What would you do if you were presented with mounting evidence that you couldn’t believe? Hide your head in the sand, or question your beliefs? The 27 year run of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Laboratory has repeatedly challenged the beliefs of scientists around the world with their eye-popping research findings on the interactions between consciousness and matter.
Anomalies are a test of good science. An anomaly is a test result that is unexplainable by present theory. The idea of sailing around the world was an anomalous idea when the dominant theory was that the Earth was flat. When an anomaly is proved to exist, dogmatic science will reject the anomaly as “impossible.” Good science will change the theory; a humble but important step.
Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne, two researchers at the PEAR Labs presented a very good discussion of this topic in the journal Scientific Exploration. They also presented an impressive summary of the conclusions of the PEAR research.
In short, the research at PEAR is hard evidence for the interactions of living consciousness and matter. In 27 years, over fifty million experimental trials containing nearly three billion bits of information have been performed. Most of the trials joined a machine designed to spit out a predictable stream of random information with a human operator who tried to influence the machine’s output with nothing but intent.
In various trials, they varied the number of operators, the distance from the machine (by thousands of miles), the timing of the operators intent (timing the influence on the machine to appear in the past or the future), and the type of machine (analog, digital, age, and many others).
The results are truly astounding. A few highlights:
-Operator intent clearly changed the way these machines worked. Statistically, the chance that the anomaly shown by 27 years of data is purely by chance is about 1 part in a trillion.
-When an operator addressed the machine from thousands of miles away, the data changed in the same signature pattern as when sitting right next to the machine.
-Experiments performed “off-time” resulted in the same effects as those done in present time. In other words, if an operator exerted an intention to have an effect on the machine several hours or days before, or after, the machine produced its data string, the characteristic signature for that operator would appear, on schedule.
As Jahn states, “consciousness is capable of inserting information into these random physical systems, by some anomalous means that is independent of space and time.”
The impact of consciousness on matter is the foundation of my practice, and my belief systems changed to include these kind of anomalies a long time ago. However, I don’t want to become isolated in this belief. I have a great desire to try to build bridges from my kind of “woo-woo” medicine to more conventional forms of health care, and I believe that good science can be the substance from which these bridges can be built.
Jahn’s work in the PEAR laboratory is a wonderful nugget of good science. It is reproducible and has provided a foundation upon which other similar experiments have been designed. (I will soon write about a particularly entertaining experiment studying the bond between newborn chicks and a robot.) I thank Robert Jahn and his fellow researchers for having the courage to pursue anomalous research for the past 27 years in the face of great criticism. I believe that we will all be better of for their efforts.
Do you have other examples of good anomalous science? Please let us all know about them.