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From our experiments, I am convinced that the reason targets with fewer and bolder elements in the visual field are much easier to describe has nothing to do with ESP. The advantage of high contrast is common to all of our ordinary visual, perceptual processing capabilities and habits. One of the keys to separating the psychic signal from mental noise is that the image of the psi target usually has greater surprise value than the noise from memory or imagination. In addition, one is able to move and shift one's point of view for true psi images, especially large outdoor targets. |
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For example, I recently correctly described an island target as "covered with fir trees, except for an area that is clear-cut down to the orange-brown earth by the sea." I then described a house by the shore, and some of its contents. I had started out with a mental picture of a very large building in a city, until I saw the sea at the edge of my mental field of view. At that point I was whisked out to sea, where I found myself looking down on several islands, of which I described the largest. The clear-cut area was totally unknown to my interviewer, but was confirmed by an unexpected phone call the following day. |
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In addition to our experiments in the Soviet Union, which were video-taped, I have carried out many remote-viewing demonstrations live on television, where the television host was the viewer. Our success rate is much higher on TV than it is in the lab. Successful trials have been done on the Phil Donahue Show, 60 Minutes Australia, and several evening news programs. Researcher Charles Honorton found a similar pattern of TV success when he was director of the Psychophysical Research Laboratory at Princeton, New Jersey. Although the remote viewer feels plenty of "performance anxiety" under such conditions, the excitement and the need for success seems to get the psychic juices flowing. This is further evidence that psi is not an analytic ability, because nobody is able to do mathematical calculations better on TV than in a quiet, private place. I believe that the stimulation of being on TV parallels Yoda's advice from Star Wars, when Luke Skywalker was trying to psychically levitate his starship from the mud: "There is no trying there is only doing." |
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In April, 1973, we were just beginning to explore the effect of increased distance on remote-viewing accuracy. In one of our experimental series, Hal |
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