On WATER (Part 1)

By Wesley Hansen

Water is an amazing substance.

Here I present the premise that humans can, in subtle ways, influence or even manipulate water using conscious intent. William Tiller, a condensed matter research physicist at Stanford University for 34 years, has presented peer-replicated experimental results in which they change the pH, by ±1 unit, in various waters using what he calls an Intentional Host Device (IHD). This device, a simple analog electrical circuit, plays host to a conscious intent meditatively embedded in the device by a group of meditators, and seems to raise the gauge symmetry of a volume of space. You can expect a series of articles explaining why I believe so strongly in the power of human conscious intent. I will begin with a brief exposition on the unconventional subject of telepathy. This is because for such phenomena to exist there must be a presently not-well-understood method of robust information transmission.

Telepathy is a phenomena of communication between biological entities which does not depend on standard modes of communication or on the standard sense faculties. The existence of telepathy is taken for granted by many people. The scientific data which has been generated, the ganzfeld studies and card-guessing tasks in particular, is no longer questioned. I’m not really baffled by the dogmatic bias against these phenomena exhibited by the orthodox scientific community, because, as William Tiller often stated, the modern scientific method is founded on the unproven premise that the conscious intents of experimenters has no impact on experiments, or, if they do, it is in the form of fraud or subconscious bias contaminating the protocol. Hence, many in the orthodox community find so-called para-psychological phenomena threatening to their very livlihood. Let’s examine the evidence.

In her 1999 paper The Significance of Statistics in Mind-Matter Research, statistician Jessica Utts provides a very nice discussion of the relevant statistical parameters. Here’s a short part of that discussion concerning the so-called ganzfeld protocol utilized in many telepathy studies:

Ganzfeld studies were introduced to parapsychology in the early 1970s and were the subject of a debate in the early 1980s between parapsychologist Charles Honorton and skeptic Ray Hyman (Honorton, 1985; Hyman, 1985; Hyman and Honorton, 1986). The debate focused on meta-analysis of the ganzfeld studies that had been done up until that time. Much of the disagreement between Honorton and Hyman followed from their impressions of whether the studies contained too many flaws to allow conclusions to be drawn.

In a paper written shortly after the Hyman-Honorton exchange, Akers (1985) criticized the use of meta-analysis as a retrospective method in para- psychology. He noted that as long as there is disagreement about the quality of individual studies, there will be disagreement about meta-analyses of them. He suggested that agreement for protocols be reached before conducting future experiments:

“It is time for parapsychologists and their critics to shift attention away from past research and to focus on designs for future research. If experimental standards can be agreed upon before this research begins, much of the methodological controversy can be avoided (p. 624).”

As a result of the debate Hyman and Honorton did just that. They agreed to a set of experimental conditions that would alleviate flaws identified in the original collection of studies. Honorton constructed a laboratory that met those conditions, called the Psychophysical Research Laboratories (PRL) and a new series of studies were conducted.

I would highly recommend anyone who questions these statistics to thoroughly digest Professor Utts paper but the point is that the so-called parapsychology researchers worked with the skeptics to construct an agreed-upon protocol.

Moving on, I will describe a recent study which uses fMRI scanning in an attempt to isolate the neural correlates of telepathic ability: Investigating paranormal phenomena: Functional brain imaging of telepathy. From that paper:

“Telepathy” is defined as “the communication of impressions of any kind from one mind to another, independently of the recognized channels of sense”.[1] With the help of various rigorous paradigms over the last 70 years, systematic research has lent support to the reality of telepathy.[2] Meta-analyses of “ganzfield” studies[3] as well as “card-guessing task”[4] studies provide compelling evidence for the existence of telepathy.

They reference Dean Radin’s book, The Conscious Universe, reference 3 and 4, which is a nice resource. Radin has his Masters in Electrical Engineering and his PhD in Psychology. He is a highly respected researcher. The authors of the fMRI study accept that the existence of telepathy is overwhelmingly probable and have moved on to investigating mechanism by searching for neural correlates. From their “Discussion:”

Our study methodology strictly adhered to the guidelines for research on paranormal phenomena proposed by Hyman and Honorton.[11] These include rigorous precautions against sensory leakage, extensive security procedures to prevent malpractices, full documentation of all experimental procedures and equipment, and complete specifications about statistical analyses.

So they follow the accepted protocol. Here’s a description of the task:

One of the investigators (PNJ) drew an image in the presence of other investigators [HRN, BNG, and GVS]. Figures ​Figures1A1A and ​and2A2A were the images drawn by PNJ for the “mentalist” and the control subject while both were seated in separate rooms. Neither the mentalist [GS] nor the control subject [JS] knew what the image was. The subject was then shifted to the MRI scanner and the investigator (PNJ) was seated in the MRI console room (about 15 feet away). Adequate precautions were taken to avoid sensory leakages by following the guidelines of Hyman and Honorton.[13] During the scan, the subject was instructed to perform the act of telepathy to think about and identify the probable image that would have been drawn by the investigator during the designated epochs of “activation” and not to engage in this task during the periods of “rest”. The subjects were visually cued (using a mirror attached to the head coil which reflected the cues projected on a screen) by green and red stars to indicate the respective onset of activation and rest epochs. The investigator (PNJ) was also given the same cues and was engaged in transmitting the image to the subject in the MRI scanner during the “activation” periods, stopping during the periods of rest. After the scanning, the subject was asked to draw the image that he was able to obtain by performing telepathy. Figure 1B was the image reproduced by the “mentalist” and Figure 2B was the image reproduced by the control. Both the subjects were scanned on the 3rd day of the lunar cycle and at the same time of the day (1400 hours IST) separated by a three-month interval.

Here is the image drawn FOR the mentalist:

Sketch of a hand drawn box with a subdivided circle inside it.

Here’s the image drawn BY the mentalist:

Sketch of a hand drawn box with a few compartments drawn inside it.

Here’s the image drawn FOR the control:

Sketch of a hand drawn box with a circle inside it subdivided into an almost-grid.

Here’s the image drawn BY the control:

Sketch of a trapezoid with a double outline.

Here are the results of the fMRI scans and their analyses:

The image [Figure 1B] reproduced by the “mentalist” showed striking similarity to the original image drawn by the investigator (PNJ) whereas the one reproduced by the control subject [Figure 2B] did not. The mentalist showed significant activation involving the right parahippocampal gyrus [Number of voxels = 160; Talairach and Tournoux co-ordinates of peak activation: ‘x’ = 32, ‘y’ = -41, ‘z’ = -6; T = 4.88; P (uncorrected) < 0.001; FDR-corrected P = 0.018] [Figure 3] whereas the control subject showed significant activation involving the left inferior frontal gyrus [number of voxels = 363; Talairach and Tournoux co-ordinates of peak activation: ‘x’ = -42, ‘y’ = 25, ‘z’ = -8; T = 4.21; P (uncorrected) < 0.001; FDR-corrected P = 0.037] [Figure 4].

So you see they had completely different brain activity while performing the task. These are pretty fascinating results! But how does it work? What is the mechanism? I will explore that question in my next article, H2O part 2.