Analysis showed that the average cross-correlation among all data sets produced by the RNGs during the workshops were significantly positive, as predicted, with associated odds against chance of 500 to (Location 3652)
Each experimental session consisted of a series of concentrate and relax periods, each lasting twenty-five seconds and alternating for a total of seven minutes. (Location 3886)
Without meditation practice, thoughts begin to wander every couple of seconds, so even in sessions lasting just a few minutes, most nonmeditators’ minds begin to drift into mouthwatering fantasies about cheeseburgers rather than the experiment under way. (Location 3888)
four of whom had many decades of daily meditative practice. Those five contributed nine test sessions. (Location 3920)
This outcome, which closely resembles what would happen if you physically blocked a laser beam with your hand, was caused (it appears) by the meditator’s mind alone. (Location 3940)
Then I spent a few minutes discussing the session with the two videographers as they gathered up their gear. (Location 3951)
He said yes, but that it took until about halfway through the session before he figured out how to do it. (Location 3957)
Psychic information appears to be easier to gain in terms of perceptual primitives, such as shape, form, and color, rather than analytical factors such as precise location and specific words and numbers. This distinction is roughly similar to how the two hemispheres of the brain are specialized for different kinds of information processing. (Location 4385)
You meditate and empty your mind. After a while you gain a mental flash of something green and spiky. (Location 4399)
You assess how well your impression matches each image, and you decide with some confidence that you must have been seeing the cactus—it’s green and spiky. (Location 4400)
You can also improve your decision by rating your confidence on each trial (before you see the target). If you perform several trials and you find that your remote viewing confidence is uniformly low, then you may decide to pass on that trade. (Location 4405)
He conducted multiple remote viewing trials to develop a consensus decision to buy or sell, and the images he used for the remote viewing targets were selected from thousands of digital stock photographs from commercial sources, or were randomly selected images from the Internet. (Location 4410)
advanced yoga techniques were kept secret because without substantial moral and ethical preparation most of us are just too immature to safely develop and use the superpowers. (Location 4492)
Unexamined assumptions in science can lead to problems when we’re trying to understand the nature of reality and what is likely to be true or not true. (Location 4539)
This discussion immediately gets us into dangerous territory, because foundational issues in quantum theory are still very much an open question, orthodox quantum theory does not allow for information transfer, and physicists don’t like it when “quantum concepts” are, in their opinion, abused or misinterpreted. (Location 4579)
The very idea that quantum theory would be relevant to biology was considered laughable nonsense just a few years ago. No one’s laughing anymore. The standard argument (Location 4586)
This distinction is important because the property of the quantum world associated with its spooky “nonlocal” character is called coherence. (Location 4591)
These objections allowed neuroscientists to dismiss psi effects because it was assumed that the brain could be described flawlessly using plain old classical physics. (Location 4594)
A 2011 article in Nature, one of the top science journals, entitled “Physics of Life: The Dawn of Quantum Biology,” explains why biology is not so separate from the quantum world after (Location 4598)
These effects are more pervasive than anyone ever (Location 4609)
But with newer techniques and measurement concepts, they are being found in increasingly larger and hotter systems. (Location 4612)
But within physics it is well established that beneath the appearances of common sense, space and time are relationships and not absolutes. (Location 4617)
Psychic phenomena may be thought of as symbols that indicate “the irruption [a bursting in] of meaning in the physical world via the radical collapse of the subject-object structure itself. (Location 4723)
In other words, where objective and subjective meet, the fabric of reality itself blurs. (Location 4725)
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. (Location 4735)
“It is my personal opinion that in the science of the future reality will neither be ‘psychic’ nor ‘physical’ but somehow both and somehow neither.” (Location 4738)
it is known only through the subjective, our consciousness. (Location 4743)
the omission leads many to the belief that consciousness is just another aspect of the inanimate matter that constitutes the rest of the universe. (Location 4744)
Is it possible that consciousness, like space-time, has its own intrinsic degrees of freedom, and that neglecting these will lead to a description of the universe that is fundamentally incomplete? What if our perceptions are as real [as] (or maybe, in a certain sense, are even more real) than material objects? (Location 4747)
Alan Wallace points out that gravitational waves interact with matter so weakly that persuasive evidence that they even exist has yet to be found. (Location 4751)
This outrageous idea borders on the New Age fantasy that if we only wished hard enough, then we could create our own reality. (Location 4782)
Through future technologies, we may gain the ability to intensify these small effects, manifesting the promise of books like The Secret through something akin to the miraculous amplification technologies promoted by the lingerie chain Victoria’s Secret. (Location 4789)
Beyond such speculations, one thing is certain: Gaining a deeper understanding of consciousness will play an increasingly important role in twenty-first-century science. (Location 4791)
Reality built out of imagination, which in turn is a manifestation of a primordial “substance” that is both mind and matter? (Location 4795)
It leads us to the conclusion that some of these enigmas might be real. (Location 4807)
One of the first to explore the theme of mythology manifesting as real was psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who in 1957 published the book Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky. (Location 4829)
Rather, it suggests that some of these experiences may literally be psychophysical, a blurring of conventional boundaries between objective and subjective realities. (Location 4835)
That is, that mind literally shapes matter, that the imaginal and the real are not as separate as they seem. Where have we heard that before? (Location 4838)
If Willis Harman’s intuition was correct, and as a species we are evolving toward a new fundamental worldview, then our interpretation of phenomena that lay in the boundaries between mind and matter may be headed toward a unification. If that does occur, then how that future world may look and feel stretches the imagination. (Location 4854)
When science begins to consider the full range of phenomena associated with ancient contemplative practices, and when advanced practitioners of those methods begin to embrace the value of objective scientific studies, both traditions are likely to benefit. There (Location 4863)
We may find growing societal resistance at the prospect of being “absorbed” into an increasingly powerful collective mind. (Location 4873)
But the teeth grinding will eventually settle down as younger investigators, who were not so entrenched in passé prejudices, reach their prime. (Location 4877)