PSI - Boundaries Of The Mind (1976)

[Music] 587 [Music] Roger Hold Steady place is at 19,000 ft why did you do that R I don't know I just felt uncomfortable see something down there no there's nothing there see how did you know I wish I knew throughout history people have been perplexed by events they couldn't explain by dreams that seem to predict the future by the ability to Envision distant [Music] events what's the matter I have the the strangest feeling Jerry's been in a car accident now come on Hina don't be silly let's go have some dinner all right sure very often those premonitions turn out to be nothing more than an overactive imagination hello but there are hundreds of cases where extra sensory perceptions have been recorded and verified most people feel that the only things that influence them are the things that come into the senses the things they can taste hear touch feel or see well we have evidence that there's something more than that this thing that we call sigh which can influence people without the use of the senses scientists believe that Sai is a means of communication that we don't yet understand when we take in information through Sai means it is known as extra sensory perception ESP when we send out information without the use of our muscles that's known as psychokinesis or PK but no matter whether the Sigh is ESP or PK these experiences are so far from what we consider normal that it's hard to accept that these things could actually take place what we know of ESP does not fit in with the current scientific framework now we have uh very good evidence that ESP and other side phenomena do occur so the obvious conclusion is that the current scientific framework is fundamentally incomplete now this isn't particularly surprising science is always changing science is a dynamic process and it really only represents the the current best guess as to the nature of the universe since earliest times man has tried to recognize and control the unseen forces around him those he could understand and those he could not for a long time most of the world was heavily influenced by fortune tellers and mediums and by folklore and myth but superstitions faded away in the 19th century scientists like Madame curri began to explain away the Mysteries with a new rational way of thinking the world embraced science science made industry possible and Industry produced material Comforts The mediums and fortune tellers could never provide in the bustle of the new scientific age the Western World dismissed things like ESP as unscientific not until the 1930s did Serious researchers such as JB and Louisa Ry perform well-controlled experiments with ESP their work showed that ESP does exist but most people still found it difficult to accept ESP as a reality people are suspicious of ESP because so many apparently real demonstrations turn out to be just clever trickery and I'll write them down on the back of this now just think about it for a second do you have the two initials in your mind now okay okayy concentrate on the second initial now okay I think I have it I think I have it if you'll announce your choice to the audience and I'll reveal what I've written SB SB that's exactly what I've written here exactly it looked as though I was reading her mind but I wasn't in fact I wrote nothing with a pencil instead after she called out the initials I simply wrote the initials down with a pencil attached to my thumbnail like this the Trick's as simple as that and when supposed psychic events are not Pricks they often are just ordinary occurrences that have simple explanation on this Laura look this is incredible 10,000 people died in an earthquake in South America last night and I dreamt about it I'm clar voyant I have ESP Bob don't you remember you went to bed early last night I stayed up and I watched the late news that was on the news last night you heard it in your sleep you're not Clairvoyant I guess you're right I'm not yet verifiable sigh events do take place and scientists are now beginning to theorize about how these phenomena occur hey Charlie from what we've seen we believe that people may be scanning their environment pretty much all of the time scanning with sigh in order to discover things out there that are related to their interest related to their concerns and when they discover these things via this unconscious SI means they react to them it begins to influence their actions in some way they're usually not aware of this it's quite unconscious it's it's very subtle but there's a definite influence on their behavior it seems luck or coincidence may be the only Factor that's involved in this type of incident but we think there may be another Factor Nam sigh some Sai Research Laboratories are seeking to discover under what conditions ESP can be repeated most reliably this experiment was filmed as it actually happened at my manad medical center in Brooklyn Ellen Messer has volunteered to be the subject in this test Sharon Harper will try to send images to Ellen from a room down the hall the images she sends will be from A View Master slide wheeel taken from a packet chosen at random now each packet contains four different slide reels as you can see and the sender will only send one of these reels all right I'm going to be in a room at the end of the hallway yeah I'll be looking at some slides which I'll try to send to you researchers have discovered that most thep experiences occur when people are very relaxed or are dreaming really relaxed and and you've been uh giving your imagery ping pong balls over her eyes break up the normal patterns of visual perception I've done this before it usually looks very a monotonous hissing through the earphones quiets her perceptions of sound and we're going to leave and we're going to start the session okay these preparations serve to diminish the normal senses making the mind more receptive to internal imagery thanks a lot we're already okay Sharon here's the Target have a good session thank you at this point no one knows what slides are in the packet after 10 minutes of relaxation Sharon selects one slide wheel from the [Music] packet I see some kind of um tubular structure over my head like a almost like an elevated Subway and I'm driving in the car beneath it and I see a lot of red lights as if I was in an airplane looking down at the road and there were trees on both sides of it it looked as if it was carved from a mountain and I was looking at it an area view Cliffs right High craggy Cliffs and the waterers down to my left different B relief pictures on the walls actually on Stone image that keeps coming back is driving down that RO with the red lights and the tubular structure above my head and keeps returning again and again and again okay fine okay I'll just give you you know take after half an hour Ellen is brought in to look at the slide wheeel packet at this point only Sharon knows which slide wheeel was viewed during the experiment both in bed knobs and uh broomsticks and in these cathedrals of the world there's a picture the one with the arch I don't know why this one seems kind of familiar it's the the one with the arch but this is my first inclination when you first came in yeah when I first it was just something about this it's my first inclination is uh cathedrals of the of Europe do you want me to write that as one write that as one okay bed knobs and Bon sticks is too your Woods will be three birds of the world will be four I guess that's my order okay I guess we should get Sharon in here to um tell us what it was hi hi why didn't you tell us what it was it was Cathedral hey another director fantastic fantas fantastic you know she came right in here and said there is one chance in four that Ellen could have made a lucky guess but the group at myones has repeated this procedure more than 200 times and reported direct hits in 44% of the experiments the odds against that happening strictly by chance are 100 million to one so great fantastic it's not only Sai that remains mysterious we really still know very little about the normal functions of mind for example uh memory where is memory memory we talk of memory banks but we have not yet located memory in the brain one of the world's leading neurophysiologists for example Sir John Eckles uh who uh won a Nobel Prize for his work in neurophysiology has repeatedly warned that we should stop pretending that Consciousness is not a mystery at Stanford Research Institute one of the goals is to determine whether Sai information is transmitted via some type of radio wave or magnetic field or other means this experiment is part of a series of remote viewing trials Gordon Sheridan who has volunteered for this test chats with Dr Russell tar in the laboratory as Dr Harold Poff receives a randomly selected Target location from a senior SRI executive accompanied by our photographer he leaves the Institute opens the envelope and drives to the Target location at the laboratory the subject tries to visualize the area Dr POF is viewing there's a building to their left there's some trees to their very close to them a dark brown Building look around at the building you see anything else in the neighborhood of that building that might be interesting there's a u some Hedges between the sidewalk and the parking lot maybe we'd like to draw what that looks like okay world's worst artist by comparing what the subjects visualize and the actual targets Sr I scientists hope to learn much more about such factors as the distance over which Sai communication can function at the time this film was produced SRI had published results of 53 remote viewing experiments and independent judges had correctly matched Targets in over half of them we know that we have something we know that sigh is real that it works but we have not yet discovered the mechanism underlying it it well we assume that when sa events occur there must be corresponding events going on in the body and particularly in the brain and the question is whether we can learn something about those events by studying the processes that we can measure at the surface of the body during the experiment you'll be relaxing down in the basement in our room which is over that way about 150 ft and we'll be recording your EEG and occasionally the computer will be turning on this light up here in this room get an idea what that looks like the room will be very dark and it'll be a good good bright flash and we' like you to try and get a sense of what's Happening up here and then after each trial you'll be asked to give your guess about what you thought was occurring whether the light was on or off okay Steve we're all set now now we can take the signals from your scalp and they'll come down the wire down into the board out into the polygraph and up to our computer okay all set every 20 seconds or so the computer upstairs decides to either Flash the strobe light or not to flash it downstairs Steve's job is to visualize what's happening with the strobe and indicate his guess by pressing the button so what we're really interested in is seeing whether even even in the event that he himself doesn't consciously know what's happening maybe his brain in some sense does so that's what the experiment is all about we've we've run five sessions of an experiment like this and we do have some preliminary evidence that when the light comes on changes occur in the EEG that'll like the changes you would see if the light were flashed right at the subject that is in his physical presence okay here the work at Duke is significant for two reasons first it is helping to explain some of the basic mechanisms involved in sigh but even more important the work has attracted researchers from a variety of disciplines they recognize that Sai represents a totally new frontier in science these scientists and their colleagues throughout the world have come to believe that if the fundamental workings of Sai can be understood and controlled then it may be possible for perhaps the first time in the history of mankind to vastly expand the horizons and boundaries of the [Music] [Music] Mind [Music]