edge science #14

7/30/2019 Edge Science #14

1/20

EdgeScienceCurrent Research and Insights

Number 14 May 2013

A publicatio o the Society or Scietic Exploratio

The Porosityof Dreams

SunkenContinents

versus Plate

Tectonics


2/20

CONTENTSTHE OBSERVATORY

Harnessing the Paranormal Community

By Loyd Auerbach

LETTERSOn The Boggle Factor

FeatureS

The Concept of Porosityin Dreams

By Robert L. Van de Castle

Sunken Continentsversus Plate TectonicsBy David Pratt

REFERENCE POINTWhos Talking?

A review by Michael Prescott of

The Origin of Consciousness in

the Breakdown of the Bicameral

Mindby Julian Jaynes

BACKSCATTERUncatalogedBy William Corliss

EdgeScience #14May 2013

EeSee s a qate maaze.Pt pes ae avaabe meesee.ma.m.F te mat, see eesee.Ema: [email protected]

Why EdgeSciece? Bease, ta t pb

peept, set kwee s st kws. Wat emas t be svee watwe t kw ve ke was wat we kw.A wat we tk we kw ma t be ete et est. Amaes, w eseaeste t sweep e te , s be atvepse as es t pteta beakts a ewets see.

PuBliShEr: Te Set Set ExpatEdiTor: Patk he

ASSociATE EdiTorS: dk Basba,P.d. Me

conTriBuTorS: l Aeba, Wam css, dav

Patt, Mae Pestt, rbet l. Va e castedESign: Smttpe des

The Society or Scietic Exploratio (SSE)s a pessa azat setsts asas w st sa a expaepemea. Te pma a te Set s tpve a pessa m pesetats,tsm, a ebate e tps w ae vas eass e ste aeqatewt masteam see. A sea a s tpmte mpve esta tse atstat eessa mt te spe setq, s as sa stats, esttve

w vews, e teeta assmpts,a te temptat t vet peva tet peva ma. Tps e vestatve a we spetm. At e e ae appaetamaes we estabse spes. At tete, we paaxa pemea tat bet estabse spe a teee mae te eatest pteta set avaea te expas ma kwee. Te SSEwas e 1982 a as appxmate 800membes 45 tes wwe. Te Setas pbses te pee-evewe Journal oScientifc Exploration, a s aa meets te u.S. a bea meets Epe. Assate

a stet membesps ae avaabe t te pb.T j te Set, me mat, vs t tewebste at setexpat..

PrESidEnT: Wam Best, St. Jseps ceeVicE-PrESidEnT: rbet Ja, Pet uvestSEcrETAry: Mak uba-la, Ma State

uvestTrEASurEr: yk dbsEuroPEAn coordinATor: E Sta,

st cee, nwa

cpt 2013 Set Set ExpatTe ats, atsts, a ptapes eta pt t te wk.

34

11

20

cve at: Sea aes a vta asape b P Meees & Ftae/stkpt

6

16


3/20


4/20

4 / EDGESCIENCE #14 maY 2013

An additional, strictly practical reason or doing nothingmore than suspend belie, accepting the claims as plausible, asabstract inormation, is that most o us have our hands ulloten more than ullwith our own pursuits. Were typicallytoo busy to take a really serious interesti.e. an active, par-

ticipating interestin other matters. Over the years Ive eltunhappy, indeed guilty on quite a ew occasions, when Ivebeen asked to comment on someone elses work on a subject Iknow nothing about, and have declined simply because I dontwant to take the time away rom the long list o my top priori-ties that always seems to get longer rather than shorter.

Over HIV/AIDS, I experienced the same sort o rustra-tion as Bill describes. Ater I had been led by sheer curiosityinto collating all available results o HIV tests, and ound thatthis shows beyond any doubt that what the tests detect is notan inectious agent and is not correlated with AIDS, I thoughtthat the people who were already criticizing HIV/AIDS the-ory would build on my ndings and cite my work all over the

place. But it didnt happen, not even among those who arequite active in arguing and campaigning against HIV/AIDStheory. Everyone has his or her own pet disproo o the the-ory. I suspect that Bills rustration may stem chiefy rom thelack o active response rom the many people and groups whomight be expected to take up his initiatives, people and groupswho have worked and are working on things like therapeutictouch and other mind- or soul-body interactions.

That some Society or Scientic Exploration (SSE) coner-ence presentations can strike one as too much reminds meo my rst reading o Tim Dinsdales Loch Ness Monster. It allseemed quite believableuntil there came a chapter claimingsimilar monsters were extant in lakes and oceans all over

the world. Too much, I said to mysel. Some time later Iwoke up to the act that i Nessies exist, its much more likelythat their cousins exist in other places than that they can beound only in one lake. So too with probable reactions to myDogmatism in Science and Medicine: Hard enough to believethat science could be wrong about HIV/AIDS, let alone thatits wrong also about global warming, the Big Bang, dinosaurextinction, and all the other topics covered in the book. But:its much more likely that something has gone wrong with sci-ence as a whole, than that a properly unctioning science couldmake and maintain such a colossal mistake as HIV/AIDS the-ory. So one reason that Bills work is too much is that itimplies that the worldview thats ingrained in most o us is

misleading in some very undamental and important manner.One cant accept and act on that acceptance without chang-ing ones approach on many other things as well. (For moreon whats wrong with science, and the popular mistaken viewo science, see Dogmatism in Science and Medicine and mynew blog intended as continuing commentary on those topics,beginning with A politically liberal global-warming skeptic?at http://wp.me/p2VG42-e.)

Bills essay is at root about how we come to believe some-thing and how we might change our mind about something.Working on my rst anomalies case-study, I realized thatthe usual rhetorical dismissing o an anomalyHow couldanyone believe that?is a undamentally wrong question.

On The Boggle Factor

Bill Bengston (The Boggle Factor in EdgeScience#12)raises many points deserving o much urther discussion.Rather than attempt to write that book, though, Ill justbriefy remark on some o those points. I also recommendthe Introduction to Jerry Clarks recent book, Unexplained(reviewed in JSE 26 #4), which refects Clarks consideredjudgments,... wisdom acquired over decades o grapplingwith reports and other evidence about matters that most omainstream science and scholarship nd too dicult to han-dlein other words, the Boggle Factor at work.

Bill asks: What more would he need to do?It depends on what sort o response he wants. Does he

want people to believe that his experiences are exactly asreported, but to do no more than believe? What good wouldthat do, and how would he or anyone else ever know?

This raises a distinction that applies to anomalous claimsquite generally, the distinction between acceptingas inor-mation, in the abstractthat the evidence underlying theclaims is actual, by contrast to taking actions that presumethe anomalous claims to be unquestionably true. Applied toBills situation, the latter would imply that i we are diagnosedwith cancer, we should call or Bill Bengston instead o otheralternative treatment or mainstream treatment. Anything

short o that implies the too much Boggle Factor, doesnt it?This sort o distinct ion, Ive suggested elsewhere, explains

some o the reaction by the mainstream to anomalies. Forinstance, I think the evidence is strong that Loch Ness harborsan unidentied species whose identication would be o con-siderable importbut it would be ill-advised or a career zool-ogist to try to learn about Nessies, because theres no obviousway to get more inormation within any oreseeable period otime. So, overall, quite a ew career scientists privately enter-tain the reality o all sorts o anomalies without doing any-thing about it. I have to be satised with people saying aboutmy Nessie claims, Interesting. Hope we can learn more sometime.

LETTERS

EdgeScienceCurrent Research and Insights

Number 12 October 2012

a publiction othe Society or Scientifc Explortion

First Person Science

Can a Conscious MindChange the Brain?

Hair of the Dog and theRise of Low-Dose Therapies

Interconnectedness:A Time Bomb in Medicine?


5/20

EDGESCIENCE #14 maY 2013 / 5

treatment, is an editorial oversight and could damage main-stream interest in psi and related consciousness research.

From my work recently, I can testiy to the growingalbeit cautiousinterest in psi rom mainstream scientists. Forexample, a German group not previously connected with psi

research is about to report a series o mostly successul studiesreplicating Daryl Bems retroactive acilitation work. At suchan auspicious time or parapsychology, it would be prudent notto give the pseudo-skeptics ammunition by allowing them totarnish the eld by associating it with the outlandish claimsespoused by the HIV denialists.

Michael DugganBirmingham, U.K.

Bill Bengston replies: The portrayal o Henry Bauer insimplistic terms as an HIV denialist serves to reinorce oneo the points in my piece on the Boggle Factor. My pointwas not to espouse or deny any particular area o anomalies

research, but rather to indicate that we al l have buttons, andthese buttons are not necessarily based upon the quality o thedata. When our boggle threshold is reached, we tend towardsemotional overreaction that ought to be outside the bounds oscientic discourse.

I stand by my original statement that Henry is a world-class scholar and intellect. Whether he is correct about the lacko association between HIV and AIDS is presently beyond mycapacity to seriously judge. I am, however, grateul that hecontinues to push my buttons.

Humans are brought up and trained to believe what were told.The correct and interesting question is: how do some o usever manage to start thinking or ourselves on the basis o evi-dence and experience? (See Beyond Velikovsky: The History o aPublic Controversy, especially chapter 11, Motives or believ-

ing, and chapter 12, Accomplices to belie.) Some yearsago John Brockman published What Have You Changed YourMind About? Todays Leading Minds Rethink Everything, anda reviewer noted that the sel-described mind-changes wereonly minor ones, not the sort o paradigm shit that anomal-ists dream about.

What Ive ound most conducive to mind-changing iswhen riends, people Im comortable with, disagree with meabout something I believe or take seriously something thatIve hitherto dismissed. Ive gained immeasurably throughinteractions in the SSE or that reason, recognizing faws in myarguments and coming to appreciate all sorts o other thingsbecause their proponents are respected and valued colleagues.

Henry BauerBlacksburg, Virginia

As much as I look orward to reading the excellentEdgeSciencepublication, I have serious reservations about thepositive portrayal o the HIV denialist argument rom the edi-torial o Pro. Bill Bengston. Associating the excellent ron-tier research that is regularly eatured in EdgeSciencewith sub-ject matter that is not only demonstrably alse, but leads toearly death in those adherents who eschew modern anti-viral

U N S E T T L E D S C I E N C EDearbrn, MI The Hitri Dearbrn In

The Society or Scientifc Exploration

32nd AnnualConerenceJune 68, 2013

Up-to-date details are available o the SSE website: scietiicexploratio.org

TopIcs: UFOs Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Contact Yoga and Neuroscience, and more


6/20


Robert L. Va de Castle

ca Stk Pt i. / beeee

My lielong pursuit o dreams began rather reluctantly.Ater receiving my PhD degree in clinical psychologyrom the University o North Carolina, I took a ull-timeteaching position at the University o Denver. In addition tosome undergraduate courses, I was also supposed to teach anopen-ended graduate clinical course on some area o interest

that would appeal to the eight or so students enrolled. When Iinquired as to what topic they might wish to learn more about,they almost, to a person, said dreams. I explained to themthat I knew practically nothing about dreams as it was a topichardly ever mentioned in any o my own previous classes. Iasked them to suggest another topic, but they insisted thatthey wanted to learn about dreams. I again explained my igno-rance about dreams, and they again demanded that dreamsbecome the topic o ocus or the course. We wound up asthe blind leading the blind. We agreed to read various jour-nal articles on dreams and exchange our notes during classmeetings. Everyones interest seemed to subsequently leaprog in ways that were meaningul or each student. Since I

had developed an interest in projective techniques previously(Rorschach Ink Blots etc.), I began to appreciate the similari-ties between interpreting the ambiguous images o inkblotswith eyes wide open, and the dream images we develop withour eyes closed while sleeping.

During this time, I requently came across reerences toCalvin Hall and his continuity theory o dreaming. Briefystated, he proposed that dream images are the embodimento thoughts and that by examining their content, one couldbecome amiliar with the important conceptual areas thatorganized ones lie. He wrote a valuable book in 1953 entitledThe Meaning o Dreams that oered comments on over 200dreams. I became interested in his work and contacted him

to inquire as to whether there might be any possibilities orworking with him. He said he was just beginning a new studyand would be happy to hire me i his proposed $7,000 annualsalary were acceptable to me. Although I was married and hadve sons, I was willing to make any sacrice necessary to joinhim on the exciting projects that would be orthcoming.

In the two years that I spent with Hall in Miami, weworked together on developing an elaborate system or scor-ing up dreams in a quantitative ashion that would enableobjective techniques to be employed with dreams so that theywould receive the scientic respectability that they deserved.We utilized the scoring system we developed to objectivelyevaluate 500 dreams rom American male college students and500 dreams rom American emale college students. Theseresults provided the baselines or what type o dream contentmight be ound or any sample o dreamers. We published ournorms, and our rationale or how they were developed, inour 1966 book, The Content Analysis o Dreams. Our systembecame the most widely used one in the world or researchers

who wished to treat dreams in the same objective way as otherresearchers employed standardized personality tests.

In addition to our work on developing dream norms,our main project at the Institute o Dream Research ocusedupon comparing dream content rom the same subjects whensleeping in their own beds at home and in our laboratory(actually the basement o Halls home). We both served inthe roles o experimenter and subject or this research. In onechapter o an unpublished book entitled The Scientifc Study oDreams, Hall described his eorts to investigate the eectso subliminal stimuli on dreams and admitted that when theexperiments were begun I was skeptical o obtaining positiveresults.... These personal observations are pertinent because

The Concept of

Porosity in

Dreams


7/20


dream again. Third, the subjects personal involvement in theaction by standing up and throwing a ew imaginary punchesmay have refected the experimenters rather spirited but silentpantomiming in the next room. Hall also conducted similarattempts with ve other subjects with whom a total o 121 pre-sentations o stimulus material were made. In 56 o these pre-

sentations, some correspondence was noted between the mate-rial that was sent and the contents o the dream that was sub-sequently reported. (Some examples o these correspondencescan be ound in my bookOur Dreaming Mind, page 418.)

Hall also extended his explorations in another direc-tion. Sometimes, the sleep o two subjects was monitored onthe same night. The subjects slept in separate rooms whichwere located on either side o the room in which the EEGwas located. Occasionally, the two subjects would have REMperiods close together in time, and in two instances a strik-ing congruence between the dreams reported by the subjectsrom these REM periods was noted... . Subject A dreamed oreceiving a special delivery letter and subject B dreamed his

sister was writing a letter which was to be sent at a special rate.On another occasion, subject B dreamed o going into a storeto buy something.... Subject C reported a dream in which hewent into a store to buy something.

The most startling example o dream to dream tempo-ral correspondences between two subjects was reported byAlan Rechtschaen, proessor emeritus in the Department oPsychiatry and Psychology at the University o Chicago and anoted pioneer in the eld o sleep research. He was invited topresent an experimental design or a 1968 conerence spon-sored by the Parapsychology Foundation on Methodologyin Psi Research. Ater conducting some inormal research, hesaid: We noted a good deal o correspondence, quite anec-

dotally, between dreams occurring about the same time in thenight by two sleepers.

Here was how he described his best example:

In the rst dream, one subject dreamt about stu-dents singing in Russian and the other subject dreamtabout students doing some kind o interpretive sing-ing. In the second dream, the rst subject was tak-ing a violin lesson and the other subject was learninga guitar melody. In the third dream, the rst sub-ject was watching a James Cagney gangster movie,and the other subject reported a dream about a recentgangster movie, Bonnie and Clyde As the subjects

knew each other, the possibility o collusion, whichwe really doubt, could not be ruled out. So we hadto go on and introduce experimentally an externalstimulus into the dream. We did this by post-hyp-notic suggestion. Beore the subject went to sleep orthe night, he was hypnotized, and while he was in atrance we told him that during the night he wouldhave a certain dream.

The very rst night we tried it, we told the subjectthat he would dream o the death o Martin LutherKing and o the ear o riots, and he dreamt thatMartin Luther King had been shot, that somebody

investigators o psychic phenomena have been accused o nd-ing what they want to nd, and o not being suciently criti-cal o their experiments.

Hall had not told me he was starting to seriously investi-gate this area and use me as a subject. On one o the nights

when I served as the sleeping subject, Hall reported: the rsttwo presentations with Van de Castle did not have any dis-cernible eect on the dreams he reported. The third topic con-sisted o watching a prizeght. The experimenter visualized aprize ght mentally, looked at pictures o prize ghters in amagazine, wrote out the message: you are watching a prizeght, and stood up and engaged in shadowboxing. Theseactivities were continued or about 15 minutes. When thesubject was awakened, he reported a long dream into the taperecorder. The rst third o the dream was sexua l in character,then the ollowing episode was recorded: this setting shitedto a large auditorium and it was a boxing match going on.There were two young lightweight boxers who were ght-

ing and one o them was doing much better than the other.It seems his opponent became vanquished and then anotherlightweight contender got into the ring with him. This newcontender now started to give a pretty savage beating to theother boxer who at one point kind o started to use a doublepunch where both hands would be brought rom the out-side and would simultaneously hit the other boxers head atthe same t ime. My sentiments began to be or the underdog,and I remember standing up and throwing a ew imaginarypunches mysel because I was so involved with the action inthe ring. Hall then wrote: The description o the ghtcontinued or nine more lines, and then shited back to thetheme o the rst part o the dream.

Although I experienced this dream back in 1967, I canstill recall the vividness and intensity o that dream 46 yearslater. It served as mypersonalintroduction to the reality o psy-chic phenomena, even though I had a broad previous readingbackground on the subject. For persons experiencing this kindo impactul dream, no amount o skepticism by omniscientscientists can ever dissuade an experiencer o this kind o pow-erul psychic event that they were deluded. I you get hit by atruck, you know that you were hit by a truck, and no amounto critical comments by the arbiters o reality will ever con-vince you that the truck that hit you was an imaginary truck.Hall mentioned: we obtained 97 dreams rom that subjectwho had dreamed o a prize ght when that topic was sent.

There was no mention o a boxing match in any o his other97 dreams.

In commenting about the boxing dream, Hall stated:Several things will be noted about the incorporation into thedream o the topic. First it was a very direct reproduction owhat the experimenter was thinking about and pantomiming.Second, the boxing episode was inserted into the dream andappeared to have no connection with what went beore andwhat ollowed it. This inserted quality is also what one ndswhen a sleeping person is stimulated by a sound, light, or dropso water. It appears that the subject received the message in themiddle o a dream which was interrupted in order to incor-porate the subliminal stimulus and then return to the main


8/20


threw a rock and they were araid a riot would start.The other subject, who had not received any sugges-tion, dreamt o a Negro policeman who was beatinganother man and he was araid that somebody wouldthrow a brick and start a riot.

On another night we told the subject to dream

that he was in an amusement park, having a very goodtime. He dreamt that, and specically he dreamtabout riding on a merry-go-round. The other subjecthad a dream o people laughing and running in cir-cles and there were grinning, unny looking horsesin his dream.

Rechtschaen then decided to use hypnosis to investigatethe possibility o inducing simultaneous dreams. He wouldhypnotize subject A and tell him to dream or 10 minutesabout topic X. He would then hypnotize subject B and tell himto dream about what A had dreamt. He reported some verystriking correspondences between these hypnotically induced

dreams. He subsequently raised this intriguing question: We

thought that maybe the question is not so much what dodreams mean, but whose dream are you having?

My rst impressive personal introduction to the realm oentangled dreams and the question o whose dream are youhaving, occurred when I conducted an inormal experimentrom my home in Charlottesville, Virginia. I was a co-editor

or the Dream Network Bulletinand announced to readers thatI would concentrate on a picture on the night o November 17,1985, and invited them to send me accounts o their dreamsrom that night. A total o 27 percipients rom around thecountry responded to my request.

The target picture involved a black-and-white photo-graph o a Kuna Indian woman rom Panama standing inront o a house with slanted, wooden walls, and a thatchedroo with some children inside (at let). The participantsreported numerous correspondences to the target picture,such as mentioning a short sleeve blouse, unusual ankle jew-elry, oreign locations, and children. One woman, ClaudiaB, who was rom Brooklyn and who was a complete stranger

to me, mentioned her young daughter, hands on a structureo beams and poles, wooden sliding doors and a buildingwith an unusua l looking roo. In my associations recordedthat night to the target picture, I had written that a thatchedroo provides good protection rom the rain. Claudia men-tioned she heard rain all ing and realized that she didnt havean umbrella. I recalled 4 dreams that night and there werestriking correspondences between my dreams and Claudiasdreams throughout the night.

My rst dream involved a shing scene: I was sometimeson a boat and sometimes on shore. The man I was with caughttwo large founder, and a woman insisted that I put them ontop o the boat and gut them. I attempted to cut the sh open

with a razor blade. Some blood came out; the shs ace turnedinto a mans ace and he was bleeding. I told him to rinse hisace with water and said I would need his advice as to howto cut around his ears and nose. In her rst dream, Claudiareported, I am outdoors, perhaps on the deck o the shipmounting the resh, whole wet skin o a small whale or whaleshead (sh size) on a board. Ater removing one eye (its a sideview) with the knie Im using, I hear a conversation (Thiscould be infuenced by a recent waking experience o wash-ing founder or cooking, but not removing their heads.) I eela kinship, or sympathy, with the whale, which at some pointtransorms into a person. The wet, stretched, mounted skin isnow o a mans ace, reddish-brown.

The odds against two complete strangers on the samenight, geographically separated by 500 miles, dreamingabout a boat, cutting open a sh and having the ace o thesh turn into a bloody mans ace are astronomical, and thatboth dreamers specically mentioned founder seems to argueagainst any notion that the correspondences are a chanceoccurrence. Rechtschaen had noted that, When you sim-ply have judges match a dream against a suggested topic, a hitdoes not reveal the degree o the hit. A simple matching pro-cedure does not take into account the very unlikely probabil-ity o such a specic occurrence. Although not as striking inmatching details, another emale dreamer saw an animal aceand an animal with an open wound that I wanted to sew up or


9/20


heal beore too much blood was lost.My next dream involved providing drinks that cost $0.41

each. Claudia reported that she oered to count anotherpersons share and wrote down gures which were an oddamount o dollars and cents. My next dream involved amother dividing a cake into two portions, and in Claudias

second dream, her daughter was with her and asked the oth-ers to count out a share with equal denominations. In ournext dreams, both Claudia and I dreamed about students andworking on a project.

Dreamers other than Claudia also seemed to tune intovarious eatures mentioned in my rst dream. There were re-erences to: a water setting, an ocean, ocean trip, sea, river,yacht, boat (2x), oars or a rowboat, shing, and sh hooks.There is no material in the target image that bears any rela-tionship to any o this shared dream material, but it does seemas i some sort o content leakage or seeping in imagery occursbetween and among the dreamers. In my ourth dream, I wasusing a hose to water down a pile o leaves. Two o the nine

male dreamers reported urinating in their dreams, and onewoman dreamt that something like tea was being splashed ordripped on the rippled pages o a magazine.

I have come up with the term porosity to describe howthe material o multiple dreamers dreams seems to inter-connect in rather fuid ways. There has been a great deal oresearch conducted recently on the concept o thin bound-aries and the term porosity seems relevant to this concept.I think the title illustration at the beginning o this articlecaptures this conception o everything sort o being intercon-nected with everything else.

The results I obtained with Hall led to my serving as asubject or eight nights in the dream telepathy studies carried

out at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn. I had EEG elec-trodes attached to my ace and scalp to monitor my REM peri-ods, and was repeatedly awakened throughout the night toreport my dreams. A typical nights transcription would runto over 25 single-spaced pages. A total o eight potential tar-get pictures, consisting o colored art prints, served as targetstimuli. Since there were oten similarly themed pictures pres-ent because o the randomization procedure to select targetpictures each night, a decision was made to consider all myjudging choices that were ranked as number 1-4 as hits andthose ranked 5-8 as misses. Using that criterion, I receiveda total o 8 hits during my nights at Maimonides and such aresult would be considered as statistically signicant (


10/20


REEREnCES

Dwyer, R., Van de Castle, R., & Pimm, B. A. (2010). Dreams asa Multidimensional Expression o PSI, Explore: The Journal

o Science and Healing, 6(4), 263-268.

Hall, C., & Van de Castle, R. (1966). The Content Analysis o

Dreams. New York: Appleton-CenturyCrot.

Rechtschaen, A. (1970). A sleep and dream states: An exper-

imental design, In R. Cavanna (Ed.), Proceedings o an

International Conerence on Methodology in Psi Research(pp.

87-120). New York, NY: Parapsycholgy Foundation.

Ullman, M., Krippner, S., & Vaughn, A. (1973). Dream Telepathy.

New York: Macmillan.

Van de Castle, R. L. (1994). Our Dreaming Mind. New York:

Ballantine Books.

detail and provided a drawing that mirrored many eatures o

the target picture and labeled her dream Reaching or NewGalaxies (see inset). However another dreamer rom Quebecshowed us a dream report rom her dream journal that she hadtitled The Rocket Explosion. In her dream she mentionedthat she was in a grass eld with a group o people to see thelaunch o the space shuttle at night. The interesting eature oher dream was that she experienced it three nights beore thesender selected the target picture!

The concept o porosity that I am promoting is one thatsuggests that there is a very open, fuid, permeable, relation-ship shit ing between and among the tangled webs o psi men-tal imagery associated with the state o dreaming.

ROBERT VAn DE CASTLE, PhD, s a eteca Psst a Pess Emets

Beava Mee a Psat at te

uvest Va heat Sees cete

cattesve, VA. he s te -at

The Content Analysis o Dreams wt cav

ha (1966) a te at Our Dream-

ing Mind (1994). he s a me Peset

te iteata Assat te St

deams a 2004 e eeve te st letme Aevemet

deamwk Awa. he s et te Avs Ba deams-

c.m, w s te aest eam-eate ste b aee ea

ba wt a pesee 129 tes a 11 aaes.


11/20


The idea o continental drit has been around or more than200 years, but the rst detailed theory was put orward byAlred Wegener in 1912. It generated heated debate and metwith widespread rejection. Interest in continental dri t wasrevived in the early 1950s with the rise o the new science opaleomagnetism, the study o the magnetism o ancient rocks.In the early 1960s new data rom ocean exploration led to the

idea o seafoor spreading, and within a ew years these andother concepts were synthesized into the model o plate tec-tonics, which quickly became the new orthodoxy.

According to plate tectonics, the earths outermost layer,

Sunken Continentsversus Plate Tectonics

David Pratt

or lithosphere, is divided into several plates that move overan underlying plastic layer known as the asthenosphere. Platescause mountains to rise where they push together, and conti-nents to racture and oceans to orm where they rit apart. Atthe end o the Permian, some 250 million years ago, all thepresent continents are believed to have been gathered togetherin a single supercontinent, Pangaea, consisting o Laurasia in

the north and Gondwana in the south, which began ragment-ing some 180 million years ago. Plate tectonics claims that vir-tually the entire ocean crust must be younger than this age,because the ocean lithosphere is constantly being generated at

Te ke ppe pate tets s tat te tspee exsts as sepaate a stt tet pates, w fat te f-ke astespee

tat aws te pates t mve eet ets. cet: uSgS


12/20


13/20


drillholes are inconsistent with seafoor spreading. The pres-ent oceans have undergone considerable subsidence since theJurassic, but this occurred in a mosaic ashion rather thanshowing a systematic relationship with distance rom the oceanridges. Younger shallow-water sediments are oten located ar-ther rom the axial zones o the ridges than older ones, and

some areas o the oceans appear to have undergone alternatingsubsidence and elevation.

A major eort should be made to dril l the ocean foor tomuch greater depths to see whether there are more ancientsediments beneath the basalt layer that is currently assumedto be basement. There are already signs that the basalts arethe result o magma erupting onto the seafoor or intrudinginto older layers o sedimentary rock. This was clearly shown atdrill site 10 on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the lowermostsediments are Cretaceous (about 80 Ma) and the underlyingbasaltic sill, erroneously termed basement, had a radiometricage o only 15.9 Ma.

Ocean-foor sampling and drilling, seismic data, sedimen-

tary data, and ocean-bed fora and auna indicate that thereused to be large (now submerged) continental landmassesin the present oceans. Many islands and ocean plateaus withsemi-continental crust appear to be the remnants o such pale-olands, whose ormer continental crust has undergone varyingdegrees o oceanization.

A major practical implication o this emerging new viewo the ocean crust is that enormous hydrocarbon resources arelikely to exist in deep-sea basins.

Marie magetic stripesStrong support or seafoor spreading is said to be provided

by marine magnetic anomaliesapproximately parallel stripeso alternating high and low magnetic intensity that character-ize some 70% o the worlds midocean ridges. According toplate tectonics, as the fuid basalt welling up along the ridgesspreads horizontally and cools, it is magnetized by the earthsmagnetic eld. Bands o high intensity are believed to haveormed during periods o normal magnetic polarity, and bandso low intensity during periods o reversed polarity. But oceandrilling has seriously undermined this simplistic model.

Correlations have been made between linear magneticanomalies on either side o a ridge, in dierent parts o theoceans, and with radiometrically-dated magnetic-reversal eventson land. The results have been used to produce maps showing

how the age o the ocean foor increases steadily with increas-ing distance rom the ridge axis. This simple picture completelyignores numerous radiometric rock ages that are anomalouslyold. Moreover, the claimed correlations have been largely quali-tative and subjective; more detailed, quantitative analyses haveshown that the correlations are very poor. A more likely expla-nation o the magnetic stripes is that they are caused by ault-related bands o rock o dierent magnetic properties.

Side-scanning radar images show that midocean ridges arecut by thousands o long, linear, ridge-parallel ssures, rac-tures, and aults. This strongly suggests that the ridges areunderlain at shallow depth by interconnected magma channels(surge channels), in which semi-fuid lava moves horizontally

andparallelwith the ridges rather than at right angles to them,as claimed by the seafoor-spreading theory. Indeed, there isstrong geological and geophysical evidence or the existence osurge channels beneath all major tectonic belts.

SubductioThe earthquakes taking place at dierent depths on the land-ward side o ocean trenches dene a Benio zone, which isinterpreted in plate tectonics as a subducting plate. But justhow ocean crust is supposed to descend into the denser man-tle has never been satisactorily explained. Moreover, Beniozones have a highly variable and complex structure, with trans-verse and vert ical discontinuities and segmentation, and bearlittle resemblance to the highly stylized pictures o continuousdown-going slabs depicted in geology textbooks. An alterna-tive view o Benio zones is that they are very ancient racturesproduced by the cooling and contraction o the earth.

The volume o crust generated at ocean ridges is sup-

posed to be equaled by the volume subducted. But whereas80,000 km o midocean ridges are supposedly producing newcrust, there are only 30,500 km o trenches (mostly aroundthe Pacic R im) and 9,000 km o collision zones. I subduc-tion was really happening, vast amounts o oceanic sedimentsshould have been scraped o the seafoor and piled up againstthe landward margin o the trenches. However, sediments inthe trenches are generally not present in the volumes required,and do not display the expected degree o deormation.

Plate-tectonic interpretations o seismic proles acrossPacic trenches have been criticized as being model driven.The proles actually show that the Paleozoic and Precambrianlower crust is present under both the ocean foor and continen-

tal slope and passes across the trench without any subduction.Plate tectonics has great diculty explaining earthquakes,

even those associated with Benio zones, which do not alwaysmatch the location o supposed subducting slabs. A newmodel is emerging, which has already had some success in pre-dicting earthquakes: it recognizes that earthquakes are con-trolled by deep-rooted tectonic zones, which channel risingmantle fuids and thermal and seismic energy towards the sur-ace, and which are also present in continental interiors, arrom the alleged subduction and collision zones.

Paleomagetic pitallsOne o the main props o plate tectonics and continental dritis paleomagnetism. For each continent a polar wander pathcan be constructed, and these are interpreted to mean that thecontinents have moved vast distances over the earths surace.However, paleomagnetism is very unreliable and requentlyproduces inconsistent and contradictory results. For instance,paleomagnetic data imply that during the mid-CretaceousAzerbaijan and Japan were in the same place. When individualpaleomagnetic pole positions, rather than averaged paleopoles,are plotted on world maps, the scatter is huge, oten widerthan the Atlantic Ocean. Paleopole discrepancies have led tothe invention o hundreds o independently moving micro-plates and exotic terranes, in addition to the 13 major plates.


14/20


instance, distances rom the Central South American Andesto Japan or Hawaii are more or less constant, whereas platetectonics predicts signicant separation. Moreover, extrapolat-ing present crustal movements tens or hundreds o millionso years into the past or uture is clearly a hazardous exercise.

The earths surace is crisscrossed by linear geological

structures (aults, ridges, etc.), originating in Precambriantime, which oten run or thousands o kilometers across oceanbasins and adjacent continentssomething that is incompat-ible with large-scale plate motions and seafoor spreading.

Drit versus geologyA compelling piece o evidence that all the continents wereonce united in one large landmass is said to be the act thatthey can be tted together like pieces o a jigsaw puzzle. Theserious problems with such reconstructions go largely unmen-tioned. In the celebrated Bullard t o the Atlantic continents,or example, the whole o Central America and much o south-

ern Mexicoa region o some 2,100,000 kmhas been letout because it overlaps South America. The entire West Indianarchipelago has also been omitted. Ancient continental crustextends unbroken rom Florida to the eastern Bahamas andnorthern Cuba and the total area involved, 300,000 km,overlaps Arica. The Cape Verde Islands-Senegal basin, too, isunderlain by ancient continental crust, creating an additionaloverlap o 800,000 km. Several major submarine structuresthat appear to be o continental origin are also ignored, includ-ing the Faeroe-Iceland-Greenland Ridge, Jan Mayen Ridge,Walvis Ridge, Rio Grande Rise, and the Falk land Plateau. Yetthe Rockall Plateau is included simply because it can be slot-ted in. All plate-tectonic continental reassemblies ignore the

evidence or sizeable ormer landmasses in the present oceans.The opening o the Atlantic Ocean allegedly began in

the Jurassic by the riting apart o the Eurasian and Americanplates. However, on the other side o the globe, northeasternEurasia is joined to North America by the Bering-Chukotskshel, which is underlain by Precambrian continental crustthat is continuous and unbroken rom Alaska to Siberia.Geologically these regions constitute a single unit, and it isunrealistic to suppose that they were ormerly divided by anocean several thousand kilometers wide, which closed to com-pensate or the opening o the Atlantic. I a suture is absentthere, one ought to be ound in Eurasia or North America,but no such suture appears to exist. Similarly, geology indi-

cates that there has been a direct tectonic connection betweenEurope and Arica across the zones o Gibraltar and Ri on theone hand, and Calabria and Sicily on the other, at least sincethe end o the Paleozoic, contradicting plate-tectonic claimso signicant displacement between Europe and Arica dur-ing this period.

India supposedly detached itsel rom Antarctica some-time during the Mesozoic, and then drited northeastwardup to 7,500 km until it nally collided with Asia in the mid-Tertiary (55 Ma), pushing up the Himalayas and the TibetanPlateau. That Asia happened to have an indentation o the cor-rect shape and size and in exactly the right place or Indiato dock into would amount to a remarkable coincidence.

One o the basic assumptions o paleomagnetism is thatrocks retain the magnetization they acquire at the time theyormed. In reality, rock magnetism can be modied by weath-ering, thermal eects, metamorphism, chemical changes, andtectonic deormation, and remagnetization commonly occurs.Sediment compaction, as well as horizontal and vertical rota-

tions o crustal blocks, urther complicate the picture. Anotherundamental and equally questionable assumption is that overlong periods o time the geomagnetic eld approximates asimple dipole (N-S) eld oriented along the earths rotationaxis. But the past existence o stable magnetic anomalies onlyslightly more intense than the present-day East Asian anomalywould invalidate this hypothesis.

Movig plates?The lithosphere is said to average 70 km thick beneath theoceans, and to be 100 to 250 km thick beneath the conti-nents. However, seismic tomography (which produces 3D

images o the earths interior) has shown that the oldest partso the continents have very deep roots extending to depths o400 km or more, and that the asthenosphere is absent or verythin beneath them. Even under the oceans there is no contin-uous asthenosphere, only disconnected asthenospheric lensesat dierent depths. Furthermore, there are close correlationsbetween near-surace geological eatures, crustal structure,and inhomogeneities in both the upper and lower mantle. Theact that such connections remain stable or long periods ogeologic time contradicts the idea that lithospheric plates haveundergone considerable horizontal displacements in relationto deeper mantle structures.

The earths crust is in constant motion. The earths relie

currently ranges rom 8.8 km above sea level to 10.8 km belowit. There is ample evidence that the movement o mantle fuidsand hot magma can cause signicant changes in crustal thick-ness, composition, and density, resulting in substantial uplitsand subsidenceswithout the need or plate collisions andsubduction.Some 90% o sediments on land were laid downunder the sea. The scale o vertical movements is indicatedby the act that the thickness o marine sedimentary layers inmountain belts is commonly over 10 km and can reach 23 km.

As ar as horizontal movements are concerned, eld evi-dence indicates that crustal strata can be thrust tens i nothundreds o kilometers, and that crustal extension or shorten-ing o up to hundreds o kilometers has occurred. But given

the widely varying thickness o the lithosphere, the existenceo deep continental roots, the lack o a continuous astheno-sphere, the absence o some plate boundaries, and the cor-relation between near-surace and deep-mantle eatures, themovement o lithospheric slabs as relatively rigid bodies overhundreds or thousands o kilometers is highly implausible.

Satellite measurements o crustal movements have beenhailed as having proved plate tectonics. Such data shed lighton local and regional crustal stresses and strains, but do notconrm plate tectonics unless the relative motions predictedamong all plates are observed. However, many o the resultshave shown no denite pattern and have been conusing andcontradictory, giving rise to a variety o ad-hoc hypotheses. For


15/20


Furthermore, major uplit o the Tibetan Plateau did notbegin until about 5 Ma, and the act that river terraces in vari-ous parts o the Himalayas are almost perectly horizontal anduntilted suggests that the mountains were uplited vertically,rather than by horizontal compression. There is in act over-whelming geological and paleontological evidence that India

has been an integral part o Asia since Precambrian time. Inshort, the fight o India is no more than a fight o ancy.

CoclusioFar rom being a simple, elegant, all-embracing global theory,plate tectonics is conronted with a multitude o observationalanomalies, and has had to be patched up with a complex vari-ety o ad-hoc modications and auxiliary assumptions. Thehypotheses o large-scale continental drit, seafoor spreadingand subduction, and the relative youth o the oceanic crustare contradicted by a considerable volume o data. Mountingevidence or signicant amounts o submerged, ancient conti-

nental crust in the present oceans poses a particularly seriouschallenge to plate tectonics.

urther readigDickins, J. M., Choi, D. R., & Yeates, A. N. (1992). Past distribu-

tion o oceans and continents. In: Chatterjee, S., & Hotton,

N. (Eds.), New Concepts in Global Tectonics. Lubbock, TX:

Texas Tech University Press, 19399.

Meyerho, A. A., Taner, I., Morris, A. E. L., Agocs, W. B., Kaymen-

Kaye, M., Bhat, M. I., Smoot, N. C., & Choi, D. R. (1996).

Surge Tectonics: A new hypothesis o global geodynamics (D.

Meyerho Hull, Ed.). Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Pratt, D. (2000). Plate tectonics: a paradigm under threat.Journal o Scientifc Exploration, 14:3, 30752.

Pratt, D. (2013). Palaeomagnetism, plate motion and polar wan-

der. New Concepts in Global Tectonics Journal, 1:1, 66152.

Vasiliev, B. I., & Yano, T. (2007). Ancient and continental rocks

discovered in the ocean foors. New Concepts in Global

Tectonics Newsletter, 43, 317.

Vasiliev, B. I., & Choi, D. R. (2008). Geology and tectonic devel-

opment o the Pacic Ocean. Part 3: Structure and compo-

sition o the basement. New Concepts in Global Tectonics

Newsletter, 48, 2351.

Yano, T., Choi, D. R., Gavrilov, A. A., Miyagi, S., & Vasiliev, B. I.

(2009). Ancient and continental rocks in the Atlantic Ocean.

New Concepts in Global Tectonics Newsletter, 53, 437.Yano, T., Vasiliev, B. I., Choi, D. R., Miyagi, S., Gavrilov, A. A., &

Adachi, H. (2011). Continental rocks in the Indian Ocean.

New Concepts in Global Tectonics Newsletter, 58, 928.

The New Concepts in Global Tectonics Journal (edited by DrDong Choi), and its predecessor, the NCGT Newsletter, can bereely downloaded at http://www.ncgt.org.

DAVID PRATT s a tasat b pess, et base Te

hae, a a av eseae set amaes. Sme s a-

tes ave appeae te Journal o Scientifc Explorationa te New

Concepts in Global Tectonics Journal/Newsletter.

Recet Books by Members o the Societyor Scietic Exploratio


16/20


There is an air o triumphalism about the booktheannunciation o a staggering new truth, blinding in its sim-

plicity and awesome in its implications. One reviewer enthusedthat Originrenders whole shelves o books obsolete. Thebooks lengthy title was clearly chosen to refect DarwinsOrigin o Species, the longer title o which is On the Origin oSpecies by Means o Natural Selection. Jaynes elt that he hadsolved the problem o the origin o consciousness as decisivelyas Darwin had solved the problem o the origin o species.

Jaynes certainly makes a pretty strong case that the psy-chology o ancient peoples was distinctively dierent romour modern psychology, and that these people relied on stat-ues, totems, gurines, and other such artiacts to stimulatethe hallucinated voices that guided their actions. He urtherargues that the voice o the local chietain (or later, the king)

was itsel hallucinated as a means o social control, and that thechie or king was the rst god.

He adduces a lot o evidence in support o this position,ranging rom the curious burial practices o the ancients, whichtypically treated the dead person as i he were still alive and inneed o nourishmentto the multitude o idols carved withunnaturally large eyes, oten represented by glittering jewelsthat would have had a mesmerizing qualityto the carvingso kings accompanied by a double who is seen guiding themby the hand and speaking to themto such inscriptions as theCode o Hammurabi, which eatures a prologue and epiloguein the boastul and childish voice o the king, bracketing aseries o 282 laws that speak in a calmer and saner voice.

All o this is pretty compelling, and its impossible toignore the whole body o evidence he presents. Yet althoughJayness theory received a great deal o press, it has ound rela-tively ew takers. Only a handul o academics have endorsedJayness views, and his ideas today spark little interest.

There are several reasons or the widespread indierenceto such challenging ideas. First, Jayness theory is inherentlydicult to accept. An entire civilization consisting o peoplewho are unconscious is simply too ar removed rom our nor-mal way o understanding the world. To support such an idea,Jaynes has to regard consciousness as nonessential to humanlieas a mere ability to narratize behavior we would haveperormed anyway. He goes to great lengths to convince us

In 1976, with considerable anare, Princeton psychologistJulian Jaynes put out a provocative and ascinating book thatpurported to explain human consciousness, religion, ancienthistory, and even some orms o mental illness. This all-encompassing theory was presented under the imposing titleThe Origin o Consciousness in the Breakdown o the BicameralMind.

The crux o Jayness argument is an apparently outrageousclaimthat modern consciousness, in the sense o sel-aware-ness, is a historically recent development, dating back onlyto about 1000 BC, and that earlier civilizations, includingthose o the ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, and Babylonians,

were ounded and maintained by people who were essen-tially unconscious. That is, they received marching ordersrom voices in their heads which they took to be the voiceso the gods, but which were actually generated by the righthemisphere o the brain. (The division o the mind into twohalves, godlike instructor and passive listener, is what Jaynescalls bicameral.) In a trancelike state that lasted a lietime,primitive people carried out these instructions, living, mar-rying, working, and dying in the thrall o the gods whoordered and organized every detail o their lives. Later, thelet hemisphere became dominant and the gods died out, per-sisting (in a debased and altered orm) only in certain cases oschizophrenia.

REFERENCE POINT

Whos Talking?Book Review by Michael Prescott

King Hammurabi (standing) receives instruction from his

god Shamash. cet: Ftz-Mka-da-Samm

Petek

Arici/istockphoto


17/20


question, or even to understand it,suggests to me that he suered roma condition sometimes described astheory blindness. Having con-structed a comprehensive theory

by which to view the world, he wassimply unable to think his way outo that mental box.

Though Jaynes continued topromote his theory or the rest ohis lie, his promised sequel to TheOrigin o Consciousnessnever mate-rialized. He died in 1997, leaving itto other academics to continue hiswork. Few have taken up the chal-lenge. Today discussions o Jaynessbook are ound mainly on New Agewebsites, mixed in with reerences

to the pseudoscientic writings oImmanuel Velikovsky and ErichVon Daniken.

For mysel, I have come tothink that The Origin o Con-sciousness gets history exactlybackward. In Jayness materialistworldview (in which consciousnessis a mere epiphenomenon o mat-ter), there can be no such things asgods and spirits or any other para-normal phenomena. Thus the uni-versal acceptance o such things in

ancient (and modern) cultures isa puzzle requiring some explana-tion. The bicameral mind is hisanswer to the problem; the gods

and spirits are simply a more primitive part o the brain.But suppose there actuallyareparanormal or supernatu-

ral phenomena. Suppose there arespirits and what we mightcall godsor God. Then the universality o such belies doesnot require complicated rationalistic explanations. An alterna-tive hypothesis to Jaynes bicarmeral mind is that the ancientsreally did hear the voices o godsor to put it more accu-rately, they received messages rom the spirit world.

Rather than hunting or the gods in some orgotten cor-

ner o our nervous system, we might do better to seek outtruths that primitive peoples knewand which we haveorgotten.

Near the end o his book, Jaynes laments misguided mod-ern eorts to recapture the gods through mysticism, religion,poetry, and even scienceattempts to return to what is nolonger there, like poets to their inexistent Muses...

But what i the Muses did exist, and still doand we havesimply stopped listening?

MICHAEL PRESCOTT, at e sspese ves, as bee

teeste evee ps a e ate eat a matas a b

evte t tese tps at maepestt.tpepa.m.

that consciousness is unnecessaryor most human activities, pointingout, or instance, that we can drive acar without paying conscious atten-tion to the task. But surely we need

to be conscious when we learnhowto drive a car; only ater this skill hasbeen habituated can we aord todrive on autopilot, and even thenwe need to be able to snap back intoull alertness in an emergency. Theidea that such vast engineering proj-ects as the ziggurats and pyramidscould be carried out unconsciouslyis anti-intuitive in the extreme.

Second, Jaynes has a discon-certing tendency to quote selec-tively rom his sources. When min-

ing ancient literature or hints o thebicameral mind, he culls examplesthat buttress his point while ignor-ing or explaining away countlessother examples that work againsthis position. One example o histendentiousness is his treatment oHesiods Works and Days, a veryearly Greek poem that consists oinstructions on how to manage aarm. Jaynes interprets the poem ashaving been dictated by the godside o the brain; in eect, he argues,

Works and Daysis a written record othe kind o voice that our ancestorsheard incessantly.

But the poem itsel containsscattered verses indicating a very dierent origin. The narratortells us that he and his brother Perses inherited their athersarm, that Perses is shitless and incompetent, and that havingtaken Perses to court and lost, the narrator has put togetherthis instruction manual or Perses in a last-ditch attempt tosalvage the arm. None o this is consistent with the bicameralmind hypothesis. Jaynes deals with this considerable imped-iment to his argument by brushing it aside; the sections othe poem containing these reerences, he says, must be laterinterpolations.

Finally, Jaynes alls into the trap that awaits any special-ist who ventures outside his area o expertise. As a psycholo-gist with no special training in ancient literature, he seems tomisunderstand the ancient sources themselves. Jaynes makesmuch o Biblical writings that depict pagans worshipping theiridols as literal gods, or example, but i these writings them-selves are inaccurate, and i pagan idolatry was in act muchmore sophisticated, then Jayness arguments are undamen-tally fawed. No one disputes that Hebrew prophets inveighedagainst idols. The question is whether the prophets correctlyunderstood the nature o pagan idolatry.

Jayness inability or unwillingness to properly address this

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown ofthe Bicameral Mindby Julian Jaynes, HoughtonMifin, 1976.


18/20


short). In general, the key speakers are the para-celebs (eventhose with one appearance on a series episode), authors whoseworks connect to the methods and ndings o the shows,people claiming excessive experience in investigations, pro-

ducers and other behind-the-scenes crew o the shows, andoccasionally a psychic who has made some riendly connectionwith the event producer or the para-celebs. The speakers do onoccasion include someone with actual academic background,but thats rare. Ater all, they can watch the TV shows andlearn all they need to.

In other words, the events tend to be an-based gather-ings, with the added bonus o bragging rights or being able togo on an investigation with one o the para-celebs.

not a Para-CelebMy own experience with such events is limited. To some

extent, the geography o the events, with the vast majority othem held east o the Mississippi (and me in Caliornia), bringswith it higher travel costs or speakers like mysel, which hitstheir budgets hard. As I may not be as big a draw as, say, JasonHawes oGhost Hunters, thats where they spend their money.

Those events that I have attended, speaking mainly onParapsychology or Ghost Hunters, Ive had mixed receptionand reaction to my presentations. At one event in Phi ladelphia,the audience appeared shocked that I was shocked that mosthad no knowledge that there was any relationship betweenParapsychology and what they were investigating, and upsetwhen I questioned their hard belies such as turning out thelights (going dark) and that phenomena supposedly hap-

pens more at 3:00 a.m. (calleddead time on ParanormalState). In act, my reaction tothe audience, coupled with myreusal to investigate in pitchdark, likely contributed to mybeing red rom the eventproducers schedule o events.Other events have had some-

what better results and audience reactions, though those sameaudiences were also exposed to speakers on demonology andthe ever-present para-celebs with their strong opinions as tohow to investigate properly and scientically.

This is not to say there were not individuals at these eventswho have expressed real interest in what the eld has doneand how parapsychologists approach eld investigations dier-ently. The main reason Ive continued my eorts to reach outto groups, to people running events, and to individuals identi-ying themselves as paranormal investigators or ghost huntersis to nd that minority, however small it might be, and culti-vate their interest into something real. I have had some successin this, which has kept me going, but it is dicult when themajority is only getting this message rom a very ew o us.

While the downturn in the economy, and I suspect a dwin-dling pool o die-hard ans capable o spending the hundredso dollars or the events, has caused a shrinkage o the number

o paranormal conerences across the country, the numbero groups and ans o the shows gathering on the internet hascontinued to grow. Some have gured out they really are notbeing scientic, and have sought real research-based mate-rial, but this is a very small minority. Some have gotten boredwith the antics o their el low ghost hunters and have simplydropped out. But the numbers, in general, continue to grow.

What this all means is that there are many thousands ohobbyists, thrill seekers, and amateurs who are essentiallyweekend ghost hunters. They express their opinions, dis-cuss (and argue) ideas, and even organize undraising or theiravorite historic haunted site that needs nancial support.They spend hundreds on equipment and events.

The Paraormal CommuityThey reer to themselves as being part o the paranormalcommunity (an apt term) and many purport to be conduct-ing research and investigation as part o the paranormal eld(meaning eld o investigation o ghosts, hauntings, polter-geists, and unortunately demons).

They discuss concepts o physics and biology oten withlittle regard to actual work and ndings in those elds, andlike many others, talk about theory as i its established act.Too many seem to hold to the idea that being scientic isas simple as using scientic equipment, whether or not they

know the actual unctions/limitations o the equipment orwhat to do with the data they gather, though this is a broaderproblem promulgated by the dire state o science education inthe United States. They generally seem unaware that what theydo has any relationship to Parapsychology/Psychical Researchand unaware that theres even a history to eld investigationsgoing back beore the ounding o the Society or PsychicalResearch in 1882. Many Ive spoken with are surprised theresany work beore the 1990s (when the paranormal shows beganpopping up more oten).

The rise o the paranormal community with its manythousands shows that the interest in anomalous phenomenais there. That so many claim to be doing research or the

OBSERVATORY, continued from page 4

Imagine if we could bridgethe gap with the paranormal

community, createopportunities for them to be

part of the actual researchefforts, encourage them to

join and support professionalorganizations


19/20


The purpose o any o all this is to be able to give theseolks something dierent to think about (dierent rom theshows). Be sure to talk about others in the eld who are doinggood workthe more we reer to them, the more amil-iar the paranormal community will become with the real

authorities.

Educatio Is The MissioReal parapsychologists may eel hesitant or even embarrassedto deal with these members o the paranormal community, asthere is such a vast separation between them and the academic/scientic side. However, consider the mission here: Education.You are helping to educate them about what has been/is beingdone rom a scientic perspective. About Science in general.About how the ndings and methodologies dier rom TVsportrayal.

My eorts in this vein have been positively received, but it

remains to be seen how eective this will be. I think that themore o us who present to the paranormal community with thesame or similar message, the better. And I dont see doing thisas anything to be embarrassed about, though in my experience,I do have to monitor the internet to be sure none o them areusing my name to promote their own agenda, something thathas happened only a couple o times in 10 years. Ive had manymore skeptics (including Randi) take my name in vain and mis-represent me than ghost hunters/paranormal investigators.

In conclusion, its a little lonely out here as I orbit andobserve the paranormal community. It may be true that Ivehad only little impact in swaying these olks into the sphere oinormation rom psi research and investigation, but then again

I am only one o a very ew voices paying any attention to them(and believe me, its attention they seek). I invite my colleagues,many o whom have much more academic/scientic credibilitybehind them, to join me in trying to educate the paranormalcommunity, or at the very least get their curiosity about the realwork engaged. I we can even get a small percentage o theminvolved and better educated, the amount o incoming dataincreases and the general support or the eld and or organiza-tions and research centers will grow, perhaps even signicantly.

LOYD AUERBACH, M.S. (Paaps-

), det te oe Paama

ivestats, as bee te e

ve 30 eas s eat ae vestat. Te at et

bks, e s a pess at Atat u-

vest a JFK uvest, a teaes

Paaps at hch isttte ca-

a. Peset te Ba te F-

eve Fam Fat, e s as te

Ba te re resea cete a

te avs ba te Wbe i-

sttte. hs mea appeaaes TV, a, a pt mbe te

tsas, ABcs The View, Oprah, a Larry King Live. he s

a pessa metast/ps etetae as we as a pessa

ate.

paranormal eld indicates that there is a body o peoplewanting to contribute (even though they think they alreadyare). On the other side, we have a eld that comes rom aca-demia, rom Science, that has ew seriously interested peopleand next to no unding.

Imagine i we could bridge the gap with the paranor-mal community, create opportunities or them to be part othe actual research eorts, encourage them to join and sup-port organizations like the Society or Scientic Exploration,the Parapsychological Association, the Society or PhysicalResearch, and the Rhine Research Center, and mobilize themto correctly gather data and do undraising or actual scienticeorts to understand psi phenomena.

But without some numbers on our sideeven i only aew dozen peopleall trying to connect with the paranormalcommunity, we will stay as outsiders and the paranormal com-munity will continue to grow, the paranormal eld evolvingurther into what appears to be the pseudo-scientic eld

the skeptics have accused Parapsychology o being. This canonly conuse the public even urther and is a waste o whatappears to be a potential resource or our eld.

How To Bridge the GapThe challenge is to bridge that gap, and part o the solutionis in simple but active outreach to this community. Id like toshare some ideas as to how we can take initial steps, at least.

Acknowledging that they are out there is the rst step,and awareness o their source material is the second. By thisIm not suggesting that olks start watching the paranormaltelevision programs on any regular basis, but at least sample

the shows. It will help to understand the growing paranor-mal community, and understand what kinds o misconcep-tions they might be taking on. You will likely have to put asideyour visceral reactions to what you see on the showsI knowI generally dobut its well worth sampling the many di-erent shows that appear regularly on Syy, A&E, Bio, TravelChannel, and other cable networks. Some are more enter-tainment oriented, with the on-camera talent not necessar-ily claiming any degree o expertise (some even being quitegooy). All too oten, they speak as though theyre actualauthorities on the subject. Some o the shows actually ocuson the ghost storyon the experience o the witness, withno ollow-up investigation (though generally a dramatization).

Becoming aware o the myths is going to help ease peo-ple out o them. Being able to comment, even negatively, onthe shows and their shortcomings or poor science or potentialraud or where they might get something right comes mainlyrom knowing at least something about the programs.

Reaching out to members o this community is as simpleas nding groups on Facebook or other social media and join-ing them. You may not participate in their discussions, butnding out what they do discuss wil l likely lead you to jump inrom time to time. Youll also nd out about events, local andotherwisei local to you, consider oering to speak. Youlllearn about the myriad o interview podcasts, and you canoer to be a guest.


20/20


BACKSCATTER

UncatalogedWhen William Corliss, ounder o the Sourcebook Project, passed away on July 8, 2011, he let two drat items in his typewriter stor-age. These two items rom the current literature were slated or the next issue o his newsletter, Science Frontiers (#195). His workscontinue to be available through science-rontiers.com.

William Corliss

cet: Be Bak (uvest Wast), Vet ike (lee

uvest, Te neteas), gaet Meema (Stkm uvest),

THE LOnG WALLS

Long walls present anomalies that are not as easy to discernas they are with the Great Pyramid. Let us say cautiously thatthe bigger the pyramid or ancient walls, the more oten closerlooks will identiy anomalies, such as:

(1) The use o unusual materials;(2) Obscure purpose;(3) An oten-dicult-to-establish purpose;(4) New, precocious technology used,

Long walls are here dened as being over 100km in length. Obvious in this category are the Great

Wall o China and the Great Wall o the Incas. Now, wecan add Vietnams Long Wall, which has been com-pletely absent rom our les until now! This act aloneis unusual, since this wall is 127.4 km long.

It survives in sections up to 4 m high, is rein-orced by orts, 80 o which so ar have beenidentied.

Some scientists are convinced that the Long Wallis the longest structure in Southeast Asia. (The GreatWall o China is ar to the north.) The Long Wall has

been known or about three centuries, but it does not seem to

have been studied in great depth. Given the above statistics,more attention should be paid to this giant work o engineering.(Anonymous; The Long Wall, Current World Archaeology#46:10, April/May 2011)

l Wa Qa na. cet: T Te news

WHAT ADDS EnERGY TO THE COSMOSAnD WHY?Looking up at the night sky, we see only thetraces o the violent billions o years that ol-lowed the Big Bang and the interactionsbetween its progeny.

Recently, though, B. Rees, o the Univer-sity o Manchester, U.K., has already discov-ered scores o pairs o aligned gaseous nebulae.Rees pairs are aligned sort o head-to-tail par-allel to the plane o the galactic disc.

We do not yet have good reasons why somany gaseous nebulae align with each otheror or what purpose. (Anonymous: NebulaeShow Mysterious Alignment, New Scientist,p. 21, May 7, 2011)

edge science #14

Documents