Abstract: Black hole event horizons provide us with an image of what
the world looks like when it has been reduced to its smallest spatial components and all process has been squeezed out of it. It appears as a vast
sheet of tiny, random dots. Since time is at the basis of ‘process’, the image
highlights questions about temporality that also exercised philosophers,
notably Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead. Following a strategy
suggested by Whitehead’s approach to the questions leads to a possibility, which is also at the basis of a particular panprotopsychist theory (‘SoS
theory’), that the ‘time’ to which we ordinarily refer in everyday language
may have two ontologically distinct but equally ‘real’ components—(a) the
‘objective’ metric spacetime of general relativity which refers to the organization of classical, causal relationships and (b) a ‘subjective’ sequence of
‘nows’ providing a basis for conscious experience—albeit ‘nows’ to which
(usually very brief) objective durations can be attributed. If true, it is to be
expected that macroscopic, conscious mind-related violations of energy
conservation should occasionally manifest. There is a wide range of anecdotal evidence from ‘psychic’ phenomena suggestive of such violations. The
main aim of this paper is to point to the potential value of investigating the
energy budgets of candidate phenomena
Abstract: —More than 60 remote viewers contributed 177 intuitive-based
associative remote viewing (ARV) predictions over a 14-month period.
These viewers comprised pre-established, self-organized groups cooperating under the rubric of “Project Firefly” (PFF), and were supervised by experienced ARV group managers operating under the umbrella of the Applied
Precognition Project (APP), a for-profit organization exploring precognition
and leveraging ARV methodology as an investment enhancement tool.
Based on predictions from the ARV sessions, PFF used the Kelly wagering strategy to guide trading on the Foreign Exchange (FOREX) currency
market. Viewers performed under typical scientific protocols, including
double-blind conditions, appropriate randomization, etc., using a variety of
ARV application methodologies. Investors, many of whom were also participants (viewers and judges), pooled investment funds totaling $56,300
with the stated goal of “creating wealth aggressively.” Rather than meeting
that goal, however, most of the funds were lost over the course of the project. Beyond merely reporting on an extensive remote viewing experiment,
the present study is an examination of what went wrong, providing lessons
learned for further ARV research whether involving for-profit activities or
basic research, as the principles are relevant to both. Associative remote
viewing is a research paradigm that harkens back to early days in science
where competent non-academic researchers can provide datapoints and
breakthroughs in a field typically peopled solely by professional researchers. Adapting a form of ethnographic study, we refer not only to the statistical results produced by the PFF effort, but also employ a mixed-methods
qualitative approach to exploit the information and insights contributed
by numerous participants about what happened, what worked, and what
didn’t. This creates a reference we believe will be useful for those conducting future applied precognition projects involving multiple participants or
groups. We feel that the insights gleaned from this study will improve both ARV experimental design and execution of research protocol, benefitting
professional and amateur researchers alike in their future ARV experimentation
Abstract: In this paper I present a translation of an autobiographical essay
French physiologist Charles Richet wrote about his involvement in psychical
research in his Souvenirs d’un Physiologiste (1933). In the essay Richet presented an outline of aspects of his psychic career, including: Early interest
in hypnosis and hypnotic lucidity, encounters with gifted individuals such
as Eusapia Palladino and Stephan Ossowiecki, contact with the Society for
Psychical Research, his Traité de Métapsychique (1922) and his lack of belief
in survival of death. Richet’s account will be of particular interest for those
who are not acquainted with his career. However, the essay is succinct and
lacks important events that need to be supplemented with other sources of
information. An examination of this autobiographical essay illustrates the
limitations of autobiographies to reconstruct the past, but also provides an
opportunity to discuss aspects of Richet’s psychical research.
