The results were successful. In fact, one of the most successful, rigorous free response studies was birthed from looking at the results of cross-cultural surveys showing that around half of all spontaneous psychic experiences occur in a dream state. What was this new free response test? It was testing dream telepathy. From 1966 to 1972, psychiatrist Montague Ullman and Stanley Krippner lead a team of researchers at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. This study would give rise to the famous Maimonides Dream Lab and the testing therein. This team of researchers, led by Ullman and Krippner, devised a series of tests conducted in a dream research laboratory. The staggering results of the test suggested that a person could send mental images to someone in a dream state, with the result that sometimes, these people would incorporate these images into their dreams.
The testing scenario is much like the Ganzfeld method that we looked at last time. In fact, the Ganzfeld method was developed out of the testing schema of the Maimonides Dream Lab. Though there were different nuances to each test, the basic format went like this: The receiver was placed in a soundproof and electromagnetically shielded room. The experimenter applied electrodes to the receiver's head to monitor the brain waves. While the receiver sleeps, the experimenter monitors the brainwaves. At the beginning of REM, the experimenter notified the sender (who was in another room) with a buzzer. The sender would pull out the target pack (which neither the experimenter nor the sender had access to). Once the target pack was open, the sender would focus on the picture and try to send the image to the dreaming receiver.
At the end of each REM period, the experimenter would wake up the receiver and ask them to relay their dreams. This went on through the night, and after the end of the nights sleep, the receiver was asked to give their impression of what the target picture might be (remember, the experimenter does not know the target picture). The responses are recorded and transcribed, then given to a group of independent judges for analysis. The judges then compare the transcripts to a pool of pictures that included the actual target picture to see if their is any correlation. The judges were usually asked to give a ranking for each picture. For example, if there were seven pictures, the picture with the highest correspondence would be ranked "1", while the picture with the least correspondence would be ranked "7". If the target picture ranked in the top 3, this was considered a "hit".
The resulting data from the Maimonides experiments shows a number of matches between the dream transcripts and the target pictures. In fact, in one example, a perfect score was achieved! This person, know as "Series F Second Erwin", scored eights hits and zero misses. So convincing were these results, that after reviewing the data, Yale University psychologist Irvin Child concluded, "What is clear is that the tendency toward hits rather than misses cannot be reasonably ascribed to chance. There is some systematic- that is, nonrandom source - of anomalous resemblance of dreams to target." ("Psychology and Anomalous Observations", American Psychologist, 40, 11, November 1985, 1225.) However, what is staggering is that a meta-analysis of the 450 Maimonides ESP trials found the overall success rate to be 63%, with a 95% confidence rate. This means that the odds against chance of this happening are seventy-five million to one. Fluke? Nope, because through the years, these types of findings have been confirmed through other research teams using the same methods.
Based on what we have looked at in these last two post, it is clearly evident that telepathy is a confirmed phenomenon. Years of rigorous, systematic testing has yielded the same staggering results. An intellectually honest person cannot continue to ignore these results. Ignoring such overwhelming evidence usually stems from wanting to hold on to a view of reality that we are comfortable with. Looking at the evidence in an honest manner will force some of us to change how we view reality, and what we let within our worldview. For the most part, Christians have either 1) Denied the existence of psychic phenomena, 2) Acknowledged its existence, but consider it all demonic, 3) Have chosen to completely ignore it. Based on the evidence, 1 and 3 are no longer options. I will deal with 2 directly when we reach the end of this series (though some interaction with this view will happen earlier), and show that it fails to deal with all the information accurately. What we are left with, then, is coming up with a different explanation - a different rubric - to view psi phenomena. In fact, in the next post, we will look to see if there are any examples of telepathy in Scripture.