I. Human/Machine Anomalies
The most substantial portion of the PEAR program examines anomalies arising in human/machine interactions.
Random mechanical cascade experiment.
In these experiments human operators attempt to influence the behavior of a variety of mechanical, electronic, optical, acoustical, and fluid devices to conform to pre-stated intentions, without recourse to any known physical processes. In unattended calibrations these sophisticated machines all produce strictly random outputs, yet the experimental results display increases in information content that can only be attributed to the influence of the consciousness of the human operator.
Robot experiment.
Over the laboratory's 20-year history, thousands of such experiments, involving many millions of trials, have been performed by several hundred operators. The observed effects are usually quite small, of the order of a few parts in ten thousand on average, but they are statistically repeatable and compound to highly significant deviations from chance expectations. These results are summarized in "Correlations of Random Binary Sequences with Pre-Stated Operator Intention: A Review of a 12-Year Program."
Fountain experiment.
A number of secondary correlations reveal structural features within these human/machine databases. In many instances, the effects appear to be operator-specific in their details and the results of given operators on widely different machines frequently tend to be similar in character and scale. Pairs of operators with shared intentions are found to induce further anomalies in the experimental outputs, especially when the two individuals share an emotional bond. The data also display significant disparities between female and male operator performances, and consistent series position effects are observed in individual and collective results. These anomalies can be demonstrated with the operators located up to thousands of miles from the laboratory, exerting their efforts hours before or after the actual operation of the devices.
Linear pendulum experiment.
These random devices also respond to group activities of larger numbers of people, even when they are unaware of the machine's presence. "FieldREG" data produced in environments fostering relatively intense or profound subjective resonance show larger deviations than those generated in more pragmatic assemblies.Venues that appear to be particularly conducive to such field anomalies include small intimate groups, group rituals, sacred sites, musical and theatrical performances, and charismatic events. In contrast, data generated during academic conferences or business meetings show no deviations from chance.
Elaborate analytical methods have been developed to extract as much understanding as possible from all of these results, and to guarantee their integrity against any experimental or data processing flaws.
II. Remote Perception
In another class of studies, the ability of human participants to acquire information about spatially and temporally remote geographical targets, otherwise inaccessible by any known sensory means, has been thoroughly demonstrated over several hundred carefully conducted experiments. The protocol requires one participant, the "agent", to be stationed at a randomly selected location at a given time, and there to observe and record impressions of the details and ambience of the scene. A second participant, the "percipient", located far from the scene and with no prior information about it, tries to sense its composition and character and to report these in a similar format to the agent's description.
Remote perception target and transcript: Ruins of Urquardt Castle, Loch Ness, Scotland.
Even casual comparison of the agent and percipient narratives produced in this body of experiments reveals striking correspondences in both their general and specific aspects, indicative of some anomalous channel of information acquisition, well beyond any chance expectation. Incisive analytical techniques have been developed and applied to these data to establish more precisely the quantity and quality of objective and subjective information acquired and to guide the design of more effective experiments. Beyond confirming the validity of this anomalous mode of human information acquisition, these analyses demonstrate that this capacity of human consciousness is also largely independent of the distance between the percipient and the target, and similarly independent of the time between the specification of the target and the perception effort.
III. Theoretical Models
All scientific research requires generic and specific theoretical models for constructive dialogue with the empirical data. The stark inconsistencies of PEAR's human/machine and remote perception results with established physical and psychological theories place extraordinary demands on the development of competent new models to represent these processes.
(view Preamble)
In particular, the primary importance of operator intention and emotional resonance, the operator-specific structure evident in the data, the absence of traditional learning patterns, and the lack of explicit space and time dependence clearly indicate that no direct application or minor alteration of existing physical or psychological frameworks will suffice. Rather, nothing less than a generously expanded scientific model of reality, one that allows consciousness a proactive role in the establishment of its experience of the physical world, will be required. The challenges and caveats of such a "Science of the Subjective" are explored in detail in several of our publications.
One such model has been proposed and developed under the major premise that the basic processes by which consciousness exchanges information with its environment, orders that information, and interprets it, also enable it to bias probabilistic systems and thereby to avail itself of some control over its reality. This model regards the concepts that underlie all physical models of reality, particularly those of observational quantum mechanics such as the principles of uncertainty, complementarity, and wave mechanical resonance, as fundamental characteristics of consciousness rather than as intrinsic features of an objective physical environment. In this view, the "anomalous" phenomena observed in the PEAR experiments become quite normal expectations of bonded human/machine and human/human systems, and the door is opened for all manner of creative consciousness/environment interactions. See "On the Quantum Mechanics of Consciousness, With Application to Anomalous Phenomena".
In a complementary approach, a modular conceptual framework has been proposed wherein direct attention of the conscious mind to observable physical processes is bypassed by an alternative route whereby unconscious mind and intangible physical mechanisms are invoked to achieve anomalous acquisition of mental information about, or anomalous mental influence upon, otherwise inaccessible material processes. See "A Modular Model of Mind/Matter Manifestations (M5)". Implications of this approach for more effective experiments include the incorporation of subtler feedback schemes to facilitate conversion of the operator's conscious intention to unconscious mental processing; the use of physical target systems that provide greater richness of intangible potentialities; and an environmental ambience that supports the composite strategy. Theoretical requisites for its pursuit include better understanding of the dialogue between the conscious and unconscious aspects of mind; more pragmatic formulations of the relations between tangible and intangible physical processes; and most importantly, cogent representation of the merging of mental and material dimensions into indistinguishability at their deepest levels. A rudimentary attempt to represent this latter "subliminal seed space" has been attempted in the format of an array of complex vectors whose components embody the pre-objective and pre-subjective aspects of their interactions. Elementary algebraic arguments then predict that the degree of anomalous correlation between the emergent conscious experiences and the corresponding tangible events depends only on the alignment of these interacting vectors, i.e., on the correspondence of the ratios of their individual "hard" and "soft" coordinates. This in turn suggests a subconscious alignment strategy based on strong need, desire, shared purpose, or personal resonance, that is consistent with our empirical experience. This will be explored in an article currently in preparation, "M*: Vector Representation of the Subliminal Seed Regime of M5."
Other worthwhile research on this site:
Margins of Reality Preamble
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/preamble.pdf
Science of the Subjective
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/sos.pdf
On The Quantum Mechanics Of Consciousness With Application To Anomalous Phenomena
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/FP_PEAR.pdf
A Modular Model of Mind/Matter Manifestations
http://www.princeton.edu/%7Epear/m5.pdf
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/
