Posted on 10/31/2008 10:06:46 AM PDT by BGHater
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is well known for pushing the boundaries of science and technology in search of ways to give the U.S. military an edge—robotic pack animals, self-navigating vehicles and plant-based jet fuel, to name a few. Less well known is the agency's Cold War-era investigation into how paranormal phenomena like extrasensory perception might be used by the U.S. to get a leg up on the former Soviet Union and, perhaps more importantly, by the USSR against the United States.
Working with Washington, D.C., think tank RAND Corporation, DARPA determined that paranormal research by the Soviets focused on physical science, engineering and quantifiable results, whereas their U.S. counterparts tended to be psychologists looking instead to explore the human mind. The bottom line, according to a 1973 DARPA-commissioned study entitled "Paranormal Phenomena": "the U.S. has failed to significantly advance our understanding of paranormal phenomena."
As Halloween approaches, the report serves as a reminder of our fascination with paranormal forces (for more on this, visit Sciam.com's "Science of the Occult" in-depth report). The authors were worried that the Soviets might win the race to use the supernatural to its advantage much as they had threatened to win the space race decades earlier when they launched Sputnik. "If paranormal phenomena exist," RAND analysts P. T. Van Dyke and Mario L. Juncosa concluded, "the thrust of Soviet research appears more likely to lead to explanation, control and application than [does] U.S. research."
The authors acknowledge that the study was limited, because it was based on but a sampling of works available at the time. Among them: a decade of abstracts from the parapsychology section of Psychological Abstracts, a print version of the PsycINFO abstract database of psychological literature. They knew even less about Soviet efforts, they admitted, noting that their conclusions on that front were based on a "somewhat impressionistic" sample and "some not always reliable and frequently imprecise reports of Western visitors to the Soviet Union."
Soviet research on telepathy dates from the early 1920s when a program was established at the Institute for Brain Research at Leningrad State University. The Soviets appear to have been fascinated with telepathy, which they called "biological communication," as a ship-to-shore way of communicating with submarines without using electronic equipment. They also considered training their cosmonauts to develop and use precognitive abilities to "foresee and to avoid accidents in space."
It seems the Soviets also were quite taken with the possibility of psychokinesis (using mental imagery to move objects) as a way of "disrupting the electrical systems associated with an ICBM's [intercontinental ballistic missile] guidance program."
The Soviets were more inclined than American scientists to believe that paranormal phenomena might be the result of "bioenergetics," or the energy given off by the metabolic processes of living things. This theory stated that people exuded "bioplasma," (a theoretical energy field) that, under certain conditions, was capable of emitting charged coherent radiation beyond the body surface in the form of electrons and possibly protons.
Although the Soviets did not reach a consensus on the existence of bioplasma, RAND concluded, "the very pursuit of this theory indicates that Soviet parapsychologists were attempting to explain alleged paranormal phenomena with a greater degree of specificity than their Western counterparts."
I need to read this later
Did they find the crystal skull?
ESP or Remote Viewing. They were big on that stuff. The problem with it was, getting the context right. Still, some of what they were able to demonstrate with double blind protocols was pretty amazing.
I’ve read a little bit about that. The claims that went along with much of it were essentially specific breathing exercises.
bttt
Not only where they into the paranormal but (I think) were very interested in Electromagnetic (EM) weapons (an area in which we have barely scratched the surface..IMO). Our current crop of WMDs will be around until they are rendered ineffective, probably by something worse.
They had a couple programs about this on Discovery and History Channels.
Get someone to put an object in a box and hide it in you house or apartment. No clue from them.
Get a pad of paper and a pencil, get quiet, and focus on the box, try to see what's inside. Let the pencil draw whatever impressions you get. shapes for one. If a color comes to mind, write it down. That sort of stuff. (and this is very simplistic from what I've read long ago.)
Give it 30~60 minutes. Then get your friend to get the box and see what's inside. See if you hit on anything. Granted there might be a statistical probability of getting a shape right (a simple circle could also imply a sphere, a square, a cube that sort of thing) merely by chance, especially if you draw more than one. But there might be other impression (like of a detail) you get where the probability becomes astronomical. Keep at it. I think the mind starts to tune in a little better after more practice.
Again, this is a very brief and summary of a book or two I read on the subject many years ago. I tried it one or two times. One time I got a square and the number 12. Turned out it was an old style digital clock (mechanical numbers that show unplugged). I didn't know it was a clock, didn't make the connection and the "data" was incomplete, but the number 12 was showing.
I've often wondered if so called "intuition" was just a way of saying that the mind was tuning into information freely available out in the ether.
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