In a recent article here on TDG, Jack Hunter described some of the paranormal experiences of anthropologist Edith Turner, when working among the Ndembu people of Zambia (see: "Anthropology of the Weird"). Today I was browsing through a book I helped publish last year, Communing with the Gods: Consciousness, Culture and the Dreaming Brain, by Charles D. Laughlin, Ph.D. (available from Amazon US and Amazon UK), and came across some quotes from Turner on what she sees as flaws in how anthropologists do their work:

Members of many different societies, even our own, tell us they have had experience of seeing or hearing spirits. Let us recall how anthropology has dealt with the question in the past. Mainline anthropologists have studiedly ignored the central matter of this kind of information – central in the people's own view – and only used the material as if it were metaphor or symbol, not reality, commenting that such and such "metaphor" is congruent with the function, structure, or psychological mindset of the society... the neglect of the central material savors of our old bete noire, intellectual imperialism. What is pitiful is the tendency of anthropologists from among the Native peoples themselves to defer to the western view and accordingly draw back from claiming the truth of their own religion. The mission of western anthropologists to explain the system in positivist terms at all costs, which thereby influences a new elite, is oddly similar to the self-imposed task of the more hidebound religious missionaries who are also sworn to eliminate their hosts' religion…

Laughlin discusses this problem in terms of the "don't go native" rule in anthropology - which, in many ways, comes from a foundation of staying objective and thinking rationally, which is a state of mind very far removed from the beliefs and practices of many non-Western cultures. But, as Laughlin says (and Jack Hunter's essay shows), "the simple fact is that these [transpersonal/paranormal] dream phenomena do seem to occur in the experience and data of ethnographers".

The danger for the 'scientific' anthropologist? "One's brain mediates one's states of consciousness, and one is only able to reach a new state of consciousness when the circuitry of the brain has transformed into a new configuration. Once the new configuration is developed, there is no going back." Scary stuff indeed for the committed rationalist...

You might also enjoy...

• Communing with the Gods Reviewed
• Introduction to Lucid Dreaming

Lucid dream expert Ryan Hurd has posted a wonderful review of Charles Laughlin's Communing with the Gods: Consciousness, Culture and the Dreaming Brain (available from Amazon US and Amazon UK), a book that I'm proud to have released via Daily Grail Publishing in 2011. Ryan really nails my own feelings about the book:

Whenever I have had a spare moment for the past three months, I’ve been sneaking peaks at Charles Laughlin’s new book Communing with the gods: Consciousness, culture and the dreaming brain. It’s a tome, over 500 pages long, and because of its girth I have approached the volume each time with some hesitancy… and a little fear. But each time I’ve dived in, I’ve come away with big ideas, and also some unusual clarity.

This book may be heavy, but it’s really approachable for an academic text.

That’s an accomplishment for a book that essentially takes on the weighty task of summing up the topic of dreams in cross-culture perspective, including the evolutionary impact of the dreaming mind on our species, history, religion and art. Laughlin does this remarkably well, and he tells some great personal stories along the way.

There’s really only a few people in the world who have the personal experience and the scholarly prowess to single-handedly write an anthropology of dreams. In fact, no one has attempted this feat in a generation or longer.

Filled with the expert opinion of a life-long researcher of consciousness, dreams and shamanism, and wrapped in the perfect cover image courtesy of Adam Scott Miller, this is one book you need on your bookshelf. Grab a copy from Amazon US or Amazon UK.

Read the review in full here - thanks to Ryan for his thoughtful (and positive!) feedback.

A nice profile in SF Weekly of a legend of parapsychology, Dr. Stanley Krippner, covering everything from his involvement with the famous Maimonides dream telepathy experiments through to drum hypnosis sessions with The Grateful Dead:

For the better part of the past 40 years, Krippner, 79, has been a psychology professor at San Francisco's Saybrook University, a small graduate school near Jackson Square established in 1971 by the founders of psychology's humanistic movement. He has penned close to 1,000 papers on subjects as far-reaching as childhood creativity, combating soldiers' post-traumatic stress disorder, and worldwide shamanistic rituals. He has won more laurels from more organizations than he can keep track of, including several lifetime achievement awards from the American Psychological Association — the world's largest organization of psychologists and the definer of mainstream thought in the field.

And yet, among Krippner's cavalcade of papers are the following eye-openers: "LSD and Parapsychological Experiences," "The Paranormal Dream and Man's Pliable Future," and "An Experiment in Dream Telepathy with the Grateful Dead." (That last one, perhaps the only scientific study undertaken at the behest of Jerry Garcia, was published in the incomparably titled Journal of the American Society of Psychosomatic Dentistry and Medicine).

Krippner has traveled to every continent, save Antarctica, to participate in mind-altering tribal ceremonies or investigate "psychic claimants," and ventured behind the Iron Curtain to inspect "psychotronic generators" built to store and harness "psychic energy."

He has established a firm standing in the realm of parapsychology — the scientific study of psychic phenomena generally known as extrasensory perception — akin to the Dead's place in the pantheon of rock 'n' roll. Among both "advocates" and "counter-advocates" of ESP, his decade of meticulous experimentation with "dream telepathy" is viewed as some of the field's strongest and most methodologically sound work of the 20th century.

"Stan belongs on the Mount Rushmore of parapsychology," says fellow ESP researcher Charles Tart. James "The Amazing" Randi, perhaps the world's most prominent skeptic, also offers Krippner his benediction: "There are so few things in this field you can depend on, and there are so many people who are prejudiced and biased. But I can depend on Stan. And I don't think he's biased at all."

One of the best articles I've read on a parapsychology researcher in terms of balance, which may be an outgrowth of the calm and sensible manner in which Krippner himself approaches the topic. And make sure you don't miss the side-bar article on the "cartload of mind-blowing anecdotes that didn't make it into the final article.

Read: "The Psychic World of Stanley Krippner" at SF Weekly.

I came across an interesting passage from Prof. Paul Davies' book The Mind of God which I thought would be worth sharing. In this section of the book, Davies is discussing the apparent independent, stable, 'reality' of the landscape of mathematics - the so-called 'Platonic Realms', or what Rudy Rucker labels the 'Mindscape' - and the mystery of why and how the human brain has evolved extraordinary abilities that allow comprehension of seemingly useless (in an evolutionary sense) concepts such as abstract mathematics:

The mystery becomes even deeper when we take account of the existence of mathematical and musical geniuses, whose prowess in these fields is orders of magnitude better than that of the rest of the population. The astonishing insight of mathematicians such as Gauss and Riemann is attested not only by their remarkable mathematical feats (Gauss was a child prodigy and also had a photographic memory), but also by their ability to write down theorems without proof, leaving later generations of mathematicians to struggle over the demonstrations. How these mathematicians were able to come up with their results "ready-made", when the proofs often turned out to involve volumes of complex mathematical reasoning, is a major puzzle.

Probably the most famous case is that of the Indian mathematician S. Ramanujan. Born in India in the late nineteenth century, Ramanujan came from a poor family and had only a limited education. He more or less taught himself mathematics and, being isolated from mainstream academic life, he approached the subject in a very unconventional manner. Ramanujan wrote down a great many theorems without proof, some of them of a very peculiar nature that would not normally have occurred to more conventional mathematicians. Eventually some of Ramanujan's results came to the attention of Hardy, who was astonished. "I have never seen anything in the least like them before," he commented. "A single look at them is enough to show that they could only be written down by a mathematician of the highest class." Hardy was able to prove some of Ramanujan's theorems by deploying the full range of his own considerable mathematical skills, but only with the greatest difficulty. Other results defeated him completely. Nevertheless, he felt they must be correct, for "no one would have the imagination to invent them". Hardy subsequently arranged for Ramanujan to travel to Cambridge to work with him. Ramanujan unfortunately suffered from culture shock and medical problems, and he died prematurely at the age of only thirty-three, leaving a vast stock of mathematical conjectures for posterity. To this day nobody really knows how he achieved his extraordinary feats. One mathematician commented that the results just seemed "to flow from his brain" effortlessly. This would be remarkable enough in any mathematician, but in one who was largely unfamiliar with conventional mathematics it is truly extraordinary. It is very tempting to suppose that Ramanujan had a particular faculty that enabled him to view the mathematical Mindscape directly and vividly, and pluck out ready-made results at will.

Scarcely less mysterious are the weird cases of so-called lightning calculators - people who can perform fantastic feats of mental arithmetic almost instantly, without the slightest idea of how they arrive at the answer. Shakuntala Devi lives in Bangalore in Inida but regularly travels the world, amazing audiences with feats of mental arithmetic. On one memorable occasion in Texas she correctly found the twenty-third root of a two-hundred-digit number in fifty seconds!

Even more peculiar, perhaps, are the cases of "autistic savants", people who are mentally handicapped and may have difficulty performing even the most elementary formal arithmetic manipulations, but who nevertheless possess the uncanny ability to produce correct answers to mathematical problems that appear to ordinary people to be impossibly hard. Two American brothers, for instance, can consistently outdo a computer in finding prime numbers even though they are both mentally retarded. In another case, featured on British television, a handicapped man correctly and almost instantly gave the day of the week when presented with any date, even from another century!

We are, of course, used to the fact that all human abilities, physical and mental, show wide variations. Some people can jump six feet off the ground, whereas most of us can manage barely three. But imagine someone coming along and jumping sixty feet, or six hundred feet! Yet the intellectual leap represented by mathematical geniuses is far in excess of these physical differences.

I could post extracts from about half of Paul Davies' total output, he always has interesting things to say. You can pick up a copy of The Mind of God from Amazon US and Amazon UK.

An interesting confluence of two stories that crossed the Grail news-desk yesterday. Firstly, there's this story about an 'outbreak' at a New York school where 19 people (18 girls, 1 boy) "have developed a sudden-onset disorder with symptoms similar to the movement disorder Tourette’s syndrome."

Several of the girls report that the symptoms seemed to come out of nowhere — one minute they were asleep, the next they had woken and developed uncontrollable movements and vocalizations. Their tics could be dramatic: arms twitching or jolting out to one side, speech chopped up by nonsense utterings, head jerking, eyes blinking. Some girls have also had blackouts and seizures.

Thus far, no physical causes have been found that explain the symptoms, and eight of the girls have been now diagnosed with 'conversion disorder', or mass hysteria. This seems an odd explanation though, given the long period of 'contamination' and lack of social contact between those suffering from the symptoms.

Coincidentally another link that I came across at the same time discussed the 'Dancing Mania' that occurred from the 14th to 17th centuries in Europe:

As early as the year 1374, strange episodes of dancing mania were reported across Europe. No obvious pattern or triggers to the outbreaks, just large gatherings of men and women of all ages, forming circles and dancing for hours at a time, often until they collapsed with exhaustion...

...Priests, town councils, and local rulers were all alarmed by the dancing mania. The Church blamed the dancing mania on demonic possession and fought it with all the tools at their disposal. Along with frequent sermons directed at the dancers, churches conducted long religious festivals designed to stop the dancers. Although a few priests even resorted to exorcisms, 250px-Die_Wallfahrt_der_Fallsuechtigen_nach_Meulebeeck[1]nothing seemed to keep the dancers down for long. While the priests did what they could, local governments resorted to more direct approaches including having the dancers beaten with sticks and even banning the wearing of round-toed shoes in some places (which made dancing harder).

Although the dancers often burned themselves out after a few months, the relative calm afterward rarely lasted long. As the dancing stopped in one part of Europe, new outbreaks would happen in other parts.

All rather strange, and a testament to how little we still understand about the human mind (or even 'spirit', if that is the case).

A fascinating new study by Dean Radin (and Leena Michel, Karla Galdamez, Paul Wendland, Robert Rickenbach, and Arnaud Delorme) appears to offer supporting evidence for conscious influence of quantum effects. "Consciousness and the double-slit interference pattern: Six experiments " will be published in the June 2012 issue of Physics Essays:

A double-slit optical system was used to test the possible role of consciousness in the collapse of the quantum wavefunction. The ratio of the interference pattern’s double-slit to single-slit spectral power was predicted to decrease when attention was focused towards the double-slit as compared to away. Each test session consisted of 40 counterbalanced attention-towards and attention-away epochs, where each epoch lasted between 15 and 30 seconds. Data contributed by 137 people in six experiments, involving a total of 250 test sessions, indicated that on average the spectral ratio decreased as predicted (z = -4.36, p = 6 x 10-6). Another 250 control sessions conducted without observers present tested hardware, software, and analytical procedures for potential artifacts; none were identified (z = 0.43, p = 0.67).

Variables including temperature, vibration, and signal drift were also tested, and no spurious influences were identified. By contrast, factors associated with consciousness, such as meditation experience, electrocortical markers of focused attention, and psychological factors including openness and absorption significantly correlated in predicted ways with perturbations in the double-slit interference pattern. The results appear to be consistent with a consciousness-related interpretation of the quantum measurement problem.

I'm yet to see the paper, but the interesting parts of the above abstract are the highly significant results per prediction, vs control experiments, as well as what appears to be improved results for subjects with enhanced aspects of focus (e.g. meditators) (Dean notes in the comments that "about half were meditators...They did much better than non-meditators".

The latest issue (Vol 3, Number 1) of the free journal Paranthropology ("anthropological approaches to the paranormal") is now available to download. In the new release:

• "The Sublime and the Profane: A Thealogical Account of Psychometric Experiences Within a Sacred Space" - Patricia 'Iolana
• "Money God Cults in Taiwan: A Paranthropological Approach" - Fabian Graham
• "Proceeding With Caution: What Went Wrong? The Death and Rebirth of Essential Science" - Charles T. Tart
• "Transpersonal Anthropology: What is it, and What are the Problems we Face Doing it?" - Charles D. Laughlin
• "Contemporary Physical Mediumship: Is it Part of a Continuous Tradition" - Jack Hunter
• "Charles Richet at the Villa Carmen" - Robert McLuhan
• "Nourished by Dreams, Visions and William James: The Radical Philosophies of Borges and Terence McKenna" - William Rowlandson
• "An Inner Curriculum Vitae" - Paul Devereux
• "Communing With the Gods - An Overview" - Charles D. Laughlin
• "Brazil: Where Cows Might Fly" - Guy Lyon Playfair

And in case you haven't read this great resource before, all of the previous issues remain available to download from the site as well. Don't forget to support the journal with a PayPal donation if you find it interesting/useful...well-deserved and will help ensure publication into the near future.

Over at Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow has posted a story (contributed by Clay Shirky) on the attempted replications of Daryl Bem's controversial 'feeling the future' precognition experiments, which he has titled "ESP proponents claim that ESP skeptics are psychic, and use their powers to suppress ESP" (linking to the original story "Wait, Maybe You Can't Feel the Future"):

Clay sez, "Stuart Ritchie, a psychology doctoral student in Edinburgh, worked with two colleagues to try to replicate the results of a famous recent experiment, claiming people could predict in advance whether they were about to be shown erotic images. When the three failed to find any such evidence for ESP they sent their results out for publication, and the British Psychology Journal, one of the journals to which it was sent, in turn sent the trio's article out for review. When Ritchie et al got the responses back '...there were two reviews, one very positive, urging publication, and one quite negative. This latter review didn’t find any problems in our methodology or writeup itself, but suggested that, since the three of us (Richard Wiseman, Chris French and I) are all skeptical of ESP, we might have unconsciously influenced the results using our own psychic powers.' They are still looking for a place to publish their findings.

Now personally, I don't agree with the reviewer's grounds for rejecting the replication study. Though I've read about the alleged 'experimenter effect' before, and consider it an interesting sideline topic, I think the paper by Ritchie, Wiseman and French deserves to be published regardless. Additionally, they already *do* address the possibility of the experimenter effect in their paper explicitly, in referring to the original experiment set-up by Bem:

When discussing the issue of replication, Bem drew special attention to the role of experimenter effects, arguing that a skeptical experimenter might be more likely to obtain a null effect than one more open to the possibility of psychic ability. To help overcome this potential issue, Bem describes how he specifically designed the study to be run by a computer (thus minimizing the experimenter’s role) and using undergraduate experimenters that were given only informal training. In line with these guidelines, only Replication 1 was carried out by the Principal Investigator - Replication 2 was conducted by the Principal Investigator's research assistants, and Replication 3 was carried out by an undergraduate student as part of a project being supervised by the Principal Investigator.

(Though there could be an argument that Replication 1 did not address the issue raised by Bem, and the further possibility that the research assistants and undergraduates under supervision may have shared the skeptical view of the Principal Investigator due to their working relationship).

What I wanted to address more though is the handling of it at Boing Boing. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but the title seems to me to be designed to say "those whacko ESP proponents, justifying their belief in any way they can". The addition of the 'Psychic Reader' image helps reinforce the woo-woo component. The problem is this: though it has been noted for decades, the 'experimenter effect' has come to the fore in recent years chiefly due to research performed by Richard Wiseman, one of most high-profile *skeptics* in the world. In a joint study with 'psi proponent' Marilyn Schlitz, of the Institute of Noetic Studies, Wiseman found (very tentative) evidence that it might be possible that results may differ depending on the attitude of the researcher. In "Experimenter effects and the remote detection of staring" (full-text PDF), Wiseman and Schlitz discussed the possible explanations for the discrepancy in Wiseman's negative results and Schlitz's positive results:

Finally, it is also possible that both RW and MS used their own psi abilities to create the results he/she desired. This interpretation, if genuine, supports past research which suggests that ‘successful experimenters’ (i.e., those that consistently obtain significant effects in psi studies) outperform ‘unsuccessful’ ones on a variety of psi tasks (see Palmer, 1986 for a review of the literature supporting this notion).

Wiseman and Schlitz have collaborated three times on investigating experimenter effects - the first two resulted in positive evidence, but the most recent experiment failed to replicate their previous findings. Their conclusion at this time regarding the experimenter effect was that "the inconsistent nature of our findings does not allow for a firm acceptance or rejection of either interpretation and the issue will only be resolved by further research".

Now, given that Bem explicitly notes his concern over 'experimenter effect', and further that Richard Wiseman was also one of the co-authors of the failed Bem replication, some might say it's fair enough to raise the experimenter effect as a possible variable, given it's part of Wiseman's own research corpus and that he has actively stated it as a possible cause of failed results. As I said at the beginning, I do think it's worthy of publication all the same. But the Boing Boing title is misleading, and leads to a vast comment thread with a number of boorish and uneducated 'skeptical' comments. Which is a shame, because it's a fascinating field of research no matter what the final outcome is.

You might also like...

• Slippery Skepticism
• The Future of Psi
• Daryl Bem on The Colbert Report

Scientific American have published a feature today on the latest research into lucid dreaming, and in particular some of the benefits that may be gained from learning this long-neglected human ability:

Until recently, most experts thought of lucid dreaming as a curiosity—a fun way to act out wishful thinking about flying or meeting celebrities. But recent research has uncovered practical uses for lucid dreams. Chronic nightmare sufferers often find their only source of relief is learning how to take control of their dreams. A study in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics in October 2006 found that those who learned how to increase their frequency of lucid dreams reported fewer awful dreams afterward, although the exact mechanism underlying the relief is unclear. Perhaps becoming aware during a bad dream allows sufferers to distance themselves emotionally from the dream’s content. Some people may even become so adept at lucid dreaming that they are able to keep themselves from imagining frightening disaster scenarios while they are asleep.

...Beyond therapeutic applications, lucid dreaming may also facilitate the learning of complicated movement sequences. In dreams, we are all capable of unusual actions. We can fly, walk through walls or make objects disappear. According to sports psychologist Daniel Erlacher of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, athletes can internalize complex motor sequences, such as those needed in the high jump, more quickly after targeted lucid-dream training.

Regular dreams have been shown to be involved in problem solving, so some researchers have asked if lucid dreams could be useful in focusing the dreamer’s mind. A small study last year at Liverpool John Moores University in England suggests that lucid dreams are good for creative endeavors such as inventing metaphors but not for more rational exercises such as solving brainteasers. The lucid dreamers in the study were instructed to summon a “guru” figure, a wise character to serve as a kind of guide. Indeed, some of the subjects found their dream characters to be surprisingly helpful.

For more on this topic, make sure you grab a copy of Paul and Charla Devereux's book Lucid Dreaming: Accessing Your Inner Virtual Realities (Amazon US or Amazon UK), released by Daily Grail Publishing earlier this year, which covers these topics and also fills you in on how you can take control of your dreams.

You might also like...

• Introduction to Lucid Dreaming
• Stephen LaBerge on Lucid Dreaming
• Lucid Dreaming Kicks On
• Learn to Lucid Dream
• Communing with the Gods

Today I'm proud to announce another new book release from Daily Grail Publishing: Communing with the Gods: Consciousness, Culture and the Dreaming Brain, by Charles D. Laughlin, Ph.D. (available from Amazon US and Amazon UK):

Communing with the Gods presents the most comprehensive account of culture and dreaming available in the anthropology of dreaming, and is written by an anthropologist who is also trained in neuroscience, and who is himself a lucid dreamer and Tibetan Tantric dream yoga practitioner. The book examines the place of dreaming in the experience of peoples from diverse cultures and historical backgrounds. Communing with the Gods touches on shamanism and anthropological theories of dreaming, 'paranormal dreams', lucid dreaming, and what we know about how the brain produces dreams and why.

A comprehensive theory of brain, culture and dreaming is presented that explains the neurobiological functions of sleep and dreaming, the evolution of dreaming, the universality of, and cultural variation in dream elements, and the role of dreaming as a system of intra-psychic communication. This theory is then applied to an examination of dreaming in modern society. The book concludes by discussing how modern dream-work may ameliorate wide-spread alienation, spiritual exhaustion and despair in modern society.

I want to be clear that this is an extremely scholarly work on the neuroanthropology of dreaming - it is not a 'pop read' in any sense. But that is what is exciting about this book: Charles Laughlin is a very well-respected academic with a long history of research into this topic, and in this book - aimed at others in the fields of anthropology, neurobiology and dream research - he deals calmly and rationally with the oft-neglected issues of transpersonal and paranormal dreaming, not to mention the more general fact that modern Western cultures largely ignore dreams, to their detriment, and that it is high time we began to reconnect with this aspect of our lives.

For those who are interested in exploring these topics further, you can use the following links to purchase a copy:

• Amazon US
• Amazon UK
• Barnes and Noble
• The Book Depository
• Fishpond.com.au

Also, for those admiring the gorgeous cover artwork: it's courtesy of our good friend, visionary artist Adam Scott Miller.