Electromagnetic Wave Theory and Telepathic Phenomena Research

The first was related to the emission of electromagnetic waves by the brain, the second, even more inexplicable was the range of frequencies at which this emission occurred, which should be situated between $1$ and $200$ MHz. It is indeed known that all brain activities reach a maximum frequency slightly above $25$ Hz, that is, six orders of magnitude lower. Vasiljev L. Leonid, in "The Biophysical Bases of Direct Thought Transmission", Vestnik Znanija n°7, 1926, described experiments with two hysterical women of about 35 years known by the names of Ivanova and Fjodorova, while the hypnotic sleep inducers were Dr. Dubrovskij and Tomashevskij. The experiments included: • Suggestion of motor acts: in which the inductor had to mentally induce a movement suggested by a third experimenter; • Suggestion of visual images: in which the inductor had to mentally project one or more symbols; • Suggestion of hypnotic sleep at distance: in which the inductor, following the model of Janet's first experiments, had to induce hypnotic sleep at distance. In all these experiments the group had good results, but certainly the best and most easily repeatable were those related to hypnotic sleep at distance and the relative awakening according to the protocol established by Pierre Janet with Dr. Gibert. The protocol in question consisted of having the subject to be hypnotized lie down, placing the hypnotist in another room. After a variable interval from a few minutes to more than an hour, the hypnotist began the mental suggestion towards the subject to induce hypnotic sleep which generally occurred within two minutes from the beginning of the suggestion. Subsequently, always at the discretion of the hypnotist, an awakening suggestion was operated, which generally led to obtaining faster responses from the hypnotized subject who awakened quite promptly. To avoid autosuggestion phenomena, the group switched to operating on always new subjects unaware of the type of experiment to which they were subjected, then moving to increasingly complicated methodological operations while still managing to replicate the results. The second phase of the program consisted of demonstrating the role of electromagnetic waves in the telepathic phenomenon. Thus the experiments were conducted inside a room built in lead and with a door sealed with liquid mercury. The results showed no significant difference between lead shielding or its absence. In addition to lead shielding, the distance between inductor and percipient was increased by sending the hypnotist doctor Tomashevskij to Sebastopol, that is, $1700$ km from Leningrad. However, the percipient felt no difference, always falling asleep in less than a minute from the beginning of the sleep suggestion and waking up less than a minute after the beginning of the awakening suggestion. The uselessness of lead shielding, the non-sensitive dependence of the phenomenon on the distance between inductor and percipient made the group desist from seeking an electromagnetic origin in the telepathic phenomenon examined and forced the group to hypothesize a psychic energy that was involved in the phenomenon. The director of the Laboratory of Cybernetic Physiology at the University of Leningrad, Pavel Guljaev, under whose direction the experiments continued after the 1960s, specified the psychon as a particular state of matter different from that of substance and energy. Today, after more than one hundred years since their appearance in scientific literature, telepathy phenomena during hypnotic states are still widely studied and constitute a persistent anomaly that cannot be easily explained by study quality, fraud, selective reporting, experimental or analytical incompetence, or other frequent criticisms. In one version of these experiments, $3,885$ test sessions have been collected, performed over more than forty years from 1974 to 2018, with an excess success rate equal to $8:1$ above expectation. This method, known as the ganzfeld method, consists of exposing a "receiver" of telepathic information to a light form of unstructured sensory stimulation. In this experiment, the receiver relaxes in a comfortable reclining chair, the experimenter attaches halved ping-pong balls over the receiver's eyes, and then asks them to wear headphones that reproduce background noise, a rustling sound like a waterfall. Then the experimenter shines a red light on the receiver's face, and asks them to keep their eyes open. After several minutes in this condition, the mind is encouraged to slip into a dream-like hypnagogic state. After the receiver relaxes in this state for about 15 minutes, they are asked to speak aloud everything that comes to mind in the next 20 minutes, while the "sender," who is rigorously isolated from the receiver through shielding and distance, mentally sends them an image randomly chosen from a pool of 4 randomly selected photographs, each of which is as different as possible from the others.