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Direct Mental Interaction with Living Systems, or DMILS, is another area of ongoing research at the Koestler Chair, and in other parts of the world. In recent years, a large body of evidence has been accumulated suggesting that physiological processes can be influenced by remote individuals with no obvious means of communication. Physiological measures have been used in ESP research almost since the equipment has been available, however, the current methodology used in DMILS arises primarily from the work of William Braud, Marylin Schlitz, and others.
For simplicity I will refer to the Agent as the person who attempts to alter the distant system, and Participant as the system being acted upon. It is unclear who is really doing the 'influencing' or who is being influenced and the number of different descriptors used in the literature reflects this (i.e. 'influencer - influencee', 'sender-receiver' etc.). The acronym DMILS itself is relatively new, arising from Bio-PK, remote staring, distant influence, and others. Direct Mental Interaction allows for contributions from both agent and participant, while Living Systems includes organisms in general (even cellular systems). Throughout this page certain references are highlighted, simply click on them to see the full citation, and then click again on the citation to return
The typical remote staring experiment involves situating the participant comfortably in a sound attenuated, shielded chamber while the Agent either stares at the participant via a closed circuit video, or looks away according to a random sequence previously unknown to the Agent. The participant can be asked to guess when they think staring is occurring, or may be monitored physiologically as an unconscious measure of staring detection. The participant may try several mental strategies during staring in an attempt to gain the attention of the participant. Physiological measures of detection have proved to be more robust than conscious guessing thus far, with physiological arousal being generally higher during staring periods than for non staring periods. Distances between Agent and Participant vary due to laboratory architecture, but most studies occur over at least 20 meters, and with several closed doors between the two. Click HERE for a layout of our laboratory
Remote influence studies are vary similar to remote staring, in that physiological responses are recorded and the Participant and Agent are separated by sound proofing, shielding, and distance. However, rather than staring or not staring, the Agent uses one or more of several influencing strategies to either calm or activate the remote participant. Influence periods (calm or activate) are broken up by a control periods, where the Agent attempts no influence. These are counter balanced and randomly assigned by computer or by other procedures such that the Agent and Participant are unaware of the sequence of influence period. In many cases, computers are used to prompt the Agent and for physiological feedback from the Participant. Several influencing strategies have been developed for use in remote interaction:
Not every experiment works, nor is the effect upon the physiology
that great, however, results from a meta-analysis of 37 DMILS
experiments have yielded a statistically significant difference (effect
size .33, p=2.58x10
Other biological systems have been used as Participants in DMILS studies. Blood cell deterioration rate was measured as a dependent variable in a study by Braud & Dennis, (1989). Braud has also done some other experiments using fish orientation in a tank and mammal locomotion. I'll build more into this section later, perhaps reviewing more general animal experiments.
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page created by Zachary McDermott, for comments, suggestions, or if I've missed anyone please Mail me