Dream Telepathy

DREAM TELEPATHY Montague Ullman, M.D. and Stanley Krippner, Ph.D. with Alan Vaughan from a new book to be published in September by Maemillan Publishing Co. “The paranormal dream that seems to transcend time and space remains no less controversial today than it was in the days of Cicero... who complained that dream di- vination was sheer superstition.” Thus begins a new book for the general reader, describing the dream-telepathy experiments of Drs. Ullman and Krippner at the Maimo- nides Dream Laboratory in Brookiyn, N.Y. They have com- pleted and published extensive studies describing a “strict experimental method in which normal, genuine real dreams of ordinary human beings are studied with full attention to the rigorous techniques of electrophysiology,” as Dr. Gardner Murphy says in his Foreword. “It is difficult to imagine,” he continues, “a study more important, more nearly central to our fundamental problems in parapsy- chology: Can we adapt to the experimental and quanti- tative requirements of the laboratory, the vast floating psychological energies of the living human mind, so com- plex, so challenging, so full of both inspiration and tefrOr aga PROCEDURE The person who is going to take part in these experiments comes to the laboratory. Electrodes are fastened to his Dr. Helmut Schmidt, Director Institute of Parapsy- chology, FRNM, with Dr. Osis, ASPR Director of Re- search. (See story, page 4.) Number 18—Summer 1973 scalp and sensors to the corners of his eyes. When an in- dividual dreams, his eyes move rapidly (REM, rapid eye movements). The EEG (electroencephalograph) measures the REM’s and the brainwave changes which accompany dreaming. Watching for these telltale movements, the experimenter rouses the subject, and asks him to describe the dream; he gets unprecedented detail in response, much more than if he waited till morning for the person to recall his dreams. While the subject is asleep, an agent 100 feet away and beyond four closed doors is looking at a randomly chosen picture (usually a colorful art print), and trying to beam this target picture, by ESP, to the dreaming subject. This procedure effectively eliminates any possibility that the dreamer could normally know what the picture is about. In the morning, the experimenter and the subject discuss the night’s dreams. This post-sleep interview sometimes elicits additional information, and the dreamer may describe associations to the subject-matter, which in them- selves may be helpful in identifying telepathic content. JUDGING THE CORRESPONDENCES BETWEEN DREAMS AND TARGETS Next all the transcripts of the dreams, plus those of the morning associations to the dreams, are sent to indepen- dent judges, along with copies of all the targets. Their task is to compare transcript and dream, and evaluate the amount of correspondence between them. The judges’ rankings are pooled in each series. “Results have demonstrated that the resemblances are significantly greater than would be expected by chance ...Ina half-dozen years [since the beginning of pub- lication of the formal studies] and with over a hundred subjects, there is a significant relation between what is ‘sent’ and what is ‘received.’ ” REINFORCING THE AGENT’S MESSAGE It happened that in one series the agent had decided to try involving himself more actively in the target picture, by drawing the picture or acting out part of it. He felt this would help him immerse himself in the theme and mood of the picture. Exploring the idea that such acting out might reinforce the impact of the painting, Ullman and Krippner collected “props,” ranging from toy soldiers to a boxing glove, to accompany a group of art-print tar- gets which had been chosen for emotional content and bright color. Each target was given its own multisensory accompaniment, to see whether “life imitating art” in the laboratory would bring a high dream-telepathy result. One picture was a Japanese print, showing a man with an

umbrella walking in a driving rain (“Downpour at Shono”). The props were a toy Japanese umbrella, and instructions to the agent: “Take a shower” — which he did several times during that night. Describing his dreams, the subject men- tioned, for instance, “Something about an Oriental man. . a fountain, water spray that would shoot up... . Walking with someone on the street .. . . Raining.” In the morning, he remembered “fountains in Rome,” etc. It seemed that the reinforcements had helped put the message across. A more emotion-laden target was Beckmann’s “Descent from the Cross.” The box of props contained a crucifix, a small wooden cross, a picture of Christ, some tacks and a red felt pen. Instructions to the agent were: “Nail Christ to the cross and color his wounds red.” Among. the dreamer’s responses: ceremonial sacrifice, “we were going to be sacrificed, or something.” During the post-sleep inter- view in the morning when asked to make a guess as to what the target had been about, he said, “There was a ceremonial thing going on.” His strong symbolic and ritualistic impress- ions drew from the judges a very high rating, the highest, in fact, of all in the whole series. So the instructions, “Color his wounds red” did seem a potent way to heighten the tele- pathic impression of the Crucifixion picture. YOUR OWN DREAM EXPERIMENT Organizations and colleges around the country have been making their own informal dream-telepathy trials and send- ing in the reports to the authors. Three college students in a parapsychology course (Centenary College, Shreve- port, Louisiana) tried dreaming about a picture being sent by their instructor. It showed a man clinging desperately to the side of a tall building and seeming to be about to fall off. One student dreamed that he fell off the top of a university building—hitting ground, bleeding, then dying. “The vividness woke me up,” he reported. Another was “climbing a rocky cliff and jumping off . . .” The third dreamed that he was with two of his friends, “on the roof of (a) tall . . . building . . . They were getting down by kind of falling . . .” The authors remark, “At one blow, three new telepathic dreamers discovered.” YOUR OWN DREAMS The book’s final chapter states that it is well worth the effort to try to remember one’s own dreams. One specific strategy for improving your recall is to keep a pencil and notebook handy at the bedside and write down frag- ments of dreams—words, images, feelings—immediately. Make the effort to rouse yourself enough to write the dream down. Unless you resist your own “bland reassu- rances that so vivid a dream will certainly be remembered in the morning . . . the outcome is apt to be a blank mind as well as a blank sheet of notepaper.” Moreover, “the dreamer himself is the only real expert concerning the message of the dream . . . An understanding of dreams is certainly essential to the additional task of identifying and evaluating possible paranormal content.” $8.95, 320 pages. This book has been chosen by the Psy- chology Today Book Club as its main August selection (the first on this subject).