The experimental study of dream telepathy, introduced by
Montague Ullman and Stanley Krippner at the Maïmonides Hospital in New York, was
certainly one of the most interesting experiments ever conducted on altered states of
consciousness.
Periods of dreaming (spaced about 90 minutes apart) were detected through a particular
brainwave / eye movement pattern which had been recently identified as associated to
dreams. Whenever this physiological pattern was detected in the sleeping receiver, the
sender (in another room) was instructed to concentrate on the target image. At the end of
the dream state, the subject was awakened and asked to relate the dream, before going back
to sleep. This process was repeated for each dream period - on the average, 4 to 5 times
per night. In the morning, the dream imagery was reviewed. Then, either the subject or a
blind judge (having no knowledge of the targets) was asked to "rank" 8 images in
terms of their proximity to the dream imagery. If the actual target was included in the 4
highest ranks, the session was a hit; if in the lower 4 ranks it was a miss. So, by this
evaluation protocol, the hit rate due to chance would be 50%. In fact, the cumulated
results were truly impressive : considering studies in which all the dreams of each night
were used (in other words, all studies but one), subjects had 102 hits versus 48 misses,
yielding a hit rate of 68% (p=.002). Blind judges actually did better, with a hit rate of
73% (p = .000002). Positive findings were also obtained in two studies testing for
precognition - whereby the randomly-selected target was generated only the next morning,
after the dreams had been recorded. |
