Citation

This study explored whether long-term yoga/meditation practice facilitates psi awareness. Data were collected in an Indian ashram setting in 2003 and 2004 from yoga practitioners with three levels of initiation: students (ST) (0.3-15 years practice); sanyassins (SN) ( l-10 years practice); and swamis (SW) (4-33 years practice). These preliminary experiments focused on adapting Western laboratory procedures to the ashram setting with a Macintosh laptop serving as a portable laboratory. Participants had a short meditation followed by an awareness period to precognitively perceive a target video clip that they would see at the end of the session. They then rated four target clips on a l to l00 scale for similarity with their awareness experience. A reanalysis (using effect sizer) showed no overall significant effect in either year (2003: r = -0.09; 2004: r = 0.08). Advanced practitioners (SW) in both years showed nonsignificant psi hitting (2003: r= 0.21; 2004: r= 0.07), whereas the other two groups (SN and ST) were more variable in their scoring (2003: SN r = -0.23 and ST r = -0.38; 2004: SN r = 0.05 & ST r = 0.13). In 2003, in line with the hypothesis, the advanced group (SW) scored significantly better than SN (p = .05) or ST (p = .04). In 2004 these differences became nonsignificant. Implications and possible explanations are explored.