Citation

Recent research by the lead author has sought to incorporate ganzfeld  stimulation as part of a remote viewing protocol. An initial exploratory  experiment (Roe & Flint, 2007) suggested that novice participants  can successfully describe a randomly selected target location while in  the ganzfeld context but did not make a direct comparison with  performance in a waking state. This paper describes a series of three  subsequent experiments that compared performance at a remote viewing  task in a waking condition with a ganzfeld stimulation condition using a  counterbalanced repeated measures design. There were only minor  variations in design across the three experiments to enable combination  of data in a summary analysis. In total, 110 participants produced 43  hits in the ganzfeld stimulation condition (39%), giving a highly  significant positive deviation from chance expectation (sum of ranks =  225, p = .000012), whereas in the waking RV condition they achieved 30  hits (27.5%), which is marginally better than chance expectation (sum of  ranks = 253, p = .034). The difference in z scores for target ratings  in the two conditions approached significance (t[39] = 1.86, p = .065).  In experiment 1, individual difference measures identified as predictors  of psi performance were unrelated to target ratings. Participants  completed Pekala’s (1991) Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory (PCI)  in order to gauge their responsiveness to the ganzfeld protocol and of  the 12 sub-dimensions tested, ganzfeld performance correlated  significantly with greater absorption in their subjective experience,  lower arousal, and less internal dialogue. In experiments 2 and 3  individual differences measure were replaced by measures of  transliminality, openness to experience, and dissociative experiences,  but these were unrelated to task success. Data from experiment 2 did not  confirm the findings using the PCI from experiment 1, though a  significant association was found with the time sense dimension. In  experiment 3 no PCI dimensions correlated with task performance, a  pattern that was confirmed when data were combined across all three  experiments.