Ok, thanks for taking up the challenge.
I note your points above:
you can’t project at will, but will try to develop your power
finding ‘glee’s desk’ is not too difficult
you don’t know how long it takes
Here are the suggested conditions for the first test - let me know if you agree:
For identification purposes, the desk is on the right of the room as you enter, and has two computers on it.
Ignoring all computer equipment (and pieces of paper), there are 12 separate objects on the desk. They are all clearly visible. I have allocated each object a number, rolled a 12 sided dice, and stuck a yellow post-it note on the chosen object (with the words ‘this one’ on the post-it).
You are invited to remote view the desk and identify the object with the post-it attached.
If you feel able, you are welcome to name the other 11 objects.
There is no time limit, because no-one else uses the room (and my cleaning lady has instructions not to touch anything in the room!)
Purely for comparison purposes, SDMB members are invited to also perform steps 3. and 4. Please state whether you claim paranormal powers, or are a ‘control’ (e.g. just using your intelligence guided by your experience)
I am e-mailing David B. the answers to 3. and 4. (right after posting this). If another Moderator would like to join in, they are most welcome.
I suggest that predictions be posted on the thread, since I think this will make analysis of the various answers easy. Once cityboy916 has posted, David B. can reveal all.
I am on GMT here (it’s now about 0100 i.e one hour after midnight). There is usually enough daylight to see the room clearly, plus I work from home quite a bit.
Wow, it’s really interesting to see this being carried out.
Cityboy, if its not too personal, can I ask a few questions?
How often have you astrally projected?
Do you always know that you have, or only figured it out later?
Can you view arbitrary things (eg. random numbers) or only things of some import to a person?
I’m kind of guessing at the appropriateness of these questions. Also, I recognise that you’re likely to not know all the answers, but I think we’d still like to hear if you do, or what guesses you might offer.
I realise this could turn into a hijack but I think that its very relevant in designing an experiment.
Wait just a gosh-durn minute! Have all parties agreed to the terms? The conditions? The time limit? What constitutes a success? A failure?
But is this part of the test? If not, then no matter how accurately they may be described, they do not count towards verification of the original claim!
if someone can astral project, what happens if their body has to go to te bathroom?
I’ll offer up my room also.
There is something in it that came in the mail last month. What is it?
I agree to the terms and conditions outlined in post #4306750 (glee’s post, above).
In response to Shade:
In the past it has been once every year or two, but in the past couple of years it has become more common.
I always know as soon as it begins.
I could probably view any objects, but have not yet tested my capabilities in this area. I prefer the collection of objects rather than trying to memorize a number. I might see the number and forget some of the digits, or I might not have enough acuity to make out all the digits. A 6 digit number would be a stretch (9 digits would be out of the question).
No I do not think the questions are too personal.
Musicat, the sentence you quote is item #4 on the test. And anyway, if I can name a few of the objects other than the “this one” item, it merely shows stronger evidence of my having been there in spirit form.
vanilla, if the body has to use the bathroom, it hinders projection. Any kind of sensory input can do this. That’s why at the Monroe Institute, mentioned in the other thread, participants are asked to empty their bladders before beginning.
David B, we could start by establishing that in order for the experiment to be a success, I must at the very least identify the “this one” item. I’m open to thoughts on whether or not identifying some of the other items will be a requirement.
Heck I’d offer my desk as well…but it has so much crap on it you can name anything in the world and I’d probably have something fairly close.
I agree that there needs to be clarification on what’s a success. After all if he says banana when you have tagged a yellow flashlight is that a near miss?
What if he ‘misses’ the right item but gets about 6 of the other 11? I’d say that it’s terribly unlikely to get 50% of the items so would it be a success or failure at that point?
It’s really not fair to ask astral projectors to identify words or 6-digit numbers, because reading is impossible on the astral plane. You can see the writing, of course, but you can’t remember what the figures represent or even how many there are.
At least, that’s how it is according to a novel I read. Or maybe it was a dream I had. Can you read in your dreams? I can’t.
There’s more I’d like to add, but my pet ghost just flooded the toilet again. So I gotta run…
It appears cityboy doesn’t know when he’ll project but is confident that he’ll know if he’ll project. This would suggest three possible outcomes:
Cityboy never projects - undetermined.
Cityboy projects, but gets the object wrong: evidence that cityboy can’t project
Cityboy projects, but gets the object right.
However, if we’re likely to wait a year for something to happen, it would seem sensible to make the test harder to guess. How about we figure out some way for glee to choose a random object that he finds and puts on the desk. Or perhaps a statue, or something? We would still have to come up definite success/fail criteria. What I’m trying to do is to decrease the odds of guessing it, while not making it harder to project. If it’s a common object the test might be 20-to-1, which isn’t that strong evidence if we can’t rerun it as often as we’d like.
The thing I’m worried about is that an object not naturally there might be hard to view for some reason. Cityboy: any suggestions?
Very well. How about a time? This is effectively a four digit number, and can be lit up at night. glee could buy a cheap LED clock, set it to a random time which was continually displayed (and didn’t change!) and set it atop his monitor. It could be seen at night as clearly as any other object on the desk, and surely everybody can tell the time in dreams (although I fail to see how this is pertinent).
The problem I have with the tagged “object” is that cityboy might come back from his trip saying that the post-it note was yellow (No!) and was attached to a long, squat object which looked like it was made of plastic and looked pale in colour, perhaps white, and that it seemed like something gleeused regularly. He would then make a wrong guess. However, proponents of astral-projection would then point to his vague description and say “See - he obviously could see the object, he just couln’t see it clearly!”.
I propose that *cityboy simply says what the object is, with no preamble, and further that the clock be arranged in case he shows up at night.
Sorry to crash into your experiment, but mightn’t it alter the results if people start answering in the thread? IMHO feedback from other Dopers could muck up the control group at the very least.
we are all aware that both cityboy916 and glee are merely anonymous posters
they could be in league, as could David B (the referee)
Well this is just a start. There is no money at stake, and no claim that this is a definitive proof of anything.
However I have been asking for evidence of paranormal activity for ages, and cityboy916 is the first to respond. Respect.
the conditions are rather loose, and there is a limited range of objects that could be ‘on a desk’
Condition 3 (see previous post) is the biggie. That is the official test of success or failure. One object is marked with a post-it. I have e-mailed David B with its identity. (Also cityboy916 is content that he can find my location.)
Condition 4 is a bonus.
As I have said, anyone (go ahead, Mr. B!) is welcome to have a go at both 3. and 4.
Please state whether you are psychic or not!
I see this as a control - if non-psychic posters can do well, then we need a better test.
describing objects can lead to ambiguity over a correct answer
Once cityboy916 has had a go at this first test, I will invite him to the second one. Here I will list all 12 objects (if necessary I will change some to make identification clearer), select one randomly and invite more remote viewing.
remote viewers can’t read numbers on the astral plane
Well I note that only KGS has suggested this (in a suspiciously sarcastic-looking post :eek: )
I have a deal with cityboy916, who has been polite and helpful throughout. I will therefore only accept his authority on whether such reading is possible.
it might take a year to remote view
I have a sad life (kidding! ). What I can say is that things generally stay where they are put in my house (not food, obviously). It will be no problem to leave the objects on my computer desk untouched for a year.
Also I have a problem with your protocol.
If someone remote views your room, how would they know which object came in the post last month?
Anyway, how many objects in your room came in the last month?
Sounds like you need a time-travelling remote viewer…
Someone suggested PGP encryption to allow everyone to verify the results. I think we all here trust David B, but if you wanted to do a test that could be verified by all, you could do it simpler than PGP. Use any standard symmetric encryption program, such as DES, Blowfish, etc. Create a message with the secret contents, publish the encrypted version publically, then wait until the test has concluded and publish the key.
Cityboy, I respect that you’re willing to put your beliefs to the test. I hope you stick with this to its conclusion. If it all works out, we skeptics could be welcoming a new member to our community. I don’t mean this as an insult - many of us here believed this stuff at one time too, until something happened that made us question it.
Shade, I’m not sure. I tend to think that what is seen while projected is what is really there, and that all objects should be equally visible. However, I will not dismiss the possibility of things being more or less noticeable depending on whether they belong there and how strongly the owner is attached to them.
Mr. B, that would be true if I was guessing the items or claiming a clairvoyant ability that does not actually involve relocating the center of consciousness. But the only way I will post an answer here is if I genuinely believe to have projected and been there in spirit. That is to say, only if I have actually seen the objects. I will not post guess answers or premonitions. Furthermore, if I believe it at the time and awake to the cruel realization that it was only a dream (this happens sometimes - one may dream of achieving any goal they set their mind to) I will not post the content of the dream. (Unless glee decides that might be relevant - any thoughts on this one?)
Now of course you could still have a valid concern if I were to see certain guesses posted here and then have them on my mind looking for them on the astral plane. It is theoretically possible to be so caught up with one expectation that the mind forces a wrong interpretation of an object that’s there - say, if I am so confident I will see a banana, I might indeed see one instead of the actual object which might be a yellow flashlight.
But all I can do is assure everybody that that is not going to be the case. I don’t know how much mental/cognitive faculty I will have while projected (nor do I know whether I will be awake or asleep but I will try to wake up once I am far enough away from my body that it wont’ end the projection) so I must devote whatever cognitive faculty I have to “glee’s desk - look for a sticky - identify the objects” or some similar mantra. It is not reasonable for me to carry around a bunch of expectations that would only get in the way.
glee has a point about the time travelling RV-er. I think the astral body is capable of viewing the past and future, but I do not speak from direct experience on this matter.
CurtC; hah! We’ll just see about that. Besides, there have been die hard skeptics that have come to believe in paranormal phenomena. Bestselling author Whitley Strieber comes to mind. Just because somebody changes their belief doesn’t mean their newfound ideas are correct, any more than it means they are wrong.
In another thread, perhaps, it would be most enlightening.
Actually, I was concerned about other people, specifically the controls in the study. A non-blind control could be attacked in future threads.
I’m piping in because last night I had a very strong impression of glee’s room. In fact, I had the distinct feeling that glee was caught between dubiousness and “self-consciousness,” for lack of a better understanding. Also, I think glee may have been tempted to move the desk items (now that the email’s been sent) just to see if there’s a psychic link vice an astral one.
I don’t think you need to get overly specific here. Glee has an object on his desk and if cityboy nails it then it goes on to Randi and the $1,000,000. Think of it as a screener
I think you DO need to be specific here. If the object is a white coffee cup and Cityboy916 says he saw something white, hard & round, did he nail it?
I have four objects on my desk right now that match that description perfectly: a coffee cup, a pencil-holder, a roll of post-it tape, and a blank CD. Can an astral-projection viewer tell the difference?
Without clear, unabiguous rules in advance, agreed upon by all parties, this test is useless. Mark my words, pass or fail, both sides will use the results to prove their point.
Hmm…I was actually thinking it was an action figure type toy, maybe Buzz Lightyear? Now the dilema is, does Glee admit having in his posession the adorable Buzz toy or does he just say I’m wrong.
). What I can say is that things generally stay where they are put in my house (not food, obviously). It will be no problem to leave the objects on my computer desk untouched for a year.
