ABSTRACT

Judging Telepathy Contests: A Challenging Look at Psi Dreaming Connections
Panel Discussion

Rita Dwyer is a former research chemist, coauthor of papers and patents in the aerospace field, ASD Founding Life Member, Chair of the Board (1987-90), Past President (1992-93), Executive Officer(1993-99). A founder and facilitator of the Metro D.C. Dream Community, Rita is also a writer, lecturer, and certified pastoral counselor.

Jean Campbell is moderator of the ASD online Bulletin Board and co-chair of the ASD Development Committee. An educator, dreamworker and writer, she conducts individual sessions and workshops in DreamWork/BodyWork. She is moderator of the World Dreams Peace Bridge (http://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org) and CEO of the iMAGE Project, a nonprofit consciousness research organization.

Dale Graff, Prince Frederick, MD:

Dale E. Graff is an internationally recognized lecturer, writer and researcher on psi topics. He is a physicist and a former director of project Stargate, the government program of research and applications of remote viewing phenomenon. His books, Tracks in the Psychic Wilderness and RIVER DREAMS, present his experiences with remote viewing, psychic dreaming and synchronicity.

Ed Kellogg, Ashland, OR

Ed Kellogg earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Duke University. A proficient lucid dreamer, he has a long-standing interest in the phenomenology of dreaming. He has presented numerous papers and workshops on such topics as the lucidity continuum, lucid dream healing, and mutual dreaming. In 2002 Ed organized and hosted ASD’s First Online PsiberDreaming Conference.

Linda Lane Magallón, M.B.A., is a founder of ASD, Bay Area Dreamworkers Group (with Fred Olsen) and the Fly-By-Night Club dream psi research group. She is the author of *Mutual Dreaming* and has been a judge, sender and target creator for ASD dream telepathy contests. (http://members.aol.com/caseyflyer/flying/dreams.html (Dream Flights); e-mail: CaseyFlyer@aol.com)

Dream Comparison – The Varieties of Psi Expression

Cynthia Pearson has chaired ASD's "Long Term Journal Keeping" panels for five years and presides over Dreamjournalist.com, "A Website for People Who Write Down Their Dreams." She is the author of "The Practical Psychic," "Parting Company: Understanding the Loss of a Loved One" and the forthcoming "Dreaming of the Dead."

Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., San Francisco, CA:

Stanley Krippner, Ph.D. Alan Watts Professor, Saybrook Institute, past-President of the Association for the Study of Dreams, author of Dream Telepathy, Dreamscaping, Dreamwork and Dreamtime and many other publications on dreams and other topics. Dr. Krippner won a career award from the American Psychological Association for his contributions to international psychology.

Robert Waggoner graduated from Drake University with a B.A. (summa cum laude) in psychology. An ASD member since 1995, he has been published in the "Dream Network Journal", "E-Dreams," and "The Lucid Dream Exchange," which he co-edits. A lucid dreamer and journal keeper since 1975, he resides in Ames, IA.

Summary of Presentation

The ever-popular ASD Telepathy Contests pique our interest and produce solid hits on target images, but they also raise questions about judging the results, given individual cognitive styles and the interpersonal connections made during the dreamtime. Our panel of experts will provide insights into the wonders and possibilities of Psi Dreaming.

Learning Objectives.

• To learn how to formulate and evaluate experiments, similar to those done at Maimonides Medical Center, which validate dream telepathy.

• To understand the psychic component of dreaming and the varieties of these exceptional dreaming experiences.

• To explore the cognitive styles of individual dreamers and the interpersonal aspects of dreaming with a combined focus towards a common goal.

Evaluation questions:

1. Is there good evidence for the reality and validity of dream telepathy?

2. What are some of the key elements to consider in judging hits and misses in telepathy contests and other forms of psi dreaming?

3. What are various factors that might influence outcomes in unexpected ways and should these be taken into account in judging?

Abstract

In 1985, Dr. Robert Van de Castle inaugurated the first ASD Dream Telepathy Contest at our second annual conference at the University of Virginia. Loosely patterned after the pioneering research done by Drs. Stanley Krippner and Montague Ullman at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY, in the 1960s and 1970s (Ullman, M., S. Krippner and A. Vaughan, Dream Telepathy: Experiments in Nocturnal ESP, second edition (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1989), the ASD contests have led to surprising results which are yearly reported upon in ASD’s magazine Dream Time, as well as online.

Protocol: After instructions have been given on the evening of the contest, a person designated as the sender selects at random one sealed envelope from a pool of four envelopes, each containing an image which has not been seen by the sender nor others present. The sender then takes that envelope to his/her room and opens it in private, and during the night and morning, attempts to telepathically send that image to those focused on dreaming of the target.

In the morning, all four pictures of the pool are displayed in a public area and dreamers bring copies of their dreams of the night, self-selecting what they believe to be the target based upon their dream content. They place the copies of their dreams in a box or envelope attached to the image which seems to have the most correspondence with their dreams. Judges then review these submissions and determine the "winners" of the contest ribbons.

In recent years, we have opened the experience to online participants with the picture of the sender posted on the ASD Website the evening of the event and the four pictures of the pool on the following morning. Dreamers from all over the world have sent in their entries electronically, proving that distance is not a factor in making connections with the target picture.

Not only have dreamers year after year had hits of varying degrees of accuracy on the target image, but they have also connected with the pictures of the target pool, with the dream content of the sender and other dreamers, as well as outside influences. This panel will offer suggestions for judging the contest, including a tool, useful for both dreamers and judges, the Psi Dream Key Questionnaire (PDKQ), devised by Dr. E.W. Kellogg, III. They will also provide fascinating insights into psi dreaming in its many aspects and into the interconnections that are made in the dreamtime.

Presenters’ abstracts:

What do dream telepathy targets have to do with the nature of time and space? Are dream telepathy experiments planned in advance at unconscious levels by contest participants, then acted out in dreams and waking reality? How does the ASD Dream Telepathy contest work in the context of these questions; and what, if anything, does this say about scientific experiment in general?

Methodologies for assessing Conscious State Psi (CSP) data, including remote viewing (RV) are presented. Recommendations are made on how to apply these procedures to evaluating Dream State Psi (DSP), including dream telepathy. Criterion developed during the Stargate remote viewing program that emphasized visual cognition, especially form-structure elements, and de-emphasized interpretative and emotional aspects, provide the basis for this evaluation approach. Examples from remote viewing projects and from the presenter’s recent psi dream research illustrate the similarities and differences between these two psi modes. Various concepts on how psi information may be obtained are reviewed since they relate to data evaluation considerations.

Dreams can present psi-content on three levels: the structural level - the raw dreamscape, shapes, colors, and movements; 2. the meaning level - thematic and emotional elements; and, 3. the labeling level - specific identifier words used in the dream report. Remote viewing research has shown that structural elements of designated targets seem the easiest to pick up psychically, but that percipients often misidentify them. Unfortunately, dream reports usually contain scant structural information as such, and in the past judges in psi-dreaming experiments have paid little attention to this kind of psi-content. Dreamers need a way to make it easier to for them to include information on all three levels of potential psi-content in their dream reports. Judges need a way to more objectively evaluate psi-content, and to quantify the magnitude of "hits" on all three levels in submitted dream reports. The presenter has designed the Psi Dream Key Questionnaire (PDKQ) as a tool to help both dreamers and judges accomplish these goals.

Some results of a telepathic dream contest that might be missed by simply comparing dreams to target show up when participant dreams are compared one to another. Dreamers accounts may share some target elements (shape, color or concept), but their identifying labels will differ. Comparison also reveals that dreamers have various perceptual modes (visual, verbal, emotional, kinesthetic, spatial, conceptual), levels of sensitivity (thin/thick boundaries), degrees of explicitness (literal, dramatic embellishment, accurate metaphor or pun), target relationships (observation at a distance, dreaming oneself into the picture), recording habits (terse or verbose), sociability styles (telepathic of sender or fellow participants, favoring clairvoyance). To aid in the detection of shared target elements, I suggest use of colored highlighting pens.

Between 1992 and 2002, Cynthia Pearson conducted five informal studies in programming precognitive dreams. It became a particular challenge to distinguish between what was telepathic and what was precognitive, not only in selecting targets but also in judging the results. Volunteers were recruited to study the targets and compare them to the dreams that had been submitted, scoring each as containing a hit, a partial hit, or no hit. What this system lacked in quantitative refinement was made up for in qualitative observations, as judges discovered not only hits but unexpected correspondences that suggest a "near miss" phenomenon.

I will discuss, and give examples of, situations in which someone else besides the identified target person actually seemed to be the source of the psi information obtained.

ROBERT WAGGONER: IS THE TARGET PICTURE THE ONLY BASIS FOR JUDGING HITS? A central element of dream telepathy studies seems to be the assumption that the target picture is the basis for the judging process. Yet in the book, "Dream Telepathy: Experiments in Nocturnal ESP" by Montague Ullman and Stanley Krippner, one reads that the experimenters determined the role of the telepathic sender had a significant influence on the results. For example, a pilot study by the Maimonides group found that a telepathic sender "actively involved" in the target’s theme by utilizing a "multisensory experience" yielded results that were more highly significant than a telepathic sender who simply looked at the target picture. Additionally, the group noted that in some cases, the telepathic sender’s "…associations can come through more strongly than the actual target picture." Given this, should the target picture be the sole basis for judging the dream telepathy results? Or should the telepathic sender’s active involvement with the target picture and related associations be the basis? In essence, what is the telepathic sender sending? The presenter will discuss this important distinction with examples.

Note: All citations from p. 208, "Dream Telepathy: Experiments in Nocturnal ESP"

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