Consciousness Interactions with Remote Biological Systems: Anomalous Intentionality Effects
📄 Original study ↗📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
This is the big one — a 13-year summary asking whether the mind can directly affect living things at a distance. Across 37 experiments, influencers mentally targeted a wild variety of biological systems from separate rooms: skin conductance, blood pressure, muscle tremors, fish swimming direction, gerbil activity, and red blood cell breakdown. Twenty-one of 37 experiments were individually significant — 57% versus 5% expected by luck — and the combined odds against chance were in the trillions. They introduced the "lability hypothesis," suggesting systems that naturally fluctuate are easier to influence mentally. Framed as a laboratory model for mental healing, this became a foundational reference in the field.
Actual Paper Abstract
This paper describes a 13 year long, and still continuing, series of laboratory experiments that demonsrrare that persons are able to exert direct mental inHuences upon a variety of biological systems that are simated at a distance from rhe inHuencer and shielded from all conventional informational and energetic influences. The spontaneously Hucruating activity of the target system is monirored objectively during randomly interspersed inHuence and noninfluence (control) periods while, in a distant room, a person arrempts to inHuence the system's activity in a prespecified manner using mental processes of intentionality, focused attention, and imagery of desired outcomes. The expetimental design rules out subtle cues, recording errors, expecrancy and suggestion ("placebo") effects, artifactual reactions to external stimuli, confounding internal rhYThms, and coincidental or chance correspondences. Distantly influenced systems include: another person's electrodermal activiry, blood pressure, and muscular activiry; the spatial orientation of fish; the locomotor activity of small mammals; and the rate of hemolysis of human red blood cells. The experiments are viewed as laboratory analogs of mental healing.
Research Notes
Foundational DMILS compendium — the most comprehensive source for Braud & Schlitz's bio-PK program at the Mind Science Foundation. Central to the distant healing and staring detection debates. Later meta-analyzed by Schmidt et al. (2004) and Roe et al. (2015). Introduced the lability hypothesis for target susceptibility.
Summarizes a 13-year research program (37 experiments, 655 sessions) investigating direct mental influence of living systems (DMILS). Influencers attempted to mentally affect remote biological targets — including human electrodermal activity, blood pressure, muscular tremor, fish orientation, gerbil locomotion, and red blood cell hemolysis — while isolated in separate rooms with randomized influence/non-influence epochs. Twenty-one of 37 experiments reached individual significance (57% vs. 5% by chance). The overall Stouffer z = 7.72 (p = 2.58 × 10⁻¹⁴) with mean effect size r = .33 across all systems. Additional studies showed electrodermal correlates of remote attention (staring detection). Results are interpreted as laboratory analogs of mental healing.
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Same Research Program
Extended By
- Experimenter Effects and the Remote Detection of Staring — Wiseman, Richard (1997)
- Distant Healing of Surgical Wounds: An Exploratory Study — Schlitz, Marilyn (2012)
- Effects of Healing Intention on Cultured Cells and Truly Random Events — Radin, Dean (2004)
- Evidence for Correlations Between Distant Intentionality and Brain Function in Recipients: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Analysis — Achterberg, J (2005)
- Compassionate Intention as a Therapeutic Intervention by Partners of Cancer Patients: Effects of Distant Intention on the Patients’ Autonomic Nervous System — Radin, Dean (2008)
Cited By
- Unconscious Perception of Future Emotions: An Experiment in Presentiment — Radin, Dean I (1997)
- A Compendium of the Evidence for Psi — Parker, Adrian (2003)
- Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries: Going Beyond Even Meta-Analysis of Distant Intention Effects — Bengston, William F (2012)
- Can We Help Just by Good Intentions? A Meta-Analysis of Experiments on Distant Intention Effects — Schmidt, Stefan (2012)
- The Sense of Being Stared At: A Preliminary Meta-Analysis — Radin, Dean I (2005)
Meta Analyzed By
- Distant intentionality and the feeling of being stared at: Two meta-analyses — Schmidt, Stefan (2004)
- Can We Help Just by Good Intentions? A Meta-Analysis of Experiments on Distant Intention Effects — Schmidt, Stefan (2012)
- Two Meta-Analyses of Noncontact Healing Studies — Roe, Chris A (2015)
- The Sense of Being Stared At: A Preliminary Meta-Analysis — Radin, Dean I (2005)
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📋 Cite this paper
Braud, William G, Schlitz, Marilyn J (1991). Consciousness Interactions with Remote Biological Systems: Anomalous Intentionality Effects. Subtle Energies & Energy Medicine.
@article{braud_schlitz_1991_consciousness_interactions,
title = {Consciousness Interactions with Remote Biological Systems: Anomalous Intentionality Effects},
author = {Braud, William G and Schlitz, Marilyn J},
year = {1991},
journal = {Subtle Energies & Energy Medicine},
}