Exploring the Relationship between Tibetan Meditation Attainment and Precognition
📄 Original study ↗📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
At the personal invitation of the Dalai Lama, researchers traveled to Tibetan monasteries in southern India to test whether deeply experienced meditators might have a knack for seeing the future. Ten monks — including senior Lamas and scholars called Geshes — did a computer-based guessing task after meditating for fifteen minutes. The group as a whole scored right around chance, nothing special. But here's where it gets fascinating: the two most advanced practitioners, both Nyingma Lamas, nailed it with a striking success rate (an effect size of r = 0.50, which is impressively large by any standard). Even more remarkable, when the researchers pooled these results with an earlier companion study, a powerful pattern emerged: the more years a monk had spent meditating, the better their psychic scores — a dose-response relationship that was highly statistically significant. It's one of the only studies ever conducted with Tibetan monastics, and it hints that whatever psi might be, serious contemplative practice may sharpen it considerably.
Actual Paper Abstract
This study of advanced practitioners of meditation extends our earlier work testing the hypothesis that meditation enhances psychic awareness or "psi" (Roney-Dougal, Solfvin, & Fox, 2008). Ten (male) Tibetan Buddhist monks participated individually in eight sessions, each comprising a meditation period and a computerized test of precognition in which they were asked to rate each of four pictures on a 100-point scale in terms of how likely it was to be randomly selected as the "target" to be displayed at the end of the session. The normalized rating assigned to the target itself was defined as the "psi" score, where a score of zero is chance expectation. Overall, psi scores did not exceed chance expectation, t(79) = 0.70, p = 0.49, 2-tailed, r = .08, and the type of meditation (mantra or visualization) did not make a difference. The correlation between years of meditation practice and psi scores was in the predicted direction but not significantly different from zero (rho = 0.28, p = 0.22). Nevertheless, the two most experienced meditators, both Nyingma lamas, achieved significant mean psi scores, t(15) = 2.25, p = 0.04, 2-tailed, r = 0.50, confirming a similar finding from our earlier work.
Research Notes
Second Tibetan monastery study in a four-experiment series by Roney-Dougal and Solfvin. The PDF is the 2011 JSE Vol.25 Study 2 paper (Roney-Dougal & Solfvin only; no Fox co-author), not the 2008 JSE Vol.22 Study 1. Provides the strongest psi effects in the series for the most advanced practitioners (Lama subgroup r=0.50) and, when combined with Study 1, a significant dose-response relationship between years of meditation and psi. The experiment was conducted at the invitation of the Dalai Lama, who requested scientific investigation of Tibetan psychic traditions. One of very few psi studies with Tibetan monastics.
Study 2 in a series testing whether meditation attainment enhances psi. Ten Tibetan Buddhist monks (2 Nyingma Lamas, 1 Gelugpa Rinpoche, 7 Gelugpa Geshes) at two monastic universities in Bylakuppe, South India each completed 8 sessions of a computerized free-response precognition task following a 15-minute meditation period (mantra or visualization). Overall psi scores were at chance: t(79) = 0.70, p = 0.49, r = 0.08. Meditation type made no significant difference. However, the two Nyingma Lamas (the most advanced practitioners) showed significant psi-hitting: t(15) = 2.25, p = 0.04, r = 0.50. The meditation-years vs. psi correlation was non-significant (rho = 0.28, p = 0.22) but in the predicted direction. Combined with Study 1, monastic rank significantly predicted psi: F(2,15) = 4.33, p = 0.033, and the meditation-years correlation became rho = 0.737, p = 0.0005.
Related Papers
Same Research Program
- Experimental Investigation of Precognition in Yoga Practitioners — Alibalaei, Hassan (2025)
- Precognition as a Form of Prospection: A Review of the Evidence — Mossbridge, Julia A (2018)
- Future Directions in Meditation Research: Recommendations for Expanding the Field of Contemplative Science — Vieten, C (2018)
Extended By
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Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli: An Update of Mossbridge et al.'s Meta-Analysis
📋 Cite this paper
Roney-Dougal, Serena M, Solfvin, Jerry (2011). Exploring the Relationship between Tibetan Meditation Attainment and Precognition. Journal of Scientific Exploration.
@article{roney_dougal_2011_meditation_tibetan,
title = {Exploring the Relationship between Tibetan Meditation Attainment and Precognition},
author = {Roney-Dougal, Serena M and Solfvin, Jerry},
year = {2011},
journal = {Journal of Scientific Exploration},
}