New Worlds of Body, Mind & Spirit Since 1901
| One of the most remarkable parapsychological experiments of all time took place on April 27,
1973, at the Stanford Research Institute in California. As physicists monitored their activities, two of America’s leading psychics, Harold Sherman and lngo Swann, projected their consciousnesses into outer space and toward the planet Jupiter. Pioneer 10 was scheduled to approach Jupiter the following December, and the Stanford scientists wanted to compare the psychics’ impressions with the data the space vehicle would radio back. Swann and Sherman reported that the planet had dense magnetic fields and massive storms. The atmosphere was so heavy, they said, that it would deflect radio probes and thus prevent Pioneer 10 from landing on the surface as planned. Subsequently both their description and their prediction were confirmed. On March 11, 1974, a follow-up experiment in astral space exploration was conducted. This time parapsychologist Janet Lee Mitchell monitored the proceedings in Swann’s New York studio while Sherman participated from his home in Arkansas. The men were going to explore Mercury, which in 16 days Mariner 10 would be approaching. Although the two men projected themselves toward the planet at the same time, neither was aware of the other’s astral presence during the experience. Nonetheless they reported seeing the same things about the planet; some of this information??"such as their claim that Mercury has an atmosphere??"contradicted what scientists believed about conditions there. But it turned out, when the Mariner data became available, that the psychics were right. After all, they were there. Astral projectors have known for a long time, of course, that space and distance are no obstacle in the out-of-body experience. The Sherman-Swann experiments are significant, not because the two psychics traveled into space, but because they were able to make scientifically valid observations about what they saw there. The implications of this fact for future scientific research of all kinds are obvious??"if only scientists were willing first to acknowledge the reality of out-of-body projection and to find out how and why it works. A few scientists, most of them in the parapsychological field, are working to unravel the mysteries of astral travel. |
