Expanded consciousness is all well and good, but what’s in it for me?
An absurd question, but one that occasionally bobs to the surface of the mind stream, asked by the part of us that sometimes feels like a victim of circumstance. In the article below, Dr. Joe Gallenberger addresses that unspoken question with elegance and practicality, speaking directly to our human selves as well as to our greater awareness.
"Las Vegas as a Psychokinesis Laboratory"
by Joseph Gallenberger, PhD
Reprinted with the permission of Edge Science magazine, No. 31, September 2017—
The idea of using Las Vegas as my psychokinesis laboratory didn’t just pop into my head. I was already familiar with Vegas, having gone there to play about once every two years. Scanning back over those many years, I did have a few very unusual experiences that suggest psi in action.
A dice event that I remember occurred on my birthday. I was staying at the Sahara hotel as I had done many times before and had become known to the crews. I found an empty craps table with the box man Gene sitting in his position at the center of the table. Gene and I exchanged pleasantries. I mentioned that it was my birthday and he said, “Well, step right up and make yourself a birthday gift!” Gene had watched me play many times and knew that I was capable of good rolls but that I always kept my betting very cautious and conservative.
In addition to working as a clinical psychologist, I have been a trainer at The Monroe Institute1 (TMI) for 26 years and have had many psi experiences there. For example, I was able to repeatedly roll exactly the pattern I envisioned on dice.
I began a good roll, making my targets easily. Every few minutes Gene would cajole and encourage me to raise my bets, saying things like, “You are doing great. You are now playing with the casino’s money, take a chance, would you?” I went into the zone and just kept rolling. Although I had started at an empty table, it now became packed with other players; the action was fast and furious. My run continued. Gene brought in two extra basemen to help handle all the action. But I barely noticed this, nor all the chaos and cheering. I just kept being in the zone and raising my bets whenever Gene told me to.
When I finally got tired and seven’ed out by throwing a seven at the wrong time, I had held the dice for over 90 minutes. Since seven comes once in every six rolls by chance, a typical roll lasts about five or ten minutes in the game of craps. The table exploded in cheers, which brought me out of my trance enough to notice the huge pile of chips before me. I was surging with too much adrenaline to even handle my chips easily. The crew stacked them for me. Exchanging smaller denominates for larger ones, and finally giving me the count. I had made well over $3,800 on my roll after starting with $5 bets.
How it all began
But before I go any further about the casino as classroom, I should present the background on how I became interested in psychokinesis. In addition to working as a clinical psychologist, I have been a trainer at The Monroe Institute1 (TMI) for 26 years and have had many psi experiences there. For example, I was able to repeatedly roll exactly the pattern I envisioned on dice. That psychokinesis experience felt like a wonderful magic space, and I wanted to experience it again and understand it better. Psychokinesis with dice is amenable to research because the statistical properties of rolling dice are well known and follow the laws of probability.
As I started to more formally study psychokinesis (PK)— the ability to affect matter using nonphysical means—it seemed to me that this PK energy was the same as the energy found in miracle healings. And this PK energy could also be used to greatly increase the effectiveness of efforts to create a more abundant reality for one’s self, by adding a facilitative energy to the process of intent and visualization employed during manifestation work. Examples of psychokinesis include using just your energy and no physical means to illuminate light bulbs, grow seeds in your hand in just a few minutes, and bend heavy metal2 and brittle plastic.
About two decades ago I received a small grant to go to Princeton University’s Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research3 (PEAR) laboratory. At PEAR scientists had been studying PK for nearly 30 years under very strict scientific standards. For example, they had done one study with 12.5 million trials and achieved highly significant results, suggesting that PK is real. When I arrived at Princeton, I walked into a very interesting space and was welcomed warmly. Many experiments in the lab included what are called random event generators or REGs. The generators are quantum mechanical devices that basically choose either a one or a zero, thousands of times a second. They do this by referencing random atomic action to “decide” which of the two options to pick. Basically, it is like flipping a coin thousands of times a second. The results in the coin flip over thousands of flips, if the coin is perfectly balanced, should be very close to 50 percent heads and 50 percent tails. The random event generators do the same process but electronically, and the results also should be roughly 50 percent ones and 50 percent zeros by chance, as each option has an equal chance of occurring.
The experimenters told me that I had achieved results that were 30,000 to one by chance.
Random event generators allow a very precise and scientific study of psychokinesis. Each time you flip a coin, the chances are 1 in 2 that it comes up heads. If you start flipping a coin, and the first two times it comes up heads, that will occur once in every four times by chance. If the first five flips all come up heads, this would be unusual but not a miracle because it will occur naturally once in every 32 times you tried to do this. But if the coin comes up heads 10 times in a row, now things are getting pretty spooky because that would occur only once in 1,024 times by chance. Well, imagine you are on a roll and you flip the coin 20 times and it comes up all 20 times as heads. Now we are in miracle territory as this would occur only once in 1,048,576 times by chance.
An understanding of probabilities helps put into perspective my experiences with PK in the casinos. In the Princeton experiments, when they are running thousands of chance determinations per second resulting in millions of events, any strong deviation from chance will be highly noticeable and scientifically significant. This indicates that the events are being influenced by something that is causing the events to deviate from chance. And if the only something that can influence the events is nonphysical energy and intent, then psychokinesis is proven beyond any reasonable scientific doubt.
One random event generator experiment that I did at Princeton was called Art Reg. Here a computer using a random event generator selects pixels from a picture of a pyramid whenever the random event generator picks the number zero. And on the same screen, at the same time, the computer presents pixels from a picture of a cat whenever the random event generator selects the number one. So what you see on the screen is a mush created by combining pixels from the two different pictures. My job was to somehow affect the random event generator so that it selected more ones (cat picture pixels). If I could do so, the picture would more and more clearly become a cat.
PK performance does not respond well to pressure. One just has to intend it and then relax and let it happen.
I had meditated and raised energy for a few days before coming to the lab. I sat down and relaxed in front of the screen and then willed the picture of the cat to emerge—nothing happened, just what looked like a mushy static on the screen. I then stood up and got all excited, building energy and looking at the screen, putting my hand out in a beckoning motion and saying “Here, Kitty, Kitty.” The cat picture began to slowly emerge from the mush. The clearer the picture got, the more excited I became, and there it was—a clear picture of the cat, with the pyramid completely gone! The experimenters told me that I had achieved results that were 30,000 to one by chance.
My biggest result was with what I called the fountain experiment. The researchers had set up a water fountain in the lab. It shot a narrow column of bubbling water into the air for about two feet. The fountain was behind a pane of glass, so that it could not be affected by direct touch and breezes in the air. They explained that the water in the column changed height by random hydrodynamic law. The up and down dancing of the column height that you see in a fountain changes height randomly if the water remains under steady pressure.
My goal in this experiment was to use only my energy to make the column of water stay high for 10 minutes, then leave it alone for 10 minutes in the control or comparison period, then make it low for 10 minutes. The results were very strongly indicative of PK. Then the computers crashed in the lab. We joked that they may have crashed because of all the energy flying around the lab.
My Princeton experience proved to the scientist in me that PK was real and that I could do it.
The Princeton lab staff were terrific. They were excellent at reducing any sense of pressure. PK performance does not respond well to pressure. One just has to intend it and then relax and let it happen. This is true of many natural human abilities. We can see this even in something as simple as going to sleep. On a normal night, you feel tired and intend to go to sleep. Then you just settle down, relax, and not think about it, and sleep comes. However, if you have only four hours to sleep before getting up for a trip, what happens? The pressure to go to sleep is too great and sleep does not come. Imagine falling asleep on command on TV with millions of people watching. This is what it would be like to expect someone to perform PK on TV.
My Princeton experience proved to the scientist in me that PK was real and that I could do it. Just to be clear, PEAR did not certify me as psychic. They did not do that for anyone. But the results were very clear to me. I was able, to a statistically significant degree (that would not occur by chance), to change the outcome of what are usually random events, using just my mind and energy. And it appeared from the results of other experiments that many and perhaps most people can do the same thing.
As I began my search to understand psychic phenomena better, I found that other reputable universities and laboratories had confirmed and expanded the PEAR results. The parapsychology lab at Duke University,4 which separated from Duke and is now known as the Rhine Research Center,5 has studied dice rolling, telepathy, and other psi functions. I met Dean Radin, Ph.D. then at the University of Nevada, now at the Institute for Noetic Sciences,6 and saw his lab. I read his book The Conscious Universe, which is an excellent summary of what had been proven in the psi or psychic fields in terms of PK, telepathy, and clairvoyance.
... during the experiences at Monroe with dice and at the lab in Princeton, I was given a taste of the type of energy and focus needed to achieve these effects in the physical world.
My Princeton experience indicated that I was not deluding myself about what had happened with dice at TMI. Further, during the experiences at Monroe with dice and at the lab in Princeton, I was given a taste of the type of energy and focus needed to achieve these effects in the physical world. It seemed to occur if you were very relaxed and had a strong, loving, and connected feeling with the world and those around you. Then you set a clear intent, and followed this intent by letting go—trusting the energy to flow toward your intent. It seemed to me that this same energy could be used to heal myself or another and that would be a miraculous thing to do.
It looked likely that the same set of energy, intention, and focus that was helpful in PK could enhance our ability to manifest in our lives what we really wished for. If energy healing, manifestation, and PK all used the same energy and processes, then becoming better at PK should make one more insightful, consistent, and powerful in all three of these areas. This really ignited my passion! I thought that it would be a wonderful thing to be able to do PK and perhaps teach others to do PK as well.
Back in Vegas
I wondered just how much these skills could be brought under conscious control, developed, and consistently repeated. One thing I knew was that I needed a place to practice under objective conditions. I had to find a place to practice where I knew for certain that the target was random (not influenced by cheating, or physical manipulation). And to find a place where expected chance results were well understood and established statistically, so I could tell if I was able to create unexplained change or patterns. I figured that this study may take years. So the question became how and where could I devote the time to pursuing a black belt in PK? The answer was suggested by the initial dice throwing experience—Las Vegas! There, the dice are guaranteed to be neutral and random, or the casino would be rapidly out of business. There, the laws of probability were very well understood, to the point that one knew exactly what the odds were by chance of any number or series of numbers being thrown. And there, if I were successful at causing the dice to roll in a non-random or patterned way, I could perhaps recoup at least part of my travel and learning costs.
Besides providing objective “games” or “experiments” with measurable statistical results, Vegas provided something else that I now consider extremely facilitative of strong PK. My own experience and other’s research such as that summarized in The PK Zone by Pamela Rae Heath, M.D., Psy.D, suggest that a critical component of the PK state is to achieve an altered state of consciousness (ASC) prior to initiating PK activity. Monroe Institute’s Hemi-Sync®, through its ability to alter brain wave patterns quickly, allows a very rapid acquisition of meditation skills that makes achieving ASC much more accessible to the average person.7
I also noted what worked in terms of generating strong positive PK (winning), what generated negative PK (losing), and what seemed to result in random non-influence of events.
In university labs where I had been a subject, I noticed that very little attention was paid to generating ASC in the experimental subjects. The labs tended to be fairly sterile spaces and the scientists were quite neutral in presenting the experimental tasks to the subject. Because of the need to accumulate data, the trials often become boring. For example, more recently I have been working with the wonderful scientists at the University of Virginia, Division of Perceptual Studies.8 My assigned PK task there was to apply PK to a grey box that contains sensors. I was asked to do 48 seconds of PK, followed by 48 seconds of rest, alternating for 100 trials, while sitting in a white-walled room and wired up to a 128-lead electroencephalogram (EEG), and other physiologic monitoring, looking for neurophysiological correlates of PK. I had to remain perfectly still so as to not have muscle movement throw off the EEG. I stopped at 50 trials, too tired to continue. Yet I did achieve statistical significance in terms of PK, and we did obtain some interesting brain wave readings from the EEG.
In contrast to a science lab, the environment of Vegas casinos are highly stimulating, and the potential to win money keeps excitement and motivation high for hours at a time. I began my PK study in Vegas by going there about once every two months and spending a few days keeping careful notes about results. I also noted what worked in terms of generating strong positive PK (winning), what generated negative PK (losing), and what seemed to result in random non-influence of events. I did this for about five years and accumulated quite a data set, as well as began to achieve enough consistency that I felt that I could teach this skill to others. I was excited to teach, as the whole process confirmed that PK, energy healing, and manifestation were variants of the same energy and that the process was a highly positive one in terms of psychological and spiritual growth.
At this point, I have taught approximately 85 Inner Vegas Adventure™ workshops over the past 18 years using the dice and slots in Vegas as a classroom to teach PK. During this time, I have witnessed amazing feats of PK, energy healing, and manifestation in that environment.
Key factors
These are a few of the things that I have learned.
Personal Verification: In doing and teaching PK on slots and dice in Las Vegas now for over 20 years, I have confirmed sufficiently for myself (and many others through their own personal experience) that PK is real, that it is an effective way to shape reality, and that it is a teachable skill that over time can become more robust, repeatable, and consistent.
The most facilitative dynamics for PK performance: During my five years doing PK individually in Vegas, I found that it never works when I am tired or stressed or in ego or overly in the head. So when I arrived, I would spend the entire first day resting, meditating, and doing good things for my physical body such as swimming or getting a massage. I found that releasing stress and raising energy through meditation was very helpful if one also remained grounded and strongly in the present moment. One had to be fully present in one’s body and connected to the physical to be effective. Being spacey did not work. Abstaining from all alcohol, and of course drugs, and moderating caffeine intake helped with this “power of now” state. One of my most significant discoveries was on how to handle ego and fears that naturally arose when in a gaming environment. Until this discovery, fears such as “I am risking failure” and “what will others and the casino think?” would surface regularly, and addressing them individually was like putting out brushfires repeatedly. Once I discovered that it was easier to melt fear with love, rather than meeting fear with courage, things went much more smoothly. In fact, I now use the saying, “Fear is expensive, love is priceless, choose wisely” as a governing principle not just in PK but in life.
Feedback should be immediate and clear. That is another huge advantage that Vegas casinos have over a science lab (and also in life). When we have our Inner Vegas Adventure groups around tables reserved just for us—if we as a group are grounded to the earth, expanded in connection to spirit, open-hearted, cheerful and grateful, and able to focus clear intent, then let go and be playful—we are rewarded within seconds with a money win. If a significant portion of the group goes into fear, greed, and ego, we are punished with a loss of money. Much like teaching a dog to sit, this system of reward and mild punishment is a form of classical psychological conditioning, and in the case of PK into a more enlightened way of living that is heart based, spiritually connected, in the present moment, with gratitude for blessings and an awareness of the miracles and abundance that are always available to us.
Vegas teaches us, if we are aware, that our thoughts when coupled with emotion do create our reality.
Vegas teaches us, if we are aware, that our thoughts when coupled with emotion do create our reality. For example, I threw my target of six on the dice well above chance for several hours, then sat at a slot machine to relax: the first pull on the machine came up 4 sixes; in delight I thought to myself, “I am a great king of light,” then with the next pull came 4 kings, followed by kings and sixes for a half hour until the energy faded. Slot machines can be great PK teachers because one can visualize in meditation a particular target such as a royal flush in hearts and then go down and hit this immediately on the machine (160,000 to one by chance). We can put the royal flush in hearts in perspective. When I said that it would occur only once in 160,000 times by chance, it is like flipping a balanced coin 17 times in a row, having the goal that it will come up heads and then coming up heads every time. When my wife and I got identical jackpots on the poker machines side by side (four aces with a four), it was equivalent to flipping a coin and having it come up heads over 20 times in a row. And to make matters even more interesting, slot machines contain random event generators similar to the random event generators in the experiments at Princeton and other parapsychology labs! (Actually, slot machines use what are called pseudo random event generators that use a mathematical formula to randomly select different hands—the cards that will appear on the screen—hundreds of times per second versus the atomic action that drives real random event generators.)
After several years of seeing good PK success in the majority of Inner Vegas Adventure workshops, I used the knowledge gained there to develop a new program at the Monroe Institute called MC2 for Manifestation and Creation Squared.10 In this six-day program, participants enjoy the beautiful country setting of TMI, participate in meditation exercises using Hemi-Sync technology, and attempt a variety of PK tasks including dice throwing, illuminating light bulbs, growing seeds, and bending metal. There are also eight healing circles scheduled where energy healing is practiced, often with dramatic results. MC2 has been going on for more than a decade, and in the last several years researchers from the University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies have been collecting data at MC2, attempting to measure PK effects. Some of the pilot data have come in at a statistically significant level and experimental procedures continue to be refined.
No respect
Given the success I’ve had with PK, one might wonder why this knowledge is not afforded more respect in the science community and not more widely known by the public. Chris Carter wrote a book entitled Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics that presents clear evidence for psi functioning and then explains in detail the politics behind our current situation where a coalition of debunkers—each with his or her own political motivation spanning from the religious fundamentalists who think this stuff is of the devil to atheists who will brook no non-material forces—cooperate to disseminate distorted information to the government and the press. Some organizations have as part of their charter that they will do no experiments, yet go on to proclaim that all psi is bunk, all the while refusing to even look at the data produced by parapsychologists.
I am confident that the next decade will teach us more about our human PK potential both through rigorous science and through practical application.
My discoveries with PK in the university and casino environments have generated multiple paths of training, including books, meditation exercises, and seminars for those interested in incorporating the skill of PK and its benefits into their lives. Even after doing 85 Inner Vegas Adventure workshops, I still feel that I learn something valuable each time I enter the casino with PK in mind. I continue to discover limiting belief systems and emotional patterns that, when understood and cleared, allow increased PK performance and enhanced living toward full potential. I am confident that the next decade will teach us more about our human PK potential both through rigorous science and through practical application.
ENDNOTES
- The Monroe Institute advances the exploration of human consciousness and the experience of expanded states of awareness as a path to creating a life of personal freedom, meaning, insight, and happiness. www.monroeinstitute.org.
- For an excellent exploration of the science of metal bending see The Metal Benders by John Hasted.
- The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program, has completed its experimental agenda of studying the interaction of human consciousness with sensitive physical devices, systems, and processes, and developing complementary theoretical models to enable better understanding of the role of consciousness in the establishment of physical reality. Their results are archived at http://www.princeton. edu/~pear/
- http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/paralab/
- http://www.rhine.org/
- http://www.noetic.org
- Using The Whole Brain by Ronald Russell is an excellent description of the uses of Hemi-Sync
- https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/
- http://synccreation.com/inner-vegas/
Joe's discoveries with PK in university and casino environments are detailed in Inner Vegas: Creating Miracles Abundance and Health. He put his findings into a practical application in the book Liquid Luck: The Good Fortune Handbook and the CD entitled Liquid Luck. He developed SyncCreation®, a home study course, teaching PK as a way to manifest abundance. His latest book is Heaven Is for Healing and companion CD is The Ocean Heart. More information at www.SyncCreation.com.