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My name is Brenda Dunne, and for 28 years,

I served as the laboratory manager of the Princeton

Engineering Anomalies Research, or PEAR program,

at Princeton University.

I worked with Professor Robert Jahn,

who spent 15 years as dean of the School of Engineering.

He was an aerospace scientist.

He had become interested in looking at human machine

anomalies, and he was able to get funding for it

from a colleague of his in the aerospace business, James

McDonnell, who was the patriarch of McDonnell Aircraft Company.

He felt that it was important for an aerospace point of view

to understand this because they were so-called gremlins that

were observed sometimes in aircraft under very

tense emotional situations, and he thought

we needed to understand it.

He told Bob, if you set up a program at Princeton,

I'll fund it.

And then when Bob and I met at a conference

where I was giving a talk about my remote viewing work,

he told me he was setting up the program,

asked me if I'd be interested in working with him.

And I said, I sure would.

So anyway, that's how we started.

This was back in 1979.

People came in and always looked surprised to find this

in the engineering school.

We had three main portions-- one of them

was a series of experiments in what we called

a human machine anomalies.

These were a function sort of like coin flipping.

If you flip a coin, you have a 50-50 chance

of a head or a tail.

In these experiments, you had a 50-50 chance of a one or a zero

or a ball that bounced to the left or to the right.

And people would just try to get more ones or more zeros

or just let the machine run in a controlled condition

without thinking anything.

So the primary variable that we studied in these experiments

was human intention, and the intentions

were recorded ahead of time, both in a computer file

and in a log book.

All of the devices were very carefully calibrated

so we knew that we were dealing with processes that

were reliable, that left to themselves

would produce a random output.

The idea was we would just tell people, try to get

the mean high or the mean low.

It was a statistical process.

But over many hundreds or thousands or indeed,

millions of binary events, you could

get a distribution output.

And you could see that the mean of that distribution

was ever so slightly shifted, correlated with the intentions

that people had determined.

As I say a very tiny effect, but over many millions of trials,

a highly significant effect that could not occur by chance.

Particularly if the machine is going this way when people want

it to go that way and going this way when

they want it to go this way, there's

no way that you can explain that otherwise.

It's also important to point out that when

we talk to our participants, they frequently would tell us,

there's more to having an intention to make this work.

I have to have an emotional connection with the process.

I have to feel like the machine is an extension of myself.

I have to develop a relationship with the device that

is meaningful.

It's more than just intention.

We realized very early on that although we thought

we were studying, or we had set out

to study the effect or the vulnerability of engineering

systems, we realized that we were looking

at something far more profound.

We were looking at how can consciousness,

how can non-sensory intention have

a tangible and measurable effect on a physical system.

The second part of our program was a body

of research in remote viewing.

There would be two people involved.

One would be an agent who would go out

to some assigned-- randomly assigned location somewhere

without knowing ahead of time.

Just get an envelope that would say go to the duh, duh,

duh, duh at such and such a time.

The other person is called the percipient

would be somewhere else, sometimes thousands of miles

away.

Their task was to try to visualize,

try to sense where the agent was located at the assigned time.

So we explored probably a couple of dozen

different analytical algorithms or recipes.

We felt we wanted to get a more quantitative handle

on how much information was actually acquired.

In the course of that, we generated some several hundred

trials.

And even by any standard, the results

came out to be way beyond what chance would predict--

what you would get if you were just guessing.

If consciousness can acquire information

without any sensory input independently

of time or distance, then consciousness

is not in the brain.

Consciousness somehow is out there,

and we are tapping into it.

It can't be the brain.

In fact, it seems to work best when you turn your brain off.

When you're quiet and you stop thinking and stop trying to--

where would he be likely to be, what do I know about him,

but just shut it down.

I sometimes have told people, try

imagining you're in a movie theater

and there's this dark screen.

And at some point, a movie is going

to come up on that screen, and you're going to see it.

Don't try to predict what the movie is going to be.

Just wait until it starts showing itself.

It worked more often than-- it shouldn't work at all.

Logically, it shouldn't work.

The third part of the program was our attempt

to try to figure out what was going on because it was clear

that these phenomena could not be explained

by any known model or concept, so that was kind of fun.

Of course, there has been criticism of the PEAR work

over the years.

There still is because what we are demonstrating

is inconsistent with the prevailing worldview,

particularly the prevailing scientific worldview.

We have had criticisms that have dealt

with the design of our equipment,

with the protocols we've used, with the analytical techniques

we've used.

But we have been very, very careful

to make sure that those were not factors.

There is a saying--

I think it was from Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher, who

said, I should love my enemy because he brings out

the best in me.

And because we knew that people were always

going to look for some slip up, some error,

we were very, very careful.

All of the devices were very carefully

calibrated to be sure that they were not

subject to any kind of artifact, temperature, vibrations, air

pressure, whatever it may be.

But most importantly, the experiments we did

consisted of very large databases.

There was somebody who once said,

this is something I wouldn't believe even if it was true.

How do you argue with that logically?

OK.

There is a big difference between science

as a method of learning and scientism,

which is a dogma that says, we know everything

that is necessary to know, and anything

that doesn't fit into our model has to be wrong by definition.

I am a big fan of the method of science,

which I think is a great way to learn and to discover

new insights in a particular phenomenon.

I am a great enemy of scientism.

I've heard that from people who said, but if you're right,

then I'd be wrong.

And I'd say, no, just you'd be incomplete.

There's more.

The quantum mechanics principles even

acknowledge that observation is an important part

of the construction of reality.

The scientific community, which, by the way,

would not even allow the words, "consciousness" when we started

in 1979, now accepts that consciousness is important,

but their way of going about trying to study it

is to look in the brain.

They are persuaded that it's something

that the brain generates through its neuronal activity

and whatnot.

They're having fun doing it, but they're not

going to find consciousness inside the brain.

Consciousness is something much vaster.

And I think many of the phenomena,

such as out-of-body experiences or near-death experiences

or precognition, indicate that consciousness is not

dependent upon the brain, but the brain

is dependent upon consciousness.

It's as if our brains work sort of like a radio.

There's all these frequencies and amplitudes

filling this room, but we're not going

to pick up on them unless we have a device that we can tune

into a particular set of signals,

and then we can pick that up.

But the program isn't in the radio.

The radio is just a transducer of those signals,

and that's what I think our brains do.

The universe, if you will imagine,

is just this vast field of potentiality.

Nothing absolute but just possibilities.

Then consciousness comes and organizes

that into whatever it wants it to be.

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It's really rather sad that from the time we're very young

and we start to learn language, we

tend more and more in recent years

to emphasize the analytical processes.

What happened to imagination?

What happened to poetry?

What happened to music?

Children should be allowed to just play.

They should be allowed to go out and look at nature

and experience it and look at the flowers look at the birds.

And yet we're told, oh, don't worry about that.

Or, oh, I had a wonderful dream-- oh, it's just a dream.

Don't pay attention to it.

It's just your imagination.

And it's denigrated.

The most creative side of our being is dismissed,

and this, I think, is very sad.

Maybe it's part of why we have such problems in our culture

with young people getting depressed or getting

suicidal or feeling stressed.

They don't seem to have a sense of meaning, a sense

of connection with the world.

They don't know how to dream.

We have two basic modes.

There's a subjective mode of experience

that allows us to immerse ourselves

in a beautiful sunset, in a concert, in love.

And somehow or other, we have lost our sense of identity,

and we have become one.

And then there is the analytical side that says,

I've got to try to describe this piece of music.

I've got to try to describe how I feel about my loved one.

But the description isn't the experience.

We have to do both.

If all we're doing is describing abstract stuff,

we're not living.

And of course, if all we're doing is experiencing

and we're not describing, then we're sort of airheads.

But I think it all comes from the same dynamic, what

the ancients, the Taoists, call the yin yang.

They're not separate.

They're just two ways of perceiving or interacting

that come together, and that dynamic

is the source of everything that becomes.

One of the most important parts of the PEAR lab

was the dynamic between Bob and me, yin and yang.

We were very different.

Bob was very much the scientist--

very analytical, very rigorous.

I was very much the philosopher, the mythology reader.

But we complemented each other.

We each brought to the program a different perspective,

without which the program never would have happened.

We actually wrote a book called "Molecular Memories"

that described some of this.

The energy of the molecule tends to be greater

than the sum of the energy of the constituent parts.

Neither of us could have done PEAR alone.

But coming together and sharing that

and working together and respecting one another,

which is very important.

I was the one who interacted more with the participants.

I encouraged them.

I made them feel at home.

I made them feel comfortable.

That was important.

They were part of our family.

Bob was the one that was very scrupulous in checking out

the statistics and the analysis and the technology.

I think we need both of those.

For many millions of years, we didn't separate ourselves

from our environment.

In order to survive, we became familiar.

We resonated with the natural world.

We understood the intelligence of the animals.

We understood the nature of the changing seasons.

I don't think my consciousness is separate from the world.

I feel as if I am a part of it.

And through that sense of connection,

I can have a feeling about what is going on around me.

One has to have a sense of connection

and belonging to the bigger picture,

and this is what we need to learn.

We have to go back to some of that early knowledge, some

of that intuitive knowledge.

We are not only thinking creatures,

we're intuitive creatures.

There is nobody that I can imagine

who doesn't at some point say, I don't feel good

about this situation, or this is a very attractive opportunity.

What makes it attractive?

What makes it not feel good?

Is it something intellectual, or is it

a gut feeling that makes you be drawn to some situations

and wanting to avoid others?

One of the books that we published through our ICRL

Press is called "Syntrophy--

The Spirit of Love."

It postulates that there is a principle called synthropy,

which is the complement of the principle we

know called entropy.

So entropy comes from the past to the present

and makes things more and more complex

and eventually breaks them down and eliminates them.

They becomes chaos.

Syntrophy comes from the future, from a completed event

with the energy that goes back into the present.

And we'll draw from the present, whatever

is needed to fulfill and manifest that completed image.

So in a sense, entropy is the spirit of division.

Syntropy is the spirit of integration.

Again, it's not either.

They're complements.

The world consists of this dynamic,

of things falling apart and things coming together.

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That is difficult. It is very hard

to convince somebody to take on a different worldview.

Many years ago, I had this conversation with Bob Jahn,

and we talked about this.

And I said, given human nature, given

its greedy, self-serving style of being,

how are you ever going to convince these people to love?

From the beginning of time, there

have been these great teachers who

have come along and preached how we should love one another,

and what good has it done?

And Bob said something I think was very profound.

He said, the only way you're going

to get people to love one another is when you can

persuade them that it's in their own greedy, self-serving best

interest to do so.

They need to recognize that if they don't do it,

they're in deep trouble.

You do it because you have to.

You do it because it's the only option you've got left.

When the despair becomes so great,

either you're going to get depressed and end up

committing suicide, or you're going

to have some kind of an epiphany,

some kind of an insight that suddenly white light,

and you go, oh.

I remember a story a friend of mine

told of her father who had been a career Marine, this very

serious old guy, but he was dying.

She was sitting at his bedside, holding his hand.

He was asleep.

And at one point, he opened his eyes,

and he looked at her very alert.

And he said, you know what?

It's all about love, isn't it?

And it has to come like that.

You can't tell people that.

You can't preach it to them.

In my own experience, it was that kind of a thing.

I was very depressed.

I was a very unhappy young person.

I just felt that nothing was going to happen.

I had spent my life trying to please other people.

And no matter how hard I tried, I wasn't able to please them.

They were always critical.

And then I had this sudden insight that said,

you've got to stop trying to please other people.

Because even if you do, it's not you

that they're going to accept.

They're accepting that false face that you're putting on,

and that's not going to make you happy.

Wouldn't you be better off just being who you really are?

And then if people don't like you, they don't like you.

But the people who do like you really like you.

We spend so much of our lives reacting

to this terrorizing threat of what will people think.

But pleasing somebody by being false is not love,

and demanding that somebody behave a certain way

so you would love them, that's not love either.

Love is being who you are and accepting other people

for who they are.

How do you get there?

I don't know.

There were days when I find the circumstances in our society

terrifying.

Other days, I find it hilariously funny.

It's so bad that it's really funny.

There's a part of us that is destructive,

that wants to break things down and create chaos.

And there is a part of us that wants

to be drawn together, to be part of a social group,

to be in love, to be part of something bigger.

We have to choose which path we're going to follow.

They're both there potentially, and we're all

going to have days when we go this way and days when

we go that way.

But at some level, we have to choose

which path we're going to make a commitment to.

What does that?

What is it within us that makes us choose which path to follow?

I don't know.

But I think we do have free will.

I think we can choose.

I mentioned earlier, I had a very unpleasant childhood.

OK, I was not a happy kid.

I know people who have had experiences,

early experiences akin to what I had and they become bitter.

They become angry, resentful, and they carry that pain

with them all their lives.

I didn't.

I kind of got out of it and decided this is not

a very productive way to go.

I'm not hurting anybody but myself.

We're not going to be able to love others

until we can love ourselves, and we're not

taught to love ourselves.

We're taught to be critical of ourselves.

We're taught to compete.

We're taught to live up to other people's-- we don't love

ourselves.

And we're not going to love ourselves

until we accept ourselves for who we are and say, hey,

it's OK.

I may not be perfect, but I'm me.

My colleague, Robert Jahn passed away almost two years ago.

His brain is no longer functioning,

but I feel his presence.

I feel his consciousness because we were so close.

We worked together.

We understood each other.

We had such an intense dynamic for so long.

I know his consciousness is still there,

and there are times when I have a thought,

and I get a sense of, no, that's not right,

and I know it's Bob talking to me.

There's a lot of evidence that consciousness is not over

just because the body is.

And there's no way you're going to convince people

who are skeptical of it, and I don't feel the need

to try to convince them.

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We are expressions of the life force.

We are the manifestation of this dynamic between consciousness

and potentiality, the universe wanting to experience itself.

There's something precious about being a part of the whole

and recognizing that there is a whole.

I'm not here all alone.

I'm not just here without some purpose, or why am I here.

Who am I?

What difference does it make?

Maybe I should shoot myself.

No, I have a purpose to serve and that

is to contribute in whatever way I can to this whole.

To be as good a little cell as I can

be because that will enhance the health

of the big organism in some way even

though I don't understand it.

Where people get into a different state of mind,

and suddenly they see that everything's really connected.

It isn't all separate pieces.

It's all one big unit.

You just realize that you're just one little piece

of the whole, and all of the pieces are connected,

and it's beautiful.

It gives you such a wonderful warm feeling

of purpose and meaning.

It doesn't last very long.

You usually come back down to Earth, so to speak,

and you remember that you've got to go to the grocery store

or you've got to go wash the dishes.

But it carries back with you some harmony,

some piece of that that says, I had that experience.

I don't have to doubt it.

I don't have to worry about somebody else

or depend on someone else describing it.

I've seen it, I've known it, and I know it's real.

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