New Issue of Rhine Online!

We are excited about this summer 2010 issue of our Psi News Magazine. Our general focus is on complementary and alternative healing techniques. Psi and healing is a topic that arises frequently in discussions, talks, and workshops at the Rhine, and one of great interest to the community at large. In fact, one of our current research projects started by the late Dr. Steve Baumann, and continued by Dr. Bill Joines is a study of photon emission in bio-energy healers.

Alternative healing is directly linked to psi. In a 2001 paper, Daniel Benor, MD, uses the term “psi healing,” in fact, to describe various healing techniques. He says:This paper accepts the existence of psi healing (also called spiritual, mental and paranormal healing) to be an established fact. The author has found 152 published studies of healing (Benor 1990; Benor in press). More than half of these demonstrate significant effects. There is thus more research on healing than on all the other complementary therapies combined, with the exception of hypnosis and psychoneuroimmunology. Psi healing demonstrates that the mind of a healer can alter the conditions of organisms, including cells in vitro, bacteria, yeasts, plants, animals and humans. In addition, there is evidence that healers may influence water, crystallization of salt solutions and enzymes. Some of these studies show significant effects of healing at a distance.

In terms of popularity in the mainstream world, what Benor calls “psi healing” may be one of the rare examples where the believers are coming close to balancing out the skeptics. For example, according to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, approximately 38 percent of adults and approximately 12 percent of children in the United States were using some form of complementary or alternative medicine (CAM) as of 2007, and the figure is steadily rising. These therapies include yoga, tai chi, massage, meditation, Reiki, acupuncture, shamanism, etc.

In this issue, we hope to illuminate some of these healing techniques. Dr. Katherine MacDowell, respected author and the founder of Ocean Seminary College, gives an overview of shamanic practice and techniques, especially as related to her personal tradition. Additionally, Dagmar Ehling, licensed doctor of Oriental Medicine, gives an extensive overview of acupuncture, Chinese medicine, and their guiding principles. Reiki, an energy healing technique that originated in Japan, works with the same conceptual understanding as acupuncture, and from my experience as a Reiki Master Teacher, I give a brief introduction to Reiki in an interview.
Jane Katra, PhD a renowned healer from the northwest United States, shares two powerful stories with us. In one, she describes a distant healing experience with Russell Targ, one of our recent speakers and the founder of remote viewing in the United States. In the other, she describes an extraordinary afterlife visit from Dr. Elisabeth Targ, associated with healing and comforting at a distance. You will have to read for yourself to understand the uniqueness of these interactions.

Some of our most common therapeutic experiences are the healing interactions we have with animals. We include two powerful examples in this issue. Sally Rhine Feather, Executive Director of the Rhine Center, shares with us a miraculous story of a human, Anthony Swaney, healing a small kitten through an energy healing technique. In the reverse, my article titled “The Healing Power of Dolphins” discusses the powerful ways in which an animal species heals us.

Jack Hunter, the editor of Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal, shares with us a powerful commentary on anthropologists and their experiences during field work. If an anthropologist is fully immersed in a ritual, the intended results of that ritual are typically undeniably experienced. In this way, anthropologists may sometimes be our closest scientific link between the worlds of mainstream science and ancient practices (such as shamanism, energy healing, and the like).

Finally, we want to bring you closer to the current personalities and activities at the Rhine Research Center through a number of interviews:

Christine Simmonds-Moore, PhD, our visiting researcher, sheds light on her research, her interests, and her entrance into the world of parapsychology at a young age. Bob Gebelein, our featured volunteer this quarter, describes the work he does at the Rhine Center, his decision to move here to be closer to the Center, and his viewpoint about parapsychology and Harvard University.

Last but not least, we give an overview of the Rhine events from this spring and summer with an in-depth sample of two programs as experienced by Dave Roberts, managing editor of the Journal of Parapsychology, and an extensive interview with Joe McMoneagle, a recent popular speaker and workshop leader renowned for his acumen in remote viewing.

We hope you enjoy the issue. Please e-mail me at Jennifer@Rhine.org or my co-editor, Mark A. Schroll, PhD, at Mark@Rhine.org with any comments or suggestions for future issues, and do drop by the Rhine Center whenever you are in Durham, North Carolina.

Reflections on Rhea White's Presidential Address to the 1984 Convention of the Parapsychological Association

One of the many good things about not having read every book, article and research paper in the field of parapsychology is that I am regularly thrilled by a new find.

The downside of course is that I sure wish I had read Rhea White's Presidential Address to the 1984 Convention of the Parapsychological Association years ago. These presidential addresses usually cover a lot of ground, but there are some fantastic points she makes that shed a lot of light on current thinking in the field. You may have been present for her speech, or you may have read the article years ago, but something struck me at the beginning of the speech that may benefit us to take another look today.

Remember, its 1984 when the speech was made. The parapsychological world is just learning about Remote Viewing from Targ and Harary's book "Mind Race". Cellphones had just been invented, were the size of a brick, and wouldn't become widely used for another decade or two. In 1984, the Macintosh was introduced, the first personal computer using a mouse and a graphical user interface.

Rhea White's address emplored parapsychologist to break out of their current mindset in viewing PSI and its mechanics, since she felt new approaches were needed to discover productive areas of research. To stress the frustrating nature of PSI research at the time, she used the example of the telephone ringing spontaneously, as PSI events are almost always just as capricious.. She asked, how can we make it ring again, who is calling, why are they calling?

The telephone model, with a sender and reciever, was and still is a popular way of conceptualizing how PSI works. Her point in 1984 I don't think was to reinforce or support the sender/receiver idea of PSI, but to point out the difficulty in figuring out what is going on with a random phone ring, something we can still relate to in 2010. But my point here is to take her example and look at it in the light of our current telephone technology, and then update our view on how PSI works.

Back in 1984, for the most part, all calls had a sender and a reciever. Calls were carried with electrical signals on wire, from point A to point B. Other than the occassional thunderstorm, when the phone rang, it was because someone sent a signal on a line to make it ring. So back then, remote viewers talked about signal/noise ratios, and worked to make the signal stronger or the line noise less. To clean up the "signal line", efforts were made to insulate the line with all sorts of things, faraday cages, the ganzfeld, controlled remote viewing, hypnotism, you name it.

Modern phone technology is a little different. Signals from sender and reciever are sent out in every direction, the communication only occurs because the two locations share an agreed upon frequency upon which to transmit the signal. Hundreds of other signals are flying through the air at the same time, but your phone rings because it is receptive to a particular piece of information. The frequency can change with each use, if it does NOT change its an unusual conincidence. So if you get a call, then turn right around and try to find the sender again on that same frequency, it probably won't work. Many of the suggestions Ms. White makes for new approaches to research make a lot more sense if we update her 1984 phone technology to the present one.
Take this process and now think about the transmission of information in PSI events (if transmission of information is actually what is happening). Every person is receiving the information, but only if the person is tuned in to a particular signal will they get a useful communication. The other implications for updating our view of communication via "extrasensory perception" also provide new ways of working with research design and the "how-to" of PSI. I will leave all that up to the reader, my main point here is that evolving technologies such as computers, holograms, and many others give us an opportunity to likewise evolve our way of looking at PSI. Rhea White was asking readers in 1984 to change their course in researching and understanding PSI, and we can do just that by examining what new technologies can perhaps suggest to us about an old problem.
- Benton Bogle

A Report on Joe McMoneagle's visit to the Rhine from Benton Bogle

Joe McMoneagle visited the Rhine Center last weekend (June 4th and 5th) and it was once again an amazing event. Joe is considered by many to be the finest Remote Viewer alive, having been tested hundreds of times and having appeared on numerous live TV programs displaying his talent. He does not do a lot of appearances and virtually no training, but occasionally he visits the Rhine Center to enlighten us with his knowledge and fascinating anecdotes from his lifetime of work in the highest levels of military intelligence. Joe was a "psychic spy" for the military for almost 20 years, and helped develop what we know as remote viewing today.

The first thing you notice about Joe is that he's a friendly guy who is eager to help you learn about Remote Viewing. He's direct and thorough, so you learn from him that discipline and practice is centrally important in improving your RV success. He talked about his own method, and how important it is for each of us to find our own process, and to dedicate ourselves to it.

Like any other skill, RV is something you have to make a part of your life, you need to care deeply about it and pursue it. If you are interested in learning about how Joe does Remote Viewing, you will do yourself a big favor by reading his book, "Remote Viewing Secrets" where he spells it all out. The book Joe recommends you read to put it all in perspective is his book "The Stargate Chronicles: Memoirs of a Psychic Spy". Like his talks, it is full of stories from the development and application of the Military/Government program that flourished in the 1970s through the mid 1990s. Fascinating reading, and Joe shared many stories from those years that did not make it into the books, and follow-ups to impressive viewings.

He spent a lot of time answering the questions of the audience members in his Friday night talk, and did the same on Saturday after putting us through our paces with numerous Remote Viewing sessions. He worked with us as viewers and monitors during the sessions, and emphasized where we were getting it right, and where we needed to improve.

I had the good fortune to have Joe as my monitor on a few sessions, and he really kept me on task and guided me to use effective strategies to get the information I was looking for. You could tell from the chatter on breaks and afterwards that everyone there got a lot from the day's education, and we took a lot of great training home with us to apply to our future Remote Viewing.

The Rhine Center will be posting a video of the Friday evening program if you are interested in hearing what went on. If you have the opportunity in the future to go hear Mr. McMoneagle speak, its a great experience. Anyone interested in Remote Viewing as a practice, or the exciting stories of its application in the intelligence/political field, should pick up a copy of Joe's books and give them a good read.