Die Tossing Dialogues with the Unknown.
Mental influencing of dice tossing for a particular face to land up was probably first studied by JB Rhine in 1934 (Rhine LE, Rhine JB, The psychokinetic effect, J. of Parapsychology 1943, 7, pp 20-43), and stimulated many followers, whose endeavours were summarized in a meta-analysys by Dean Radin and Diane Ferrari in 1989, and with all due ‘worst case’ considerations proof of the psychokinetic effect was estimated to odds against chance at three million to one (The Conscious Universe, Radin D, 1997, pp 134-135). Helmut Schmidt (at the Boeing Laboratories) replaced the dice with the first random numbers generator, which operated on radioactive decay, and obtained overwhelming evidence for psychokinetic influence over random events derived from quantum mechanical uncertainties (The PSI Quotient (PQ): An Efficiency Measure for PSI Tests. J. of Parapsychology 33, 1969, 210-214). In 1979 Robert G. Jahn orgsnised the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research labortories (PEAR), the programme of which included study of anomalous interactions between man and machine. In a paper 2001 (A Modular Model of Mind/Matter Manifestations (M^5), J of Scientific Exploration, Vol 15, No. 3, pp 299-329), he and Brenda J. Dunne questioned the psychokinetic effect, albeit proven, to originate in a direct bridging of the old quasi-Cartesian divide between consciousness and matter. In their opinion the anomalies recorded remained irrational, almost impishly evasive, and their source to be sought possibly in the unconscious. The less some of their test subjects had been aware of what was going on, the better had seemed their ability of scoring success. Random numbers generators also react to television mediated coherence of emotion in large masses of poeople, entirely unaware of any on going testing. The bell shape distribution curve of ”ones” and “zeroes” flattens and the Z-score rises. On September 11, 2001, immediately before the twin towers were hit, continuously running random numbers generators deviated beyond 3 Z, and this happened no other day in 2001 (Entangled Minds, D Radin, 2006, pp202-207).
The merit of dice as random numbers generators is their slowness, every single event can be recorded in the sequence it actually occurred, they offer, as it were, a microscope. Of course, the die has to tumble well, a good distance, for a near chaotic situation to be ensured. Investigating various psi abilities in 1997, I performed a series of dice experiments, curious of cumulative effects. Unfortunately most of that data, which I recorded in random “staircase diagrams”, a hit was an upward step, and vice versa, I can no longer find, but what struck me more than overall deviations was an emergence of peculiar symmetries, almost like travelling backwards in time at certain points. My youngest daughter also became interested in the fervent dice tossings involved, and wanted to try as well. In complience with her father, she agreed to influence even numbers, but thoroughly failed - however, a remarkable fraction of fives turned up, with the odds against chance 10 000 to one, “Strange, daddy, she remarked, five is my favourite number”.
I too had an emotional reason for choosing my even numbers – those faces of the die reminded me of the window panes which had been my grandfather’s the year he lived in the same home for the elderly, which later became a road side café – in the garden of which I conducted the bulk of my dice sessions ten years ago, at a cup of coffee, before driving on to the beach.
For the new experiments recorded here I used a hard surface to throw the dice on, preferably a smooth rock shelf in my swimming cove, which strongly reinforces all bounces, but ordinary tables were used as well, also in road side cafés visited during biking tours in the two days last June the new experiment was performed. All in all I collected data from 35 sessions, ranging from 35 to 362 throws in each. A pair of dice was used. After both had been thrown, one after the other, I recorded the outcome in the correct sequence, with an O for ‘hits’, which were the even numbers, and X for odd numbers. Immediately preceeding the throw I exposed the die to an imperative mental image of even numbers and reinforced it with an inner voice pronouncing “Sixes, Fours, Deuces…” or maybe “Pairs!” . The acquired row or rows of O’s and X’s were transposed to “staircase diagrams”, as already explained, which rather looked like a row of rising and building waves (see diagram). Every session lasted a predetermined number of ‘OX- rows’ in my notebook (range 1 – 8), where about 40 signs filled a row.
Results
In the 35 sessions a total number of 2438 throws were recorded. Significant cumulative positive results occurred i 7 cases and ditto negative in 8 cases, but these are not our main concern. Short one-row sessions were as many as 17, which reflects a certain boredom with the enterprise. Whenever the mental image was successful, a preceeding feeling of deep inspiration was felt – which could be present already before a whole session (the visit in the pier café were the above recorded session Nr XXX took place, was very pleasant).
On dice the five symbol is reminiscent of a little X-sign. Oftentimes I noticed intrusive X’s in my ‘imperative mental image’, and then fives would dominate the unwanted odd numbers, e.g. in session XXVIII 27 out of 56, one tailed significance level .015.
The null hypothesis of this experiment is agreement with Markow chains, where every step is dependent exclusively on the immediately preceeding one and nothing else. But this did not happen. Striking symmetries appeared, like were som kind antagonistic memory directing the dice. Conspicuous sequences of “hits” became immediately reversed, and insurpassable “ceilings” as well as “floors” were outlined. In the diagram shown (from session Nr XXX, 15 June) a sharp rise occurs at step 44 – 50, after an initial random fluctuation. The peak reached is repeated at step 58, and then a ceiling is pushed upwards as a building wave to be touched four times between 70 and 80. Thereafter it recedes to recur as a solitary peak at 118, and subesequently be build up to a new conspicuous ceiling beginning at 131, which is again touched at 147, and from there this rising wave is subsequently pushed to the highest summit of the whole session at 202, thirty-two steps above the zero line (p=.014 one tailed, which is of secondary interest only). The most striking feature of the diagram, instead, is its two strongest recedings – from the highest summit at 202 – where it forms a perfect “time reversed” mirror image of the climb up, and from a ceiling at step 80, as a postponed reply to the rise 44 – 50.
In an attempt of quantifying these features in the whole series of 35 sessions, rises and falls were considered only if at least they ran a level change of five steps in a sequence of five tosses, one (compensated) false step allowed. Thus in the diagram shown 8 countable rises can be identified, 44-50, 55-62, 144- 151, 157-164, 172-180, 186-194, 197-202, and 227-232. The countable falls are 80-88, and 202-207. All summits and ceiling touces according to this definition had to be identifyed and counted – and in addition all steps from where a fall would have been interpretated as from a summit or ceiling. The first possible summit in the diagram is 49, marked with a dot, while the first actual summit is 50, also marked with a dot, which recurrs at 58 and 60 (dots), and is pushed upwards, all possible new summits and ceiling touches marked with dots until 80, as shown in the diagram, whereafter the process is carried over to 118, etc. Since from the 5 last steps of the sessions no significant falls or rises are possible, those were omitted and the number of throws analysed reduced from 2438 to 2263. The summits, ceiling touches, actual and possible, were 279. Ditto troughs and floor touches, 209. The total rises were 49, the total falls 48, rises from floors or troughs 12, from troughs exclusively 2, and falls from summits or ceilings 17, and from summits exclusively, 7.
Odds against chance that straight rises to summits tend to be immediately reversed by equally straight descents, one billion to 1.
Odds against chance for correlation of considerable descents with summits and ceilings, two and a half million to 1.
Ditto correlation of rises with floors and troughs, ten thousand to 1.
Odds against chance that troughs tended to be followedby sharp rises, a hundred to 1.
The distribution curve did indeed flatten. We can also notice that the intended summits and their iterations, actual and possible, or the ‘building waves’ occupied 279 steps, in significant excess of their unintended 209 counterparts from troughs and floors, with odds against chance 667 to 1. This reflects a rather humble conscious psychokinetic effect, measurabe as building wave masses rather than conspicuous deviations.
There is nothing irrational or evasive about these results in themselves. They are straightforward – as a game of chess between two players – only one player is not shown. The situation is dyadic, and the responses of the mysterious other strictly limited to ‘up’ or ‘down’ in the diagram. The quasi intelligent memory implied could be indicative of backwards running time, which, if possible, would render all parapsychology trivial - but it could more probably originate in the experimenter himself, from the unconscious (as suggested by Jahn and Dunne, 2001). The unconscious is conceived of as dyadic and complementary, dreams are postulated to balance waking experience. Our unconscious could reach, as if beyond ourselves, in Jung’s transconscious character of the pairs of opposites, the phenomenology of man’s totality, Jung’s Self Archetype (Mysterium Coniunctiones, 1963), where he places our ego personality in an intermediate position, ‘inter bona et mala sita’ (ibid. p 6). If we now take a big leap, we could recognize that our representation of reality occurs on one and only one single stage, where we still want to differentiate between our inner and outer worlds. Unfortunately we possess no rational means of doing so, both will remain forever confused, unless we make use of intuition. Everything starts with intuition. Unconsciously we could be associated with what we consider as the external world in a way we have not suspected, we could extend as patterns into it, far beyond the reach of our fingertips. The father of theoretical biology, Johann Jakob von Uexküll, defined an Umwelt as the external world of an animal, the representation of which would be inseparable from its mind (Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere, 1909). Such an Umwelt may very well have far deeper and more general meanings, than originally indicated. We have the plethora of epigenetic causation in morphogenesis to consider (Sheldrake R, The Presence of the Past, 1988, Bennett JG, The Dramatic Universe, book 5, 1966). Unexpected communication needs a non-deterministic medium, a measure of freedom to enter its target, hence rather uncertainty itself is capable to mark the interface between our inner and outer worlds, not our fingertips. Feelings as well as the unconscious are ubiquitously recognised as stronger than the conscious thinking mind. The famous esoteric teacher Gurdjieff even said that “unfortunately” the conscious and the unconscious have changed places in modern man. The fact that we easily could confuse our inner and outer worlds may lead to serious consequences, in analytic psychology strange accidents are regarded as messages from the unconscious (Mindell A, The Shaman’s Body, 1995), and synchronicities occur to anybody with the unconscious activated and eyes to see or ears to hear (Jung CG, Synchronicities, 1951). A possible patterning of the world, taken for entirely external, could very well comprise a means of survival, or a linkage to Sheldrake’s morphogenetic fields (ibid.), or of ability to be, which the philosopher John G. Bennett ascribed to a conditioning frame of existence, which he liked to name hyparxis (The Dramatic Universe, 1956-1966), alongside with conditioning frames time and space. Finally, we might consider the phenomenon of Art. Last century many artists seemed to make their best and shake it out from the same sleeve as chaos theory, as if spontaneously, but also compelled by the growing ranks of art theorists defining art by form, ”because paintings had already been done, art could no longer be paintings”, because symphonies had already been composed, etc. Yet this forced refuge in chaos was not entirely wrong. In every work of art there is found the artistic line, every work of art consists of such lines, or corresponding elements, depending on what kind of art we are considering - a something dependent on the skill of the artist, but also on contingency, on some anxillary unknown source, on inspiration, as a surprise to the artist himself. If this is not present, the work is dull. Uncertainty may be much more important than we are used to think, and ”quasi-Cartesian” attempts to eliminate it, rather than listen to its messages, may be not worth striving for.
Toomas Mathiesen
