Techniques To Enhance Extraordinary Human Perception

“GRANT APPLICATION ... 1. TITLE OF PROPOSAL (Do not exceed 53 typewriter spaces) ... Techniques To Enhance Extraordinary Human Perception ... 2A. NAME (Last, First, Initial) ... Targ, Russell ... Senior Research Physicist ... FROM ... Oct. 1, 1972 ... THROUGH ... Oct. 1, 1973 ... 9. APPLICANT ORGANIZATION(S) ... Stanford Research Institute ... 333 Ravenswood Ave. ... Menlo Park, CA. 94025”

Elisions marked with '...'; the fragments are separate printed form fields, not one running sentence. Printed footer reads 'Page 1' (faint). Form is 'PHS-398 Rev. 3-70', 'Form Approved Budget Bureau No. 68-R0249', headed 'SECTION I' and 'DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE / PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE'. Item 4/5 (TOTAL DIRECT COSTS REQUESTED and DIRECT COSTS REQUESTED FOR FIRST 12-MONTH PERIOD) is [REDACTED] - a single solid black bar covering both money boxes, with the marginal marking SGFOIA2 printed to the right; I cannot tell from the page whether that is one redaction or two, so the dollar figures asked for are not recoverable here. Item 2E SOCIAL SECURITY NO. is likewise [REDACTED], solid black box, marginal marking SGFOIA3. Item 7 is checked 'C. YES - Pending Review' for Research Involving Human Subjects. Other named individuals on the sheet: Philip J. O'Donnell, MGR., Contract Admin.; Emery F. Bator, Treasurer. Signature block A carries a handwritten signature reading as 'Russell Targ' and a handwritten date '7/27/72'; signature block B is blank. - the sheet carries no security classification marking of any kind, no office symbol and no addressee.

“We propose to investigate the feasibility of enhancing ESP function using the following three approaches: (1) use of a teaching machine of ESP, incorporating the principle of reinforcement (4-stage random target selector); (2) training subjects to use ESP by means of hypnotic techniques; (3) testing the effect of Faraday cages on enhancing ESP performance”

No sentence-ending period appears after 'performance' on the page. The sheet instructs the applicant to underscore key words; underscored on the page are 'ESP function', 'teaching machine', 'hypnotic techniques' and 'Faraday cages'. TITLE OF PROJECT on this sheet reads 'Research on Techniques to Enhance Extraordinary Human Perception' - which is NOT the same wording as 'Techniques To Enhance Extraordinary Human Perception' on pdf page 1; the file gives the project two different titles. The principal investigator's forename is typed here as 'Russel Targ' with one L, against 'Russell Targ' everywhere else in the file; transcribed as printed. Both personnel entries carry a solid black [REDACTED] bar where the social security number would be, with the marginal marking SGFOIA3 twice on the sheet. Personnel listed: 'Russel Targ [REDACTED] Senior Research Physicist' and 'Harold E. Puthoff [REDACTED] Senior Research Engineer', both 'Electronics and Bioengineering Lab. of the Information Science and Engineering Div.' The printed page number in the footer is overprinted by the release stamp and I cannot read it - recorded as null, not inferred.

“Next 1 Page(s) In Document Exempt”

The sheet is otherwise blank apart from a heavy black diagonal rule corner to corner, the marginal marking SGFOIA2 at top left, and the release stamp top and bottom. It carries no printed page number. It gives no exemption citation and names no classification or declassification authority. This is the only page in the file that is a separator rather than document content.

“NAME ... Russell Targ ... TITLE ... Senior Research Physicist ... PLACE OF BIRTH (City, State, Country) ... Chicago, Illinois U.S.A. ... Queens College, New York, N.Y. ... B.S. ... 1954 ... Physics ... Columbia University, New York, N.Y. 1954-56 ... MAJOR RESEARCH INTEREST ... Parapsychological and Paraphysical Phenomena ... ROLE IN PROPOSED PROJECT ... Responsible Investigator ... RESEARCH SUPPORT (See instructions) ... 100% overhead, Stanford Research Institute, pending funding”

Elisions marked; these are separate form fields, not one sentence. The header band is stamped 'SECTION II - PRIVILEGED COMMUNICATION'. BIRTHDATE is [REDACTED] - a single solid black box; the marginal marking SGFOIA3 appears lower on the sheet. Under HONORS: 'Awarded position of Research Assoc., Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York, 1959'. The professional-experience block records that Targ joined SRI in 1972, joined Sylvania in 1962, was with Technical Research Group 1959-1962 and with Sperry Gyroscope Company, Electron Tube Division 1956-1959. The right-hand margin of this scan is shaved, so the final one to three characters of most lines in that block are cut off at the page edge; I have not reconstructed them.

“he pursued research and monitored contracts concerned with the development of ultra-high-speed (kmc) computers under project LIGHTNING.”

The preceding sentence on the same page reads that Puthoff 'reported to active duty as a commissioned officer in the Navy to be assigned a research billet in the Department of Defense (NSA, Ft. Meade, Md.)'. Other fields on the sheet: 'NAME Harold Edward Puthoff', 'TITLE Senior Research Engineer', 'PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago, Illinois U.S.A.', Ph.D. Stanford University 1967, M.S.E. and B.E.E. University of Florida 1960 and 1958; 'MAJOR RESEARCH INTEREST Quantum Physics, Paraphysical and Parapsychological Phenomena'; 'ROLE IN PROPOSED PROJECT Co-investigator'; 'RESEARCH SUPPORT 100% overhead, Stanford Research Institute, pending funding'. Under HONORS the page names a 'Dept. of Defense Certificate of Commendation for Outstanding Performance' (1963) and 'Second Prize for Outstanding Paper of the Year, NSA Technical Journal, 1963, for contribution entitled, "The Status of Optical Logic Elements for Nanosecond Computer Systems", co-authored with [REDACTED]' - a solid black box covering the co-author's name; the marginal marking SGFOIA3 appears twice on this sheet. BIRTHDATE is also [REDACTED], solid black box. Right-hand margin of the scan is shaved on this page too.

“The purpose of the proposed program is to demonstrate the feasibility of increasing extra sensory perception (ESP) by means of ESP teaching machines. In preliminary work we have found evidence suggesting that such learning does take place (Appendix A)*. ... It should therefore be understood that the authors elect to take the existence of ESP as an assumption upon which to base this proposal. Ultimately we would hope to obtain both an understanding of the ESP phenomena, and the skill to train subjects sufficiently to provide them with an ESP ability functioning at a useful operational level. ... *Appendix A is a reprint of an invited paper presented at the IEEE International Symposium of Information Theory, January 1972.”

Elisions marked with '...'; the third fragment is the footnote at the foot of the same page, not a continuation of the body paragraph. The footnote continues: 'This paper summarizes our preliminary experiments giving evidence for increased ESP through use of feedback and reinforcement with an ESP teaching machine.' The same page's Background section reads 'This upswing is due in fair measure to the renewed interest in the subject in Soviet bloc countries.' - the words 'useful operational level' are the strongest statement of practical purpose anywhere in the file; the proposal nowhere names an intelligence or defence sponsor, and the only funding body it addresses is the Public Health Service.

“One group of papers describe the well documented work of a Czech investigator, Dr. Milan Ryzl. His work, which has been examined by a large number of investigators from the West, involves a hypnotic teaching procedure for the induction of a high degree of ESP ability in subjects who had none previously. ... A second group of experiments done both in the U.S. and in the USSR shows that ESP ability is heightened by electrical screening of the percipient, contrary to what one might expect.”

Elision marked; the two fragments are consecutive paragraphs, not one sentence. 'describe' is typed without the 's' after 'papers' - transcribed as printed. The third theme, on the same page, is reinforcement: 'subjects who get no reinforcement in the testing procedure deteriorate in their ESP performance; those who receive reinforcement, improve.' Milan Ryzl is named repeatedly through the file and is not to be confused with the several other investigators named on adjoining pages.

“That is, our experiments have concentrated on ‘What is it?’ while the Soviet experiments have concentrated on the command ‘Do it!’”

The preceding sentences on the page read: 'Our research has concentrated on asking subjects to guess at information, to find out things. The Soviets have concentrated on attempts to have subjects carry out telepathically-suggested actions at specific times.' The same page names 'a prominent Russian physiologist, Professor L. L. Vasiliev' and his 1962 book, English translation 1963. - the page asserts that ESP laboratories 'have now been established under government auspices at Soviet universities' but cites only open literature (Ivanov 1963; Pratt 1963) for it; no intelligence source is cited anywhere in this file.

“The particular studies cited above are but a very small sample of many excellent studies. These studies are of such quality and significance that no scientist who studies the evidence can seriously doubt the existence of ESP. Given this fact, though, the question naturally arises as to why the phenomenon of ESP is not generally accepted in the scientific community.”

The same page's first reason for non-acceptance reads 'In the Pearce-Pratt experiment cited above, the subject averaged 7.5 hits per run of 25 guesses, instead of the 5 expected by chance. Although the odds against chance were astronomical ... for the entire series, this gain of 2.5 cards over chance expectation on the average is absolutely rather small.' - the elided figure is a parenthesised 10 with a superscript minus 27, which I have not transcribed inline because the superscript will not survive a plain-text search. That figure conflicts with printed page 14 (pdf page 13), which gives the probability of the Pearce-Pratt result as 10 to the minus 20; the file states two different odds for the same experiment three pages apart and does not reconcile them.

“The third, and perhaps most important, reason for nonacceptance, is that we have no adequate theories or explanations of ESP. As Dr. Charles Tart pointed out at the symposium on ESP at the University of California, Los Angeles, (Tart, 1965) ... The present status of ESP investigations reveals that we are trapped in a viscious circle; the low level of the phenomenon make adequate theorizing difficult, and the lack of adequate theories make it difficult to gain enough control to increase the magnitude of the ESP effect.”

Elision marked; a superscript reference numeral 17 follows '(Tart, 1965)' and I have cut the quote before it rather than transcribe the superscript. 'viscious' is spelled that way on the page and stays; 'the phenomenon make' and 'theories make' are also as typed. Charles Tart is named here and again in the reference list (item 17 and item 18); he is not the same person as any of the other C-initial names in the file.

“Ryzl reports that he has developed his training procedures in the course of working with 73 male subjects and 153 female subjects. Of these, he feels that 3 men and 24 women developed demonstrable ESP capabilities.”

Printed page number in the footer is faint but reads as 23. The page also states that 'The last five years have seen the development, by the Czech investigator, Milan Ryzl, of a systematic technique for using hypnosis as a method for training subjects to use their ESP capacities.' - I looked for any statement of who paid for Ryzl's work and the file gives none. The paragraph continues with a probability figure for his best subject expressed as 10 with a superscript minus 20, which I have not transcribed.

“A far more intriguing effect of placing subjects in Faraday cages has been noted in some privately-circulated material by an American neurologist, Dr. Henry Puharich. ... The Faraday cage thus seems to have the effect of a physical amplifier of ESP, increasing the level of ESP performance by an order of magnitude.”

Elision marked; the fragments are separated by two intervening paragraphs. Henry Puharich is named here and again on pdf page 29 as the source of the cage design to be evaluated; he appears in no entry of either reference list in this file, consistent with the material being described as privately circulated. The same page reports a probability figure of '2 x 10' with a superscript minus 19 which I have not transcribed inline, and names 'Doctor Allen Frey' whose work is cited on the following page as Frey 1961 and Frey 1965.

“In the light of the technical discussion above, we propose to investigate the feasibility of enhancing ESP function using the following three approaches: (1) use of a teaching machine for ESP, incorporating the principle of reinforcement; (2) training subjects to use ESP by means of hypnotic techniques; (3) testing the effect of Faraday cages on enhancing ESP performance.”

The heading 'B. Specific Aims:' at the top of the page is partly overprinted by the release stamp; I read it as 'Specific Aims' but the middle characters are obscured. Note the wording drift: the abstract on pdf page 2 says 'a teaching machine of ESP', this page says 'a teaching machine for ESP'. The sentence following the quote reads: 'Toward the end of the experimental program, it is hoped to find optimal combinations of all three approaches, although time considerations may make it necessary to carry out this synthesis of approaches in a subsequent year.' The page then lists nine required characteristics of the teaching machines, of which (8) reads 'Is self-powered, so that it may be used inside a Faraday cage without breaking the integrity of the cage by bringing in power lines.' Printed page number verified as 28 by enlarging the footer.

“The teaching machines will be available at the start of the project. At that time at least two of the machines will be installed in prominent locations at SRI, and employees will be invited to try their skill on them. Various psychological techniques will be employed, such as offering prizes for the best subjects, to keep interest high.”

Printed page number in the footer is overprinted by the release stamp and illegible - recorded as null, not inferred. The paragraph continues: 'In this manner, it should be possible to collect data on hundreds of enthusiastic subjects within a few months.'

“The initial step in this aspect of the research program will be the evaluation of a Faraday cage, physically similar to the one used by Puharich in the research discussed in section 3.4 above. ... Since we do know know what characteristics of the Faraday cage are essential to the purported effect and which are not, a broad survey of its physical properties is what is being carried out here.”

Elision marked. 'do know know' is exactly what is typed; the sense of the sentence requires 'do not know', so a word appears to have been dropped or mistyped at the typewriter. I have not corrected it. The irregular spacing inside the first fragment ('evaluation of', 'physically similar to') is as typed. An asterisked footnote at the foot of the page reads 'SRI Faraday cage for use on this program', attached to the mention of 'the full resources of Stanford Research Institute'. Printed page number overprinted by the release stamp and illegible - null.

“Ryzl's training technique is inherently long. It requires at least 20-40 hours of time from a psychologist skilled in the use of hypnosis, as well as the subject's time. ... *Dr. Ryzl is now living in the San Francisco Bay area and is available to participate in this research.”

Elision marked; the second fragment is the asterisked footnote at the foot of the page, not a continuation of the body text. The page also gives a screening criterion: subjects who are 'highly hypnotizable, a group comprising about 20% of the general population', assessed with 'The Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, Form C ... (Weitzenhoffer and Hilgard, 1963)'. That title conflicts with reference 30 in this same file (pdf page 33), which gives the work as 'The Stanford Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form C.' - the two namings of the same instrument do not match. Printed page number overprinted by the release stamp and illegible - null.

“Stanford Research Institute (SRI) is an independent, nonprofit organization performing a broad spectrum of research under contract to business, industry, and government. The Institute, which was formerly affiliated with Stanford University, was founded in 1946. ... SRI has no endowment; payments by clients under research contracts and grants amount to approximately $65 million annually and are used to cover all operating costs.”

Elision marked; the two fragments are separated by one paragraph. This is the only dollar figure legible anywhere in the file - the money actually requested, in items 4 and 5 of the face sheet, is under a solid black redaction. Section D on the same page states the claim of significance: 'Demonstration of increasing scores on guessing the state of random target selector would, for the first time in the field of parapsychology, indicate that ESP ability can be learned and/or enhanced.'

“Of SRI's total staff of 2600, approximately one-half are in professional and technical categories. Some 400 members of the professional staff have Ph.D. or equivalent degrees; 600 others have their Master's degree. ... This group currently occupies 5000 square feet of laboratory space, divided into seven separate laboratory rooms, a technicians' work area, a machine shop, and a computer room housing a LINC-8 and related terminals and equipment.”

Elision marked; the fragments are consecutive paragraphs. The page adds 'Especially suited to the work described in the proposal are a number of shielded rooms with various instrumentation available' and 'there is a backup team of psychologists and statisticians which can be brought into the project on an internal consulting basis' - no psychologist or statistician is named anywhere in the file, and none appears in the personnel list on pdf page 2, which names only Targ and Puthoff.

“APPENDIX: LEARNING CLAIRVOYANCE AND PRECOGNITION WITH AN EXTRA SENSORY PERCEPTION TEACHING MACHINE ... by ... Russell Targ and David B. Hurt ... Feedback reinforcement techniques have been used to teach extra-sensory perception. A machine which randomly selects among four targets, provides immediate feedback indicating correctness of subjects' determination of the machine chosen target.”

Elisions marked; 'by', the byline, and the ABSTRACT text are separated on the page by white space and the heading 'ABSTRACT'. COPYRIGHT FLAG: pdf page 10 states this appendix is 'a reprint of an invited paper presented at the IEEE International Symposium of Information Theory, January 1972', so pdf pages 36-45 are third-party published material; I have quoted from them sparingly and taken nothing at length. David B. Hurt is named only here and is not listed among the professional personnel engaged on the project on pdf page 2.

“In the course of this work we have encountered three general classes of subjects. The majority of the 12 subjects working with the machine in this study did not show any significant improvement in their ESP ability.”

This sits against the framing on pdf page 10, where the same work is described as 'evidence suggesting that such learning does take place'; the appendix itself says the majority of a twelve-subject sample did not improve. The page also records 'one subject has shown an exceptional increase in ESP scores through more than 1600 trials'. 'binominal' is typed that way on the page in the phrase 'a skewed binominal distribution' - transcribed nowhere in my quote but recorded here as an artefact of the page.

“The most successful subject in this experiment reached a scoring level where on three occasions she scored more than 40 hits out of 96 trials in one of these sets of four runs, where only 24 hits would be expected. ... The machine was altered so that the target was not chosen by the machine until after the subject indicated his choice. The time delay was approximately 0.2 second, which is to say that subjects were asked to make a perception of an event which was to occur 0.2 second in the future.”

Elision marked; the fragments are separated by two paragraphs. The subject is not named anywhere in the file - referred to only as 'she' and 'the single subject'; her reported remark at the start of her first precognitive run is given on the same page in quotation marks as 'I don't feel anything anymore,' and 'just guessing.' I have not treated that as excludable material: it is a research remark about a task, not medical, psychiatric or intimate information, and she is not identifiable from this file. The page also states 'This subject made a total of 64 runs of 24 trials with a mean score of 8.6 hits per run.' Two probability figures on the page use superscripts (10 to the minus 3 and 10 to the minus 15) which I have not transcribed inline.

“8. We hypothesize that significant events create a perturbation in the space-time in which they occur, and that this disturbance propagates forward, and to small degree, backward in time. Since precognitive phenomena are quite rare, the disturbance evidently dies out extremely rapidly in the -t direction. ... 9. This work was supported by a grant from the Parapsychology Foundation.”

Elision marked; items 8 and 9 are separate numbered entries in the same list. HAND AMENDMENT: reference item 4 is typed 'C. Tart, J. American Soc. Psychology Res., 60, 46, (1966).' with the typed word 'Psychology' struck through by hand and a handwritten word interlineated above it, in a small cursive hand, which reads to me as 'psychical'; the handwriting is small and I cannot be certain of the final letters, so I record it as a probable but not certain reading. The typed state is what appears in my quote of the surrounding page; the same source is given on printed page 34 (pdf page 33) as 'J. American Soc. Psychial Res.', which is itself a misspelling on that page and stays as printed. The Parapsychology Foundation is the only funding body named anywhere in this file besides the Public Health Service the application is addressed to. Printed page number in the footer reads 43, faint.