SUBJECTIVITY, COLOR, AND TELEPATHY

                       

Is there a connection between our subjective nature and telepathic abilities? If so, can this principle of subjectivity be used to enhance telepathic experiences?

During our previous research on color, it became evident that color could be a natural tool for studying subjectivity. Moreover, in telepathy research, we have shown that telepathy is more likely to occur when intense imagery occurs and insights are vividly experienced. If a person, therefore, is in a subjective state due to an active experience with color, will telepathy more likely occur?

While doing experiments with color, it was noted that subjects had definite objective and subjective reactions to color. Few were ambivalent about colors. When looking at them, or just talking about them, subjects would enthusiastically share likes, dislikes, and vivid subjective experiences with color. If color has such an effect on people, why not use it as a tool in telepathy studies?

In designing an experiment using color as a medium for telepathic communication, we decided not to have subjects send and receive a certain color, but rather to emphasize subjective feelings. The sender would look at a series of colors, experience the color in a subjective way, and a receiver would pick up on those feelings. Neither sender nor receiver knew which colors would be used prior to the experiment.

Seven colors were used: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, magenta, and black. Though not considered a color in physics, black is considered a color in psychology. It was included in the study because many people have a marked emotional response to black.

Two subjects were used in each session. The sender was seated at a table in one room, and the receiver was seated in another room. The sender was given a large envelope containing one of the seven colors and was asked to look at the color and become absorbed in his subjective feelings. He was then to write down his responses. The subjective was told to fully experience any images that might come to mind, and relate to their meaning.

The sender was a passive sender; he was instructed to relax and experience the color, to become absorbed in a subjective response, rather than a telepathic transmission. When both the sender and receiver were ready, the next envelope was opened and the procedure repeated until all seven colors were completed.

The receiver was seated in a lounge chair. According to the subject’s preference, the room was lit with either candle or fluorescent light. He was told when the sender was looking at a color. At that time the receiver attempted to tune in to what the sender was experiencing. At no time was the receiver told what colors were. When something was received, he or she wrote it down and told the investigator to have the sender go on to the next color.

There were twenty-two participants, paired as eleven senders and receivers. With seven colors, and the pairing of twenty-two subjects, a possibility existed for seventy-seven telepathic matches. There were forty-nine undeniable telepathic matches occurring during the experiment [63.64%].

In addition, there were several possible matches that we felt were questionable. These equivocal matches were not included.

In a surprising number of cases, the similarity of the comments independently written by the subjects was beyond expectation. Concerning the color orange, one sender wrote that all she could think of was lemonade, which perplexed her since it was orange. Simultaneously, the receiver wrote: “Grimace. Sour, as in the taste of lemon.”

When looking at the magenta color, the same sender wrote: “Hot. Vibrancy. I wanted to leave the sheet blank. I vacillated to blue.” Her receiver wrote: “Vibrancy. Force. Energy. I wanted to leave it blank and go back to the previous color.” The previous color was blue.

                                                             TELEPATHIC MATCHES

At another session a sender wrote about the magenta: “Make me feel like dancing.” The receiver wrote: “Feeling of swirling around and around, or of twirling, such as a dance step.” In the interview after the experiment, the sender said she had a strong visualization of herself twirling around a dance floor, which is always a pleasurable experience for her.

The color green prompted a soror who was sending to write: “I was in a forest surrounding by trees, looking upward toward the sky. Cool, relaxed, in the shade of a forest, healing, soothing, happy and peaceful.” Picking up on this visualization, the receiver wrote: “Pointing upwards, looking up into the sky or space. Wide, blue, spacious background.” Had he shared her visualization?

Of the eleven pairs of participants, all experienced at least two telepathic experiences, and as many as six matches out of seven possibilities. Some were simple as experiencing a warm, happy feeling, or cool, dark feeling. One sender wrote that she responded to the color black with “a sort of sinking feeling. Like a tunnel, deep down in the ground. A hole. Someplace I don’t prefer to be in.” picking up on these feelings, the receiver wrote: “Depression. Heaviness. Isolation. Sinking.”

Some responses to the colors were tactile, such as a sender writing that the color, yellow, made him feel soft and warm, and the receiver feeling the softness of velvet against his skin.

Another dramatic match came when a sender wrote: “This color makes me wish to be amidst the trees, the pines. I see myself hovering in the tops of the trees… flying.” She said she was zooming in the treetops, high in the sky. Flying with her, her receiver simply wrote: “Sky. Flying.”

Several subject-pairs, who knew each well, illustrated the difference between an objective and subjective approach. One such receiver commented that she subjectively received a certain color and the emotional that came with it. She was perplexed, and changed her answer, because she thought her friend disliked that color and couldn’t understand the response.

In the interview following the experiment, it came to light that the sender did, indeed, like the color in question, but never wore it because it did not complement her complexion. The receiver had been correct in picking up the color and emotion, but had let her objective mind interfere with her subjective experience.

This experiment was purposely designed to allow subjects to have open-ended and creative responses. In a traditional ESP experiment, there is, in each trial, a one in five chance of obtaining a correct answer. In this experiment, regarding the probability of eleven expected telepathic hits in seventy-seven trials, this would have worked nicely if the criteria we employed had been the identification of one particular color out of a limited population of seven colors.

However, the target was not the color [the subjective stimulus], but rather, the individual subjective response. It was the subjective responses recorded by both senders and receivers that gave the total of forty-nine matches. There was not a finite population of seven possible subjective responses, but a much broader spectrum of possibilities, the total number of which is difficult to determine.

We have continued to collect data on subjective responses to color and with time may categorize subjective reactions. However, labeled categories may defeat our purpose if they were to eliminate such unique responses as the sender and receiver who both subjectively experienced the taste of lemonade. Most of the matches are in categories all by themselves. Generally, the matches have an unexpected quality.

From this experiment, it is evident that color does promote subjective responses and experiences. Under suitable conditions these subjective responses can and do lead to telepathic events of a subjective nature