Something is real if it makes a difference in your life, a wise philosopher woman once told me. I agree. ESP sure made a difference to that student and I. The fact that I reached out and touched that person at just the right moment made a difference in the way we experienced our relationship and work together.

Coincidence? Well, maybe, maybe not. I've heard many people, for example, tell a story similar to mine, only to exclaim, "It was creepy!" Then they shrug it off as "just a coincidence." When they say the C word, they do so with a sigh of relief. The coincidence defense is often used, I believe, to deny the intimate connection between minds, just like in another context someone might deny intimacy by saying "We're just friends!"

To destroy the plausible deniability of ESP, I recommend the book, The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena (HarperSanFrancisco). The author, Dean Radin, Ph.D., is Director of the Consciousness Research Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His name appears often in my Psi Research column because of his wide ranging and innovative research and his book reflects his impressive scope and grasp of the field.

The major strength of the book, and what makes it stand out as a unique and important contribution, is his treatment of the technical details defining the evidence for ESP. People are confused by statistics, for example, and in the absence of a dramatic psychic phenomenon, like spoon bending, we can easily dismiss an ESP effect that is largely statistical in nature. Radin gives some good examples of statistical realities that are more familiar in our culture to help the reader better comprehend the nature of the evidence for ESP. To take one example, perhaps you've heard about the studies showing that aspirin can prevent heart attacks. A long term study by Harvard Medical School was in progress when the results were so dramatic, the investigators made the unusual move of going public before the study was completed. They felt that the information was so important, the public had to be informed because of the lives that could be saved. What is less known is that the strength of this effect, the change in your odds of getting a heart attack if you take aspirin, and the strength of the statistics backing up those odds, are weaker than the statistics that underlie the laboratory evidence for ESP! It's more likely, in other words, according to accepted mathematical canons of science, that ESP exists than it is that aspirin reduces heart attacks. Moreover, ESP has a stronger effect on laboratory data than aspirin has on medical data. If I may say so, ESP is stronger than aspirin!

If ESP is so strong, why doesn't it work in Las Vegas? Radin, strategically located in the gaming capital of America, is in position to give us some new information on this perennial question. The answer is, it does! He was able to obtain normally top secret information concerning casino payoffs. He presents graphs that show, with the visual vividness we usually associate with scientifically secure phenomena, that casino profits fluctuate with the strength of the earth's geomagnetic field. As other studies show, when geomagnetic field is weak, people show greater psychic ability, and the Las Vegas casinos are not exempt from this influence.

We are being affected psychically, and exerting psychic effects, according to the studies Radin presents, on a national, international and global scale. At the moment the verdict in the OJ trial was announced, when more people were glued to the boob tube than in any other moment in history, electronic random number generators in several laboratories registered an unprecedented lack of randomness. When minds are joined, it matters. Over a thirty year period, to give another example, on the afternoon of the outdoor graduation ceremonies at Princeton University, the weather was sunnier than normal, even when it was raining in nearby localities! Just a coincidence? Don't bet on it.

Our thoughts, as has been noted before and as Radin now shows undeniably, are powerfully real things! They make a real difference in our lives.