At the end of the nineteenth century, English psychologists introduced the word "telepathy" to denote the phenomenon of mental suggestion. That is - "feeling at a distance." Another term has appeared: psi-phenomenon. In Russia, research on this mysterious phenomenon began at the Institute for the Study of the Brain, founded by Academician Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev.
Thought is a radio wave?
In the early 20s of the last century, a new employee, 37-year-old neurophysiologist Leonid Leonidovich Vasiliev, appeared at the Bekhterev Institute. It was him who had to continue unusual research after Bekhterev. "Vladimir Mikhailovich," Vasiliev recalled, "attached great importance to these experiments."
Hypotheses about what serves as a carrier of mental information. there were many. The veil of secrecy, it seemed, began to lift when the radio waves were opened. The assumption arose that they are the carriers of thought. This hypothesis was strengthened after the sensational experiments of the Italian professor F. Katsamalli. In 1923, he announced that he had detected radio emission from the human brain using instruments.
Needless to say, the discovery of the "brain radio" aroused not only great interest, but also great controversy. Scientists from different countries wanted to repeat the experiments of Katsamalli. And the first to undertake such research were scientists from the Brain Institute.
The unexpected and mysterious death of Academician Bekhterev in December 1927 did not stop scientific work on telepathy. True, the new director, Professor V. P. Osipov, according to Vasiliev, “did not allow the possibility of telepathy,” but the institute suddenly received a special assignment “from above” on this topic, and the director was forced to accept it for execution. The task before Vasiliev and his assistants was the most difficult.
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Telepathic Beams
The electromagnetic hypothesis of mental suggestion, the brain radio, was taken as a working one. At the institute, the so-called Faraday chamber was built - a rather spacious cabin, upholstered with sheet iron. The subject was placed in a cell on a bed and immersed in hypnosis. Then he was verbally instilled in any pleasant or unpleasant experiences. And the experimenter, who was also in the Faraday chamber, tried to pick up signals from the subject's brain using a radio receiver and headphones.
Alas, no radio signals could be detected. The experiments of the Italian professor were not confirmed. However, for Vasiliev and his staff, this was not so important. Much more important. they believed to establish the very fact of telepathic transmission and the degree of influence on it by the shielding properties of the Faraday chamber. After all, if you could notice. that the "telepathic rays" are delayed by the metal walls of the chamber, this would mean one thing: thoughts are transmitted precisely through radio waves.
The second, also difficult problem, was the search for subjects, percipients, for receiving mental signals. A group was selected, consisting mainly of women between the ages of 19 and 40, suffering from hysteria or neurasthenia. In the role of mentally suggestive. inductors, Vasiliev himself spoke, as well as his colleagues - the physiologist Tomashevsky and Dr. Dubrovin.
They decided to conduct the experiments in the following way: mentally suggest body movements, then - various visual perceptions and, finally, also mentally, immerse the subjects in sleep and force them to wake up.
Juar's method
At the end of the century before last, the French physician P. Juard mentally inspired simple movements. For example: raise a leg, cross your arms at chest level, take a step forward or backward. Vasiliev decided to instill, according to the Juard method, unaccountable movements - the rocking of the human body.
The subject stood on a small triangular platform, under one of the corners of which a rubber bulb was placed, connected by a tube to a pneumatic recorder. Even the slightest movement of the one standing on the platform was transmitted to the pear and was recorded on the recorder tape.
The inductor (most often Vasiliev) mentally ordered: “Fall back! Fall! And this caused a number of sharp swings of the subject and bursts on the graph. When the mental suggestion ceased, the recorder again began to draw a calm line.
For the mental suggestion of visual images, a simple device was used, a kind of tape measure. On the vertical axis were fixed (also in a vertical position) two discs - one white, the other black. The inspiring one brought the axle in motion. into fast rotation. When it stopped, the suggesting person saw in front of him any of the disks, white or black, and began to mentally suggest color.
This experience made it possible to quickly accumulate the results of the experiment. Mathematical calculations in the theory of probability showed that mental suggestion manifested itself. It is impossible to get so many correct answers by chance. Suffice it to say that in one of the experiments the subject correctly named the color of the disc 10 times in a row! But the most interesting results were obtained with the help of mental suggestion of sleep and awakening.
Euthanasia from Sevastopol
The experiment was performed hundreds of times, and only in a few cases the result was erroneous. Sometimes the person making a mental suggestion would retire to the next house or even further - to the next street, or even to the other end of the city, in order to send mental orders from there. And they did. Amazingly, we even managed to put to sleep at a distance of … 1700 kilometers, from Sevastopol!
But the shielding effect of the Faraday chamber did not appear in any way. It turned out that radio waves (they could not have passed through the iron wall) had nothing to do with it. “This result, - wrote Leonid Leonidovich, - we got contrary to our own conviction”.
In the fateful years of the Stalinist repression, research on telepathy was discontinued. They were not conducted even during the war. Only after the victory did Leonid Leonidovich learn that abroad the study of telepathy is actively continuing, especially in the United States. For example, it became known about an amazing experiment staged on board the American nuclear submarine "Nautilus".
Percipient was inside a boat that plunged into the Atlantic Ocean. Mental suggestion of special signs to him was made from the shore. And at a distance of two thousand kilometers, under the water column, in the steel hull of a submarine, the subject gave 70 percent of the correct answers!
“Such an unexpected confirmation of our 25-year-old experiments,” wrote Vasiliev, “prompted me to acquaint a wide range of scientists with the results of our experiments. I had to repeat my lecture many times in Leningrad and Moscow, and every time he met a keen interest from the audience."
I am convinced of this
In the early 1960s, Professor Vasiliev organized a laboratory at Leningrad University for the study of telepathic phenomena.
Leonid Leonidovich was already a corresponding member of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a famous scientist. He took great risks. Telepathy in those years was often ridiculed as a charlatan invention. A scientist who decided to engage in such a frivolous business could defame his name forever. You had to have a lot of courage and firmly believe in your righteousness to take such a risky step. For that time it was, without exaggeration to say, a scientific feat.
In an interview with one of the newspapers, Vasiliev expressed the hope that in three years many questions of telepathic communication would be cleared up. However, not only three years, but also several decades were not enough to reveal the great secret of nature.
The research was interrupted by the unexpected death of a prominent neurophysiologist from heart disease on February 8, 1966. There was no other scientist who would "pick up the banner" and continue important experiments with the same enthusiasm.
For one of his books on telepathy, L. L. Vasiliev chose the winged Latin expression as an epigraph: “I did what I could. Whoever can, let him do better. " He was convinced that the research he began would bring invaluable benefits to science, that the development of parapsychology would one day turn our entire civilization on a new path. “You yourself need to work a lot experimentally,” wrote Vasiliev, “to make sure that suggestion exists at a distance. I was personally convinced of this."
Gennady Chernenko. Magazine "Secrets of the XX century" No. 18 2010