Observations placeholder

From Psychic Warfare (Threat or Illusion) By Martin Ebon

By 1961, … Vasiliev's psychiatric colleague Professor K-I. Platonov was able to address a Kharkov meeting on telepathy and recall experiments he had conducted in 1924 at the All-Russian Congress of Psychoneurologists, Psychologists and Teachers in Leningrad. Vasiliev, who was present during the original Congress, published Platonov's account in his book. During a meeting of the Congress's Hypnological Section, a female subject, M., sat at the presidential table, facing the audience, while Platonov stood behind a blackboard that hid him from M., although he could be seen by the audience.

Platonov had told the audience earlier that, when he silently covered his face with his hands, he would try to put the subject to sleep hypnotically. His report continued:

"Having covered my face I formed a mental image of the subject M. falling asleep while talking to Prof. G. [who sat next to her on the dais]. I strenuously concentrated my attention on this for about one minute. The result was perfect: M. fell asleep within a few seconds. Awakening was effected in the same way. This was repeated several times."

Platonov's observations included the finding that, when he gave the subject the actual mental suggestion of saying "Go to sleep" or just "Sleep!" he didn't get any results. But when he "visualized the image" of her asleep - or awake, when he wanted to conclude the experiment - he had positive results. He noted that the subject woke up suddenly, "within a few seconds after I had started mentally visualizing her awakening." Platonov emphasized that the subject was "entirely unaware of the nature of the experiment."

Platonov said that his tests should prompt scientists to take these phenomena "extremely seriously."

He concluded that his findings give researchers "the right to search for means of finding a scientific grounding, not only for the phenomena of telepathically inducing sleep, but for many other telepathic phenomena as well."