slowing their blood cells' destruction. The odds here, gleaned from
　　　　  64 separate sessions, were nearly 200,000 to one.
　　　　  Overall, Braud has performed more than 500 such experiments, all
　　　　  aimed at detecting the nonlocal influence of consciousness -- pure
　　　　  thought--on biological processes as diverse as the spatial
　　　　  orientation of fish, the locomotor activity of small rodents, and
　　　　  the brain rhythms of people. Consciousness, he has concluded,
　　　　  produces verifiable biological effects in distant human 'targets' as
　　　　  well as in bacteria, neurons, cancer cells, enzymes, fungi, mobile
　　　　  algae, plants, protozoa, larvae, insects, chicks, gerbils, cats, and
　　　　  dogs. In human subjects, these "telesomatic" effects occurred even
　　　　  when the target was unaware of the effort. "I very much doubt that
　　　　  mobile algae," Dossey deadpans, "are susceptible to suggestion or
　　　　  the placebo effect."
　　　　  It is doubtful that the majority of Dossey's colleagues will be
　　　　  susceptible to his suggestion: that the mind-body revolution is
　　　　  leading inexorably toward a consciousness revolution--one so
　　　　  profound that some long-cherished scientific truisms may have to be
　　　　  subsumed within a much larger, much stranger framework. The
　　　　  heretical theses being nailed to the church door are unsettling:
　　　　  that mental forces can violate the laws of physical causality; that
　　　　  the mind's influence on the body goes beyond the biochemical links
　　　　  between brain and immune system posited by PNI; that there are
　　　　  things that mind can do that a physical brain could not. What Dossey
　　　　  is talking about in a fairly unvarnished way is the science--or as
　　　　  some would have it, the nonscience or nonsense--of parapsychology, a
　　　　  bastard-turned-prodigal child that may be on the verge of claiming
　　　　  its share of the patrimony.
　　　　  It's not as if it was ever entirely scratched out of the family
　　　　  portrait. William James, the father of American psychology, spent 25
　　　　  years examining psychic phenomena, spritism, and religious
　　　　  experiences, producing a radical empiricism that respectfully made
　　　　  room for altered states. Freud admitted that when it came to such
　　　　  oddities as visions of the future, "attempts at giving a
　　　　  psychological explanation have been inadequate to cover the material
　　　　  collected, however decidely the sympathies of those of a scientific
　　　　  cast of mind may incline against accepting such beliefs."
　　　　  Jung, whose early work was influenced by E.W.H. Meyers, founder of
　　　　  the Society for Psychical Research, conceived of the brain as simply