It has been an honor and a pleasure during the past sixteen years to work among several hundred pioneering souls in the combined fields of psychical research, parapsychology, and psychoenergetics, and each of them deserves my deepest thanks. I am especially grateful to a large group of interested people who have brought both substance and direction to the long and painful hours of research and experimentation, but who would prefer not to be mentioned for professional reasons.
In addition to all the above, the management of SRI International is due special thanks for their long and continued support of a research effort that has frequently come under attack by detractors, and to the numerous staff of the Psychoenergetics Project there. Specific thanks must go to Dr. Harold E. Puthoff, to whom this present book is dedicated, for his staunch support and his ability to endure through hardships, and to Dr. Edwin C. May, Dr. Charles Tart, and to Martha Tompson whose research assistance has been invaluable: and Russell Targ, Hella Hammid, Keith Harrary, and Gary Langford, whose work in analogous problems of ESP has made life more exciting.
I have always been indebted to the early support of the Board of Trustees of the American Society for Psychical Research, and to Dr. Karlis Osis, Dr. Janet Mitchell, and Mrs. Laura F. Knipe; to Dr. Arthur J. Ellison of the University of London and long-time president of the Society for Psychical Research; and to the Parapsychology Foundation and its tremendous library, especially to Mr. Wayne Norman who has helped locate obscure but valuable sources. Creative support has always been forthcoming from Dr. Jan Ehrenwald, Dr. Gertrude R. Schmeidler, Dr. Jacques Vallee, Dr. William A. Tiller, Mr. Trammell Crow, and Mr. Martin Ebon, among many others.
The editorial horrors of making the complex issues talked about in this book more easily accessible have been eased by the professional insights of Eleanor Friede and Barbara Bowen. I am also indebted to Tom Joyce, who has provided the finished original art work, and to Julia Turchuk, who helped organize the many picture drawings in this book.
Last, but far from the least, the most profound debt of gratitude must go to my predecessors who found the courage to bring their fragile talents into the clinical laboratory setting and before an unbelieving world, and because of whose cumulative work this present book has been made possible.