"Seeing" Without Eyes

Research continued throughout the period in the field of training
psychic abilities in children. In March, 1992, seven Hangzhou University
researchers did a six-month experimental study of training
schoolchildren to ''read with the ear'' (develop visual perception
through body parts other than the eye). This project, led by Tian
Weishun and Zhu Huizhong, involved 1222 students from elementary through
high school, of which 623 were boys and 599 were girls. The training
method involved introducing the concept of reading with the ear and
instructing them to clear their heads and concentrate. They then checked
the children's abilities in tests proctored by their schoolteachers.
Their results were that 12.35 percent of children aged seven to thirteen
had the power, but only one female aged 17 had the power among the
students from ages 14 to 18. The best age for training the ability was
found to be nine, at which age the success rate was around 20 percent.

We cite the Chinese source My Research on EHF
by Prof. Tang Jianmin. He also mentions a similar experimental study by
Xu Baoyi of China's Bangbu Medical Institute. This study worked with
1388 teenagers and found that 180 of them were able to see without their
eyes. The largest number of successful subjects was found at age 12,
while the fewest were over 16.

A report by Shao Laisheng and the well-known Zhu Yiyi (editor for China's Nature Magazine)
described work in training young adults aged 18 to 20. They found it
was still possible to train them, but they had greater success with less
educated working people than with university students. They hypothesize
that the university students are busier and less able to achieve the
relaxation and concentration required for successful psychic training.

One
group that has continued working on research in training psychic
children is the ''Human Body Informatics'' group in the electrical
engineering department of Shanghai's Fudan University. In experiments
from 1986 to 1993, they trained 46 children (18 male, 28 female). They
reported that almost all of the children developed both extrasensory
perception and psychokinetic abilities. However, the subjects suffered
from dizziness, head throbbing and fatigue when exercising these
abilities.

X-Ray Vision Studies

A
popular research target in the 1990s has been see-through vision. This
has a good application as a tool for medical diagnosis. Xinjiang
People's Liberation Army Hospital did 117 tests of children's abilities
to perform such medical diagnoses. In 22 cases of examining for diseases
in the head, the children were correct 17 times, partly correct four
times and wrong one time. In 53 cases examining the liver, the results
were: 43 correct, 5 partly correct, four wrong, and one couldn't see
clearly. In 19 trials of viewing fetal position, they were correct 16
times and wrong 3 times. These results were reported in ''Preliminary
Investigation of Modern Medical Verification of EHF'' by Yang Junpeng,
assistant director of the hospital.

Professor
Tang Jianmin published an interesting study of the factors contributing
to see-through vision. He reviews the known results that the power is
prevalent more in females than in males, more in youths than adults,
more in rural areas than in cities, more among American children than
Chinese children, and more among Chinese adults than American adults. He
hypothesizes that the development of see-through vision is affected by
the same factors that affect ordinary vision: relaxation, and spending
less time on activities that focus the vision strongly like reading,
watching television, driving, and doing stressful work. This theory
could explain some of the differences observed. For example, children in
China spend more time reading and studying than children in America, so
this could affect both their vision and their see-through vision.

Chinese Government Shifts Stance

As the 1990s drew to a close, psychic research became a center of controversy, as many masters of chi gong
meditation promoted their practices as a path to mysterious spiritual
powers. The Chinese government took a negative view of some of these
activities, especially those that rejected the use of conventional
medicine. In 1999, the Chinese government banned one of these chi gong
practices, Falun Gong, and issued an arrest warrant for its leader, Li
Hongzhi, who has been living in New York. Many newspaper and magazine
articles in China attacked their mysterious beliefs as superstition.
However, psychic research in a scientific framework has continued to
receive the support of the Chinese government. Paul Dong discusses this
issue in our forthcoming book The Allure of Falun Gong (Welcome
Rain Publishers). It is noteworthy that in the 1980s, many high-ranking
Chinese government officials supported psychic research, but today most
of these have been replaced by a new generation of leaders who have
shown that either they aren't familiar with the research or they don't
believe in it. Thus, the future of psychic research in China is
uncertain, although the work continues today in many institutes in the
country.

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