Fingerprints of God_ The Search for the Science of Spirituality - Barbara Bradley Hagerty [120]
That is how Teena and J. D. Miller found themselves squirreled away in the mountains of northern California, wired to computers that would measure their vital signs and, like a Geiger counter, the seismic activity of their love. And it is how I found myself following the Millers, Schlitz, and Radin down a stone path through the woods to their laboratory nestled in the trees.
Radin led J.D. to a soundproof room, and sat him before a computer screen. Over the next half-hour, Teena’s face would appear on the screen at random intervals, and remain there for ten seconds. During those times, J.D. would send his wife compassionate thoughts. The rest of the time he would think of anything but his wife.
As Radin gave J.D. some last-minute instructions, Schlitz was ushering Teena into the soundproof, electromagnetically shielded room. No noise, no signals of any sort, could enter or leave. Teena settled into the deep armchair and sighed contentedly, absorbing her environment: a plastic ficus tree, soft lighting, pale curtains, and a camera aimed at her face which would allow her husband to see her from the other room. Schlitz leaned down to affix electrodes to Teena’s hand.
“So, this is measuring blood flow in your thumb, and this is measuring your skin conductance activity,” Schlitz explained to Teena. Because they had dismantled much of the equipment after the Love Study was finished, they were measuring only two of the five bodily functions during this replication.
“Basically both of these are measures of your unconscious nervous system. And as you can see, your image is being projected by this little camera into the next room. So your husband will be able to watch you at random times during the session.You won’t know when, so don’t try to guess, because it’s all random.”
“Right,” Teena said, leaning back against the headrest and closing her eyes as Schlitz closed the hermetically sealed door with a soft thud.
A minute later, the experiment began. After a few seconds, Teena’s face appeared on J.D.’s monitor. We knew he was seeing Teena on the monitor and sending her loving intentions for those ten seconds; we gazed at the computer screen recording Teena’s blood flow and skin conductance (that is, the perspiration on her hand). Those ragged or undulating lines would indicate whether Teena was perhaps unconsciously “responding” to J.D.’s thoughts projected from the other room.
“Notice how there’s a change in blood flow?” Radin asked me excitedly, pointing at sine waves on the computer monitor. “A sudden change like that is sometimes associated with an orienting response. If you hear somebody whispering in your ear and there’s nobody around, you have this sense of What? What was that? That’s more or less what we’re seeing in her physiology.”
Thirty minutes passed, during which time J.D. sent thirty-six random packets of “loving intention” to his wife. The experiment ended. Radin slipped off to run through a quick computer analysis of the data. Schlitz walked to the sealed room and opened the door. I followed on her heels, intent on interviewing Teena and J.D. separately, before they could exchange their stories. I was curious to know whether their thoughts as well as their physiology matched in any way.
“What did you experience?” I asked Teena.
“Happiness. It went between my granddaughter and my husband. What goes through my mind is kissing my husband right near his ear, where the whiskers are. I love that spot. And that kept popping into my head, constantly.”
“Were