Dr. Serena Roney Dougal - a parapsychologist collaborator

For the past two years, Dr. Serena Roney Dougal has been assisting me with research. Serena is one of the few people in Britain to have obtained a PhD for a parapsychological thesis, exploring the relationship between subliminal perception and telepathy. She has had over 30 years of study and experience in scientific, magical and spiritual aspects of the psychic and currently lives, researches and lectures between the UK and India. She has written two books “Where Science and Magic Meet”, and “The Faery Faith”.

On Serena’s recommendation, I went to the Society of Psychical Research Annual Conference (Manchester: Sept 03) to hear about current research in the field: Rupert Sheldrake and his work with a telepathic grey parrot, a psychic lottery project, Serena’s research into heightened psi states in yoga students, the impressive evidence of the Jacqui Poole case, Adrian Parker’s recent work using the digital Ganzfeld, to name a few examples - an eclectic and eccentric mix of people and information.

Serena has continued to collaborate in our research explaining all sorts of phenomena, theories and terminology.

In November 2003, I asked her to run a ganzfeld experiment with us using static picture targets - she agreed to be the experimenter.

The ganzfeld experiment has proved to be a core influence in our working process, with the experiment providing an active structure and timing for both our devising process, and the 45 minute performance.

The field of psi seems to open up to include the study of the whole universe. This collaboration with Serena has enabled us to focus specifically on a few important ideas, and her book “Where Science and Magic Meet has been a key source for our research.

The Society of Psychical Research also continued to be a vital resource for my research. In September 2004 I returned for the Annual Conference this time as a speaker, to present a paper on the project and show a film of the work.

>>>psi and performance:
a paper presented at SPR Conference September 2004