Andrija Puharich
Andrija Henry Puharich, M.D. (February 19, 1918 – January 3, 1995), born in Chicago, made significant contributions to medicine, neurophysiology, mind sciences, and medical electronics through his researches and inventions in these fields. He graduated from Northwestern University Medical School in 1947 and completed his residency in internal medicine at Permanente Hospital in California. His interest in psychic research developed from an academic curiosity about telepathy.
In 1948 he established the Round Table Foundation in Maine. There he conceived and developed a series of experiments to enhance ESP in sensitives by means of electronic systems. Among his colleagues and research associate were author Aldous Huxley and Dr. Samuel Rosen, world-renowned ear surgeon. Puharich’s first research subject was Eileen Garrett, the late medium who founded the Parapsychology Foundation, and the results of this research convinced him that telepathy existed.
Puharich brought the Dutch sensitive Peter Hurkos to America for investigation and was the first to study this gifted psychic. His experiments teaming Hurkos with another sensitive, Harry Stone, produced extraordinary results when both subjects were in an electrified Faraday cage. These experiments are now regarded as classic in the field. Puharich also studied the Indian sage and teacher Dr. D. G. Vinod, whose powers of materialization and contact with nonterrestrials opened new possibilities in preparing the way for Puharich’s future work.
In 1958 he moved his laboratory to Carmel, California, where he continued his researches and served as a consultant to industrial corporations, foundations, and universities.
In 1960 he headed a research expedition to Oaxaca, Mexico, to study the sacred mushroom rite of the Chatino Indians. He is the first known outsider to participate in the sacred rites of the Chatinos and to document it on film. The following year he went to Hawaii at the invitation of David Bray, last of the royal line of Kahuna priests. After intense, training and development, which awakened his own powers of consciousness, Puharich became the first non-Hawaiian to be initiated into the Kahuna priesthood, a tradition dating back thousands of years. While in Hawaii, Puharich discovered the first hallucinogenic mushrooms ever found in the islands.
Later that year, he moved to New York and founded Intelectron Corporation (with J. L. Lawrence), to develop electronic systems for aiding hearing in nerve deafness. He served as president and director of research for ten years and holds fifty-six United States and foreign patents for his inventions. He has also applied for patents on his systems to enhance ESP, which have become the issue of a long-standing debate with the U. S. Patent Office and are assuming the stature of classic cases in the legal literature.
From 1963 to 1968 Puharich led a number of medical research expeditions to Brazil to study the healer Arigó. Arigó’s totally unorthodox surgery and healing powers defied every rule of medicine. While in Brazil, he first became aware of UFOs, where he saw and photographed a number of them.
