Mental Radio

Upton Sinclair is a Pulitzer Prize winning author who wrote over one hundred books including the classic novel The Jungle. Sinclair had a deep interest in psychic phenomena and wrote a book called Mental Radio documenting a series of tests he conducted with his wife, Mary Craig Kimbrough, in order to understand her self-claimed telepathic abilities. Sinclair devised a series of 300 tests that were said to prove the reality of mental telepathy and remote viewing while revealing untold powers of the mind.


Sinclair is said to have sat in one room drawing a picture and then placing it into a sealed envelop while Mary, who was in another room, would "tune in" and draw what she perceived. In other tests, Mary would write out a message sent from someone "far away." Her accuracy rate was said to be astonishing ruling out random chance as an explanation. The couple conducted these experiments for a period of three years. They conducted 290 trials consisting of 65 (23%) successes, 155 (53%) partial successes and 70 (24%) failures.

Sinclair used radio broadcasting as a metaphor to explain how telepathy works. One person's brain sent out a mental "vibration" that the other brain picked up. Sinclair concluded that telepathy is real, uneffected by distance and can be trained, verified and scientifically studied.

Mental Radio documents these experiments and includes Mary's instructions on how to learn the "art of conscious mind-reading." William McDougall, known as the "Dean of American Psychology" at the time, was inspired by the Sinclair's work. McDougall went on to establish a parapsychology department at Duke University. Parapsychology is a discipline that seeks to investigate the existence and causes of psychic abilities and life after death using the scientific method.

Mental Radio was originally published in 1930 and republished in 2001 as a part of Hampton Roads series Classics in Conciousness, edited by Russell Targ. The 2001 edition has an addendum containing an analysis of the raw experiment documentation by Dr Walter Franklin Prince of the Boston Society for Psychic Research. Albert Einstein wrote the book's Preface:



I have read the book of Upton Sinclair with great interest and am convinced that the same deserves the most earnest consideration, not only of the laity, but also of the psychologists by profession. The results of the telepathic experiments carefully and plainly set forth in this book stand surely far beyond those which a nature investigator holds to be thinkable. On the other hand, it is out of the question in the case of so conscientious an observer and writer as Upton Sinclair that he is carrying on a conscious deception of the reading world; his good faith and dependability are not to be doubted. So if somehow the facts here set forth rest not upon telepathy, but upon some unconscious hypnotic influence from person to person, this also would be of high psychological interest. In no case should the psychologically interested circles pass over this book heedlessly.

Albert Einstein - Preface - Mental Radio

In order to achieve a receptive state of telepathy and be able to distinguish between true psychic impressions and normal thoughts, Mary suggests, on page 105 of Mental Radio, that you "Give yourself a suggestion to the effect that you will relax your mind and your body, making the body insensitive and the mind a blank , and reserving the power to break the concentration in a short time. By making the body insensitive, I mean simply to relax completely your mental hold of, or awareness of, all bodily sensation. After giving yourself this suggestion a few times, you proceed to relax both body and mind. Relax all mental interest in everything in the environment; inhibit all thoughts which try to wander into consciousness from the subconsciousness, or from wherever else thoughts come." She adds,  "the way to relax is to let go. Let go of every tense muscle, every tense spot, in the body. This deep relaxation is important for if the body is tense it affects the thoughts in the mind. Likewise, if the mind is full of thoughts it will tense the body." More precise instructions are given on the following pages of the book.

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