What do you call a scientist who studies clairvoyance, qigong, and psychic healing not in an effort to disprove them but rather to stake a claim that they actually exist?

Beverly Rubik, whom I interviewed recently, is a UC Berkeley-trained biophysicist, and that's what she does.

At her Oakland, California-based Institute for Frontier Science, Rubik studies the "biofield," the purported life-force energy that is called qi in Chinese martial arts, prana in yoga, and other things in other traditions. She wants to prove the existence of the biofield, calling it "the next step" in science, which would "explain more deeply how the mind works and how the body responds to various types of alternative therapies" that the medical establishment disdains. Proving the existence of the biofield would prove too that the human body is more than "just a bag of biomolecules," asserts Rubik, who describes her current project as "investigating high-frequency brainwaves that may be involved in higher states of consciousness."

It works like this: Neurotek neurofeedback devices around the heads of habitual meditators. Fitted with electrodes and revealing levels of brain activity, the devices show that the meditators' brains ae able to produce higher frequencies than do the brains of non-meditators who are also included in the experiment, under neurofeedback. Significantly, the frontal portions of some meditators' brains - the region known in esoteric circles located just above the "third eye" - consistently operate at a speed of 40 hertz, especially Tibetan Buddhist meditators. And according to a rapidly expanding coterie whose seemingly disparate contingents include scientists, psychics, and makers of techno music, her research has shown that this high frequency is associated with feelings of love, joy, gratitude, clairvoyance, and childlike wonder.