Remote viewing

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Remote viewing (RV) is a term coined by Ingo Swann at the Stanford Research Institute, to describe a procedural approach to clairvoyance.

Contents

Process

Purportedly remote viewers in a state of deep meditation can gather information on a designated target removed from the physical presence of the viewer. The target need not be confined to the present, and may be either in the future or past. Sense impressions are gathered, with more detail revealed typically as the session progresses, as the viewer tunes into the emotions, sights, sounds, smells, and textures of the target.

Proponents argue that Remote Viewing is distinguished from other forms of clairvoyance in that it follows a specific experimental protocol (or some variant of it). Under the remote viewing family of protocols, the viewer is blind to the target, i.e. is not explicitly told what the target is. One common method is that the target is described either in writing or by a photograph or by some set of coordinates (e.g. latitude & longitude), the latter of which may be encrypted.

The description is then placed in a double-set of opaque envelopes which may be shown to the viewer or its location described to the viewer, but which the viewer is not allowed to touch or open during the viewing session. The viewer then writes down whatever information he can gather about the target, typically including drawings and gestalt impressions as well as visual details (and sometimes auditory or kinesthetic details as well). The viewing session is often administered or facilitated by a second person called the monitor.

The output of the viewing session is evaluated by a third person, the analyst or evaluator, who matches or ranks the output against a pool consisting of the actual target with some number of decoy or dummy targets. In research scenarios (experiments) the monitor and analyst are also blind to the target along with the viewer until the evaluation is complete. The viewer is typically given information about the target after the evaluation is complete, especially during training sessions.

In the opinion of most of its proponents, remote viewing is a skill that typically improves with training. Joseph McMoneagle, one of the original Stargate Project remote viewers, wrote in his book "Remote Viewing Secrets" that the remote viewing protocol is not suitable for viewing unverifiable locations, because feedback is an essential part of the training process in the remote viewing protocol. One learns what a mental surface 'feels' like, one learns what a missile silo feels like, and so forth.

Some variations on the remote viewing protocol have names or adjectives:

  • Outbounder Remote Viewing has a person (the outbounder) physically present at the target site acting as a "beacon" to identify the target site. This was one of the earliest protocols used in the SRI program.
  • Extended Remote Viewing (ERV) refers to the first protocol used in applications at Fort Meade.
  • Coordinate (or Controlled) Remote Viewing (CRV) in which target sites were originally described in terms of geographical coordinates, later generalized to any (non-descriptive) identifying code used to identify a target to the viewer. Originally suggested by Ingo Swann and developed at SRI. This technology was the basis which allowed remote viewing to be taught to non-psychics.
  • Technical Remote Viewing (TRV), which is a trademarked term of one company's offered training PSI TECH, based upon CRV, incorporating advanced tools developed in the latter years of the DIA operational unit and in the private sector
  • Associative Remote Viewing (ARV) is a variant which adds a level of indirection, specifically proxy targets are associated to events in order to answer binary (yes/no) questions. Often applied to predicting future events.

A substantial amount of remote viewing procedural training literature is also claimed to be held, under trademark, copyright and patent protection, by such companies such as PSI TECH and it's subsidiary Technical Remote Viewing Univeristy. Access to this literature is restricted, as some is available on its web site for free, but much is only available for a substantial fee. There is a so called declassified remote viewing manual offered on several websites, but it was authored by Paul Smith as a tactic to win congressional funding, and even Paul does not endorse its use as appropriate training material.

Development History

The credit for the original concept of remote viewing, has been publicly given by McMoneagle and Swann to Ren� Warcollier, a French chemical engineer. A series of experiments in telepathic communication were conducted in the early 20th century, where participants sought to transmit drawings using the power of the mind, to subjects who would record their impressions on paper. In the book Mind to Mind prefaced by Swann in recent printings, Warcollier describes his pioneering work in detail. However, this work is both obscure, and largely forgotten.

Modern development interest began in 1972, when Dr. Hal Puthoff, a researcher at SRI (Stanford Research Institute), put forth a series of proposals to study quantum mechanics in life processes. His paper outlining the intended research, Toward a Quantum Theory of Life Process, was not accepted, but was circulated to a number of people involved in similar research, including Clive Backster who was using polygraphs to study electrical processes in plants.

A local artist, Ingo Swann, happened to read the paper while visiting Backster's laboratory, and wrote back suggesting that he should instead study parapsychological effects. He described a number of such studies that he had been involved with at the City College of New York. Puthoff was interested and invited Swann to SRI for a week in 1972. Prior to the meeting Puthoff had set up test equipment below the room in which Swann demonstrated his talents, all of which recorded anomalies. As a result of this meeting, Puthoff became convinced the matter was worth additional study, and published a short report on the meetings.

CIA Involvement

A few weeks later several people from the CIA arrived. The U.S., and the CIA in particular, actively read most published research from the USSR in order to keep abreast of their developments. When they learned that the USSR had serious programs pursuing the development and application of PSI abilities, they decided to fund research to evaluate the potential threat from this direction. Puthoff's report came to their attention and they decided that SRI would be a perfect place to carry out a small research project of their own.

Puthoff then arranged a meeting between members of the CIA delegation and Swann. Small objects were placed in boxes and Swann was asked to describe them, with results that were apparently "good enough" to convince the CIA to fund the project. The result was an eight-month pilot study, the Biofield Measurements Program. Joined by another interested SRI researcher, Russell Targ, the project got underway in late 1972.

Early Tests

Early tests in the program were similar to those of the demonstrations for the CIA. Documents placed in envelopes or objects in boxes were "viewed" and recorded (either verbally or as a drawing), with the results being judged by a 3rd party who had previously seen neither. By the end of the series they had changed the tests to include "outbound" studies in which the viewers (at this point there were about a dozen involved on and off) were asked to describe locations around the San Francisco, California area (home to SRI).

During this period Swann suggested yet another change to the study, wherein the viewers would view a location given nothing but its geographical coordinates. Puthoff and Targ were skeptical, but developed a series of test procedures to try it out. The CIA sent back the coordinates of a site to be viewed, one in West Virginia and another in the Urals. Funding was continued for another year.

Operational Viewing

Now into the second year, the CIA decided to try to use the viewers on an operational target, the nuclear test facilities at Semipalatinsk, USSR (now Kazakhstan). The viewer, Pat Price, returned a series of drawings, including a building layout "from above", details of several of the buildings, and a drawing of what was interpreted to be a large gantry crane. The site did indeed contain a gantry crane, and further studies were suggested.

Phase II studies were more subjective, with members of the CIA "interviewing" the viewers about the Semipalatinsk site. Phase III was a longer series of additional viewings of the site, along with other studies of a more general nature. These studies had all ended by 1975.

At that point a CIA overview of the project concluded that evidence for the workings of remote viewing was shaky at best. For instance, in the original Phase I Semipalatinsk tests were generally negative, with only the gantry crane being considered close to a match. The "hit" could have been due to a successful remote viewing, or it could have been plain luck, and the problem was that there was no way to verify which was which. They decided to withdraw from further testing.

However, additional funding was soon forthcoming from both the DIA and Department of Defense, under the name Stargate Project. During this period the nature of the studies expanded from remote viewing to just about any psychic phenomenon, including the testing of Uri Geller's abilities to bend spoons. This era continued into the 1980s with additional small-scale funding throughout this period.

SAIC Involvement

The project was moved to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in 1992, after new civilian management had brought in tarrow readers and fortune tellers in 1989, departing from the CRV protocols, where it was hoped that better experimental controls would be in place. SAIC ran the program until 1994, but apparently called for their own review of the work. In 1995 the program was put under review by a small panel appointed by the American Institutes for Research (AIR).

In 1995 Jessica Utts and Ray Hyman both wrote reports on the project, commenting almost entirely on the SAIC experiments. The Utts report focused on statistical significance of the results beyond chance, and on the statistical matches between the SAIC experiments and those of other related PSI experiments. Utts wrote that the magnitude of the effect remained consistent across modifications to the experimental design, and that the magnitude of the effect corresponded to other experiments conducted elsewhere. Utts also wrote that the SRI results showed a significance of 1020 to 1. The Utts report claimed that this these two types of statistical evidence are strong evidence of remote viewing demonstrating a real ability.

Hyman's report disputed this conclusion, notably because the comparison requires results from experiments that have generally been discarded as being inaccurate. He noted a continued series of experiments that were offered up as "incontestable proof" of PSI, only to be discarded when problems with the experiment were discovered. Hyman wrote that the SAIC experiments may indeed be demonstrating a real effect, but that they must do so on their own, and he wrote that it is not clear that they are strong enough to do so. After these reports, funding was discontinued for the project.

Current

Due to the secrecy intrinsic to espionage, it is unknown whether remote viewing is still in use or still being researched within the intelligence community. Reportedly the Indian government is among the leading spenders in this area, but little is known of their program.

Much of what we now know about the process, comes from the extreme frustration project members felt, when their methodical work on protocol development was disregarded, and casual tarrow readers brought in. The process was taken public in large part, because many members of the research community felt the government lacked the level of competence required to manage the work.

Today many private individuals, companies and non-profit organizations claim to be conducting continued research on remote viewing, although few of these claims are related to the protcol based work refined under the guise of the Stargate Project. Remote viewing has become a generic term for clairvoyance.


Names of Note

Major General Albert Stubblebein

A key sponsor of the research internally at Fort Meade, convinced of the reality of a wide variety of psychic phenomena, he never mastered walking through walls, although he did greatly bruise his noise in numerous attempts. In the early 1980s was responsible for Army intelligence. Some commentators have confused 'Project Jedi' run by special forces primarily out of Fort Bragg with Stargate. In fact General Stubblebein was poorly received when he visited Fort Bragg, and did not participate nor was aware of the goat lab experiments being conducted.

Ingo Swann

Coined the term 'remote viewing' as a derivation of protocols originally developed by Ren� Warcollier, a French chemical engineer in the early 20th century, documented in the book Mind to Mind. Swann's achievement was to break free from the conventional mould of casual experimentation and candidate burn out, and develop a viable set of protocols that put clairvoyance within a framework named �Coordinate Remote Viewing� (CRV).

Joe McMoneagle

In the early 1970's Joe had a Near Death Experience (NDE) that bestowed him with exceptional psychic powers. Widely considered a "natural," Joe has stated that remote viewing ability is predominately determined by innate talent. While many disagree with this statement, it is notable none of his critics seem able to work to the same level as Joe. Joe's definition implies that remote viewing is any psychic undertaking that is performed under scientific protocols.

Lyn Buchanan

A sergeant brought in by General Stubblebein for two main reasons. Firstly extraordinary telekinetic abilities, secondly computer software expertise. This made him exceptionally well qualified to be the data base manager for the Stargate project. From this vantage point, Lyn had the opportunity to work with all the key members of the unit, and in possession of statistical analysis of the session data, was able to properly assess the accuracy of the session data obtained. After leaving the forces, Lyn founded Problems, Innovations, Solutions, contracted Mel Riley to work for his company, and continues to undertake private tuition.

Mel Riley

Army Sergeant who retired in 1991. Mel is another natural psychic, and was noted for being able to describe what lay under objects in aerial photography. This aroused inconclusive interest in the 1970s. In 1984, the CRV unit had only several trained remote viewers, and Mel was requested transferred to the unit. Based upon his innate ability, with training in the CRV protocols, Mel quickly became an impressive remote viewer. Mel was featured in the documentary released in 1995 by the BBC titled "The Real X-Files." He has recounted past life experiences as a Native American, and continues to be involved in native American culture, enjoying a quiet life with his wife.

Paul H. Smith

Retired U.S. Army Major and intelligence officer. Paul was one of the five people trained as a prototype test subject in Ingo Swann's psychic development of the Coordinate Remote Viewing (CRV) protocols in 1983. Paul was later assigned to work part time in the Defense Intelligence Agency�s remote viewing unit. He was the main author of what is known today as the �CRV Manual� which was written as an effort to describe CRV technology for the sole purpose to solicit continued annual funding for the unit from congress. The CRV manual was not written under the guidance of Ingo Swann, nor was it written for the purpose of teaching CRV. Paul, having natural artistic abilities, produced impressive CRV session sketches. He always preferred to remote view in the blind, being tasked with CRV coordinates by a project manager. Paul rarely took the initiative to perform CRV session analysis of his own work or to operate as the team project manager.

Ed Dames

One of the first five who were trained by Ingo Swann in the Coordinate Remote Viewing protocols. Quickly established a reputation for pushing CRV to extremes, with target sessions on Atlantis, Mars, UFOs, and aliens. Many in the unit despised him for this. Joe McMoneagle has expressed the opinion session feedback is required to learn CRV, and this could not be obtained when targeting such unverifiable locations. Eventually Mel Riley got so fed up with Ed, a fake session was arranged, when they described Santa coming over the North Pole in his sleigh. With his ever active imagination, Ed immediately deduced an object over the north pole was a nuclear attack, and was set to call the highest levels of the military, before he was informed of the prank. Internally, his reputation never recovered.

David Morehouse

Dames brought David Morehouse into the DIA's Remote Viewing unit during its final days. David has a somewhat troubled past, and is primarily notable for producing a largely fictionalised account of the limited time he spent as a remote viewer called Psychic Warrior.

  • Jonina Dourif, remote viewer.
  • Edwin May, program member since mid-1970s and STAR GATE program director from 1986 until the close of the program.
  • Hal Puthoff, physicist and original program director.
  • Russell Targ, physicist and program member.

External Links

Regarding the AIR evaluations:

Remote Viewing Proponent links:


Psychic Links:

Of historical interest:

Papers on remote viewing applied to marine archeology:

Remote viewing data about extraterrestrial life:

Articles disputing the scientific value of Remote Viewing research:


References

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