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Remote viewing

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Remote viewing (RV) is the purported ability for a person to gather information on a remote target that is hidden from the physical perception of the viewer and typically separated from the viewer at some distance, a form of extra-sensory perception.[1][2] The term was introduced by Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff in 1974.[3]

As with other forms of extra-sensory perception, the objective validity of remote viewing has not been proved, and critics such as Randi and Clarke in An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural explain RV by normal means.[4]

History

From World War II until the 1970s the US government occasionally funded ESP research. When the US intelligence community learned that the USSR and China were conducting ESP research it became receptive to the idea of having its own competing psi research program. (Schnabel 1997)

Early SRI experiments

Template:Partisan

The report of a low-key psi experiment conducted in 1972 by SRI laser physicist, Hal Puthoff, with purported psychic Ingo Swann led to a visit from two employees of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology. The immediate result was a $50,000 CIA-sponsored project. (Schnabel 1997, Puthoff 1996, Kress 1977/1999, Smith 2005) As research continued, the SRI team published papers in Nature (Targ & Puthoff, 1974), in Proceedings of the IEEE (Puthoff & Targ, 1976), and in the proceedings of a symposium on consciousness for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Puthoff, et al, 1981).

The initial CIA-funded project was later renewed and expanded. A number of CIA officials including John McMahon, then the head of the Office of Technical Service and later the Agency's deputy director, became strong supporters of the program. By the mid 1970s, facing the post-Watergate revelations of its "skeletons," and after internal criticism of the program, the CIA dropped sponsorship of the SRI research effort. Sponsorship was picked up by the Air Force, led by analyst Dale E. Graff of the Foreign Technology Division. In 1979, the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, which had been providing some taskings to the SRI investigators, was ordered to develop its own program by the Army's chief intelligence officer, Gen. Ed Thompson. CIA operations officers, working from McMahon's office and other offices, also continued to provide taskings to SRI's subjects. (Schnabel 1997, Smith 2005, Atwater 2001)

The program had three parts (Mumford, et al, 1995). First was the evaluation of psi research performed by the U.S.S.R. and China, which appears to have been better-funded and better-supported than the government research in the U.S. (Schnabel 1997)

In the second part of the program, SRI managed its own stable of "natural" psychics both for research purposes and to make them available for tasking by a variety of US intelligence agencies. The most famous results from these years were the description of a big crane at a Soviet nuclear research facility (Kress 1977/199, Targ 1996), the description of a new class of Soviet strategic submarine (Smith 2005, McMoneagle 2002) and the location of a downed Soviet bomber in Africa (which former President Carter later referred to in speeches). By the early 1980s numerous offices throughout the intelligence community were providing taskings to SRI's psychics. (Schnabel 1997, Smith 2005)

The third branch of the program was a research project intended to find out if ESP -- now called "remote viewing" -- could be made accurate and reliable. The intelligence community offices that tasked the group seemed to believe that the phenomenon was real. But in the view of these taskers, a remote viewer could be "on" one day and "off" the next, a fact that made it hard for the technique to be officially accepted. Through SRI, individuals were studied for years in a search for physical (e.g., brain-wave) correlates that might reveal when they were "on- or off-target".

At SRI, Ingo Swann and Hal Puthoff also developed a remote-viewing training program meant to enable any individual with a suitable background to produce useful data. As part of this project, a number of military officers and civilians were trained and formed a military remote viewing unit, based at Fort Meade, Maryland. (Schnabel 1997, Smith 2005, McMoneagle 2002)

Decline and Termination

Template:Partisan A struggle between unbelievers and "true believers" in the sponsor organisations provided much of the program's actual drama. Each side seems to have been utterly convinced that the other's views were wrong. (Schnabel 1997, Smith 2005)

In the early 1990s the Military Intelligence Board, chaired by DIA chief Soyster, appointed an Army Colonel, William Johnson, to manage the remote viewing unit and evaluate its objective usefulness. According to an account by former SRI-trained remote-viewer, Paul Smith (2005), Johnson spent several months running the remote viewing unit against military and DEA targets, and ended up a believer, not only in remote viewing's validity as a phenomenon but in its usefulness as an intelligence tool.

After the Democrats lost control of the Senate in late 1994, funding declined and the program went into decline. The project was transferred out of DIA to the CIA in 1995, with the promise that it would be evaluated there, but most participants in the program believed that it would be terminated. (Schnabel 1997, Smith 2005, Mumford, et al 1995)

Distant Viewing and Stephan Schwartz

Parallel with the work at SRI, Stephan A. Schwartz, who had just left government as Special Assistant to the US Chief of Naval Operations, developed almost the same protocol which he called Distant Viewing[5] To study this, he began a research laboratory known as Mobius. A central question in the seminal IEEE paper (Puthoff & Targ, 1976) was whether RV was electromagnetic in nature, or something else. Schwartz had begun to consider how this might be studied in 1973, after reading the work of Soviet Academician Leonid Vasiliev, the tutor for Russian psychic Nina Kulagina,[6]. This work had eliminated all of the EM spectrum except for very low frequency ranges, known as ELF.

Testing in the ELF range required a submarine, because the only shield for ELF is hundreds of feet of seawater. In 1976, Schwartz was offered access to a small research submersible capable of going to the depths required by University of Southern California Institute for Marine and Coastal Studies. In 1977, just as the experiment was about to go to sea, he invited SRI to assist him in carrying out his study. The Project, known as Deep Quest, and carried out with logistical support from the USC Institute. It took place in the waters off Santa Catalina Island. Two Remote Viewings, one by Hella Hammid,[7] one by Ingo Swann described where target individuals were hiding in California. Both sessions were conducted while the submarine was at depth, and both were successful.

The experiment also tested a protocol Schwartz had devised involving five multiple viewers. [8] Four were given charts of the Pacific ocean and were asked to locate an unknown wreck on the seafloor. They chose as their location a 10 mile square area near Santa Catalina.[9] The sunken vessel was determined by the Bureau of Land Management Marine Sites Board to be previously unknown. A documentary was shot as the events took place of the entire project was made.[Schwartz, 1977, 2007][citation needed] But the riches which Schwartz and his investors have sought in their many undersea expediditions have never been found.[10] The ship Schwartz's team found on the Bahamas Banks was carrying molasses, not the treasure that was their goal.[11]

Schwartz also claims he was involved in the discovery and the first modern mapping of the Eastern Harbor of Alexandria and the discovery of numerous shipwrecks as well as Mark Anthony's palace in Alexandria, the Ptolemaic Palace Complex of Cleopatra, and the remains of the Lighthouse of Pharos, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Much of this was discounted by two on-site Egyptian scholars whom Schwartz had listed as research associates, Dr. Shehetta Adam, head of Egypt's Department of Antiquities and Dr. Mostafa El Abbadi [12].

AIR Evaluation of Remote Viewing

In 1995, the CIA hired the American Institutes for Research, a perennial intelligence-industry contractor, to perform a retrospective evaluation of the results generated by the remote-viewing program, the Stargate Project. Most of the program's results were not seen by the evaluators, with the report focusing on the most recent experiments, and only from government-sponsored research.[13] One of the reviewers was Ray Hyman, a long-time critic of psi research while another was Jessica Utts who, as a supporter of psi, was chosen to put forward the pro-psi argument. Utts maintained that there had been a statistically significant positive effect, with some subjects scoring 5%-15% above chance.[14] Ray Hyman argued that Utts' conclusion that ESP had been proven to exist, "especially precognition, is premature and that present findings have yet to be independently replicated".[15] Based upon both of their collected findings, which recommended a higher level of critical research and tighter controls, the program was officially terminated. [14].[16]

The Stargate Project was one of a number of code names for government "remote viewing programs". Others included Sun Streak, Grill Flame, Center Lane by DIA and INSCOM, and SCANATE by CIA, from the 1970s, through to 1995. It was an offshoot of research done at Stanford Research Institute (SRI).[17]

The project was eventually terminated, according to the official report at the time, because there was insufficient evidence of the utility of the intelligence data produced. David Goslin, of the American Institute for Research said, "There's no documented evidence it had any value to the intelligence community."[16]

In 1995 the project was transferred to the CIA and a retrospective evaluation of the results was done. The CIA contracted the American Institutes for Research for this evaluation. An analysis conducted by parapsychologist Jessica Utts showed a statistically significant effect, with some subjects scoring 5%-15% above chance, though subject reports included a large amount of irrelevant information, and when reports did seem on target they were vague and general in nature.[14] Skeptic Ray Hyman concluded a null result[14] Based upon both of their collected findings, which recommended a higher level of critical research and tighter controls, the CIA terminated the 20 million dollar project.[16] Time magazine stated in 1995 three full-time psychics were still working on a $500,000-a-year budget out of Fort Meade, Maryland, which would soon be shut down,[16] which occurred in 1996.[18]

Criticism

According to Dr. David Marks in experiments conducted in the 1970s at the Stanford Research Institute, the notes given to the judges contained clues as to which order they were carried out, such as referring to yesterday's two targets, or they had the date of the session written at the top of the page. Dr. Marks concluded that these clues were the reason for the experiment's high hit rates.[19][20]

Dr. Marks has also suggested that the participants of remote viewing experiments are influenced by subjective validation, a process through which correspondences are perceived between stimuli that are in fact associated purely randomly. [21] Details and transcripts of the SRI remote viewing experiments themselves were found to be edited and even unattainable.[22][23][24]

Others have said that, the information from remote viewing sessions can be vague and include a lot of erroneous data.[14] The 1995 report for the American Institute for Research "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications" by Mumford, Rose and Goslin, contains a section of anonymous reports describing how remote viewing was tentatively used in a number of operational situations. The three reports conclude that the data was too vague to be of any use, and in the report that offers the most positive results the writer notes that the viewers "had some knowledge of the target organizations and their operations but not the background of the particular tasking at hand."[14]

According to James Randi, controlled tests by several other researchers, eliminating several sources of cuing and extraneous evidence present in the original tests, produced negative results. Students were also able to solve Puthoff and Targ's locations from the clues that had inadvertently been included in the transcripts.[25]

  • In the NBC television series Heroes, the character Molly Walker has the ability to see and locate anybody on earth simply by thinking about them.
  • In the movie Suspect Zero detectives must track a killer who has the Remote Viewing ability. A major theme of the film is remote viewing, and the DVD's extra features include interviews with people who worked with the US military and intelligence agencies as part of those programs.
  • In the second season of The Dead Zone, episode 16 (The Hunt) involves the protagonist being recruited by a covert government remote viewing team. He enables the team to provide real-time intelligence information to U.S. special forces engaging with terrorists in Afghanistan.
  • Remote Viewing is a common topic on the late-night radio talk show Coast to Coast AM.
  • In the video games Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy and Second Sight, the main characters have remote viewing as one of their abilities.
  • In the science fiction novel Three Days to Never by Tim Powers one character is a psychic spy, but also blind, using her Remote Viewing to see normally through the eyes of others. The underground US military Remote Viewing spy training facility in the desert which honed her RV capabilities as a child is loosely based on an actual CIA program which existed until the 1980s.
  • In the TV series Numb3rs, season two episode "Mind Games" features John Glover as a remote viewer who assists Eppes' FBI team with a case.
  • In the animated TV series Delta State, one of the four protagonists has the power of remote viewing.
  • In the book Sole Survivor by Dean Koontz, a genetically modified remote viewer is able to possess control of a persons body at any location, usually indoors.
  • There are numerous references to remote viewing in the TV series the X-Files. Particularly in the last episode of season 6 when David Duchovny's character Fox Mulder suddenly develops the ability to remote view after exposure to a fragment of an alien spacecraft.

Selected RV study participants

  • Ingo Swann, one of the founders of remote viewing
  • Pat Price, one of the early remote viewers
  • Paul Smith, credited with authoring/editing what is known today as the “CRV Manual”. The CRV manual was never intended to be a "training manual" per se, nor a replacement for proper training by a qualified instructor. It's purpose was simply to serve as a guide and a reference for the terminology to obtain government funding. Smith has published articles on remote viewing in UFO Magazine, and about dowsing and remote viewing in The American Dowser, the quarterly journal of the American Society of Dowsers. His book Reading the Enemy's Mind was the book bonus feature for the March 2006 Reader's Digest. [26]
  • Russell Targ, cofounder of the Stanford Research Institute's investigation into psychic abilities in the 1970s and 1980s
  • Joseph McMoneagle, one of the early remote viewers.[27] See: Stargate Project
  • Ed Dames, formerly associated with PSI TECH, Inc.
  • Courtney Brown, founder of the Farsight Institute
  • David Morehouse, remote viewer during Stargate program
  • Lyn Buchanan
  • David Marks, the critic of remote viewing, after finding sensory cues and editing in the original transcripts generated by Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff at Stanford Research Institute in the 1970s
  • Gerald O'Donnell, Founder and President of the Academy of Remote Viewing and Remote Influencing Reality and Thought

Books

  • David Marks, Ph.D., "The Psychology of the Psychic (2nd edn.)" Prometheus Books, 2000. ISBN 1-57392-798-8
  • Courtney Brown, Ph.D., Remote Viewing : The Science and Theory of Nonphysical Perception. Farsight Press, 2005. ISBN 0-9766762-1-4
  • David Morehouse, Psychic Warrior, St. Martin's, 1996, ISBN 0-312-96413-7
  • Jim Schnabel, Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies, Dell, 1997 , ISBN 0-440-22306-7
  • Paul H. Smith, Reading the Enemy's Mind: Inside Star Gate -- America's Psychic Espionage Program, Forge, 2005, ISBN 0-312-87515-0
  • Ronson, Jon, The Men who Stare at Goats, Picador, 2004, ISBN 0-330-37547-4, written to accompany the TV series The Crazy Rulers of the World [3]The military budget cuts after Vietnam and how it all began.
  • Paolini, Christopher Eragon & Eldest Knopf publishing, 1989 ISBN 0-432-2191-5
  • Buchanan, Lyn, The Seventh Sense: The Secrets Of Remote Viewing As Told By A "Psychic Spy" For The U.S. Military, ISBN 0-7434-6268-8
  • F. Holmes Atwater, Captain of My Ship, Master of My Soul: Living with Guidance, Hampton Roads 2001, ISBN 1-57174-247-6
  • McMoneagle, Joseph, The Stargate Chronicles: Memoirs of a Psychic Spy, Hampton Roads 2002, ISBN 1-57174-225-5
  • Targ, Russell and Hurtak, J.J.The End of Suffering2006, Hampton Roads.

Papers

  • Utts and Josephson, The Paranormal: The Evidence and Its Implications for Consciousness, 1996 [4]

References

  1. ^ Search for the Soul by Milbourne Christopher, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1979
  2. ^ Kiss the Earth Good-bye: Adventures and Discoveries in the Nonmaterial, Recounted by the Man who has Astounded Physicists and Parapsychologists Throughout the World by Ingo Swann, Hawthorne Books, 1975
  3. ^ http://parapsych.org/glossary_l_r.html#r Parapsychological Association website, Glossary of Key Words Frequently Used in Parapsychology, Retrieved January 8, 2006
  4. ^ Randi & Clarke, An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural "Remote viewing" definition
  5. ^ http://www.iskenderiye.com/story/stephan-a-schwartz/
  6. ^ http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:srDADU4mSi8J:www.uri-geller.com/potm27.htm+leonid+vasiliev+pk&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
  7. ^ http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/rvandlayers.html Ingo Swann describes Hella Hammid's RV abilities and the RV process
  8. ^ "Both the research and applications fail to statically support a reality that multiple viewrs increase the amount or the degree of accuracy about a specific target." The Ultimate Time Machine by Joseph McMoneagle, Hampton Roads Publishing Co.,Inc.,1998, p.30
  9. ^ Psychic Powers: Mysteries of the Unknown edited by Henry Anatole Greenwald, Consultants: Stephan A. Schwartz, Marcello Truzzi, and James G. Matlock, archivist of the ASPR library, Time-Life Books, 1987, p.124
  10. ^ The Blue Sense: Psychic Detectives and Crime by Arthur Lyons and Marcello Truzzi, Ph.D., The Mysterious Press, 1991, pp 76 & 77
  11. ^ Parapsychology: The Controversial Science by Richard S. Broughton, Ph.D., Ballantine books, 1991, p.338
  12. ^ The Blue Sense: Psychic Detectives and Crime by Arthur Lyons and Marcello Truzzi, Ph.D., The Mysterious Press, 1991, p.77
  13. ^ May, E.C., “The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A Commentary”, The Journal of Parapsychology. 60, pp 3-23, March 1996
  14. ^ a b c d e f http://psiland.free.fr/dossiers/parapsy/psi_defense/remote.pdf "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications" by Mumford, Rose and Goslin
  15. ^ [1] Evaluation of a Program on Anomalous Mental Phenomena by Ray Hyman.
  16. ^ a b c d Time magazine, 11 Dec 1995, p.48, The Vision Thing by Douglas Waller, Washington Cite error: The named reference "Time" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  17. ^ CIA-Initiated Remote Viewing At Stanford Research Institute
  18. ^ US News and World Report, January 19, 2003 Enemies in the mind's eye by Marianne Szegedy-Maszak and Charles Fenyves
  19. ^ Marks, D.F. & Kammann, R. (1978). "Information transmission in remote viewing experiments", Nature, 274:680-81.
  20. ^ http://www.nap.edu/books/POD276/html/647.html "A comprehensive review of major empirical studies in parapsychology involving random event generators or remote viewing" by Alcock, J.
  21. ^ Marks, D.F. (2000). The Psychology of the Psychic. Amherst, New York:Prometheus Books.
  22. ^ The Psychology of the Psychic by David Marks and Richard Kamman, Prometheus Books. Amherst, New York, 2000, 2nd edition. 1st edition, 1980, does not contain all of this information
  23. ^ [2] Book review of 2nd edition by James Alcock
  24. ^ Flim Flam by James Randi, Prometheus books, New York, 1987, 9th printing
  25. ^ Remote viewing at the Randi Educational Foundation
  26. ^ http://www.learndowsing.com/aboutpaul.cfm
  27. ^ Mind Trek: Exploring Consciousness, Time, and Space Through Remote Viewing by Joseph McMoneagle, Hampton Roads, Publishing Co., Inc., 1997

Stargate FOIA (freedom of information act) remote viewing documents and other remote viewing files and history can be found at remoteviewed.com

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