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Remote viewing

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Remote viewing (RV) is a form of clairvoyance by which a viewer is said to use his or her clairvoyant abilities to "view", i.e. gather information on a target consisting of an object, place, person, etc, which is hidden from physical view of the viewer and typically separated from the viewer in space by some distance, and sometimes separated in time (future or past) as well.

Remote viewing is distinguished from other forms of clairvoyance in that it follows a specific experimental protocol (or some variant of it). The salient aspect common to these protocols is that the viewer is blind to the target in the sense that he is given no (or negligible) information regarding the target being viewed.

Most of the remote viewing literature was developed as a part of US-sponsored research projects, the aim being to develop a reliable "spying system". The ability to remotely view military installations and documents would be invaluable. The official project ended in 1995 after over 20 years of effort, with little to show for the efforts.

History

For some time in the 20th century the CIA monitored science programs in the USSR, particularly those related to intelligence and military applications. 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.

As a result, in the early 1970s the US government contracted with the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) to investigate these questions. Dr. Hal Puthoff reviewed the information made available to him regarding projects behind the iron curtain, and wrote that there seemed to be sufficient evidence to warrant scientific investigation into psi abilities.

Around that time, on the east coast of the US, Ingo Swann had attained some note as the subject of a series of experiments designed and conducted by Dr. Karlis Osis of the American Society for Psychical Research. These had produced positive, reasonably repeatable results in precursors to the remote viewing protocols. In 1972, Swann was put into contact with Puthoff by Cleve Backster (prominent in the field of modern polygraph testing), and they arranged a meeting at SRI. As a result of their meeting, Puthoff hired Swann to work on the program.

Very early on they believed that they had sufficiently convincing evidence of psi phenomenon. The continued funding of the program therefore was not so much concerned with establishing the existence of psi phenomenon as with characterizing it and determining to what extent psi abilities could be controlled or reduced to practice, i.e. whether psi abilities could be developed or trained in individuals and used to gather information remotely on a practical basis.

Extrnal review, both within in the intelligence community and a limited number of outside observers, continued to critisize SRI's experimental methods. After nearly two decades of activity the program moved from SRI to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in 1989.

In 1995 the justification for further government funding of the program was put under review by a small panel appointed by the American Institutes for Research (AIR). Conflicting reports were issued by Drs. Jessica Utts (who believed) and Ray Hyman (who didn't), and the decision was made to stop funding the program. Dr. Utts has, before and since the publication of the report, published numerous articles on similar subjects in journals such as the Journal of Parapsychology and the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

Over time the program had a series of names (or perhaps sub-projects which had specific names) of which the most recent and perhaps most well-known was STAR GATE. Since the government-funding of the program was ended in 1995 there has been an increase in publicly available RV services and training offered by several of the principals who were involved over time in the program (as well as by others).

Description

Under the remote viewing family of protocols, the viewer is blind to the target, i.e. is not explicitly told what the target is; rather it is specified in one of several ways. 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, and certain variations of the protocol are used during training.

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) identiying code used to identify a target to the viewer. Originally suggested by Ingo Swann and developed at SRI.
  • Technical Remote Viewing (TRV), which is a trademarked term of one company's offered training, basically the same as CRV.
  • 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.

Applications

Remote viewing was originally developed under a US government-sponsored program, with an eye toward intelligence-gathering applications for the CIA and military clients. Some RV proponents state that they suspect that some US government agencies still make ongoing use of RV activities. RV proponents also claim that a number of foreign states engage in RV activities.

RV proponents also claim that RV has found applications outside the government. It has been applied to marine archeology (see links to reports below), though whether RV was of significance in those operations the reader should determine for himself. RV proponents also claim applications to criminal investigations, and commercial information gathering (not to say industrial espionage), but due to privacy concerns it is unlikely that details would be provided in these cases.

Critism

Critism of the remote viewing projects at SRI center on a number of specific complaints. Primary among these was the weakness of the protocols to obvious "fooling", and experimenter effect, as Putoff and his associates were clearly "true believers" who often accepted very shaky evidence and promoted it as excellent research.

In several cases the "best evidence" turned out to be a hoax on the part of the experimental subject. Although the experimenters made many claims about the validity of their experimental controls, when examined by outside observers the consensus was that they were flawed, often terribly. When a subject was placed under tight control their abilities would disappear, only to return when the controls were relaxed.

In other cases the "correct" image selected in the double-blind was very different than the controls, for instance color pictures in a set of black and white images, or a picture of buildings among ones of nature. In these cases the statistics would always be skewed, even with no remote viewing going on.

When faced with these complaints, the researchers were always quick to adbandon their previous results. This is a major theme of Ray Hyman's report on the research. This is an important point.

If you were trying to demonstrate that a particular lake averaged 5 degrees, you would do a series of temperature measurements over time. If those results said 10, 11, 11, 10, 8, 11, 12, and then later 5, 4, 5, 7, 4 etc, the only possible conclusion is that the lake does not average 5 degrees.

This was not the case in the remote viewing experiments, and parapsychology in general. When faced with the realization that a particular test series was flawed, faked, or simply returned the null result (ie, no remote viewing capability), the experimental run was discarded.

Of course looking at the results from the outside was very difficult, and only allowed on a limited number of occasions. The entire effort was being run in a private think-tank, paid for by intelligence services. At the end of every scathing report, the principle investigators would write a counter-report and funding would continue.

Within the parapsychology field, success rates for RV experiments, i.e. the strength of the scientific evidence for RV is apparently not viewed as being as strong as that for some other psi phenomena, such as the ganzfeld experiments. However it should be pointed out that the ganzfeld experiments are simply the latest "incontestible proof" in the wider field that has also discarded all previous examples of "incontestible proof".

Perhaps the best critism is that RV is not used by the intelligence community itself. Although proponents claim it is, they can offer no proof, and when pressed for it have always replied that such proof is impossible due to the top-secret nature of the efforts. However many of the people involved went onto private industy, including Puthoff and his associate Russel Targ, and have had no better success there.

Names of Note

  • Lyn Buchanan, viewer.
  • Ed Dames, viewer.
  • Edwin May, program member since mid-1970s and STAR GATE program director from 1986 until the close of the program.
  • Joe McMoneagle, one of the early viewers.
  • Hal Puthoff, physicist and original program director.
  • Paul Smith, viewer credited with authoring/editing the original CRV training manual.
  • Ingo Swann, artist and primary subject (not to say "psychic") and co-developer with Puthoff & company of the original RV protocol(s).
  • Russel Targ, physicist and program member.

External Links

Regarding the AIR evaluations:

General links:

Of historical interest:

Papers on remote viewing applied to marine archeology: