Remote Viewing: A Brief Overview
Remote Viewing is not able to be covered in a single blog post, but I’ll try to provide you a brief overview of this potential ability that has almost 60 years of data behind it. You may be familiar with the phrase from our episodes, or maybe you’ve never heard of it before. Either way, Remote Viewing remains one of the strangest phenomenons I’ve ever heard of.
In brief, Remote Viewing is a practice in which a ‘viewer’ is able to intuitively know information regarding a specific target that is hidden from their physical view. Not only is it hidden from physical view, but the target is usually further separated by distance or, even stranger, time.
It is a very popular field of study in ‘Psi’, which is an overarching umbrella term that covers the functions of telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis as we understand them.
Although future and/or impossible viewing has been a part of the human collective narrative for centuries, focused studies of Remote Viewing began to appear in the 1960s. The US Government took particular interest in studying this ability during the Cold War.
There were two major research projects (although there would be many not related to the US Government)...
First, there was a research program titled Anomalous Condition, which was led by Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ at Stanford Research International lab, which would later be handed in 1988 to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), under the direction of Edwin May. Their findings, especially in the 1970s, were renowned.
In the early experiments, Puthoff and Targ set up a series of remote-viewing experiments with who they believed were people gifted with 'psi' abilities. Each participant was asked to describe mental images with regard to some person or distance in space and time. From three experiments, Targ and his team concluded that "the accuracy and reliability of remote viewing is independent of distance up to 10,000km, and of time up to several days in the future." Targ also wrote, "Psi ability clearly violates our ordinary ideas of casuality, since future events are seen to be the cause or trigger for experiences at an earlier time. We also learned that feedback to the viewer is helpful, but is not necessary. Remote viewing is non-analytic ability; describing a distance shape, form, or location on the planet is easier than guessing a number of 1-10"...but this does not mean remote viewing is necessarily weak or even unreliable. You can read more about his experiments here.
Then, there is the slightly more infamous Project STARGATE, which was a mission-oriented project overseen by various intelligence agencies of the US Government.
But what *IS* a Remote Viewing session? It involves, usually, two people: one person to ask the questions, and another to respond. It should be slightly conversational and there can even be a layer of intimacy or closeness to it.
We even have a real example from one of the earlier studies. Below is an outline of a session!
Swimming Pool Complex at Rinconada Park, Palo Alto (1974)
The Introduction/Context: This viewing was carried out by Pat Price who was described by Russell Targ as one of their ‘psychic treasures’. The target was selected randomly from out of a ‘target pool’ of sites, unknown to Pat Price and Russell Targ who were stationed inside a ‘Faraday Cage’ in the Radio Physics Building of SRI International Labs. Hal Puthoff and an associate Bart drove off to the target site, which was five miles away. After the alloted time of 30 minutes, Pat Price was asked to view and describe the target site.
The Session: Pat said he saw ‘a circular pool of water about a hundred feet in diameter’ (it was actually 110 ft); he also saw ‘a rectangular pool 60 ft by 80 ft’ (it was actually 75’ by 100’); he went on to describe a concrete block house which was also at the site. He drew a diagram of the complex. Pat said that the site seemed to be a water purification plant and drew two water storage tanks and some rotating machinery such as pumps etc.
Review: After completing the drawing and description, all of them drove to the site to assess the accuracy of Pat’s viewing. Everything was remarkably accurate except for the two water tanks and the water purification plant, which were absent. Pat Price’s inclusion of the non-existent tanks remained a puzzle for 21 years. However, the mystery was unexpectedly solved in March 1995 when, as part of the ‘centennial celebrations’ of the city of Palo Alto, a commemorative volume was published. This brochure carried a picture of the Rinconada Park site taken in 1913 on the occasion of the inauguration of the city’s new water works showing two water tanks exactly at the location indicated by Pat Price in his 1974 viewing!
Conclusion: This amazing example brings out one of the remarkable features of remote viewing, namely the ability of consciousness to access the past. In RV literature it is referred to as ‘retro cognition’ while in ancient Indian texts it is described as accessing the ‘akashic records’!
This information is JUST scratching the surface of Remote Viewing...but now you have, at your fingerprints, the names of important figures, an overview of what it is, and even an example of experiment. Now all you have to do is jump down the rabbit hole...
Thanks so much to Chuck from Ohio for this blogtonishing suggestion!
The blog image is Screenshot from Inside the Brain: Unraveling the Mystery of Alzheimer's Disease, an educational film by National Institute on Aging, a United States Government agency. It is in the public domain.