What Is Remote Viewing?
Definition
Remote viewing is a type of clairvoyance. It is the psychic ability to see distant or hidden objects, events and locations beyond the range of the physical eye. A viewer may describe a location on the other side of the world, which he has never visited. Or an event that happened long ago. Or describe an object sealed in a container or locked in a room. A viewer may even describe a person or an activity – all without being told anything about the target, not even its name or designation.
ESP
The term ‘remote viewing’ was coined in the 1970s by American physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff.
This area of extrasensory perception (ESP), lends itself particularly well to scientific research. In practice, the psychic will be quantifiably right or wrong in what he sees.
The ability to see at a distance was used extensively by so-called ‘psychic spies’ during the Cold War. These spies worked on classified military projects, using their clairvoyance to gather intelligence.
Remote viewing is one of the oldest forms of parapsychology or psi. Psi is a term derived from the Greek, meaning psyche, mind or soul. Shamans have practiced this paranormal skill for centuries in Tibet, Africa, India and the Americas.
Frederick Myers, founder of the Society for Psychical Research, suggested in the latter part of the 19th century, that remote viewing – or ‘travelling clairvoyance’ or telesthesia as it was called then – was a combination of telepathy, precognition, retrocognition and clairvoyance.
Remote Viewing Research and History
Stanford Research Institute
American writer Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) was interested in occult phenomena and experimented with telepathy in the early 20th century. He recorded significant data relating to seeing at a distance. This data was later used by Targ and Puthoff in 1972, to set up a research project at Stanford Research Institute in California.
Learned Skill
Targ and Puthoff researched remote viewing for 10 years, working with the gifted psychic Ingo Swann (1933 – 2013). Together, they conducted hundreds of experiments and collected some impressive results. The researchers came to the conclusion that remote viewing is a psychic experience that occurs naturally in people, but can also be learned. They found that they could train people to see at a distance regardless of psychic ability. People, they claimed, could be taught to ‘see’ into a container to describe the contents inside.
PEAR Project
Other major research in remote viewing has been carried out at Princeton University by the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research group (PEAR) established in 1979. PEAR is the first research group to apply modern engineering science techniques to the study of PSI.
In studies of pre-cognitive remote perception, PEAR came to the conclusion that it is possible to obtain information by means that cannot be explained by ‘known physical phenomena’.
Other researchers in America and Canada have found that remote viewing is affected by geomagnetic activity. They concluded that the higher the incidence of geomagnetic activity before a viewing test, the less successful the results.
Stargate Project
In 1972 during the height of the Cold War, the American CIA launched a classified project to train and utilize psychic spies. The ‘remote viewing’ project, based at the Stanford Research Institute, was a direct response to the (then) USSR’s similar training of military personnel for long distance spying. The project purported to develop a systematic strategy for accessing latent clairvoyance. It operated surreptitiously for 24 years, under such evocative code names as STARGATE, SUN STREAK and CENTER LANE. It was finally declassified and terminated in 1995.
We do not know if the intelligence community is still using or researching remote viewing today, given the secrecy surrounding espionage. Many private individuals, companies and non-profit organizations claim to be conducting continued research on remote viewing. Not all of these independent remote viewing projects, however, approach the subject from the perspective of performing controlled studies.
Remote Viewing Today
Research operations in remote viewing continue today for such purposes as locating missing persons and equipment. The technique has also been used to solve crimes and gather commercial information. Both scientists and occultists alike remain intrigued by the possibilities remote viewing can offer.
According to the International Remote Viewing Association, remote viewing is not really a ‘psychic phenomenon’ as such. Rather, they claim it is an imposed skill that helps the viewer to harness his own innate, underlying intuitive abilities.
Time Travel Using Remote Viewing
Symbolism
Some remote viewer practitioners, claim it is possible to virtually time travel with remote viewing. The experience, however, appears to differ from regular remote viewing, in that the target is unchartered territory. You cannot instruct your mind to travel to a specific place, if that place no longer exists in the future. Or even if it does exist, you may not be able to describe what you see, because of the lack of reference points. With a traditional remote viewing target, things often simply are, what they appear to be.
Time travel, on the other hand, can end up producing symbolic rather than literal images in a remote viewer’s mind eye. It is possible that the subconscious mind communicates complicated thoughts more easily through symbols and metaphorical images, than through direct representation. The pursuit of tangible facts could actually, in this instance, cause valuable information to be lost in translation.
Interesting Thought
Despite efforts by many researchers, we still have no scientific explanation as to how the brain can create the sense of a conscious experience. That essential spark that is you. Is our mind located in our brain? Or is our brain simply a computer modem which connects to our mind, which is resident somewhere else in the Universe? In the cloud, perhaps? This could certainly explain how it is possible for a person to survive and communicate after death. And it certainly explains why our mind could travel through the exercise of remote viewing.
How To Practice Remote Viewing
Visit the International Remote Viewing Association’s website for information and practice exercises: www.irva.org.
Studies and Research
Remote viewing as applied to futures studies. 2008 by James H Lee.
Clairvoyant remote viewing: The US sponsored psychic spying. 2008. M.Srinivasan
Effects Of Background Context For Objects In Photographic Targets On Remote Viewing Performance. Journal of Scientific Exploration. D.L. Katz et al (2021).
Remote Viewing With And Without Controlled Out-Of-Body Consciousness. Advanced Research in Psychology. A. Ballati et al (2020).
Related terms and synonyms: Astral projection, Edgar Cayce, Extrasensory perception, Lucid dreaming, Parapsychology, Third eye chakra
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Karina, author of Tarot in 5 Minutes.
