Scientific studies on remote viewing

Source: Philippine Star
REMOTE VIEWING, OR MORE technically known as “traveling clairvoyance,” is the mental ability to project one’s consciousness or awareness to a specific distant place one has never been to and to describe it accurately.

Remote viewing as a psychic ability that nearly everyone can perform, even only after a brief training, is a relatively recent modern discovery.

It was scientifically proven to exist after very extensive and exhaustive studies under controlled conditions for 20 years at the Stanford Research Institute (now called SRI International) at Menlo Park, California, by two prominent scientists with Ph.Ds in physics, namely Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff. The study lasted from the early 1970s to 1990s under strict secrecy, until it was declassified at the turn of the century.

I met Targ in Menlo Park after he had already left SRI. He was then working as senior research scientist at Lockheed Corporation. During that meeting, I told him that I had modified the scientific protocol they had established for remote viewing at SRI. And he asked me what was my rate of success. I said about 90 percent. “How long do you train the subject?” I said about two hours.

Then he laughed and told me: “You know, Jimmy, both you and I know a secret.” And what was that, I asked him. “Well,” explained Targ, “most people think that psychic functioning can be performed by only a few people, and that it takes long to train them to perform it. We both know that nearly everyone can do remote viewing and it takes only a short period to train people.” I told him he was right and we both laughed.

I have been teaching the modified version of remote viewing in both my Inner Mind Development and Basic ESP and Intuition Development courses in the Philippines and in many parts of the world, with very great success for over 20 years now.

In the original remote viewing procedure developed at SRI, a subject stays at SRI and is watched closely by the scientists, while another person goes to a remote place of his choice, unknown to the remote viewer and the scientists. The other person is supposed to stay for about 30 minutes in his chosen location and writes down what he sees around him. In the meantime, back at SRI, the remote viewer is also asked to write down details of what the other person is seeing and describing. When the other person returns to SRI, their two separate statements are compared and evaluated by an independent panel and not by the scientists, in order to prevent unconscious cues or biases that they may unconsciously project.

The percentage of accuracy obtained by the scientists, after numerous experiments over a period of 20 years, averaged 80 to 90 percent, a figure that could not be attributed to chance, or to collusion between persons involved.

Today, remote viewing is part of the training of CIA agents, as well as some military personnel in the United States and possibly in other countries. Its applications in intelligence gathering and industrial espionage are numerous.

Simplified model

I have modified and simplified this scientific model developed by Targ and Puthoff at SRI. In my version, all I do is ask each member of the class to choose a partner whom he does not know too well. A perfect stranger would be the best partner. After placing the class in a meditative and passive state (an altered state of consciousness), I ask them to mentally go to each other’s house and describe what each perceives. At the end of the exercise, each will tell the other what he had seen in his partner’s house.

In almost 20 years of teaching this method in the Philippines and abroad, about 90 percent of the participants are able to describe the house of the partner or some particular part of it with great accuracy. Sometimes, they even describe the house the partner has lived in before and not the present house. In a few instances, the remote viewer describes a house his partner intends to buy but does not yet own.

This modified version of remote viewing I had developed is now being used in two other Western countries, in Canada and Great Britain. In Canada, Dr. Lee Pulos, a professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia and a well-known hypnotherapist, is teaching this technique to his students. A British scientist named Dr. Peter Anton Stewart is also using my model of remote viewing in his seminar in Great Britain.

I thought that remote viewing was a modern discovery. I was wrong! I found out that it has been practiced since Biblical times. A very good example can be found in the Book of Kings 2 in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. I also discovered a fully documented case of remote viewing that took place in the 18th century. In next week’s column, I shall describe these two remarkable remote viewing cases.