Most of the issues involved are straightforward ones when seen in their own
contexts and times -- and which times began in 1971, after which the issues
remained more or less straight-forward until about 1988.
This was the
seventeen-year period during which the elements of controlled remote viewing
(CRV) were gradually separated out from a somewhat ambiguous morass of
parapsychological phenomena, then refined until it was an entity of and within
itself, complete with a novel nomenclature appropriate to it.
In its refined and developed state, its chief characteristics were twofold:
- its gradual increase in scope, precision and accuracy; and
- its
closeness more to general human potential rather than to special things seen as
psychic or parapsychological.
When remote viewing was understood, even in its
natural state in individuals, it was no longer ambiguous, but seen as a precise
set of existing faculties against which the ambiguous term "psychic" was no
longer useful.
After 1988, though, the year I retired from active research, what might be
called the decomposition of remote viewing began to set in.
Conceptual
distortions began to occur, with the tendency to return the formerly strategic
characteristics back into the ambiguous morass of parapsychological and psychic
phenomena.
After about 1990, the decomposition proceeded at a rapid rate -- one reason
being that the term "remote viewing" went public and was seized upon by many as
a scientifically dignified replacement term for "psychic."
Thereafter, just
about anything could be called "remote viewing," just about anyone could call
themselves a "psychic remote viewer" -- and ambiguity had once again been
achieved. Back to square one, as it were.
Another reason for the decomposition was that the demand for precision and
accuracy in which the intelligence community had invested its efforts was, in
the public domain, not really necessary.
As we will see later in the text, it
was to be the scope and increase of accuracy which identified the original
formats of remote viewing, and especially controlled remote viewing, and which
accounted for the long duration of the intelligence community's effort.
The
authenticating of such high-stage accuracy could only be determined by adequate
and long-term testing, record keeping, and equally long-term oversight processes
and committees.
There do exist extremely gifted natural remote viewers, of course. It
happened that I was one of them, and I know of four others.
But in general
the raw (so to speak) forms of remote viewing do not produce the high-stage
accuracy absolutely mandatory for intelligence purposes -- and this was the case
even regarding my own natural aptitudes at the start-up of the discovery and
development phase.
In any event, there are a few things that cannot be ambiguous -- and remote
viewing proficiency and accuracy are two of them.
And so when, in the
went-public stage, latter-day formats of "remote viewing" began detaching from
TESTED, DEMONSTRATED and CONFIRMED proficiency and accuracy, the decomposition
of remote viewing proceeded apace.
But even so, those latter-day formats served to bring about two essential and
constructive effects.
They served to bring the concepts of remote viewing to
larger public attention.
As to the second constructive effect, I, at least,
am of the opinion that any work regarding remote viewing is better than none at
all -- for all of it helps to shift the direction of human awareness toward the
real existence of the superpowers of the human bio-mind.
In the end, the
absolute need for demonstrated and tested accuracy of any format of remote
viewing will win the day. Remote viewing formats not up to this will disappear.
Nonetheless, the decomposition period entered many distortions into the
public situation. And so it is part of the factual history of remote viewing to
meet up with the details of this decomposition -- as we will do much later in
the book under the general heading of "The Fall of Remote Viewing."
I suppose that most of the distortions might have been avoided, at least in
an historical perspective, if someone as an insider had earlier produced a
substantial book regarding the how and why of remote viewing. The public would
then have had something by which to judge things.
I was the most logical
person to do this -- for although very many were strategically involved in
remote viewing I was intimately familiar with the entire history of remote
viewing.
However, the real story of remote viewing has always been encumbered with the
secrecy which gradually surrounded it after 1972.
The secrecy initially
involved attempts to protect the identities of certain government agencies which
involved themselves with remote viewing and with what was referred to as the Psi
Warfare Gap during the Cold War era.
The secrecy was never really very good.
Various major media waves of the 1970s and early 1980s rather forthrightly
exposed the players in such places as THE WASHINGTON POST and TIME magazine,
etc. The arch-digger of secretive information, Jack Anderson, often appeared to
be given deliberate and quite accurate leaks which he joyfully exposed in his
syndicated columns.
Many supposed that the leaks were engineered to frighten
the Soviets and the KGB of the Cold War era with the fact that the United States
was indeed developing competent "psychic spies."
In any event, if secrecy means totally black projects maintained completely
invisible, the research and development of remote viewing and who sponsored it
never enjoyed anything of the kind.
Yet, the pall of secrecy overhung the
real story of remote viewing, at least as far as its insiders were concerned,
and so none of them wished to step forward.
As any secrecy specialist knows, secrecy can have unpredictable outcomes and
clay feet.
In the case of remote viewing, with the real story of it
unavailable, the media and the public had nothing to judge against when
latter-day distortions of its decomposition blazoned forth with media
attention.
It would then be natural to make the mistake of assuming that the
distortions were factually representative not only of remote viewing itself, but
of what the sponsors originally funded for research and development.
The concepts and story of remote viewing are now twenty-five years old.
But that story is not just the story of remote viewing. It is also, and more
importantly so, the real story which has involved hundreds of people who worked
to research and develop the concepts in good faith and because they were told
that it was important for the security of the nation to do so.
In their
living memory, some of those were reasonably familiar with the whole story,
others with important parts of it.
It's surprising how many of those people
are dead by now.
And, after a while more, all those who possess the
important living memory will also become absent.
And then the real insider story will be gone -- lost -- replaced by versions
of it emanating from those with their own mindsets, agendas, and what is
fashionably dignified as "their own realities."
And, indeed, this replacement
has already commenced via many garbled and truncated versions in which
agenda-hype excels over the facts.
In pondering all of this, as I have done for the last three years, it boils
down to either of two choices for me.
I can write the living-memory book --
or I can let the living memory slide into oblivion.
What would you do?
There are three sectors, or layers, to the real story of remote viewing, as
well as several quite subtle ones.
The three sectors need to be pointed up
here at the start to help expand the reader's overview of the real story and
that phenomenon named "remote viewing" -- but which, in hindsight, probably
should have been called something else.
The first sector is the most visible one. It concerns the long-term
involvement of the American intelligence community with remote viewing which was
commenced in 1973 by the Central Intelligence Agency.
This sector is visible
for two reasons.
The mixing of the mainstream intelligence community with
the Fringe area of remote viewing and so-called psychic spying IS one of the
bigger tales of the twentieth century.
Because it is a big story, the media sporadically task themselves with
attempting to expose or speculate on its sexy and scandalous details -- with the
result that media frenzies occasionally occur, and the first of which was in
full bloom in 1975.
Several media waves or frenzies regarding the "government
connection" have since come and gone, the most recent being the extensive wave
of late 1995 and early 1996.
Of all the media waves, the one of 1995-1996 was the least well-informed.
And so it initiated a series of information distortions which misled the
public. [A description of the genesis and central core of this media wave is
reviewed in Annex 1 attached, and to which I invite your attention.]
This
particular media wave confused all of the important issues beyond recognition,
and, in general, held the intelligence community up to ridicule for allegedly
wasting tax payer money on the bewilderment of "psychic" hoopla.
There is no doubt that the "government connection" is popularly seen as THE
sexy and big story, whose limelight is dramatically laden with secrecy,
super-espionage agencies and psychic foolishness.
Here is the exact stuff
which can be hyped out of proportion and real contexts -- to the utter delight
and fascination of conspiracy buffs and vulture-like skeptics awaiting
opportunity.
Many think that the sexy story is the only real story. But it is only a part
of the real story.
The real story is found just beneath the sexy first sector of the government
connection.
This second sector is of course comprised of remote viewing
ITSELF -- and WHY the intelligence community took a long-term interest in it in
the first place.
This concerns what remote viewing actually IS.
And here
we encounter an exceedingly strange phenomenon which surrounds remote viewing,
one which few will even notice unless it is pointed up.
Hardly anyone really wants to know what remote viewing actually consists of,
especially if they see themselves in any way connected to social mainstreams --
and which phenomenon, in my opinion, constitutes the exact reason why the top
five mainstream publishers refused to publish this book.
As you will see, I encountered this phenomenon from the start as early as
1972, and especially among scientists and media types, but, surprisingly, among
parapsychologists, too.
I have made a long-term, intimate study of this
phenomenon and its theme will occasionally appear in the text.
But basically, learning what remote viewing actually is might mean having to
alter one's academic and conventional wisdom.
Even though most support the
concept of increasing our knowledge, very few really want to do anything of the
kind if it wrecks their existing "realities."
There is another reason that the fundamentals of remote viewing have not been
made visible.
Aside from a few documents made public before 1976, and which
identified remote viewing as a channel of long-distance perception, the blame
easily falls on those who instituted its research and development and those who
funded it.
In this instance, no one wanted the fundamentals made visible to
the broad public because remote viewing was considered a potential intelligence
tool -- an espionage vehicle whose methodologies needed to be responsibly
guarded.
However, the CRV concepts and methodologies themselves were never
classified -- which is why I can write this book giving their fundamentals and
details.
But there was common agreement about this, additionally protected
by the fact that no one really wanted to know about the fundamentals anyway --
and in any event, the fundamentals of CRV will seem like an alien language
unless one is walked through them step by step.
Beneath the fundamentals of remote viewing, however, is the third sector I
have referred to.
The first two sectors involve individuals, research
projects, agencies, and all sorts of situations which are introverted in
smaller-picture kinds of ways.
As I have described, the centerpiece of the
first sector is the government connection. The centerpiece of the second sector
is remote viewing itself.
The centerpiece of the third sector is OUR SPECIES itself -- and whether it
DOES possess the superpowers of the human bio-mind fabled throughout our
history.
Does our species possess the superpowers even in societal
opposition to them or in spite of ignorance about them?
It is in the light of this third sector that we will encounter the ONLY
rationale for the two sectors already described.
And it was this exact
species issue, and nothing else, which caused the intelligence community to
undertake what it did, and why remote viewing was extended the opportunity to
attempt to strut its stuff. And here is something which hardly anyone has
understood.
The superpowers of the human bio-mind, of which remote viewing is but one,
can be defined as those SPECIES-INHERENT faculties which permit human awareness
to transcend the conventionally perceived limits of space and time, and of
matter and energy as well.
If our species DOES NOT possess such faculties,
then remote viewing would have to be condemned as a figment, and the
participation of the intelligence community silly.
But, in this sense, it's worth mentioning that if the faculties for the
superpowers do not exist within our species, then we also have to throw out a
great deal -- such as intuition, telepathy, peak experiencing, the creative
processes, intelligence, altered states of conscious.
And on and on until we
are left only with our most mundane aptitudes which do correspond to the "laws"
of matter, energy, time and space -- which is to say, correspond to those laws
as presently understood, but which understanding does undergo renovation and
change within the sciences themselves.
On the other hand, if such species-superpowers DO exist, then the
participation of the intelligence community in researching them was correct and
justified -- while what was out of whack were the modernist philosophies and
sciences of the cultural West which derided the superpowers under the
stereotyped stigma of the term "psychic."
This particular situation deserves somewhat extensive treatment, and will be
adequately dealt with in the text.
But here it is worth noting that it was
the COLLISION of Soviet bio-mind research with the stereotyped stigma of psychic
research in the West which occasioned the circumstances within which remote
viewing was identified and developed.
Had not this collision occurred, then
remote viewing would never have seen the light of day.
It now has to be pointed out that neither psychic aptitudes nor the
superpowers of bio-mind have been viewed in the light of being a SPECIES THING.
Which is to say, as being ALWAYS present at the species level as inherent
faculties and potentials entirely capable of manifesting in specimens of our
species.
And it is in this context that we encounter the timeless and
time-transcending aspect not only of remote viewing but of all the other
superpowers, too.
And it is this aspect which more or less has to arouse some
radical readjustments regarding conventional cosmologies and the actual place of
human consciousness within them.
Since few really want to alter their sense
of cosmology, it is this exact thing which subtly lies behind the widespread
resistance to finding out what remote viewing really consists of.
As you will see in the narrative ahead, this precise situation often led to
many amusing soap-opera incidents -- and many affected or "threatened" in this
way literally proceeded to the nearest bar to "recover."
If the superpowers had been considered a species thing from the start at some
place back, say, around 1870, then the history of psychical research and
parapsychology would have been entirely different.
What has rather happened,
though, is that we tend to think of the superpowers as belonging to selected
individuals who, for reasons peculiar to their psychology, manifest them more
vitally than others do.
And so our concepts regarding the superpowers is
locked into time and place at the individual level -- resulting in the
assumption that we can treat positively or negatively the individuals (and what
THEY are thought to represent) according to our dispositions one way or another.
However, if the existence of the superpowers is lifted from the individual to
the species level, an entirely different and very much larger panorama
immediately opens up.
For one thing, the existence of the superpowers becomes
a species situation or problem, and no longer an individual situation or
problem, while the elements to be considered are completely different.
If we consider the superpowers an inherent species thing, then we can
immediately see that various forms of them have manifested throughout the whole
of our recorded history, and in all past and present societies.
By logical
extrapolation here, we can be sure that they will continue to emerge into the
indeterminate future.
The fact that formats of the superpowers (under a plethora of terms) have
continuously emerged across generations and across all kinds of social enclaves
and strictures -- well, here is the strongest evidence that the superpowers ARE
a species thing first, and only secondly an individual thing.
If you can bear
to consider what this shift of perspective means, please begin doing so now, for
this aspect is the virtual backbone of the remote viewing story.
This is the same as saying that individuals, societies, intelligence
communities, research enclaves, philosophies, skeptics, sciences and so forth
come and go.
But even so, each time a specimen of our species is born, he or
she will in some form be a carrier of our species faculties for the superpowers
-- more or less in the same way that he or she is a carrier of our species
genetic pool.
And here is the ultimate consideration behind my decision to write this
book.
You see, if the superpowers are a species thing, then they have
dynamics which can be identified, understood, developed and enhanced, and this
possibly across the boards.
Technically speaking, there is only one thing necessary here -- a strategic
shift in vision regarding what the superpowers actually are, a vision which sees
the superpowers as a species thing first.
It is quite certain that the early Soviet researchers of the 1920s and 1930s
were the first to make this shift.
And, in making it, they were obliged to
approach the matter quite differently from how the early psychical researchers
and later parapsychologists of the West viewed psychic things, and still do.
Radically different hypotheses are certainly needed if the superpowers are to
be viewed as a broad species affair as contrasted to an individual one.
For
one thing, if the superpowers are a broad species affair, then the constituents
of the superpowers simply have to have fundamental and close biological
connections.
It is this which accounts for the peculiar, but necessary,
nomenclature the Soviets ultimately set up for their work -- for example,
"bio-communications," a term which had no Western equivalents.
By contrast, Western researchers have always viewed psychic attributes as a
particular arrangement of the individual's psychology, independent of his or her
biology -- as well as being non-material in genesis.
Indeed, on the down
side of Western parapsychology, the psychiatric definition of Psi held it to be
the illusory result of a deranged psychology.
In any event, the Soviet shift from the basis of a particular individual
psychology to a fundamental species basis made the early Soviet work
unintelligible to Western intelligence analysts -- and in which condition it
remained for nearly five decades.
It was not until the very late 1960s that
American intelligence analysts VERY SLOWLY began to realize that the Soviets
were attempting to identify and HARNESS, as it was nervously put, certain powers
of bio-mind which transcended space and time, and probably also energy and
matter.
It was also realized, much more quickly, that the hypotheses of the
Soviet work WERE completely different from the conventional hypotheses American
and other Western parapsychologists labored within.
But it was the size and magnitude of the Soviet effort along those lines
which probably impressed American analysts more than anything else. The utter
SIZE of the Soviet effort clearly indicated a good deal of smoke, so to speak,
beneath which fires were obviously brightly burning in order to justify the
size.
Where there was such a vast amount of smoke which few really
understood, but anyway was shrouded in intense KGB secrecy, the intelligence
community and elements in Congress began worrying if there was a "threat
potential" in all of the Soviet strangeness involved.
And behind-the-scenes
committees in Congress mandated a full inquiry -- as it was their responsibility
to do regarding any possible "threat potential."
Thus, the American intelligence community, alarmed about a threat potential,
was forced to take an interest in matters it certainly never would have
otherwise -- and which resulted in the complex saga and soap opera of that
bittersweet story which is detailed in the narrative ahead.
By now, in 1996, that saga and soap opera has come and gone, at least for the
present.
But there is still outstanding the matter of bio-communications and
the superpowers of the human bio-mind being a species affair -- and evidence
shows that many top researchers -- for example, in Japan, China and elsewhere --
have begun to think in those terms. (The evidence for this will be presented
much later in the narrative.)
In other words, the search for the superpowers has not ended just because the
Soviet Empire fell, or because the American effort got screwed up and decomposed
after 1988.
I have no reticence at all in predicting that the species
superpowers of bio-mind will become a topic of profound interest in the years
and decades to come -- in other nations and under other auspices, certainly to
be secret.
All that it will take is the abandonment of the ideologies of the
twentieth century which were intolerant of and totally misguided regarding such
research -- ideologies already on their way out, and which anyway were never
very important in most non-Western nations.
I have determined that no one else will, or can, present the American remote
viewing epoch in the light of the species level of the superpowers.
That
epoch will be interpreted in lesser ways, according to particular agendas and
particular ignorance and stupidities regarding what was really involved.
And,
this is my ultimate reason for writing this book.
The narrative of the real and detailed story of remote viewing begins ahead
in chapter 4.
I have utilized the first three chapters to present certain
background materials which need to be isolated and dealt with, and which I'd
rather not spread throughout the narrative itself.
Remote viewing came about because of sets of CIRCUMSTANCES which literally
sucked people into participating in them.
Most of those circumstances, both
big and small, ran across a spectrum of unexpected and astonishing to
dumbfounding. Most of them practically came out of nowhere, and most of them
left a trail of successes and skeletons in closets.
No one could have predicted hardly any of those strange circumstances, least
of all myself. But their unfolding became apparent to me quite early, and gave
me cause to reflect on what circumstances actually consist of.
As the years
passed, I got somewhat good at predicting the unfoldment of some circumstances
-- but only because I had undertaken a long-term philosophical consideration of
what circumstances actually consist of.
By now, I will go so far as to say that the identification and anticipation
of circumstances BEFORE they unfold is one of the many superpowers of the human
bio-mind -- one which has never heretofore been identified.
Since the role, as it were, of circumstances is so important throughout the
story, I've decided to utilize chapter 1 to present, as best I can, a
philosophical discussion of their nature.
Thereafter, you will be better
prepared to observe them and their remarkable phenomena in action as regards the
story of remote viewing.
The circumstances which ultimately led to remote viewing unfolded in the
Soviet Union two decades before I was born.
Those same circumstances
doubtlessly will also serve as a basis for all future work regarding isolating
and enhancing certain superpowers of the human bio-mind.
Technically speaking, those early Soviet circumstances established the
correct hypothesis that what was involved was, indeed, something at the species
level.
The nature of the early Soviet work is hardly accessible to Western
readers, and where it is briefly referred to it has been transliterated into
Western nomenclature.
The transliterations permit Western readers to assume
they know something in familiar Western terms, but which terms are so much
gobbledygook in bio-communications research terms.
Indeed, as we shall see
ahead, it was the transliteration of the Soviet work into incorrect Western
concepts which was the first mistake make made by the American intelligence
community -- and which delayed correct analysis for at least two
decades.
Bio-communications research was and is NOT psychic or parapsychology
research, and I utilize background chapter 2 to sort through various important
distinctions in this regard.
I utilize chapter 3 to present materials regarding my autobiographical
self.
Of all the chapters in the book, this was the hardest for me to
undertake -- because I have to toot my own horn in ways which might seem overly
ego-laden.
But, and I just as well say it as plainly as possible, one of the
amazing circumstances regarding the whole story of remote viewing was that my
prior accumulated experiences and knowledge had prepared me to deal with a fair
share of the NOVEL circumstances which literally sucked me into them.
There IS something called the "prepared mind." And, everything considered, I
was more or less prepared to deal in the circumstances which -- to my own
astonishment! -- came about in 1971 and thereafter.
For example, I had
already understood, in my own terms, that the fundamentals of "psi" perceptions
were a species thing, not special manifestations of individual psychology.
I
had arrived at this conclusion long before I ever heard of Dr. H. E. Puthoff,
Stanford Research Institute, or the concerns of the intelligence community
regarding the Soviet "threat analysis."
As you will see, this was to have
certain advantages regarding what was to come.