TonyWilliams said:
I honestly don't know how many folks actually believe in this stuff...
Tony, interesting link - thanks!
I would like to make something clear to you and any other rational
folks that might read this portion of this thread. My desire to was to provide an absolutely fact-based view of something that is outside of popular culture and yet supports the view of many that are religious and/or spiritual - that there's more available to us than provided by our five senses. I desired to build a bridge connecting two separated groups of forum friends - not roll in the mud.
It's very difficult to have some conversations in 'internet land' due to the loss of all the non-verbal cues and the anonymity factor. This is an area that requires a bit of credibility as it appears I'm asking folks to take a bit larger step than I first thought.
So...let's fix part of that now. What the heck's an 'AndyH'. I have not been professionally trained as a remote viewer. I have training and 'operational' experience in an art that allows basic medical diagnostics. I have attended a week-long intensive at the Monroe Institute (Gateway Voyage). I have been using their audio materials to allow self-discovery and exploration of altered states of consciousness fairly regularly since about 1998. I have had some spontaneous remote-viewing-like experiences that I've verified with the 'target' but I cannot do this at will. They happen when they happen and they don't the rest of the time. The best connection happens with a friend where there's mutual respect and a desire to work together. I have enough experience and personal contacts to know that remote viewing and other facets exist and can be learned, but I don't have enough experience to perform a side-show act.
As for the 'real world' - I'm a retired USAF intelligence analyst that served about half my career in Europe and Korea and the rest in the US. All of my experience was within the intelligence community with various agencies. I have not been part of the government's remote viewing program, but did meet Skip Atwater during my week at the Monroe Institute as he was one of the instructors.
I have used as much of my military experience as I'm allowed to use to direct us to factual information. From that we can see that remote viewing exists, is real, and yet cannot be adequately explained by mainstream science. The folks with the best guesses so far, I think, are physicists.
While I've provided a link to Dr. Edgar Mitchell's short video in which he identifies the 'm field' as the best guess so far, the link I provided to F Holmes "Skip" Atwater's
videos at the Monroe Institute provides a better look at what the M field is and what types of information is available there. I feel that Skip is uniquely qualified to provide info on the subject because while he was an early participant in the Star Gate program and helped develop various techniques and training materials, he's also been in the lab wiring up humans and expanding the frontier on the physiological side as well. The 'RV or OBE' video gives an overview of science, capability, and history. Much of what he says (like the submarine trials) can be verified in the CIA documents linked below.
Here is the best overview I've seen of the total history of modern remote viewing. It provides info on past and present viewers and observers (usually there are two souls in the room during a mission). And as my friend from the great North Wet will recognize with great relief, the name 'uri geller' is not on the list. :lol:
http://www.remoteviewed.com/rvhistorymap.html
You can see at the very top that the main development work started in about 1972 at which time the work was a limited-access intelligence program. That means that from about 1972 until the program was declassified in the late 1980s, none of the folks that had 'real clues' about what was happening could write papers and submit them to 'nature' or other journals. After the program was closed and declassified, some of the folks started businesses either providing training, viewing services, or both. One can see that in the lower section of the web page - 1989 to present.
If you're at all interested, this page has full remote viewing transcripts/reports as compiled and submitted to the customer.
http://www.remoteviewed.com/remote_viewing_history_military.htm
Those of you that watched Skip's video on the intro to RV, you'll recall that they started with large targets, then found that viewers could also describe small targets (match box), and then objects as small as microdots and things on atomic scales. Size was no limit. They later found that distance and time are not limits either. For an example of this, hit this report of a helicopter crash. The remove viewer was to go back in time to 'ride along' with a helicopter crew as they departed base and provide a narrative until the helo crashed. The military was able to locate the missing helo and her dead crew, as well as identify the cause of the crash, due to the RV team. (Recall that the remote viewers got the tasking only after all other methods failed...) edit...helo and crew were lost in Ecuador in 1981. They did multiple (at least 4) sessions before sending in search party. I hope the families got their boys back.
...nutherEdit...there are multiple helo crashes documented, with multiple sessions for each. If you really want to 'see' what we're capable of when we shift our logical mind out of the way, read thru some of these - and into the sessions around page 40 to 50.
http://www.remoteviewed.com/21.11.08/downed_chopper.pdf
While I've already provided a direct link to the listing of the CIA's declassified documents, this site has some of them archived for retrieval.
http://www.remoteviewed.com/remote_viewing_history_military_b.htm
I doubt our skeptics will appreciate that the CIA looked into Mr. James Randi:
"Recent Adverse Publicity on Parapsychological Research"
http://www.remoteviewed.com/blogdocs/James Randi.pdf
It is clear Mr. Randi is solely interested in promoting his image as a clever magician, and in enhancing his career as a showman, at the expense of reporting accuracy. The use of tactics involving "plants" raises significant ethical issues as well.
Please note that unlike Mr. Randi, the military and civilian personnel involved in the Star Gate program "are known to have extremely high ethical standards."
Folks, these docs provide a view into a parallel world most never see. Yes - it's a culture shock. Yes - it can have an adverse impact on our world view. And yes - it may take some time to 'sink in' - but this is very normal.
But it's very clear - this is a known and valid science.
This is a fantastic document! It outlines the entire arena of research at the time - what was done, why, where, and in response to what.
http://www.remoteviewed.com/blogdocs/DIA_psychoenergetics research_1984.pdf
"Psychoenergetics Research" Pages 5 and 6:
(U) For any field of knowledge to be considered a science, those involved in the field must adhere to some very rigorous guidelines. In the hierarchy of science, physics would be considered as the purest science; the other physical sciences would follow, then biology and medicine. Psychology and the other social sciences would follow these. Psychoenergetics has its place somewhere between psychology and the other social sciences. It has not been reduced to mathematics and there is no physical model, but psychoenergetics does have many characteristics that are common to all science.
The first of these characteristics is replication. If an area of endeavor is to be considered a science, experiments must be replicable. When the results obtained in one laboratory cannot be obtained under the same experimental conditions in other laboratories, the work will be neglected and will be considered to fall outside the parameters of science.
The work in psychoenergetics at SRI has been replicated by several laboratories:
~ Remote Viewing (ESP)
- Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
- Institute for Parapsychology, Durham, NC
- Mundelein College, Chicago, IL
- University of California at Davis, CA
~ Remote Action (psychokinesis)
- Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
- Mind Science Foundation, San Antonio, TX
- Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn, NY
- Psychophysical Research Laboratory, Princeton, NJ
- Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
- Bell Laboratories, Columbus, OH.
These are all bonafide scientific research and development institutes. In all, there have been 28 formal published replications of the remote viewing work at SRI. Obviously, this phenomenon is not an invention of SRI; it has been duplicated on a number of occasions.
Page 19: "The total of the proposed three-year program was to develop the remote-viewing phenomenon to a point where it could be used to collect intelligence.
This goal was achieved."
I don't expect anyone to believe me. I'd much rather that folks don't 'believe' me. But I hope that, if they're interested, they'll take advantage of my attempt to do a first run at separating the wheat from the chaff. I hope that they'll at least 'get' that I'm not a 14 year old troll trying to pull a Randi and perpetrate a hoax.
