Remote Viewing

Remote viewing is a skill by which a person (a "viewer") can perceive objects, persons, or events at a location removed from him or her by either space or time. In other words, one does not actually have to be there, nor does one need any so-called "physical" connections, such as television, telephone, etc., to gain information about the target. Remote viewing exploits and improves upon what is more commonly called "psychic" ability (an overused word that has accrued unfortunate connotations), and works whether the target is in the next room or on the other side of the planet. Neither time nor any known type of shielding can prevent a properly-trained remote viewer from gaining access to the desired target.

What Remote Viewing is Not

Remote viewing is not "being psychic" in the way commonly understood by the media and many practitioners of "paranormal" arts - though thanks to recent incomplete or inaccurate reports many have been led to believe otherwise. Remote viewers are not the typical "clairvoyants," "fortune tellers," or "psychics" we often hear about on TV or read about in the papers. Many of these more traditional psychics often do have amazing talents and abilities, but there is a qualitative difference between the average "natural" psychic, and a properly-trained remote viewer.

Controlled Remote Viewing

Controlled Remote Viewing (CRV) is a formally-structured remote viewing method originally developed under contract to the US Army by Harold E. Puthoff, Ph.D. and Ingo Swann at SRI-International (formerly Stanford Research Institute). In the CRV process sensory-like and other impressions are perceived by non-ordinary means and expressed verbally, in writing, and via sketching on paper. These perceptions are derived from subconscious impressions deposited by a hypothesized ‘signal-line’ (a term of art in CRV for the presumed stream of information about the intended target which becomes available in the course of a session). Perceived impressions are collated over the course of six incremental and increasingly information-rich "stages." Our experiment relies only on the first three of these stages:

• Stage 1 presents a brief gestaltic notion of the nature of the intended target (e.g., the target is human-made structure, water, land, etc., or is a combination of these elements).
• Stage 2 produces sense-related impressions of smells, tastes, textures, colors, qualities of light, and so on.
• Stage 3 incorporates the preceding elements plus comprehension of dimensional elements of the target. Central to Stage 3 is representational sketching of the target or of aspects and sub-elements of the target.

A core feature of the CRV methodology is identifying and separating which mental events represent sensory and other impressions in the viewer, and which merely constitute mental "noise" -- mental elements which represent analytical "conclusion jumping" or other similar distracting processes in the viewer. Such interpretation is characterized in CRV by the term "analytical overlay," or AOL. The process of collecting and reporting target-related information by the viewer is termed a CRV ‘session,’ and produces a paper transcript of the various stages recording sensory data and noting episodes of internally-generated AOL. Ultimately, the viewer produces sketches and a collection of verbal reports which can subsequently be compared with a photograph and other feedback material of the actual target.