What is remote viewing?

Remote Viewing (RV) is the attempt to gather information about a distant, unseen target using extra-sensory perception. A remote viewer is asked to give information about an object or place that is hidden from physical view and/or separated by distance. Parapsychologists Russell Targ and Dr. Hal Puthoff coined the term in 1974.

Remote viewers are generally given coordinates of a site and after "cooling down" (entering a state of deep relaxation) give impressions of what they "see". Remote viewers have claimed to be able to see things not only at a distance (including long distances such as Mars and our moon) but also see things back and forward in time.

Remote viewing is generally considered as pseudoscience due to the need to overcome fundamental ideas about causality, time, and other principles held by the scientific community, and the lack of a positive theory that explains the outcomes.

Remote viewing was popularized in the 1990s, following the declassification of documents related to the Stargate Project, a 20 million dollar research program sponsored by the U.S. Federal Government to determine any potential military application of psychic phenomena.

One of the most famous, and considered the father of RV, is Ingo Swann whose ability to correctly describe targets was considered far beyond coincidence. Much of what is known about RV came from the experiments done with Swann. At SRI, Swann and Puthoff developed a remote-viewing training program meant to enable any individual with a suitable background to produce useful data. As part of this project, a number of military officers and civilians were trained and formed a military remote viewing unit. The viewing methodology (now called "controlled" remote viewing, or CRV) they created is the core of almost all remote viewing training programs today.

The government RV program was terminated in 1995, citing a lack of documented evidence that the program had any value to the intelligence community. Although it looks more like politics within various government agencies, rather then lack of success, was what really caused the program to be terminated.

Many of the original RVers have since started their own RV institutes to train the general public on how to do RV. They have also written numerous books on the subject of RV, the military's use of RV, and how to learn RV. I'll talk about some of those books later. But one you could read immediately, and should if you are interested in RV, is Ingo Swanns' book called "Penetration: the Question of Extraterrestrial and Human Telepathy." This book is out of print and hard to find but there is an online pdf download source here.
(if the link doesn't work, go to http://www.scribd.com and do a search for Ingo Swann Penetration.)

Swann's Penetration is a fast and fasinating read. The story he tells about his involvement with RV, Men in Black, and extraterrestials reads like a sci-fi thriller. But he says its all true.

I'm currently reading some other books on RV and will post my opinions on them here later.

UFOs have been here for thousands of years

What would make me say that? Take a look at some of these bits of information from long ago and decide for yourself.

• Between 1561 and 1566 residents of Nuremberg, Germany and Basel, Switzerland witnessed spectacular displays of spheres, disks and tubes zooming about the sky and engaging in an aerial ballet. (The image is a woodcut, from the Wickiana collection, Zurich.)

• On August 7, 1566 citizens of Baslem (Switzerland) saw black spheres involved in a aerial battle with lasted for several hours. "...at the time when the sun rose, one saw many large black balls which moved at high speed in the air towards the sun, then made half-turns, banging one against the others as if they were fighting a battle out a combat, a great number of them became red and igneous, thereafter they were consumed and died out," wrote Samuel Coccius, the student in "crowned writings and liberal arts" who consigned the strange events in the city's gazette.

• From Egyptian hieroglyphics in a document dating back to 1500 B.C.: "A circle of fire coming in the sky, noiseless, one rod long with its body and one rod wide. After some days these things become more numerous, shining more than the brightness of the sun."

• An archbishop from France in the ninth century recorded the account of three men and a woman who were witnessed being placed down on Earth by an "aerial ship". The people said they have been abducted by "miraculous men" who showed them "unheard of marvels".

• A "bright ball of fire and light in a hurricane in England, Sept. 2, 1786. This phenomenon was visible for forty minutes. That's about 800 times the duration that the orthodox give to meteors and meteorites." –from Book of the Damned



• On April 4, 1561 in Nuremberg (Germany), men and women saw various objects in the sky, including balls "approximately 3 in the length, from time to time, four in a square, much remained insulated, and between these balls, one saw a number of crosses with the color of blood. Then one saw two large pipes, in which small and large pipes, were 3 balls, also four or more. All these elements started to fight one against the other." (Gazette of the town of Nuremberg). The event was said to last for about an hour and later was and dran by artist Hans Glaser in woodcut.

Ancient art and text are filled with stories like these. There are also Native American tribes who have stories of "little green men". I'll talk about a couple of those later. If you want to find out more, just do a search for "ancient ufos" and you'll find tons of stuff. I'll also post my favorite ones here in the future posts.