DEDICATION
This book is especially dedicated to those of the next century soon to be
upon us, and who will at last open up and develop the superpowers of the
human bio-mind.
But it is also profoundly dedicated to those very many of the past who,
in small and big ways, helped consolidate and open that particular doorway
into the superpowers, that doorway called "remote viewing."
But this book is also, and perhaps principally, dedicated to that astonishing
timeless phenomenon called human memory -- but which perhaps might be called
our species collective bio-mind memory, and in which the superpowers perpetually
dwell.
FORTHCOMING ADDITIONS
Dr. H. E. Puthoff, former director of the Psychoenergetics Project at
Stanford
Research Institute, has agreed to provide an Introduction for this book.
Major General Edmund R. Thompson, U.S.A. (Ret.), former Assistant Chief
of Staff for Intelligence, U.S. Army 1977-1981, has agreed to provide a
Foreword.
The Introduction and Foreword will be introduced into the book when they
are received.
The production of this book is a rather momentous effort, and the effort
to produce it has to be time-shared with the author’s other necessary activities.
And so it is anticipated that the Internet presentation of the Real Story
will take over a year.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
I had never planned to write this book. In the past there were compelling
reasons not to do so. In any event, I thought someone else would eventually
take a deep, serious interest and do THE book on remote viewing.
Because the story of remote viewing is a substantial one from a number of
viewpoints, I had anticipated that such a book would be a scholarly one,
and would clarify all of the issues involved and render them understandable
for historical purposes.
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.
Preliminary Comments On Ingo Swann’s
REMOTE VIEWING -- THE REAL STORY
Foreword to follow, focusing on later parts of the book
which deal with the period with which I am most familiar.
Ingo Swann is the only person who could write this book. That he has undertaken
to do so underscores his dedication to the understanding -- and to the further
perfection of remote viewing in the face of his frustration with the distortions
being injected into the story by the media and people with more limited
perspectives -- and sometimes with various axes to grind.
The book also illustrates his dedication to furthering his optimistic expectation
-- expressed to me in conversation as well as in this manuscript -- that
the 21st Century will come to accept and understand this and other phenomena
(today, so-called "psychic"), just as much as we do the results
of crazy Ben Franklin’s kite-flying.
The value of Ingo Swann’s "living memory" narrative of the origins
and refinement of remote viewing is that his memory, more than anyone else
I know, encompasses more facets of the story of credible and verifiable,
practical, usable parapsychology [Ingo wouldn’t like that term].
His categorization of remote viewing as a "superpower of the human biomind" makes the most sense to me of any explanation that I have
yet seen. His thesis that these superpowers are a species phenomenon, common
to all humankind, also makes sense in view of demonstrated results I’ve
witnessed by a number of trained remote viewers.
Ingo’s dedication is further demonstrated by his placing this manuscript
in the World Wide Web -- to make it available to any and all. Perhaps someone
out there will pick up on his work and carry research forward to the optimistic
expectation that he envisions.
Edmund R. Thompson
Maj Gen, USA (Ret)
Asst Chief of Staff for Intelligence, USA (1977-81)
September 1996