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| 2025-07-22 | 2026-09-21 | Remote Viewing |
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Remote viewing is a claimed psychic ability to perceive information about a distant or unseen target, often used for intelligence gathering. | Psi Phenomenon | Remote Viewing is a controversial mental faculty or technique in which an individual is said to be able to acquire information about a distant or unseen target using extrasensory perception (ESP) or 'sensing with the mind. |
Remote Viewing is a controversial mental faculty or technique in which an individual is said to be able to acquire information about a distant or unseen target using extrasensory perception (ESP) or "sensing with the mind." The term was coined by Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ at Stanford Research Institute to describe a new, more scientific and sober approach to clairvoyance, distinguishing it from older, more sensationalized terms like ESP or psychic perception. It was the central focus of the STARGATE PROJECT, a U.S. government-sponsored program investigating psychic phenomena for military and intelligence applications.1
Practitioners of remote viewing, known as remote viewers, are trained to enter a state of deep relaxation and focus their attention on a specific target, which can be a person, place, or object. The viewer then reports the images, feelings, thoughts, and other sensory impressions that come to them, a process that requires the suspension of analytical judgment. The key to the technique is to avoid what is known as "analytical overlay" (AO), the brain's natural tendency to interpret and categorize incoming data based on past experience. A successful remote viewer must act as a pure conduit for information, free of preconceived notions.2
Methodologies and Techniques
Remote viewing encompasses various methodologies and techniques:
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Coordinate Remote Viewing: Developed by Ingo Swann, this method involves using geographical coordinates to precisely and economically direct a psychic's perception to a target without revealing its identity. This was a breakthrough in making remote viewing operationally viable.1
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Outbound Remote Viewing: In this method, an "outbound" experimenter visits a target site while the psychic, back at the laboratory, attempts to visualize the experimenter's surroundings. This allows for richer feedback, as the psychic can later visit the site themselves.1
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Extended Remote Viewing: This refers to deeper altered-state methods of psychic spying, often favored by the unit at Fort Meade.1
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Associative Remote Viewing: A technique used for Precognition, where objects or geographic locations are used as surrogates for numbers or other abstract data that are difficult to remote-view directly. For example, a teddy bear might represent a specific number in a lottery, and the remote viewer would describe the teddy bear to predict the number.1
The Nature Exchange
Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff's paper in Nature of October 18, 1974, concluded that "a channel exists whereby information about a remote location can be obtained by means of an as yet unidentified perceptual modality." In 1978 David Marks and Richard Kammann reported in the same journal that they could not replicate the results and that the transcripts of Pat Price's nine trials contained cues, such as "second place of the day," from which judges could order them; Targ, Puthoff, and Charles Tart replied in January 1979 that a judge given transcripts edited of such cues matched seven of nine, and that the critique "did not address the quality of the remote-viewing descriptions in the transcripts per se, but was instead limited to criticism of a particular judging procedure." The Army's Materiel Systems Analysis Activity, replicating the SRI protocol in twenty sessions of its own in 1978 and 1979, "did not result in statistical significance."3
Characteristics and Limitations
Remote viewing, like any human faculty, has limitations. Numbers and letters are generally difficult to remote-view accurately. Visually dramatic targets with fixed and long-established locations are usually easier to perceive. The longer a target has existed at a given site, the easier it is to remote-view. Conversely, the more a target moves, the more it blurs in the remote viewer's perception. Remote viewers often find it difficult to describe a target's surroundings in enough detail to pinpoint its exact location, and reading signs or specific alphanumeric data is challenging.1
Aftereffects and Challenges
Intense remote viewing sessions can have aftereffects similar to those of hallucinogenic drugs, including heightened sensory perception and a feeling of a "natural high." However, prolonged and monotonous tasking can lead to mental fatigue, emotional fragility, and burnout. The controversial nature of remote viewing also led to the "Giggle Factor" within intelligence communities, where skepticism and fear of ridicule often hindered its acceptance and utilization.1
Connection to UAP and Consciousness
The study of remote viewing has led to speculation about its connection to the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena phenomenon and the nature of consciousness itself. Some researchers, like Garry Nolan, have discovered a correlation between individuals with a high aptitude for remote viewing and a hyperdeveloped area of the brain known as the caudate-putamen. This has led to the theory that this part of the brain may act as an "antenna," allowing certain individuals to perceive information that is normally filtered out by the conscious mind.2
Furthermore, the apparent precognitive abilities of UAP, such as the Tic Tac seeming to know the future location of the F/A-18 pilots, have led some to speculate that the operators of these craft may possess highly evolved psychic abilities, or that consciousness itself may be a fundamental component of their propulsion systems. The idea that remote viewing may be a vestigial human ability, a form of pre-linguistic communication, has also been proposed.2
Footnotes
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Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers. Dell, 1997. ↩︎
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Elizondo, Luis. Imminent. William Morrow, 2024. ↩︎
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Targ, Russell, and Harold Puthoff. "Information Transmission under Conditions of Sensory Shielding," Nature, vol. 251, October 18, 1974, pp. 602-607, read in the CIA Reading Room copy CIA-RDP96-00787R000100220001-8 on archive.org. Marks, David, and Richard Kammann. "Information Transmission in Remote Viewing Experiments," Nature, vol. 274, 1978, pp. 680-681, not obtained; quoted from Puthoff, Targ, and Tart, "Information Transmission in Remote Viewing Experiments: II," with Tart, "Reanalysis of SRI Remote Viewing Experiments," submitted to Nature, January 1979, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200090017-5, archive.org mirror. US Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity, "Project Grill Flame AMSAA Phase I Efforts," Interim Note No. 15, July 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100080005-8. ↩︎