Did you ever wonder if remote viewing was more than just people fantasizing that they were psychic? After all, if remote viewing is possible — if any form of psychic ability is real — the whole materialist fantasy falls to the ground. Well, you can call the cleanup crew to pick up the pieces. Thirty years and more of remote viewing have provided enough data to put the question beyond doubt — if you are intellectually honest enough to actually look at the evidence. What’s more, remote viewing is something like chess in that it is pretty easy to learn the moves, but a lifetime would not exhaust what there was to learn.
In another entry, I’m going to describe in a little detail one of my remote viewing exercises, which should serve as an example of the possibilities and difficulties. First though, this sketch of how it is done.
Ideally remote viewing involves at least three individuals: the viewer, the monitor, and the person judging the results. Even if you remote-view by yourself, you will still have to perform all three functions. It’s easier if different people take different roles. They are all essential.
Monitoring
The monitor, not the viewer, is responsible for collecting information. As monitor, you want to provide a sequence of on-target moments and provide time for the viewer to objectify them. It is a delicate balance. You want to keep prodding the viewer for more glimpses of the target, and more details, but you don’t want to accidentally pull the viewer off target by suggesting things.
During a remote viewing, the viewer will be “on target” or will be “reporting.” In the first case, viewers will tend to use present tense language, may make gestures in the air trying to describe things without words, and in general will be more “there” than “here.” Hard to describe, easy to recognize. In the second case, their language will tend to be in the past tense, they are more likely to make eye contact, and they will probably try to name something rather than describe it.
The monitor takes notes, and encourages the viewer to write and/or sketch. After the viewing is over, the monitor sees that the viewer writes a short narrative of the session, because the act of writing the summary will frequently remind the viewer of details that had been perceived but not reported. Sketching is encouraged at all times during the process and we found out just how valuable the most fragmentary sketch may be, as opposed to the narrative which may be fluent but largely or even totally imaginary.
Judging
Evaluating a remote viewing session is a skill in itself. You must make sense of data that is by nature a fragmentary, elliptical, often contradictory. Some of what you will be looking at will be fantasy, produced by the viewer’s left brain trying to make sense of impressions. Just as it is important that the monitor not steer the process of perception, it is important that the judge not steer the process of interpretation.
Viewers’ descriptions can be very general, which is not very helpful. We know that the grass is green and the sky is blue. It is up to the judge to find whatever is unique. A judge who has no idea what the target was, and who did not set up the target pool of photos, should be able to select from four photos the one the viewer was contacting.
Now, since the target pool was selected with the intent to produce pictures vary different from each other, you would think that — if the viewer produced a good viewing — choosing among them would be relatively straightforward. I can say from experience that it is not that simple. However, neither is it impossible. At least two of the photos usually can be eliminated pretty easily. The last two, however, may be surprisingly difficult. Pictures with little in common in terms of subject matter turn out to have surprising amounts in common when searched for fragmentary details and qualities.
Viewing
When we attempt remote viewing, our minds tempt us into three errors: memory, imagination, analysis. We will get an impression and our mind will say “oh yeah that’s just like x and such.” Or our minds will attempt to fill in the dots, constructing fragmentary or elaborate fantasy pictures. Or the mind will say “it is round, yellow, it must be the sun.”
It seems to me that we do this in ordinary life, no less. But here the process is more obvious, because the underlying data is so ephemeral, so hard to grasp, so intangible by definition. The first step in avoiding these pitfalls is to become aware that they exist. The cardinal rule in remote viewing is “describe, don’t name.” It is better to report raw perceptions. Names pigeonhole things. Naming distances us from them.
Course facilitator Skip Atwater listed five behaviors in remote viewing, and you might say that the week was a long exercise in learning and practicing them.
1. Relaxing, turning inward. Kinesthetic feelings replace mental noise. Learn ways to maintain it or jump back into it.
2. The resonance phase. Connecting with the information of interest. Different viewers experience different portions of the target.
3. Listening stage. Interior very calm: open attention versus focused attention. Not reporting perceptions, that is later.
4. Becoming aware of the information
A — the moment before, a momentary disorientation
B — awareness. It comes in fragments.
C. a brief period after. Let the thoughts blossom.
5. Describing, reporting. Objectify the perceptions. Strategies to translate without naming.