From: Haunter@castles.com (Haunter) Newsgroups: alt.out-of-body Subject: Remote Viewing- WCS article Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 08:20:21 GMT Organization: AlteredState Imaging/Psi App/WCS Lines: 153 Message-ID: <37e504c7.125643126@cnews.newsguy.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-592.newsdawg.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.452 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!pln-w!spln!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!enews4 What is Remote Viewing? By Angela Thompson-Smith From: "As the Crow Flies" the Newsletter of the White Crow Society The term "Remote Viewing", or RV, was coined by Ingo Swan and Janet Mitchell, at the American Society for Psychical Research in New York in the early 1970's. Swann took the concept to SRI International in California, where he shared his protocols with the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) researchers, Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ. Remote Viewing in its simplest definition can be thought of as "the ability to access information from a remote geographic location using something other than the known five senses." s observed in the laboratory, the basic phenomenon appears to cover a range of subjective experiences variously referred to in the literature as autoscopy (in the medical literature); exteriorization or dissociation (psychological literature), simple clairvoyance; traveling clairvoyance, or Out-Of-Body experience (parapsychological literature); or astral projection (occult literature). I choose the term "remote viewing" as a neutral descriptive term, free from prior associations and bias as to its root causal mechanism. Many professionals, who were trained by lngo Swann refer to their method as Controlled Remote Viewing or CRV. Other RV groups teach variations of CRV, and refer to their methods as either Technical (TRV) or Scientific Remote Viewing (SRV). Extended Remote Viewing or REV, refers to a wider definition, which includes other establisbed RV methods such as: Associative Remote Viewing; Coordinate Remote Viewing, Future Memory; Meditative Remote Viewing, as well as Precognitive Remote perception (PRP) protocols. All of these techniques are valid RV methods, in the wider definition of the term. However, since the early research at the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) and later, at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), the term remote viewing has come into general usage, usually to denote the ability to perceive hidden or remote information by anomalous or psychic means. Ingo Swan, has written that he has always been aware that his spirit was not confined to his physical body. He suggests that mental travel is merely an extension through time and space of individual consciousness. He also believes that the ability to have such experiences is not a special talent but a natural function of human consciousness. However, remote vewing as a protocol, is different from a simple OBE. Swan has added his concern that the RV term is often misused. It was originally coined to identify a specific kind of experiment rather than a particular kind of psi ability. According to Swan the RV model consists of five definite components: a subject; active ESP abilities; a distant target; the subject's recorded responses; and confirmatory positive feedback. When one of these component parts is missmg, remote viewing has not taken place. During an OBI the first three of these components might be present but recording of the experience and confirmatory feedback are not always present. Leonard Buchanan, one of the original members of the military remote viewing team during the 1980's, adds his own concerns. Buchanan was trained in Swan's protocol, which he called Controlled Remote Viewing (CRV). CRV was designed, for the military as a very structured disciplined protocol employing strict controls, and was to be carried out using a human monitor. Buchanan has modified the CRV nomenclature, at the request of Swann but still adheres to Swan's original concept of a highly structured process. Buchanan believes that CRV and OBEs are completely different things. He feels that the term, remote viev;ing, is used by a lot of people to mean different things. Remote viewing, he says, originally meant the set of protocols which, under strict, scientific controls, could be used to test, evaluate, quantify and prove innate psychic Remote viewing or RV has became a hot-topic on the book shelves of America. There are at least five major books on the market, dealing with this controversial topic: Mind-Trek by Joseph McMoneagle (Hampton roads); Cosmic Voyage by Courtney Brown PhD. (Dutton); Second Sight bability. Once it gained scientific respect, almost everyone who had done anything "psychic" jumped on the bandwagon and started calling what they did "remote viewing". Theefore, he adds, a distinction has had to be made between the New Age adoption of "remote viewing" to mean anything and everything pqchic and Controlled Remote Viewing, as a definite protocol, with certain rules and regulations. Historically and culturally, OBEs and distant viewing appeared to have been complementary human faculties. However, in modern times, scientific methods have been used to study various aspects of this ability and the two phenomena of OBEs and remote perception/remote viewing and have come to be seen as two distinct entities with a great deal of gray area in between. As an individual who has experienced OBEs since childhood and conducted remote viewing research both in the research laboratory and in pactice, I feel I am qualified to comment on the topic under discussion. I think that OBEs and remote viewing exist on a continuum of experience, beginning, perhaps, with simple OBEs (where the viewer lifts out and floats suspended over their inert body), along a line to remote perception (where the viewer perceives geographic locations separated from the viewer by time and distance), and to a point where the individual is able to access information from these remote locations. Somewhere along this continuum lies the ability to actively interact (and perhaps even affect) events, people and things at these distant locations. Over the past 20 years, experimental protocols have changed as different laboratories have studied remote perception. New terminology, such as precognitive remote perception and anomalous information transfer, as well as remote viewing have been introduced. The world has claimed the term remote viewing as its own and it now appears to have two definitions: remote viewing as experimental protocol and remote viewing as a generalized human ability. Perhaps we need to generate yet another name for remote viewing. After all, each culture and historic time has had a definite name for this ability--why not one for the 21st century? I would suggest Human Remote Sensing as a general definition. It has only been in the past two decades that controlled experimental protocols have been designed specifically to explore remote perception. Several commercial groups have been applying remote viewing on a practical basis, offering to view remotely for business, industry and government. Their efforts have shown a significant degree of success and according to these groups, remote viewing is a learnable skill similars to musical or math ability. Some people have more of a natural talent, but all seem to benefit from training. I believe that human consciousness in not tied irrevocably to the body but that it is a mobile function of the human system and under certain circumstances, consciousness and the body can separate. Under these conditions perceptions can be experienced with a faculty separate from our regular five senses. Remote viewing and OBEs, despite all the current confusion over terminology, are normal human abilities and we have always possessed these faculties. I believe they are as much part of our normal experience as memory, learning, and language and deserve to be studied in the same manner as these other human abilities. As the Crow Flies- the Official Newsletter of the White Crow Society http://www.whitecrowsociety.com http://www.geocties.com/athens/parthenon/4167