Introduction
human beings studied have been able to produce formal drawings
on paper approximating some distant spatial target mediated only
by the independent designation of the target and the concentration
and attention of the subject.
In terms of the ordinary type of painstaking procedures of the
scientific method, we should now be well launched into a new era
of exploring aspects of the human mind, with which scientists previ-
ously have had difficulty in dealing. There have been other thor-
!
oughly
creditable,
conventionally structured experiments
before.
But these have not received the kind of acceptance normally given
within what scientists feel
is a wholly rational, totally trustworthy
,
!
scientific community. In fact,
I think it may be fair to say that as
;i‘i
the experimental methods
to investigate so-called psychic powers
;'!
have improved, so have the violence of controversy, the proclama-
j:;;j
tions of disbelief* and the accusations of either conscious or un-
iyl
conscious fraud.
i;i
These particular experiments do start with several advantages:
;||
they come out of physics, popularly believed to be the hardest of
ij
i:
the hard sciences; they come out of a respected laboratory; and they
,jjj:
do not appear to be the work of true believers who set out to use
J.ii
science to validate passionately held
beliefs. Tremendous
efforts
have been used which far outstrip the normal procedures to guaran-
tee scientific credibility. Perhaps this in itself may make them less
easily accepted. For scientists on the whole take each other’s word
for most of their experiments, and only present their data in com-
pletely accessible form when others have failed to replicate their
experiments, seldom
distrusting
the
carefulness and honesty
of
their colleagues.
We may well ask why it
is necessary, in studies of this kind, to
have at least twice as many safeguards and artificial substitutes for
integrity as those usually demanded. Why does the psychic research
worker, following ordinary rules, have to anticipate more hurdles
than
research workers
in other controversial
fields—such
as
the
study of the inheritance of acquired characters, the existence of ei-
detic imagery, mind/body relationships postulated for somatotypic
studies, or the findings of psychoanalysis. In all of these fields, those
who claimed new results have been subjected to enormous academic
Approved For Release 2003/09/16
?
xvi
Introduction
wm-.
punishment. They have been tempted to distort or suppress their
data. Many have become unscientifically dogmatic and stubborn ad-
vocates of their positions. And, occasionally, some have been driven
into exile, or even into desperate situations involving suicide, misery',
and death.
•
The scientific world and the literate public have been fully ex-
posed to the intricacies of disputes involving scientific theories so
dogmatic as to resemble religious beliefs. Among other topics, they
have been treated to diatribes on the impossibility of transmitting
acquired characters and to the inextricable associations made be-
tween some scientific claim and the sociological platforms of com-
munism, capitalism, fascism, or racism. We have read Double Helix,
the accounts of Lysenko, Tempter by Norbert Wiener, and most
recently the story of Bill Summerlin in June Goodfield’s The Siege
of Cancer. We have even read of the early use of the microscope to
find miniature horses in horse sperm.
Psychic researchers do,
I think, sometimes forget that they are
not the only research workers, who are subjected to harassment,
misquotation, and unfair attack when they challenge old theories
and propose new ones. Yet when we examine the history of the last
hundred
years,
in
which
careful
experimentation
has
been
continuously
misrepresented and
denied, we
find many
recog-
nized scientists insisting that psychic research should be endlessly
repeated because it is not a “recognized area of scientific research.
As one person quoted in this manuscript said,
This
is the kind of
thing that I would not believe in even if it existed. We can easily
conclude that
this
is indeed an area of
scientific
research more
fraught with irrational opposition than most, although hardly more
subject to attack than, for example, psychoanalysis.
,
There are, I think, a series of historical reasons for this. It would
i be valuable
for the open-minded reader to explore some of the
historical and cross-cultural backgrounds of psi capacity. It seems to
be a very unevenly distributed ability, overtly manifested by only a
; few individuals. In most societies, no connection
is made between
7;.' these very special unique “sensitives” and the rest of the popula-
tion. Sometimes, in other societies, the capabilities exhibited by the
j
; few individuals are generalized, but if there are a large number of
§?96t00787R000500240025-6
xvii
Introduction
individuals believed
to be capable of some
exercise of psi—like
predicting the future, diagnosing illness, or healing the sick—then
the individuals who would normally stand out are simply absorbed
into a group of practitioners and
their special
abilities go unre-
marked. Other societies outlaw all such behavior as coming from
the devil or involving fraud, and here again, both the uniquely gifted
and the somewhat gifted will be discouraged.
Furthermore, there is good reason to believe that the practitioner
of an uninstitutionalized art—such as a prophet or healer or diag-
nostician—may have limited understanding or control of his or her
special capacities. There
is therefore a tremendous temptation
to
include vanous kinds of tricks
in the practitioner’s
repertoire,
in
case the little understood and unreliable power fails. This may be
why the tncks of the healer who palms a “pain” by extracting a small
crystal from the body of a patient go hand in hand with the demon-
stration of special healing abilities. The charismatic leader may also
substitute ora tonal
tricks for the spontaneity which won him his
onginal place. The medium who once could easily attain an altered
state of consciousness may take along a glove filled with wet sand, in
case the spirits
fail to arrive. There seems to be a fluctuating, un-
predictable quality about these special powers, which may be due to
nothing more than the lack of a stable cultural understanding.
n any event, such abilities should probably be classified with all
other statistically unusual abilities, such as the amazing aptitudes of
some individuals to arouse awe or wonder.
As scientific exploration tells us more about how these capabilities
can be disciplined and developed—as mathematical and musical
ability have been fostered in the past—many conditions of uncer-
tainty surrounding psi capacity can be removed. For example
the
sophistication possessed by one of the subjects mentioned in
this
book in his describing the necessary- conditions for “remote view-
ing
is particularly striking.
Psychic powers have
historically been
closely
associated
with
powers of healing, an area where faith and hope and response to
placebos means that many diagnoses and many cures remain prob-
lematical. Faith in the healer is essential to the ability of the healer
to heal, so that both healer and patient are held in a tight circular
xVipproved For Release 2003/09/16
:
Ty-
Introduction
..
.
system which
is beneficial to both, and dangerous
to break. The
vested claims of other kinds of healers inevitably come in conflict
' ^h the claims for and by the psychic healer, further obscuring ra-
-
tional
discussion. The reception accorded psychoanalysis and
all
attempts to trace symptoms or their relief to communicative activi-
ties is analogous to the reception given to reports of psychic healing
sometimes with amusing overtones such
as when
the psycho-
analyst who holds to a carefully structured theory of what
is* hap-
pening
is obliquely credited with
“just having generalized
thera-
peutic powers” as a way of explaining the theory away!
Through the ages, deliberate magical procedures have also taken
on independent life, and guilds of conjurers and magicians naturally
hold vested interests in their bags of tricks. It has become customary'
to include expert magicians among the groups testing the poweis
of sensitives, and to give critical comment on the conditions under
which experimental proof for some psychic ability is sought. From
this has arisen the curious type of criticism which will undoubtedly
plague psychic research for a long time to come, that if a particular
act could have been performed by a magician, then it could not have
been genuinely psychic. But is this any more meaningful than the
kinds of doubt which plague the study of the psvchosomatic dis-
orders of a single patient who displays a mixed set of symptoms
which could be “caused” by several different sets of antecedent cir-
cumstances?
I think one of the worst complications arises when both sensitives
themselves and their followers advocate psychic energies as being
“extrasensory,” as proof of life after death, or of the existence of
supernatural or transcendent powers of some sort. When they at-
; -
43011 such
belief system
to something as little-known and" un-
g
.
dependable as psychic energy, fanaticism
is often substituted
for
'•;T: open-mindedness. The very- tenuousness of the connection, the in-
sistence upon a physical manifestation of a power claimed to be
iSi' outside the physical universe, means that they must cling to their
TT
behefs more strongly in the face of
all evidence
to the
contrary',
vw When
scientific methods were applied
to
the study
of psvchic
Powers’ the confrontations became increasingly dogmatic, the argu-
Tw
ments became more farfetched, and paranoia on both sides arose.
,-jg|§9;6-00787R000500240025-6
xix
Introduction
ill
^ ^ often hard to tell the fanaticism of the true believer from the
paranoia of the serious experimenter, as each side feeds upon the
|
other's obstinate insistence. No researcher on psychic abilities can
l|
expect to be free of this situation, and certainly the authors of the
,|i
present book were not immune to misrepresentations by both the
credulous and the stubbornly unconvinced.
,
The SRI research not only displays the elegance characteristic of
physical experimentation and theory, but the experimenters have
I
also used an imaginative approach
to the human aspects of their
:|
problem. Where too many experimenters have put their “subjects”
:
through long, dull, repetitive performances—during which whatever
J
psychic capacities they had first displayed eventually deteriorated
j)
Targ and Puthoff have
realized
that boring experiments
are
un-
|
productive for learners, and resented by sensitives with developed
|
psychic powers. Furthermore, where much of existing research has
|
treated the human participants as either “subjects” (usually thought
|
human substitutes for rats persuaded to run a maze)
or im-
postors or self-deluded oddities, Targ and Puthoff have treated both
I
their apprentice learners and experienced sensitives as collaborators
I
iij
and persons whose view s were to be respected. It is unique here that
the subjects were considered as partners in research. And Puthoff
and Targ have been richly rewarded and have gained new insights
into the complicated and
delicate processes involved
in “remote
viewing.”
In addition to the “remote viewing,” in which the participants
|i
were m°st successful in picturing by drawing rather than by verbally
describing and interpreting the nature of the “target”
areas, the
authors present a few cases of precognition—correct viewing of the
I
target area before
it
is known to the observer who
is later to be
directed there by randomly chosen instructions. These are the cases
which raise the most interesting questions both for the contempo-
:
rary s ta te of theory in physics, and for the way in which precognition
j
may be expected to function in everyday life. If there is precognition
j
of a future event, such as a train wreck, can death in the ^eck be
|
avoided by not taking the train, even though the wreck st%<jcpurs?
|
Stated succinctly, does precognition add up to greater freedom of
j
the
will, or to a new prescription
for despair? There seems
little
I
Approved For Release 2003/09/16
j
XX
Introduction
.. *5?
reason to believe that human beings could
live with the certain
-
fSJT knowledge of disasters which they would have no power to prevent.
. This issue is not yet faced by the experimenters, but will,
I under-
stand, be on their future agenda.
A second issue, which will undoubtedly be picked up by the sensa-
tionalist press, and which flows from the accounts of Soviet interest
in mind influencing from a distance,
is the prevalence of fantasies
surrounding spying and being spied upon. “Could the enemy read
the President’s mind?” as one newspaper account put
it. But such
fantasies of omnipotence or total vulnerability to inimical
forces
have been continuously fed and
exaggerated
for over
a
quarter
century by the science fiction in which many dilemmas are solved
not by science, but by ESP. These fictions represent easy solutions,
most likely unreal and
certainly
regressive and unchallenging
in
nature.
V>:
Thirdly, these experiments are concerned with the ability of par-
ticipants to penetrate shielding when both participants are willing
to do so. But it may prove quite possible that this channel could be
as successfully blocked as it can be successfully opened. Experiments
which demonstrate that there
is a counterpart to the cooperation
between the observer at the target and the observer in the shielded
laboratory,
in which
a
trained observer at the
target blocks the
channel, would go a long way to avert all the suggestions that one’s
mind can be
“read,”
creating the strange paranoia
that,
in
this
postwar world of nuclear threat,
is inevitably exacerbated
in the
;;
.
minds of the public, in the press, and even by fellow scientists.
y
:V
Finally, I think it is important to realize that if a certain psi phe-
• v;
nomenon can be studied by scientific methods and one or more of
TF).
its mechanisms involved can be related to existing scientific theory,
this does not necessarily lead to a reductionist demolition of the
essence of the phenomenon. Explaining the behavior of great artists
yprt in terms of childhood trauma, order of birth, or congenital excess
of a hormone may advance our knowledge of biological functions
'%
'
far more than
it explains a great work of art. Those who wish to
*;£...
relate the human condition
to some transcendent power
in
the
universe should be better, not worse, off by an increased knowledge
>
of el
ITPP96-I
nisms. Science
is not simply a device for
XXI
Introduction
explaining away events and
given. Because science expands one
yp^ undersfood
this. But
denigrate another.
All
great
sci
]
^ and wbo do not
those who hold a slavish
c
f modern science are likely
understand the glorious uncer
trivializing as reducing
to come to small conclusions
7a pack of cards,
“remote viewing” to repetitious
g ^
P ^ sdencc> there
s*o
—1' s"°uld
greatly expand our present paradigms.
—M.M.
xxn
THE
STAR
FEBRUARY
«,
1«7
PAGE
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: CIA-RD(^96-00787R000500240025-6
£/VC,
\S'TA.K
i-P-7'7
STAR reporter Charles Brown
and
myself
this week
tested
an
amazing
new
teach-your-
self-KSP
technique —
and
found that
it can work.
The
method,
called
remote
viewing, was evolved by two
re-
spected
scientists.
Dr.
Itussel
Targ and
Dr.
Harold
Puthoff
o(
the Sanford Research Institute in
Menlo Park, Calif.
They say
that
remote viewing
enables a person
to describe
re-
mote
“target"
locations —
un-
known
to them — simply by
sit-,
ting
in
a
quiet room
with
eyes
closed, watching images forming
in their mind.
The two scientists say the tech-
nique has been successfully tested
bv
psychic
Uri
tidier and New
York
artist
Irigo
Swann.
Their
work
has
also
born
praised
by
famed anthropologist Dr. Margar-
et Mead.
This week the STAR decided to
put
it to the test.
Wiiile
1 sat in a
dimly-lit
room,
reporter
Brown
left our office in midtown Manhat-
tan,
telling no one where he was
going.
At
a
pre-arranged
time
I
re-
laxed and closed my eyes, as
in-
structed
in
Ihe
rpmole
viewing
technique.
I
could
see
treetops
marking the edge of an expanse,
with buildings beyond them.
It was only
later that
1 discov-
ered that Charles was looking at
a similar scene. He had taken
a
cab
to Columbia
University, and
got out at
1 16th. Street. Hfr walked
east
on
U6th
to
Momingside
Drive and found himself at the lop
of
a wooded
slope,
looking over
bare
treetops. There were apart-
ment buildings beyond.
He
then
walked
back
along
116lh Street, looking at the apart-
ment buildings on the south side
of the street. They were Victorian
brick
and
concrete
structures,
seven stories high.
Back
in THE STAR
office,
I
could
see
gingerbread-like
old
buildings, not too
tail.
Charles crossed Amsterdam Av-
enue, and proceeded toward
Col-
umbia University's old
library,
a
squarish
building
topped
by
a
shallow
dome.
Leading
down
from
it were steps.
To the right was a round foun-
tain, to the left an old Gothic style
church.
In
the most
remarkable
asso-
ciations of the whole experiment,
I visualized a round roof,
like the
top of a carousel, a round shape,
like a pond, and steps or a narrow
ramp,
I found that the major problem
with
the experiment was
that
I
tried to associate the images with
an area
1 knew.
1 had never been to the area of
Manhattan
where
Charles
was,
and
I thought he was seeing Cen-
tral Park.
The
things
did
see seemed
free-floating, without any scale or
surroundings.
Scientists Targ and Puthoff say
that remote viewing has also been
successfully
tested
by
Richard
Bach, author of Jonathon Livings-
ton Seagull.
Bach
tells
in the book how
he
watched a “surreal television pic-
ture''
in his mind of another per-
son
at a
secret
location several
blocks away. His description was
close to the
reality.
'I COULD SEE
A ROUND ROOF
AND A POND’
Above
Is
the
sketch
reporter
Meredith
Chaplin
made
of
her
Image. At left
is the old
library
at New
York's
Columbia University.
I SAW TREETOPS, OLD BUILDINGS'
At left
is her sketch of trees and
buildings.
Below
is spot where
staffer
Charles
Brown
stood.
mm
" V'Y
HERE
is how
to teach voursell
the
remote
viewing
technique,
put forward by Dr, Harold Puth-
off and Dr. Russel Targ:
Determine
if you
feel any
re-
sistance
to
the
idea
of psychic
functioning,
or
the
belief
that
you can describe a scene beyond
your normal senses. Has some-
one
in authority said
it was im-
possible. or nonsense?
Repeat
these
questions
until
you feel comfortably convinced,
even
though
you may
suspect
that
the suspension of
disbelief
is only temporary.
Ask a friend lo pick a location
— preferably unknown to you —
and tell the friend to be there at
a
particular
time,
and
to
re-
main there for
15 minutes. The
person at the
target
site must
pay
attention
to where
he
is.
and observe.
At
tlie same
time,
you,
the
subject,
should
be
in
a
quiet,
perhaps
dimly-lit
place
where
you are comfortable.
Sit up and remain alert. About
one minute before the time the
experiment
is
lo
begin,
relax
and calm your thoughts.
It is not necessary to do more
than this:
no special routine or
meditation
is needed.
Now try to describe the target
location — to yourself or to an-
other friend.Dcscribe the mental
images that seem to be associat-
ed with the target area. Just re
late the basic colors, shapes and
feelings.
It
is
essential
lo avoid
‘trying to name the place.’
Try sketching the images that
come
to
mind.
Be
willing
In
draw what pops into your mind,
even
though
you
don't
know
what
it is that the drawings rep-
resent.
You
should
visit
the
remote
target as soon as possible after
the end of the 15 minute interval
allotted
for remote viewing.
Ill
this way,
feedback
takes place
while the images are
still fresh
in your mind, and you can make
an internal comparison that will
be useful in future experiments
AFTER trying this experiment
do you think you can do "remote
viewing?"
Tell THE STAR
of
your
experience.
I?
for
everv
letter published
Write: Remote
Viewing, Tlie Star, 7.10 Third Av-
enue, New York, N.Y.
10017.
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: CIA-RDP96-00787R000500240025-6