OLGA SPIEGEL — "Ancient Future" Highways #8, Ingo Swann (1979) If the painter wishes to see enchanting beauties, he has the power to produce them. If he wishes to see monstrosities, whether terrifying, or ludicrous and laughable, or pitiful, he has the power and authority to create them... Indeed, whatever exists in the universe, whether in essence, in act, or in the imagination, the painter has first in his mind and then in his hands. — LEONARDO DA VINCI The Real Story is a book being placed in the Internet and WWW in serialized form, with continuing segments appearing at unscheduled intervals because of the time necessary to complete each segment. The book is appearing in this fashion because the top five publishers in these United States rejected it on the grounds that the public interest in the real story of remote viewing is minimal and the story is of no real mainstream interest. The author has nonetheless determined that a record of the story should be available for open-and-free-access historical purposes and for those who might chance to have interest. For purposes of accuracy, the book is very carefully based on documents existing in the author's voluminous, chronological archives as well as some in the possession of other sources and resources. All documents substantively depended upon are noted in the text. A complete bibliography of additional sources and other supportive materials will be appended later on. In those instances where guideline documentation is not available, or never existed, I have confirmed my recall by consulting with one or more direct witnesses of those instances. This follows accepted journalistic procedures which are both traditional and proper. However, the book, as it must be, is cast in the form of an autobiographical memoir and therefore contains many memories, opinions, deductions and estimations of the author -- and who therefore leans on the freedoms of speech, belief and opinion guaranteed by founding documents generally and equally applicable throughout the United States. Contents • Dedication • Forthcoming Additions • Author Preface • Preliminary Comments Part One: Beginnings 1919 -- 1971 Silence of the heart, practiced with wisdom, will see a lofty depth; And the ear of the silent mind will hear untold wonders. — Hesychius of Jerusalem • Chapter 1: Circumstances We Get Sucked Into • Chapter 2: Tiflis, Georgia • Chapter 3: Telluride, Colorado • Chapter 4: Mrs. Buell Mullen • Chapter 5: Mrs. Zelda Suplee • Chapter 6: Cleve Backster • Chapter 7: Feedback and Subliminal Perception • Chapter 8: The Repeatable Experiment • Chapter 9: Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler • Chapter 10: Psychokinesis Part Two: The Emergence of Remote Viewing At The American Society For Psychical Research 1971 — 1972 You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself. -- Galileo Today something is happening to the structure of human consciousness. A fresh kind of life is starting. — Teilhard de Chardin • Chapter 11: Encountering The Parapsychology Power Syndrome • Chapter 12: Dr. Karlis Osis • Chapter 13: Psychic Powers Vs Powers of Biomind • Chapter 14: Inside The Venerable American Society for Psychical Research • Chapter 15: Out-Of-Body? And The Emergence Of The Picture Drawings • Chapter 16: The "Picture Drawings" And My First Ambiguous Success • Chapter 17: The Emergence of Remote Viewing • Chapter 18: Janet Lee Mitchell, PhD • Chapter 19: A "Communication" From The Hard Drive Of Our Species • Chapter 20: New Year's Day 1972 • Chapter 21: The First Upset At The ASPR • Chapter 22: Mrs. Ruth Hagy Brod • Chapter 23: The Calm Before The Storms • Chapter 24: Some Background Regarding The First Storm At The ASPR • Chapter 25: The First Storm At The ASPR • Chapter 26: The First Outbound Remote Viewing Experiment • Chapter 27: Circumstances Begin Shifting Directions • Chapter 28: My First Letter To Dr. H.E. Puthoff • Chapter 29: Calm Before The Second Great Storm At The ASPR • Chapter 30: The Great Storm At The ASPR • Chapter 31: Reception For Ingo Swann At ASPR • Chapter 32: ASPR Disruption Part Three: Stanford Research Institute (SRI) 1972 The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -- Bertrand Russell What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible. -- Theodore Roethke • Chapter 33: Airborne Into The Impossible • Chapter 34: Harold E. Puthoff, Ph.D. • Chapter 35: Stanford Research Institute • Chapter 36: Social Introductions and Magnetometer Experiments • Chapter 37: The Varian Hall of Physics, Stanford University • Chapter 38: Repercussions Begin • Chapter 39: Realigning Some Garbled History • Chapter 40: Dr. Shafica Karagulla • Chapter 41: Dinner at the Tiller's • Chapter 42: First Intimations of Psychoenergetics • Chapter 43: Hail to Circumstances Beyond One's Control • Chapter 44: Puthoff Spreads the Word • Chapter 45: Dinner With Ruth Hagy and Al Brod • Chapter 46: Gloria Swanson • Chapter 47: What Does One Use For Eyes If One Is Out of Body? • Chapter 48: Uri Geller • Chapter 49: Researching the Craft of Intelligence • Chapter 50: In The Library of Congress • Chapter 51: More Shenanigans and Idiocies at ASPR • Chapter 52: The Darkest Day of My Life (One of Them, Anyway) • Chapter 53: The Second Visit to SRI • Chapter 54: Transferring Out of Parapsychology • Chapter 55: "Thoughts Through Space" • Chapter 56: The Long-Distance Factor • Chapter 57: Cognitive Aftermath of "Thoughts Through Space" • Chapter 58: The Media Hysteria of 1972 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. 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. 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 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 latter-day formats detached from tested, demonstrated, and confirmed proficiency, decomposition proceeded apace. Even so, those formats brought remote viewing to public attention and shifted awareness toward the superpowers of the human bio-mind. The real story has always been encumbered with secrecy surrounding government involvement and the Psi Warfare Gap during the Cold War. Yet leaks and media frenzies occurred, notably in 1975 and the misinformed wave of 1995–1996, which ridiculed intelligence agencies for wasting money on "psychic" hoopla. There are three sectors to the story: (1) the government connection and intelligence involvement; (2) what remote viewing actually is; and (3) whether our species inherently possesses these bio-mind superpowers that transcend conventional space, time, matter, and energy. Soviet research from the 1920s onward approached this from a biological, species-inherent basis ("bio-communications"), whereas Western research viewed psi as an individual psychological anomaly or disorder. The collision of Soviet bio-mind research with Western stigma led to the circumstances under which remote viewing emerged at SRI. 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 "Silence of the heart, practiced with wisdom, will see a lofty depth; And the ear of the silent mind will hear untold wonders." — Hesychius of Jerusalem I have debated at length how to begin this book, and whether to begin it with the philosophical topic of this chapter -- circumstances we get sucked into -- and how we then live our lives on their behalf. This is a topic which at first seems far removed from the story of remote viewing. But it is important to the saga and soap opera of the story -- because the real story was always overshadowed by the circumstances which brought about its activity and enactments. We take "circumstances" for granted. Dictionaries define circumstance as "a condition, fact, or event accompanying conditioning or determining another condition, fact, or event." Circumstances condition and determine other circumstances and incorporate people into them, whether as players or victims. Westerners elevate individualism and believe they control circumstances, yet all individuals exist within larger determining continuums. Two ongoing sets of circumstances exist in tension: (1) the circumstances leading to enlightenment regarding species superpowers of the human bio-mind, and (2) circumstances suppressing and marginalizing this knowledge out of fear and resentment of the "undue advantage" such faculties represent. Modern Western science dismissed psi as unscientific or pathological, while the American intelligence community was forced to investigate when it realized the Soviet Union was actively conducting large-scale research to harness these faculties for practical and military applications. The big picture consists of three elements: the inherent existence of bio-mind superpowers in our species, Soviet efforts to operationalize them, and the U.S. intelligence community's reaction to this potential threat. Big things often begin in small ways. In August 1919, in Tiflis (now Tbilisi), Georgia, a young student named Bernard Bernardovich Kazhinski had an experience that initiated the Soviet trajectory of bio-communications research. Kazhinski was awakened by the distinct sound of a silver spoon striking a glass. He later discovered that at that exact moment a mile away, his best friend had died of typhus just as the friend's mother dropped a silver spoon into a medicine glass. Moved and fascinated by how this sound had crossed space to wake him, Kazhinski vowed to solve the physical and biological mystery of telepathic connection. Unlike Western psychical researchers who focused on non-physical, individual psychological models, Soviet researchers framed the inquiry within biology and physiology, creating a paradigm of "bio-communications" aimed at species-level faculties.