Welcome to the Remote Viewing/Remote Perception Blog

I promote a radical idea: That we humans are more than a mere collection of physical parts and processes. Why is that radical, you wonder? Since people first became able to think, haven’t  most of us, really, deep down inside believed that human nature was partly physical, yet partly “something else”?

From the days of the early Greeks, and perhaps before, there have always been materialists around—people who thought that nothing existed that wasn’t in some way physical. But since the 1950s or 1960s the certitude has grown that human beings are just complicated pieces of biological machinery—essentially “machines made of meat.” It has become the fashion, especially in science, to reject the idea that there can be anything to humans beyond what can be measured or explained in physical terms. Such thinking leads to an unavoidable conclusion—there is nothing in human nature that is spiritual, or non-physical, or psychic in the ESP sense of the word.

From my own studies and experiences, I know this modern “scientific” belief is mistaken—is its own sort of fantasy. I have discovered for myself that humans are “more than their physical bodies” (as consciousness pioneer Robert A. Monroe aptly and often put it).

This blog documents my own experiences, thoughts, and ideas from more than three decades as a military psychic spy, philosopher, and student of human perception and consciousness. Its main theme will be remote viewing and remote perception, but as I add entries you will also find posts ranging into broader areas of consciousness, intuition,  non-local knowing, and perception as well.  Grab a hold—the ride starts now….


Protocol…or Method? Another remote viewing controversy

What is a protocol? What is a method? Are they different? Or is this merely a distinction without a difference (in other words, the words are different, but is there any real difference)? Even after two decades people in the remote viewing community still debate this. At root ...

In Controlled Remote Viewing Did Ingo Swann Add More Stages?

The original version of controlled remote viewing (CRV) was created in partnership between Ingo Swann and Dr. Harold E. Puthoff. Their version of CRV is the genesis of most remote viewing methods taught and practiced today. Their final product consists of six steps, or "stages," each progressing from ...

Overview of a Controlled Remote Viewing Session

In each of my Basic Controlled Remote Viewing Courses I do a demonstration for my students. They pick the target and I am completely blind to it. I save this exercise for late in the training week. I have found that they get more value out of it ...

Levels of Remote Viewing Training

Many folks approach me about remote viewing training. Some already know what they want. They’ve done their research, and now they’re ready to start my training program. They just need to know how to go about it. Others, though, first want to know about remote viewing training. They ...

Remote Viewing and AOL: The Monster in the Closet

This is a guest article from my long-time friend and colleague Tom McNear. Tom was the first and only military viewer to be trained all the way through in the Controlled Remote Viewing (CRV) methodology by Ingo Swann himself. Ingo often referred to Tom as his "best ever ...

Is Cool-down…Cool?

Normally, one cools down after working or exercising hard. In remote viewing, the cool-down comes first. It was Thursday, January 19, 1984. We were in the windowless, highly-secret consciousness research facility on the top floor of SRI-International’s Radio Physics Laboratory building in Palo Alto, California. And it was ...

Ideograms: The Funny Little Squiggles that are Causing All the Fuss

(NOTE: The topic of ideograms is of most importance to those learning or practicing controlled remote viewing. But they are something that anyone interested in remote viewing should know at least a little about. Recently, ideograms have become a matter of controversy in Facebook remote viewing groups. In ...

Beware the Unknown Tasker

Ever since remote viewing became a “thing” (and I’m talking 1971, not just 1995 or even 2020!) folks have wanted to kick the tires and take it out for a test drive. But that brings problems with it. Here is one: If you become a remote viewer, no ...

A Good Example of an Operational Remote Viewing Session

It seems like almost every other day or so I hear complaints that "no one is putting examples of real remote viewing sessions up on the Internet for all to see." I don't take this too seriously, because there are lots of examples available on the Internet, including ...

Digesting the Many Flavors of Remote Viewing

"Remote viewing is bewildering!” That’s what new people entering the remote viewing world often think when faced with the many “kinds” of remote viewing they see there. "What's the difference between CRV, ERV, ARV, TRV, SRV (and etc.)?" they want to know. In my book The Essential Guide ...

The Titanic–a Remote Viewing Exercise

If you've seen the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (sometimes abbreviated by fans as "CEIII") then you've seen Richard Dreyfuss building a model of Wyoming's Devil's Tower out of mashed potatoes on the dining room table. That iconic scene became a running joke among me and ...

Stephen Hawking’s Transition and the Non-local Mind

Often, the presence of death turns us to questions. Almost as if on their own, our minds grab for answers we hope will lead us to understand. We each phrase the questions in our own way, but the aim is always to try to find meaning in—or at ...

Remote Viewing With Russians

Yes, it’s true. I have just spent two weeks colluding with Russians. Mind you, this was not the political-intrigue kind of collusion that has become so famous during President Trump’s administration. No, this was more like economic espionage–but perfectly legal, rest assured. We were trying to use remote ...

Deflecting a Cheap Shot: Remote Viewing and the Nazca Lines

(Featured image courtesy Diego Delso, delso.photo, License CC-BY-SA) Some people love to find fault. Some of them are journalists—or at least pretend to be. Such is the case with a website named “MuckRock,” which bills itself as “a non-profit collaborative news site that gives you the tools to ...

Why Learn Remote Viewing?

It happens to me all the time. I will be sitting in an airport, or waiting in a doctor’s office, or wherever, and will strike up a conversation with someone next to me. At some point I’ll be asked, “What do you do for work?” I don't start ...

Happy Anniversary, Remote Viewing!

It was all started by the improbable partnership of a psychic and a scientist 45 years ago today. June 6, 1972 was when artist/psychic Ingo Swann accompanied physicist Harold E. “Hal” Puthoff into the Varian Physics Building on the campus of Stanford University. Their goal was for Swann, ...

Don’t Tell the Authorities! (Or, what do I do if I get a premonition of disaster?)

Have you or someone you know ever had a thought that seemed to be a premonition or foreboding of some disaster about to occur? If so, have you (or they) wondered anxiously what you should do about it, whom you should tell? Recently, I received the following message ...

How NOT to Take a Break

On my first day in Army airborne training I learned how not to take a break. Two hours into the routine of drills and running, our platoon’s Black Hat (as sergeants who run the training are called) halted us and said he was going to teach us how ...

A Good Start! 20 Years of Remote Viewing Training

Twenty years ago today Remote Viewing Instructional Services taught it’s first student. On 17 January 1997 an adventurous soul named Ed Bogges signed on to be my first ever civilian student of controlled remote viewing. To be sure, I had by then been doing and teaching CRV since ...

Desert Storm Christmas: Synchronicity During War

Barely four months after my wife Daryl and I were married, I got sent off to help fight a war. Not the best way to build a marriage relationship, especially since I left her with partial custody of three brand new step kids–an instant family she was just ...

John Glenn and Remote Viewing

I was tense. The longer we cooled our heels in the antechamber of the Hart Senate Office Building, the more time we had to wonder what awaited us behind that closed door. It was May 16, 1990–a Wednesday –and we were on hold while our boss, Colonel William ...
Paul H. Smith - Then and Now

Does Hair Length Affect ESP? A tale of two heads.

There is a tale making the rounds that if you get your hair cut you lose your psychic ability. Here's the gist of the story: The Army's Special Forces canvased Indian reservations for talented trackers and scouts. They recruited a number of impressively talented Native Americans, but once ...
Hal Puthoff (r) and Ingo Swann early in the SRI remote viewing program

“It Could Have Been That Remote Viewing Never Happened”

In an interesting coincidence, perhaps the two greatest watershed events in remote viewing history took place on the anniversaries of two of the biggest World War II events. As Ingo Swann mentions in this audio clip, the first ever experiment using the new remote viewing protocol that Ingo ...

Best Ever Remote Viewing April Fools Joke–and a point.

It’s not April Fools Day anymore, and the story I’m about to tell happened at a different time of year. But it is April for the next several days, so it’s still the best month to renew the tale of how a remote viewing prank caused the famous ...

You DO Need a “Gift” to be Psychic!

Have you wondered what it would be like to have just a touch of omniscience—a small (or even a bit more) psychic gift or talent to give you a little edge in life? Odds are that if you have, you may have also assumed it was beyond you ...

Out of the Body…or Out of Your Mind?

(Featured photo: Detail from cover of Journeys out of the Body, by Robert A. Monroe.) Every so often I am asked: “Have you ever had an out-of-body experience?” That is one of those $64-billion-dollar questions (they used to be $64 thousand, but, like the deficit, that has grown...) ...

ESP: What’s Love Got to Do With It? A Special Valentines Remote Viewing Blog

We don’t normally connect romance to extrasensory perception (ESP). Yet a book I read not long ago does exactly that. Since it is Valentine’s Day, I want to introduce you to Sally Rhine Feather’s engrossing book The Gift: The Extraordinary Experiences of Ordinary People, and give you a ...

Content be Damned!

Rob Cowart, Joe McMoneagle, and Tom McNear at a costume party in the early 1980s. Photo courtesy of Tom McNear. "Structure! Content be damned.” Remote viewing has relatively few quotable moments—after all, what is there to say when what matters is actually putting the process into practice? But ...

Millennium

Three years ago today, the creator of remote viewing, Ingo Swann, moved beyond his mortal body and, as will all of us in the end, entered an eternal world of infinite possibility. To commemorate that sad but affirming transition, I am celebrating Ingo's life today by posting here ...

The Marine and the Rattlesnake

I received an interesting phone call one day last fall (September 28, 2015 to be exact). It was from my medically-retired Marine friend, whom I will call simply “Dru,” as he is protective of his privacy—to the extent of pulling down his Facebook page a few years back, ...

Why Remote Perception?

I rarely argued with my mentor, Ingo Swann. When I did, it was sometimes unpleasant, but more often it was educational—even on the few occasions when in the end we still disagreed. A mild one of those arguments happened over the phone in April 2002, while I was ...

Welcome to the Remote Viewing/Remote Perception Blog

I promote a radical idea: That we humans are more than a mere collection of physical parts and processes. Why is that radical, you wonder? Since people first became able to think, haven't most of us, really, deep down inside believed that human nature was partly physical, yet ...