Remote viewing students run into a challenge that I myself first blundered into early in my own training. Recently I monitored a student on a “structure” target that included a series of columns or pillars as part of the structure’s facade. The structure itself was definitively rectangular. The student verbally objectified “curving,” and (since we were using in-session feedback) I of course said “correct,” because there is a curving component to each of the columns. But the student then interpreted the entire target as being curved, and ultimately described and sketched the target as a single, huge, cylindrical pillar.
This is a remote viewing version of something in rhetoric and logic called the “composition fallacy,” or sometimes the “part-whole” fallacy. A person commits a composition fallacy by assuming that just because something is true of a part of something, then it is true of the entire thing. In a simplistic example: “Jones is allergic to peanuts. Since Jones is a human, if he is allergic to peanuts, all humans must also be allergic to peanuts.” Like all logical fallacies, almost all of us commit part/whole fallacies at one time or another, simply because we are humans and tend to be lazy thinkers.
There’s an important principle here. Just because you get fed-back “correct” when you say “curved” (or anything else!) doesn’t mean that the nasty, AOL-based theory you’re that is starting to form in your head is itself “correct.” Just because there is something “curved” at the target doesn’t mean that the target is just one big cylinder, or a dome, or a large round pit in the floor. (The same applies later when you no longer get in-session feedback.)
Similar things happen when, for example, students report “metallic” in a target that is a mostly masonry structure. The monitor might reply “correct” because there are small bits of metal in the window frames or on the doors, but otherwise metal is not significant to the target. Before you know it, though, the student has turned the whole thing into a tall, metallic skyscraper in his or her mind.
I have had students detect a patch of black color in a target that was 90% white, and go on to describe the entire target as being black. Perceptions of “blue” can be even more pesky. The color blue is present at a large majority of targets, especially outdoor ones (after all, the sky is blue everywhere!). Yet students will often get the concept “blue,” then conclude water is there, whether it really is or not.
Why does this happen? For the same reason that other problems in remote viewing do. As I always mention in every basic CRV course, Dr. Michael Gazzaniga tells us that every human has a “left-brain interpreter” that takes the data it receives and forms judgments and interpretations that guide our behaviors and decision in everyday life. It gets this data from the right brain, which is first in line to receive and process sensory information into the perceptions the interpreter can use.
This same thing happens with remote viewing data, except that this data doesn’t come from the physical senses, but through nonlocal channels. The problem arises due to a “bandwidth” issue, especially in the early stages of a session. If you remember from the Basic CRV course, I repeatedly referred to the remote viewing perceptual “bandwidth” as being much narrower than it is for normal physical sense-perception in the everyday world.
This is how I would explain what I mean by “narrow bandwidth.” By nature, remote viewing perceptions are “nonlocal”—that is, they come through a channel that is “other,” and not subject to any of the rules that physics understands. For our brains (which are part of the world physics understands) to receive and use these perceptions, they must be converted into the right form. But this conversion process seems to reduce the rate at which they can be passed to conscious awareness.
It’s like having a herd of cows you’re trying to get from a corral into a truck through a chute only wide enough for one cow at a time. You’ll eventually get them all in, but it takes awhile, and a lot can happen as the bunched cows mill around excitedly on either end of the process.
This “narrowness” is a remote viewing fact-of-life, independent of whether the session involves CRV or any other RV methodology that contains features sufficient to generate a decent signal-line connection. Because it must still form judgments and interpretations, yet has much less data to do this correctly, the left brain will inevitably jump to many more false conclusions than it does in our outwardly-physical daily lives.
Internal editing may play a role in this process. Imagine you’re the viewer. In the course of one of your sessions, you perceive multiple data bits that fit plausibly together. But then you get a perception that your left brain thinks contradicts what you have already received. To get rid of it, you internally edit it. For example: You’ve gotten “tall, thin, vertical, high,” and then you suddenly get “short and stubby.” Since “short and stubby” surprises you by contrasting with “tall and thin,” you impulsively dismiss this “incompatible” data, and negligently fail to mention or objectify it.
You (yes, I’m talking about YOU—and every other remote viewer who has ever existed!) continue on your merry way thinking the target is exclusively “tall, thin, vertical…” etc. and dismiss anything that doesn’t fit that idea. Then the moment of truth: In your feedback you discover the target was the Grand Canyon. Sadly, the only perceptions you allowed in had to do with the light pole standing near the Canyon’s edge.
You can often tell if you have gone off on one or another of such tangents during a session when, in reporting your perceptions, you hear yourself using such words as “it’s” or “it is” (such as in “It is metallic…” or “It’s green…”). Often, when viewers say “it is” and its variations, inside their heads they are starting to think that the entire target is metallic (or green, or whatever). In normal, non-remote viewing life if, for example, you see a green car and someone later asks you what color it is, you might say “It is green,” referring to its dominant color. On the other hand, when seeing a car that is more than just green, most people will say something along the lines of “It is green and red, with some chrome highlights and a white roof.”
But because of the narrow-bandwidth problem, in remote viewing you may at first only perceive the green, and it may take awhile to perceive the red or the chrome, if you ever perceive them at all. Just because you didn’t pick up on the red or the chrome doesn’t mean the whole thing is green. Even worse, by assuming a perception you receive represents the whole target, you may stop yourself from being open to other correct perceptions.
So when you’re remote viewing, it can be a bad idea to say or think “It is…” or “The target is…” whatever. You can get away with it only if you absolutely understand that “it’s” or “it is” means only that what you just perceived is at the target, and not that it is the target. Doing otherwise may lead to the mistake of noticing a part of the target and thinking it is the whole target.
Fortunately, simply being aware and trying not to fall into the trap goes a long way to curing you of this mistake.
[Adapted from a chapter in Paul’s untitled forthcoming book.]
Copyright 2024, Paul H. Smith and RVIS, Inc.