In Extended Remote Viewing, or ERV for short, a viewer relaxes on a bed or other comfortable support and tries to reach a “hypnagogic” state–a condition at the borderline between asleep and awake. (Earlier in ERV’s development, Hemi-Sync binaural beat technology was used to help induce this hypnagogic state.) The room is darkened and soundproofed if possible.

 

An example extended remote viewing session
An example extended remote viewing (ERV) session.

As the viewer reaches the edge of consciousness, a second person in the room, the monitor (also known as the “interviewer”), begins the session by quietly giving directions to the viewer to access the desired target. These directions may be a geographic coordinate or some other reference number, instructions to “access and describe” a target sealed in an envelope the monitor has brought along, or even simply the word “target.” Once the viewer describes elements of the correct target, the monitor poses questions about it. These questions may request details, purposes, appearances, construction, activities, events, persons, or other target-related information. The monitor writes down or electronically records the answers the viewer provides. After the session the viewer makes additional notes about what was perceived, along with appropriate sketches or drawings.

Remote viewing is based on the theory that remote viewing impressions bubble up from the subconscious. When trying to move subconscious impressions into waking consciousness, “mental noise” often results. This mental noise arises from all the guessing, speculation, remembering, confusion, and so on that seems to regularly a part of every human’s mental life. ERV was developed with the idea that deliberately trying to come as close to an unconscious state as one can while still maintaining just enough awareness to respond to the monitor should make it easier to detect subtle remote viewing impressions with less mental noise. Some people feel the ERV approach is helpful, while others report that the noise does not seem any less in ERV than it is in other remote viewing methods.

The term ERV was originally coined by Capt. F. Holmes “Skip” Atwater in the early 1980s while he was operations and training officer for the Army’s remote viewing unit at Ft. Meade, MD and was used as a secondary remote viewing method throughout the latter half of the Star Gate Program. ERV existed before its name did, and was used by some of the first military viewers. Because an ERV session took longer than one performed using the controlled remote viewing (CRV) methodology, Atwater decided to call it “extended” remote viewing, and the name stuck.