Remote Viewing 1
I begin with some famous and very apt words from the English poet and literary critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834):
What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in your hand
Ah, what then?
Roughly a year ago, I read an interesting book by Paul H. Smith entitled
The Essential Guide to Remote Viewing:The Secret Military Remote Perception Skill Anyone Can Learn (Intentional Press, 2015). It’s a basic tutorial on, well, remote viewing — which is the alleged ability to perceive information about a distant or unseen target without relying on conventional sensory input but using only the mind. Thus, if it really exists, it’s literally a kind of extrasensory perception. The study of remote viewing is one of the areas of focus within the controversial field of parapsychology.
I first met Paul more than fifty years ago as a missionary in Switzerland. I pretty much lost track of him thereafter but, a couple of years back (or thereabouts), he joined one of the international tours that my wife and I accompanied and, thereafter, sent me a copy of
The Essential Guide to Remote Viewing.
I certainly found it interesting. He not only believes in remote viewing but says, quite matter-of-factly, that he has done it many times and that — precisely as he indicates in the subtitle of his book — just about
anybody can do it.
Lest you write him off immediately as a mere crackpot, permit me to share some of his background:
Paul retired from the United States Army in 1996 with the rank of Major. Prior to that, he was part of the federal government’s “psychic espionage” program for seven years, starting first in 1983 with the Army’s “Center Lane” remote viewing project and then, in early 1986, moving with the program to the Defense Intelligence Agency (Denver International Airport). He served not only as a remote viewer himself — he is credited with more than a thousand training and operational remote viewing sessions during his time with the military unit at Fort Meade, Maryland — but as theory instructor for new trainees as well as recruiting officer, unit security officer, unit historian, and primary author of the program’s training manual. In 1990, he was transferred out of the program to participate as a tactical intelligence officer with the 101st Airborne Division in Operation Desert Storm.
Fort Meade, by the way, is also the home of such operations as the Defense Information School, United States Cyber Command, the National Security Agency, the Defense Information Systems Agency, and the U.S. Navy’s Cryptologic Warfare Group Six.
Paul is president and chief instructor of
Remote Viewing Instructional Services, Inc. and a founding director, former board member, past vice-president, and twice past president of the non-profit
International Remote Viewing Association. He also serves as a board member for both the
Parapsychological Association and the
Rhine Research Center.
Paul holds a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Brigham Young University, a master’s degree in strategic intelligence (with a Middle Eastern emphasis) from the National Intelligence University, and a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin, where he concentrated on the philosophy of mind, consciousness, and the philosophy of science. His doctoral dissertation was entitled “Is Physicalism ‘Really’ Real?” His first book,
Reading the Enemy’s Mind: Inside Star Gate — America’s Psychic Espionage Program (Tor Forge, 2005), was a
Reader’s Digest Editors Choice and Book Bonus selection.
I mentioned
The Essential Guide to Remote Viewing here on this blog soon after reading it, and the response to my mention of it was, over at the Peterson Obsession Board, predictably fierce, mocking, and dismissive. I had just confirmed, for a redundant fourteen thousand five hundred and eighty-seventh time, the unanimous view at the Obsession Board that, in addition to being viciously cruel, morally depraved, and utterly dishonest, I’m a ludicrous buffoon. I called the Obsession Board’s response to Paul Smith’s attention, and he asked whether I would be interested in his formulating a reply. I answered that I would be interested, and what follows below is the first portion of that reply.
Why do I care about this matter? For one thing, because it’s interesting. Moreover, I like to keep my eyes and ears open for anomalies suggesting that our picture of reality may require major overhaul; I wish that Loch Ness actually contained a plesiosaur. Is remote viewing important to my religious views? Well, yes and no. Belief in remote viewing — via what seems, if it’s real at all, to be a natural human ability rather than a spiritual gift — is not essential to my theology. Religiously, I can easily do without it, just as I can do without Nessie..[sic] If it is real, however, it strongly suggests that naïve materialism is likely false. Which I think would be important to know.
Physics Guy Rebuttal
I first met Dan Peterson when, as a wet-behind-the-ears new missionary, I checked in to the mission home of the Swiss-Zürich Mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in March of 1974. Dan was a thin, already-balding young man wearing (as I recall) a printer’s apron, appropriate because he was on temporary assignment in between proselyting gigs as the mission printer. The ink came from Dan’s role as temporary care-giver for an offset printing machine. Dan impressed me not just because he was engaging and outgoing, but also because he was clearly very smart—tempered by just the right degree of humility to make him thoroughly authentic as a person. Well, that and the fact that we had both taken Hebrew at BYU and shared an interest in the Middle East.
After our missions, our paths radically diverged—Dan’s into academia and mine into the military. Now (much) later in life, we find our paths again converging, thanks to his core roles in the FAIR conferences and Interpreter organization, and mine and my wife’s interest in these things. This convergence was enhanced by Dan’s open-minded writings about some of the more credible paranormal phenomena—of particular interest to me, remote viewing.
Why? Briefly summarized, as an Army intelligence officer, I spent seven years in what became known as the Star Gate Program, working as—and there’s no way to sugarcoat this—a literal psychic spy for the US Government. I and my colleagues were tasked to (speaking loosely) “project our consciousness” from a small physical facility on Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. We sat in a sound-proofed, windowless room in an old “temporary” clapboard building upgraded for classified purposes, and regularly used our minds to perceive and report on foreign threats and adversaries. We did this under blinded conditions (that is, we were not allowed to know what our targets were, nor what the questions were that we were to answer). I always add this: Remote viewing wasn’t always successful. But there were projects for which we produced intelligence unavailable through any other collection means. At times it absolutely worked.
Unsurprisingly, Dan’s writing on the subject sparked push-back from people skeptical of what he was saying. And, typically, these objections were almost uniformly biased, ill-informed, and unscientific. At least for a while, the self-described “Physics Guy” was one of the more prominent of these objectors. To start, I appreciated the tone with which Physics Guy lodged his objections. From what he had to say, I got the impression that, though he spoke with assuredness, he actually has no idea whether these phenomena exist or not. This is not unusual to find in the world of anti-psi skepticism.
Before checking out of the discussion, Physics Guy didn’t make many serious arguments against psi or for his point of view. In this and other articles I will submit to Dan for him, at his discretion, to decide to publish or not, I will treat some of the hoary old objections that skeptics habitually bring to the subject matter that has been my focus for the past 40-plus years. A caveat: I will do this in occasional installments; if I were to try to do it all at once it would be far too long and indigestible. What you are now reading serves as the introduction to the “series.” I list here the skeptical objections I plan to cover subsequently. If there are other of these objections that readers want to suggest, I am open to adding to the list.
- There is no evidence” for remote viewing or other kinds of ESP.
- Didn’t the CIA find that remote viewing was of no use?
- Remote viewing (and ESP in general) is impossible because it would violate the laws of physics.
- Positive ESP results are due to fraud.
- Positive ESP findings are the result of poor research design or methods.
- Confirmation bias explains ESP effects that aren’t the result of fraud or flaws.
My tardiness in fulfilling my promise to Dan to “come up with something” in response to Physics Guy may be an excuse for some to complain that this is all water under the bridge. I submit that it is not. These skeptical arguments are evergreens that keep turning up in discussions pertaining not just to ESP claims, but in other areas as well. I think they deserve a response, even at this late date. 
