Ingo Swann
07Jan96
I have earlier entered into the Net for free access, a number
of topics having to do with remote viewing. All of those topics
so far have involved situational and anecdotal information. More
of the same will follow them in the months ahead.
But beyond situational and anecdotal materials, remote viewing
is accompanied by SUBSTANTIVE and TECHNICAL matters that pertain
to why and how remote viewing exists, and "works."
The substantive and technical matters have been compiled through
the years, and in some instances are the joint product of myself
and Dr. H. E. Puthoff, working as a team to compare concepts and
ideas and then test them. We often benefited from consultation
with a large number of scientists, psychologists and other specialists.
I offer the following eight substantive categories for consideration...
1. Remote viewing and its conceptual nomenclature problems
2. Remote viewing as one of the Sidhis
...to be provided in the near future....
3. Remote viewing and sensory transducers
4. Remote viewing and mental information grids
5. Remote viewing and human superpowers of mind
6. Remote viewing in the Twentieth Century
7. Remote viewing and Twentieth Century skeptics and debunkers
8. Projecting remote viewing into the Twenty-first Century
These substantive and technical matters have not been made public
during the twenty years remote viewing was considered a developmental
asset to the intelligence community.
However, now that the CIA is occupying itself with minimalizing
and disowning remote viewing, there is no longer any reason to
keep the substantive and technical matters from public view. In
any event, all substantive and technical matters have always remained
unclassified and proprietary to me as stated in my working contracts
as a consultant with Stanford Research Institute and the Psychoenergetics
Project established there by Dr. Puthoff.
* * *
What remote viewing consists of is a fairly complex matter
that is not easily reduced to simplistic or familiar stereotype
concepts. Very few have inspected the long history of remote viewing
among our species. Very few have seen or studied high-quality
examples of it.
A literature devoted exclusively to remote viewing does not exist,
except in some piecemeal ways. Most people, including proponents
and antagonists, will consider remote viewing from within what
they already know --- or more precisely put, within the LIMITS
of what they already know.
If it is considered that the knowledge each individual has basically
consists of frames of reference, then the question does arise
regarding what those frames do or do not consist of. In individuals,
frames of reference may either be adequate or inadequate, precise
or imprecise, present or missing. Since no adequate frames of
reference regarding remote viewing have ever been constructed,
individuals who chance to encounter some aspect of remote viewing
naturally will attempt to process its meaning through their existing
frames of reference.
* * *
In this regard, it is fair and even just to mention that most
people believe the frames of reference they do possess are sufficient
to process any information they encounter --- no matter how unfamiliar
or even alien that information might be to them.
But it would be obvious that unfamiliar information processed
through inadequate frames of reference (inadequate information
grids) results in, well, to put it simply, results in a mess or
a quagmire of confused information and strange opinions.
* * *
The basic purpose of these eight mini-essays is to contribute
to the construction of a proper frame of reference regarding remote
viewing --- a frame of reference that does not exist as of this
writing.
Unfortunately, this proper frame of reference cannot be constructed
within the present limits of the kinds and categories of knowledge
typical of the modern West. The construction will require novel
and unfamiliar analogies and metaphors.
I will present the necessary information in step-by-step ways,
and will attempt to be as clear and concise as possible. But I
will not be participating in reductionism back into frames of
reference that are not adequate in the first place. I will sometimes
say the same thing in different ways so as to try to accommodate
a wider scope of integration of the new information.
* * *
But in essence I will be painting a new picture --- a LARGER
new picture which will not become completely visible until it
is finished.
The elements of this new picture cannot be reduced back into existing
frames of reference, back into existing "realities"
--- because if this were possible, then the necessary picture
would already exist. It does not exist. But the basic rudiments
of it will exist by the end of these small essays.
* * *
You may, therefore, wish to read these essays more than once.
For, even by the second reading the general outlines of the picture
will have become more intelligible, and its separate element more
fitting. As it stands as of this writing, the bigger picture of
remote viewing is not intelligible --- even to many of those who
accept its existence.
There is one central issue that must be considered ahead of remote
viewing, and which is a subsidiary topic to the central issue.
This is whether our species possesses what, for lack of a better
concept, might be called superpowers of mind -- of which remote
viewing would be one.
Without an answer in the positive to this central question, then
remote viewing will never either make sense or find a fitted place
within the overall image of our species.
It is generally accepted that our species possesses powers of
mind. But it is also understood that how these are identified
and treated, depends on social criteria and values, and then upon
individual frames of reference based on those criteria and values.
Social criteria and values also tend to establish the contours
of behavioral norms, while the same criteria and values also have
something to do with which formats of knowledge are accepted,
or rejected.
Individuals wishing to fit into the social criteria and values
are more or less required to adapt to the accepted frames of reference
and dis-adapt from the rejected ones.
If this discretionary process is successful enough, then the individual
is accepted as fitted into the contours of the behavioral norms,
and especially into the frames of reference that characterize
their peer groupings.
* * *
The distinction in the West between so-called normal powers
of mind and superpowers of mind is largely a sociological artifact
arising out of the dominant frames of reference of the Modern
Age --- which began in the mid-1800s, but which is thought to
be majorly representative of the Twentieth Century.
As has been stated in many other sources, the modernist frames
of reference were derived from the philosophy of scientific materialism.
Within the auspices of that philosophy, those human powers of
mind that seemed to disobey the laws of matter were shaved off
the central frames and relegated to the "impossible."
Thus arose the double notion of normal powers of mind, and that
category of mind powers that were dubbed "paranormal"
and excluded from the mainline frames of reference. Most pre-modern
societies did not make this two-fold distinction and otherwise
saw the superpowers as extensions of the usual ones.
* * *
As many post-modern researchers have realized, this distinction
worked to prevent the fuller spectrum of human powers of mind
from being adequately mapped.
And it is increasingly being accepted that critics and skeptics
of the superpowers are utilizing out-dated and limited frames
of reference.
This growing realization has spawned the effort to map the fuller
spectrum of human powers of mind. This effort has become revitalized
as will be discussed in the last essay of this series.
* * *
In any event, each reader of these essays will have to decide
whether or not our species possesses superpowers of mind. This
is "the" central issue.
The second central issue is more easily (and CLEARLY) stated.
There is nothing wrong with attempting to research our species'
superpowers of mind --- any more than there is anything wrong
with attempting to research anything.
Indeed, while the Twentieth Century failed in so many other things,
it succeeded in establishing one glory --- organized research
--- and research can easily be seen as one of the hallmarks of
the human mind in all its aspects.
Research of the superpowers, if permitted and pursued, will answer
many things pro or con. And such research will surely remodel
the earlier inadequate frames of reference --- even those of parapsychology
already known to be inadequate. Condemnation of the superpowers
before the facts of researching them constitutes one of the failures
of the Twentieth Century.
Unless one is of the opinion that we already know all there is
to know about the powers of the mind, then the Modern Age exclusion
of the superpowers from research doubtlessly will be rectified
by exploring and researching them. Such research of the superpowers
though, cannot take place based on earlier inadequate frames of
reference that excluded such research. For one thing, those frames
prevent the right questions from being discovered.
One of the most correct questions is whether our species does
indeed possess superpowers of mind.
Now, all this having been said, we'll begin diving into the intricacies
of what follows.
In our present modernist culture, remote viewing is considered
an "inexplicable phenomenon," rather than as evidence
of one of the human superpowers of mind.
All things take on greater luminosity and comprehension when they
are considered within the larger contexts in which they are embedded.
If something is isolated or alienated from those larger contexts,
then fuller comprehension of its substance and meaning is denied
it.
Remote viewing is no exception. It is a phenomenology of mind
that bears extensive relationship to a number of larger contexts.
But it has been dis-embedded from the larger contexts applicable
to it.
Thus remote viewing seems a singular thing... something really
far out on the fringes where it has no apparent relationship to
anything else. It especially seems alien to most frames of reference
(mindsets) and modern philosophies characteristic of the Twentieth
Century. And so it is within the limitations of those mindsets
and philosophies that the existence and possibilities of remote
viewing are challenged and sometimes mocked.
Yet, however one might choose to consider remote viewing, it is
nonetheless one of the human superpowers of mind... and this is
the first and the greatest context within which it should be considered.
Perhaps the only context.
* * *
Under other names, remote viewing and other superpowers of
mind have been noted from time immemorial, while elements of it
have manifested in most pre-modern cultures. And since this has
continuously been so, remote viewing is a species thing, as it
were --- a power inherent in our species.
This clearly implies that all born humans are carriers of the
superpowers and their potentials --- in much the same way that
all born humans are carriers of the human gene pool. Since this
is so, it would be expected that elements of the superpowers will
manifest in given individuals down through the generations.
What different societies and mindsets do with, or about the human
superpowers of mind, is a separate issue. There should be no conflict
regarding the existence of the human superpowers of mind. But
there can be conflict regarding how they are culturally and socially
treated. This treatment has ranged from supportive tolerance to
destructive intolerance, and even down to woeful persecution of
the most obvious carriers of the powers.
* * *
Under other nomenclature, remote viewing is one of the human
superpowers of Biomind whose existence is quite well-noted in
transcultural lore and historical documents of the last 5,000
years. The proper context then, for examining and discussing it,
lies within the parameters of all human superpowers of Biomind.
This context is very large, and it clearly includes more than
just remote viewing. The chief problem here is that the larger
parameters have never been identified very well and so, important
elements of the bigger picture are lacking. This lack leaves the
larger contexts untreated, and so many are unaware of them and
naturally seek to reduce ideas of remote viewing into their personal
realities and educational backgrounds.
It might be thought that Problem 1 can easily be remedied by
submitting it to discussion and examination. As it happens, though,
English and the Romance languages don't contain nomenclature either
sufficient or precise enough to do so.
Nomenclature is largely derived from concepts, but in the case
of Problem 1, the relevant concepts have never really been identified.
For example, "telepathy" and "intuition" are
both elements of human superpowers of mind. But some thirty types
of telepathy can be listed, and about two dozen regarding intuition.
Yet we persist, in English, in utilizing only the two terms.
Precision of concepts is therefore lacking, and this accounts
for the missing nomenclature. To paraphrase Dr. Jean Houston,
if the only tool you have is a hammer, you will treat everything
like a nail. We use only the two terms as hammers to deal with
very refined matters which need precision "brain surgery"
tools.
The human Biomind organism uses information processes to establish
not only concepts of reality, but also awareness of human functioning.
The processes of awareness of human Biomind functioning have not
been identified very well, and nomenclature appropriate for what
has not been identified has not evolved. And so, not only is conceptual
nomenclature missing, but the missing contextual knowledge precludes
adequate consideration of the true extent of the Biomind's information
processes.
It is accepted that we cannot speak intelligently about that which
we don't understand, about that which we know nothing about. We
don't know very much about the human superpowers. This lack of,
or abyss, is an empty gap in our knowledge of the true extent
of Biomind functions.
As we will see in the fourth essay ahead, Problem 3 is partially
remedied by introducing the concept of "information processing
grids." The human Biomind can be described as a recombinant
analog mechanism capable of assimilating, processing, comparing
and recombining enormous amounts of information.
The term "grid" refers to "grating"... an
inter-networking system. It is technically defined as "a
network of uniformly-spaced horizontal and perpendicular lines
for locating points of information by means of coordinates."
That the human Biomind functions in grid-like ways will not be
unfamiliar to biocyberneticists or information theorists --- but
will be unfamiliar to those who utilize other models of Biomind
functioning.
It can fairly be said that some of the "points of information"
refer to concepts and relevant nomenclature utilized by individuals
and which are needed to process information and which result in
understanding it. However, the absence of certain concepts and
nomenclature equates to missing links within the individual's
information grids.
This simply means that the individual cannot precisely or adequately
process information for which points in their grids are missing.
Such information will seem alien to them -- and probably arouse
internal mind "conflicts" within whatever the individual
IS utilizing as information processing grids.
The reason for the internal conflicts is obvious. The "new"
information cannot properly be fitted into the existing information
processing grids. As will be discussed ahead, some individuals
may seek to externalize the conflicts, rather than work toward
enlarging and extending the capacities of their information processing
grids.
When the three basic problems outlined above are combined, a larger
interlocking problem emerges, and which larger problem is the
central substance of these mini-essays. But the basic meaning
of the combined problem is that remote viewing can't be understood
by information processing grids not equipped with appropriate
and expansive concepts and the nomenclature needed to flesh out
those concepts.
The "work" of the following mini-essays is to attempt
to provide certain cognitive rudiments that allow the construction
of information processing grids needed for the comprehension of
remote viewing.
It is completely accepted that unless something is understood,
then no one can make it work for them. It is also understood that
if one is utilizing the wrong models or precedents in order to
understand something, then all that emerges is conflict and confusion.
(End of Introduction)