In terms of on-going circumstances that people get sucked into, the matter
regarding WHO IS TO HAVE POWER OVER WHOM, AND FOR WHAT REASONS is tremendously
important.
The contours of this ageless problem or situation are easily visible regarding
power structures, hierarchy, societal arrangements and interpersonal relationships.
Since those contours are visible, I would, in this book, handle the power
syndrome more indirectly as most writers do.
However, the power syndrome became a very important factor not only regarding
the history of remote viewing (as might have been anticipated), but regarding
the remote viewing FACULTIES themselves.
As will be described in chapters distantly ahead, it WAS discovered that
unless the omnipresent power syndrome is acknowledged and intimately dealt
with regarding the faculties, then it can degrade, abort or distort them,
or wipe them out altogether.
What this means at this point may be unintelligible. But before long you
will have an increase of comprehension about it.
Thus the power syndrome is important from two perspectives. I've therefore
decided not to evade or soften the issues, but, perhaps somewhat stridently,
to tackle them head-on. This chapter is therefore a preface to aspects
of the power syndrome which will be encountered ahead.
Nowhere is anyone free of those on-going power circumstances, albeit there
is an enormous variety of them.
Power circumstances can be gross and very visible -- such as the power
structures of the military.
But many are very subtle, even as to be identifiable -- such as in optimistic,
sweetness-and-light sub-cultures or groups.
After the real story of the remote viewing faculties themselves, the next
most important backbone of the story has to do with the ever-present power
syndrome, especially as regards the Saga and the Soap Opera sectors of the
real story.
Indeed, very many elements of the real story of remote viewing hinge on
power circumstances -- and the power-seeking agendas of many individuals
within it.
Unless the reader is made fully cognizant of the fact that POWER circumstances
constitute several of the structural threads in the history of remote viewing,
then the real story itself won't hang together very well.
Indeed, NO stories of human circumstances hang together unless scrutiny
of the power syndrome is admitted into them -- the syndrome of who is to
have power over whom, and for what reasons.
There are many power-less in the world, the vast majority of people. But
among these is an extremely tiny population, so tiny that it has never been
identified.
Psychical research and parapsychology themselves are of course tiny (powerless)
social sub-groups within larger pictures of bigger social factors.
But within those social sub-groups there exists the tiny population of
laboratory and experimental test subjects who are not only completely powerless
but often are even kept completely anonymous when their existence needs
to be mentioned. Subjects A, B & C, for example, or Mr. or Madame X,
Y & Z.
There are, of course, power groups just about everywhere, and power groups
within power groups within power groups.
Parapsychology was, and is, no exception. Indeed, nothing is an exception
-- and certainly not the American intelligence community.
Cleve Backster has never been considered a parapsychologist by the parapsychological
community, and so his work, quite excellent, was of no official interest
to that community.
So my "entry into parapsychology" took place within the excellent
auspices of Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler -- at that time one of the few notable
pillars of that community.
The "entry," however, was as a test subject -- to be studied
and later dispensed with. And meanwhile, as was thoughtlessly taken for
granted by everyone, to willingly suffer all of the thoughtless indignities
carelessly extended to test subjects thought of as experimental rats or
guinea pigs.
I understood all of this quite well in advance. I didn't at all mind it
because I believed that my stint in the laboratory was only a temporary
phenomenon in my life. This belief was entirely typical of all those who
had preceded me in parapsychology lab testing. Lab testing was considered
a temporary thing for the subjects.
I didn't even mind the anonymous procedure. When Schmeidler asked me if
I wanted to be mentioned by name in her report or identified as subject
X, I replied that I'd leave that to her.
"Oh, well," she eventually said, "they're going to find
out who you are anyway, so I might just as well identify you by name."
But suffering INDIGNITIES during my temporary tour of being a test subject
was entirely a different matter. I never suffered any indignities within
my relationship with Schmeidler, of course. But when "entered"
slightly further into parapsychology, some of those soon appeared.
All of them were based in who was to have power and power over whom.
And unfortunately for all who were concerned and involved then and later,
in the case of THIS test subject, all of them encountered a guinea pig who
was not only "articulate" but well-grounded in his long-term study
of power.
Who had power, and why, had fascinated me at least since my high-school
years. I had collected and diligently read everything I could locate.
I had never planned to utilize my accumulated (and clearly only avocational)
knowledge of power -- largely because I was of the opinion that having power
over others was usually a disgusting affair and business. I am still of
that opinion today -- an opinion based on even better evidence than I had
back then in 1971.
It must be established within the relevant contexts of this book that if
I had not been subjected to INDIGNITIES, then I fully believe that I would
have quickly passed through parapsychology and returned to my life as an
artist and a hopeful writer.
The experimental results would have quickly passed into parapsychological
quasi-oblivion, into which most of parapsychology passes anyway. Our cultural
mainstreams see to THAT in strategic ways, and parapsychologists have never
figured out how to outwit those ways either strategically or tactically.
As it happened, not long into the year of 1972, many were saying that I
was "making waves" in parapsychology. The "waves,"
however, did not particularly concern experimental results. They concerned
my responses to test-subject indignities, power games, power agendas, and
power stupidities.
And here was the subtle beginning of my transformation from an introverted,
bookworming nerd into a lean, mean fighting machine within the battlefield
of open-and-shut doors of perceptions.
You see, POWER, who's to have it and who's not to have it, is largely a
matter of controlling doors of perceptions, doors inherent in the fabulous
bio-mind of our species, doors which every specimen of our species DOES
possess.
Power is a fundamental ingredient of the "human condition," so-called
anyway. Various attempts have been made to study it, to dissect it, to
pull its internal elements apart so that it could be better understood.
But in the end, it's surprising how little is really known about it. Various
psychologists studied it during the last and the early parts of this present
century -- Man as a Power Animal, for example.
The "social dynamics" of power have been noted and somewhat inquired
into. We are somewhat familiar with the existence of power structures,
the distribution of power, "dressing for power," "power ties
(for males)," power competitions, power mongers, power dealers, "power
games" and power "balances."
The list is very long of other power whatnots -- including self-help courses
which teach one how to "visualize that one is powerful" with the
expectation that the visualizing WILL increase one's power.
And, above all, it is broadly accepted that all human situations turn on
power of some kind -- rather, turn upon who has power and who has not.
We even know that power influences, that power corrupts, but that it takes
power to get anything done.
Power, then, is a huge and very fundamental aspect of humans everywhere
-- a MEGA-fundamental aspect. And via all of the above, it is thought that
we know something of it.
In fact, though, we don't know very much about its intrinsic nature and
"workings" -- and via such workings many sets of circumstances
arise and suck people into them.
There is, I think, a central reason or explanation for this, one which
few really want exposed too much.
It is this: No one wants others to have power.
And so there is a general and very broad silent consensus that the real
elements of power should NOT BE OPENLY EXPOSED for general consumption --
since if they were then they would be accessible to just about everyone.
THEN where would everyone be!
No, no. Power is defined relative to those who do not have it. And so
the existence of the powerless must be maintained in order for power to
be defined.
Indeed, those who do manage to have power have probably won or seized it
from someone else -- usually by trashing that someone else, whether subtly
or overtly. Had I space herein to do so, I could quite easily demonstrate
that this is the case even WITHIN power groups bonded together by communal
power.
In any event, power is fundamental -- so fundamental that the lack of formal
educational and academic courses regarding power is noticeable by their
nearly complete ABSENCE.
There is very little in the way of educational tutoring about power and
its constituents. Children, of course, are expected to grow up and take
their functional place within some kind of power structure or system. But
when they manage to find that "place," they are expected do so
completely illiterate about power, power games, power structures, etc.
So meaningful is this topic to me that I'm planning a book regarding it
and about power in general. Anyone interested?
By now the reader might be wondering why I've temporarily diverted into
this topic and what it has to do with remote viewing and the other superpowers
of the human bio-mind.
Well, the real unearthing of the superpowers, and their development for
practical applications, would automatically change power systems, structures
and edifices. And, as well, would shift the definition of power itself
-- and the definition of who is to have power and who is not.
And as I'll again remind, when the intelligence community DID take an "unconventional
and scandalous" interest in "potential powers of mind," it
did so NOT because of any intrinsic meaning regarding it, but because of
the WORRY (and even FRIGHT) that discovery and applied powers of the bio-mind
by that OTHER world superpower would shift the balances of power in very
irregular and unanticipated directions.
Indeed, the very phrase POWERS OF MIND is entirely redolent of potential
disruptions of the various status quos of existing power systems, their
balances and controls of them.
Meanwhile, back in the winter of 1971 -- and you can believe it or not
-- I already had a good grasp of all of the above. In fact, Cleve Backster
and I had mused it over, and such musing and implications were variously
discussed within the contours of Buell and Zelda Centrals.
Here you must not make the mistake that those Centrals were composed only
of Fringe types, of mainstream rejects. They were nothing of the kind,
and Buell Mullen's circle especially radiated out to incorporate CEOs, embassy
people of high standing, scientists, and politicians.
Zelda Central radiated out to incorporate media representatives constantly
requesting interview for "fill-in" articles about nudism and/or
the transexual activities of her employer, Mr. Reed Erickson, who was funding
such research at Johns Hopkins University and medical research center.
I am very much of the opinion that about the only "waves" one
can really make is to somehow impact on, or even tickle, the status quo
of some kind of power structure. I also realized that anyone who even tickles
such status quo is certainly to be targeted to receive a cow dump of you
know what.
I had no desire at all to disrupt the parapsychology status quo, simply
because I was quite certain that my "entry" into it would quickly
be followed by my "exit."
Within its higher-minded contexts I honored parapsychology, as I still
do. But there was no money to be made regarding being a test subject, and
anyway most parapsychologists had to fight tooth and nail to get any funding
at all.
When I was invited to act as a test subject at The American Society for
Psychical Research (ASPR), I decided to accept for a month or two -- and
then get back to the more serious business of my artistic and hopeful literary
pursuits.
But it was at the ASPR that I encountered circumstances out of which arose
my first indignities. These did not come from a hostile media or mainstream,
or from skeptics -- but from certain parapsychologists who were in leadership
positions and exceedingly good standing in parapsychology.
When the circumstances of the indignities began unfolding, it took me about
ten seconds to realize that I had inadvertently become incorporated within
the ageless on-going syndrome of who was to have power over whom, and for
what reason -- this the very syndrome which introverted bookworms take extreme
caution to avoid altogether.
And, again believe it or not, it was those indignities and my responses
to them which THEMSELVES brought into existence an entirely new set of circumstances
-- into which I ultimately AGREED to get sucked.
For one thing, I'm quite certain that I would not have agreed to fly to
California and meet with Dr. H. E. Puthoff -- for reasons made clear ahead.
In that case, remote viewing would have remained the "blip" it
was within the precincts of The American Society for Psychical Research.
There it would have been passed over, forgotten and retired into the dusty
oblivion where much psychical research and parapsychology ends up.