Remote Viewing in Hawaii: continuation of the Staff Reports thread

That’s an exact hit?!?

There are no exact dates on any of the crudely and very vaguely drawn sketchings. There are no details given to tell us how the “remote viewiwing” was done. I notice that the words “assassination” and “Lennon” and other similar supposedly spot-on descripions were in someone elses’ handwriting(easy to tell-the vague randomness is in cursive, and the actual possible hits are printed).

When was the test actually done?
Was the target isolated and alone?
Did the sender know the target, and have any contact with the target prior to the test?
Who interpreted the results-the sender, the target, or an uninformed and uninvolved third party?
When several dozen words and eight to twelve crudely and vaguely drawn pictures are tossed into a pile, and anything matches the goal, why do you call it a success?

Aloha DDG,

It seems that you have applied yourself fairly well in being open-minded in considering some of the available information about Remote Viewing In General as well as doing some online homework on the topic. I will endeavor to fill in some data for you.

One is being asked to consider the existence or viability of an “Effect” that occurs when a sensory collection methodology is exercised within a scientific protocol. We will call this effect the “RV Effect”. RV for Remote Viewing. The task would be to, within the protocol, show evidence of the effect, or no evidence of the effect.

The protocol is the overall collection scheme as well as data handling to satisfy the need for scientific clarity. Examples of protocol would include such things as double blind tasking for the viewers as well as blind conditions for the Analyst and on those occasions when a monitor is needed. 99.9% of HRVG work is double blind.

Remote Viewing was developed as an intelligence collection platform by the US Army and is considered to be cognitive research (Paranormal). It deals primarily with the acquisition of non-local data. This would be data that is shielded in some way from the viewer. Either by space, time, distance, or some other obstacle to direct access.

It is never 100% and most viewers’ function somewhere between 15 to 35% accuracy. Some viewers are indeed better at collecting data via RV than others. These are often referred to as naturals. It is not unusual to see 75% or better on some occasions from such viewers. All viewers have cycles of contact. This means there is a steady rise and fall in demonstrated ability or a period of time.

The RV community is quite large and is mainly organized around the ex-military viewers. Some of these are LT Colonel William Ray, Chief Warrant Officer 4 Joseph McMoneagle, Major Paul Smith, Major Edward Dames, Major David Moorehouse, Capt Skip Atwater, Capt Gabrielle Pettingell, SFC Lyn Buchanan, and myself SFC Glenn Wheaton.

There are other Military viewers but they have not decided to, or decline to teach. There are several civilians who are teaching and some of these include Dr. Courtney Brown of Emery Univ (Farsight), Dr. Wayne Carr, Prudence Calabrese, Jonina Dourif, and several others I will omit for the sake of brevity.

There are in-fact different methods of RV, but all RV should, and most is, conducted within the scientific protocol.

HRVG is an approved Non-profit organization. We are not a business and do not intend to be a business. We are primarily a research and publication entity. We train viewers and standardize protocol issues such as Analysis, Monitoring, and the Collection platform in general.

I will explain a bit about our methodology so you are getting the data from the top. While Valtra put some good information out above on it, I think I can add to it a bit.

To start with we have a fixed format for the viewer to provide data. This is referred to within the HRVG as the protocols/methodology. The viewer is trained to collect data within this protocol.

We use a series of Stages to collect and record the data. These stages are titled S-1 through S-8. I will review a few of them so you get an idea of what the viewer in HRVG actually does. In S-1 the viewer is primarily being trained to identify a specific place where the subconscious can display visual data. This space is called blackboard. The S-1 Visids is the initial collection of visual data from this viewer created blackboard. The human does not normally look or scan for visuals in this method and is tailored to train the subconscious to generate visuals from the right side of the brain and be collected when the viewer looks at blackboard.

This is considered to be a very low-level gestaltic image of the double-blind target. Normally 3 iterations of the visid exercise are conducted with all the data recorded in the required format. Still in S-1 the viewer generates a series of spontaneous ideograms (sponids) and then probes these sponids with the stylus or pen for other low-level gestaltic data. Once this is complete it is on to a collection matrix called Playfair where the viewer begins to collect low-level imagery and begins to associate other sensory data (sounds, smells, tastes, temperatures, textures) to the visual data. The source of this data comes from continued probing of the sponids.

It is at this point the viewer is given training in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and is taught to work a second data collection matrix (S-2 Nimo Playfair). The odd little Spiderman face is actually an NLP Probing icon or a Neuro Interrogation Mask Overly I.E. NIMO. The NLP technique is a basic reverse trigger to the subconscious to supply a specific type of data such as visuals, sounds, or kinesthetic.

Once the second collection matrix is complete we take a wee bit of time to dump any words or sounds from our awareness. This data is recorded in S-2 Phonics. It is primarily a place to dump junk and garbage from our minds before we continue. Then it’s on to S-3 or the site sketch. The intent here is to take the low-level gestaltic information previously collected and give it some sort of order in a single page. The viewer will attempt to associate the different gestalts within the S-3 site sketch.

Once this is complete it is on to S-4 Cascade and the viewer will take the major gestalts and summarize them in a legend of sorts. Land, water, air, structures, etc. The task in S-4 is to take the gestalts and look at them each individually. The viewer will have a Blackboard rush page where he/she will look at this gestalt on blackboard and render a graphic representation. In addition they will fill out a cascade galley on the gestalt and record their impressions about the gestalt using the NIMO probing icon.

Once S-4 is complete the viewer will do 2 exercises to push their primary awareness down to cause a theta brainwave state to be dominant. The first exercise is called edging. Edging is an exercise where the viewer does a breathing exercise to off-gas carbon dioxide. This is intended to induce a mild shallow water blackout forcing the theta spike a bit higher. If the Edging exercise fails to create the desired altered state the viewer continues a second exercise called priming, which is a wearisome mental exercise, which literally forces sleep.

It is at this threshold between sleep and awake that the monitor is brought as S-5 begins to record the information collected by the viewer as well as keep them in that little place between sleep and awake. The monitor is not allowed to lead the viewer in anyway and cannot ask questions about any data that was not previously collected in the earlier stages of viewing. This altered state lasts perhaps 15 min to 45 min depending on the viewer’s ability to maintain the altered state.

After the S-5 is completed the viewer will diarize their experience in an S-6 summary. S-7 is a complex exercise of location determining and not all targets include this stage.

The S-8 is a document that is completed after all the data has been collected and analyzed. Analysis is primarily a three-tiered affair with 3 documents being generated. The first is a data extraction matrix, which isolates into a matrix the data collected in the session. The second is a set of analytical working notes on the session work. The third is a scenario generated by the analyst based on the working notes.

I think that summarizes the methodology used at HRVG.

It takes about six months to get a viewer through the training. The intent of the methodology is to isolate the primary left-brain awareness doing administrative tasks while the data is collected from the right brain. Every effort is geared to simplified collection of data within a methodology and within a protocol acceptable to the scientific community.

This post is long enough so I will defer to the next one for additional information.

Aloha Glenn Wheaton

The viewer (Banshee) is given only a random target identifier (9011 4450), and, at the end of the session she is able to conclude the following about the target:

“This is an event where a very mentally ill man commits an assassination - It feels like New York City - I get the impression that the cue is the murder of John Lennon or other famous celebrity.”

Considering that the target could have been anything in the world, this example fits what I believe Saltire was asking for.

The date of the session is on the first session page, 31 Oct 1999. I did not spot any “additions” by another person on the pages. For example, “D - John Lennon” on page 5 is possibly written after the viewer has finished a fast-paced patter/routine and has calmed down… The “D” stands for Deduction.

The scanned pages you see are the result of a remote viewing session, not a documentation of a science experiment. Your questions do not quite apply to the actual “thing”. (Sorry, english is not my native language.)

No, it was not an exact hit. The first page:

http://www.hrvg.org/cgi-bin/picview2_session.pl?pic=http://www.hrvg.org/images/sessions_other/9011-4450/Ba.gif&targetid=9011-4450&sd=sessions_other&dir=9011-4450&nx=Bb.gif&pv=Bn.gif&pn=0

This very first page says:

Lucid, it says “cue” right there. The word “cue” means specifically when someone directs the viewer during a session. Someone gave Banshee this cue during her session. That means that someone told her to remote view the person who shot John Lennon. Someone cued her to remote view John Lennon’s assassin.

The statement ought to read:

Saltire asked for an example of “someone who didn’t know what the target was and was able to guess what it was based on the session data”. This example you’ve given is totally irrelevant.

The example is also contrary to the whole idea of remote viewing, as I understand it. The target is supposed to be nothing more than a group of 8 target coordinates, randomly assigned numbers or letters, like JSIE-CCIE, and the viewer looks at the target coordinate alone, and does the drawings and word lists. So your example doesn’t prove anything other than the viewer was able to imagine how John Lennon’s killer must have felt. So what? I can do that myself.


Questions for Rainfall:

Please explain exactly what you mean by “double blind”, in terms of actual procedures.

Here is the http://skepdic.com/control.html definition of the term “double blind testing”:

Applying this to remote viewing would mean that neither the viewer nor the analyst would know what the target was. Is that in fact what the HRVG does? Or does the analyst always know what the target is, before he begins analyzing? If the analyst knows what the target is before he begins analyzing, then you cannot say that it’s “double blind”.

Here’s my summary of the HRVG procedures:
You are using the word “blackboard” to mean an imaginary place inside the mind? It’s not a literal blackboard? Okay.

I would like to know the amount of cuing from monitors that is involved in all this. You don’t say anything about the “cuing” aspect of it.

S-1: Drawing of visids and sponids with probing. Performed 3 times.
Playfair: the matrix, with columns of words. Probing.
S-2 NIMO Playfair: A second matrix. The NLP or NIMO stuff just sounds like ways to get your mind focused on the target.
S-2 Phonics: You eliminate some words from the word lists. Please explain how you decide which words to eliminate (“dump”). Is it due to a monitor’s cue?
S-3: Sketch.
S-4: Cascade. More word lists and probing.
Edging: Deep breathing.
Priming: Not clear what this is, other than it’s a “wearisome mental exercise, which literally forces sleep”.
S-5: Okay, you’re saying that it’s only at Stage 5 that a monitor is allowed to enter the room where the viewer is? Or are you saying that it’s only at Stage 5 that a monitor is allowed to speak to the viewer, to interact with him, to “cue” him? You’re saying that for the HRVG, the monitor’s only job during Stage 5 is to keep the viewer awake? What do you mean, the monitor “cannot lead the viewer in any way”? There were references in the Farsight manual to the fact that the monitor cannot give “leading” cues, but what they meant was, cues that were closely related to the target, implying that the monitor knew what the target was (the sinking of the Titanic, etc.). They meant that the monitor can only give cues that are very general.
S-6: Summary.
S-7: Another summary? This is not clear.
S-8: The final document, including the analysis.

Ah, the analysis. You still haven’t given us even the tiniest scrap of information concerning what happens during the analysis procedures. My biggest questions are:

  1. Does the analyst know what the target is (as in, the person, place, thing, or event, not merely the target coordinates)?
  2. Is the analysis a group effort, a “committee meeting”, or does each analyst work alone?
  3. Is an analysis reviewed by other analysts, and possibly revised by the original analyst after hearing feedback from others?
  4. How does the analyst decide which “anomalous bits” to discard, that Petra referred to in the other thread?

…and, Lucid, that first page can’t be her summary page, because here’s her Diary summary page.

http://www.hrvg.org/cgi-bin/picview2_session.pl?pn=10&sd=sessions_other&dir=9011-4450&targetid=9011-4450

She obviously wrote “cue” on the Diary page when she should have written “target”.

I hope that I’m not too far off the subject, Duck Duck Goose, but after the Psych. community (seemingly) abandoned PSI research in circa 1973 (notably Duke U. in N. Carolina and Moscow State U.), I did a hunting and found an interesting paper published by the Electrical Engineers at Cornell U. in either IEEE Transactions (on communications, I think) or Proceedings.

(I copied the paper but it has since disappeared–into the rubble? Sorry; I’ve no better cite/reference than that.)

They (the Cornell Electricals) sent one of their fellows to Costa Rica where he picked a site and stared at it, at length. At Cornell they tried to get a “remote viewed” picture of the actual geographical site in Costa Rica. They drew line sketches. The Costa Rica dude came back to Cornell and they all compared what he had been looking at (the actual site) with the sketches. (All: IIRC :slight_smile: )

They did a fairly careful, analytical comparison (although nothing at the level of, say, Pat. Billingsley’s [U. of Chicago] Ergotic Theory :o ) and concluded that it (prettty much) had worked.

Then they (the Electrical Engineers), too, as did the Psychologists earlier, “suddenly” and “inexplicably” went silent on the research-subject matter of remote viewing. :eek:

REALLY wish I could find the copy of the original IEEE journal article.

…and, not to be too anal about this or anything, I went back and looked at the HRVG FAQ, and I see the target referred to as a “target”, not as a “cue”.

Well, did the guys back home know that he was going to be looking at “landscape” specifically? Or was there a possibility that he might go into downtown [name large city in Costa Rica–is there one? Colibri? :smiley: ], anyway, that he might be remote viewing something besides “landscape”? A parking garage, or a seashore, or the inside of a restaurant on a Friday night?

Because if the guys back home knew he was going to be remote viewing a “landscape”, well, shoot, I watch the Discovery Channel, I could probably draw a line sketch of the Costa Rican countryside. Trees, bushes. What’s to know? [shrug]

Not enough data to be convincing, sorry, but it’s a neat story, nicely illustrating the fact that even “scientists” can fall prey to wishful thinking. :smiley:

The EE’s used “target”, too, Duck Duck Goose. In fact, everything that I read of your stuff above (albeit, my brain went a little numb, too) was consistent with the language used by the Cornell Electrical Engineers in their research. (For whatever that’s worth.)

(Why does everyone seem so willing to ignore engineer’s research into “social” or “psychological” areas, seemingly just because they are engineers? :frowning: )

Since a new thread was started, I’ll re-post what I wrote over there. Instead of nitpicking every aspect of the HRVG protocols, I think we should lay out for them what is a proper standard of evidence, and see how the HRVG can justify their beliefs. Here’s what I wrote before:

Mana, thanks for the polite post. I hope you stick around for more discussion. You said that RV is not 100% science, but I think this shows somewhat of a misunderstanding of how science would apply to this situation. You claim that RV exists. If it exists, you can use the guidelines of science to figure out how to observe it, measure it, etc. It doesn’t have to be 100% accurate, or anywhere close.

The way this would work is that you would come up with a statement of something that you could do with RV, assuming that it exists. In my earlier post, I suggested that an RV expert could attempt to view 20 images (given their numbers), write down notes about each one, and later try to match up the images with the numbers. Matching several of them sounds like it would be a reasonable expectation if RV exists, but if you don’t think so, just come up with some other measure. The only requirement is that it needs to be objective, so that no interpretation is required to figure out if it was successful.

In my example test, if you could reliably match more than one or two out of twenty, you would have successfully shown that RV exists. If RV doesn’t exist and the matches are just random, you’d get zero correct about half of the time, and rarely get more than one or two correct.

This is how science would address the question. A reasonable request, I hope you would agree. A mere 10% success ratio over several trials would allow you to prove to the world that RV works. You could also use this test to claim the one-million dollar JREF prize.

If you don’t want to do something like this and instead just keep believing that it exists based only on subjective interpretation, then you’re fooling yourself, and you won’t make much headway with this group.

I confess that I don’t remember all of the details but, at the time (about 14 years ago), I was very interested but decidedly skeptical. I asked many of the same (kinds of) questions as you just did,** Duck Duck Goose.** Their methodology was good (for engineers :slight_smile: ). Thorough. They were spending a considerable amount of money. They were putting their reputations (as hard-headed, down-to-Earth Engineers) on the line. They were, IMHO, careful.

(At that time in history, the Electrical Engineers had become very interested in many/any aspects of communications and adjuncts of communications. The EE’s played a pivotal part in the development of such areas as Pattern Recognition [–one of my personal favorites–], Feature Extraction, and twists-&-turns on “Factor Analysis”.)

I, an arch-skinflint, thought that their stuff was good enough that I sprung for the minor fortune needed to copy the paper. (For whatever that’s worth.)

Oh, BTW, Duck Duck Goose, why did I get the feeling that you were a “believer” in remote viewing (as a method of [inter-stellar?] communication)? ***(**Was Squink right after all?? :smiley: )

Hmm… Google. “electrical engineers cornell remote viewing”.

http://www.irva.org/papers/RadinCU.shtml

IEEE Search page.

http://www.ieee.org/web/search/

Hm. Dead end. I’m stumped, not really knowing what the title of the article was, other than “psi research”, which brings up 52,307 hits and isn’t turning out to be real helpful. “Remote viewing” is even worse–85,143 hits. Search Within Results adding “costa rica” to “remote viewing” brings up (a) membership lists, and (b) papers in Spanish.

(not to mention stuff like this: “This paper proposes a Psi-cube network that consists of low-height trees of buses desirable for the coherence directories of multilevel snoopy caches.” Um, okaaayyyy…)

Anybody else wanna go look? :smiley:

Eh, you might’ve thought I was a “believer” because I started this thread. Actually, no, I don’t think remote viewing works, but I’m willing to listen, the same way as I’m willing to listen to other paranormal hobbyists. I especially enjoy the crop circles people, they are just so…amiable, I guess is the word I’m looking for. Aside from the occasional CIA conspiracy theorist, they mostly seem like a very laid-back group of people. :smiley:

Many thanks, Duck Duck Goose. I confess that I’m not very good at search engines. I will give it a try, but no time today. :frowning:

I forgot to mention the most important conclusion of the paper (and why they were involved in the first place). They were studying the hypothesis that ESP (and, in particular, remote viewing) was a straight-forward electrical phenomena via transmission of “long waves” in the EM spectrum. The information content of long waves is small which accounts for the grubbiness of the end-product (as contrasted with, say, a very sharp and detailed video image).

In another thread, g8rguy (IIRC) commented that the longer the EM wave the less power required to transmit it. Say, for example, the very tiny power available to the [human] brain. :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

If I may contribute my humble opinion on the subject… It seems that people who were once skeptical have been made believers by witnessing or reading through the transcripts of successful tests. On the surface this makes perfect sense. Skeptical at the premise, proof is asked for and proof is supplied through testing. That is after all they way the scientific community arrives at their own conclusions, so where is the fault?

From my understanding of the process, the fault is in the testing. It has been presupposed that the test was designed in such a way so as to yield results which can be taken as objective evidence. There is nothing quite so dangerous in the scientific community as a poorly designed test. It can lead perfectly rationally people to embrace erroneous propositions, thinking that it is their duty to belief once proof has been submitted.

I’ve read through the information provided, but have either missed or have not seen an authoritative treatment of the test methods. If one of the believers could point me toward it, I would interested in reviewing it. From what I have seen, there has been an effort to use controls, but they are not proper controls. True double blind testing has not been done, and hit or miss criteria is very subjective in nature.

Putting aside that whatever medium of data exchange between the viewer and the subject necessarily needs to be measurable in and of itself before there can be any belief in it, there should still be better controls on the subjective testing that is being used.

A quick check of Google under “electromagnetic long waves esp” brings up this, which pretty much says it for me.

http://www.csj.org/studyindex/studycrthk/study_pseddoscience/study_factelapathy2.htm

To summarize: We know all about electromagnetism. We can build any kind of instruments we want to detect electromagnetic waves of any wavelength, whether long or short. And we have built these instruments, and have tested them on people, to see what kind of electromagnetic waves their brains are emitting. People’s brains emit no unexplained types of brain waves. If ESP really were transmitted by electromagnetic waves, we could detect and study the waves themselves–we wouldn’t need to study the results of the waves, meaning ESP, meaning the Rhine card tests and remote viewing.

DDG,

I know I should have pointed out that the page with the target cue written on it, is NOT the first page of the actual session, but I thought that was fairly obvious. There is no sense to remote view completely frontloaded, that is, knowing what the target is. That would not be remote viewing at all.

All sessions under the Sessions at the HRVG site have been viewed blind to the target.

In other words, the page with the target cue is a “header” page to complete the set, made after the viewer got the feedback.

Not pleased with this case study: Stephanie Condon. I had originally thought that perhaps there is no harm believing in remote viewing, but I’ve got a serious problem with meddling in a criminal case. At best, information is being given to the family that has on basis in fact, at worst it muddies the factual nature of the criminal investigation.

Actually not a bad job of stating what investigators already knew. The disappearance took place in Oregon, in which case all of the location criteria is easily met. Men have a much higher incidence of committing such crimes, bearded or non-bearded pretty much covers all of them, and given the time that had passed, it was probably a foregone conclusion that the victim was deceased. The viewing involved geographic and environmental jargon that could be applied to many locations, especially the Pacific NW. ‘Snow’, ‘rock’, ‘cold’, ‘road’, ‘vegetation’ both in word and picture. One would be hard pressed to find a location in Oregon that did not fit this viewing.

Isn’t Oregon dominated by the Cascades, necessitating mountain roads? Aren’t most structures built with pitched roofs? It seems to me that barring some very unusual circumstances, when the poor girl is found, the viewer will be able to claim numerous hits.

How could one arrive at this conclusion when the case remains unsolved? What exactly has been demonstrated? I think it would be good form to prove the utility of remote viewing prior to claiming victory in an unsolved case. YMMV.

More interesting news: Another remote viewing outfit is on the case: TRV. No details are given, but they claim to have identified a suspect.

Aloha DDG,

In most cases the analyst does not know the nature of the target prior to analysis of the viewer-produced data. In training a person in analysis we on occasion will provide feedback on the target to the analyst. This is in training only.

Our definition of double blind is in concert with the scientific community. The remote viewer does not have any prior knowledge about the target he or she will produce data on. The monitor (if used) does not have access to or know any information about the target. The only data the monitor is allowed is the viewer produced S-1 through S-4. The monitor gets these documents when the viewer begins Edging and Priming. This only allows the monitor a few short minutes to formulate a series of questions for the viewer based solely on the viewer-produced data.

It is important to note that no one with target knowledge has access to the viewer, monitor, or analyst during the process.

Analysis is basic data processing. Normally analysis is conducted on RV data from multiple remote viewers on a common target. In the Data Extraction Matrix the analyst will extract data that corroborates from more than one viewer. This in turn will generate an entry in the Working Notes document. Let’s say two remote viewers supply data that says a round structure is present at the target area. The working note entry will be this fact in its most simplistic form.
The scenario is a plausible explanation of the data collected by reading the working notes and formulating a single paragraph summarizing the working notes. No new information not included in the working notes can be in the scenario.

Normally a single individual conducts the analysis and a committee within the guild reviews the work itself. The analysis in its entirety is published. There is no hidden analysis. No one can alter the analysis in any way except the analyst, which produced the analysis. If the report gets kicked back because of some analytical shortcoming or some other failure, they will receive it under a chain of custody and a record kept of all requests for changes.

I have simplified Analysis but in fact it is a lengthy training period that makes a good Analyst.

On to terminology. Remote viewing has its own language and several terms are interchangeable. A target cue and the target ID (the random letter-number target identifier) are the same thing. The monitor is only allowed to “cue” a viewer with the target ID only. Keep in mind the monitor does not know what the target is. When the viewer is sleepy they loose focus and the monitor repeats the target cue (id) to give them focus as well as alert them when they begin to drop too deep in the altered state or fall completely asleep.

Now on to something very important about remote viewing. When a remote viewer works a target it is an effort of consciousness and subject to distraction and contamination. Remember the intent is to connect with the target and generate sensory information relative to it.

If the target was the killer of John Lennon and the viewer generated data about the actual assassination event and focused on John and not the killer is this a HIT?
No, it is not a hit for generating the desired data, but it is a hit for demonstrating the RV Effect albeit miss-focused.

If you are not willing to accept that the target could have been billions of other types of data and the viewer generated closely related data to the desired target as demonstrative of a Greater than Chance incident then you will most likely never be convinced or truly believe in anything. At no time is the viewer told that they are to get data on the person that shot John Lennon.

All remote viewing data is a combination of contamination, neutral data, and suspect target data. We know this and continue to refine the RV model to limit contamination and improve performance data about the target.

Aloha Glenn

Refinement?!?
Testing for remote viewing, if done right, can be as simple as sending a message over a telegraph line. The pseudo-scientific and over-complicated mess of a testing procedure that your group has created is useless because the many unnecessary steps, unwieldy jargon, and overanalysis by far too many people who are already true believers make a “positive hit” almost a foregone conclusion.