by R.J. Durant

Editor’s note: This is the sequel to last month’s article by Mr. Durant on the CIA’s extensive remote viewing studies by physicists Dr. Harold Puthoff and Russel Targ, and the famous remote view specialist, Ingo Swann.

My training in the process Coordinate Remote Viewing, or alternatively, Controlled Remote Viewing, CRV was organized as follows. Swann would sit at one end of a long table. He had a folder containing a photograph of the site, and the latitude and longitude of the site. I hasten to add that if the reader thinks anyone can produce a description of a site from some kind of memory exercise, knowing what is at this or that coordinate, he should give it a try. Very quickly s/he will discover that this is impossible.

Also, later research showed that a purely random number coordinate assigned to a site works nearly as well as the latitude and longitude. In any event, for all but the very first training sites, the coordinates are so precise that they define the site within a hundred meters.

Seated at the other end of the table is the student -- me. I have a set of about ten sheets of 8.5 by 11-inch unlined paper, and a pen. We always used “roller-ball” pens, because these move so smoothly on the paper, but a piece of charcoal would work if that’s all you have.

The teacher asks if the student is ready, and waits until the student agrees he is prepared to “take the coordinate.” The student indicates readiness by placing the tip of his pen on the paper. The teacher reads the coordinate, such as “Fifteen degrees, twenty-three minutes, forty seconds North, two degrees, seven minutes, four seconds East.”

Immediately, the student’s hand moves, producing the ideogram. Usually, he does a quick analysis of the ideogram, jotting down whether it seems to show something man-made or natural, smooth or hard. Little else can be seen or felt at this point.

Within seconds though, the “tactiles” begin to form in the student’s mind, very vaguely. It is important not to allow any thinking or analysis to take place when these are appearing. They often take the form of colors first, but soon mix with other results of normal sense organ signals. The student verbalizes these, and writes them on the paper. For example, “brown, yellow, white, cold, rough.”

Shortly after, the pen will begin to move, seemingly by itself. Again, it is imperative that no thoughts be allowed to interfere. The seasoned remote viewer will be able to rise above the process and observe the drawing, almost as if he is watching another person draw. The result is likely to be a very rough sketch, in two dimensional form, of the target site.

Then more movements of the pen, and then on to another sheet of paper. Some exercises consume ten or 12 sheets of paper or more. Typically, a session will last from 20 to 45 minutes. For reasons not understood, the data eventually ceases to flow. However, the sequence of the flow never changes.

Perhaps the most difficult part of the entire process is to simply let it happen. There is always “performance anxiety.” Regardless of the success of a previous exercise, I think every remote viewer believes he is about to attempt something that is ridiculous, impossible. And the great enemy is allowing the mind to override the process. This can occur by attempting to analyze the results as they appear on paper, or otherwise intruding the intellect upon the process.

During the initial training, very simple targets are given. Examples would be remote places with no buildings such as the middle of a lake or a desert, or a swamp in South America. As the student becomes more sensitive, more detailed targets are used. Examples would be the Eiffel Tower, Mount Etna, and lighthouses. At this level of competence, it is important to select targets that literally rise above the surrounding terrain, and are easy to distinguish from the surroundings. The remote viewing process is much like ordinary vision in this respect -- the most obvious thing is noticed first.

A Remote Viewing Session

On 1 May 1994 I sat at the table in Swann’s basement, roller ball pen in hand, small pile of blank paper within reach, and a single blank sheet in front of me. A paper cup with coffee was nearby, a reminder that the excursion I was about to make into the farthest reaches of another universe would take only my mind, not my body.

At the opposite end of the table, Swann sat smoking a cigar, patiently waiting for me to indicate my readiness to “take the coordinate.” As usual, I was nervous. \But I had no choice, did I? Moreover, this was to be a special session – Swann had brought modeling clay, and said that the exercise would include construction of a three-dimensional model of the target site.

How this could possibly be done, I could not imagine. But I found it nearly impossible to understand how I had successfully described 30 or 40 sites during the past weeks, using only the latitude and longitude of the sites as the initial trigger for the remote viewing that followed.