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.

But it was time to remote view, and if nothing else, it meant time to absolutely stop thinking. If I had learned nothing else by now, it was that thinking is the deadly, merciless enemy of remote viewing. So I did my little trick, which I can’t really put into words, but the best description is that I shift my conscious mind sideways, leaving the remote viewing portion of my mind ready to begin.

And then I placed the tip of the pen on the paper. I was ready to begin. Speaking might disturb the delicate mind-set. And the viewer is in charge of the session. Thus Swann was waiting to see my pen drop to the paper. Then he intoned the coordinate, quietly but deliberately.

“Fourteen degrees, 20 minutes, North. One hundred degrees, 35 minutes East,” said Swann.

I wrote the numbers as he spoke. As the word “East” ended, my hand scrawled, left to right, forming the ideogram. This movement of the pen was entirely involuntary, uncontrolled by my conscious thought, and in fact the entire arm is involved in directing the pen, not just the wrist and fingers. During the next 30 minutes or so I let the process unfold, covering a dozen sheets of paper with the data.

I believe it was at this point that Swann told me to begin making a clay model of the site. I proceeded, partly with my worksheets laid out in sequence for reference, but I must say, mainly by reference to some kind of instruction my hands were getting from a truly unknown source. My fingers formed blocks and then cones that fit on the blocks, just like the drawings I had made earlier in the session.

In the course of building the model, I had difficulty getting one of the “cones” to stand straight on the block. Thus I was forced to make a tiny ball of clay, and to insert it under the cone. The repair was not visible, and had the desired effect of straightening the cone. But immediately, I got a strong impression, and went back to the page to write it.

The sense of this was that I seemed to be so strongly connected with the site that I “understood” the builders, who long ago had lavished love and care on the construction, and were appalled by my crudeness. I fully realize that none of this makes any sense, but in all honesty I feel obliged to record it here for the reader. These impressions came in an instant, and were fully developed, allowing for only a very short summary on the worksheet.

I also recall the impression that the purpose of the place was to honor ancestors, and that fires were lit there so that the smoke would rise to heaven, where the ancestors still reside. Thus it was fundamentally a religious place, though devoted to ancestors rather than the worship of particular gods.

At this stage in the evolution of the remote viewing session, although I had done no analysis of the data, I had already drawn the target and begun making a model. Moreover, I had described the cones as “spires,” with details about how they were configured and the unusual concentric rings forming their primary esthetic feature. And I had also said it was a temple, and associated heaven and both a physical and spiritual uplifting with the place.

Having finished my clay model, and stating to Swann that I was getting no further data, he opened the folder and showed me two photographs of the site. We were both extremely pleased with the result. It was indeed a temple in Thailand, though he had no other information about it.

A long Internet search eventually revealed the temple to be Wat Phra Sri San Phet, located at the ancient capital city of Ayutthaya, about 140 kilometers north of Bangkok. First construction was in about 1450. Three main spires were built after the death of succeeding kings in order to serve as their memorial. A fourth spire was designed to hold religious relics.

So that is an example of the Ingo Swann method of Coordinate Remote Viewing, carried to the point of a model of the target site. The only thing I was given was the latitude and

longitude of the site. I produced a good clay model of the site, as well as accurate information about its nature and function.

The Ingo Swann Coordinate Remote Viewing procedures are the result of years of labor carried out by exceptional men at a prestigious research facility, lavishly funded by the U.S. government. In a sane world, Swann and his colleagues would be Nobel laureates. Sadly, they are already marginalized, and social forces are trying to consign them to the dust-bin of history.

The impact of remote viewing on me has been profound in the sense that I have been forced to accept a “Buddhist” philosophical position about the nature of existence. That is, we are undoubtedly only partly “individuals,” and we inhabit a vast “cosmic soup” with which we are intimately connected. I find it both humorous and satisfying that the “cosmic soup” concept is now accepted by mainstream physics as a corollary of Quantum Mechanics.

On the other hand, it has had no practical effect. My daily activities and my relations with other people have not changed. But most certainly, I am not the same man I was before I became a remote viewer.

Put another way, would I recommend training in remote viewing? Not if your goal is to make money or in other ways influence your physical existence. Rather, I would commend it to those for whom the world of ideas is paramount, and who travel in that world of thought like the early explorers traveled awestruck through the unmapped territories of Africa.

For more information on the International Remote Viewing Association and the conference please go to http://www.irva.org/ [1]