Entangled - journey of discovery

Chapter III Remote Viewing, Distance Healing, and OBE

It seems that every major change of direction on my long journey happened from a random chance encounter with someone who is following their own path of discovery. Or maybe it was because I was retired and had more time to think about less practical and more interesting matters rather than just the mundane.

These encounters kept on happening as it did one night at the Santa Fe Hotel in Puerto Escondido with Roland and Lisa. We were having the usual conversation about good restaurants and good food when it changed to talk about meditation and Qigong. Since I had been practicing Tai Chi for many years and dabbled in meditation I was eager to hear their stories.

Then, most likely because I was showing adequate interest in their experiences, Roland asked if I knew about remote viewing (RM). I understood the reluctance to talk about psychic experiences to most acquaintances because it can easily be a conversation stopper or just turned into a joke. But in my case I was happy to hear anything that might give me direction.

I had not heard of RM, but listened carefully to how the US government trained people in The Stargate Project from 1978 until 1995. It was an effort to train people to psychically view places from a distance. For the military it was to see behind enemy lines.

But before I get into this I want to say that as I went along this journey I became more and more concerned about staying on paths that had solid scientific backing. That is, I avoided most of the discussions readily available on the internet because 99% have taken the latest hint of a discovery and are promoting some product that exploits those ideas.

After The Stargate Project ended other groups carried on investigating some of these conciousness studies. The Monroe Institute was where Roland said he was going to get trained in Remote Viewing (RV). It was worth following up for me because of the confidence I had in Roland and the remote viewing technique appeared to use extensions of our mind's consciousness.

The US military was interested back then, before today's more advanced technology, to see behind enemy lines. The project's best remote viewer, Joseph McMoneagle was trained by Robert Monroe who was best known for his Out of Body Experiences (OBEs). The Monroe Institute carried on with OBE, RV, and other related psychic studies.

This was all very intriguing for awhile and I did watch some of the training sessions on videos, but even though it would have been instructive for me to have this ability, I couldn't see where it was going to get me. What I wanted was to not just experience the seeing or knowing, but to understand how it was possible.

Even the OBE stories were interesting and some quite believable; especially when patients can describe things that happen in the next room that they couldn't possibly have known. These phenomenon only confirmed to me that something was going on, but were not going to get me to a comfortable place where there is sufficient science to back up the experiences. It was all well and good that someone has an out of body experience but how is it possible, where is the scientific explanation?

I didn't give up on these ideas and luckily after more searching I came across Claude Swanson. He impressed me right away because of his education, his maturity and his sincerity. At last a scientist who is taking some of these mysterious things seriously. He didn't seem to be selling anything, except his books, and he had done very extensive research. Apart from his work in Theoretical Physics (Unified Field Theory) he has been working on unconventional physics of the paranormal, including Remote Viewing, OBE, and Distance Healing.

I thought I had struck pay dirt. A physicist studying consciousness who had been trained in Remote Viewing at the Munroe Institute. Claude Swanson explained that the physics community did not recognize paranormal phenomena. His research seemed to be a very thorough documentation of paranormal evidence from antiquity to the present in support of the argument that there are subtle energies outside of classical physics world, and there were people with extraordinary abilities of consciousness; yogis, adepts, etc.

So eventually I was left with the comforting feeling that I am not alone in my quest, but felt quite inadequately prepared compared to Dr Claude Swanson with his degrees and research and his 800 page research book.

My head was spinning after watching a few of Claude Swanson's talks. It was way too much information way too far out for me at that time, and for how far along I was in my own journey. I did not read the book but picked up enough names and ideas to keep me going on my journey.

I felt that I was just getting started on my journey and Claude Swanson was near the end of his thirty year exploration. It was too much too fast for me. There was too much about a large range of psychic phenomenon including levitation, crop circles, UFOs, ghosts, auras, plant emotions, ESP messages, group consciousness, chi, psychokinesis (PK), orbs, NDEs, paranormal adepts, and ETs. Oh my god, do you think that covers everything.

With all the experimentation and the statistical analysis of test data he seemed to be building a case for the existence of these phenomenon, rather than explaining what I wanted; a fundamental understanding of the science behind it. I certainly was appreciative of the fact that Claude Swanson was at least a scientist with impressive credentials demonstrating the importance this journey.

But as I watched a number of his talks I was struck by the enormous effort that had gone into this research and his sincerity and knowledge, so I wanted to see some peer reviews, some collaboration, or a least some of his classical physics publications.

So much of his presentations were showing experimental data as proof of the existence of something going on, and then his statement, "how do you explain this". So rather than getting answers, I was just getting more questions and more frustration. I must add that at least I was comforted in knowing that someone in the science community was taking seriously some of the questions that I had.

What I finally came away with was the idea of subtle energies and another physicist, William Tiller. Listening to William Tiller talk about how orthodox physicists were stuck in the distance and time world, and how they were not able to get their minds around psychic experiments. This got me thinking that if they are stuck in their corner of the science world, I was in no world. I was a nowhere man.

I didn't know even the basics of physics. So how could I possibly understand, even if I was shown credible scientific proof. Both Swanson and Tiller had extensive education and scientific training and many many years of research in the area that I was just getting ready to explore.

What I realized was that I needed to step right back, take a good hard look at where I wanted to go, where I was now, what my capabilities were, and how best to proceed from here. I was seeing too many paths, too many choices to make, and I was getting entangled in a maze of ideas.

But since I was feeling uncomfortable with where I was, way out on a limb, and not knowing what the next plan of attack should be, I decided to get back to basics. I decided to step right back and try and get on some really solid scientific footing before moving on. Even if this meant studying Quantum Physics, so be it.