It is with extreme trepidation these days that I resort to pulling a target from the 200+ pool I created a few years back. What with TKR and the on-line RV group to which I belong (Starlight) there is generally enough for me to be getting on with.

Yet every so often something draws me back to the tousled draw full of numbered brown envelopes in my bedroom and I'll reach in for something to view. There are some interesting targets in there, if I remember rightly, an enticing blend of the esoteric and the personal. Hopefully I'll get one of those, whatever they were.

More often than not I'll pull a turkey. One of those targets set up years back before the vital importance of accurate tasking was hammered home through countless execrable cueings suffered at the hands of others. A real duffer, gauranteed to send you nowhere. Fast.

Take this morning, for instance. My co-ordinates sent me off into an odd little place to watch some guy with wild white hair loading objects into what looked like a coffin, or at least a long concave object of sorts. It seemed important to the man that this be done right. I got the impression that he was some kind of traveller, mentally if not physically...an iconoclast, even. Whatever he was doing it seemed important...if only I could make out what those objects were supposed to be, and why they were being deposited here.

My tasking cue?

DESCRIBE THE METHOD THROUGH WHICH PHYSICAL OBJECTS CAN BE TRANSPORTED THROUGH TIME.

Obviously my prior tasking self was looking for instructions for some kind of time machine, though quite how he expected to reach them through this cue alone is quite beyond me. As I sat there with my viewing sheets, my 45 minutes clearly wasted, I contemplated the possibility of transporting my own fist back through time and into the face of past-me at the time of writing that cue.

Perhaps, however, all was not in vain. Close examination of my session data reveals that I have indeed described the perfect method through which physical objects can be transported through time (as demonstrated by Dr Emmett Brown from Back to the Future, it would seem).

As a result I am experimenting by sending my guitar forward to this afternoon. I've transported it on via the downstairs cupboard, where I plan to go and check for its arrival at a little after three. Wish me luck.

It's always a joy to see a new publication on Remote Viewing. The title of Marilyn Isabelle Schmidt's recently released book suggests a somewhat more scientific treatment of the subject and lo and behold this is what we get.
        
Presented as her doctoral dissertation at California Institute for Human Science and subsequently published by Fenestra, the text is an objective trawl through thirty-odd years of Remote Viewing research interspersed with the occasional authorial aside.

Essentially Schmidt is an advocate of Remote Viewing research and a 'true believer', factors no doubt attributable to her comprehensive study of the field and somewhat limited experiences with `public domain` RV instructor Michael Eakin. At no point in her dissertation however does one get the feeling that this is a book on viewing written by a remote viewer. Instead one gets the sense of someone with an immense interest in the subject sifting several thousand pages of research papers and statistical results into a condensed, palatable log. Which is all fair and well...this is a theoretical investigation after all.
                                               

The first quarter of the book leads us through by now familiar terrain encompassing the various roles that psi has played in the development of human history. Shamanism, Swedenborg, JB Rhine etc...you get the picture. It's neatly done, though I did find myself wondering when exactly we were going to get to Remote Viewing; imagine a text on the principles of Basketball beginning with a ninety page explanation on the origins of sport itself. Still, it's nice to see the same old faces cropping up yet again as evidence for the existence of an underlying transcendental realm from which etc etc etc

From here we move rather abruptly on to a review of various research papers conducted at SRI, SAIC, within the USSR and by various other individual experimenters too numerous to mention. Essentially each review consists of the title of the investigation and a rough summary of its results. Many of these will be familiar to well-read viewers with a knowledge of the studies of Targ, Radin, Spottiswood et al, but there are reports of many more papers on a bewildering array of aspects, from Attitudes and expectancies in ESP scoring to A meta-analytic comparison of the sensitivity of direct hits and sums of ranks as outcome measures for free-response studies. Quite. This is serious stuff.

What IS refreshingly pleasant about this book is the sheer amount of RV research detailed within. Nowhere else have I seen such a huge volume of scientific research on the subject condensed into such digestible chunks. Sure I occasionally got lost amidst certain statements of statistical significance, but then 98% of all statistics bore the living pants off me. At least it's always an easy skip to the next lump of text.

What this book ISN'T is a subjective exploration of the writer's experiences with Remote Viewing. Don't come here looking for smiles...this is stern scientific appraisal from start to finish, not only of RV but of the methods by which experimental viewing is conducted. It is however one more step in the direction of a modern science that encompasses psi in an investigative capacity and as such Schmidt is to be applauded.

Am I any closer to a theoretical understanding of the processes behind Remote Viewing? Not really, no. I came to the same conclusions as Schmidt a few months ago, but these conclusions were largely arrived at by years of dedicated Remote Viewing. Science may need its peer reviews and its fuzzy sets and its research papers but we viewers largely know the arena and parameters of our viewing, what causes us to nail a target square or wonder off into the ether with a dummy in our mouth. Still, the reported results of certain studies have nevertheless set this particular viewer thinking...who'd have guessed that Vitamin A had such an effect on viewing outcome? (A qualitative appraisal of anomolous cognition following a liquidised carrot enema, Wincin, 2001.) 

As dry as they may be books like Schmidt's remain necessary bricks in the parquet floor of scientific progression and as such this reviewer believes she has done an excellent job. Like I said earlier though, you won't be digging this one out at parties...unless you're very weird indeed.

Remote viewing Superman, you say? Surely not. The guy doesn't even exist, for God's sake, let alone function as a viewable entity within the matrix. Not like King Arthur, Jesus Christ, those pesky Greys that keep cropping up in our sessions...at no point has the Man of Steel ever occupied a real and discernible presence in the physical universe...so how the hell do you expect us to view him?

Hang on there buddy. Just think about it a second. How many times have you been tasked a figure of questionable authenticity only to return from your psychic pryings with bona fide data confirming that yup not only do they exist but hey presto your data conforms to the currently held views on that figure's conceptual function and role?

They tasked you with Jesus and you came back with impressions of a 'teacher', 'someone sent from above', a 'source of light' etc. How handy! And how embarassing for you had you simply described some average dark skinned table-making schmoe in robes...

Can we really trust such data? Is there not the danger that rather than viewing the target itself we are allowing our focus to swing free, into that most subtle realm of AOL created and sustained by mankind's conceptions of these life forms, whilst at the same time missing the real truth of the matter...that these life forms were nothing like what we imagine them to be or worse still never existed at all. AOL can be a subtle, insidious thing, arriving with the merest twitch of the mind, allowing the wrongful association of A + B at a near unconscious level to spread outwards like a mist, obscuring all that is real in favour of comfortable, feedback-gratifying falsities.

How can we guage this? How can we learn to trust ourselves the better as viewers? It was with this in mind that I set out upon a little experiment involving our favourite Kryptonite.

AOL bird, AOL plane, etc etc

The idea was simple, the tasking simpler still:

Ultimately I was interested to see whether viewers would provide data suggesting that the target was a lifeform with any of the characteristics of Superman such as strength, speed, costume, underpants on the outside etc (though granted that last one could simply be a case of tasker displacement...doesn't half save on washing).

Were this the case then the implications for those viewers claiming clear `line of sight` to ambiguous historical or mythical figures would be severe. Would viewers spot that their target was a fictional non-entity or would they tap into the concept and report him as real?

The Sessions

My appeal on the forum boards at www.tenthousandroads.com soon threw up several helpful viewers willing to contribute sessions for what I described from the start as an `experiment'. The first session duly roled in:

female energy
see a woman or a woman is involved with this
legs walking around a square or box type object
this box is white
hard floor and box is hard. both maybe made of stone like marble or concrete
can't get passed this woman
she has medium dark hair possibly brownish or even reddish
knee length coat, sort of like a trench coat. maybe for rain or windy days,
something to do with time
a clock like object
freezing the moment in a day, like a picture..... time stops

Feedback was posted to the viewer in the form of the Superman image and tasking text provided above. Stupidly, in hindsight, for look at the data: `like a picture`, `this box is white`, `freezing the moment'. Clearly my viewer was using the picture as purely visual feedback, bypasing the need to tap into the idea of Superman himself. Rather brilliantly they had managed to spot that the target was a picture whilst at the same time describing certain aspects of it ('dark hair', 'knee length coat').

Kudos to the talents of this viewer but ultimately a flaw in my experimental design. I resolved from then on to withold the picture image and provide purely the following cue as feedback:

SUPERMAN / DESCRIPTION

By forcing the viewer to operate without visual feedback I was insisting that any data they provided came from the conceptual level I was eager to expore.

The next contact I received from a viewer contained an apology at their inability to get past the fact that I had presented the target as part of `an experiment`, at one point going on to say:

I think of experimental projecting real target with diversion of false targets...my imagination runs wild with the aspect of frontloading various experiments. I even imagine one with electrical connections running thru it as well, and then i see Frankestein's monster with you screaming "its alive its alive". Sorry my imagination runs wild.....

As ever with remote viewing here we see the viewer blithely unaware that their subconscious is at work on the target without them even being aware! The suggestion that I am the owner of some inanimate lifeform (eg Frankenstein's monster) screaming "it's alive, it's alive!" is too close a call to dismiss as mere coincedence, expecially considering the nature of the experiment.

Next up came this interesting little session:

The first is of a man, dark hair waves/curls, down to nape, dark framed glasses. He sits at a computer. I stand at his right side looking at him from a side view. He's facing a wall typing. The desk sits in a corner. His right side open to the room. From his profile he has a pleasent face.

Left and right side of the image is very dark. Like walls on either side, yet I want to say I see tree tops on either side.
I look down the centre of the picture, where the light is, like it's a tunnel. A sky line of tall buildings, blue sky.

Metal in the sky. *shrugs* Not sure what that is. white, puffy. Blue. Belly of a fighter plane?

"Is it a bird, is it a plane?"

Have we got a bona fide description of Clark Kent at work in the Bugle here? Who is this guy the viewer is describing? Of all the sessions this is the one that would come closest to describing Superman as a real person, and yet, humorous coincedences aside, it's hardly what one thinks of when one summons up an image of the Man of Steel. An interesting session, but I'm not going to leap to any conclusions and claim that here we have evidence of a fictional character being perceived by a viewer as real. Still, it bears consideration.

The next viewer seemed to struggle with achieving any clear impressions at all:

semihard
human
DEDUCTION: people in a structure

resonance, echoing in my head, like as being inside a bell
metal? (AOL?)
DEDUCTION: group of people

body
intangible
DEDUCTION: my thoughts right now are empty

AOL: noise of a motorcycle engine. Or is it a fly?
feel my synapses and neurons.. electricity in my head... feel sensible
AOL of WW2 German Spies
DEDUCTION: I have to describe something that is being (?)

Here we see the sense of `electricity' that crops up in a later session. The sense of a 'body/intangible' is also interesting. The viewer struggles on before announcing:

I feel not confident, signal seems light and weak. So difficult I even doubt about existence of a feedback.

...as well they may, given that the target I am asking them to describe has no basis in physical reality. So whilst to some this may appear to miss, the more sensible among us will realise that the viewer her is right to struggle and question the 'existence of feedback.'

Next viewer's session:

vertical tapered column
knife-like, leaf or blade
folded like a jack-knife or straight razor
silver, tall narrow, cone shape

dark haired male
different views, turning
green shirt

cars, vehicles
parking lot, night
North Eastern US

white ribbon or banner or cloth
ruffles, a dress
female, child

Again, that 'dark haired male', maybe a reference to Superman's cloak ('banner or cloth') but nothing definite, nothing suggesting the superhero in question.

The final session received proved interesting in its description of a `pulsing electric energy' that felt 'channelled and controlled':

I felt like I was inside a computer or machine - I just felt as though I were extremely small in relation to the structured elements around me.

Perhaps this viewer was picking up on the 'idea' that constitutes our conception of Superman...the actual neurons and circuitry in which the Man of Steel exists at a purely ideological level.

Don't Worry Lex...You're Safe

It would appear then that with one or two slight twitches of 'dark haired' data our mighty superhero failed to make it into the minds and out onto the pages of our viewers. At no point did any of them mention anything to do with strength, power, or anything remotely 'super'. What can we conclude from this?

Conclusion

Well, it would appear from this (admittedly small) experiment that by and large the human remote viewing mind refuses to be hoodwinked by fictional lifeforms with no basis in our concrete reality. If anything such fictions manifest themselves as an unconducive nervousness on behalf of the viewer or the reported detection of some kind of internalised 'energy', perhaps that of the idealised concept itself.

With that in mind I for one will be that much less willing to dismiss as baloney the claims of any viewer purporting to have data on an ambiguous historical figure should that data bear more than a moderate degree of match to the tasking. It would appear that if they existed, then we can view them. More importantly this experiment suggests that if they didn't exist...well, we can't.

Marv Darley