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Category: Paranormal

  • Remote Viewing Revelations From the US Military to the MoD

    Remote Viewing Revelations From the US Military to the MoD

    From New Dawn 102 (May-June 2007)

    Surprising new evidence reveals that the British Government showed an active interest in using psychics for espionage purposes. In a document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by UFO author and investigator Timothy Good, it was discovered that the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) undertook a study between 2001 and 2002 to investigate the efficiency of remote viewing.

    For those who don’t know, remote viewing – also called ‘travelling clairvoyance’ – is the ability to perceive places, persons and actions using psychic means. As is now well known, the US Army and various other tax payer supported government agencies, including the CIA, investigated and utilised remote viewing during the 1970s and 1980s.

    Now that it’s been declassified, all of the documentation pertaining to the British MoD’s remote viewing study can be obtained from their website – or so they claim. In one section it states that the results they obtained were largely unsuccessful and “undoubtedly disappointing with no one achieving any useful performance as an RV subject.” However, given the fact that untrained novices were used in the study, as well as the fact that the remote viewing methods they employed left much to be desired, this is not surprising.

    The MoD initially attempted to recruit 12 ‘known’ psychics who had advertised their abilities on the Internet. When every single one of them refused to be a part of the program, however, novice volunteers were drafted instead. One of the tests conducted involved blind-folding participants, and asking them to psychically determine the contents of sealed brown envelopes. Around 28% of the participants were successful in this endeavour. Most of them, the report states, were hopelessly off the mark.

    According to a spokeswoman for the MoD, their £18,000 remote viewing study “was conducted to assess claims made in some academic circles and to validate research carried out by other nations on psychic ability.” She adds: “The study concluded that remote viewing theories had little value to the MoD and was taken no further.”

    UFO investigator and author Nick Pope, who worked for the MoD for 21 years, suggests there may have been an undisclosed purpose to the study. Given its timing, he says, the study may have concerned military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. “It can only be speculated,” he says, “but you don’t employ that kind of time and effort to find money down the back of the sofa. You go to this trouble for high value assets. We must be talking about Bin Laden and weapons of mass destruction.”

    In response to media criticism for “wasting taxpayer’s money” on a project seen as being ludicrous, MoD defended their actions, perhaps indicating they take the subject of parapsychology – a so called “pseudoscience” – far more seriously than they would have the public believe.

    “I don’t think this was a waste of public money,” says Pope. “Many people will say so, but I think it is marvellous that the government is prepared to think outside the box. And this is as outside the box as it gets.”

    Parapsychology – the scientific study of psychic phenomena – has been around since at least the 1800s. However, it wasn’t until the 1930s, when J.B. Rhine began conducting ESP experiments under controlled laboratory conditions at Duke University, that parapsychology became a legitimate scientific field. Since that time, knowledge in this area has rapidly advanced, and, thanks to improvements in experimental design, the presence of psi (psychic or paranormal phenomena) – which is generally weak and inconsistent – can now be detected far more easily. Also of aid to this process is the use of meta-analysis, a new statistical tool, whereby the results of many different studies can be successfully combined to render the aggregate result statistically significant.

    In his fascinating book Entangled Minds, parapsychologist Dean Radin – a man with impressive credentials, who once served as a scientist at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) where he worked on a highly-classified program investigating psi phenomena for the US government – says we should no longer be trying to determine if psi exists, but how psi works. “After a century of increasingly sophisticated investigations and more than a thousand controlled studies with combined odds against chance of 10104 to 1, there is now strong evidence that some psi phenomena exist,” he explains.

    In light of the fact that parapsychology is now a sophisticated and legitimate branch of science, and has been for many years, one can’t help but wonder why the MoD’s rather expensive remote viewing study was of such poor standard. It simply defies logic. Why, in other words, didn’t their study draw more heavily from the impressive body of knowledge accumulated over years and years of parapsychological research? And why didn’t their methodology follow the well-known and highly successful controlled remote viewing (CRV) protocols developed by Ingo Swann and utilised in STAR GATE and other programs? And how come, when they couldn’t recruit the twelve ‘known’ psychics for the study, they settled for novice volunteers?

    By tracing the history of modern remote viewing, we can begin to answer these questions.

    Ingo Swann

    One of the most important figures responsible for today’s understanding of remote viewing is Ingo Swann, a scholar, artist, scientist and natural psychic. After acquiring a pet chinchilla, which, he discovered, “could read and apprehend” his thoughts, Swann developed an interest in psychic phenomena. When he began to move into the circles of those studying such phenomena, he soon became acquainted with Cleve Backster. Backster, a New York polygraph operator, is famous for his experiments in “primary perception,” in which he demonstrated, with the use of polygraph equipment, that every single type of living tissue, even the bacilli in yoghurt, possesses some degree of sentience. Swann worked in Backster’s laboratory for a year.

    Soon after that, Swann participated in a series of psychic experiments for the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR). According to Time-Life, a typical experiment would take place as follows: “Swann would sit in an easy chair illuminated by a soft overhead light, virtually immobilised by wires that hooked him up to a polygraph machine, which monitored his brain waves, respiration and blood pressure. Puffing away on his cigar, he would, as he put it, ‘liberate his mind’; then he would be asked to describe or draw his impression of objects that were set out of sight in a box on a platform suspended from the ceiling.”

    “At first,” says Swann, “I was not very good at this kind of ‘perceiving’, but as the months went on, I got even better at it.” The term “remote viewing,” coined by Swann and a research assistant at the ASPR named Janet Mitchell, was used to describe a particular kind of experiment conducted by Swann at around this time. Whilst in an out-of-body state, Swann would attempt to “see,” then report on the weather conditions in distant cities.

    Swann became more heavily involved in parapsychological research, when, in 1972, he agreed to work at SRI for Harold Puthoff, a highly successful physicist. Puthoff, after reading the seminal book Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain in which he heard about the work of Cleve Backster, was eager to conduct some parapsychological experiments of his own. The research project conducted by Puthoff – then later by him and another physicist named Russell Targ – was initially funded by the Sciences Research Foundation of San Antonia, Texas. Later on, when their successful remote viewing work at SRI began to gain wider attention, they started to receive funding from other government agencies, including the CIA.

    In one early remote viewing experiment at SRI, Swann was accurately able to describe – and sketch in great detail – the features of a uniquely designed magnetometer buried six feet in concrete beneath the floor. Not only that, he managed to affect the equipment’s output signal, as displayed on a strip chart recorder. Another subject, a photographer by the name of Hella Hammid, was able to accurately describe five out of nine target sites, resulting in odds against chance of more than 500,000 to 1.

    Thanks to the advent of coordinate remote viewing (CRV) – now called controlled remote viewing – numerous complications were eliminated. For example, it was no longer necessary for a person – known as the ‘beacon’ – to visit the spot that was chosen as the remote viewer’s target. This enabled remote viewing to be more easily used for espionage purposes.

    CRV is a method by which coordinates are employed to identify the target to be viewed. The coordinates used, however, needn’t be geographical in nature. They can be, and usually are, completely random numbers. Once a particular target has already been ‘visited’ by a remote viewer, and this target has been assigned a set of random coordinates, it is possible for another remote viewer to ‘visit’ the same location – which could be any point in time and space – simply by focusing on the same set of coordinates. The theory behind how this works is based on Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious. “Once these numbers have been assigned,” writes British author and paranormal expert Colin Wilson, “they become part of the psychic ether, much as the letters assigned to a website on the Internet will enable anybody to access the site.”

    During the Cold War, when the American government discovered they were lagging behind the Soviet Union in paranormal research, they grew concerned, thinking the Soviets might use their newly acquired knowledge for hostile purposes. Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, published in 1970 by two Western authors named Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder documented that numerous scientists throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were starting to take parapsychological research – or ‘psychotronics’ – very seriously indeed.

    “But interest in psychic phenomena within the ruling circles of Cold War leaders on both sides of the Atlantic remained very much a hidden agenda,” writes Jim Marrs in Psi Spies. “Officially, the United States had no interest in nonexistent phenomena.” However, a 1972 CIA report, released years later, proves agency officials were concerned about Soviet psychic research, even though, at the time, organisations such as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) were beginning to give parapsychology a bad name, as was the media.

    As quoted by the editors of Time-Life, the aforementioned CIA report stated, “Soviet efforts in the field of psi research, sooner or later, might enable them to do some of the following: (a) Know the contents of top secret US documents, the movement of our troops and ships and the location and nature of our military installations. (b) Mold the thoughts of key US military and civilian leaders at a distant. (c) Cause the instant death of any US official at a distance. (d) Disable, at a distance, US military equipment of all types, including spacecraft.”

    The first remote viewing research program conducted by Puthoff and Targ with CIA funding was named project SCANATE. Held at SRI, the program went on for two years, yielding some remarkable results. The CIA, happy with the success of the program, felt their money was being well-spent. A CIA intelligence consultant named Joseph A. Ball, who, according to Mind Wars author Ronald McRae, was commissioned to evaluate SCANATE, allegedly said the project “produced manifestations of extrasensory perception sufficiently sharp and clear-cut to justify serious considerations of possible applications.”

    According to McRae, the AiResearch Manufacturing Company of Torrence, California, another consulting firm, was also contracted by the CIA to evaluate SCANATE, reaching essentially the same conclusion as Ball.

    As well as Swann, another notable member of the SCANATE team, and an equally successful remote viewer, was a former police commissioner named Patrick H. Price, who died suddenly of a heart attack in July of 1975. As a result of conducting a highly successful operational test for the CIA, in which his descriptions of a missile and guerrilla training site in Libya were confirmed by the CIA’s Libyan Desk officer, Swann helped ensure that government funding for project SCANATE would continue. Also of help to this process was the publication of SRI’s remote viewing research in a prestigious technical periodical, Proceedings of the IEEE, the editor of which was almost fired for choosing to deal with such controversial material.

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    Operation GRILL FLAME

    By the late 1970s, when the SRI team began receiving sponsorship from the US Army instead of the CIA, an operational unit of soldiers trained in remote viewing – known by many as the ‘psi spies’ – was created in order to help gather intelligence during the Cold War. One of the first units of remote viewers created by the US Army was called GRILL FLAME, previously named GONDOLA WISH. According to Joseph McMoneagle, one of the original psi spies, the Army interviewed around 3,000 people for GRILL FLAME, selecting, in the end, a total of six.

    Early on, the members of GRILL FLAME practised remote viewing using a variety of different experimental methods. Consciousness-altering techniques such as Transcendental Meditation (TM) and biorhythm were tested, but proved to be of little value. Remote viewing in an out-of-body state was also found to be largely unsuccessful, in that, although it could be achieved, the viewer would often lose interest in the mission at hand, focusing instead on the awe-inspiring nature of the experience. The team decided, in the end, to adhere to Swann’s structured CRV methodology, as this produced the most consistently accurate results.

    While in an out-of-body state, Robert Monroe, founder of the Monroe Institute for Applied Sciences – which, among other things, was used to screen remote viewers for GRILL FLAME and other programs – discovered he was being ‘observed’ by a group of strangers, one of whom appeared to be a powerful female psychic. He felt they were trying to probe his mind. Shaken by the experience, Monroe asked the GRILL FLAME team to investigate the matter. They soon discovered that the Soviet Union had a psi spies team of their own. “The Soviet KGB,” says Marrs, “laboriously screened more than a million people in an effort to locate ‘super naturals’, persons with the greatest amount of psychic power. These super psychics became the Soviet Union’s psi spies, sometimes assigned to seek out their Western counterparts.”

    For many years, the two teams indulged in a game of harmless psychic cat and mouse with each other, but that’s as far as the matter went. According to former military remote viewer Mel Riley, the two teams had a kind of “gentleman’s agreement” with each other, which involved keeping the existence of the opposing team a secret from their respective bosses, so as not to cause trouble for each other.

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    In 1985 GRILL FLAME came under control of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA). From that point onwards, the unit codename underwent several changes. GRILL FLAME became CENTER LANE, then SUN STREAK, and finally STAR GATE.

    According to many of the original psi spies, the unit went downhill once it was placed under civilian control during the late 1980s. At around this time, two female trainees named Angela and Robin showed up. Called “the witches” by the others, they practised channelling, tarot card reading and automatic writing in place of CRV, consequently obtaining poor results in their work. The entire unit became something of a joke, especially when congressmen began to visit for psychic “readings.” By 1990, all of the military-trained psi spies had left the unit, leaving “the witches” in charge. Some of them retired. Others joined different units within the US Army.

    During its full operational period, before things went awry, the psi spies unit provided information of critical intelligence in hundreds of very specific cases. “On scores of occasions,” writes Swann, “this information was also described within government documents as being unavailable from any other source(s).” He continues: “Also contrary to popular belief, the program operated throughout its history under the very watchful eyes of numerous oversight committees, which were both scientific and governmental. During the seventeen and a half years it ran, it provided support to nearly all of the United States intelligence agencies.”

    Early on, most of the operational missions conducted by the psi spies involved investigating targets in the Soviet Union. Being highly classified and concerning issues of national security, the unit received little or no feedback about the success of these missions. One of the most talked about missions that the psi spies were asked to undertake was conducted by McMoneagle, who managed to correctly describe, in thorough detail, a new type of Soviet Submarine, which was then being constructed in a secret facility in Severodvinsk.

    Another mission noted for its stunning success was undertaken in May of 1978, in response to a plane crash that occurred in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). The plane, a Soviet Tupolev-22 bomber, was seen as being invaluable to the Americans, who wanted to recover the wreckage in order to examine its communication equipment. Two remote viewers working independently of one another, Frances Bryan and Gary Langford, each managed to draw detailed sketches of the area where the plane crash occurred. The plane was eventually located within barely 5 kilometres of the spot they had both described.

    The story of military remote viewing hit the mainstream press in late 1995, but not before the CIA had arranged for the American Institute of Research (AIR) to conduct a biased review concerning the value and success of STAR GATE. Their aim was to discredit remote viewing and other psi abilities, in order to thwart public interest in the subject. Jessica Utts, a professor of statistics with a positive opinion on psi phenomena, and Dr. Raymond Hyman, a professor of psychology and luminary of CSICOP – in other words, a fanatical sceptic of anything remotely ‘paranormal’ – were chosen to lead the review. “It was a good strategy to select evaluators from opposite camps; it gave the appearance of balance to the evaluation – an appearance that is deceiving,” writes W. Adam Mandelbaum in his book The Psychic Battlefield.

    The report evaluated only three remote viewing projects, which were carried out within one year towards the end of STAR GATE, a period of decline for the program. The other 16 or so years that it ran (though under numerous different codenames) were totally disregarded. Moreover, according to Dr. Edwin May, former director of remote viewing research, the AIR panel was denied access to an estimated 80,000 pages of program documents, due to their highly-classified nature. And, to make matters worse, the panel interviewed only three remote viewers involved in the program, all of whom were of “the witches” variety, in that they commonly relied upon tarot card reading, automatic writing and other unconventional methods to obtain their information. Ergo, only the very weakest data was used in the AIR evaluation.

    The AIR report states, “The evidence accrued from research, interviews and user-assessments all indicate that the remote viewing phenomenon has no real value for intelligence operations at present.” It also mentions, however, that a “statistically significant effect” had been observed in laboratory remote viewing experiments. Despite these findings, the report goes on to mention that, “no compelling explanation has been provided for the observed effects… to say a phenomenon has been demonstrated we must know the reason for its existence.”

    One can’t help but wonder if the real purpose of the British MoD’s remote viewing study was to further discredit the phenomenon. It was, after all, something of a joke – especially in comparison to the remote viewing program undertaken by the US government. Or, perhaps, as Nick Pope suggests, its real purpose has not been disclosed to the public.

    In his book Psi Spies, Marrs claims that several separate unofficial sources have informed him the US government’s remote viewing program never truly ended. It only ended in the eyes of the public – just as the CIA intended. According to these sources, says Marrs, “the remote viewing methodology was simply moved to even more secret government agencies where its use continues today.”

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    References

    ‘MoD Defends Psychic Powers Study’
    ‘Defence Chiefs Spend £18,000 on a Mystic Experiment to Find Bin Laden’s Lair’
    Ministry of Defence – Remote Viewing

    http://www.dailygrail.com – ‘Remote Viewing Revelation’

    Buchanan, Lyn, The Seventh Sense (Paraview Pocket Books, New York, NY, 2003)
    Graff, Dale E., Tracks in the Psychic Wilderness (Element Books, Inc, Boston, MA, 1998)
    Gruber, Elmar R., Psychic Wars: Parapsychology in Espionage – and Beyond (Cassell plc, UK, London, 1999)
    Mandelbaum, W. Adam, The Psychic Battlefield: A History of the Military-Occult Complex (Thomas Dunn Books, New York, NY, 2000)
    Marrs, Jim, Psi Spies (AlienZoo Publishing, Phoenix, AZ, 2000)
    McMoneagle, Joseph, Remote Viewing Secrets (Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc., Charlottesville, VA, 2000)
    Radin, Dean, Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Perception in a Quantum Reality (Paraview Pocket Books, New York, NY, 2006)
    Wilson, Colin, Alien Dawn: An Investigation into the Contact Experience (Virgin Publishing Ltd., 1998)

    © New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
    For our reproduction notice, click here.

  • The Changing Face of Russian Psi Research

    The Changing Face of Russian Psi Research

    From New Dawn 104 (Sept-Oct 2007)

    Were the Soviets really experts in paranormal research? Were they, as some researchers claimed during the Cold War, light years ahead of the rest of the world in the field of parapsychology? If so, what kind of work are the Russians up to today?

    The mysterious case of Robert Toth may shed some light on the matter.

    The Toth Incident

    Robert C. Toth, a Los Angeles Times correspondent, was arrested and detained in Moscow on June 11, 1977. He had been given papers by a Soviet scientist named Valery G. Petukhov, who claimed to be Chief of the Laboratory of Bio-Physics at the State Control Institute of Medical and Biological Research. The papers supposedly disclosed ‘state secrets’ and Toth, of course, had obtained them illegally. He was arrested before he had a chance to examine them properly.

    The papers were supposed to offer proof of Petukhov’s grounding breaking scientific research in the field of parapsychology. When living cell undergo division, Toth had been told, they emit certain particles that can be “detected and measured.” These particles can “carry information,” and their function could “explain the basis for telepathy” and other phenomena of this nature.

    Toth claimed that seconds after he had been given the papers, a small car pulled up beside him, from out of which emerged five men, dressed as civilians. They threw him inside the vehicle, which then sped off. “Our car drove through red lights and down one-way streets the wrong way to a militia [police] station,” writes Toth. “My captors were firm and polite, offering me cigarettes… I was ushered into a room with an inspector who declined my requests to phone the US Embassy but said a Soviet Foreign Ministry official would be called.”

    Toth was detained for a period of several days. He was interrogated by police officers and KGB officials. A senior researcher of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Professor I.M. Mikhailov, was asked to provide expert testimony on the information Toth had been given by Petukhov. “This material is secret and shows the kind of work done in some scientific institutes of our state,” he declared.

    Suddenly told he was free to go, Toth caught the next flight back to America. The Toth incident hit newspapers all over the world, including The Washington Post and The New York Times. The story was quickly forgotten, however – at least by the public. “But,” writes the late Martin Ebon, “intelligence analysts understood that Toth had gotten into his hand, if only for a few moments, one of the tips of the enormous iceberg of top secret Soviet research into psychic powers of the human mind.”

    The Psi Warfare Gap

    Another possibility is that the Toth incident was a Soviet orchestrated conspiracy – a set up, in other words. Between 1969 and 1971, during the height of the Cold War, American intelligence sources discovered the Soviets had a deep interest in parapsychology, were researching the subject extensively, and that this research was being well-funded by the Soviet military and the KGB.

    In 1967, it was learned, the Soviets were spending an estimated US$500 million a year on parapsychological related research. The money was being used to fund fourteen separate research institutes. This naturally worried the Americans, who deduced a hostile intent behind the Soviet’s actions.

    As to why the Soviets were spending so much money on psi research, a brief explanation needs to be given. In the aftermath of World War II, Soviet authorities feared the prospect of becoming involved in yet another war – this time with the West – much in the same way that the US authorities were greatly concerned about a possible ‘communist takeover’ and nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

    Acting as an important catalyst for the Soviet ‘psychic boom’ was a story that appeared in the French periodical Constellation, entitled ‘Thought Transmission – Weapon of War’. The article, published in 1959, told of supposed telepathy experiments that were being conducted by the US military. The article claimed that the ‘receivers’ in the experiment, located onboard the submerged nuclear submarine Nautilus, had successfully managed to pick up telepathic transmissions from the ‘senders’ back on land.

    When the US Navy denied the story, the Soviets assumed they were lying, deciding to take it seriously. Not wanting to be left behind in the field of psi research, the Soviets took immediate action. The father of Soviet parapsychology, the physiologist Leonid L. Vasiliev, who, in 1923, had been ordered by Joseph Stalin to investigate telepathy, made the following remark in April 1960, while addressing a group of top Soviet scientists: “Today the American Navy is testing telepathy on their atomic submarines. Soviet scientists conducted a great many successful telepathy tests over a quarter of a century ago. It’s urgent that we throw off our prejudices. We must again plunge into the exploration of this vital field.”

    One theory is that the Nautilus story was a clever piece of American disinformation, aimed to lead the Soviets astray, so that they would start to invest money and energy into a decided waste of time. “Whether telepathic communication experiments were ever carried out aboard the USS Nautilus is a topic that generates much doubt and dispute among paranormal enthusiasts,” explains W. Adam Mandelbaum in his book The Psychic Battlefield.

    Regarding the Toth incident, the parapsychologist Elmar R. Gruber has some interesting comments to offer: “The feeling remains that the Soviets were attempting to impart deliberate disinformation in their power game with the Americans… Did they intend to create the impression that they were far more advanced in this field than the Americans?”

    Intentional or not, the impression was certainly there, as proven by a now declassified 1972 Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) report, entitled ‘Controlled Offensive Techniques’. The report begins by stating that parapsychology in the Soviet Union is very different to that in West, the former being a “multi-disciplinary field consisting of the sciences of bionics, biophysics, psychophysics, psychology, physiology and neuropsychology.” The Soviets had named this field ‘psychotronics’. The nearest English equivalent to the word is mind (psycho) energy applications (-tronics).

    The report mentions that Soviet scientists had explored “detrimental effects of subliminal perception techniques,” which, using “telepathic means,” might be “targeted against the US or allied personnel in nuclear missile silos.” The report continues: “The potential applications of focusing mental influences on an enemy through hypnotic telepathy have surely occurred to the Soviets… Control and manipulation of the human consciousness must be considered a primary goal. Soviet knowledge in this field is superior to that of the United States.”

    Psychic Discoveries Behind The Iron Curtain

    The year 1970 marked the publication of a now classic book on Soviet psychic research. Called Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, it was written by two Western journalists, Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. During their stay in what was then the Soviet Union, Ostrander and Schroeder travelled far and wide, interviewing numerous scientists who were conducting groundbreaking research in the field of parapsychology.

    When Psychic Discoveries was first released, it caused quite a stir, sparking both public and government interest in ‘psychic warfare’. Had it never been written, the US government’s fear of ‘Soviet psychic mind control’ would probably not have reached the extreme that it did.

    Kirlian photography, dowsing, telepathy, eyeless sight, telekinesis, hypnosis – these are just some of the subjects that Ostrander and Schroeder investigated and wrote about. Their book showed that Soviet scientists had already managed to gain a practical understanding of how these types of phenomena were possible, while the rest of the world was lagging far behind.

    So what had the Soviets discovered about the unknown powers of the human mind? And how did they approach the study of this enigmatic subject?

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    Experiments In Distance Influence

    Existing in the Soviet Union were two different types of parapsychology – one official, the other secret. The former was allowed to exist in public, while the latter was taking place at well-funded, top secret state-controlled research institutes, and was largely military-based. Parapsychologists who wanted to do research in non-military areas often had difficulty obtaining funding.

    To divert attention away from the real research they were doing, the Soviets had established, in Moscow, a military-based parapsychology centre called the Institute of Problems of Information Transmission. To help it look authentic, the Soviets made sure it was well-guarded at all times. As for the real research, that was being conducted in a remote region of western Siberia, near the pioneer town of Novosibirsk, in a massive research facility named Akademgorodok, ‘Science City’.

    Built after World War II, Science City was composed of around 40 scientific centres, and housed tens of thousands of scientists and their families. It was developed, says Martin Ebon, “with such single-mindedness that even the names of the streets and city squares reflect its nature. For example, one could take a bus down Thermophysics Street, get off at the corner of Calculators Street, and walk across the Institute of Hydrodynamics Square.”

    One of its scientific centres was called the Institute for Automation and Electrometry. Located here was the mysterious Special Department 8, where entry was not permitted unless one had access to a special code. Security was such that the code was changed on a weekly basis. For the sixty or so scientists employed at No. 8, their job was to investigate telepathy and distant influence, otherwise called ‘biocommunication’.

    For psi to be possible, thought Soviet scientists, there had to be an exchange of energy taking place. At No. 8, writes Ebon, “physicists sought to discover the nature of ‘psi particles’, the elusive elements that some Soviet scientists regarded as essential to the function of such psychic techniques as biocommunication and bioenergetics.”

    In one series of experiments, telepathic communication was tested among people. Experiments in telekinesis were also conducted. Some of the subjects used were Tibetan monks and Siberian shamans, who had been carefully selected by the KGB for their remarkable psychic abilities. The American journalist Jim Marrs says the KGB “laboriously screened more than a million people in an effort to locate ‘super naturals’, persons with the greatest amount of psychic power.”

    In another series of experiments – which were conducted at No. 8 before it was closed down in 1969 – August Stern, one of the scientists who worked there, and his colleagues tested the properties of biophotons, to see if they could account “for some inexplicable forms of communication.” Photons, by the way, are the smallest physical units of light, the quanta of electromagnetic radiation. Biophotons are a type of photon that radiate from living cells. In this experiment, bacteria was placed on two sides of a glass plate, “to see whether a fatal disease could be transmitted through the glass” with the help of biophotons. “There were also experiments with photon waves, in which frogs’ eyes were used as a more sensitive measuring instrument than a machine,” recalls Stern, who migrated to France in 1977.

    Due to the shutting down of No. 8, the photon communication experiments conducted by Stern and his colleagues were not fully realised. Several years later, however, three Soviet scientists attempted the same problem, achieving impressive results. Their names were Vlail Kanachevy, Simon Shchurin and Ludmilla Mikhailova. In their experiments, two groups of cells were used, one of which was contaminated with a virus, the other of which was not. They were placed adjacent to each other, but remained physically separate. When the two groups were isolated by quartz glass, which ultra-violet waves are able to penetrate, the non-contaminated cells suddenly became contaminated; they ‘caught the disease’, in other words. When regular glass was used, which ultra-violet waves cannot penetrate, this did not occur; the non-contaminated cells remained healthy.

    These results confirmed what many Soviet scientists in the field of bioenergetics had previously theorised – that living cells can ‘communicate’ with each other over distances, and in a non-chemical way. When the affected cells were attacked by the virus, says Shchurin, they “virtually cried out loud about the danger” and “their cry freely penetrated the barrier of quartz glass… Something highly improbable happened. These waves were not only perceived by the neighbouring cells, they also conveyed the sickness to the neighbouring cells.”

    The KGB Takes Control

    No later than 1970, the KGB had taken control of the country’s research in parapsychology. It should be mentioned, however, that the KGB was an integral part of everyday life in the Soviet Union, permeating society on all levels, so their influence on psi research was not exactly sinister.

    During the 1970s, more and more KGB-controlled parapsychology research institutes were established. Because the nature of Soviet psi research was becoming increasingly secret, many Western parapsychologists lost contact with their colleagues ‘behind the iron curtain’. In addition, rumours began to circulate about sinister ‘mind control’ experiments being conducted in clandestine Soviet labs, as well as the development of dangerous ‘psi weapons’ to be used against the West. As mentioned in Psychic Discoveries, a Czech engineer named Robert Pavlita claimed to have invented a ‘psychotronic generator’, which could apparently store, enhance and radiate ‘psychotronic’ energy.

    Also known as ‘bioplasmic’ energy, Soviet scientists claimed that this energy was behind all manner of psychic phenomena, that it filled and animated all living things, and could also be harnessed for healing purposes. Using a process called Kirlian photography, the ‘bioplasmic body’ – or aura – could allegedly be photographed. The Austrian-American scientist Dr. Wilhelm Reich called this energy ‘orgone’. He invented a device called an ‘orgone energy accumulator’, consisting of a box lined with alternating layers of organic and inorganic materials, which was apparently able to trap this energy.

    “A psychotronic generator can influence an individual or a whole crowd of people. It can affect a person’s psyche mentally and emotionally. It can affect memory and attention span. A psychotronic device can cause physical fatigue, disorientation, and alter a person’s behaviour,” asserts the Soviet biologist Edward Naumov. According to Ostrander and Schroeder, “certain generators can arouse fear, anxiety, anger, insomnia, depressions and suicidal thoughts and even lead to cerebral thrombosis.” The KGB, says Naumov, spent more than half a billion roubles on developing psychotronic technology.

    When it comes to alleged Soviet mind control technology, nothing can compare to the immensity of project ‘Woodpecker’. Apparently, using an array of giant transmitters, the Soviets began to beam extremely low frequency (ELF) modulated signals all over Western Europe, Australia, North America and the Middle East. These transmissions, claims Tim Rifat, were designed to “permanently rewire the neural networks in the brains of the entire Western population, thereby destroying their social cohesiveness…” The KGB, it is said, had copied the brain frequencies of pathological criminals, mental patients, clinically depressed people and socio-psychopaths, whose brain wave maps they had studied. It is these negative frequencies that were beamed down on the West – from the early 1980s until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Assuming it was real, project Woodpecker appears to have been a tremendous success!

    Apparently, the Soviets were not the only ones who managed to create advanced ‘psi weapons’ and large scale ‘mind control’ devices; so had countries in the West – most notably the US. This technology was allegedly used against the Soviet Union, in an attempt to bring about its destruction.

    Soviet journalist Emil Bachurin claimed in Young Guard magazine that Yuri Andropov, the head of the KGB, spoke of several “psi weapons centres” in Canada, adding that “Canadian research must be surpassed.” The information was given to Bachurin by a KGB general. Other members of the Soviet intelligence community have mentioned the existence of advanced ‘psi weapons’ created by the West, even claiming that such devices have been used many times against civilian populations in the Soviet Union.

    Comments made by the late Aleksander Lebed, a distinguished General and popular politician, seem to support such charges. As mentioned in New Dawn No. 43, Lebed insisted that Western secret services had carried out a series of psychological operations (or PSYOPS) against the Soviet Union, involving “tech­nologies of psycho-semantic pro­gramming,” brainwashing and hypnosis. One such psychological operation, claimed Lebed, was the collapse of the Soviet Union itself, which had been artificially organised by the West.

    Modern Psi Research

    Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, some interesting psi experiments have been conducted in Russia, many of which involved animals and other living things. The Russians have long tried to develop biological ‘psi detectors’ – and so far they’ve been partially successful. Their theory is that psi is primarily a biological process, and that living systems react far more strongly to mental influence than do material systems. Researchers in the US have also attempted to develop psi detectors, or ‘thought switches’ – electronic devices that respond to mental intention.

    The eminent American parapsychologist Dean Radin has already managed to construct a prototype of such a device, which, he says, “incorporated a new type of physical detector, involving a matrix of random-number generators, and some advanced statistical and signal-processing techniques to detect the predicted psi-influence.” As Radin explains in his book The Conscious Universe, countless laboratory experiments have shown that random number generators – devices that produce a stream of random digits – can be influenced by a focused mind. These ‘electronic coin flippers’ are designed to operate in a truly random fashion, producing an equal number of ‘heads’ and ‘tails’. Due to the influence of consciousness, however, these devices begin to function in a more ordered way, producing statistically less probable results, such as more heads than tails, for instance.

    Georgi Gurtovoy, head of the Laboratory on Applying Isotopes in Ophthalmology in Moscow, and Alexander Parkhamov, a physicist, have done some interesting research on the distant influence of living systems that produce random fluctuations. Some of their instruments have been able to register micro-PK effects. They have also carried out anomalous distant influence experiments involving a species of fish called Gnathonemus petersii. These fish are known for their ability to emit pulsed electric signals, which they use to assist navigation in the darkness. Psychics were asked to slow down the rate of the fishes’ pulses – allegedly with much success.

    Also compelling are the experiments of Sergei Speransky, a toxicologist at the Institute of Hygiene in Novosibirsk. His findings seem to confirm the existence of ‘morphogenetic fields’, as proposed by the controversial British biologist Dr. Rupert Sheldrake. In one experiment, a population of mice that had grown up together in the same cage were split into two groups. The mice in one group were fed as usual, while the mice in the other group were made to starve. Almost instantly, noticed Speransky, the non-starving mice began to consume much more food than before, as though trying to compensate for their ‘friends’. There appeared to be a telepathic link between the two groups. Had the non-starving mice picked up a signal from the starving mice, warning them that food was scarce and that they needed to increase food consumption and storage within their bodies?

    Out of the thirty experiments conducted, twenty-seven had a positive outcome. Speransky then carried out an additional series of experiments, so as to refine his methodology, varying weight, sex and other variables. Once again, the results were nothing less than astonishing. Speransky concluded that the “biological significance of the rapid increase in weight in mice which received signals about starvation from their ‘friends’ is clear: a danger of starvation has to give them an additional stimulus to be sated.”

    It’s interesting to note that the famous British biologist Sir Alister Hardy had formulated a similar theory to Speransky’s, stating that telepathic communication between animals might play a role in evolution and adaptation. Animal habits, he suggested, might be spread by “telepathic-like means.” He further suggested that a “psychic pool of existence” might operate among members of a species.

    This brings us back to the work of Sheldrake. He believes morphogenetic fields contain the information that is required to shape the form of living things, much in the same way that certain frequencies of sound ‘contain the information’ to create complex geometric patterns in sand. We are reminded here of the bioplasmic body, which, as mentioned in Psychic Discoveries, was thought by Soviet scientists to be “some kind of matrix, some kind of invisible organising pattern inherent in living things.” Morphogenetic fields also serve a social function, shaping behaviour on both an individual and group level.

    Furthermore, due to a process called ‘morphic resonance’, remarkable forms of ‘communication’ – not limited by space or time – are able to occur within a species. “The fields organising the activity of the nervous system are likewise inherited through morphic resonance, conveying a collective, instinctive memory,” writes Sheldrake. “Each individual both draws upon and contributes to the collective memory of the species. This means that new patterns of behaviour can spread more rapidly than would otherwise be possible.”

    A Revolutionary New Approach

    When, in the 1920s, parapsychology was beginning to establish itself as a legitimate scientific field in the Soviet Union, Leonid Vasiliev greatly influenced the course of its development – more so, by far, than anyone else. In his highly influential books, articles and presentations, he continued to assert that the study of psi phenomena should be approached in a purely physiological manner, as he feared it would be exploited by proponents of “religious superstition.”

    Nowadays, parapsychology in Russia is undergoing a gradual yet fundamental transformation, thanks partly to a growing interest in transpersonal psychology. New approaches to psi research are being sought out, with an emphasis on Asian religious concepts. Scientists, moreover, are no longer so averse to ‘spiritual’ ideas. Ever since the end of the totalitarian communist regime, explains Gruber, “spirituality and religion, the pre-eminent features of the Russian soul, which were forced underground for so many decades, are again raising their claims to be the guiding principles in the understanding of man and his position in the world.”

    Russia’s leading expert on parapsychology, Alexander Dubrov, who is regarded as the spokesman for the modern approach to psi research, believes there is more to psychic phenomena than biology and neurophysiology. Psi phenomena, he says, is a quantum-mechanical process, and man is a ‘quantum subject’. Be that as it may, says Dubrov, the physical side of psi and the psychophysics of altered states of consciousness should also be taken into account, so as to gain a complete understanding of the matter.

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    References

    Lucid Viewing – The Way Forward in Remote Viewing, How it all Started – In Russia, www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vision_remota/esp_visionremota_9a.htm

    Compare Martin Ebon, Amplified Mind Power Research in the Former Soviet Union, 1996-7, www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/Ebon1.html

    Deep Black Magic: Government Research into ESP and Mind Control, Ingo Swann on CIA/ESP Connection, 1995, www.mindspring.com/~txporter/iswann.htm

    Rupert Sheldrake, Biologist and Author, Morphic Fields and Morphic Resonance – an Introduction, 2005, www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Papers/papers/morphic/morphic_intro.html

    Elmar R. Gruber, Psychic Wars: Parapsychology in Espionage – and Beyond (Blandford, UK, 1999)

    Jim Marrs, Psi Spies (AlienZoo Publishing, US, 2000)

    Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, Psychic Discoveries (Marlowe & Company, USA, 1970

    Adam Mandelbaum, The Psychic Battlefield: A History of the Military-Occult Complex (St. Martin’s Press, USA, 2000)

    Dean Radin, The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena (HarperCollins, USA, 1997)

    Tim Rifat, Remote Viewing – What is it, Who uses it and How to do it (Vision Paperbacks, UK, 2001)

    Holly DeNio Stephens, The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture (Cornell University Press, 1997)

    © New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
    For our reproduction notice, click here.

  • Mystery Thailand: Monks, Magic & the Spirit World

    Mystery Thailand: Monks, Magic & the Spirit World

    From New Dawn 140 (Sept-Oct 2013)

    What country is the most occult in the world? Lying smack dab in the heart of Southeast Asia, Thailand arguably fits the bill. This is a country that truly believes in spirits and supernatural power. Thailand has it all. With sorcerers who collect oil from the chin of corpses to perform black magic, spirit mediums who channel Hindu deities, a festival to the gods involving possessed devotees sticking sharp objects through their bodies, and monks who use their supernatural powers to charge amulets, this country is about as occult as it gets.

    Buddhism is the main religion in Thailand and much of Asia, although in Thailand there is a syncretistic mix of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Animism. Therefore, the people worship and pay homage to a number of Hindu deities and local animistic spirits right alongside the Buddha and famous monks. Thailand is a melting pot of many different religious beliefs. However, Buddha and the community of monks (Sangha) are elevated above the rest. Buddha is always at the top of peoples’ spirit altars and famous monks are revered as much or more than Hindu deities.1 In Thailand, monks are revered for possessing supernatural power and for their high standing in the spiritual hierarchy. It is for these reasons that Buddhist monasteries (Wats) are considered sacred ground where no evil spirit would dare step foot. Due to their exalted status, monks are also protected from harm by evil spirits.

    Karma, Heaven & Hell

    Buddhists believe in the concept of karma, whereby any good action leads to merit (beneficial karma) and any bad action leads to demerit (negative karma). This concept is very important in the minds of the Thai people because your store of karma, positive or otherwise, determines not only your success and happiness in this and future lives, but also determines your place in the afterlife.

    Indeed, there are supposedly 136 levels of hell in the Buddhist cosmology, none of which are very pleasant. Based on the kind of sinning you did when alive, a judge in the afterlife will send you to one of these hells. For instance, adulterers in this life, it is said, will climb a thorn tree continually in the afterlife. The adulterer tries to reach his/her lover at the top of the tree but upon reaching the top the adulterer is taken away and placed back at the bottom to begin the arduous journey once more. Those who were greedy or stole will become hungry ghosts (Phii Pret) who are continually hungry but unable to satisfy their hunger. Others may have their heads turned into animal heads and undergo disembowelment or other such horrors.2

    Conversely, if your store of good karma is high, you may end up spending time in the company of deities in one of the many magnificent heavens. There you can enjoy hours of bliss and pleasure until your store of good karma has run out and it’s time to be reborn. If your karma is good enough, you may even be exalted to the status of a deity yourself in the afterlife.3 With what’s at stake, you can imagine that acquiring good karma is important to the Thai. Mostly though, it’s not the afterlife they are worried about, but success in this life.

    This gives monks a prominent place in society and in peoples’ lives. For by giving alms (food or money) to monks, or by donating to a monastery, you can acquire beneficial karma. Helping monks in some way is thought to generate a great deal of merit. This not only helps you have a better afterlife and future life on Earth, but also gives you instantaneous protection and good luck in this life.4 Even just being in their presence as they meditate or chant is thought to be auspicious and beneficial for one’s karma.5

    Beneficial Energy Radiated by Monks

    Monks are thought to radiate a kind of beneficial, protective energy. Monks gain their power through a variety of means. One way is through meditation and chanting sacred Pali texts (which comprise the Buddhist scriptures). During the time they are engaged in one of these activities, monks generate a beneficial force/energy which radiates outwards, and nearby things can become charged with this energy.6

    The entire lifestyle of monks emanates a kind of sacredness and austerity, if not holiness. A Buddhist monk lives a lifestyle whereby he eats his meals before noon, regularly chants holy texts based on the life of Buddha, meditates and studies. Monks also abide by an amazing 227 precepts, or rules, formulated on the teachings of the Buddha Gautama. Among these, four are critical: 1. Abstain from intercourse 2. Do not steal 3. Do not intentionally kill any human creature and 4. Do not lie about your magical power.7 Surely, some of their holy power in the eyes of commoners stems from their obedience to these and a great number of other rules they adhere to. As scholar and specialist in the social and cultural history of Thailand, Barend Jan Terwiel, says:

    Many of these rules of behaviour are closely related to the ideas on the monks’ sanctity current among the rural population. The traditional knowledge of the rules can in general be described under two rubrics: activities that are prescribed and those that are forbidden. In the view of the Wat Sanchao people [the area studied by Terwiel] the monks’ prescriptions are intended to increase their beneficial power, while the prohibitions are there to prevent the loss of this sacred protective force.8

    It is interesting to note that part of a monk’s magical power is thought to stem from their celibacy.9 Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University, Jeffrey Kripal, shares an interesting observation related to comic book superheroes in his landmark book Mutants and Mystics. He writes that “the superpowers of a comic book hero and the sexual powers of its creator (or most devoted readers) are inversely related: the more superpowers, the less sex; the less superpowers, the more sex.” In other words, the powers of sexuality and of supernatural power “are the same power on some deeper metaphysical level.” The same energy that manifests outwardly in sexual desire and orgasm can also be internally “transformed into a kind of radiation” which transforms the body and leads to supernatural power.10

    Although not a specifically Thai belief, it is widely believed that a serpent power, or kundalini energy, is located at the base of the spine (also the position of the sex organs) ready to be activated through meditation or other spiritual practice. Once activated, this supernatural energy winds its way up through the chakras and explodes out of the crown chakra to produce enlightenment. This power is said to transform the body and may lead to psychic or other spiritual power.11 It seems the sexual organs and sexual energy can be powerfully expressed internally. This could be a key reason why celibacy is seen as important in many religious traditions, including Thai Buddhism, as a way to increase spiritual sanctity and power.

    The late Professor of Anthropology, Buddhism and Thai Studies at the National University of Singapore, Pattana Kitiarsa, focused on a different factor. He said that monks acquire their perceived supernatural power “during extended periods of wandering in the forest and dwelling away from the mundane.”12 These forest dwelling monks are relatively isolated from the outside world and have the ability to focus on meditation and improving themselves spiritually. Furthermore, many learn and practice magical incantations from a Master Teacher. They use this knowledge and power to help others.

    Blessings, Offerings & Spirit Shrines

    Monks, due to their powers, are called upon regularly to perform services. When moving to a new house, or having built a new house, it is customary to invite monks over to bless the establishment. The same goes for the erection of a new spirit shrine. A common sight in Thailand, spirit shrines are small houses erected on a post or platform, and always near the main house. They provide a shelter for the spirit of the land, known as Phra Phum, meaning ‘lord of the land’. This spirit is said to protect the house and land and bring prosperity to it.13 A picture or figurine of the Phra Phum is placed inside this miniature home and offerings are regularly made to it.14

    The wife of a department store president in Bangkok explained why a spirit house to Phra Phum was erected outside the department store:

    We have to do it for our fortune. Most of the Thai people believe in Buddha… and they believe in the spirits. So (the spirit houses) are for our staff, for their families and for our customers too. When they come here, they can have peace. They are safe. They are protected.15

    The owners consider the store’s success to be in large part due to the careful tending of the spirit house and the regular offerings they make there. Every year Buddhist monks are called in to bless the spirit house. This blessing is the same for a household who erects a shrine to the venerable Phra Phum. During the ceremony, a candle and incense is lit and placed on a table in front of the shrine. At the same time the Phra Phum spirit is informed of the ceremony. Then, a sacred cotton thread (sai sin) is attached to the top of the shrine and unwound towards the house making sure it doesn’t touch the ground. The thread is unwound in a clockwise direction around the house and then is taken through a window and wound around the Buddha image which has been placed on a pedestal for the ceremony. The monks hold the string which is also wound around a vessel of water. While holding the string the monks chant auspicious texts from the Pali Canon.16 As Barend Terwiel explains:

    It is believed that beneficial, protective power is emitted by the monks as they chant the Pali texts and that this travels through the cotton thread. This power is reinforced by the Buddha image and causes the water to be charged.17

    Foremost Thai scholar Phya Anuman Rajadhon describes the sai sin “as an electric wire, carrying the sacred words as recited by the monks at one and the same time to every place and corner where the sacred cord reaches.”18 The vessel of water around which this cord has been placed during the recitation of holy texts becomes charged with beneficial power and is sprinkled around the home. It is thought “capable of warding off illness, unhappiness and misfortune.”19

    The entire area of the house and spirit house is consecrated via the monks’ chanting which emanates a beneficial force that travels through the cord to consecrate all areas and bring happiness and blessings upon the residence and people therein. Furthermore, this will ensure that the spirit of the land is happy and that no evil spirits intrude upon the residence.

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    Unhappy Spirits

    Journalist and author Tiziano Terzani had first-hand experience with the occult nature of Thai society. Travelling around Southeast Asia in search of fortune tellers, he settled for a while in a beautiful house in Bangkok that was built over a pond. The house had no spirit altar, but he was told that the protecting spirit of the house belonged to a huge meat-eating turtle who lived in the pond upon which the house was built. He was told by the previous residents to feed the turtle everyday to keep it happy. However, after moving in the turtle seemed disturbed by his presence and failed to show itself. The turtle hid itself, preventing Terzani from making offerings of food to it.

    With the spirit unhappy, misfortune loomed in the air. Indeed, Terzani reports that the people who worked at the house “began complaining of one ailment after another: the gardener coughed non-stop, the cook could not stand on her feet, and my secretary had a constant headache. Some of their relatives had road accidents; two died.”20 Terzani didn’t waste any time, knowing that in the eyes of everyone these misfortunes were due to the wrath of the unhappy turtle spirit. He went to a famous Buddhist monastery to bow before the Buddha. He then had monks come to his house and consecrate it via chanting and the sacred thread which was wound around the house and pond. After the monks left, he reports, a swarm of wild bees came and made a honeycomb in a tree in the garden. This was a sign of great luck for the house, and sure enough the troubles ceased. The monks’ beneficial power consecrated the residence and protected it from misfortune.

    We have to ask ourselves: Was the angry spirit of the turtle really causing the illnesses and misfortunes that affected the workers at the house? Or were they psychologically conditioned to believe that unhappy spirits cause illness, so when they saw the turtle was not coming around and being fed they manifested illness psychosomatically via a reverse placebo effect?

    Another event where monks are called to is a death. Especially when someone dies a sudden or violent death, it is believed their spirit can remain on Earth and cause harm to others. Their life being unexpectedly and abruptly ended makes their spirit unwilling to leave this world due to unfinished business or a yearning for worldly things. Plus, they may be angry for not having a chance to finish their life. Also, during a funeral other evil spirits of the land (Phii) may be attracted to the ceremony. Thus, monks are called in to chant Buddhist scripture from the Pali Canon. The recitation by monks of these sacred texts is believed to keep the evil Phii at bay and protect everyone participating at the funeral from attack or possession by the angry spirit of the deceased or other lurking spirits.21

    Why are Amulets Popular?

    Monks are also tasked in Thailand with consecrating and imbuing amulets with power. These are usually worn around the neck and contain images of famous monks, deities, or kings and may also contain mystical designs (Yantra) or sacred mantras that are associated with the specific power of the amulet. The mantras and designs are different depending upon the intended purpose of the amulet (i.e. protection from danger, success in business, finding a lover, etc…) Amulets can be constructed of many different materials. Some are clay tablets imprinted with the image of the Buddha, or a famous monk, etc. Others are made of silver and gold. Still others are made from objects like a bullet or the tooth of a tiger. Sacred ingredients often go into making amulets, such as “ash obtained from burning the oldest handwritten sacred books of the monastery,”22 sacred powders, rare metals, wood from a temple, or even human flesh.23

    You can buy these amulets online and prices range considerably. Just to give you an example, for $220 you can buy a locket which contains an image of a diva (a master of seduction). The locket contains sacred writing and powerful magical herbs and powders. Of course, it is empowered by a senior monk by chanting sacred words over it. You could say that in this way it is “charged” with power by a monk. Its suggested uses include Seduction, Personal & Corporate Spying, Gambling, and Love & Marriage. By wearing it, it is believed you can be successful in these endeavours!24

    Most of the amulets on the market are for helping people gain success in business, increase their luck in gambling, love and marriage, and accrue wealth. Another common theme is protection. If you work in a dangerous job, you might want to consider an amulet that protects you. Some of the more powerful amulets made or empowered by the most esteemed monks are even said to protect one from bullets! Apart from the inherent powers of amulets’ ingredients and designs, all their different powers are endowed via the correct chants, or magical incantations spoken by a powerful monk.25

    There are some amazing stories of people who were saved from death by protective amulets. One such story is of a man who had a kind of amulet known as a takrut placed under the skin of his arm by one of the most revered magic monks around, Luang Pho Khun, of Wat Baan Rai, Dan Khun Thot, Nakhon Ratchasima province. A takrut is a kind of amulet that is essentially a tiny scroll or sheet of paper on which is drawn a mystical design or some sacred mantra. Luang Pho Khun uses a thin sheet of gold and inserts it underneath the skin on the upper right arm for protection.

    Professor Pattana Kitiarsa tells of a businessman who ran a competitive business and wanted protection from enemies who might wish to harm him and his business. Attacked one night by an unknown gunman, he found himself under fire from an M16 rifle. Bullets pelted his body and he fell to the ground unconscious. However, he later regained consciousness and found that none of the bullets had pierced his skin and he only suffered from minor pain. Amazed, he thought of Luang Pho Khun’s amulet inserted underneath the skin of his right arm and attributed it to his miraculous escape from death.26 Other such stories abound.27

    Another remarkable story regarding Luang Pho Khun’s protective amulets involves the collapse of the Royal Plaza Hotel in downtown Korat, Thailand. In this disaster 137 people died and another 227 were injured. Subsequent media reports focused on those survivors who were wearing amulets blessed by Khun and his fame and reputation were enhanced.28 And so it is that the belief in the supernatural and the benefit of amulets is driven by the culture, and popular media in particular. Stories of the monks’ powers and miracles connected to them are presented on TV and in the popular press. Endorsements by politicians or military leaders also contribute to the thriving amulet industry in Thailand.29 Advertisements are key, too, in promoting amulets.

    The BBC reported on one popular series of amulet that was advertised on the side of Bangkok’s tallest building – the Baiyoke Tower. Considering the Thai amulet business is estimated to be worth upwards of 22 billion baht ($650 million) a year, the aggressive advertising is not surprising.30 Buddhist temples, or monasteries, often sell amulets to pay for temple construction projects or to acquire money for charity. However, it’s just as much a commercial business with amulets being sold all over Thailand for profit. Thai amulets are even revered in other parts of Asia such as China and Hong Kong, where celebrities and others dish out loads of cash for them. One Hong Kong celebrity, Cecilia Chung, reportedly spent around 1 million baht (around $32,000) for one amulet.31

    One wonders why the amulet business is so lucrative. A possible answer, already alluded to, is that the amulets work. Whether it’s protection from danger or winning money at a casino, success stories of wearing certain amulets abound. This leads more people to believe in their power. The media, which propagates such stories, feeds the craze. On a deeper level though, amulets serve a basic psychological purpose. Amulets provide “protective assurance” and peace of mind to people hoping to be successful in business, gain wealth, or avert danger.32 It gives them psychological comfort in a perilous and fraught world. The amulets, you could say, help them believe in something (like protection or the success of their business dealings), thus erasing doubts which might otherwise cause anxiety and depression.

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    Controversies

    We see that monks are a key part of Thai society, in the main providing spiritual nourishment and advice. Other services they offer that I did not discuss include using magic to combat sorcery, enhancing one’s lifespan, forecasting the future, and providing tips for picking winning lottery numbers.33

    Some of these other services have led to controversies and scandals. For instance, one of the rules Buddhist monks are supposed to abide is not handling money.34 Although this rule is routinely broken due to the necessities of modern life, every once in a while a scandal breaks out that reminds people of the danger of corruption that can come when a monk accrues a great deal of wealth through the provision of his services to the public.

    A recent scandal involves a monk who accrued millions of dollars, regularly travelled in a private jet, did drugs, and had sex with teenage girls.35 In other words, he was living the life of a rock star. This invariably outrages Thai Buddhists who believe in the sanctity of the monks. With this in mind, some see the wealth acquired by some monks as blasphemy. Pravit Rojanaphruk, writing for The Nation, expresses this sentiment:

    …look at how many temples in Thailand are needlessly and lavishly built in poor communities upcountry. This money could go to help build a hospital, school, library or even an agricultural cooperative – but it goes instead into building and maintaining grand, pricey and fancy temples and nothing is being done to condemn it…36

    Again, he writes:

    Next, there’s widespread belief in praying for health, wealth, and whatever you want from monks, Buddha statues, Hindu statues, Buddhist and Hindu amulets by those who are supposedly Buddhists. Never mind if the Buddha himself said one should depend of oneself and not on others. Such practice is not just un-Buddhist in its thinking, but also constitutes one of the roots of a culture of bribery as people invariably promise to give something in return if and when their wishes are granted.37

    Monks are supposed to renounce all desire for the pleasures of this life and instead live a modest life filled with compassion for others, all the while focused on the goal of trying to obtain release from future worldly existence (nibbāna or nirvana). It’s sort of a catch 22 when you take into consideration that Thai people believe that the more they give to monks, the better their karma and future life. Monks – usually on behalf of the temples they reside – will in all probability continue to receive lots of money.

    Although Buddhism dominates life in Thailand, the people still retain a strong animistic belief system. Buddhist monks aren’t the only ones Thai people turn to in times of need. The Thai people also believe in the power of spirits to protect, harm, or confer blessings. Shrines to these powerful spirits collect thousands of dollars in donations from Thai people who are eager to give offerings to the spirits in return for what they ask for. Who are these great and powerful spirits? Why do the Thais spend so much money placating them? And what do these spirits want in return for their services?

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    Footnotes

    1. P. Kitiarsa, Mediums, Monks, & Amulets: Thai Popular Buddhism Today, University of Washington Press, 2012, 11
    2. M. Guelden, Thailand: Into the Spirit World, Times Editions Pte Ltd, 1995, 50-52, 71; C. Lamar, “Spend a lovely day with the kids at Thailand’s hell torture theme park.” IO9, 5 June 2012, http://io9.com/5915890/spend-a-lovely-day-with-the-kids-at-thailands-hell-torture-theme-park
    3. Barend J. Terwiel, Monks and Magic: Revisiting a Classic Study of Religious Ceremonies in Thailand, 4th ed. NIAS Press, 2012, 240
    4. Ibid., 127
    5. Thailand, 43-46
    6. Ibid., 43; Monks and Magic, 130
    7. Monks and Magic, 109-110
    8. Ibid., 112
    9. Ibid., 113
    10. Jeffrey J. Kripal, Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal, University of Chicago Press, 2011, 168-171
    11. Gopi Krishna, The Evolutionary Energy in Man, Stuart & Watkins, 1970. (www.kundaliniawakeningsystems1.com/downloads/kundalini-the-evolutionary-energy-in-man_gopi-krishna_(89pg).pdf)
    12. Mediums, Monks, & Amulets, 37
    13. Thailand, 89; The Phra Phum is one of the many kinds of spirits (Phii). Although this will be the subject of a future article, it suffices to say that the Phii can grant protection, help someone in some way, or cause harm if angered.
    14. Phya A. Rajadhon, Popular Buddhism in Siam and Other Essays on Thai Studies, Thai Inter-Religious Commission for Development, 1986, 128-129
    15. Thailand, 83
    16. For more information about this ceremony, see: Monks and Magic, 211-213; Other places and things can also be blessed in this way, like a car or airplane.
    17. Monks and Magic, 212
    18. Popular Buddhism, 59
    19. Monks and Magic, 213
    20. T. Terzani, A Fortune-Teller Told Me, Three Rivers Press, 1997, 35
    21. J. Gorin, “Worship of Phii in Thailand: Spirit Cults and their Relationship to Buddhism,” ReliJournal 14 December, 2012. http://relijournal.com/buddhism/worship-of-phii-in-thailand-spirit-cults-and-their-relationship-to-buddhism/
    22. Monks and Magic, 70
    23. Mediums, Monks, & Amulets, 118
    24. Thailand Amulet, “Mae Nang Prai Pasanee (Ongk Kroo) – Civet Oil Phial, Hand Inscription, 2 Takrut Maha Sanaeh, Wan Dork Tong Powders – AC Perm Prai Dam.” SKU 02349, Retrieved June 24, 2013, from http://thailandamulet.net/#!/~/product/category=3848009&id=23875141
    25. Monks and Magic, 116-117
    26. Mediums, Monks, & Amulets, 89-90
    27. For other stories, see: Monks and Magic, 270 note 1; Thailand, 131
    28. Mediums, Monks, & Amulets, 90-92
    29. Ibid., 92-94
    30. J. Head, “Thailand’s frenzy for amulets,” BBC News, 3 September 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6976705.stm
    31. W. Woo, “The Price of Faith?” Retrieved June 24, 2013, from http://waynedhamma.blogspot.kr/2013/05/the-price-of-faith.html
    32. Mediums, Monks, & Amulets, 109, 113
    33. Ibid., 39
    34. Monks and Magic, 126
    35. L. Intathep, “Pilot lifts lid on monk’s depravity,” Bangkok Post, 7 July 2013, www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/358796/monk-depraved-life-revealed
    36. P. Rojanaphruk, “Thai Buddhism: Much deeper things have gone wrong,” The Nation, 10 July 2013: www.nationmultimedia.com/politics/Thai-Buddhism-Much-deeper-things-have-gone-wrong-30210084.html
    37. Ibid.

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  • The Reality of ESP: An Interview With Russell Targ, Remote Viewing Pioneer

    The Reality of ESP: An Interview With Russell Targ, Remote Viewing Pioneer

    From New Dawn 133 (Jul-Aug 2012)

    Russell Targ is perhaps the best-known psychic investigator of our times, and certainly among the most academically prestigious. Born 11 April 1934 in Chicago, USA, he received a Bachelor of Science in physics from Queens College twenty years later, and did graduate work in physics at Columbia University (both in New York). He retired in 1997 as a project manager and senior staff scientist from Lockheed Martin, an American aerospace and advanced technology company, where he developed laser technology for airborne detection of wind shear and air turbulence. Wind shear, a difference in wind speed and direction over a relatively short distance in the atmosphere, is a potential aeronautical hazard. Targ’s inventions and contributions in lasers and laser communications won him two National Aeronautics and Space Administration awards.

    Beginning in the 1970s, he co-founded a twenty three-year program of research into psychic abilities and their operational use for the US intelligence community. Until 1995, it was classified “secret.” 

    His autobiography, Do You See What I See: Memoirs of a Blind Biker, tells of his life as a scientist and legally blind motorcyclist. The publishing arm of The Theosophical Society in the United States – Quest Books – recently released his latest book, The Reality of ESP: A Physicist’s Proof of Psychic Abilities.

    According to reviewer Eugene Bourgeois, “Russell Targ looks at the subject from the perspective of an experimental physicist and finds compelling scientific evidence to confirm that something very much like ESP can be demonstrated without fail under laboratory conditions. As any physicist would, he seeks to find a model that will help us describe just how it is that such experiences are possible.”

    In this pointed interview for New Dawn magazine, Targ offers his latest conclusions about the relationship between the demands of hard science and the paranormal potential of inner human experience.

    FRANK JOSEPH (FJ): Your work as a physicist in the early development of lasers and research into meteorological anomalies forms an unusual backdrop to the unrelated, unconventional field of psychic investigation. What caused your radical departure from mainstream science?

    RUSSELL TARG (RT): I had a childhood interest in magic and card tricks. I performed on the stage as a magician, as a teenager. In the course of doing mental magic on stage, I had numerous psychic experiences, leading me to get more interested in real magic than stage magic. At that point, as a young scientist, physics graduate student at Columbia, I began to read the professional parapsychology literature.

    FJ: What was your own, most significant psychic experience?

    RT: My own most significant public remote viewing experience was my very accurate description and drawing of my colleague Hal Puthoff’s location at an island airport off the coast of Columbia two thousand miles away. I have also had very powerful out-of-body experiences of a more personal nature.

    FJ: What, if anything, did Robert Monroe, the mid-20th century American New York radio-broadcasting executive who achieved worldwide recognition as an explorer of human consciousness, contribute to your understanding of psychic phenomena?

    RT: I knew Bob Monroe well. He brought the idea of out-of-body (OOB) experience to common usage. He helped us understand that there is a continuum from simple remote viewing, where one sees images on ones mental screen, to OOB experiences where one can bring emotional and sexual sensitivity to the fore. No one ever had a bad remote viewing experience. But one can indeed scare himself with a bad OOB trip – because of the increased emotional involvement. Aleister Crowley describes this as “sex on the astral plane.” Not for the timid. And we did not pursue this at SRI [Stanford Research Institute].

    FJ: Your latest book is supposed to distil your lifetime of paranormal research and latest conclusions. Can you give us a summary of The Reality of ESP?

    RT: It provides statistical proof of psychic phenomena as evidence so strong it would be logically or probabilistically unreasonable to deny. If facts alone can convince a skeptical investigator of the reality of ESP, this book should do it. It presents evidence from the research program I co-founded at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in the 1970s, together with the Buddhist and Hindu origins of ESP. Some of the amazing feats of psychic ability include remote viewing for America’s Central Intelligence Agency and US Army Intelligence, when SRI psychics found a downed Russian bomber in Africa, reported on the health of American hostages in Iran, described Soviet weapons factories in Siberia, and forecasted a Chinese atomic-bomb test three days before it occurred.

    When San Francisco heiress Patricia Hearst was abducted from her home in Berkeley, a psychic with the SRI team was the first to identify the kidnapper and then accurately described and located the kidnap car.

    After leaving SRI, our group made $120,000 by psychically forecasting for nine weeks in a row the direction and amount of changes in the silver commodity futures market, without error. The odds against chance in many cases are staggering. Take the thirty-six outdoor remote viewing trials described with six US Army intelligence officers. Their overall statistical significance was at odds of three in a hundred thousand (3 x 10-5). If the officers had been baseball players, the expected six first-place matches would equal a batting average of one hundred sixty six. But they achieved nineteen matches – batting better than five hundred – while the great Joe DiMaggio had a lifetime average of only three hundred thirty five. Such numbers are what we mean by statistical proof.

    We achieved an effect size of 0.6, which is ten times greater than that claimed by America’s National Institute of Health for aspirin preventing heart attacks. I am convinced that most of us have psychic abilities we haven’t tapped, and conclude my book by describing how we can learn to develop our own ESP, at no cost, working at home using the SRI techniques with a friend. It involves a simple, meditative skill that eighth-century Buddhists called moving from conditioned to spacious or naked awareness. Who would not want to try that?

    FJ: In The Reality of ESP, you cite four kinds of psychic experiments, beginning with remote viewing, in which a person describes places and events independent of space and time. Professor Richard Wiseman, a British psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, told the Daily Mail four years ago, “Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionise the world, we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions. Right now we don’t have that evidence.” How do you respond to his conclusion?

    Pages from NewDawnMagazine133-2

    RT: We published our formal experiments in the Proceedings of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers, and in Nature. In our first decade of work at Stanford Research Institute we did three highly significant experimental series. These comprised trials wherein a person in a shielded room with me had to describe what it looked like where my colleague Hal Puthoff and another witness were hiding in the San Francisco Bay area. In the first series of nine trials, a psychic policeman, Pat Price, achieved seven first place matches, where only one would be expected by chance.

    The probability of this is less than one in a hundred thousand. In the second series, a “control” subject photographer Hella Hammid, got five first place matches and four second place matches. The probability of this is approximately one in a million. In the third series, we taught six army intelligence officers how to do remote viewing, as part of the government’s program to set up an army psychic corps in Fort Meade, Maryland (USA). The six men each did six trials. Out of those thirty six trials, they got nineteen first place matches, where six would be expected by chance, again at odds of one in a hundred thousand. Our work had been replicated at Princeton and dozens of other labs worldwide.

    FJ: Can remote viewing be illustrated by the concept, in physics, of photon entanglement? If so, how do you define photon entanglement in relationship to psychic activity?

    RT: Photon entanglement is a consequence of space-time non-locality, wherein two photons that are created together (twin photons) travel on opposite directions at the speed of light, and the measurement on one affects the other. This non-locality, I believe, is the basis of ESP. Since remote viewing accuracy and reliability are independent of distance and time (up to a few days into the future) a physicist would say that the data for remote viewing appear to be non-local.

    FJ: During the Cold War, the US Government’s Central Intelligence Agency undertook a serious study of remote viewing, eventually terminating its $20 million dollar “Stargate Project” after David Goslin, of the American Institute for Research, declared, “There’s no documented evidence it had any value to the intelligence community.” Was he right after all?

    RT: The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Army Intelligence Command would not have supported our program for twenty-three years and $25 million if we had not produced useful information. The program was secret. We successfully described Soviet submarines, a kidnapped US general in Italy, etc. That’s why they kept supporting us.

    FJ: According to psychologist David Marks, remote viewers are influenced by subjective validation, a process through which correspondences are perceived between stimuli that are in fact associated purely randomly. Couldn’t this be a real explanation for remote viewing?

    (Top) Remote viewing target site was Livermore Valley Foothills Windmill Farm. Below is sketch by Viewer a hundred miles away, showing poles, hills, “moving electricity in the form of a grid” and “halo probably not visible to the eye,” at the top of the poles. Remote Viewer: Joseph McMoneagle. Trial was carried out with Dr. Edwin C. May in 1987. Graphic courtesy of Russell Targ.
    (Top) Remote viewing target site was Livermore Valley Foothills Windmill Farm. Below is sketch by Viewer a hundred miles away, showing poles, hills, “moving electricity in the form of a grid” and “halo probably not visible to the eye,” at the top of the poles. Remote Viewer: Joseph McMoneagle. Trial was carried out with Dr. Edwin C. May in 1987. Graphic courtesy of Russell Targ.

    RT: The first published remote viewing experiment had some clues as to the order of some of the trials. These clues were removed, and the series was re-judged with exactly the same outstanding results. All other series were doubly randomised to remove this valid criticism. Transcript clues wouldn’t help us find the kidnapped US general or the downed Russian plane.

    FJ: Your book also discusses possibilities for distant mental influence, where the thoughts of the experimenter can positively or negatively affect the physiology – including heart rate or skin resistance – of someone far away. Can you cite any credible examples of this phenomenon?

    RT: William Braud wrote a book called Distant Mental Influence which presents twelve of his experiments showing that the thoughts of one person can affect the physiology of another person. This is also the basis of distant healing. My book describes my daughter psychiatrist Elisabeth Targ’s published experiment showing that the half of her AIDS patients who received distant prayer had significantly better health outcomes than the thirty controls. This paper was published in the Western Medical Journal in 1999.

    FJ: Our readers may be less familiar with Whole Field Isolation mentioned in The Reality of ESP. As I understand it, WFI applies to a “viewer” who accurately describes the visual experiences of someone else in another place. Does the “viewer” actually enter into the mind of another person, and how is this process achieved?

    RT: The person who is isolated in the “Ganzfeld” isolation chamber can obtain information seen by his/her distant friend either clairvoyantly or by telepathy – no way to tell.

    FJ: What exactly is the “Ganzfeld isolation chamber,” and how does it have any bearing on remote viewing?

    RT: The Ganzfeld isolation chamber has the purpose of removing all physical stimulation from a person’s awareness. The perceiver in the Ganzfeld is isolated from all electromagnetic radiation. He has white noise fed into his earphones, together with red light shown onto Ping-Pong ball halves fitted over his eyes. This isolation is thought to be a psi-conducive state, suited to daydreams and free association. Very good ESP results have been obtained with people in the Ganzfeld chamber. But not any better than a remote viewer sitting at a table in the lab.

    FJ: You write of Retrocausality, in which future events can allegedly affect history. But the future has not happened yet, so how can it influence the past?

    RT: When you have a dream on Sunday night of an elephant walking down your street and trampling your flowers, and then see the elephant doing exactly that the next morning, we would say that Monday morning’s experience of the elephant was the cause of Sunday night’s dream. That’s what we mean by retrocausality. In a non-local world, your consciousness is not separated from the future.

    FJ: Oral traditions from Tibet and Polynesia tell of large groups of persons who together entered into altered states of consciousness, then simultaneously focused all their individual thoughts on a single, common objective – i.e., to cure or kill someone, levitate a stone weighing several tons, etc. Were these credible examples of distant mental influence? If so, what do they say of possibilities for similar psycho-communal efforts undertaken today?

    RT: As a physicist, I am not involved with the claims of oral traditions. However, I am impressed with Buddhist and Hindu books describing techniques for remote viewing dating from the time of Christ, wherein the instruction are very similar to what we do in the lab.

    FJ: Exactly how does ESP work based on the Buddhist/Hindu view of our selves as non-local, eternal consciousness?

    RT: The Buddhists and Hindus didn’t know how ESP works, anymore than we do today. But they did believe that separation is an illusion; that our awareness transcends all of space and time. They taught that we can see into the distance and into the future; heal the sick and diagnosis illness – all psychically. The metaphor of Indra’s net describes a world in which every vertex of the net is a highly polished jewel, which reflects all others in the net. This is an early holographic model that is very suggestive of the non-local description we use today.

    FJ: Do you believe that psychic abilities are either inherited from a period earlier in our past, when they were more highly developed than today, but have since languished? Or do they represent a new development in human evolution?

    RT: I believe that psychic abilities are an evolutionary progressive ability. They helped the caveman become aware that a tiger was at the door of his cave, etc. They are definitely not new in any sense. Buddhists and Hindus described them exactly as we know them today.

    FJ: Archaeologists discovered that, some twelve centuries ago, Maya priests were ingesting 5-MeO-DMT, a psycho-active chemical excreted from the poison gland of Bufo alvarius, a local toad, because it engendered the “flight of the shaman” beyond space and time. The Bufo toad is depicted at the Mexican shrine of Izapa, where the 2012 Mayan calendar end date was inscribed. Could the Maya have thereby projected their consciousness into our time, then returned to theirs, where they composed their “prophecy”?

    RT: There is no convincing data showing that DMT or anything else will make you psychic. Too bad! It only makes you feel psychic.

    FJ: In Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, British biochemist Rupert Sheldrake describes what appears to be a telepathic bond between pet animals and their human owners. Do you believe his research is valid? And if so, can you suggest any method to strengthen or expand that bond to some degree of trans-species communication?

    RT: I am confident of trans-species communication. Any cat owner knows that all you have to do is think of taking your pet to the vet, or giving her a bath, to have the cat immediately disappear.

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    FJ: What, if anything, has ESP got to do with questions concerning the survival of human consciousness after physical death? What might ESP teach us about the alleged immortality of the human soul?

    RT: If one believes that who we are is “non-local and timeless awareness,” then the idea that this awareness is eternal, is quite natural. Our awareness, whether alive of dead, is outside space and time. I believe that the evidence for survival of consciousness and personality is quite good.

    FJ: Parapsychologists argue that the greater development of remote viewing could lead to either the end of war or more deadly military applications. What is your opinion?

    RT: Remote viewing is definitely useful in wartime, since it provides intelligence information, which is frequently unavailable any other way. Human beings love to be at war. ESP is not going to end that. But it might encourage people to be more honest with one another, if they are aware that lies will be immediately detected.

    FJ: Larry Dossey, M.D., author of The Power of Premonitions, states that “the mind can function without limitation in space and time, and that this ability is widespread, teachable, and practical.” Should teaching psychic development become part of public education? If so, how might this be achieved?

    RT: I think it would be very important to encourage children to develop their psychic abilities – it is part of who they are. I taught my own children to be polite, intelligent and psychic as they were growing up. And it didn’t seem to hurt any of them (two doctors and a lawyer). Like many things, I think psychic abilities are better taught at home, rather than at school. But since it is an ability we all have naturally, it is very desirable that children be made aware of this gift before it is stifled and repressed by the larger society.

    FJ: What advice would you give anyone just beginning to explore their psychic potential?

    RT: I would suggest that a beginning remote viewer should find a partner to work with. The partner can bring you little objects in a bag, and encourage you to psychically describe them. You can then do the same for your partner. This is a surprisingly easy and enjoyable activity.

    FJ: Do you foresee a time when humanity in general will have developed its entire psychic potential, as described in your new book? If so, what kind of a world will that be?

    RT: I believe humanity will indeed make use of their psychic potential, with the result that people will quit lying to each other. They will also begin to notice that there is more to life than flesh and bones. That is, we have the capacity for timeless awareness, which, in fact, is what we are.

    The Reality of ESP: A Physicist’s Proof of Psychic Abilities (Quest Books, 2012) is available from all good bookstores and online retailers.

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  • Trickster Pack: At the End of Deception – A Gnostic View of Disclosure

    Trickster Pack: At the End of Deception – A Gnostic View of Disclosure

    From New Dawn Special Issue 17 (Sept 2011)

    In a text in the Nag Hammadi collection discovered in Egypt in December 1945, an unnamed teacher declares to his student: “Behold, I shall reveal to you the path of deliverance. Whenever you are seized [in the soul] and undergo mortal fear, a multitude of archons may turn on you, thinking they can capture you. And in particular, three of them will seize you, those who pose as toll collectors. Not only do they demand toll, but they take away souls by theft.” (Nag Hammadi Library in English, ed. by James Robinson, 265)

    Consider the information packed into this short paragraph: the certainty of a supernatural confrontation, the mortal fear it inspires, the threat of being captured or taken hostage, the large number of predators, their habit of appearing in threes, the demand for tribute or toll, the feat of abduction (“take away souls by theft”). And the intruders are even named outright: archons.

    The First Apocalypse of James, probably written down around 300 CE, presents a glimpse of “higher education” in the Mystery Schools – that is to say, education concerning the supernatural, the paranormal, parapsychology, and the noetic sciences.

    The founders and leaders of those schools were ancient seers called Gnostikoi, “those who know divine matters.” Gnostics were the arch-enemies of the early Christian converts and ideologues such as Irenaeus, who established the canon of the four Gospels of the New Testament. In order for Christianity to rise to power and meld with the Roman Empire as a state religion with an agenda of totalitarian mind control, its advocates had to eliminate the competition. Gnostics threatened the salvationist agenda due to something they knew, or claimed to know, about its origins.

    Scholars of Gnosticism do not ask why the threat posed by the Mystery adepts was so great and grave that it required centuries of murder, persecution, and intellectual genocide to be eliminated. On the contrary, they routinely assume that Gnostic sects were early, innocuous variations of primitive Christianity. They take the writings found in the Nag Hammadi Codices for out takes of Christian material. That being so, why did the Gnostic message simply not co-exist and mingle with the writings that were to become canonical for the Judeo-Christian faith? Why did they have to be extirpated, root and branch?

    The threat posed to Christian ideology by the Gnostic message was very great, indeed. And still is. For one thing, Gnostics asserted that the paternal father god of Jews and Christians alike, Jahweh-Jehovah, was in reality one of the archons. An alien intruder, a hostile ET. And moreover, they insisted that this alien pretender is insane and working against humanity. Needless to say, this proposition was extremely alarming to devotees of the Abrahamic faith. Since the discovery of the Gnostic cache in Egypt in 1945, that alarm is again sounding across the land.

    The Sophianic Vision

    Extensive noetic and parapsychological training, undertaken in teams (cells) and maintained for generations, allowed adepts of the pre-Christian Mysteries to detect predatory ETs, discern their origin and habitat, identify their forms, and to unmask their motives and methods, as well as how to resist them. That itself was an immense achievement in psychic detection.

    But for all their scope and finesse in supernatural matters, the Gnostikoi were also acute observers of the social world. They had a rigorous deconstructive view of history and the belief-systems that drive human behaviour.

    “Pagan adepts from the Mysteries in the Levant and Egypt saw in the salvationist agenda of Abrahamic religion both the evidence and the instrument of archontic deviation” (Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief by John Lamb Lash). The evidence and the instrument.

    In other words, they saw in the religious ideology of male-only creation, election, messiahship, atonement, retribution, etc., the evidence of deviant intrusion on the human mind, and they identified that ideology as the very instrument of the intruding force, archons.

    This analysis is extremely close to the notion of the “foreign installation,” attributed by Carlos Castaneda to alien intruders called flyers. Interestingly, the made-up Aramaic-Hebrew name, Ialdabaoth, assigned by Gnostics to the archon overlord, may mean “the one who flies or flits around in space.”

    Gnostic teachers in the Mysteries were devotees of the goddess called Sophia, “wisdom” in Greek. They were deeply versed in the designs and purposes of this divine power through their method of mathesis, instruction by the Light – that is to say, the primal living radiance of the goddess herself. Gnostics accessed the source of life and consciousness on this planet, for Sophia, although originally a goddess from the galactic centre, had morphed into the material body of our planet. So goes the Gnostic origin myth. Prior to her conversion into materiality, the aeon Sophia (as she was addressed honorifically) had engineered the human genome among the company of gods in the galactic core, the pleroma (“fullness, plenitude”).

    In the sacred instruction of the Mysteries, Sophia is both the source of pre-terrestrial humanity, our divine parent, and the setting in which human life unfolds, this planetary habitat. Her biography, the Sophianic origin myth, is the story that guides our species on its proper course of experience. Illumined teachers in the Mysteries taught the three Ss: source, setting, story. Ancient writers assert that all the Mysteries were dedicated to the Magna Mater, the Great Mother, i.e., Sophia embodied in the Earth. Today an appropriate name for the wisdom goddess would be Gaia-Sophia. I suggest the pronunciation So-FI-uh over So-FEE-uh, to distinguish the sacred name from the latter, the common name for a woman: Guy – UH – so – FI – uh.

    Error, Not Evil

    The Sophianic vision story of the pagan Mysteries is the cosmic biography of Gaia-Sophia, divine wisdom embodied in the Earth. Amazingly, this scenario not only recounts the origin of humanity in the galactic centre, but also the origin of the species of the predatory aliens called archons, who endanger the human adventure in certain ways.

    Gnostics saw the threat operating along two trajectories: by psychic intrusion or mental parasitism, and by deviant and insane beliefs framed in religious ideology, such as creation by an off-planet father god, the chosen people, messianic expectations, the redemptive value of suffering, apocalypse, and divine retribution. Indeed, they attribute such beliefs to a kind of channelling from the archons.

    In the Gnostic view, the invasion of our world by hostile ETs has been underway for millennia. Via the intrusion of an alien mindset into human consciousness, rather than a physical invasion with saucers and Flash Gordon death-rays. No such event was foreseen by Gnostics, for archons are unable to live in the terrestrial habitat. However, they would have us destroy the home planet out of sheer envy against us, Gnostics cautioned.

    Several texts in the Nag Hammadi Library warn explicitly that archons envy humanity for the qualities of freedom and love, not to mention ingenuity and imagination, all of which they lack. These texts state that the envious ETs operate through deception and excel in simulation (Coptic HAL), but basically have no agenda or master plan except to disrupt and confuse. Their plan is “senselessness,” a pointless game of “fear and enslavement” (NHLE, 364-5) to which humans succumb due to egotism. Detesting the innocence and brilliance of the human species, they delight in deception and confusion for its own sake, cosmic spoilers, tricksters bent on absurdity. Our confusion actually entertains them, and they feed vicariously off our fear.

    It is important to emphasise that Gnostics did not consider archons to be evil as such. The autonomy of evil and similar propositions are – if you will allow this expression – alien to the Gnostic way of thinking. Gnostic were the cream of pagan intelligentsia. Pagans essentially did not see evil in the cosmos, but they realised the risk of deviance from cosmic harmony. Gnostics refuted the concept of cosmic or “satanic” evil working against humanity. In their view, no one can sin, but we can all make mistakes. And mistakes can be corrected. Even the error of the archons can be corrected.

    Mystery teachings do not carry apocalyptic predictions, but the plot of the Sophianic myth contains a key event called “correction” (Greek diorthosis), indicating a decisive moment in the human adventure when we as a species come to terms definitively with the archon problem, the alien presence on Earth. We would resolve and correct that problem through reaching an interactive connection to the wisdom goddess.

    Indications point to that moment being now, right now. The decisive factor in the event would not be disclosure, for aliens have been known to lurk around the human world since time immemorial, including many benevolent kinds. Are we to assume there is only one predatory alien, identified by those ancient seers? Well, one is all it takes. And if there were more than one malevolent intruder, and we cannot clearly see even one, we would really be in trouble, wouldn’t we?

    What if, at the moment of correction, humanity achieves deliverance from the delusion of the Archons, overthrowing the devious strategy that gives them an advantage in our minds? The follow-up of Gnostic psychic detection would then be deliverance from Archontic influence rather, than disclosure of their presence in some official capacity. But more on this distinction at the close of this article.

    Prison Planet

    The “foreign installation” or archontic implant may also be regarded as a delusional matrix, a false paradigm. By broad definition a matrix is any setting or habitat: the natural world is the matrix of all terrestrial creatures. Your home is the matrix of your domestic life. Your soul-life is the matrix of your sensibility, aesthetics, ethics. But a matrix can also be a construct of unnatural or inorganic origin. Like a labyrinth or house of mirrors. Like a bureaucracy or government agency, a Kafkaesque impersonal system. Gnostic seers saw the danger of humans getting trapped in such systems, to the extent of becoming soulless and losing our humanity.

    In the citation above, the Gnostic master says archons act like toll keepers, or gatekeepers. This allusion is consistent with the Mystery teaching on “planetary spheres” conceived as a maze of confining shells defined by the orbits of the planets in our solar system. This paradigm, leaked from the Mysteries and never widely discussed in the world at large in ancient times, compares the solar system to a multilevel computer game inhabited and guarded by trolls who prohibit passage through the maze unless they are provided with passwords, tolls, or tokens.

    In the cynic or fatalistic spin, the “planetary spheres” may be envisioned as a vast penitentiary system where human souls are captured. Misunderstanding of this initiatory concept by those outside the Mysteries led to the assumption that this Earth is a hell-world where the human soul is imprisoned. This ancient teaching is the origin of the “prison planet” meme, a stroke of pagan, pre-Christian and anti-Christian genius. Note that point, Mr Alex Jones.

    Gnostics did not view the penitentiary paradigm (which they originated) in that sense. They saw it as a labyrinth of error and illusion, not a diabolical tool of punishment. Behind their view was a sophisticated cosmology that proves to be compatible in many respects with modern Gaia theory. In Gnostic cosmology, the Earth does not properly belong to the celestial clockworks of the solar system but is merely captured in it: an organic planet captured in an inorganic system. Because Sophia permeates life on Earth through and through, and she herself is the ground on which we stand, the air we breathe, this planet is different from the rest of the solar system. It is alive, aware, sentient, nurturing organic life, whereas the other planets such as Mars and Jupiter are inorganic worlds suitable as habitats for inorganic or cyborg entities such as archons.

    Moreover, Gnostic seers claimed that the alien mind parasites who intrude upon humankind originated along with the solar system before the Earth itself arose – that is, before the galactic goddess Sophia morphed into her terrestrial body. The term archon comes from the Greek root archai, “prior, before, in the beginning.” The archon horde arose in a region of the galactic spiral arms prior to the formation of the Earth. That region was a kind of fracture zone produced by the impact of the plasmic luminosity of Sophia when she dove from the galactic core (pleroma) into the relatively dense materiality of the spiral arms (kenoma). Sophia allowed the archons to establish a habitat for themselves in that zone, called the stereoma. It was a virtual reality simulation of the pleromic region of fractal animations, the realm of the galactic gods in the core, the aeons. But a mechanical, lifeless imitation. Archons cannot create but only imitate. They did not produce the stereoma of celestial clockworks out of their own intelligence and intention: they merely acted in drone-like fashion, executing the design lent to their minds by the Aeon Sophia.

    So, prior to the moment in cosmic evolution when the Earth appeared and human life emerged on this planet, the archon stereoma was already constructed, up and running. Sophia produced the Moon to set a boundary to their activities, thus establishing a mechanical, seemingly artificial regimen of moments and measures (NHLE, 121. Note: That the Moon is older than the Earth is a recent hypothesis supported by quite a lot of convincing evidence, and some solid inference). The archontic heaven comprises our solar system exclusive of the Earth, Moon, and Sun which form a three-body dynamic of autonomous and cooperative properties, as Gaia theory confirms. Such is the amazing assertion of Gnostic astrophysics.

    The Sophianic vision story presents a complete and coherent rendition of world origin and human origin, cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis. It tells us that the human genomic design (anthropos) was engineered in the galactic core, but archons arose in the spiral arms due to a freak event, before that human strain had time to seed on a planet and emerge.

    “The world-system we inhabit came about due to a mistake (anomou), an anomaly” (Gospel of Philip, NHLE, 154). This is perhaps the most famous one-liner in the Nag Hammadi corpus. A sensational remark, to say the least. And totally, precisely accurate in cosmological terms. The anomaly was Sophia’s plunge from the pleromic core, producing a fracture zone where the locust-like cyborg archons emerged by spontaneous generation – exactly as shown in the abiogenesis of Acari insects performed by Andrew Crosse in 1837, reported to the Royal Society, and duplicated by Michael Faraday.

    Sophia provides the archons with a Disneyesque virtual world to inhabit, but as one Nag Hammadi corpus text says, the archon overlord Ialdabaoth, “because of the power of luminosity he possessed of Sophia’s light [which the goddess lent to his mind], he called himself [the only] god, and he did not obey the place from which he came” (Apocryphon of John, NHLE, 111).

    The demented alien overlord assumes a reptilian form (Greek drakon) and sports the mask of a lion-head, representing the usurpation of authority and his preference for working through royalty, dynastic lineages, blood-lines. He arrogantly assumes himself to be the Supreme Being and would have others do the same. He does not respect boundaries and attempts to invade the human world, an absurd objective, doomed to fail. Yet he can harass and confuse the human species to the point where it loses contact with Sophia and the pleromic gods, destroys its own habitat, and turns into a horde of mindless zombies.

    This is the ultimate peril of ET invasion in Gnostic terms. There is much evidence that we today are at the ultimate threshold of that drama of absurdity and alienation.

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    Spiritual Control

    When I began to write Not in His Image around 1996, I was deeply immersed in researching the ET/UFO phenomenon. In all I delved into some 150 books. I talked to many people who had seen flying hardware or been abducted. I also drew upon my own encounters with Castaneda’s flyers over many years. Among all investigators of the alien enigma, I found in Jacques Vallée a diagnostic and deconstructive view closely compatible with Gnostic sources.

    Vallée and his mentor, Allen Hynek, both initially considered that the ET/UFO phenomenon was benevolent. They concluded that it was not. I totally concur. Vallée’s sophisticated and in-depth analysis tallies with that of another outstanding mind in the field, John Keel, who views ETs as tricksters. But not tricksters out to play with us in a kind and instructive manner. Vallée and Keel both observe that speculation about ETs and UFOs tends to develop religious dimensions – clearly seen in the messianic zeal of Steven Greer, head of the Disclosure Project. A Gnostic living today would perhaps comment, “Yes, but we already have an ET religion on Earth: Judeo-Christianity, the brainchild of a reptilian freak.”

    My studies are summarised in Nine Theories of Extraterrestrial Contact under archon files on metahistory.org. Among these are the Sitchin theory said to be drawn from Sumerian cuneiform tablets (although Sitchin’s translations are extremely dubious), the ancient astronauts of Erich von Daniken, and biblical Ufology which asserts that divine visitations in the Bible are reports of alien encounters. This third hypothesis would be positively shattered by Gnostic deconstruction, showing that angels, if they be archons disguised, are indeed ETs, but there is no divine plan working through them, and the god who sends them is definitely not on our side. The Rapture is a ludicrous soap-opera of archon deliverance.

    As for Sitchin’s slave species scenario, now widely adopted and mindlessly repeated by many people, it is frontally refuted by several Gnostic texts that describe how the archons wished to rape Eve and plant their seed in her, but failed (NHLE, 164). So much for the incest delusion of the alien interbreeding program. Archons cannot hack the human genome. The claim that they can is an archontic lie. Yet with their acute powers of simulation, archons can induce humans to life-like experiences of what they pretend to be doing. Without a touchstone to reality grounded in the wisdom of the Earth itself, it may be impossible to detect and unravel such virtual reality con-games.

    Entrants to the Mysteries learned that we on Earth live in the terrestrial paradise of the body of the wisdom goddess, supported by the Moon and Sun, an Edenic three-body system (trimorphic protennoia, NHLE, 511f). But at the same time, this system has been captured in the planetary stereoma, making us subject to certain properties of inorganic, archontic physics. And blinding us mentally to the divine presence in our world. This situation recalls the metaphor of a two-source hologram proposed by Philip K. Dick, who was deeply versed in Gnostic writings. Indeed, the archontic theme of simulation (HAL) dominates his novels.

    Awakening to this situation involves a dual solution (diorthosis): a return to the ground of our being, the goddess who originated our species in the galactic core, and deliverance from the archontic maze, the matrix of deception, hoaxing, concealment, secrecy, and desolating make-believe. Although archons may inspire that maze by insinuating their mindset into ours, it is human egotism, greed and fear that keep it up and running. We are our own worst enemies, for only archons can only assist us in defeating ourselves. Archons are merely a phantom pretext for our betrayal of our own divine potential. Undetected, their influence exaggerates our errors beyond the scale of correction. Such is the Gnostic message on the alien presence in this world.

    I have deliberately front-loaded this article with Gnostic material before getting to the specific topic of disclosure – understood as formal announcement of an extraterrestrial presence by world governments. I realise that the Gnostic material is massive and may be largely new to some readers. But having a chance to overview this material, you may remark how much debate and investigation of the ET/UFO phenomenon is conducted in total ignorance of the above views and insights. In total oblivion to what may be the single most important information we have for reading and repelling the alien presence. The word archon also means “ruler, authorities.” If disclosure means public admission by authorities of an alien, ET presence, then it cannot be anything but another ploy of archontic deception. Anyway, who would believe anything the authorities or governmental rulers say at this point in the world game? If anything gets corrected right now, it ought to be blind confidence in what authorities say. The absurd credulity of the human species.

    No doubt, the authorities would announce the presence but hold back further details as a matter of global security. “We are in negotiations,” Obama says with a straight face. Well, the game is not hard to call. If the ETs in contact with world authorities are benevolent, there is nothing to conceal. If they are malevolent, they can get the hell off the planet along with the federal and military psychopaths who are colluding with them. Along with the bureaucratic drones and media whore who keep their sick charades up and running.

    In Sophia’s correction comes the follow-up of the Gnostic expose of the archons: time to go after the lot and take them out. According to the Sophianic vision story, the power to do so comes from the wisdom goddess, the planetary animal mother – rather as last-minute rescue comes from the Pandoran goddess Ey’wa in Avatar. After all, SHE was the one who put humanity in harm’s way by unwittingly and unintentionally producing the archon horde of neonate drones with its reptilian overlord, Ialdabaoth. But for Sophia’s precipitous plunge from the galactic core, these pesky intruders would not ever have threatened our world in the first place.

    So the story goes. Just a story? Well, maybe. But what a story it is. And consider how it can be enacted and tested… It may be that following out the plot of the Gnostic vision story can lead to frontal defeat of the archons and their human accessories, archontified people. The Sophianic myth is open-ended and certainly does point to that opportunity, the moment for which is right now. Deliverance from the error and illusion of the archontic matrix is the best option for our species, but disclosure is bound to be just another con. Many people are already alerted to this deceit: for instance, consider the widespread caution that the authorities are due to stage a false-flag alien invasion, Operation Blue Beam.

    Whatever the case, Vallée’s warning that the ET/UFO phenomenon operates as a “spiritual control program,” and Castaneda’s assertion that the flyers are the way the universe tests us, both tally beautifully with Gnostic deconstruction of the cosmic error in our minds. Human potential comes in a trickster pack. It is as if the prize in the Cracker Jack box was a device that tricks your mind. Eat the toasted corn, observe the show closely, be entertained and learn, keep freedom and love uppermost in your mind, and do not be tricked by the cheap bauble in the box.

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