It is the height of the Cold War, late 1960s/early 1970s and the US clandestine world is concerned about Soviets and their work and successes in psychotronics, the Eastern bloc’s word for parapsychology. Laser physicist Dr. Harold (Hal) Puthoff, with several patents to his name, having worked in and continuing to be interested in quantum electronics comes to SRI in 1971 from Stanford University. Meanwhile, Ingo, known around Greenwich Village New York, his home, as The Psychic Artist, having been highly successful at repeatable psychokinesis, that is being able to manipulate things with your mind, experiments, repeatable experiments in psi always being an hard to obtain factor if not impossible one to obtain within parapsychology, with Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler with thermometers in sealed containers and out of body experiments at the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) with Drs. Karlis Osis and Janet Lee Mitchell, is in the spring of 1972, fed up with the ASPR because they believe his results are too good to be true, writes to Puthoff thanks to his connection via psi experimental work on plants researcher Cleve Backster, and in turn Puthoff invites Ingo to SRI to play around.
This playing around as Puthoff calls it happens in July of 1972 and involves taking Ingo to Stanford's Physics department where there is a quark detector buried under eight feet or so of cement, shielded from frequencies and emissions. Around Ingo are various Stanford University Physicists and Puthoff. Ingo begins to "psych" it out and in doing so begins to draw it and perturbs it, that is the read out which until that time has produced nothing but a straight begins to fluctuate which had had never done before. Shortly after Ingo's effect on the read out of this detector and his drawing of the device itself (which was classified) another well-established laser physicist, Dr. Russell Targ. After that as the story goes the US clandestine world began to provide funds, CIA monies, the first of which comes via a small grant Puthoff secured called the Biofields Measurement Contract from the CIA in August of 1972, as a result of Ingo's psychokinesis happens this was for what they, Puthoff and Targ called psychoenergetic work, perception of information through an unknown channel and the perturbance of equipment through non-physical means.
Based on his further work in remote seeing CIA funds would then flow to SRI determine whether anomalous mental phenomena (i.e., extrasensory perception or ESP and psychokinesis) existed and the degree to which such phenomena might be applicable to problems of national interest, which led to the refinement of remote viewing under Ingo's recommended project in 1973 Scanate (scan by coordinate) and the emphasis on making it an operationally useful i.e. espionage tool, the whole of which is most readily referred to as Star Gate.
But RV as an espionage tool began with the Army under its intelligence security command group, INSCOM, launching its altered states of consciousness/out of body type of RV under a project called Gondola Wish by contracting with Robert Monroe/Monroe Institute in 1978. Noting that altered states of consciousness can be achieved via such things as drugs, hypnosis, mediation, but in Monroe's case it was via audio stimulation, Gondola Wish turned into Grill Flame, a joint DIA and Army program in 1980 which was sunsetted in 1983. The type of RV used during this program is now called Extended Remote Viewing or ERV.
For Ingo's part he would create thanks to his work with Puthoff a set of protocols for Remote Viewing called Controlled Remote Viewing or CRV, what he called an intellectual disciple the protocols for which allow the flow of information in stages, so not leaving your body, not entering or being in an altered state, not telepathy, which he described as being one with another mind, not channeling entities, rather an intellectual information gathering process from which anyone can be trained in this ability (although Ingo used the term ability because that most readily resonates with most people's reality, but the way he articulated it was as a part of our inbuilt perceptual awareness system we just need to remember we have) and can bring under our own conscious intellectual control.
Ingo used these protocols to train a group of students sent to him by Army intelligence, he was hired by the Army directly to do, under a program called Center Lane starting in 1982. This would become operational under project Sun Streak in 1986 before being named Star Gate in 1990. At some point during it appears late in the program RV'ers were using CRV to get to the target and then ERV to drill down into specific details.
So in all RV change hands over time and not in this order between Army intelligence, the Air Force, the DIA, and the CIA, lasting until 1995, being retired under Star Gate. Ingo for his part retired from the program in 1988/89 but really started to limit his involvement in 1985 when Puthoff left the program and it was transferred to the DIA.
A more detailed timeline follows below, while information on Ingo's serial memoir about the development of CRV, Remote Viewing: The Real Story, including a free download of it, can found further down this page.
A Clandestine Timeline
Remote Viewing took center stage when it was used operational by both East and West clandestine agencies during the Cold War. And how that happened for the West, and for Ingo in particular, is as follows...
Seeking to fit ESP into the scientific paradigm so fleeting in earlier experiments, Ingo, in the 1970s, showed that such abilities can be rigorously tested inside of well-designed and well-shielded repeatable experiments. He had the staying power to withstand the long hours of repetitive trials. And it would be the repeatable experiment structure, results from which had been so elusive in parapsychology's past that would drive Ingo's laboratory experiences, from one set of experiments to another to ultimately SRI and Remote Viewing. Just how that occurred though, Ingo says was born from random "circumstances," events which suddenly commenced, seemingly out of nowhere, the confluence of which goes like this:
1970
US intelligence assesses the USSR to be spending millions of rubles annually on so-called "psychotronic" research. It was believed that the Soviets were heavily engaged in a parapsychology research program whose existence was classified and whose funding and control resided largely with the Ministry of Defense and possibly with the KGB. It is also believed the Soviets were conducting intelligence missions using parapsychology.
1971
Physicist Harold (Hal) Puthoff affiliates with SRI. Ingo participates in an informal test of Kirlian photography at a party during which he produces, by thought alone, a ball of light above his head as captured in a photograph now in his archives at the University of West Georgia. A few months later Ingo meets Robert Monroe, founder of the Monroe Institute, an altered states of consciousness researcher, and the CIA's interrogation specialist, Cleve Backster at another party. Ingo begins working in Backster's lab. Backster was working on analyzing the effects of his consciousness on plants. The plants, hooked up to polygraphs, would register Ingo's intention to harm them at the moment of that intention. The results, though controversial, appear to have demonstrated this successfully and are documented as "the Backster Effect" in The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. This leads to Ingo working with Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler. For these experiments Ingo effects changes to thermometers placed inside sealed thermistors. This work leads to Ingo performing the out-of-body distance viewing experiments at the ASPR in New York City with Drs. Karlis Osis and Janet Lee Mitchell. The term "Remote Viewing" is born.
1972
Puthoff submits a proposal on basic research into quantum biology to Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement. A copy of this proposal is sent to Backster. Ingo experiences a breakthrough of sorts while doing flicker fusion experiments at the ASPR with Dr. Carole Silfen which went on to have tremendous importance when Controlled Remote Viewing was later developed at SRI. The problem had not been seeing too little but seeing too much. This "seeing too much" regarding perceptual states external to eye vision was ultimately to become a workhorse in the development of Controlled Remote Viewing. Ingo's successes at the ASPR are mind-blowing but the ASPR board worries they are too good and will not publish them. Ingo becomes entirely frustrated with the ASPR and ESP research; Backster shows the Puthoff proposal to Ingo. Ingo and Puthoff connect. Puthoff's proposal is funded by Science Unlimited Research Foundation. Puthoff invites Ingo for a week-long visit to SRI. As Ingo had previously participated in experiments effecting changes in thermometers, Puthoff wants to see a demonstration of such abilities for himself. Puthoff takes Ingo to a "well-shielded magnetometer" used for physics experiments located in a vault below the floor of the building at Stanford. Ingo "perturbs the operation of the magnetometer" and then draws a "reasonable facsimile" of the interior of the machine, the design of which has never been published.A second physicist, Dr. Russell Targ affiliates with SRI. Testing on "psychics," Ingo first and foremost, begins at the hands of SRI project leaders Puthoff and Targ where a host of random ESP experiments led to the discovery of Remote Viewing using geographical coordinates, after Ingo had discussions with ARPANET researcher and future ufologist Jacques Vallée in the SRI cafeteria. The DIA begins funding SRI "to determine whether anomalous mental phenomena (i.e., extrasensory perception and psychokinesis) existed and the degree to which such phenomena might be applicable to problems of national interest." A more flushed out report details the government's the funding from 1971 to 1983 of psychoenergtic programs: CIA-RDP96-00788R001800060001-7.
1973
Ingo suggests the first of what will go to be several clandestine-supported psychic projects using Remote Viewing to view targets at geographical locations. Sponsored by the CIA, it was called Project SCANATE, the name having been derived from the process of scanning by coordinate. A 2002 CIA declassified document entitled Project SCANATE: Exploratory Research in Remote Viewing, CIA-RDP79-00999A000400050002-4 provides insight into Ingo's early work on this, and incorporates some of his RV sketches. Pat Price joins the program.
1974
Price conducts the CIA’s most famous test of a Soviet nuclear facility, "URDF-3," near Semipalatinsk, the Soviet Union's nuclear test site. Shortly thereafter the CIA then begins to question Price and the possibility he is Scientology or Soviet plant. See Parapsychology in Intelligence: A Personal Review and Conclusions, CIA-RDP96-00791R000200030040-0, written by Kenneth Kress, then with the CIA's Office of Technical Services, and the analysis referred to within this document entitled Analysis of a Remote Viewing Experiment of URDF-3, CIA-RDP96-00791R000200040002-1. Price is given a new CIA handler and moves to West Virginia becoming the President of the Princess Coal Company; the program goes on a hiatus. Ingo returns to New York.
1975
The CIA terminates its SRI contract following the suspicious death of Price. The US Air Force's Foreign Technology Division (FTD), the Air Forces' scientific and intelligence wing focusing on foreign air, space, and ballistic missile systems, working under DIA's intelligence production guidance, takes over from the CIA as the primary sponsor of Remote Viewing research, with Dale Graff, aerospace engineer and physicist, presiding.
The Navel Electronics Systems Command, NAVELEX, begins a one year Remote Sensing program with SRI.
Dutton Books publishes Ingo's autobiography To Kiss Earth Good-bye in which Ingo details his unclassified work at SRI and what led to his early ESP experiments.
1977
Puthoff and Targ publish their book Mindreach about the unclassified aspects of their Remote Viewing work. Working with Graff at FTD, SRI's psi program, spying on the Soviet Union, continues in deepest secrecy. Stephan Schwartz of the Mobius Group funds SRI to trial the ability of Ingo and photographer Hella Hammid, "Price’s replacement," to remote view when submerged in a submarine. Classified aspects of the trial are sponsored by Graff at FTD. Hammid came to the program having in 1973 participated in the first Gateway Voyage program, a program of expanded awareness, offered by Robert Monroe, founder of The Monroe Institute, held at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA, where such things as sensory awakening and gestalt awareness training were used to enhance human potentials.
The US Army begins its own Remote Viewing experiments under the code name "Gondola Wish." The program was designed to integrate the Soviet parapsychology collection threat into an OPSEC (operations security protocol that prevents sensitive materials from getting in the wrong hands) by training military personnel to collect sensitive intelligence data through parapsychological means, particularly to gauge the military applications of Remote Viewing and telekinesis. See: Gondola Wish Assessment Report: CIA-RDP96-00788R002000160001-3 and ADVANCED THREAT TECHNIQUE ASSESSMENT: CIA-RDP96-00787R000500150001-2 (which had lots of Ingo's RV sessions in them).
The FBI raids the Church of Scientology. Jacques Vallée in his book Forbidden Science, Volume 2 notes materials were obtained during this raid by which "the FBI came to believe (falsely?) that Price was used as a spy against the CIA."
1978
Gondola Wish becomes established under its Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), then renamed "Grill Flame," and instituted at Fort Meade, MD.
The Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity, AMSAA, contracts with SRI under "Grill Flame" to test/evaluate/develop a Remote Viewing program being run out of Ford Ord in California. See: CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210083-1.
Dell Publishing releases Ingo's novel Star Fire, about a rock superstar-composer Dan Merriweather, the world's first true megapsychic, and how he discovers the true extent of his extraordinary powers, while his out-of-body voyages reveal the existence of top-secret US and Russian installations for the development of psychic weapons more frightening than any nuclear or bacteriological hardware.
1979
The first Army operational Remote Viewing session is carried out in collaboration with Graff at FTD. SRI is formally integrated into the Army program. The Air Force cancels its FTD-run RV program. The effort is picked up Jack Vorona of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
1982
The first two Army students are trained in CRV by Ingo: Thomas M. McNear, CPT, US Army (retired as a Lieutenant Colonel) and Robert (Rob) Cowart, Army designation unknown.
1983
Grill Flame is re-designated by INSCOM as Project "Center Lane," and continues with using psychoenergetics, namely Remote Viewing, to gather intelligence.
1984
The existence of the top-secret aspects of the Remote Viewing program is disclosed by syndicated columnist Jack Anderson in The Washington Post. Behind closed doors, the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council unfavorably reviews the program. Ingo trains William (Bill) Ray, CPT, US Army (retired as a Major), Paul H. Smith, CPT, US Army (retired as a Major), Edward Dames, CPT, US Army (retired as a Major), and Charlene Mettee Cavanaugh (Shufelt), DAC, US Army as operational Remote Viewers. The Army terminates funding for RV.
1985
The Army remote viewers all transfer to the DIA. Puthoff leaves SRI for the Institute of Advanced Studies, Austin, TX. Nuclear physicist Edwin (Ed) May becomes SRI program head.
1986
The DIA takes formal control of Remote Viewing, renaming it "Sun Streak." Ingo draws down his involvement and his participation in the program begins to wane. An declassified document CIA-RDP96-00789R002100240001-2, an overview of the project to date provides an historical progression of the program.
1987
Bantam Books publishes Ingo's how to guide on ESP/RV entitled Natural ESP: The ESP Core and Its Raw Characteristics. Puthoff writes the introduction.
1988
Ingo retires from active RV research.
1990
Graff becomes head of the operational RV unit at Fort Meade and renames the project “Star Gate.”
All referenced CIA declassified documents can be found in the CIA Reading Room and are available as PDF downloads below.
Ingo's Training
The superpowers of the human biomind, of which Remote Viewing (distant-seeing) is one, existing for time immortal, weaving in and out of humanity's history under the guise of many names, are defined as those indwelling faculties of our species which can transcend space and time as one major category of activity, and energy and matter as another major category. The concept that human powers and perceptions are locked into and only accord with the known laws of matter and energy and time is not correct -- although such has been the dominant concept of the last two centuries. The full extent of our species faculties of memory, for example, transcend the known laws of matter and time, as do the faculties for human imagination. Memory and imagination, therefore, are among the many superpowers -- although they have not been identified this way within the prevailing wisdom of the Modern Age. In addition to memory and imagination which are universally shared by all specimens of our species, the several formats of intuition and of the telepathic transfer of information are also very broadly shared. These first four of the superpowers are accepted as naturally existing, although they cannot be explained by conventional beliefs based in conventional concepts of matter and time. But it is understood that these first four of the superpowers recombine into creativity and inventiveness -- and which have been the two major hallmarks of our species from time immemorial. The superpowers are probably arranged along some kind of perceptual-cognitive spectrum, the fundamentals or rudiments of which are carried by all born individuals. This spectrum also consists of other indwelling faculties which are less broadly shared in their natural state, but which seem to need special development if they are to become active. The existence of the superpowers as a species thing transcends social formats and their levels and/or defects of knowledge. The faculties for the superpowers are therefore permanent within our species. Each generation of humans born is a carrier of the faculties, equally as much as it is a carrier of our species' gene pool. It is not the purpose of this site to convince anyone that the superpowers exist. The only purpose is to present information.
--- Ingo Swann
To get a sense of how much more there might be to us, in Reality Boxes Ingo talks about exceptional human experiencing which relate to "abilities," i.e., just looking at things people may experience: cosmic consciousness, Inter-species communication, so like between you and your pet, transformational experience, exceptional experiences such as with human performance and within the martial arts, out-of-body experience, empathy, electrical sensitivity, bilocation experience, aura sensing, charisma and/or vibe sensing, guardian angel encounters, kundalini awakening, "aha" experience, lucid dreaming, déjà vu, intuition, premonitions, out of the blue inspiration, abductee and UFO experiences, near-death experience, demon experience, and the list goes on. Ingo would call these things, these experiences which are part and parcel of our perceptual awareness systems, our superpower faculties.
Believing all things "psi" are species wide abilities,pioneered the development of a Remote Viewing training technique using geographical coordinates, with its requisite protocols, called CRV (first labeled Coordinate Remote Viewing, then later Controlled Remote Viewing).
Ingo used CRV protocols to train intelligence operatives to assess operational targets, ones that could not be seen using conventional means. Ingo's training consisted of progressing through six stages, and took place under a project called Center Lane.
In developing CRV, Ingo defined what CRV is, how it works, and the rules in which one could be trained, i.e. the protocols. He then trained several individuals in these protocols, the basic theory of which is built upon a viewer learning how to obtain information from a matrix (a universal database synonymous to the Akashic Records) in a controlled format, and that controlled format takes place in six stages.
As in the case with an idea, theory, product, service so forth, when in R&D and even in the early stages of the roll-out many hypothetical ideas get bantered about, if there are merits to them, they get included, if not then not. If Ingo had felt additional stages were important to further refining information coming via accessing a database, ones which had been flushed out, developed, and rigorously tested, needed to be part of his training protocols, they no doubt would have been, and we would have seen individuals trained in them both during Center Lane but also in the years afterward. With this in mind, to date no one has claimed to have been trained by Ingo in anything other than this.
What we do know though is that starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s Ingo became increasingly concerned with what he called in a FATE Magazine article, our psychic castration, having long since sorted out the other than terrestrial's, and with the help of human actors, use of telepathic, chemical, electronic, and sonic methods to control us. He says they have an advanced form of Telepathy and we have an undeveloped form. This is something he speaks to directly in his book Penetration and why his use of the word Telepathy in the book's subtitle.
When one speaks about psychic communication, mind melding, and multidimensional (psychic penetration) traveling, this is no longer about obtaining information from a matrix, CRV, it is about Telepathy, and probably akin to the Telepathy+ Ingo would go on to write about in Penetration. The two are distinct things. In one case, information via a database is being accessed, in the other a form of communication, of oneness, with another being/entity is taking place. Ingo's desire, more than anything, was for us learn how to psychically arm and empower ourselves in concert with recognizing we are amazing beings with incredible perception awareness systems, in which CRV and Telepathy are just a part of, the control of which we do not need to learn from them (other than terrestrial) nor need from them.
Regarding possible additional stages and Ingo's students' thoughts on them, please see this article: https://rviewer.com/in-controlled-remote-viewing-did-ingo-swann-add-more-stages/
When Jim Schnabel trained with Ingo in 1994 as part of his background research for his book Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies, Ingo included commercial airline pilot Robert (Bob) Durant in the training too. Like Jim, Bob had been a recent introduction to Ingo, although Bob had been actively involved in UFO/Remote Viewing studies prior to his work with Ingo. After Ingo's training was complete, Bob became a lifelong friend to Ingo.
Over a decade later as film makers worked with Ingo on a documentary about him, still a work in progress but now called A Life Gone Wild, Bob was interviewed by journalist Nick Cook regarding his training with Ingo. In the videos below are Bob's narration of that training to Nick, showing an example of what exactly CRV is. This includes a brief discussion with one of the film makers, Robert Knight. The videos are of that marvelous interview, in its entirety, without any editing.
For a beginner's guide on RV see Ingo's book Everybody's Guide to Natural ESP.
How to Do RV
Determined that a record of his story of how Remote Viewing came into existence be available for open-and-free-access historical purposes and for those who might chance to have interest, Ingo began working on the Remote Viewing: The Real Story in 1995 and shared his chapters on his Superpowers of the Human Biomind website as he wrote them. By 2013, he had completed 58 chapters, with still more in his mind, no doubt, to share, when he passed away.
About this Ingo wrote...
An (eventual) full-length book (currently in process of being serialized in the Internet and WWW), revealing the actual history of Remote Viewing and its developments. Four general categories are interwoven throughout: the Discoveries; the Political and Technical History; the Rise and Fall; the Saga and the Soap Opera. Although the the topic of Remote Viewing has attracted media and speculative attention at various times, the real and detailed insider story has never been presented before.
A fully copy is available as PDF download below.
In 1997, Ingo wrote a letter to Jeffrey Mishlov in response to those in the "field" who actively discourage the truth about the development of Remote Viewing. A copy of that letter is also provided as a PDF download below.
A complete and free PDF, available for downloading, has been made of everything that had been on Ingo's Superpowers of the Human Biomind website and is contained within the Superpowers section of this one.
Stargate Remote Viewers Paul H. Smith and Tom McNear
Stargate Remote Viewer Paul H. Smith
Interview, Part 1
Remote Viewing Discussion
Remote Viewing Structure and Improving the Synergy Between Viewer and Analyst
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