Remote Viewing

Paranormal review reports a story about two independent mediums successfully pointing to the whereabouts of a British soldier, Blake Hartley, who went missing about 3 years ago, in France. The mediums, Gordon Smith and Dennis McKenzie, were asked to work on the case by the mother, after Blake disappeared during an army expedition to France.

Both mediums, Gordon Smith first, and McKenzie second, told the mother that Blake was dead and pointed to a section of a river near the place of his disappearance as to where he would be found. McKenzie even traced back the events of Blake’s last night, his path to the river, his nightclub events at that day and more.

Gordon Smith, when telling where to look for Blake, narrowed the search by referencing a weir on the river, 60 kilometers below the point where he disappeared. He also predicted that the remain would be found later, around 3rd anniversary of his disappearance.

Some local, moved by the story and knowing the river, searched the area of the weir for several months, and on 30 December 2006, they have recovered some human remains which proved to be Blake’s in a DNA test.

“It was found in exactly the kind of area Gordon had described,” Sally reveals in Gordon’s book, Life Changing Messages. “Annoyingly, it was found just a few yards further south of the place where every search that we had conducted had ended, just downstream of a bridge that denotes the beginning of the torrent, where, according to the police, bodies do not get caught up!”

Unfortunately, the recovery of the body didn’t lead to the discovery of the reason of his death. Was it an accident or a murder still remain in the realm of the unknown.

A forum user posted a question asking about using remote viewing to find lost object (on forum). Apparently, he lost one his gameboy games inside the house and now can't find it. Do you know if Remote Viewing can be used to locate lost things?

This question comes in at a good time for me, too, since I seem to have lost my wrist watch and I'm not even sure it's at my home. I've never actually learned remote viewing so I don't know if it can be used for that but I've learned some dowsing and my mother-in-law, who also studied it, once found my wife's lost jewelry, in only 2 minutes, using an L-Shaped rod to answer the questions of its location. So, I guess something is possible. See more what I wrote about Dowsing.

Also, back in Oct' 2005, when I only started this blog I've already written about this subject, but mostly related to Silva Method, see: Remote viewing to find lost objects (blog)

Paranormal review reports that police in Portugal has confirmed that they are following up leads by psychic in their search for Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in the country four weeks ago.

Three British psychics, all of who claim previous successes in such cases, flew to Portugal in order to be closer to the place of the event. This, in their opinion, will help them to “sense” better information. The three psychic mediums are: Amanda Hart, Ben Murphy and Diane Lazarus.

The article then cites a long report from Amanda Hart, where she describes her vision if Madeleine, her abductors and whereabouts, including such claims that her hair was cut like a boy, that there’s a woman and two men involved in the kidnapping and that she gets two locations, one Mombassa and other Amsterdam. She furthermore describes the countryside where the child is held.

I have recently wrote about Sharon Neill, a psychic medium, also from the UK, who helps the police in lost people cases. It will be interesting to see how this story will progress from here and if she will be close to the truth or be like Sylvia Browne in her famous false prediction in the Shawn Hornbeck case.

Do Some Psychics “Read the Eyes?”

A popular misconception about ESP that has existed from time immemorial is that it involves some form of “mind reading.” Telepathy has been popularly conceived as two people “reading each other’s minds,” and when a person appears to perform a feat of clairvoyance in correctly guessing something about another person’s life, that other person often exclaims, “Wow! Are you reading my thoughts?” An examination of subjective reports from spontaneous cases as well as from the lab (Rhine, 1967) suggests that the experience of ESP can often be much more complex than this, but the mind reading concept still holds even today in the minds of some people, including some mainstream scientists and skeptics who are not familiar with parapsychological research.

It is likely that a great many instances of apparent ESP that look like “mind reading” can be chalked up to sensory cues that we often give off, whether we are aware of it or not. It is often claimed by skeptics that, rather being highly adept in ESP, many mental mediums and commercial psychics who give readings are more skilled in picking up on these cues in the expressions of the people consulting them, and use this in tandem with cold reading and other mentalist tricks to produce false psychic information. One such sensory cue that these mediums and psychics may pick up on is the movement and the appearance given off by our eyes, which can sometimes be used to infer our current mood. Other people who may be skilled in this may include psychotherapy professionals, salespeople, police officers involved in lie detection, and skilled poker players trying to “read” others at the table on a good hand or a bluff.

Recently, a group of researchers from the New York University School of Medicine and two German universities conducted a study that looked a bit closer at “eye reading” to see if psychic readers are particularly more advanced than most people in applying “theory of mind” and empathy in their practice (Dziobek et al., 2005). Theory of mind is actually a concept from social psychology that describes the ability for a person to infer other people’s mood, thoughts, desires, and/or intentions; it can be seen as a kind of mental plan we develop for knowing how the minds of others feel and work. Most inferences that we make (both consciously and unconsciously) to build a theory of mind come through social interactions, and can be expressed through the “intuitions” we have about people (e.g., when we hear someone say, “I have a feeling about her,” or “There’s something about him that rubs me the wrong way”). More complex applications by skilled people can even include anticipating what a person is going to say or do next based on their body cues. Similarly, in empathy a person is able to project their own mind into that of another such that they are able to realize and share the feelings, needs, and thoughts of that other person. In other words, we are able to “look at the world through another person’s shoes,” so to speak.

Today I’m glad to announce the launch of the forum on the Mind-Energy.net site. The Parapsychology and alternative medicine forums at http://forum.mind-energy.net are place for the visitors and readers of mind-energy.net and all other internet users to talk about subjects of parapsychology and psi research and on the various topics of alternative medicine and energy healing.

In the forum you’ll find sections devoted to energy healing (EFT, Quantum Touch), personal practices, such as qigong and yoga, Traditional Chinese Medicine and your home remedies for various conditions.

Other topics including scientific debates on parapsychology and psi research as a place for the skeptics and supporters of parapsychology to delve into serious debates, a section on developing psi abilities and a place to post your question to the community describing your personal stories of unexplained character.

The last section is devoted to Mind-Energy.net site itself. On is a general discussion for your suggestions on the site’s content, design, goals etc. The other forum imports all blog posts off www.mind-energy.net to continue debates on the topics in the forum, which is better platform than the comments in the blog. In the near future, all the comments on the main site will be disabled and all commenters will need to use the forum instead. This will also improve spam protection and garbage comments.

You can subscribe to forum feeds using RSS as well, if it is easier for you.

My hope is that the forums will be a place for quality people. I’m going to attract some experts in the various related fields of knowledge to add value to the community.

You are welcomed to propose more forum topics, a different structure are help with moderation. If you hold yourself as an expert in any area, please let me know using the contact form as I might have something special for the experts.

So, head over to the Parapsychology and alternative medicine forums right now, register and start your discussions.

Thanks, Jacob.

I’ve found a number of good articles about Remote Viewing (RV) written by Mr. Gerald O’Donnell, founder of Academy of Remote Viewing and Remote Influencing. The articles appear in the American Chronicle and the latest one is from today.

The first article is The Quantum Physics of Remote Viewing and it tells about the history of modern science, gives a very short intro into some ideas of quantum mechanics and continues with the usual description how quantum psychics can explain such effects as non-locality and how it connects to remote viewing. He then states that our consciousness affects the reality by observing it and thus we create our reality.

I’ve been hearing these about these claims about Quantum mechanics explaining psi phenomena for some time now. Many New Age authors give these claims, including Deepak Chopra, Amit Goswami (a theoretical nuclear physicist), Dr. Fred Alan Wolf (Dr. Quantum) and other people. And although my understand of quantum mechanics is not good enough and some of these people actually are quantum physicist, I’m still not sure that they are right. First, as far as I know, these claims are based on one specific interpretation of quantum physics, which is not fully adopted to be the correct one. Second, if they are true, their implication is so significant that I my head somehow resists it, I guess. Similar to my previous post (See Is the media afraid of parapsychology research?), where it seems that we somehow disregard such difficult claims.

In his second article, The Real Secrets of Remote Viewing , O’Donnell, explains a lot about the different brainwaves, Alpha, Beta, Theta and Delta and how they relate to performing Remote Viewing and affect behavior in general. He claims that in order to perform remote viewing well, one must be doing it while in the Theta state (4 to 5 Hz).

I’m glad to announce that the results of the second Psi Experiment are now available. The results are at results of the second psi experiment. I've not performed much analysis on the results, since the second experiment also had design flaws which made psi detection impossible.

This is also an opportunity to remind you to take part in the third psi experiment if you have not already done so. Tell your friends to participate as well.

Discuss the results in the comments.

Mind-Energy.net is proud to announce the launch of its third Psi Experiment. In this experiment, several measures were taken to make the results of this experiment more credible, after the experiment design issues of the first two were taken into account.

In this experiment you’ll be shown with a photograph of a random playing card on a table and you’ll need to answer which color is the card’s suit – red or black. You can see it as a simple game.

Each time you play this game, the computer reshuffles the cards and you’re presented with another photograph of another card. So, you can play as long as you want. After each 20 trials, you’ll be immediately able to see the statistics of your trials.

So, don’t wait and go to Third Psi Experiment.

I’m glad to announce that after a lot of work with the results of the first Psi Experiment, I’ve now posted the results at results of the first psi experiment. Despite some bad experiment design decisions there are still some interesting things to learn about demographics, psychological biases and which methods work better.

This is also an opportunity to remind you to take part in the second psi experiment if you have not already done so. Tell your friends to participate as well.

Discuss the results in the comments.

After successful launch of the psi experiments website I’m proud to announce the launch of the second experiment.

Over 1500 people have participated in the first experiment and the results will be published during the coming two weeks, after the analysis will be complete. Yet, following constructive criticism regarding some design flaws of the first experiment, this second experiment is better designed to overcome these flaws and provide more reliable results.

Everyone is invited to participate in this second psi experiment and spread the word among your friends. The more participants, the more reliable will be the results.

I’m also glad to add a new sponsor on board. This new sponsor is Immrama Institute and they will provide their Insight CDs as prizes. Insight CD is a powerful tool to help you explore expanded states of meditation and consciousness, achieve deeper levels of self awareness, reduce stress, enhance creativity, and improve your overall mental and emotional well-being.

To those participating, if you’d like to learn some ESP I can advice you to read my articles:
Developing ESP – First steps
Exercises to develop ESP ability – part 2

For those interested to learn more about psychic abilities I can refer to the course Developing psychic powers, which, for a reasonable price, includes three books with over 500 pages of material to develop your psychic abilities.

I’m glad to announce that the first in the series of previously announced Psi Experiments to test the abilities of the human mind has been launched. This is a most basic parapsychology experiment with more interesting ones to follow.

Tell all your friends and encourage them to participate. Go to Psi Experiment #1 and do your best.

It has been now revealed that the UK MoD has conducted in 2002 a psychic power study to find out whether psychic abilities, especially remote viewing, could be used to find hidden objects.

During the tests, the volunteers had to identify the contents of sealed envelopes while blind-folded. In the beginning, the MoD tried to recruit advertising psychics for the tests. But all 12 of the advertising, or “known”, psychics have declined to take part in the experiments. The MoD then has found “novice” volunteers who took part in this research.

Some 28% of tested psychic could get a close guess at the contents of the envelopes, which included pictures of a knife, Mother Teresa and an “Asian individual”. The MoD spokeswoman had the following comments about the study:

The study concluded that remote viewing theories had little value to the MoD and was taken no further.

My commentary: although most of the tested subjects could not correctly “guess” the contents of the envelopes, to me the 28% percent getting a close guess sounds like an astounding achievement. Although, by MoD standards this might not be enough for reliable intelligence work, from the parapsychology researcher’s point of view, this looks like a strong evidence for the existence of psi and validity of remote viewing as one of the best performing uses of psi. The MoD did not say that remote viewing does not work at all, just not good enough. Although the original BBC article did not say what the expected chance for the “guesses” was, 28 percents sounds like a lot above chance when you had you tell what’s inside an envelope.

On a sad note, I wonder what the fact that all 12 of contacted “known” psychic have refused to take part means? It makes them now look like charlatans. But I always thought that the strongest psychics do not advertise themselves. They really don’t have to, since in their case word of mouth advertising would serve them better and cheaper.

Source: BBC article