21. REMOTE VIEWING

HUMAN BEINGS HAVE A LATENT ABILITY
TO SEE ANYWHERE, ACROSS ANY DISTANCE.

My first introduction to the fact that human beings can connect with one another at very subtle levels of consciousness came from Willis Harman in the early 1980s during the Leadership Forum years and later at Shell in London in the early 1990s, when most of the information about the remote viewing work became declassified. When I met Willis in 1980, he had just been appointed as the President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, founded by Dr. Edgar Mitchell, Apollo XIV astronaut and the sixth man to walk on the moon. For twenty or so years before that appointment, Willis had been a senior officer at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), a scientific think tank affiliated with Stanford University. He told me of the “remote viewing” studies that began in the early 1970s when various US government agencies (Department of Defense, Army, Navy, and others) initiated a research program at SRI. The experiments were pioneered by physicists Harold Putoff and Russell Targ.

The agencies wanted to determine if humans could “see” distant, strategically important locations through any known form of shielding. The studies examined the ability of humans to perceive objects and events at a distance, beyond the reach of ordinary senses. In these experiments, the “agent” would travel to a randomly selected, distant location while another person (the remote viewer, or person “perceiving”) would remain in the lab, isolated from contact with anyone who knew where the agent had gone. At a designated time, the perceiver in the lab would try to describe where the agent was and what he or she was seeing.

The experiments showed that human beings have a latent ability to see anywhere, across any distance. An article about these experiments was published in the British journal Nature by Putoff and Targ and attracted criticism in the traditional scientific community. A subsequent movie, Men Who Stare at Goats, poked some fun at the “notion” of remote viewing. Over the years, I have had many occasions to experience comments from skeptics. I have come to understand that their skepticism derives largely from their unwillingness to reexamine their limiting belief systems. Yet detailed examination of the critiques of the journal article found that their authors were unable to explain away the reported results.

In 1988, a study was made of all the remote viewing experiments conducted at SRI since 1973. The analysis was based on 154 experiments consisting of more than 26,000 separate trials conducted over those sixteen years. The statistical result of this analysis indicated odds against chances of more than a billion-billion to one. Chance is not a viable explanation of such results.

The SRI studies were later refined and replicated by other scientists. The Princeton University Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Lab conducted 653 formal remote viewing trials between 1976 and 1999. Bob Jahn and Brenda Dunne calculated that these experiments generated positive evidence verifying the SRI studies, with odds against chance at thirty-three million to one.

In telling me about the remote viewing studies at SRI, Willis said they originally used people who were known to have highly developed capacity for mental telepathy, but later, researchers used “ordinary people off the street.” By a meaningful coincidence in 2001, just before we began to write Presence, I met one of the “highly developed” people with whom Willis had worked, and he gave me a personal demonstration of remote viewing.

My remote viewing experience began in early 2001, when I was in London meeting with Dadi Janki, a coleader of the Brahma Kumaris (BK), a seventy-year-old spiritual organization with close to a million members in a hundred countries. Dadi was accompanied by one of her key deputies, Sister Jayanti, who acted as interpreter since Dadi’s first language was Hindi. Since the fall of 1997, I had attended an annual dialogue of thought leaders from across the world hosted by the BK’s and Peter Senge to explore “the call of our time” – the collective responsibility we have at this time of fundamental change. A month earlier, I had been in Rajasthan for one of the dialogues, and Dadi had suggested I meet with her for a week to explore more deeply the pressing issues humanity faces.

We spent most of every day in deep dialogue. On the third day, Dadi excused herself to talk with one of her colleagues. Jayanti and I were engaged in light conversation, and I asked her if Dadi ever made public appearances to share her wisdom as she was doing with me.

“Oh, yes,” Jayanti said. “She’s done that from time to time; the last was a couple of years ago at Royal Albert Hall. She had a dialogue on stage with Uri Geller.”

“Uri Geller!” I exclaimed. “I’ve heard about him. I’d love to have a conversation with him; I’d learn a lot about the very subject of the book we’re about to write.”

About that time, Dadi Janki returned, and I mentioned to her what Jayanti and I were discussing. Dadi listened and confirmed how interesting it was to make that presentation with Geller. As we turned to our dialogue, she said, “But we haven’t been in contact with Uri for two or more years.”

We resumed our dialogue, but about five minutes later, the phone rang and Jayanti picked it up. Neither Dadi nor Jayanti were very happy about this; they had left strict instructions for us not to be disturbed. We paused while Jayanti spoke to Dadi’s assistant: “But we left firm instructions not to be disturbed. Who is it? … Oh.” She covered the mouthpiece of the telephone, looked at Dadi and said, “It’s Uri Geller. He insists on speaking to you.”

I almost fell out of my chair. Dadi sighed.

Jayanti said, “I think you’d better take it.”

Dadi picked up the receiver and said, “Hello, Uri…. Yes…. I’m in dialogue…. No, we can’t be disturbed.” She listened a few moments and then said, “Ok, Uri. Come to the old house at 7:00 p.m. We will have finished our meditation and you can meet him then.”

Dadi said, “Uri wanted to know with whom we were talking. He said it was important he meets you. So I made arrangements. This might inform your work.” The synchronicity was, to say the least, startling. They, however, didn’t seem very surprised, and so we returned to our dialogue.

At around 6:00 p.m., we went to the small home where the BK London operation had started over twenty years previously. As agreed, after our meditation, Geller arrived and was escorted into the room. After Uri and I got acquainted, Dadi suggested we all talk and that Uri and I could have dinner at the BK University dining room later.

So Uri and I went together to the large, empty dining room at the university where I was staying and sat down to a long and deep conversation over dinner. Almost immediately, we determined that Willis Harman was a mutual friend. Geller had worked with Willis, Hal Putoff, Russell Targ, and the other scientists at SRI during the remote viewing studies from late 1972 until early 1975.

One thing led to another, until Uri offered to demonstrate remote viewing to me. He suggested I take two pages from my writing pad. He asked me to draw the most original and complex design I could imagine on my sheet. Once I completed it, I was to look at it and concentrate on the drawing. He said he would replicate it on the sheet I gave him. He went to the other side of the dining hall and we turned backs to one another as I began to draw. I was completely alone on the opposite side of the large room from him.

I was both interested and amused by the opportunity to experience this small demonstration. I was vaguely aware that Uri was a controversial figure, and there were many who were skeptical of his psychic ability. Yet, based on what Willis had told me, I suspected he would indeed “see” my drawing and reproduce it – a classic “remote viewing” or picture-drawing experiment that Willis had told me about. What I didn’t anticipate was this: once I had finished the picture, he came over and showed his own version to me. It was, of course, the same. I smiled. And then he suggested I pick my page up, put mine and his back-to-back and go over to the nearby floor lamp. He suggested I look “through” the two pages. I did so; and they were precisely the same! There was not a millimeter’s difference in the two drawings. That, I told him, was really surprising.

Then, after we talked a while longer, I began asking him about psychokinesis (or “telekinesis” as it’s sometimes called) – the capacity he had demonstrated many times to audiences. I told him I was aware of the experiments involving mental interaction with random number generators and the fact that elite athletes had spoken about their ability to “see the ball into the receiver’s hands” in American football, or “see the ball into the hole” in golf. We spoke about Bohm and the questions he had raised with me at the outset of our conversation twenty years ago in London about “what is mind, and what is its relationship to matter?”

It was getting late. As we were walking toward the door, we passed by a table where a few young people were still sitting. He said, “Come here – I’ll show you something.” He picked up a large spoon off the table, held it in the palm of his hand, and stared intently at it. Within seconds, the spoon started to bend, curling up into a “U.” As this started to happen, he put the spoon in the palm of my hand. The spoon continued to curl up in my hand, palm up. The “bottom of the U” where the spoon was bending was very warm to the touch – almost hot. He smiled and gave me the spoon to keep. He said he hoped we could stay in touch in the future; we exchanged contact coordinates and said goodbye. I have that spoon in my library today.