THE PHYSICS BEHIND REMOTE VIEWING

THE PHYSICS BEHIND REMOTE VIEWING

We live in a complex present, a permanent now in which everything that can happen does and it all happens at once. Past, present, future and possible events are all around us, and they are just as real as the events we happen to notice and remember.

Every interaction between one real thing and another is mutual in that the interaction changes both observer and observed, both actor and what is acted upon.

For our purposes a real thing is defined as something for which there exists a collection of past, present, future and possible interactions with other objects.

In ordinary reality, which is merely a set of beliefs about reality, only one thing happens at a time, the past never changes and no one can see the future. To enter a room you must use the door, and remote viewing, of course, is impossible.

Fortunately, these beliefs do not describe the real world. I recommend that you take time to read the scientific literature about remote viewing, beginning with the seminal IEEE article by Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ. Dean Radin’s work in meta-analysis probably requires some familiarity with statistics to be fully appreciated, but is well worth reading. The scientific evidence in support of remote viewing and psi in general is as strong as the evidence for any other phenomenon in science.

In our era, passionate beliefs far overshadow the quest for truth. If you, the reader, have the passionate belief that psi does not exist, it is a waste of time for us to argue about it. I don’t feel the need to convince you of anything. If you are curious, though, I encourage you to read on.

Returning to the paradigm, the past, present, future and possible all coincide in the now. Every interaction—we could just as well say “observation”—changes all parties to it because their possible states impinge on each other. The collection of possible states (yours, mine, my cat’s, everything) continually evolves.

Among other consequences, this means that the past is not fixed. Your memory of what took place in the past may not agree with other people’s recollections, and places you revisit may not look quite the same.

This line of reasoning suggests that physical constants can also change. I am confident that they do.

As children we learn to discriminate the possible states using various criteria. We learn that a certain collection of states is called objective reality. In this collection gravity works and we receive only sense data derived from the immediate environment. We arrange everything that ever happened to us on a timeline because linear time is one of the rules of ordinary reality.

Linear time is not one of the laws of the universe because there is no ultimate clock to keep track of it. There never can be, because the collection of possible states is always changing. There is no single standard against which the passage of time can be measured.

Children are taught the difference between the past and the future. They need to be taught because the possible states are different in content but not in kind.

When we remember a past event, we fish it out of the collection of possible states. “When we lived in Birmingham we had flower wallpaper in the dining room…” The fishing expedition returns a batch of possible states in which this was so.

The collection can be further refined: “…and I fell off the swing in the park.” The imaging capability of the brain returns

a visual image of the incident, which is considered a memory.

Memory is plastic. It is not like a book that we always carry with us. It changes from time to time because reality changes. As the collection of possible states evolves, what may have been a majority state in the collection (and therefore easy to pay attention to) can be reduced to minority status. The world may come to remember things differently than you do, but this does not mean that you are wrong. We can each remember in detail something that could have happened to us but in ordinary reckoning did not.

(Remember, ordinary reckoning includes the requirement that only one thing can happen at a time. That is not the way the universe really works.)

From this standpoint memory is simply the ability to focus attention on a selected possible state and form an image of it.

If that is true, why don’t people remember the future? The answer is that they do. There are many recorded instances in which people have had vivid memories of a future event. You may be able to think of a few in your own life.

Now what if you wished to focus attention on a very special group of possible states: if I were in the Oval Office at a certain time, what would I have seen and heard? If I were able to move about freely in the planet Jupiter, what would I have perceived?

If there are possible states referenced by the question, and if you know how to pay attention to them and create the image, you will have your answer.

We all use remote viewing—the ability to pay attention to future and possible states—every day. When we have a collection of errands to do, we reflect briefly upon the order in which we will do them. After a pause the inner person produces a decision.

Where does this decision come from? I suggest that it comes from a survey of the possible states. This may be the source, or a source, of what we call intuition.

A good remote viewer can produce a report that is as accurate as he or she could have given from being at the scene.

Essentially, the question the viewer is asking the universe/collection of possible states is “what would I have perceived if I had been there?’

If the viewer is present in some sense, which is what I have argued, why don’t people perceive him or her?

In fact they sometimes do. The immediate reflex of most people is to reject the perception. “This person did not come in by the door, and is floating in the air: it is only a figment of my imagination.” And they spontaneously forget what they saw.

One of my students learned to move his perception about. He floated down University Avenue in Berkeley enjoying the novelty of not having to cart his physical body along. Suddenly a ragged street person spotted him and pointed at him, shouting “Ya think nobody can see ya but I can, I can see ya!”

The student was startled and snapped right back into his physical body. His attention defaulted to the collection of states we identify as ordinary reality.

That collection has no special virtue. It is simply the collection of states we have been taught to place attention upon.

All of the possible states are real. That is why we are able to image them.

If possible and future states are all around us in the now, why don’t we see them? The answer is that we do. Many people spontaneously have images or intuitions about the future, or about distant events that they cannot possibly know about in any ordinary way.

Remote viewing is a way of accessing the possible states. When you view a distant location you are using the same capabilities you use to see across the room. You are simply paying attention to a different collection of possible states.

Your participation in events at that distant location can be as powerful as you wish it to be, given that you have developed enough skill.

Note that what happens in a location you are viewing can affect you. Its possible states will impinge on you, and vice versa. It is worth taking time to acquire some skill in managing your own possible states so that you can avoid (ahem) unfortunate occurrences.