Remote Viewing: an easy way to experience magic

After the last article, I've gotten some feedback. The easiest way to summarize it would be to paraphrase it as something like this:

It's all well and good to talk about a fancy book with a controlled experiment showing 'correlation', but how can this 'magic' apply in the real world?

Let me tell you a story about the first time I tried out these techniques on my own.

Last year, I took trip to Penang, Malaysia to meet up with a Kung Fu brother of mine. The main objective of the trip for me was to learn a few weapon-based sets our school was studying. My Shaolin brother had been practicing the Flowing Water Staff and Plum Flower Sabre for some time and was comfortable running me through the essence of each set. So in the relatively cool evenings, we worked on these sets on the grounds of the Xin Jun Temple.

Learning basic patterns from the Flowing Water Staff set.

To avoid the intense heat of the sultry days we stuck to cooler, shaded places. We visited local tea shops to taste Chinese white teas (白茶 - bái chá) and black/red teas (红茶 - hong cha) for possible Western wholesale. We conferred with local healers to discuss their various Eastern practices of spiritual, karmic and chi-based therapies. We hunted down ingredients for a traditional Kung Fu healing elixir from local apothecaries.

My favorite place we visited was the koon our Sifu first began to study Kung Fu as a child. This ancient gym held so many mysteries, housing a century old alter to Guan Yu, a hall of ancestors filled with alters, a massive collection of training weapons and tools. Yet I think it's best feature was a wooden plank practice floor that had been smoothed by decades of sparing. Every step filled the hall with rickety BANGS, as we practiced on our teachers sanctified ground.

Just some of the traditional practice weapons at the koon.

It should go without saying that with all we were doing, I was pretty happy to chill at our hotel. My Shaolin brother met with a local Chi Kung healer and found a cool recliner in the hotel's lounge. First thing I did was check in with my wife via text. Then while awaiting her reply, I pulled out my copy of Russel Targ's Limiteless MIND and picked up reading where I'd left off. Coincidentally, I was on Chapter 5, which covered the use of Remove Viewing for medical diagnosis. With my friend going through an energy-based healing session, I ravenously ate the chapter up. The proceeding Chapter 6 discussed Remote Healing, where prayer, visualization and intention were scientifically demonstrated to improve health outcomes. This stuff seemed amazing and I was anxious to hear from my buddy after his one-on-one private session.

Russel Targ's Limiteless MIND

After some time, my wife did reply. I told her what we were up to and how cool this stuff seemed. At home, we had tried practicing a bit of Remote Viewing. We had adapted Targ and Radin's Remote Viewing protocols into a game. We had practiced with small objects around the house and locations we visited around town. She was a natural!

Still, we had never really tried it from a large distance. I was now in a completely different country, surrounded by entirely new items. So with the break, I gave her a bit of a psychic challenge. I would take some random object from within my hotel room, and place it in my hotel's shower. I told her that I could guarantee that she had never seen the object. Honestly, I didn't t even know what the item was when I placed it on the floor of the shower. Very quickly, she told me she had it.

Screenshot of our remote viewing conversations.

The description was almost useless, as they tend to be. So, I asked her to draw it and send me a photograph of what she drew. She next sent me the following image:

Hand drawn image from Remote Viewing experience.

She followed up by saying the item reminded her of a bacteria. Of course, I had not placed such a 'bacteria' in the shower. This poor description was an artifact of the Remote Viewing process. Both Targ and Radin explained that many might sense and accuratly describe or draw an object at a distance. Yet these same people would miss wildly when they provided specific titles or names for the objects. This case was no exception, as indeed I had placed a broad, flattish, light-colored, near-monochrome object in the shower.

The object placed in the Penang shower - a ceramic, stool.

Yet the accuracy of the description is far exceeded by the image provided. As usual with Remote Viewing, notice how the intuitively drawn shape illustrates the basic essence of the object: the cylindrical shape, the various circles (holes) throughout, and the appearance of lines crossing about its monochrome surface. As is the case with remote viewing, the image is not precise. The "lines" are actually branches, and they do not come out of the cylinder. However, the image I received was so characteristic and telling that we were both instantly stunned.

We later continued experimenting with Remote Viewing. We found we could both do it to varying degrees, although she seemed a bit better at it. We could see items across distances or even days. Meanwhile, she seemed better at feeling and describing the textures or drawing them instantly, while I was better at assembling composite images that together described the items.

We even attempted to make practical use of these skills. We tried to use Remote Viewing to win at horse races or chose the winning lottery ticket. These attempts were of varying success, and those stories are for another day. This was my first attempt to have someone other than myself both explore and confirm magical findings.

Have you had personal experiences with the miraculous? Are you curious to learn and practice remote viewing?

What can we say about 'Real Magic'?

Is there an unbiased way to examine the legitimacy of the miraculous? When examining claims of magic, it would be wonderful to begin on neutral ground; to explore an argument where evidence for and against are measured impartially. This is exactly what best selling author Dean Radin, PhD attempts to do in his 2018 book, REAL MAGIC: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and the Guide to the Secret Power of the Universe.

I love the cover for REAL MAGIC, by Dean Radin.

To begin with, we must first evaluate the efficacy of any argument for such a controversial topic. After all, the science of psychology has shown that folks tend to measure the world by their own experiences (recency bias), to look for and trust information that corroborates their beliefs (confirmation bias), and to generally react from uncomfortable emotions when faced with conflicting facts (cognitive dissonance). Meanwhile, even the hard science of physics has fallen victim to perspective dependence. Consider the how the famous double-slit experiment within quantum physics demonstrates the influence an observer can make on an experiment. Would not the measurement and repeatability of meta-physics fall victim to similar difficulties? In fact, Radin makes this exact argument. 

We only see what we want to see; we only hear what we want to hear. Our belief system is just like a mirror that only shows us what we believe. - Radin, REAL MAGIC, Ch. 6, p. 122.

How is evidence provided for this statement? As it's done throughout the book, Radin walks through a meta analysis of scientific research and historical documents. In Chapter 6 of this book, Radin investigates the greater Scientific Evidence for magic. One remarkable essay explores The Role of Belief in the scientific research of magic. This particular idea is examined by introducing a study conducted in the 1940s by Gertrude Schmeidler at City College of New York. This Sheep and Goats experiment had a hypothesis that people who don't believe in magic subconsciously avoid magical experiences because they don't want to experience them. Contrariwise, those who do believe in magic and want to see it, find it. To test this hypothesis, study participants were given a questionnaire covering their beliefs on magic. They were subsequently classified into 'sheep' (i.e. believers) or 'goats' (i.e. skeptics). Each participant then took part in the same psi test, testing their own inherent magical abilities. Schmeidler found that believers, sheep, tended to score above chance in magical experiences, while skeptics, goats, scored below chance. Radin then provides other examples of how this study was replicated and conclusions verified. 

In this way, REAL MAGIC spends about one third of its pages (77 of 222 article-style) reviewing some three thousand laboratory experiments and scientific studies that provide convincing evidence for magic. Within the scientific community, magical principles are not labeled as such. Psychic phenomena are abbreviated with the term psi (pronounced "sigh") and are studied within the scientific discipline of parapsychology. This subset of psychology has a long research history, requires scientific repeatability and non-bias, and shows high levels of statistical significance. REAL MAGIC introduces this field with summaries of over one hundred referenced studies. These studies of psi experiences include telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis. Explanations of how psi has been studied fall into six classes of experiments:

• Telepathy - Where knowledge, emotions and/or images are shared between the minds of isolated people, which has been measured with a protocol called the ganzfield.
• Remote Viewing - Otherwise referred to as clairvoyance or precognition, this protocol tests an individual's ability to perceive information beyond space and time.
• Presentiment - The measurement of unconscious psychological reactions to future or distant events.
• Implicit Precognition - Testing how future events influence present-time behavior.
• Random Number Generators (RNG) - Testing how personal will can influence the outcome of future, random events generated by truly random, electron tunneling in electronic circuit components.
• Global Shared Consciousness - A world-wide RNG study establishing global baselines and exploring how mass affecting events influence RNG outcomes.

For anyone looking for scientific evidence of magic, this chapter is a must read. Still, REAL MAGIC does not merely focus on being a review of scientific literature. It goes into magic's ancient history, recent practice, and modern theories. REAL MAGIC provides deep diving chapters on popular opinions of magic, the historical origins of magic, the practice of magic, the scientific theories for the causes of magic, and the biographies of three historically recent practitioners. For each topic, Radin uses a meta-approach and provides interesting stories, pointed questions, and detailed references. While it's clear the author has a firm belief, Radin attempts to answer each side of any argument to the best ability. Radin's scientific shines strongest and comes through in the explanation of research and balanced arguments. If you're looking to further explore scientific studies of magic, consider Radin's 2006 book, Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality. 

I just had to read Entangled Minds after REAL MAGIC.

Finishing REAL MAGIC was an easy thing to do, and I devoured the book. What struck me most is how instead of trying to explain the origins and source of these effects, the book simply describes evidence and asks the reader to seek further truth. While many have personally felt magic in their lives, there seems a pressure to do one of two things. We are either to write it off, as the trick of fraudsters and the foolishness of the superstitious. Otherwise, we are to ascribe it to some cosmic being, religion or dark entity. But is that not how scientific exploration works. We do not need to understand the why something is to measure how it behaves. Meanwhile, to ignore the evidence leaves us to cling to a comfortable ignorance.

What are your thoughts on the scientific study of magic? What are your personal experiences with the miraculous? Could there ever be sufficient evidence to sway skeptics?