SRI - the modern beginning...

In the early 70's reports started filtering out from the former USSR that psychic research was being taken seriously. This coupled with the released of the book 'Psychic discoveries from behind the iron curtain' caused the intelligence community to look into psychic research or fall behind.

SRI (Stanford Research Institute) was tasked with the research and asked to come up with a repeatable, reliable methods of psychic techniques.

For almost a decade the remote viewing experiments of Targ & Puthoff continued at SRI. The team expanded remote viewing attempts over vast distances.

One subject a photographer by the name of Hella Hammid, was judged to have described correctly five out of nine target sites, a feat that beat odds of 500,000 to 1.

Targ & Puthoff with SRI in the background - circa 1970's

Ingo Swann, an artist, author and well known psychic, after reading a paper of theirs about quantum physics being a possible explanation for extra-sensory perception in 1972, offered to be tested by Puthoff and Targ at SRI, .

During the earliest testing at SRI, Swann was accurately able to describe the features of a uniquely-designed magnetometer buried six feet in concrete beneath the floor. He also affected the output signal of the magnetometer on a strip chart recorder.

Ingo soon became bored with the scientific repetition of experiments and suggested that he could travel psychically to anywhere on the planet. After an initial reaction this was tried, and proved to be successful.

"Project Scannate", remote viewing by coordinates was born.

Swann and other viewers, including Pat Price, were provided with latitude and longitude, and they attempted to view the geographical location at those coordinates. Ingo Swann and Pat Price proved to be remarkably accurate at this technique.

Further rigorous testing of Swann, Price, photographer Hella Hamid, and others at SRI convinced Targ and Puthoff that remote viewing was not just an ability to be enjoyed by certain psychics but that anybody could do it.

One of the best Remote viewing sessions & feedback in the public domain is the Ingo Swann Remote Viewing of planet Jupiter. This was done at SRI in 1973. Read it here.

In 1977, Targ and Puthoff published the results of their remote viewing experiments in the book 'Mind-Reach' in which they evaluated the ways in which remote viewing could be put to practical use, they listed:

(a) Survival value — many spontaneous OBE's occur at the time of a serious accident, injury or during surgery. "It is in primarily life-threatening situations that exceptional spontaneous functioning seems to occur" they say;

(b) Executive ESP — use of remote viewing and other anomalous abilities in the business world;

(c) Futuristic predictions;

(d) Medical diagnosis; and

(e) Space exploration.

The results impressed the intelligence agencies namely the CIA, who were funding the research.

But not all was well at SRI. Ingo Swann & Pat price allegedly did not get on well and the psychic contest that raged between them often felt like it would explode outside of SRI itself. In August of 1973 Ingo's contract ended and he left SRI.

Late in 1974, as Pat price left SRI to work for the CIA directly, Ingo returned and was tasked with producing a methodology for remote viewing that was teachable and offered repeatable results.

Links:
Before Modern Remote Viewing
SRI (Stanford Research Institute) - The beginning...
Military Use & Development of Rv