Saturday, June 16, 2012

Remote viewing conference held in Nevada

By Steve Hammons

The potential of human consciousness is the focus of the annual conference of the International Remote Viewing Association (IRVA) being held this weekend in Henderson, Nevada, at the Green Valley Ranch Resort, Friday, June 15 through Sunday, June 17.

Speakers, workshops and even a psychic or psychokinesis “spoon-bending party” (kids welcome!) will be part of the conference activities. As usual, the line-up of speakers is impressive.

The keynote speaker this year is Christopher “Kit” Green, M.D., Ph.D. Green has a significant background in scientific activities within the U.S. defense community. His keynote presentation is titled Separation Anxiety: A view from the inside of the two scientific worlds of remote viewing."

Bill Ray will be the master of ceremonies. Ray was an intelligence officer during his decades of service with the Army.

The IRVA conference website (http://www.irvaconference.org) notes that, “This year we will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of remote viewing, commemorating the day in June 1972 when Hal Puthoff and Ingo Swann executed their remote viewing magneto-meter experiment at the Stanford Research Institute.”

SPEAKERS HAVE IMPRESSIVE BACKGROUNDS

Each year the conference lines up impressive speakers with rich backgrounds related to remote viewing.

According to the conference website, “The speakers at the 2012 International Remote Viewing conference will discuss remote viewing, alternative training, research, the future of remote viewing, and the past.

This year some of the speakers include the following:

Skip Atwater – an Army lieutenant back in the 1970s when the Army began the counter-intelligence research based on Soviet activities in psychic warfare and spying (reportedly including trying to affect the minds of U.S. leaders).

Paul Smith, Ph.D. – former Army major recruited into U.S. remote viewing program. Smith wrote the book “Reading the Enemy's Mind" about Project STAR GATE remote viewing activities.

Russel Targ, Ph.D. – physicist who joined Hal Puthoff as a lead scientist in the early days of U.S. remote viewing research after Puthoff took on a small CIA contract to do some research about Soviet “psychic spying.” Targ has also written books on these topics.

Jim Channon – retired as an Army lieutenant colonel and headed the Army project known as the "First Earth Battalion” that the movie "Men Who Stare at Goats" touched on in a semi-fictional way.

Lyn Buchannan – a former Army NCO recruited into the Project STAR GATE program. He now has a remote viewing training and consulting firm.

Angela Thompson Smith, Ph.D. – a remote viewer and researcher recently in the news for assisting law enforcement authorities in a murder case.

Several other highly-qualified and fascinating speakers will also make presentations and conduct workshops.

ASSOCIATION EDUCATES PUBLIC

The IRVA describes itself as “a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the responsible use and development of remote viewing. We are an independently formed member organization of scientists, remote viewing professionals, students, and other interested persons.”

The IRVA website (http://www.irva.org/) explains that “remote viewing is a novel perceptual discipline for gaining information not available to the ordinary physical senses.”

“Used extensively by so-called ‘psychic spies’ during the Cold War for classified military projects, it has a long history both as an intelligence gathering tool and as the subject of research and applications in the civilian world,” according to the website.

The organization also points out that, “remote viewing has now taken a long step into the public domain with the formation of a professional association to educate, research, propose standards, test performance, and promote public awareness of this unique human mental capacity.”

From initial formal research in the 1970s to the 1990s when remote viewing was reportedly terminated and also made public, many interesting developments about this type of extrasensory perception (ESP) or “anomalous cognition” have occurred.

Now, in 2012, as more Americans and people around the world learn about the implications of remote viewing, we may find that a significant breakthrough in understanding may occur.

Maybe it will be this weekend at the IRVA conference.