You’re probably familiar with the term remote viewing – essentially, it’s the psi ability to perceive details of a target location in the mind’s eye, without being consciously aware of anything related to the location.

In July 1995, nearly 300 pages of formerly classified information were released regarding the CIA’s research into remote viewing – research which took place in the 1970s and 80s at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA in what was known as the Stargate Project.

Back in 1996, Harold Puthoff, of the Institute of Advanced Studies at Austin, said of the research, “Despite the ambiguities inherent in the type of exploration covered in these programs, the integrated results appear to provide unequivocal evidence of a human capacity to access events remote in space and time, however falteringly, by some cognitive process not yet understood.”

Mainstream science has been poo-pooing the concept of remote viewing ever since, but the evidence that something of use was found still persists. As late as December 2019, Russell Targ, a lead researcher in the early days of the project, asserted in the Journal of Scientific Exploration that “in our laboratory experiments and classified operational tasks, psi was found to be surprisingly reliable and useful.”

As fascinating as the scientific debate is, the overall concept of remote viewing is a useful tool for developing your own psi abilities. Even if you are not a firm believer in psi, you may surprise yourself if you put it to the test.

Here’s an easy way to get started with remote viewing, for the curious (it’s also a good way to pass a rainy afternoon in lockdown!):

Choose Your Remote Viewing Setup: Single or Duo

However you choose to experiment, you will need the help of a willing friend or family member to source and choose the images you will try to view.

Once the images have been chosen, though, you can choose whether you want to experiment on your own, viewing images in envelopes your helper has prepared, or whether you want to work with someone else who actively looks at and ‘transmits’ the images to you in real time.

It’s entirely up to you. Why not try both on different occasions, and investigate whether this has any impact on your results?

Choosing the Images to View

Ask your helper to select ten images if you want a roughly 90-minute session, or 5 images if you have less time.

The images can be real photographs, printed online images, or images cut from magazines or newspapers.

Images can be of outdoor natural scenes or of the exterior of manmade buildings or landscapes. (Later, you can try to work with indoor images or indeed single objects, but most people find it easier to start with outdoors to begin with).

Suitable images for beginners will include a single clear focal point – for example a single building or a single animal or a tightly focused natural scene such as a waterfall. Try to avoid images with no obvious focal point, such as a wide shot of a relatively featureless meadow. Images can have people or secondary buildings or further animals in them, but it’s best if there’s no debate over what the main focal point is.

Great images for beginners will also contain clear details, such as a pattern on a building, distinctive shapes, bold colours or great variation in scale (such as one very large building surrounded by small cars, or one animal in the foreground with others appearing much smaller in the background).

Images should be cut out and stuck onto or printed onto a single sheet of paper, with nothing else on the paper.

If you are going to view the images in envelopes, ask your helper to fold each one neatly and put it into a sealed, dark coloured envelope that you have no possibility of seeing through. If you are going to work with your transmitter (which can be but doesn’t have to be the same person who chose the images) then the images should be stacked faced down next to the transmitter, for use one at a time.

Beginning the Viewing Process

If you are working alone, have your helper leave the envelopes on your desk stacked in a random order.

If you are working with a transmitter, have your transmitter seated in a separate room to you, within earshot but not within sight.

Sit down comfortably with a notepad and paper and clear your mind. Some people like to have a candle lit so that they can stare into the flame, or a bowl of water to look at; others work with closed eyes (until the sketching stage) or simply stare blankly ahead – whatever feels right for you.

Pick up the first envelope and place it in front of you. Do not otherwise handle it. If you are working with a transmitter, call out “begin” to your transmitter. Your transmitter should then turn over the first image and focus on it. They can allow their eyes to wander at will, noticing whatever they wish about the image. They’re also free to allow memories or thoughts connected to the image to come to them – they don’t have to relentlessly zero in on the details of the picture, but they should try to keep looking at it and keep their eyes moving over it. They must not speak.

Take a deep breath.

What is your immediate first impression of the target? Go for the bigger picture here – you’re just after knowing whether it’s a natural scene or a manmade one. Do you feel that it’s an animal, a building or an outdoor object? Is there a main colour or shape?

Do not second guess yourself. Your first impression is the one to run with.

Take another deep breath.

Holding on to your original first impression, try to let your mind go deeper. Imagine that you are standing directly in front of the target scene. What do you see straight ahead of you? What do you see to your left, and to your right?

Write notes immediately on your first impressions – just words if necessary, noting shapes, colours or anything else very obvious to you.

The Senses Stage

Take another deep breath.

Now pay attention to your non-visual senses. Can you smell anything? What can you hear? Traffic? Machinery? Birdsong? Water? Kids laughing?

How does the image make you feel? Do you feel happy, sad, anxious, fearful? Do you think it’s a positive place, a place you’d like to be, or a negative or frightening place?

Write down these impressions too, and again, do not second guess.

The Descriptive Phase

Look at your notes so far, and flick back and forth between your notes and the image in your mind.

Expand on your notes to make the more descriptive. You may have written ‘car’ – can you add to that now to write ‘red car’ or ‘car travelling on a busy street, pointing to the left of the paper’ or ‘car parked outside a building in front of railings’?

If you’ve written ‘tree’, can you sense what type of tree? Is it huge or small compared to the rest of the scene? Young or old? What season is it according to the tree’s leaves, or is it evergreen?

The Sketching Phase

Take one last deep breath.

Start to sketch the scene you have in your mind. First, sketch it as you believe the image appears on the paper, ie try to copy the image as best you can. You don’t have to be an artist – if there are rocks on the left-hand side of the image, you can just roughly sketch ovals or circles and label them rocks. The idea is to get a sketch plan of what is in the image as you or your transmitter would see it on the paper.

Now try to take your mind up high, as if you are looking at scene from a tall building, a plane or a drone. Try to do another sketch, a bird’s eye view sketch. This time, you’ll be locating everything in the scene in its relevant place, for example showing whether there are trees to the left or right of the building, how many of them and roughly how far away.

Finally, try to make a third sketch just of some details in the scene – the brickwork patterns, or curves or rectangular shapes which you can see but you can’t make out what exactly they are. If you can sense a spiral in the image, sketch a spiral and note that you’re not sure what it is.

The Feedback Stage

If you’re working with a transmitter, call out ‘stop’ and have your transmitter put the image face down in a new pile next to them. Put your own notes face down in a pile next to you too, so that there is no confusion over which notes go with which image. When you are ready, call out ‘begin’ and have the transmitter pick up the next image to work with.

Feedback if you’re working with a transmitter will have to wait until you’ve done all of the selected images, but if you’re working alone, feedback should occur image by image.

If you’re working alone, you’re now done for this image. Open the envelope now, before you move onto the next image, and compare it to your notes. Then, when you’re ready, put the image and your notes to one side, and begin the next image.

Whether you’re working alone or with a transmitter, don’t beat yourself up if you have not replicated the exact image in every detail (it’s a virtual certainty that you haven’t!) – but look for links in what you have written or drawn when compared to the image. If you drew a mass of red balloons, but the image is a flowerbed or red tulips, give yourself credit for getting numerous objects, red and approximately the right shape. If you drew a waterfall but the image is a beach scene, give yourself credit for have successfully sensed moving water.

Remember, this is a skill which you can improve with practice. You may not be working for the CIA and putting this skill to any practical use, but it’s still valuable as an exercise in developing your psi abilities and your intuition, and in demonstrating to yourself that some things really are more possible than you think!