PLACING REMOTE VIEWING INTO LARGER CONTEXT IN ORDER TO COMPREHEND WHAT IT IS

Introduction

Beyond situational and anecdotal materials, remote viewing is accompanied by substantive and technical matters that pertain to why and how remote viewing exists, and "works." The substantive and technical matters have been compiled through the years, and in some instances are the joint product of myself and Dr. H. E. Puthoff, working as a team to compare concepts and ideas and then test them. We often benefited from consultation with a large number of scientists, psychologists and other specialists.

I offer the following substantive categories for consideration...

1. Remote viewing and its conceptual nomenclature problems

2. Remote viewing as one of the Sidhis

These substantive and technical matters have not been made public during the twenty years remote viewing was considered a developmental asset to the intelligence community.

However, now that the CIA is occupying itself with minimalizing and disowning remote viewing, there is no longer any reason to keep the substantive and technical matters from public view. In any event, all substantive and technical matters have always remained unclassified and proprietary to me as stated in my working contracts as a consultant with Stanford Research Institute and the Psychoenergetics Project established there by Dr. Puthoff.

What remote viewing consists of is a fairly complex matter that is not easily reduced to simplistic or familiar stereotype concepts. Very few have inspected the long history of remote viewing among our species. Very few have seen or studied highquality examples of it.

A literature devoted exclusively to remote viewing does not exist, except in some piecemeal ways. Most people, including proponents and antagonists, will consider remote viewing from within what they already know or more precisely put, within the limits of what they already know.

If it is considered that the knowledge each individual has basically consists of frames of reference, then the question does arise regarding what those frames do or do not consist of. In individuals, frames of reference may either be adequate or inadequate, precise or imprecise, present or missing. Since no adequate frames of reference regarding remote viewing have ever been constructed, individuals who chance to encounter some aspect of remote viewing naturally will attempt to process its meaning through their existing frames of reference.

In this regard, it is fair and even just to mention that most people believe the frames of reference they do possess are sufficient to process any information they encounter no matter how unfamiliar or even alien that information might be to them.

But it would be obvious that unfamiliar information processed through inadequate frames of reference (inadequate information grids) results in, well, to put it simply, results in a mess or a quagmire of confused information and strange opinions. The basic purpose of these miniessays is to contribute to the construction of a proper frame of reference regarding remote viewing a frame of reference that does not exist as of this writing. Unfortunately, this proper frame of reference cannot be constructed within the present limits of the kinds and categories of knowledge typical of the modern West. The construction will require novel and unfamiliar analogies and metaphors.

I will present the necessary information in step bystep ways, and will attempt to be as clear and concise as possible. But I will not be participating in reductionism back into frames of reference that are not adequate in the first place. I will sometimes say the same thing in different ways so as to try to accommodate a wider scope of integration of the new information. But in essence I will be painting a new picture a larger new picture which will not become completely visible until it is finished.

The elements of this new picture cannot be reduced back into existing frames of reference, back into existing "realities" because if this were possible, then the necessary picture would already exist. It does not exist. But the basic rudiments of it will exist by the end of these small essays.

You may, therefore, wish to read these essays more than once. For, even by the second reading the general outlines of the picture will have become more intelligible, and its separate element more fitting. As it stands as of this writing, the bigger picture of remote viewing is not intelligible even to many of those who accept its existence.

THE FIRST CENTRAL ISSUE

There is one central issue that must be considered ahead of remote viewing, and which is a subsidiary topic to the central issue.This is whether our species possesses what, for lack of a better concept, might be called superpowers of mind of which remote viewing would be one.Without an answer in the positive to this central question, then remote viewing will never either make sense or find a fitted place within the overall image of our species.

It is generally accepted that our species possesses powers of mind. But it is also understood that how these are identified and treated, depends on social criteria and values, and then upon individual frames of reference based on those criteria and values.

Social criteria and values also tend to establish the contours of behavioral norms, while the same criteria and values also have something to do with which formats of knowledge are accepted, or rejected.Individuals wishing to fit into the social criteria and values are more or less required to adapt to the accepted frames of reference and disadapt from the rejected ones.If this discretionary process is successful enough, then the individual is accepted as fitted into the contours of the behavioral norms, and especially into the frames of reference that characterize their peer groupings.

The distinction in the West between socalled normal powers of mind and superpowers of mind is largely a sociological artifact arising out of the dominant frames of reference of the Modern Age which began in the mid1800s, but which is thought to be majorly representative of the Twentieth Century.

As has been stated in many other sources, the modernist frames of reference were derived from the philosophy of scientific materialism. Within the auspices of that philosophy, those human powers of mind that seemed to disobey the laws of matter were shaved off the central frames and relegated to the "impossible." Thus arose the double notion of normal powers of mind, and that category of mind powers that were dubbed "paranormal" and excluded from the mainline frames of reference. Most premodern societies did not make this twofold distinction and otherwise saw the superpowers as extensions of the usual ones.

As many postmodern researchers have realized, this distinction worked to prevent the fuller spectrum of human powers of mind from being adequately mapped.And it is increasingly being accepted that critics and skeptics of the superpowers are utilizing outdated and limited frames of reference.This growing realization has spawned the effort to map the fuller spectrum of human powers of mind. This effort has become revitalized as will be discussed in the last essay of this series.In any event, each reader of these essays will have to decide whether or not our species possesses superpowers of mind. This is "the" central issue.

THE SECOND CENTRAL ISSUE

The second central issue is more easily (and clearly) stated. There is nothing wrong with attempting to research our species' superpowers of mind any more than there is anything wrong with attempting to research anything. Indeed, while the Twentieth Century failed in so many other things, it succeeded in establishing one glory organized research. Research can easily be seen as one of the hallmarks of the human mind in all its aspects.

Research of the superpowers, if permitted and pursued, will answer many things pro or con. And such research will surely remodel the earlier inadequate frames of reference even those of parapsychology already known to be inadequate. Condemnation of the superpowers before the facts of researching them constitutes one of the failures of the Twentieth Century.

Unless one is of the opinion that we already know all there is to know about the powers of the mind, then the Modern Age exclusion of the superpowers from research doubtlessly will be rectified by exploring and researching them. Such research of the superpowers though, cannot take place based on earlier inadequate frames of reference that excluded such research. For one thing, those frames prevent the right questions from being discovered.

One of the most correct questions is whether our species does indeed possess superpowers of mind. Now, all this having been said, we'll begin diving into the intricacies of what follows.

Remote Viewing and Its Larger Picture

In our present modernist culture, remote viewing is considered an "inexplicable phenomenon," rather than as evidence of one of the human superpowers of mind. All things take on greater luminosity and comprehension when they are considered within the larger contexts in which they are embedded. If something is isolated or alienated from those larger contexts, then fuller comprehension of its substance and meaning is denied it.

Remote viewing is no exception. It is a phenomenology of mind that bears extensive relationship to a number of larger contexts. But it has been dis embedded from the larger contexts applicable to it.

Thus remote viewing seems a singular thing... something really far out on the fringes where it has no apparent relationship to anything else. It especially seems alien to most frames of reference (mindsets) and modern philosophies characteristic of the Twentieth Century. And so it is within the limitations of those mindsets and philosophies that the existence and possibilities of remote viewing are challenged and sometimes mocked.

Yet, however one might choose to consider remote viewing, it is nonetheless one of the human superpowers of mind... and this is the first and the greatest context within which it should be considered. Perhaps the only context.

Under other names, remote viewing and other superpowers of mind have been noted from time immemorial, while elements of it have manifested in most premodern cultures. And since this has continuously been so, remote viewing is a species thing, as it were a power inherent in our species.

This clearly implies that all born humans are carriers of the superpowers and their potentials in much the same way that all born humans are carriers of the human gene pool. Since this is so, it would be expected that elements of the superpowers will manifest in given individuals down through the generations.

What different societies and mindsets do with, or about the human superpowers of mind, is a separate issue. There should be no conflict regarding the existence of the human superpowers of mind. But there can be conflict regarding how they are culturally and socially treated. This treatment has ranged from supportive tolerance to destructive intolerance, and even down to woeful persecution of the most obvious carriers of the powers.

STATEMENT OF THREE ESSENTIAL PROBLEMS

PROBLEM 1 Under other nomenclature, remote viewing is one of the human superpowers of biomind whose existence is quite wellnoted in transcultural lore and historical documents of the last 5,000 years. The proper context then, for examining and discussing it, lies within the parameters of all human superpowers of biomind.

This context is very large, and it clearly includes more than just remote viewing. The chief problem here is that the larger parameters have never been identified very well and so, important elements of the bigger picture are lacking. This lack leaves the larger contexts untreated, and so many are unaware of them and naturally seek to reduce ideas of remote viewing into their personal realities and educational backgrounds.

PROBLEM 2 It might be thought that Problem 1 can easily be remedied by submitting it to discussion and examination. As it happens, though, English and the Romance languages don't contain nomenclature either sufficient or precise enough to do so.

Nomenclature is largely derived from concepts, but in the case of Problem 1, the relevant concepts have never really been identified. For example, "telepathy" and "intuition" are both elements of human superpowers of mind. But some thirty types of telepathy can be listed, and about two dozen regarding intuition. Yet we persist, in English, in utilizing only the two terms.

Precision of concepts is therefore lacking, and this accounts for the missing nomenclature. To paraphrase Dr. Jean Houston, if the only tool you have is a hammer, you will treat everything like a nail. We use only the two terms as hammers to deal with very refined matters which need precision "brain surgery" tools.

PROBLEM 3 The human biomind organism uses information processes to establish not only concepts of reality, but also awareness of human functioning. The processes of awareness of human biomind functioning have not been identified very well, and nomenclature appropriate for what has not been identified has not evolved. And so, not only is conceptual nomenclature missing, but the missing contextual knowledge precludes adequate consideration of the true extent of the biomind's information processes.

It is accepted that we cannot speak intelligently about that which we don't understand, about that which we know nothing about. We don't know very much about the human superpowers. This lack of, or abyss, is an empty gap in our knowledge of the true extent of bio mind functions.

As we will see in the fourth essay ahead, Problem 3 is partially remedied by introducing the concept of "information processing grids." The human biomind can be described as a recombinant analog mechanism capable of assimilating, processing, comparing and recombining enormous amounts of information.

The term "grid" refers to "grating"... an inter networking system. It is technically defined as "a network of uniformlyspaced horizontal and perpendicular lines for locating points of information by means of coordinates." That the human biomind functions in gridlike ways will not be unfamiliar to biocyberneticists or information theorists but will be unfamiliar to those who utilize other models of bio mind functioning.

It can fairly be said that some of the "points of information" refer to concepts and relevant nomenclature utilized by individuals and which are needed to process information and which result in understanding it. However, the absence of certain concepts and nomenclature equates to missing links within the individual's information grids.

This simply means that the individual cannot precisely or adequately process information for which points in their grids are missing. Such information will seem alien to them and probably arouse internal mind "conflicts" within whatever the individual IS utilizing as information processing grids.

The reason for the internal conflicts is obvious. The "new" information cannot properly be fitted into the existing information processing grids. As will be discussed ahead, some individuals may seek to externalize the conflicts, rather than work toward enlarging and extending the capacities of their information processing grids.

Combining the Three Basic Problems

When the three basic problems outlined above are combined, a larger interlocking problem emerges, and which larger problem is the central substance of these miniessays. But the basic meaning of the combined problem is that remote viewing can't be understood by information processing grids not equipped with appropriate and expansive concepts and the nomenclature needed to flesh out those concepts.

The "work" of the following miniessays is to attempt to provide certain cognitive rudiments that allow the construction of information processing grids needed for the comprehension of remote viewing.

It is completely accepted that unless something is understood, then no one can make it work for them. It is also understood that if one is utilizing the wrong models or precedents in order to understand something, then all that emerges is conflict and confusion.

REMOTE VIEWING AND ITS CONCEPTUAL NOMENCLATURE PROBLEMS

Three general problems regarding remote viewing were pointed up in the introductory materials of these essays: (1) remote viewing as a human superpower of mind; (2) lack of adequate concepts and nomenclature by which this superpower can be discussed and comprehended; and (3) lack of appropriate mental information grids needed by the recombinant analog mind to cognitively process the necessary experiential information.

As a term, "remote viewing" emerged in 1971 and was at first quite obscure. It achieved luminosity when the intelligence community took a longterm interest in what it referred to. Since then remote viewing has been thought of in different ways, depending on whose thinking was involved. It is to be understood that different people think of things in different ways. There is no real way to prevent this, and in fact it should not be prevented. For the ability to arrive at different conclusions is very important to the progress and achievements of the human species.

However, what kind of information, and what amount of it, different people utilize to arrive at conclusions is, or should be a matter of concern and interest not only to others but to themselves. It is well known that the use of erroneous or inadequate information results in conclusions of the same kind.

A proper working definition of remote viewing will be presented ahead after certain information points have been established. The proper working definition more or less prevailed in the intelligence community up until about 1988.

Outside of the intelligence community, though, between 1974 and 1988, no consistent definition of remote viewing has prevailed or been subscribed to. At about 1980, the term began being popularly utilized as a descriptor for random affairs which might not be remote viewing. Many have most incorrectly used it as a replacement term for "psychic."

As contrasted to the various popular ideas which might be applied to it, a precise technical definition (or descriptor) for remote viewing does exist. But it is a complicated one in that remote viewing is not a singular thing in itself, but a compounded series of awarenessdynamic processes.

Experience has shown that Englishspeaking people have difficulty in combining two different words with a hyphen in order to approximate a concept for which English has no singular word. German and other languages, however, have this capability, and their speakers are used to stringing words together without hyphens in order to get at some special concept.

Remote viewing must be discussed in its own contexts, not within those hampered by terminological and conceptual inadequacies. To get around those inadequacies it is useful to combine two common English words to produce a combined and new meaning.

"Dynamic" essentially means "active." "Aware" means "having or showing perception, realization, or knowledge." Realization, perception and knowledge are usually considered somewhat passive states. So the term "dynamic" needs to be associated with "awareness" in order to get at the needed active potentials.

Generally speaking, remote viewing is a form of active perception and realization as contrasted to their usual states as passive reception or passive experiencing. If you have trouble conceptualizing dynamicawareness experiencing, just remind yourself of sexual arousal, music participating, or encountering a beautiful thing.

In order to figuratively get at this combined but unfamiliar meaning even better, we will utilize an unusual analogy.

Since about 1990 or earlier, the computer subculture began giving special neo meanings to the term WIRED. Loosely defined, the neo term refers to how the mind awareness of a person is "wired" regarding active states of cognition and subsequent activity based on them.

"Wired" then approximates dynamic awareness as contrasted to being passively aware. It also refers to "nets" or "grids" which consist of interactive "wiring" and "terminals." It also refers to being active ("hot") rather than passive ("unwired"), more or less in the same way as a system becomes active by being electrified or fed energy ("turned on").

In a certain sense, then, dynamicawareness means "being hot wired." An earlier term from the 1950s being "with it" meant approximately the same thing.

In this sense, then, remote viewing is a form of being wired in the neo sense of that word. The younger, computer savvy "hot" generations who utilize it in that context probably will most easily comprehend what remote viewing actually is:

• a special active form of awareness wirework netting;
• or a "being wired" format;
• or being wired into or hooked up into "multiple terminals" or multiple "wired grids;"
• or being wired into different levels or strata of biomind information processes.

As we will see below, mental information grids are forms of wiring that can be "hot," crosswired, or obsolete. One can also be "dead" wired, or wired in closedcircuited ways.

The younger computerwired generations clearly think of the human mind as a computer which itself can be uplinked into other computers and the whole of which becomes a systemic net or grid of informationcarrying processes. The same system can exchange, upload and down load information providing one can work or "hack" the system by having access to pertinent addresses behind which various kinds of information are stored and available. This is actually a technological form of "remote viewing," and is almost an exact metaphor for biomind remote viewing.

The definitions of these neo terms are not the principle issue here. But the concepts behind them are.

Remote viewing is a form of "hacking" the informationbearing terminals of our species bio mind which itself is a very impressive and sophisticated "net." Each born individual is not only a "terminal" in that net, but carries within itself a replica of it. In this sense, then, each born human is a reproduction downloaded from the species biomind net. In this context, each born human in essence is an issuedforth extensionterminal of the larger biomind net. This analogy is clearly compatible with the known fact that each born human is a reproduced, downloaded extension of the species larger genetic pool.

These analogies and metaphors might be somewhat creaky to begin with since we don't usually think of the mind as a biomind, and otherwise tend to think of it as entirely separate, selfcontained and an extension of nothing except its individual self. On the other hand, we do think of our individual genetic bodies as extensions of the genetic pool as carried down and distributed through genetic lineages.

We can get around the creakiness by accepting that when a genetic babe is born physically, the elements of bio mind are also born with it. Not only is the physical bio body born but a mind is also born. The biobody and its mind are inseparable. And so we just as well think in terms of biomind.

Geneticists now can show that about 98.5 per cent of our species genetic elements are identical and universal in everyone and that only about 2.5 per cent account for all differences no matter what they are. It should therefore follow that about the same statistical distribution refers to the biomind born at the same time the body is. In other words, about 98.5 per cent of our biomind endowment is identical and universal in everyone. In other words, all of us are more the same than we are different. That we give overwhelming attention to our perceived differences gives rise to much of the human drama. But beneath and behind that drama other perpetual factors are at work.

If we accept that about 98.5 percent of our bio mind endowment is universal in everyone, it shouldn't take much imagination to envision that this greater endowment constitutes the biomind "hard drive" much in the same way that the 98.5 percent of our genetic makeup provides the physical "hard drive" for all our bodily functions.

And indeed, if we utilize the computermodel as something akin to the computerlike functioning of the biomind we are almost required to introduce the term "hard drive. All "terminals" must have access to a hard drive in order to function at all. The reason for the above discourse is that it can be demonstrated that the basis of remote viewing is found in the biomind's hard drive. All reproduced genetic biomind downloads (i.e. you, me, everyone) possess the hard drive rudiments for remote viewing (and other superpowers of mind as well.) All biomind hard drives are relatively similar. Therefore the basis for remote viewing is universal within each of us and which is the reason elements of remote viewing manifest down through the generations. The only thing that gets in the way of our becoming "wired" into these hard drive rudiments, are installed mental software programs which abort cognitive access to them. This will become more clear ahead.

If credence can be given to any of the above, then it becomes clear why the entire nomenclature of parapsychology and psychical research is inadequate and why the cultural West in general has never evolved terms that are adequate or appropriate.

The worst term of all is "psychic." No stable definition has ever been established for it, and there are great hazards in attempting to utilize a term which has not much in the way of an agreed upon definition. Supporters do assume that it refers to extraordinary, nonnormal (paranormal) activities of mind. But skeptics assume it refers to illusion, derangement and a variety of non normal or abnormal clinical psychopathologies.

As will be discussed ahead, that the concept of "normalcy" should have been used as the central focus for modern mind research, is one of the greatest flaws of the Twentieth Century.

But here it can be stated that what is perceived as "normal" anywhere or at any given time is completely and only relative to social circumstances. And our history shows that social relativity has very little to do with the true extent of our species biomind hard drive capabilities. Social relativity is always a situation regarding software information programs installed into the hard drive. Such software programs come and go at a great rate. The bio mind's hard drive stays mostly the same.

That true extent of the biomind's capabilities will never anywhere be identified from within local normalcy venues. All of these must be transcended in order to get fairly at the species biomind faculties and capabilities.

REMOTE VIEWING AS ONE OF THE SIDHIS

One of the earliest sources which refers to remote viewing faculties is found in the Yoga teachings of ancient India, with echoes of them throughout the Far East.

There are also elements to be found in most early preModern cultures in lower Africa, Egypt, Babylon, Scandinavia, among the Amerindians, among the ancient traditions of the Bushmen of Australia, in early Greece, among Siberian and Persian shamans, and among the Polynesian Islanders, including Hawaii. Elements of remote viewing were also found in early Europe before the Inquisitions of the Middle Ages. And elements of remote viewing again emerged early in the eighteenth through and into the twentieth centuries.

The hypothesis now to be considered is this: if the fundamentals of remote viewing exist within the hard drive of our species' biomind then it is to be expected that elements of it wil manifest. Indeed, such elements have manifested in the past, in the present, and will continue to do so into the indeterminate future. The formats of the manifesting may be different, but the essential nature of what does manifest is the same.

The terms used among these many older cultures are very many. But in English the general concept can be adequately rendered as "distantseeing" a hyphenated term not too difficult to deal with.

We need only combine "dynamicawareness" (of) "distantseeing" to get the general drift of what is meant. For unless distant seeing is expressed via dynamic awareness, then its fundamentals will remain latent and invisible within the hard drive of each human specimen's biomind.

The historical background for the existence of distantseeing is quite extensive. But in large part it has been bowdlerized (or "bleeped") from conventional modern history texts utilized by science and academe. Thus the general public is unaware that distantseeing possesses a vital and substantial history.

In most of the cultures the elements that equate to distantseeing were passed down through the generations by word of mouth not in writing.

The ancient Yoga texts differ in this regard. For there is evidence that the methods for developing distantseeing were in some kind of brief written form perhaps from about 2,000 BC or even earlier. Who the peoples were, though, is in question excepting that they probably were not the Hindus of historical times. Those earlier texts are lost, however, but versions of them were compiled, lost, and compiled anew from about the sixth century BC. In those and later texts, distantseeing is listed among the numerous "Sidhis."

Here is a term that is very difficult to render into English. It won't do to say that a "sidhi" is a psychic power because the modern connotations of "psychic" are neither appropriate nor exact enough.

The ancient Hindu Yoga texts that consider the sidhis are in Sanskrit. This is an extremely elegant language and far surpasses the Western romance languages and English in containing terms having to do with faculties and functions of the mind. It often takes a long English paragraph to give approximate English definition to a single Sanskrit term.

Furthermore, most past efforts to translate into English the Sanskrit Yoga texts range from incompetent, to awful, to useless. This is probably not the direct fault of the translators, but due to lack of frames of reference in the English language. But two additional problems are that contemporary Sanskrit speakers no longer comprehend what the sidhis are except in a general way. English translators themselves have no real idea. So the English translators select what appears to be the nearest English equivalent. The "sidhis" thus are equated to psychic powers. But there is a problem here, too, in that the term "psychic" has never achieved a good or stable definition in English. It has been important to the substantive and technical concepts of remote viewing to reconstruct what may originally have been meant by "sidhis," especially the one having to do with distantseeing. Such a reconstruction is summarized below.

I accept that the reconstruction may be argumentative for a number of reasons one of which is that scholars tend to be an argumentative lot to begin with. Whatever the sidhis were in the distant past, they have since taken on legendary status. Scholars therefore deal with them as legendary and not as direct participants in the dynamicawareness phenomena involved.

In what follows I am not at all saying that "controlled remote viewing" as researched and developed at Stanford Research Institute during the 1970s and early 1980s, is the exact same as the distantseeing sidhi of the Yoga texts. But the working assumption can easily hold that similar mind dynamic fundamentals are involved in both the sidhi format and the contemporary remote viewing format.

Both formats have one distinct attribute in common, however. It is generally accepted among scholars that a sidhi was NOT merely a spontaneous manifestation of a superpower of mind.

This is clear from the fact that such spontaneous manifestations are separately mentioned in the Yoga texts. In other words, the sidhis were not spontaneous forms of psi. The sidhis therefore cannot be equated with the spontaneous and randomly present forms of psi which have been the topics of modern psychical and parapsychological research.

The evidence is very good that the sidhis were controlled and enhanced forms of what we would call psi, whose potentials are universally present throughout our species. In any event, we must distinguish between a potential that can emerge spontaneously or temporarily, and a developed ability that is under cognitive control. And it seems likely that the developers of the sidhis did so as well. It may be that the Yogins saw the potential for the superpowers as an innate manifestation of the biomind hard drive to which I have already referred to in speculation.

But it is quite possible that the ancient Sanskrit speaking people saw the natural and spontaneous presence of superpowers of mind as the basis to build upon and perfect into highly organized functioning. When this building was accomplished, the result was called The Sidhis i.e., the spontaneous superpower was brought into a cognitive and controlled state.

The controlled format of remote viewing emerged from similar considerations. If it were not for this I would probably hesitate to connect controlled remote viewing to the ancient sidhi of distant seeing.

The following might be somewhat difficult to cope with, even though I try to be as clear and succinct as possible.

In the ancient Yoga traditions, the functional basis of the sidhis belonged to the human species and elements of them were to be found in every human. Whether or not the ancient Yogins distinguished between mind and body becomes more uncertain the deeper one goes into the Yoga materials. The strong modern distinction between body and mind as separate and different things appears not to have extensively existed until about 1850.

We can roughly speak of the sidhis as superpowers of mindbody that extend beyond the local limits of the physical senses, but which senses were very numerous in the ancient Yoga frames of reference. So there is a danger here because the Yoga traditions held that the physical senses themselves, were, in fact, very extensive IF they were honed and "perfected."

It is important to establish that the Yoga traditions did not distinguish between physical, mental functioning and superpowers in the way the modern West has done. How they did distinguish these is not clear. But the traditions emphasized unity of the whole rather than breaking it apart into separate functions and which breaking apart would have brought about imbalances within the whole.

In the Yoga traditions, these three categories were not, and should not be separated and divided. All of them were integral parts of the human organism which contained all them interdependently. The modern concept that has long prevailed held that the biomind human organism possessed only five limited physical senses, and that how much we perceive is constrained within their limits.

The question is now pertinent whether there are more than five physical senses. To save time and space here, I now refer you to "Deciphering the Senses: The Expanding World of Human Perception" by Robert Rivlin and Karen Gravelle (Simon and Schuster, 1984). This book reports on seventeen physical senses identified by bioneurologists during the 1970s. And the book's last chapter considers "ExtraSensory Perception" not particularly as a paranormal or "psychic" thing, but as extensions of the biobody's very many sensory receptors.

The historical evidence is very good that the ancient Yogins taught that the abundantlymorethan five physical senses could, by practice, be so perfected as to achieve many hundreds of highly specialized senses.

The distinction between the perfected manifold physical senses and the superpower sidhis is thus very narrow because a highlydeveloped physical sense might indeed be a sidhi. All highlyskilled martial arts persons will immediately understand what is meant here.

In the ancient Yoga traditions, the sidhis are part and parcel of the whole human organism and its manifold senses that could be honed and perfected. But if we consider that the Yogins taught biomind holism, it then becomes curious why they singled out the sidhis for special discourse.

There are between seven and twenty sidhis depending on which source is consulted, and distant seeing is always one of them. Yet the Sanskrit texts comment on certain clearly pyhsical senses that can be perfected so as to function as "distant senses" such as sensing magnetic directions. This we might think of as a mind superpower but it was not considered a sidhi.

There may be several explanations why the ancient Yogins particularly identified the sidhis from among the many other extended senses. But one explanation is that the sidhis probably would not have been specially commented upon and identified unless there was an essential difference regarding them that needed to be comprehended.

Something now depends on what a "sidhi" is. This is quite complex and opinions have certainly differed through the ages, among scholars, and even among Yoga masters.

To the best of my understanding, a sidhi is not exactly a thing in itself to start with. But, with honing and development, it can later become a thing in itself.

You will need to read through the papers ahead having to do with sensory transducers and mental information grids to more fully comprehend this. After you do so, you can come back to this point better prepared.

In essence, a sidhi is something that needs to be put together within dynamicawareness in order to take on discrete identity. In other words, the basis for distantseeing might exist within our bio mind hard drives and from which source it might function spontaneously some of the time.

However, in such a "natural" state, it functions in the absence of cognitive dynamic awareness. In other words, it functions (when it does) automatically while the experiencer usually does not cognitively know when, how, or why it does.

In this sense, it can be said that the hard drive superpower is functioning automatically, but that cognitive control of it is absent. Or we can say that the potential is spontaneously manifesting, but that the organized ability to call it up and sustain it under direct control of cognitive will has not been developed.

It seems that the "direct control of cognitive will" was what the ancient Yogins may have meant in reference to the "sidhis." If this is the case, then a "sidhi" is different from all our other extensive physical senses all of which come equipped with physical receptors born with the human biobody and which are fully encoded in our human genetic pool.

My understanding, which was proven at least somewhat correct in the case of remote viewing, is that a sidhi results from a very highly specialized organization of powers of mind/body. This organization includes extensive and direct awareness of biological and mental functioning, including knowledge of what Freud and others called the subconscious and the supraconsciousness.

To the Yogins, a human person was born with a bio mind that possessed potentials. But it was born in a raw state, and was a disorganized mind until it could become properly organized. I believe that "properly organized" can be equated quite nicely with "mind software programming" which is defined as "installed information grids."

It is quite clear regarding the sidhis that correct selfaware information grids are being talked about here information grids which permit the recognition and integration of the vast spectrum of bodymind faculties innate in our species.

Clearly, the installation of correct "software information grids" would "organize" the biomind into highly efficient thinking patterns while incorrect ones would result in the opposite. Indeed, the Yogins held, even in ancient times, that mind can be installed with incorrect or false or fake information grids that yielded "illusion." The presence of "illusion" among humans is, at any rate, a very big concept in most Far Eastern philosophies. Accordingly, life lived within illusion information grids was predictably confusing, painful and awful.

Indeed, the escape from illusion is a major theme in all ancient Yoga. The "escape" apparently meant to escape from faulty mental information grids that deprived their carriers of dynamicawareness of real reality, so to speak. Furthermore, the Yogins taught that the sidhis could not be developed and "perfected" in the presence of incorrect information software grids even though, as they noted, rudiments of the sidhis might occasionally flare up spontaneously.

But this brings up the question regarding from where the rudiments occasionally flare up.

The Yogins appear to be talking three things:

• A naturally existing base drive for the human bio body/mind; 
• The fact that incorrect and correct mind software programs can be inserted into the naturally existing base drive; 
• The difference between illusion and Reality.

If all this is thought of in the technological computer metaphor, it seems that the Yogins were actually talking about a biobody/mind born as a ard drive, but into which correct or incorrect software programs could be installed that were derived from experience, learning, indoctrination or misinformation.

If we utilize the computer metaphor, we can add to it the metaphor of a program "virus" whose introduction can demobilize and erode or distort all of the mind's software programs including the bio mind hard drive. An incorrect thought out of keeping with real Reality thus can act like a virus throughout the entire biomind systems.

Several different kinds of Yoga practice were evolved to correct different kinds of illusion information grids and to install (or "awaken") those more in keeping with what we today would call "innate human potentials." There was a central motto that was variously subscribed to within different Yoga philosophies and practices: that the correct way of life was that Way which was in keeping with nonillusion, and thus in keeping with selfdiscovered true life principles not only of the human species, but of the universe.

To the ancient Yogins, or at least most of them, each human specimen was innately a self perfecting "unit" within whom existed the basic framework or faculties for enormous powers of body and mind. These powers could be located, developed and enhanced if the mind and selfaware body could be properly formatted to do so by constructing information grids of selfawareness of potentials.

This was a process referred to by different metaphors such as "the Unfoldment of the Lotus" a flower growing out of water (the subconscious) and unfolding in perfect form in cognitive consciousness. Another popular metaphor, especially favored by later Buddhists, referred to the "Perfecting the Diamond Consciousness."

The sidhis appear to have been selected out for special note because it seems that it required more of biomind recombinant elements to achieve them. It is especially important to note that the sidhis were neither separated from the physical senses, nor held to be exclusively mental in nature. Rather it seems that the sidhis were additional extensions of the physical senses that required the integration of a very large number of mental and physical faculties. But the faculties would not work together very well unless selectively and increasingly integrated by the cognitive mind of the human selfperfecting "unit." They also held that while some of the faculties might function spontaneously, others of them needed to be deliberately integrated so as to achieve higherorder and more spectacular performance.

In this sense, the sidhis appear not to consist of  a singular faculty naturally existing within the bio body / mind, but need to be artificially engineered within consciousness by combining a number of faculties within dynamic awareness. And this is what controlled remote viewing also consists of.

If this was the case, then indeed the sidhis needed special mention as contrasted to all our other naturally existing faculties and senses. For a great number of our sensory and bioprocesses (including our urges and drives) function automatically or autonomically. But the sidhis had to be engineered into existence within cognitive dynamicawareness in order to take on "perfecting."  What was it that had to be artificially engineered within cognitive biomind consciousness to achieve, for example, the sidhi of distant seeing?

There is only one concept that fills the bill. It is very wellknown in the modern physical sciences and technology. But it has never been applied to the human biobody/mind. It is the concept of the tranducer the topic of Part Three of these miniessays. Rather than thinking of distantseeing as a psychic aptitude, it is more to the point to think of it as a correct series of sensory transducers that permit the integration of biomind hard drive faculties that result in cognitively controlled distantseeing.

Thus, distantseeing it is not at first a thing in itself, but can become one (a sidhi) after the needed sensory transducers are cognitively located and integrated.When it became possible, during the mid1970s, to lift remote viewing up and out of its spontaneous "psychic" nature and to tutor others in it with increasing selfperfection well, remote viewing, as a format of distantseeing, indeed seemed to equate to one of the sidhis of ancient India.

Controlled remote viewing (CRV) was achieved by the cognitive integration of the needed sensory transducers that resulted in the installing of the correct cognitive software program exactly as the ancient Yogins had determined. It was then seen that while spontaneous remote viewing is an "experiencing," CRV is a form of "controlled and directed meditation."

The concept of sensory transducers will be the most difficult concept in these essays. Although you might not agree with the terminology I've selected for them, we can see people walking around with their frames of reference, mental information grids and mindsets.

It is also not difficult to apply the concept of transducers to technological equipment, such as telephones, televisions and radar, etc. All of these utilize transducers to convert one form or energy or signal into another form.But it is difficult to apply the concept of the transducer to sensory stimuli and to minddynamic functions. Yet it can be shown that practically every cell, neuron, or synapse in our biomind bodies is a sensory transducer of some kind.

Copyright 1996 by Ingo Swann. Permission to redistribute granted, if done so in complete and unaltered form.