Remote viewing · 12 MIN READ · 6 SOURCE QUOTES
Why blinding matters in remote viewing
In remote viewing, blinding decides whether a description of a hidden target can be taken seriously. A session is single-blind when the viewer does not know the target and double-blind when nobody in the room with the viewer knows it either. The Defense Intelligence Agency's protocols for its remote-viewing unit define it that way: the condition in which people in session with a remote viewer have no knowledge whatsoever of the target. In a proficiency-enhancement project, a project officer picks the target, numbers it, tasks the viewer and later supplies feedback and an evaluation.
Frontloading is the opposite error, giving the viewer information about the target beforehand. Skip Atwater's example is announcing that today's session is McDonald's and then asking for a description. Practitioners instead use targeting that is blind to the viewer, such as a set of coordinates or a sealed envelope. Joe McMoneagle, a longtime Army remote viewer, says there is only one protocol and it has to be double blind, because people communicate in many nonverbal ways that can break it. He recalls insisting that a Time magazine writer have someone else prepare the target in a double-wrapped opaque envelope.
The Monroe Institute built the same design into a teaching exercise: twenty-four double-blind, independently judged trials during its first Remote Viewing Practicum, with participants rotating through the roles of viewer, monitor and judge and each judge picking the true target out of four photos. Thirteen of the twenty-four judgments were first-place matches, against about six expected by chance, which the Hemi-Sync Journal put at roughly one chance in 480. The Journal added a catch: the judges themselves may have used psychic functioning, a reminder that blinding is one control among several.
Double-blind means no one in the room knows the target; frontloading means hinting at it in advance. Remote-viewing protocols exist to prevent both.
Key points
Single-blind, double-blind and frontloading
Blind targeting hides the target from the viewer. Double-blind goes further: the DIA glossary defines it as the condition in which people in session with a remote viewer have no knowledge whatsoever of the target. Frontloading is the reverse, giving the viewer advance information about what to expect. Feedback, which the glossary defines as information about the intended target, reaches the viewer only after the project is complete and the reports are recorded.
The project officer holds the target, not the monitor
In a DIA proficiency-enhancement project the project officer selects the target, assigns it a number, gathers materials such as photos or maps, tasks each viewer on a tasking sheet, and afterward provides feedback and an evaluation. The monitor, by contrast, sits in the session and records the data, and must have no knowledge of target possibilities. Target knowledge stays with the project officer, so the person beside the viewer has nothing to leak. Viewers are told not to discuss their findings with one another until feedback is given.
Why the monitor must not know the target
The protocols list three monitor problems. A monitor who knows target possibilities can lead the viewer, which is why the double-blind rule exists. Monitors also tend to pick and choose information according to their own mental set and preconceptions, so interpretation invites misinterpretation. And monitors can become frustrated by psychic information that seems incomplete, sporadic, symbolic or irrelevant. The protocols make a parallel point about customers: stay quiet, because nods of approval, voice inflection and suggestive questioning give subtle clues and happen all too often.
McMoneagle's rule: one protocol, double blind
McMoneagle says remote viewing has to be taught double blind, meaning no one in the room with the viewer can know the target, because human beings communicate in many nonverbal ways that can violate the protocol. As long as a session is double blind, he says, a viewer can use pretty much any technique. He says he will not work beyond the original protocol. For a Time magazine writer he specified that someone else invent the target and bring it in a double-wrapped opaque envelope, and the writer's senior editor prepared it.
What happens when blinding slips
In McMoneagle's account, the Army's in-house version of Swann's training, completed after Swann's departure, had the trainer sit with the target. The trainer said correct when the trainee was right and stayed silent when wrong, which McMoneagle calls the old game of you're getting warmer, an inadvertent directional steer toward the target. He says SRI considered that training not kosher. The leak did not have to be deliberate; even silence carried information.
From outbound people to coordinates to sealed envelopes
McMoneagle traces how targeting changed. Early experiments put a person at the target location, which was expensive; geographic coordinates replaced that. When skeptics objected that viewers might memorize coordinates, the coordinates went inside sealed envelopes. Sean Webb describes an outbound design in which the person sent to the target is handed a randomly selected location, picked by a dice roll, only at the last moment. The two people are never in the same room and do not know each other, and the viewer works in a radio-shielded room in a different building.
The Monroe Institute's remote viewing practicum
Twenty-three participants and trainer Carol Sabick formed eight teams of three, and across three rounds every person served once as viewer, monitor and judge. Targets were twenty-four pictured locations sealed in opaque envelopes, and the monitor followed guidelines while blind to the target. The judge, not otherwise involved in the session, compared the descriptions and sketches with a sheet of four photos, one true and three shams, in police-lineup fashion. Thirteen of twenty-four judgments were first-place matches, which the Journal reported as about one chance in 480.
Even blind judging has loopholes
The Hemi-Sync Journal added a note to its report: the significant results suggested psychic functioning but might not represent remote viewing as classically defined, because the independent judges who made the matches may have used psychic functioning of their own. The same issue appears in an out-of-body study that Charles Tart describes in the Institute's research files, where the researcher knew the target number. Tart reports that the most interesting criticism comes from believers rather than skeptics, who ask whether the subject simply read the number from his mind, and he concedes the first study was too crude to rule out mere telepathy.
In their own words
Quotes are checked word for word against the recordings and documents they come from. Bracketed words correct transcription errors; “…” marks an omission.
“There's only one protocol for remote viewing: remote viewing has to be taught double blind, which means that no matter what the person does, they can't know anything about what the target is when they're working on the remote viewing, that's for practice or anything else. Double blind infers that anybody in the room with a remote viewer at the time they're doing remote viewing practice or otherwise, no one can know what the target is, because we … now know that human beings communicate between one another in a multitude of ways, to include nonverbal communications, NLP and all kinds of other problems that … can violate the protocol.”
“When I talked to him on the phone, it has to be a target you don't know anything about. Somebody else has to invent the target, put it in a double-wrapped opaque envelope that you can't see through and bring it with you. And he did. He had his senior editor put the target together. So we got this double, double-packed envelope sitting on the table. It's got no markings on it at all. And that was my target.”
“The way that happened, the trainer would sit with the target, which is obviously not double blind then, and the person would say something, and if it was correct, … they'd say correct. If it was wrong, they wouldn't say anything. In my mind, that's the old, you're getting warmer, you're getting warmer.”
“It's also referred to as front loading. If I was to say to you, “Okay, today we're going to be remote viewing McDonald's. Are you ready? Now describe, you know,” and that's called front loading. It's much better if you have no [foreknowledge] whatsoever of what you are expected to perceive, … if the targeting is what's called blind to you. So it can be a set of geographic coordinates; it can be, say, a sealed envelope, and in this picture, is in this envelope, is a picture of someone, and we need you to describe that person, their state of health, in their location.”
“Historically, a monitor is an experienced remote viewer because considerable experience has shown that there are a number of considerations, precautions and potential problems for which the monitor should be prepared. 1. First, when a monitor is present, it is especially important to ensure that this individual has no knowledge whatsoever of target possibilities. This is known as a double blind. This precludes the monitor leading the viewer.”
“One of the photos matched the target; the other three were shams. The judges, who were not otherwise involved with the remote-viewing process, were to use the “police lineup” method to compare qualitative descriptions and sketches provided by the viewers and monitors with the four locations pictured. The judges were asked to score first-, second-, third-, and fourth-place matches. Once the decision was made, the opaque envelope was opened to reveal the target photo.”
Important things to consider
Ask who knew the target, and when
For any remote-viewing claim, list everyone who knew the target and when each person learned it: who chose it, who sealed it, who handled the envelope, who sat in the room, who gave feedback. A session is only as blind as its least careful step, including preparation, tasking and feedback. A label such as double blind at the top of a report is where the questions begin.
Blinding and judging are separate controls
Blinding governs how information could reach the viewer; judging governs how the description is compared with the target. A blind session can still be scored loosely. In the Institute's practicum the judge took no part in the session and had to rank four photos, only one of them real, before the envelope was opened. A judge who knows the target, or a match chosen after the fact, weakens the result even when the session itself was blind.
Someone usually knows the target
Blinding removes ordinary channels; it usually cannot remove the fact that someone, at some point, knows the answer. The out-of-body study in the Institute's research files shows the logic: because the researcher knew the target number, mind reading could explain the result. Randomized selection, sealing, and revealing the target only after the report is recorded narrow the question without ending it, so a claim should say who knew what, and when.
Practice is not the same as evidence
The DIA protocols separate proficiency-enhancement projects, where the project officer picks the target and gives the viewer feedback, from operational projects, where feedback may arrive late because the customer must research or act first. They add that some information stays plausible but cannot be fairly evaluated until an operation is over. Practice with feedback builds skill; it does not carry the weight of a pre-planned, independently judged trial.
How the outside evaluators split
In 1995 the CIA had the American Institutes for Research review the government's remote-viewing program. Two outside experts read the laboratory studies and disagreed. Statistician Jessica Utts concluded that the results were far beyond chance and that the objections about methodological flaws had been answered. Psychologist Ray Hyman, whom the report describes as representing a more skeptical position, argued that a statistical anomaly is not demonstrated psychic functioning and that the claims needed replication in independent laboratories. Joe McMoneagle, writing in the Hemi-Sync Journal afterward, said the same report considered the quality of the basic research good.
Do not frontload yourself
A viewer who has guessed the likely target pool is frontloading themselves. Paul Smith warns that viewers who work the same kinds of targets over time start guessing and filling in the blanks with what they think about the target. If you practice, have another person choose and seal targets from varied categories, keep your own guesses out of the session, and read the feedback only after your description is written down. McMoneagle's rule of a target you know nothing about, sealed by someone else, is the simplest version.
Common questions
What does double-blind mean in remote viewing?
Double-blind means that nobody in the room with the viewer knows what the target is. The Defense Intelligence Agency's remote-viewing protocols define it as the condition in which people in session with a remote viewer have no knowledge whatsoever of the target, and they say a monitor with no knowledge of target possibilities cannot lead the viewer. A single-blind session hides the target only from the viewer. McMoneagle puts the reason bluntly: people communicate in many nonverbal ways that can violate the protocol, so anyone present who knows the target is a potential leak. The project officer, not the monitor, holds the target and supplies feedback afterward.
What is frontloading, and why do remote viewers avoid it?
Frontloading means giving the viewer information about the target before or during the session. Skip Atwater's example is telling the viewer that today's target is McDonald's and asking for a description. The problem is that the description is then built around what the viewer was told, so a match says little about perception. Atwater says it is much better to have no foreknowledge at all, with the targeting blind to the viewer: a set of geographic coordinates or a sealed envelope containing a picture. A viewer can also frontload themselves by guessing the likely target pool.
Why can't the monitor know the target?
Because a monitor who knows the target can steer the session without meaning to. The DIA protocols give three reasons for care with monitors. A monitor who knows target possibilities can lead the viewer. Monitors tend to pick and choose information according to their own preconceptions, so interpretation invites misinterpretation. And monitors can become frustrated by information that seems incomplete or symbolic. McMoneagle's example of non-blind training shows how small the leak can be: a trainer who sat with the target said correct for hits and stayed silent for misses, which he compares to the game of you're getting warmer.
Does a sealed envelope make a remote-viewing session double-blind?
Only if nobody present knows what is in it. A sealed envelope hides the target from the viewer, but the person who made it knows the answer, so that person must stay out of the session. McMoneagle's instructions to a Time magazine writer show the idea: someone else invents the target and puts it in a double-wrapped opaque envelope that cannot be seen through, and the person who brings it does not know its contents. In his story the envelope carried no markings, and in any such design the description should be recorded before anyone opens it. The Monroe Institute's practicum added a judge who ranked four photos before the envelope was opened.
How did the Monroe Institute run double-blind remote-viewing trials?
During its first Remote Viewing Practicum, led by Skip Atwater and Carol Sabick, twenty-three participants and the trainer formed eight teams of three. Over three rounds each person served once as viewer, once as monitor and once as judge. The targets were twenty-four pictured locations sealed in opaque envelopes, and the monitor followed guidelines while blind to the target. The judge, who took no other part, compared the viewer's and monitor's descriptions and sketches with four photos, one real and three shams, ranked them, and only then was the envelope opened. Thirteen of twenty-four judgments were first-place matches, about six being expected by chance, and the Hemi-Sync Journal put the odds against that at roughly one in 480.
Were the government's remote-viewing sessions really double-blind?
On paper, yes. The DIA protocols required that a monitor have no knowledge whatsoever of target possibilities, kept target selection with a project officer, delayed feedback until all sessions were finished, and told customers to stay quiet so they would not give clues. The sources also describe lapses and workarounds. McMoneagle says the Army's in-house version of Swann's training, with the trainer sitting with the target and signaling hits, was not double blind and that SRI called it not kosher. He also describes coordinates being sealed in envelopes to answer skeptics. Whether any given session met the standard depends on its records.
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