Remote viewing · 12 MIN READ · 8 SOURCE QUOTES
Extended Remote Viewing
Extended remote viewing, or ERV, is the relaxed style of remote viewing that grew up inside the U.S. government program now remembered as Stargate. The viewer lies down in a dark room, settles into a hypnagogic state, mind awake and body asleep, and describes impressions aloud to a monitor who records the session. Former Army remote viewer Paul Smith credits Skip Atwater with inventing it as a blend of several approaches. Atwater describes ERV as the nickname, these days, for the way his viewer Joe McMoneagle liked to work: lying down in a meditative state instead of following Ingo Swann's structured method.
A DIA protocols document from the program's later years gives ERV its most formal definition. Its aim is the subjective extension of psychic impressions so brief they would normally be ignored, so that a trained viewer can observe and report them. It treats ERV as a discrete state of consciousness built from eight learned skills, from physical relaxation and reduced arousal to focused intent and the ability to communicate what is perceived. In Smith's account, viewers listened to a Focus 10 or Focus 12 Hemi-Sync tape on cassette first, and an interviewer then entered the dark room under a red light to take notes.
That makes ERV the counterpart of coordinate remote viewing (CRV), which the same document describes as a quick-response, six-stage protocol with a restricted reporting format, a featureless viewing chamber and tightly limited monitor talk. The Monroe connection runs through Atwater, who sent McMoneagle to Bob Monroe under a military arrangement and later spent 25 years at the Monroe Institute, and through Hemi-Sync itself. What survives is a procedure and the recollections of people who used it; Smith himself allows that the tapes' benefit could have been placebo.
ERV is remote viewing from a relaxed, mind-awake state, often after a Focus 10 or 12 tape, spoken to a monitor instead of worked through CRV's stages.
Key points
The aim is to stretch fleeting impressions
The DIA protocols define ERV by its goal: the subjective temporal extension of subliminally brief psychic impressions. A trained ERV viewer, the document says, can control, observe and report perceptions that would otherwise be ignored as fleeting imagery. This widening of the perceptual window comes from reaching a discrete state of consciousness defined by learned, state-dependent behaviors. The document adds that ERV draws on decades of research by independent investigators and academic institutions, naming the University of Virginia Medical Center, the Mind Science Foundation, UC Davis and Syracuse University.
Eight learned skills make up the state
The protocol lists eight skills. Four concern body and attention: relaxing physically, reducing arousal, attenuating sensory input and increasing awareness of internal feelings. Two change the mode of thinking: engaging receptive, right-hemispheric functioning and achieving an altered view of reality. The last two concern the task: focusing conscious and unconscious intent on the remote viewing target, and communicating what is perceived.
A session is spoken, not written
Smith describes ERV as the version that is not written: the viewer lies on a bed in a dark room, hypnagogic, mind awake and body asleep. A monitor, which he also calls an executive monitor and interviewer, comes in after the viewer is settled, uses a red light so as not to disturb the state, takes notes and records the session. He describes the interviewer as non-leading and often blind to the target, and calls it the gold standard for everyone in a project to be blind.
Hemi-Sync focus tapes set the stage
Smith says his group listened to a Focus 10 or Focus 12 tape, on cassette, before ERV work as a cooldown that put both hemispheres in a coordinated condition more open to remote viewing input. He thinks it worked and allows it could have been placebo. He also says that once you know what the state feels like you can reach it without the signal, and that by a later project his group no longer used the tapes.
Skip Atwater is credited with the method
Smith says Atwater invented ERV as an amalgam of several ways of working. Atwater was the Army officer whose initiative, in the words of the interviewer introducing him, led to the remote viewing program, and he describes holding an official assignment as its operations and training officer. After 20 years in the Army he went to the Monroe Institute, became its research director and spent 25 years there; the interview introduction adds that he became president.
The Army, Monroe and Joe McMoneagle
Atwater and McMoneagle each describe a military arrangement in which McMoneagle worked with Monroe for about a year. Atwater recalls a contract, which he puts at $25,000, under which Monroe would experiment with sound to help McMoneagle reach the right state of mind for remote viewing. McMoneagle says the Defense Department wanted him to learn to control spontaneous out-of-body experiences so they could be compared with remote viewing for intelligence work, and that he spent 12 to 14 months working in Monroe's lab on long weekends. The accounts differ on purpose and agree on the year-long span.
How ERV differs from CRV
The DIA document says CRV was developed by an SRI subcontractor in the early 1980s to improve the reliability of remote viewing by controlling what it calls noise. Its components are repeated coordinate presentation with quick-reaction responses and a restrictive reporting format, a featureless, acoustic-tiled viewing chamber, and a strictly limited monitor patter, all meant to minimize overlays. Sessions begin with encrypted coordinates and move through six stages. ERV works on the viewer's state and on extending brief impressions instead. Atwater's remark that McMoneagle did not do "Ingo Swann work" draws the same line, since Swann is the figure associated with CRV.
The Monroe Institute in the DIA directive
The directive's ERV section cites universities and foundations, not the Monroe Institute. The Institute appears in Appendix C, a list of outside organizations and institutes available for enhancing capability, alongside the Edgar Cayce Foundation, the Parapsychological Association and the Spiritual Science Fellowship. The Institute's archive catalogs the scan as 1984, but the cover is dated January 1994, the pages carry a STAR GATE header, and the text says it follows a directive published in October 1993, so the catalog year is not the document's date.
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.
“The ERV approach has as its goal the subjective temporal extension of subliminally brief psychic impressions. The trained ERV percipient is able to control, observe, and report perceptions which would otherwise be ignored or neglected fleeting imagery.”
“The goal of ERV is to simultaneously exhibit all of the learned skills, thereby achieving a specified discrete state of consciousness in which an individual is able to remote view.”
“ERV … stands for extended remote viewing, and it was Skip Atwater that invented it, but it's kind of an amalgam of couple different ways of doing things. The idea was that you got into the zone, to use the term loosely, with a Focus 10 or Focus 12 Hemi-Sync tape. You know, get your hemispheres coordinated, and then you went into the session. You had a … monitor, or an executive monitor and interviewer, I think they called it. An interviewer would come in after you were down … turn on a red light so that it wouldn't disturb you cuz you were in a dark room.”
“Before we did, particularly, what we called ERV, or extended remote viewing, we would listen to a Focus 10 or Focus 12 tape. We were using cassette tapes back then and get us in a kind of a frame, a unified hemispheric condition, where we would be more amenable or conducive to … receiving a remote viewing … input. … I think it worked. I mean, it could have been placebo effect … but it seemed to work.”
“So we did use that, but by the time Bill Ray did this project, we weren't using Hemi-Sync anymore. The interesting thing about it is you start to learn that state … what that state is like, and you can go to it. You don't have to have the Hemi-Sync to do it.”
“[He's] the type of person [who] doesn't do Ingo [Swann] work. He lays down and gets into a meditative state to do his remote viewing. There's a nickname for that these days called ERV, or extended remote viewing. There's a funny story behind that too.”
“I'm saying, I want you to play with those different sounds and find ones that we might think that maybe helps Joe get into the right state of mind for his remote viewing. We don't know what the right state of mind is, but we're going to go play with this for a little bit.”
“So DoD, Department of Defense, decided that I should learn to control them, to see if, comparatively speaking, they were better for intel than remote viewing. So they found the guy who is best at it, and that was Robert Monroe at the Monroe Institute. So they made a deal with him. I would work with him in the lab on long weekends, and he would teach me to control my [out-of-bodies] so that comparison could be … made.”
Important things to consider
What the sources show, and what they do not
What survives about ERV is a procedure document and recollections from people who practiced the method. They describe how sessions were meant to run and why viewers used them. None reports a measured hit rate, and Smith himself says the tape benefit could have been placebo. Read ERV as a documented method with a stated rationale, not as a demonstrated technique.
A state is not a session
Focus 10 or Focus 12 is the state; ERV adds a target, a monitor and a record. Listening to a Gateway tape does not by itself make an ERV session. The 2012 Monroe Institute web overview lists remote viewing among the tools developed in Focus 10.
Blind, non-leading monitors
Smith calls it the gold standard for everyone in a project to be blind to the target, and describes interviewers who were non-leading and often blind. The same logic applies to any remote viewing practice: the person asking questions should not know the target, and the notes should be made before any feedback.
The tapes may not be essential
Smith says that once you know what the state feels like you can go there without Hemi-Sync, and that his group had stopped using the tapes by a later project. That is one practitioner's experience; he also thinks the tapes seemed to work, and he says he probably still self-induces a synchronized state when he does a session. His account does not settle whether the audio adds anything beyond practice.
Inductions can be long
One person who took an extended remote viewing class describes an induction phase of about an hour and finds long inductions frustrating, because they reach a trance state within seconds. An hour is one class's experience, not a standard.
The label covers a style, not one fixed protocol
Atwater calls ERV a nickname these days for the lying-down, meditative way McMoneagle worked, and Smith calls it an amalgam of several methods. The DIA document gives the formal definition. When someone says they teach or practice ERV, ask which version they mean.
Listening cautions
Hemi-Sync tapes are relaxation and attention audio, not a medical treatment. If you have a seizure disorder or a serious mental-health condition, or are unsure whether audio entrainment suits you, read the publisher's guidance and talk to your clinician first. Never listen while driving or doing anything that needs your full attention.
Common questions
What is extended remote viewing (ERV)?
ERV is remote viewing done from a deeply relaxed, hypnagogic state, mind awake and body asleep, rather than through CRV's staged format. The viewer lies down in a dark room, often after a Focus 10 or Focus 12 Hemi-Sync tape, and describes impressions aloud to a monitor or interviewer who takes notes and records the session. A DIA protocols document defines its aim as extending subliminally brief psychic impressions in subjective time so that a trained viewer can observe and report them, and describes it as a discrete state of consciousness built from eight learned skills. Former Army remote viewer Paul Smith credits Skip Atwater with inventing it.
How is ERV different from CRV?
Coordinate remote viewing is built to cut what the DIA document calls noise. The viewer receives encrypted coordinates, responds quickly, reports in a restrictive format, works in a featureless viewing chamber and deals with a monitor who follows a strictly limited script, moving through six stages. ERV is built around the viewer's state instead. The viewer relaxes, often with a Hemi-Sync tape, settles into a hypnagogic condition and speaks to an interviewer; Smith describes it as not written. Atwater drew the line in personal terms: his viewer Joe McMoneagle did not do Ingo Swann work, he lay down and went into a meditative state. The same directive lists written remote viewing as a separate third method.
Did ERV use Hemi-Sync, Focus 10 and Focus 12?
According to Smith, yes. Before ERV sessions his group listened to a Focus 10 or Focus 12 tape on cassette. He describes it as a cooldown that put people in a unified hemispheric condition, more receptive to remote viewing input. He thinks it worked but allows it could have been placebo. He also says that once you know the state you can reach it without the signal, and that by a later project his group had stopped using Hemi-Sync. Atwater, for his part, asked Bob Monroe to experiment with different sounds that might help McMoneagle reach the right state of mind for viewing, adding that nobody knew what the right state was.
Who invented ERV, and what is the link to the Monroe Institute?
Smith says Skip Atwater invented it, as a blend of several earlier approaches. Atwater was the Army officer whose initiative, in one interviewer's words, led to the remote viewing program, and he later spent 25 years at the Monroe Institute, eventually as research director. He recalls arranging a military contract for Monroe to work personally with McMoneagle on sound technology, and McMoneagle says the Defense Department sent him to Monroe's lab for roughly a year of long weekends to learn to control out-of-body experiences for comparison with remote viewing. A DIA protocols directive from the Stargate years also lists the Monroe Institute among outside organizations available for enhancing capability.
What happens in an ERV session?
Going by Smith's description, the viewer first listens to a Focus 10 or Focus 12 tape, then lies on a bed in a dark room and settles into a hypnagogic state. A monitor, also called an executive monitor or interviewer, comes in under a red light so as not to disturb the state and takes notes, and the session is recorded. The interviewer is non-leading, and ideally everyone involved is blind to the target. The viewer speaks impressions aloud instead of writing them down.
Does ERV work, and is there proof?
What survives about ERV is a procedure and practitioner recollections; no accuracy figures are given. The DIA document states what a trained ERV viewer should be able to do, and Smith says the tapes seemed to work but could have been placebo. Whether remote viewing of any style gives reliable information remains contested, and a long or vivid session is not evidence on its own. What would count is a blind target, a record made before feedback and an independent comparison afterward. See the Stargate page for the wider history of the program.
Can I do ERV at home with the Gateway tapes?
The Gateway Experience tapes teach the states ERV starts from, Focus 10 in particular, and the 2012 Monroe Institute web overview lists remote viewing among the tools developed there. But ERV, as Smith describes it, is a monitored session with a target, a quiet dark room, an interviewer who ideally does not know the target, and a recording, not something a solo listener does while a tape plays. If you experiment, keep that structure: relax first, have a partner who does not know the target ask neutral questions and write down what you say, and compare with the target only afterward. Stop if anything feels uncomfortable.
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