Time
There are a lot of very strange beliefs floating about regarding time and its influence on remote viewing. I've heard people say you can't go back in time much farther than the beginning of the first observer. They obviously believe it is telepathy; someone had to be present to observe something, if any information is going to be transferred. Others have said you can't go forward any farther than 2012, 2025, 2500, etc. They believe this for a multitude of reasons: the way certain calendars will end, Extra-Terrestrials (ETs) being a major preventative cause, and even God denying access to the material. The truth of the matter is, no one really knows.
Historically I guess, one would have to say that it depends on how far you can stretch your belief, or proof in principle; in other words, what one has observed to be true. So, one thing is for sure, if it doesn't happen in your personal lifetime, then it probably isn't going to be taken very seriously. What the heck, we won't be here, right? But shouldn't we find a reason to believe? Shouldn't we be concerned about a future we might not even experience? I think we should if for no other reason than what we might be leaving to our children, perhaps a planet poisoned by gases, severe overpopulation, or corrupted weather patterns.
The facts in the matter are scarce and sometimes complicated. But, I will share what my experience has shown me to be true.
Present Time
As I explained in my book, The Ultimate Time Machine, there probably isn't anything like the present. We fool ourselves into believing there is, in order to adjust and recognize our place in reality. It helps us to locate where we are in time/space. Be that as it may, present time does imply something happening, or an object/thing existing relatively close to where we are in time. It involves where people might be as we are thinking about them, what events might be occurring, or what object/thing might be perceived at a location remote from us as at the same moment. It is very easy to target these things, not because they are easier to remote view than most other targets, but because our "belief systems" allow us to buy it as real.
Think about it for a moment. Some people are willing to buy the ability to describe an event, person, object, place, or thing totally chosen at random and to which we have absolutely no other form of access in real time, but, these same people will reject the notion of past or future targeting. Why? Doesn't make any sense, does it?
Actually, the problem lies in one's ability to rationalize. You can rationalize the existence of the target in your own time frame, but you can't in a time frame for which you have no knowledge. Not surprising really. In other words, you are willing to suspend your disbelief only so far. You are willing to agree to psychic functioning, but not to time warping.
What if I told you that, in my experience, most remote viewers who target something in the present usually provide some information that is pertinent to the target in the past and future? Well, that's exactly what happens in most cases. The first target I ever did worked that way, and I'm sure it won't be the last. I saw a red bicycle in a bicycle rack outside the front door of the target building. The outbounder didn't see one, because no bicycle was there when it was being targeted. But, when the remote viewing was completed and we all went back to the target for my feedback, someone rode in on a red bicycle and parked it in the rack, sort of fulfilling the prophecy.
There are numerous examples of information being provided by viewers on present-time targets, where the information was slightly off in one direction or another. It's always been fascinating to me that no one ever talks about the phenomenon, nor do they take the past/future information into account when trying to evaluate how or why remote viewing works.
One thing can be said about real time targets: they may predominantly lie within real time, but they will usually contain near past and near future information as well. This means that fixing a target in time is critically important to the remote viewing process. The more accurately you can do that the better.
By necessity, when targeting something in present time, or for that matter, in the past or future, you should provide one of the following statements:
1: Describe the target, as it exists now
2: We want to know about the target, as it exists today, July 14, 1999, at 10:15 A.M..
3: Our interest lies in present time only.
I once did a whole series of targets at SRI-International for which no specific time of interest was mentioned. Every single one failed. It was years later that buildings I had described in those remote-viewing sessions were actually built at those specific target sites.
Past Targets
The primary belief about past targets deals with telepathy. Many who buy remote viewing as possible do not believe you can remote view past a point where there was human consciousness present. You need at least one mind to transmit the information to another mind. This is a great hypothesis, provided you buy into the belief that most or at least some of the information transferred is through telepathy. The thing that complicates this is that both elements are probably true. I'm convinced that at least a part of the information being passed comes through telepathy. But, I would disagree that this makes telepathy necessary to remote viewing.
I think remote viewing uses whatever lines of communication or information resources that are available. When there is no line of information available through telepathy, it looks elsewhere.
Unfortunately, there is very little evidence that I can offer. I could ask Christians, if this is so, then where did the information come from . . . reference creation prior to the existence of Adam or Eve in the Bible? Oh, that's right, it was inspired by the word of God. Okay, isn't God an intelligent entity? I'm not proposing that God gives information to remote viewers; I'm just questioning how we think about consciousness, knowledge, how or where it might all come from. Seems to me that in our bungling nature, we would be somewhat arrogant in claiming to know all sources of knowledge or how information might be shared or generated throughout the cosmos. But, these are just my thoughts.
To state it more emphatically, I have seen absolutely no evidence that limits the ability to remote view into the past, other than our ability to believe that it can be done. Usually information about the past will be generated for which there is very little knowledge available in present form.
Sometimes it will take years to prove that the information was correct. Eventually, in many cases, it is proven to be correct. In numerous cases I have waited fourteen to seventeen years for confirmation on a remote viewing of the past. It's no less satisfying to see that one was right sixteen years later than in real time. Which of course points out a small twist to past targets: maybe the act of telepathy is totally within one's self. Eventually, when we find out we are right, maybe that's when we send the information to ourselves in the past. So, the confirming data from the future provides the accurate information about the past, or at least what we are willing to believe is accurate.
It may be that remote viewing information about the past is stuck within the reality of "our own time." In other words, it is only considered real because that is the consensus of the time in which it was produced. A remote viewer puts the beginning of formal metallurgy at around 120 thousand years. Current belief is 80 thousand. Proof is discovered ten years later that it's 120 thousand. The viewer is considered right. Seventy-five years later, the viewer is dead, and archeologists successfully prove that it's actually 220 thousand. So, the information is only valid during the knowledge period of the viewer. I don't know if this is how it works, but wouldn't be interesting if it is?
So, when working past targets, you should identify them as well as you would a present target (see 1, 2, and 3 above). But I need to add a cautionary note here. If you generally target someone in the past and want to depend on the date they give you, you want to be very careful about what you do with it. In my experience, and the experience of nearly all the people who know anything at all about remote viewing, you cannot depend on dates or times a remote viewer might provide. Only in the rarest of cases can a remote viewing provide a date or time that is more than general, in the extreme. It is one of the least dependable products.
Future Targets
You can't remote view past the end of the Mayan Calendar.
Someone actually said this to me at a lecture I gave in Lynchburg, Virginia. To which I replied; "You could be right, but I seriously doubt it." In reality, no one knows how far out into the future one can remote view and still produce accurate information.
Essentially remote viewing the future is the same as making a prediction. You are either predicting that something will happen, or that something will be known, at some future date and time, which accurately matches what was said in the remote viewing. Many have major hang-ups with this reality.
Most of the problems involve probabilities, a belief in multiple universes, multiple strings of reality, or things being predetermined. Of course things being preset or predetermined would imply that we all have no free will and therefore one of the major tenants of our religious belief as well as belief about our own god-like nature would be destroyed.
Well, you needn't worry because remote viewing the future doesn't imply any of that at all. If it does, then you are taking remote viewing and predictions far too seriously. Imagine yourself as a single point on a sheet of white paper, dead center. That's where you are now. Each molecule in the sheet of paper is a connective act that forms a string we call life. This would be a line that connects the dot where it lies in the center to somewhere else at some future date on the sheet. How could one possibly predict where on the sheet that second dot might lie?
I happen to believe you can, to some degree of accuracy. I base that belief on having done it, but admittedly, only locally, or in what might be assumed to be near-real time. Was I making a statement that was preordained to become true? In other words, was I establishing a predetermined outcome for someone or something? No. I was simply correct in my guess about where that point would fall on the sheet of paper. One could draw a circle, using a compass, by placing the point of the compass on the originating point and passing the line of the pencil through the second point on the paper. All the molecules contained within that circle represent all the probable or possible routes that could have been taken out to the line drawn. All the molecules falling immediately on the line represent all the possible outcomes. The only thing that can be said about a prediction that comes true in the future is that the remote viewer "did something really amazing." In such a case, all the possible outcomes represent the multitude of possibilities that occur by chance. Compared against a viewer's single guess, it is truly amazing that such a prediction could be made accurately. I guess it's clear to see why it's easier to believe a predetermined future exists, than it is to believe it's the other way around.
Ingo Swann, a well-known psychic and remote viewer with the laboratory at SRI-International, and one of the original participants in the CIA evaluations of remote viewing back in the early 1970s, made astounding predictions concerning the outlying planets in our solar system. He made these predictions up to two years prior to these planets being first visited by deep space explorer/information collection satellites. There was no significant decline in his accuracy for these targets over any other targets he worked while at SRI-International.
Literally dozens of targets worked by viewers within the STARGATE Program made successful predictions relating to events involving people, places, or things, generally out to between 90 and 365 days. More than a few predictions I've made within my files are valid out to about 15-17 years. And those who have read my book The Ultimate Time Machine know that I'm probably going for a world record and the reason why.
If you believe in the predictions of Edgar Cayce, then you have to believe that there is a probable ceiling of about fifty or so years to accurate predictions. If you buy some of what Nostradamus is saying, then you are increasing your ceiling of belief out to about four hundred plus years. All of this is nice, but rationally, most are only going to buy what's relative to their own lifetime, and relevant to what's going on in the framework of their belief.
So, when targeting the future, while there is probably no limit as to how far out you can go, you might want to stick with something people are going to care about that's relevant to their own time frame. Going much farther than that will usually be viewed as fantasy or science fiction.
Again, as with recommendations in items 1, 2, and 3, above, you should be as specific as possible when targeting dates and times in the future. Expect bleed-through from the immediate past as well as the immediate future within those specific time frames as well. The primary difficulties you will encounter in targeting the future will be the ability to grasp the information. You only have to go just a few years into the future to lose sight of the conceptualizations that drive what's actually going on. As an example, as a remote viewer, how would you explain a high-energy pump laser three years before it was discovered?