Remote Influencing, Manifestations, and Apparitions
Lots of interesting things that happen around remote viewing are almost never talked about, or are talked about in hushed and worried tones, implying that something is going on that shouldn't be, or that some kind of danger is involved. I'm not sure why people have to bring so much mystery, paranoia, and fear into the subject, but they do. Most of it centers about remote influencing (which includes healing, or by default, wounding), invasive or manipulative entities or manifestations, and directly affecting the future for yourself or others.
Because of the very nature of these subjects, many have their own opinions regarding them. One has only to look at the Internet to see this is so. What I will say about them is based purely on my own observations from twenty-one years of involvement, both in the obtaining of information and in research.
Remote Influencing
Let me start by stating that in only a handful of cases do I believe I've seen remote influencing demonstrated.
Having said this, I can add that in some of those cases, not all the arguments are in, not all of the leakage paths have been sealed, and no one is really sure that remote influencing has actually been displayed. Why?
Well, primarily, as Dean Radin, Ph.D., states in his book The Conscious Universe (Harper Collins, 1997, p.132), "no one has been able to design an experiment that will cleanly separate 'pure' precognition from 'pure' mind-matter interaction."
This means there are two things that can always be happening. A subject can be using precognition to predict when a variance from the norm will occur, or can be causing the variance by direct mental intervention. A formal experiment to differentiate between the two has not yet been designed, at least not one that I'm aware of.
As an example of how this might work, let's say you have someone separate patients into two groups, a target group and a control group. You then select a group of healers to remotely work on the target group, with the intention of healing them. They might use prayer, good thoughts, or whatever seems to work for them. The healers are not even informed who is in the group, nor are the patients told which group they are in. All the patients have essentially the same illnesses. At the end of a pre-determined study period, you have doctors who are blind to which people were in which group, independently judge how well the patients are doing. You end up with two lists of patients, those doing well and those who are not doing as well.
You are surprised to see that the ones who are doing really well are the ones listed as the target group. Have you just proven remote influencing? The answer is probably not. And the reason why is that the person who divided the patients into a target group and a control group at the outset of the experiment might have used precognition to make the selections.
An immediate argument would be something like, "Okay, then let's run the experiment again, and this time we'll use a random number generator to determine which list the patients are put on." Now you have only to prove that generating random numbers are truly random, and that interaction with the machine is not really precognitive selection—deciding when to push the selection button to give you the number sequence you are looking for.
What to do?
What is interesting about this process is that it is entirely driven by a desire to prove remote influencing and not by a desire to heal more patients. In actuality, for some diseases there should be some statistical evidence that only a very small percentage of patients will ever get well or recover. These kinds of diseases should be the ones that are targeted while attempting to prove remote influencing. If you continually and statistically violate the bottom line expectation for getting well, then you are probably remote influencing, since even precognitive selection can't significantly bend that bottom line statistic for how many get well.
Many don't want to use terminal patients for a variety of reasons. There are ethical questions. What if you are successful with targeted patients and not the controls? Should you have told the controls they were controls? Have you restricted healing to a randomly selected few? There are even larger questions. For an illness that's near 100 percent terminal, would a 33 percent healing statistic open the door to science meddling in the miracle department? Arguments abound.
Why is all this important to remote viewing?
The importance lies within an automatic assumption that is made from the outset with remote viewing or psychic functioning, the belief that we in some way totally control what's actually happening. When the Remote Viewer is penetrating the target, whatever it might be, we assume that the Remote Viewer is totally in control. We also assume that the Remote Viewer, or psychic, is accessing information pertinent to the target. Many believe they are accessing this information from a general-reality records file, an Akashic one or otherwise. This implies both control and dipping into, listening to, tasting, or even stealing from this file. No one ever assumes that information is passed both ways, or that there is a sharing between the Remote Viewer, or psychic, and the actual target. But, if you look, I think there's plenty of evidence that this certainly might be happening with regard to humans.
Many of us have had the experience of suddenly knowing that one of our close family members is ill, or has had an accident. How did that happen? Were their first thoughts as the pain raced out through their body of us, the ones they care about? Was it fear of losing connection with us that made the sudden connection? We don't know. But, somehow it happened. We differentiate between sending and receiving information. Maybe that's not what's happening at all. Maybe when we tap into a target person, place, object, or thing, we actually share information with it. Maybe we view it as one way simply because cognition is taking place; we know when it's happening. Or in the case of objects or things, maybe just understanding the communication system would help. We probably don't understand that all trees communicate with each other, simply because we do not understand the language. So, we assume the communications is something we took, instead of shared.
I believe that when we perceive something—or target it, as in remote viewing—we are actually opening and sharing information. There is no actual broadcasting, transmission, or taking of the information. It is simply shared. This would certainly account for the observer effect noted in many areas of research. I see no radical difference between an observational effect resulting from physically watching something, and one accomplished through psychic observation.
Remote influencing is a significant issue that deserves a lot of attention. Until proven otherwise, I would assume an exchange of information is taking place with a target long before I would assume I am simply taking information from it.
Manifestations and Apparitions
I bring this into a book concerned with the details surrounding remote viewing, for a couple of reasons. First, interactions with what appears to be conscious entities seem to be happening, or at least they are being reported, by psychics and people who are purportedly doing remote viewing. Secondly, based on personal experience they seem to be a natural byproduct of playing with remote viewing and the paranormal.
On occasion someone reports having interacted with a non-physical being or ephemeral conscious entity while attempting to do remote viewing. There are unsubstantiated reports of entities and discarnate beings interfering with the obtaining of information during remote viewing. I've had people tell me specifically that they were either directed or advised not to pursue certain targets by these entities. In rare cases, viewers report being assisted by such beings. Does this mean the entities are real and truly exist?
In spite of my own observations, I would have to say, your guess is as good as mine! I honestly do not know what to make of these events and have not yet reached any firm conclusions. I can only state what my own observations have been.
In most cases where I've had the experience, I have either been given information or have been made uncomfortable about pursuing it. By that I mean the experience has been either somewhat negative or somewhat positive.
I sense that where it was a positive event, I gladly accepted the information, which usually turned out to be about as good or bad as remote viewing information usually is. It certainly wasn't significantly better.
Where it turned into somewhat of a negative experience, I would not automatically attribute the negativity as an attempt to "warn me off," or to drive me away from the target. But, then, I've been doing this for twenty-one years, so I view these experiences more with curiosity than anything else. I try not to jump to conclusions, especially when there is insufficient data.
What actually may be going on is that I am in some way projecting a figure, or archetype from inside myself, which derives its origin from a positive or negative space that's in a more buried part of my unconscious. In other words, there is no clear or conscious connection between the information that I'm getting vis-a-vis a self-created entity, and that place inside me that already has a conviction or agreement with the information that's being presented. One could translate this to mean one of two things. I'm either giving myself information that I would ordinarily deny or reject, or I am going out of my way to fool myself.
After spending a considerable amount of time thinking about it, I would have to say that generally speaking, at least in my own experiences, these events, when they happen, have been about equally distributed between negative and positive. So, if I were forced to guess as to the reason for such experiences, it would be difficult to specify. My tentative feelings at the moment are that regardless of my negative or positive feelings for any specific experience, they are probably all rooted within some personal issue that touches on fear, at least to a sufficient degree that internally I am prevented from making a direct conscious-to-unconscious connection for data transfer. At the moment, however, this is only a guess.
So, are apparitions or communications with entities real? Yes, I would say so, at least to the extent that they have a profound effect on the one who experiences them.
Is the information received or provided accurate? Yes, at least to the degree that any other self-generated information can be; remote viewing, psychic, or otherwise. I would almost automatically assume that the messages are connected in some way with a deeper part of self, an archetype, or an area of the unconscious that is dealing with issues it cannot yet bring to the surface or is as yet unwilling to bring to the surface.
At this point, I'm not sure I would jump to any other conclusion about entities, regardless of how they might interact, appear, or identify themselves.