Hal Puthoff, the parapsychologist and remote viewing expert, talked about potential UFO disclosures in a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. On the podcast, he recalled,
"I was looking, around and I think I found a UFO base on Earth, this was during the remote viewing era” expressed Puthoff.
The History of Remote Viewing:
Remote viewing is the ability of an individual to describe locations that one has not visited before or has no prior knowledge of. The history of remote viewing can be linked to the United States government’s interest in psychic espionage during the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
During World War II, the soviets were introduced to a rumor that the U.S. military was using psychic spies for communications at sea. While there is no evidence of how true the rumor was, the Soviets didn’t intend for the US military to have an upper hand, hence, they started their own psychic training within their military and intelligence agencies decades ago. The U.S. government created a remote viewing CIA training program in the 1970s.
A report published in Strategic Analysis, the monthly journal of the IDSA, defines remote viewing as the claimed human ability to access information about distant or hidden geographical locations without relying on the known senses.
The U.S. remote viewing effort consisted of two primary elements. First, a research component, initially led by physicists Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ at Stanford Research International (SRI) in California, examined what was termed “Anomalous Cognition.” This research later moved to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) under Edwin May in 1988. Their early findings appeared in several peer-reviewed journals in the 1970s.
The second component was operational, involving classified intelligence missions under the codename Project STARGATE. Declassified in part by the CIA in 1995, the program has since become the subject of various publications. However, researchers involved have noted they were restricted from disclosing many sensitive aspects.
Remote Viewing Experiments conducted by Hal Puthoff:
Hal Puthoff and fellow physicist Russell Targ led government-funded research into extrasensory perception (ESP) at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) during the 1970s. Their task was to determine whether parapsychological phenomena, including remote viewing, could be scientifically validated. One of their earliest test subjects was Ingo Swann—a New York-based artist and self-proclaimed psychic—who had previously demonstrated an ability to remotely sense weather conditions in distant cities.
Before working with SRI, Swann had collaborated with parapsychology researcher Gertrude Schmeidler at City College, where he reportedly influenced temperature sensors from several feet away. Swann shared his findings with Hal Puthoff, who invited him to SRI to test these abilities further. In one early experiment, Swann was asked to focus on a quark detector buried beneath concrete.
According to Hal Puthoff, each time Swann concentrated on the machine, the device’s readings shifted. That experiment marked the beginning of what would later be formalized as remote viewing research.
A look into how Remote Viewing Experiments Are Conducted in the Lab:
Laboratory tests of remote viewing generally involve a subject attempting to describe a location or image known only to a designated “beacon.” Judges later compare the subject’s description to a group of photos, including the actual target and several decoys. Recent trials have used National Geographic images for this purpose. A match between the description and the correct image counts as a “hit.”
In more rigorous designs, reports are scored by ranking their similarity to each image in a set, usually five in total. Results that exceed statistical probability are viewed by researchers as possible indicators of remote viewing capabilities.
Since 2017, Hal Puthoff has been the vice president of the science and technology division of To The Stars Academy of Arts And Science, as per his LinkedIn profile. In the 1960s, he developed an interest in the Church of Scientology. However, Hal Puthoff broke all ties to Scientology in the 1970s.
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