Limitless MIND: A Guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness
By Russell Targ
Reviewed by William P. Eigles
(This review appeared in Aperture, Vol. 3, No. 2, the newsletter of the International Remote Viewing Association.)
In this latest work by remote-viewing pioneer and former IRVA president Russell Targ, the author undertakes several purposes in a sometimes very personal survey of the current state of the remote-viewing field. Of paramount importance to Targ throughout his book is the opportunity that psychic abilities afford people to focus on individual self-inquiry and spiritual self-realization, in furtherance of a discovery that all of us are capable of a greatly expanded awareness far beyond our physical bodies. In this vein, he posits the centrality of "nonlocal" reality to the scientific understanding of psi phenomena. the notion that everything and everyone is interconnected across space and time and that, as such, each of us can be affected by events that are distant from our ordinary awareness. It is this precept that allows both remote viewers to "inflow" information about targets remote in time and space, and psychic healers to "outflow" energy or awareness to people far removed from them, to achieve some demonstrable therapeutic effect. Targ notes, in reviewing many of the world's spiritual and philosophical traditions, how very universal this paradigm of nonlocality really is.
The author reviews the psychicaL research program that he joined as co-director with Dr. Hal Puthoff at the Stanford Research Institute in 1972, which program culminated in the development of remote viewing as a useable tool. Detailing via anecdotes their work with Ingo Swann, Pat Price, and Hella Hamrnid, as well as related work of some other prominent researchers, Targ provides a concise yet very entertaining summary of what is known about the RV phenomenon and the nature of the psychic channel, followed by a chapter of some basic, practical exercises for people to begin experiencing the remote- viewing skill both as viewer and "interviewer." Intriguingly, by way of discussing success in the art, he likens remote viewing to making love: It requires "complete surrender to the task at hand, with no preconception or self-judgement about the outcome" and at the same time "a Single-pointed focus of attention."
Further to his thesis that human existence is timeless, the author explores the research in precognition, including dreams of the future and associative remote viewing. Based on his own experiments, he suggests that remote viewers targeted with the future see the actualized, chosen prospective events rather than probable futures. His account is chock full of tantalizing anecdotes that buttress the notion that the future is eminently discernible.
Other chapters discuss the research of the last century concerning intuitive medical diagnosis and distant mental influence aimed at healing afflicted persons, with some "how-to" suggestions offered throughout. Targ's consideration of this realm spans the work of Edgar Cayce, Judith Orloff. and Mona Lisa Schultz in diagnosis, to that of Russian Leonid Vasiliev, Willam Braud, and his own daughter Elisabeth in distant influence; her studies of the efficacy of intentional prayer on people with AIDS in the 19905 in California are particularly renowned.
Russell Targ is an avowedly spiritual man, and this perspective frames and informs his treatment of all subjects he covers in this volume. The greatest significance of his psi investigations seems clearly to have been the development of a deeply healing spirituality for himself. He views remote viewing as a gateway to a spiritual path, a tool to help all of us explore the transcendental awarenesses of which great mystics have long spoken. Whether elucidating the teachings of Dzogchen Buddhism, A Course in Miracles, or his own teacher Gangaji, Targ writes movingly of his personal search for peace and inner love. He has been deeply inspired throughout his journey of exploring remote viewing and related psi phenomena, and earnestly seeks to convey that ongoing wonderment to his readers.
Particularly poignant, Targ includes as an afterword a short memoir and tribute to his late daughter Elisabeth, a gifted research psychiatrist whose work investigating distant healing through prayer was cut short by her own untimely death just before her 41st birthday. Justly extraordinary in life, her abilities apparently did not end with her passing, for she appears postmortem to have telepathically relayed messages to her husband through a third person's dream-in Russian no less, a language in which she, but not the dreamer, was fluent while alive. It's really no wonder then that Russell Targ became such a profoundly inspired man.
William P. Eigles is a former telecommunications attorney who has been a longtime aficionado of remote viewing and many other forms of paranormal cognition. Currently serving on the executive board of IRVA and editorial board of Aperture, IRVA's quarterly publication, he is a writer, advocate, and noetic advisor.
Limitless MIND: A Guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness by Russell Targ, (2004); New World Library, Novato, CA. ISBN 1-57731-413-1