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From the High Desert book cover

From the High Desert

A Cultural History of Art Bell

Thumbnail for July 19, 1996: Remote Viewing - Courtney Brown

July 19, 1996: Remote Viewing - Courtney Brown

Jul 19, 1996
2h 50m
0:00 / 0:00
Dr. Courtney Brown, tenured professor of political science at Emory University and head of the Farsight Institute, provides a detailed scientific framework for understanding remote viewing. He describes how the U.S. military spent two decades developing trainable mental protocols at Stanford Research Institute that achieved 85 percent accuracy in intelligence operations, and explains that the procedures work by shifting awareness to a dimmer perceptual channel projected by what he calls the subspace aspect of human consciousness.

Brown outlines the Farsight Institute's blind protocol method, where remote viewers are given only random four-digit numbers corresponding to undisclosed targets, then accurately describe locations, events, and people they have never seen. He reports that all 31 students trained at the institute have successfully learned the technique, with professional-level viewers achieving near-perfect accuracy on verified physical targets. The discussion moves into remote viewing of extraterrestrial subjects, the Adam and Eve narrative as a genetic uplift project, and the discovery of an ET library being used for patent development.

The episode raises profound questions about consciousness, the soul, and the ethics of a technology that eliminates all secrets. Brown argues that remote viewing constitutes laboratory proof of the human soul's existence and frames physical life as an accelerated school for spiritual development within intentionally limited bodies.

Key Moments

  1. Defining remote viewing - trainable, scientific, military origins: Brown defines remote viewing as a trainable mental procedure for extracting accurate descriptive information from distant locations across past, present, or future. He distinguishes 'scientific remote viewing' (SRV) - a modernized protocol set evolved from techniques the U.S. military developed at SRI from the 1970s through the 1990s purely for espionage.

  2. U.S. vs. Soviet programs - 85% vs 80% operational accuracy: Brown contrasts the two Cold War programs: the U.S. built trainable protocols at SRI; the Soviets screened for natural psychics. He gives operational success rates - 85% accuracy for the U.S. program, 80% for the Soviets - and notes the Soviet procedures were sold to the highest bidders after the USSR collapsed, including to a country the U.S. had bombed.

  3. The pencil exercise: three projectors in the brain: Brown walks Art (and listeners) through the foundational SRV exercise: with eyes open, picture a pencil - note the Eberhardt label, the number two, the metal band, the pink eraser. He lays out neurologists' three-projector model: ocular image is brightest, remembered image dimmer, remote-viewing image dimmest and foggiest, all projected onto the same cortical 'screen.'

  4. $20 million at SRI and the claim of 'positive proof of the human soul': Brown frames the DIA's investment at Stanford Research Institute / SRI International as roughly $20 million across two decades - pocket change for the Pentagon. His claim: those scientists produced 'absolute positive proof, certifiable positive proof in laboratory conditions of the existence of the human soul,' because remote viewing requires a non-physical component.