Courtney Brown, The Future of Scientific Remote Viewing |421|

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Courtney Brown, The Future of Scientific Remote Viewing |421|
by Alex Tsakiris | Jul 30 | Consciousness Research, Consciousness Science, Parapsychology
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Courtney Brown talks about where remote viewing has been and where it’s headed.



photo by: Skeptiko

Alex Tsakiris: Dr. Courtney Brown, thanks for joining me. You know, I did a lengthy introduction to this interview that people will hear before they jump into this conversation, so I don’t need to go over all that again, but I did want to thank you so much for joining me. I think you’re such an important figure inside this, I guess I want to call it consciousness community. Your work is amazing. I think you’re especially important in light of everything that’s going on today, and I’m a little bit surprised when I set up this interview, I was a little bit surprised that, hey, everybody’s got to be talking to this guy about this stuff.

I mean we are in the middle of disclosure. I mean the New York Times is coming out and saying, “Oh, yeah, there really are UFO videos released by the Department of Defense,” and then, you know, the RV original guy. Dr. Hal Puthoff is putting his name in there and saying, “Yes, this is all real, and ETs are real and UFOs are real, and here you are sitting back, Dr. Courtney Brown, and this has kind of been your thing for the longest time. You’re well, well-known inside the remote viewing community as we just talked about, but have you given much thought to where are you are right now, in terms of this stuff that seems to be coming around what you’ve been talking about for so many years?

Dr. Courtney Brown: Yeah, it looks like it’s a bit of a wave but we’ve seen these waves happen before and, you know, you just have to, it’s like, just don’t believe it until you actually see it. So some people are coming out and saying some things but in terms of a mass level of disclosure, I don’t think that’s going to happen right away.

The reason is that the mass level of disclosure where governments actually say, “Yeah, this was going on,” they don’t do that unless they get something big from it, there has to be some reason for it. They’re not going to just unleash that on the public. They’ll keep it going as long as they can. They have to get something back from it.

Like if they have a full disclosure, you’d have to say, “Okay, well, what did the government get for that?” Not just our government but the Russian government and like, they don’t really get anything for that. The one thing you should erase from your mind permanently is that they’ll do it just to be good guys. I mean that just won’t happen.

So you’re getting some people come out, but you’re still not getting any articles about it and the level that it needs to be talked about openly. Whether that happens in 2020, I don’t know. Whether it happens in 2021, 22, 23, 25, I don’t know, but the process of making that happen is incremental.

So unless we keep, just giving this stuff out that we do, it won’t ever happen. So it’s very important that you don’t expect like a sudden wave, like a sudden, immediate, there’ll be an incremental movement and what we do is part of that incremental movement as a good part of it.

What you’re seeing right now is something that’s very valuable from that perspective of that incremental movement, but it’s the biggie that you’re actually thinking about.
 
Wow - that was a fascinating interview, but it is getting late at night here in the UK, so I will give you a lot more thoughts about this tomorrow.

One quick takeaway - CB thinks that there is no spiritual realm as such, but that consciousness does separate from our bodies at death, and then exists in one of the other realms out there - each with a different physics. I find that idea strangely comfortable!

David
 
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As a fan, believer in and occasional practitioner of RV, I really enjoyed this interview.

However, I caught something problematic in the institute's methodology. Courtney first describes how the viewers are blind as to the target. Later he talks about how there is psi connection between the person (himself) that sets the target and the viewer; even a retroactive causality. IMO, the psi connection is a real thing - and is intensified - in expanded consciousness realms/when the ego defenses are diminished due to meditation and intent to expand the mind. So, the viewer really isn't blind to the target.

Furthermore, it is reasonable to consider that Courtney's own beliefs and attitudes about an event that is to be viewed will leak through via psi to the viewer. In other words, the viewer is influenced in what s/he sees by Courtney's biases.

This situation is quite different than the military protocols wherein the viewer is given, say, some coordinates at which is something that all involved are blind to or is tested by simply identifying or describing the location of a target person.

IMO, beyond Courtney's own biases influencing the viewers, there is also the potential for bleed through impressions from random people, especially those who feel strongly about an event, place or object. I have personally experienced this. I have in mind here the institute's RVing of JFK, 911, aliens and similar popular topics, but it's not limited to these events or concepts. Such psi influences can occur to highly significant levels given anything surrounded by strong emotions. This is, again, my opinion, but it also stands as reasonable given Courtney's own words.

Actually, I think what I am outlining has a lot to do with how consensus reality itself is built. There is no such thing as blind because psi is always involved. The influence we have on each other's perception is constant and powerful. Together we create worlds, ETs, gods, personalities, you name it, IMHO.
 
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This situation is quite different than the military protocols wherein the viewer is given, say, some coordinates at which is something that all involved are blind to or is tested by simply identifying or describing the location of a target person.
no difference that I can see. I don't think project stargate blinded in the way yr talking about... you can't blind for retrocausality.
 
Wow - that was a fascinating interview, but it is getting late at night here in the UK, so I will give you a lot more thoughts about this tomorrow.

One quick takeaway - CV thinks that there is no spiritual realm as such, but that consciousness does separate from our bodies at death, and then exists in one of the other realms out there - each with a different physics. I find that idea strangely comfortable!

David

I think that’s what all the info that we get says. The picture that the data (from NDEs, OBEs, mediums/channeled info etc) presents us with has been collectively organized and studied by serious afterlife researchers like Craig Hogan, Victor and Wendy Zammit etc). What I feel can be confidently stated is that there are a countless number of realms. This is but one of them. But it isn’t any more or less of a “spiritual realm” than all of these other places. Of course we are biased as this is all that most of us know. So we call these other realms “spiritual realms.” I think that phrase serves no purpose and only serves to further perpetuate this idea that we are in base reality and that when we move on we become immersed in something more “spiritual.”

These other realms do operate by different rules. Some of them are differences in what we would call material laws of nature. The most notable difference (to me) is that many of these other realms seem more malleable to thought. But they are just other places. Like China. They are no more or less “spiritual” than this place. This all a part of normal nature. This place and those places are all a natural part of nature. Some people go elsewhere after death. And of course (as per the reincarnation data) some choose to come back for another round of hell on Earth.

IMO this forum doesn’t truly touch on afterlife studies at all. Which is fine of course. Just putting that out there that if you wanted to dig into it, I feel pretty convinced that you would end up agreeing with and confirming the idea that you wrote about in your post and what I am saying here. And what the guest apparently had said.
 
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"Do you think remote viewing is real?"

Yes.

I had a remote viewing experience in a mediumship class. I viewed a building with a circular driveway outside, a large carpeted wooden staircase inside, and there was a ghost watching over the place. When I was told about the target my observations were confirmed.

I had similar experiences giving readings in class. I saw distant locations like buildings in a city in another country I had never been to which were recognized by the sitter when I described them and which I was later able to find in photographs of the city in the internet. I saw the past many times when I saw scenes from the lives of spirits who were communicating with me, including their appearance and places where they lived and worked - ie. people and places separated from me by time and distance - which were verified by the sitter. (I am not saying spirit communication can be explained by remote viewing rather than survival of consciousness. It cannot.)

I witnessed many times other people having experiences like these when they gave readings in class and during Spiritualist church services.

I have had many precognitive dreams, as have many other people - so why should remote viewing the future be hard to accept? (Whether it can be utilized for practical purposes is a different question from whether or not it can occur.)

There are many areas of human functioning where we do not expect 100% perfection but nevertheless recognize outstanding performances. For example in baseball a batting average over .300 is considered good. Psychic functioning while measured to be astronomically far above chance, is not 100% perfect and this fact should be understood when interpreting the output of remote viewers and other psychics.
 
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no difference that I can see. I don't think project stargate blinded in the way yr talking about... you can't blind for retrocausality.

retro-causality is a red herring. If there's psi, then there's psi.

Stargate went after targets where there was low information dispersion. 911 and JFK are mass knowledge events. If there's psi, you're tapping into a sea of thoughts, emotions and opinions that will shape what the viewer sees. Remote viewing was never intended for mass knowledge events.
 
I think that’s what all the info that we get says. The picture that the data (from NDEs, OBEs, mediums/channeled info etc) presents us with has been collectively organized and studied by serious afterlife researchers like Craig Hogan, Victor and Wendy Zammit etc). What I feel can be confidently stated is that there are a countless number of realms. This is but one of them. But it isn’t any more or less of a “spiritual realm” than all of these other places. Of course we are biased as this is all that most of us know. So we call these other realms “spiritual realms.” I think that phrase serves no purpose and only serves to further perpetuate this idea that we are in base reality and that when we move on we become immersed in something more “spiritual.”

These other realms do operate by different rules. Some of them are differences in what we would call material laws of nature. The most notable difference (to me) is that many of these other realms seem more malleable to thought. But they are just other places. Like China. They are no more or less “spiritual” than this place. This all a part of normal nature. This place and those places are all a natural part of nature. Some people go elsewhere after death. And of course (as per the reincarnation data) some choose to come back for another round of hell on Earth.

IMO this forum doesn’t truly touch on afterlife studies at all. Which is fine of course. Just putting that out there that if you wanted to dig into it, I feel pretty convinced that you would end up agreeing with and confirming the idea that you wrote about in your post and what I am saying here. And what the guest apparently had said.

funny, I was just about to write that I totally agree with everything you're saying and then I got to the last paragraph haha :)
 
When we are out of the body we are spirits. When we are spirits we go to spiritual realms.

I am not against belief in other types of dimensions or other physical realms or other universes. BUT I think there is a better way to explain why remote viewing sometimes fails than by asserting the existence of alternate universes. The same alternative universes hypothesis is made to explain why OBErs can't produce verifiable information from their OBEs and I think there is a better explanation in those cases too.

If there are so many alternate universes almost identical to ours that remote viewers and OBErs can become confused by them, how come evidential mediums are not affected?

There are many areas of human functioning where we do not expect 100% perfection but nevertheless recognize outstanding performances. For example in baseball a batting average over .300 is considered good. Psychic functioning while measured to be astronomically far above chance, is not 100% perfect and this fact should be understood when interpreting the output of remote viewers and other psychics.
 
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Well I like Courtney Brown. I don't agree with everything he says (of course), but what he does say excites engagement and obliges thoughtful response. You can't ask more than that.

I especially liked his description of 'reality' as being both (in my terms) animistic and insubstantial. I liked his objection to 'spiritual' as a descriptor. That's why I prefer to say metaphysical.

I was interested in his characterisation of ET, and would like to have listened to a more detailed discussion. Have him back for that maybe? Several things struck me as both sensible and worthy of reflection:
  1. ET is able to move freely between the physical and metaphysical domains using tech associated with what we call UFOs. This is on the same spectrum that gives some folk the power of telepathy while the rest of us rely on mobile phones - same outcome, just different tech.
  2. I was intrigued by his observation that the realm of ET is just as complex and chaotic as the human - and that some were on noble missions and others on self interest missions. He invoked the 'As above, so below' maxim to characterise the state of affairs - and that raises intriguing thoughts about whether ET should respect conventional human power structures, such as governments - or just connect with the more spiritually refined. The dangers and complexities are evident, even at first blush.
  3. I thought he hinted at a notion of the divine that really didn't develop into something useful. This wasn't Alex's fault. Its just a damned huge topic. The notion of The One is sensible (but you can't have other 'Ones' for God's sake), and there are those others, gods and goddesses, who are described (to me) as "of The One, but not as The One." Alex raised the theme of a hierarchy, but Corey did not go there in any depth. Here was the beginning of an interesting conversation. But maybe it was not Courtney's turf to get into detail.
  4. I didn't think Courtney was what I'd loosely call theological literate. That's not a criticism. It just means he knows there are limits to his capacity for argument, and respects them. But he nailed the essential ideas. He just can't argue to the point in any depth.
  5. The idea that time and space do not exist in any absolute sense is important. As we advance in our understanding our tech will reflect this. I gather tech based on QM exists, but it is not yet part of the cultural discourse - that is still locked in Newtonian physical and materialism. So the intellectual notion that time and space are not 'real' makes sense rationally. But its not experientially 'real' in our common experience, or part of our cultural discourse. What is the 'essence' of time and space? White's 'The Unobstructed Universe', published at the end of WW2 is the only attempt to explain that I have come across.
 
When we are out of the body we are spirits. When we are spirits we go to spiritual realms.

I am not against belief in other types of dimensions or other physical realms or other universes. BUT I think there is a better way to explain why remote viewing sometimes fails than by asserting the existence of alternate universes. The same alternative universes hypothesis is made to explain why OBErs can't produce verifiable information from their OBEs and I think there is a better explanation in those cases too.

If there are so many alternate universes almost identical to ours that remote viewers and OBErs can become confused by them, how come evidential mediums are not affected?

Jim,
I like the Tart article you link to, but the name you gave the link is a little deceptive. Tart says that one subject came back correctly the hidden 5 digit target number remotely viewed. So that OBEr did produce verifiable info.

Otherwise, I agree with what Tart says. A real OBE is not the same as what a lot of people think are OBEs and what a lot of people experience.

Also, what I said earlier in this thread. The problem with these experiences (IMO includes RVing) is that it is all psi based and psi taps into all kinds of mental imagery from all kinds of people. You can get bad info from layers of human mental junk that's everywhere like radio static.
 
funny, I was just about to write that I totally agree with everything you're saying and then I got to the last paragraph haha :)

Lol, well all I can speak for is myself I guess. What I get from here is that we are establishing how silly the materialist paradigm is, and how bizarre and seemingly magical consciousness and reality is. But as far as TRYING to sort out what particular afterlife states MIGHT be like, there are far better and comprehensive sources. It’s just a matter of focus.

Overall, this is one of my favorite places. The podcast is great. You have a good voice and personality for podcasting. And I really like reading the thoughts of most of the regulars here on the board. Brilliant.

On that note, I don’t think you’ve interviewed Victor Zammit have you?

http://www.victorzammit.com/
 
Tart says that one subject came back correctly the hidden 5 digit target number remotely viewed. So that OBEr did produce verifiable info.

Yes, I should have said they can't do it reliably. I believe there are some genuine OBEs. Usually they are spontaneous rather than induced by techniques (which are often similar to methods of hypnotic induction).

My main point is that invoking alternate universes is not a good way to explain anything. It doesn't work when materialists do it to explain the fine tuning of the universe to support life, and it doesn't work when parapsychologists and experiencers do it to explain failure to produce verifiable information.

And I'm not saying there aren't other dimensions or realms, I'm just saying I can think of a better explanation than there are universes almost identical to ours so that it could confuse a psychic.
 
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I have been poking around a bit on the Farsight webpage, and came across this:

https://farsight.org/demo/Demo2008/RV_Demo_2008_Page1.html

Look at the predictions for 2013! It looks to me that RV can get pushed off beam by mass opinion - which Courtney seemed to be saying at various points in the discussion. It is slightly odd that he didn't add a comment of some sort in hindsight, but notice that the idea of a global warming catastrophe is marked as "Not yet confirmed" (CV18). Yhis may relate to something mentioned by Eric above:

So, the viewer really isn't blind to the target.

If people can pick up the target by psychic means, then subjects like 'Climate Change' must be super hard to RV. Indeed, Eric may be closest to the mark:

Actually, I think what I am outlining has a lot to do with how consensus reality itself is built. There is no such thing as blind because psi is always involved. The influence we have on each other's perception is constant and powerful. Together we create worlds, ETs, gods, personalities, you name it, IMHO.

This of course, does not bode well for using RV to solve important questions.

David
 
I have been poking around a bit on the Farsight webpage, and came across this:

https://farsight.org/demo/Demo2008/RV_Demo_2008_Page1.html

Look at the predictions for 2013! It looks to me that RV can get pushed off beam by mass opinion - which Courtney seemed to be saying at various points in the discussion. It is slightly odd that he didn't add a comment of some sort in hindsight, but notice that the idea of a global warming catastrophe is marked as "Not yet confirmed" (CV18). Yhis may relate to something mentioned by Eric above:



If people can pick up the target by psychic means, then subjects like 'Climate Change' must be super hard to RV. Indeed, Eric may be closest to the mark:



This of course, does not bode well for using RV to solve important questions.

David

Joe McMoneagle would not make those mistakes.
 
Look at the predictions for 2013! It looks to me that RV can get pushed off beam by mass opinion - which Courtney seemed to be saying at various points in the discussion.

Indeed, Eric may be closest to the mark

This of course, does not bode well for using RV to solve important questions.
David

Hi David,
Thank you.

Like I said, I think there is value in RV, but it lies within a limited range of application.

It must only be used when general awareness of the target is limited.

There are well documented cases where psychics (just another form of RV, IMO) have found missing people, murder victims, identified the murderer and methods, etc. There are a few police detectives that have admitted to successfully using psychics when standard procedures have failed. I have studied some of these cases and am very impressed.

The key is that only the victim and the perpetrator know the truth. There isn't a mass of minds out there muddying the waters.

Ditto military application where, say, only a few Russian personnel know what exists at a certain location.

It's simple. If there is psi (I believe there is) then someone who has opened themselves to it, will pick up on all kinds of signals from all kinds of people. If there is a way to filter the diverse signals such that one only gets a narrow and accurate range of them, I am unaware of it.

Maybe Courtney knows something I don't. I'd love to hear what he has to say regarding this issue.
 
Yes, I should have said they can't do it reliably. I believe there are some genuine OBEs. Usually they are spontaneous rather than induced by techniques (which are often similar to methods of hypnotic induction).

My main point is that invoking alternate universes is not a good way to explain anything. It doesn't work when materialists do it to explain the fine tuning of the universe to support life, and it doesn't work when parapsychologists and experiencers do it to explain failure to produce verifiable information.

And I'm not saying there aren't other dimensions or realms, I'm just saying I can think of a better explanation than there are universes almost identical to ours so that it could confuse a psychic.

I agree.

I do think that one can deliberately induce valid OBEs; actually, from personal experience, I know that can be done. However, also from personal experience, I know what you are saying is true as well.

IMO, one of the mechanisms by which false OBEs are induced is the ego fighting to preserve itself. This leads to distraction from the mission in the form of lucid dreams or dreams of having an OBE.
 
But is there a solution? If a person can become aware of the nature of the target by ψ, how can this be avoided?

David

Whether these is a solution depends on how you define the problem.

What is the problem: You want to know how RV works? You want to know the future? You want to sell RV classes and services?
 
Whether these is a solution depends on how you define the problem.

What is the problem: You want to know how RV works? You want to know the future? You want to sell RV classes and services?
Well suppose you want to use RV to shed light on a problem such as Global Warming, where many people have strong opinions.

David
 
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