Book Review | Tracks In The Psychic Wilderness By Dale Graff
An exploration of ESP, Remote Viewing, Precognitive Dreaming, and Synchronicity
This book, published in 1998, just 3 years after the declassification of Project STARGATE, makes a valuable addition to any Remote Viewer’s library.
Physicist Dr. Dale Graff was the first Director of Project STARGATE and in fact, was the one who named it “to invoke the feeling of exploration, a sense of reaching beyond our ordinary capabilities, of expanding the boundaries of our human potential.” He is famous for appearing in ABC’s 1995 Nightline broadcast where Remote Viewing was first introduced to a wide American audience.
The author was involved with Project STARGATE from nearly the beginning, in the days when Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ cast a wide net to evaluate all things psychic. Over the years of research at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), later SRI International, many psychic techniques were dropped in favor of the more trainable and operational Controlled Remote Viewing (CRV). However, this generous early exposure to a panoply of psychic topics shaped how the author views the world and explains his interest in psychic abilities beyond just the well-known CRV protocol.
This book is written as a series of case studies, each illustrating a major point about psychic phenomena.
Structured vs. “loose” Remote Viewing
There has been a decades-long battle in the Remote Viewing community over the need, or lack thereof, for structure while performing sessions. I perform Technical Remote Viewing (TRV), developed by former operations and training officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency’s top-secret Psychic Intelligence Unit, Major Ed Dames, in which staying in structure is deemed key. CRV is also a highly structured protocol. In TRV and CRV, there are distinct stages of a session as well as an “ideogram” which is a squiggle-type drawing done quickly upon first contact with a target. However, other Remote Viewing luminaries, such as former SRI Remote Viewing research director, Ed May, suggest that Remote Viewing can be successful with much less adherence to a rigorous structure.
And, to this day, entrepreneur and Remote Viewing pioneer Stephen Schwartz teach a form of Remote Viewing which is a 2-page, less structured version of CRV with no ideogram, similar to what was being done at SRI in the 1970s.
The Remote Viewing method the author describes in the final chapter of this book would be considered less structured than CRV. In fact, one could argue it is more like Extended Remote Viewing (ERV), for which Project STARGATE participant, and former police officer, Pat Price was so famously known.
As a side note, the ideogram was added to what would become CRV based on the work of French telepathy researcher Rene Warcollier. In the first part of the 20th century, the trained chemical engineer hosted parties in which people experimented with sending and receiving telepathic communication. It became observed that the most successful attempts were associated with minor associated squiggly drawings. These parties and much of the research are detailed in his fascinating book, Mind to Mind.
Exploring Remote Viewing
Dr. Graff describes several famous Remote Viewing “hits” from his time at Project STARGATE. In one of these, the Ohio Caverns, the author took part in an “outbound” experiment in which he and another person visited publicly accessible subterranean caves. A Remote Viewer, in this case, Hella Hammid, was tasked with Remote Viewing them in real-time. It was designed to be a test to see whether Remote Viewing could penetrate below ground.
She described the location perfectly. But, as with all Remote Viewers at one time or another, discounted her results as seemingly unlikely. This highlights one of the reasons why it may be important to have the task of Remote Viewing analysis be separate from the Viewing itself.
Remote Viewing can be done by anyone
The author professes to have had no known psychic ability previous to his involvement with Project STARGATE. However, Hal Puthoff convinced him to give Remote Viewing a try. After getting over his initial fear of “looking like a fool”, he agreed. After performing a session close in nature to ERV, and then rendering some sketches, the author realized he was clearly on target. The author has developed a strong belief over the years that anyone can succeed at Remote Viewing, not just those who have had obvious psychic experiences.
Thoughts through space
The author recounts a series of very famous telepathy experiments conducted between arctic explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins and psychic Harold M. Sherman. Mr. Sherman was a leading psychic researcher of the day and author of multiple books, such as TNT, The Power Within You, How To Use The Power Of Prayer, Your Key To Happiness, and Know Your Own Mind. In fact, Mr. Sherman was so well known that he also consulted for SRI in the early days of Project STARGATE.
In 1937, arctic explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins was commissioned by the Soviet government to rescue the crew from a crashed trans-polar flight. Recently acquainted and based on a mutual interest in psychic realms, Mr. Sherman and Sir Wilkins decided to keep in “psychic touch” during the rescue mission. Over a 6-month period, Wilkins would transmit mental messages, detailing his trip, at pre-arranged times, to Sherman, the receiver, in New York. Results were compelling and are detailed in the 1941 book Thoughts Through Space.
In fact, these results were so compelling that Dr. Graff wished to recreate the scenario during his own wilderness trips to Canada’s Northwest Territories. Dr. Graff was able to track down a much older Harold Sherman. The two repeated the procedure with great success, the results of which are detailed in this book.
Telepathy has been used and studied scientifically since J. B. Rhine in the 1930s and is detailed in his book Extra Sensory Perception as well as in Stacy Horn’s Unbelievable.
But, in my mind, it begs the question: 1) Is telepathy just Remote Viewing by another name? 2) In a telepathy setup, is the “sender” even necessary? Or, 3) is the “receiver” just Remote Viewing a sender and their thoughts without those thoughts needing to be sent?
Psychic phenomena in dreams
Part of the SRI program evaluated the 1960s precognitive dreams and dream telepathy research of Dr. Stanley Krippner. Although this research fell by the wayside at SRI, in pursuit of other things, the author still feels this application of psychic abilities is pivotal.
The author believes psychic dreams can occur easily if we have the intention to be open to them. He advocates setting various intentions, keeping dream journals, and recording progress. In the book, the author presents several more stories of his development in this realm over the years.
Without getting into the weeds on this discussion, I would recommend an excellent talk given by the author at a Society for Scientific Exploration Conference here.
And, as another aside, Dr. Krippner is in great company with a whole fleet of books on psychic abilities and research here.
Developing your psychic potential
I don’t want to give away too much of the book, so I won’t detail much of the how-to; besides, it would take too long.
But here are some crucially important conclusions resulting from the SRI Project STARGATE research over the years.
Remote Viewing research conclusions
The author believes that Remote Viewing is best done in a relaxed state. However, relaxation need not be as deep as in various meditative states. It is an eyes-open process.
The state of relaxation and the Remote Viewing method presented in this book feels to me more like ERV that CRV or TRV. However, the relaxation imperative is a good reminder for me, because I often do my sessions after a coffee.
The BIG Remote Viewing takeaways from SRI research are:
1) Remote Viewing sketches are often more accurate than word-based data.
2) Being motivated to solve a real problem gives better results; motivation and intent are more important than any particular protocol.
3) Intent to Remote View is key (i.e., initiating the process).
4) General curiosity and being a curious person help results.
5) Perceived importance of the task helps results.
6) Flexibility in being able to be inner-focused vs. outer-focused helps results (and this can probably be practiced).
7) The ability to suspend limiting or critical beliefs about psychic abilities in general &/or our own abilities seems to improve results. In fact, Dean Radin of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) describes this as well with the famous “goats vs. sheep” example in his book Real Magic.
8) If you get stuck in a session, ask for more detail. It helps to develop short-hand mental cues (e.g., “How?”, “What?”, “Where are they?”, or even “I request more detail”).
9) Describe, don’t label. Remote Viewing is about describing a site, not identifying it. Identification is for the analysts and taskers.
10) There may be other factors that affect Remote Viewing results, for example, time of day and the environment in which the session is performed.
Dale Graff’s website: www.dalegraff.com.
Books by Dale Graff:
Tracks in the Psychic Wilderness by Dale Graff: An exploration of ESP, Remote Viewing, Precognitive Dreaming, and Synchronicity
River Dreams: The Case of the Missing General and Other Adventures in Psychic Research
Presentations by Dale Graff:
Activating Psi Dreaming (Society for Scientific Exploration)
Psi Perception: A Range of Connections (Society for Scientific Exploration)
Evidence for Consciousness Extending Outside of Space-Time (Society for Scientific Exploration)
Quotations and cover art are included with the author’s permission.
By Brian Lightfoot, Director of Standard Remote Viewing where he offers training, and services and publishes a newsletter containing Remote Viewing project research and future predictions.
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