Remote Viewing, Out of Body Experiences and the Strange Experiments of the Cold War

Imagine walking into a military intelligence office during the Cold War and being handed an assignment.

There is no satellite photograph to analyze. No intercepted radio transmission. No informant waiting overseas.

Instead, you're told to relax.

Clear your mind.

Then try to describe a place you've never seen.

Maybe it's hundreds of miles away. Maybe the target is hidden inside an envelope. Maybe you're trying to locate a missing person or aircraft. You might be asked to sketch buildings, terrain, machinery or whatever impressions appear in your mind.

It sounds like the beginning of a science fiction movie.

Except the United States government really did this.

For roughly two decades, parts of the U.S. intelligence and defense establishment investigated whether human consciousness could obtain information without using the ordinary senses.

The programs went through names including SCANATE, GRILL FLAME, CENTER LANE, SUN STREAK and eventually STAR GATE/STARGATE.

Thousands of pages of the records are now declassified.

The CIA describes STAR GATE as part of a decades-long Intelligence Community effort involving paranormal phenomena and remote viewing.

This isn't the story of what conspiracy theorists claim the government did.

It's the considerably stranger story of what government documents show it actually investigated.

The Cold War Gets Weird

Why would intelligence agencies spend money investigating alleged psychic abilities?

Part of the answer was the Soviet Union.

During the Cold War, American officials received reports concerning Soviet and Eastern Bloc interest in parapsychology and alleged psychic phenomena.

That presented intelligence officials with an uncomfortable possibility.

What if most of it was nonsense but some tiny part wasn't?

The potential military advantage would have been extraordinary.

Imagine obtaining information about a secured military installation without sending a spy inside.

Imagine locating something without aircraft or satellites.

Imagine gathering intelligence from a room thousands of miles away.

Even if the probability of success appeared small, the potential consequences of allowing an adversary to develop such an ability first were enormous.

So the United States investigated.

Eventually researchers began concentrating heavily on something called remote viewing.

What Exactly Is Remote Viewing?

Remote viewing is often casually described as "seeing somewhere with your mind."

The actual experimental idea was more structured.

A viewer would be given a target while being denied normal information about it. The person would then describe whatever impressions came to mind.

Instead of immediately saying, "I see a Soviet missile base," a viewer might report impressions such as a large structure, cold, metal, water nearby, a vertical object or movement.

The viewer could draw shapes and structures as well.

Government records describe structured remote-viewing protocols and training intended to develop increasingly detailed descriptions of targets.

The purpose wasn't simply to produce an interesting laboratory effect.

Officials wanted to know whether alleged extrasensory perception could be applied to intelligence problems.

That is where this story stops sounding like a college psychology experiment.

They wanted to know whether it could actually be used.

They Selected Military Remote Viewers

The Army didn't simply put an advertisement on a bulletin board asking whether there were any psychics in the building.

The selection process was considerably more deliberate.

One declassified Army record says 251 INSCOM personnel were initially considered for GRILL FLAME.

From those, 117 were interviewed.

The Army's personnel-selection records give us an especially interesting glimpse into what officials were looking for.

The original pool included experienced intelligence personnel from fields such as SIGINT, PHOTINT and HUMINT. People could be eliminated because of factors including a commander's evaluation, health, availability and whether they would remain in service long enough to participate.

During interviews, officials looked for characteristics including open-mindedness, adventurousness, above-average intelligence, maturity, stability, sensitivity, success, an ability to communicate and what the records describe as an artistic character or personality.

Previous unusual or "psychoenergetic" experiences could also receive consideration.

But there was an interesting balance.

People strongly opposed to using supposed psychic phenomena could be excluded.

At the same time, people who displayed what the document described as unreasonable enthusiasm, occult fanaticism or mystical zealotry could also be rejected.

In other words, they weren't necessarily looking for someone who walked into the interview announcing that he was a psychic.

They seemed to want intelligent, stable and open-minded people who were willing to experiment without already having decided what the answer was.

Think about how unusual that is.

Military intelligence was deliberately looking through its own personnel for people whose personalities might make them better candidates for remote viewing.

There is one characteristic we have not found in those selection documents, however:

Blood type.

Nothing we've found shows that GRILL FLAME selected participants because they were Rh-negative or used ABO or Rh blood groups as part of its screening process.

We'll come back to that question later.

Then They Started Giving Them Real Intelligence Problems

Eventually remote viewing moved beyond controlled experimental targets.

Declassified Army records document remote-viewing sessions conducted in response to intelligence requests.

Some session reports describe the viewer's impressions as raw intelligence information that would be passed to the requestor for interpretation and evaluation.

That's an important distinction.

The government wasn't merely asking whether someone could identify a photograph hidden inside an envelope.

They were asking whether this could provide intelligence.

One Army chronology records that an early operational remote-viewing session concerned a missing A-6E aircraft.

The chronology reports that the aircraft was located within a relatively small radius of the location indicated through the session.

That claim comes from the program's own historical record. It doesn't independently prove that psychic perception caused the result.

But it establishes the kind of real-world problem they were attempting to solve.

Other records get even more serious.

Government files document remote-viewing work connected to actual intelligence questions rather than simply laboratory targets.

Again, that doesn't tell us that the resulting information was accurate.

It tells us something arguably more important historically:

These techniques were actually being investigated for intelligence applications.

"Move Through Time and Space"

Some surviving session transcripts become even stranger.

A 1982 GRILL FLAME transcript begins with the remote viewer receiving a sealed envelope containing a photograph of an individual.

The viewer was instructed to concentrate on that person and describe the individual's location on specified dates.

Then came an extraordinary instruction:

"Move through time and space."

The viewer was directed toward the individual's location on a specified historical date.

Later in the same session, the viewer was again instructed to shift perception through time and space toward another date.

The viewer proceeded to describe impressions of buildings, roads, surroundings and other features.

Whether those impressions corresponded to reality is a completely separate question.

What's remarkable is that this isn't somebody remembering an alleged experiment forty years later.

The transcript itself survives in the government's declassified records.

Then Robert Monroe Entered the Picture

This is where our story gets even stranger.

Robert Monroe was a broadcasting executive who became fascinated by unusual states of consciousness after reporting spontaneous experiences that he interpreted as occurring outside his physical body.

He eventually founded what became The Monroe Institute in Virginia.

Monroe developed audio techniques intended to alter or stabilize states of consciousness.

One of the best known became Hemi-Sync, short for hemispheric synchronization.

The basic technique involved delivering carefully arranged audio signals through stereo headphones.

U.S. Army intelligence became interested.

Government records from this period document Army interest in Monroe Institute training in connection with its psychoenergetic program.

CENTER LANE records describe advanced training at both Fort Meade and the Monroe Institute of Applied Sciences in Virginia.

The idea was fascinating:

Could deliberately changing someone's mental state make remote viewing easier or more reliable?

So yes, Army intelligence really did explore altered states of consciousness and Monroe Institute training alongside its remote-viewing work.

That part isn't internet folklore.

The Gateway Program

Then comes perhaps the most famous part of the entire story:

Gateway.

The Monroe Institute's Gateway system was designed around progressively altered states of consciousness.

Accounts and documents concerning Gateway describe participants using stereo headphones while practicing deep relaxation, visualization and increasingly unusual states of awareness.

Imagine walking into one of these sessions without knowing what was happening.

People lying quietly with headphones on.

Very little movement.

Guided audio.

Deep relaxation.

Exercises intended to change the participant's state of consciousness.

And during the same general period, military intelligence had become interested in whether related techniques might have useful applications.

The Cold War was an unusual time.

The Famous "Gateway Process" Document

In 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Wayne M. McDonnell produced the now-famous report:

Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process

The document attempted to understand Gateway through a mixture of neuroscience, physics concepts, consciousness theories and highly speculative models.

It discussed meditation.

Hypnosis.

Biofeedback.

Brain-wave activity.

Hemi-Sync.

Resonance.

Energy.

Consciousness.

And eventually ideas involving holographic models of reality.

This is one reason screenshots of the document regularly explode across social media.

People discover an official government document discussing consciousness and reality in language that sometimes sounds like something from The Matrix.

But an important distinction is usually lost online.

The document is an Army INSCOM assessment.

It is not proof that the CIA discovered how consciousness or the universe actually works.

McDonnell was attempting to analyze extraordinary claims and construct a theoretical explanation for them.

That's fascinating.

But theory is not the same thing as experimental proof.

What About Astral Projection?

This is where terminology becomes important.

Remote viewing, out-of-body experiences and astral projection aren't necessarily the same thing.

Remote viewing refers to attempting to obtain information about a distant or hidden target without ordinary sensory access.

An out-of-body experience, or OBE, refers to the sensation of experiencing consciousness or perception from somewhere outside one's physical body.

Astral projection usually goes one step further and interprets the experience as consciousness, or an "astral body," actually separating from the physical body and traveling independently.

Monroe himself became famous for describing experiences he interpreted in essentially those terms.

Gateway explored states of consciousness associated with similar experiences.

But there's a huge difference between saying participants reported experiences that felt like leaving their bodies and saying scientists proved that consciousness literally leaves the human body.

The first describes reported experiences.

The second has not been established.

Yet the possibility was strange and interesting enough that people connected to these programs explored altered states of consciousness seriously.

Could Consciousness Travel Through Time?

Here's another part that sounds made up until you start reading the files.

Some remote-viewing experiments weren't limited to ordinary distance.

They also involved targets at specified points in time.

The 1982 session mentioned earlier explicitly instructed its viewer to move through "time and space" and focus on the photographed person's location on dates years earlier.

That does not mean the Army invented time travel.

Nobody physically traveled backward through time.

The experiment was asking a very different question:

Could information somehow be perceived independently of ordinary constraints involving distance and potentially time?

That's an enormous claim.

There is no accepted scientific evidence demonstrating that people can reliably perceive past or future events through psychic means.

But the extraordinary part of this history is that government personnel actually experimented with the question.

What Were the "Focus Levels"?

Monroe's consciousness system described different mental states using numbered Focus levels.

Instead of simply describing someone as awake, asleep or meditating, Monroe's system attempted to distinguish progressively different subjective states of awareness.

Gateway participants practiced reaching these states while remaining mentally aware.

Exercises incorporated breathing, visualization, concentration and specially designed audio.

One of the most recognizable concepts became the Resonant Energy Balloon, commonly called the REBAL.

Participants visualized an energy field surrounding their bodies.

Other exercises involved separating attention from ordinary bodily sensations and exploring increasingly unusual subjective experiences.

None of this establishes that literal external energy fields or nonphysical dimensions were scientifically demonstrated.

But the exercises themselves were real.

People practiced them.

And military personnel became interested enough in Monroe's methods that the relationship appears in declassified records.

And the Monroe Institute Is Still Here

This may surprise people who assume all of this disappeared with the Cold War.

It didn't.

The Monroe Institute still operates today.

And remarkably, it still offers remote-viewing instruction.

Its current introductory program includes remote-viewing history, guided audio-supported meditation, practical instruction and an opportunity to work with a training target.

So something that sounds like a forgotten chapter of Cold War history is still being taught today.

And one of the people connected to that training has an especially interesting history.

Remote Viewer 001

Joseph McMoneagle became one of the most famous people associated with the military remote-viewing program.

He's commonly identified as Remote Viewer 001.

Today, the Monroe Institute offers introductory remote-viewing instruction associated with McMoneagle and describes his long involvement with remote viewing.

That creates a pretty remarkable historical connection.

You can sit at home today reading declassified government files about military remote viewers from decades ago.

Then you can visit the Monroe Institute and find remote-viewing instruction connected to one of the best-known figures from that world.

The classified program disappeared.

The fascination with the question certainly didn't.

Did Remote Viewing Actually Work?

Now we reach the question everyone wants answered.

After all those years, did they prove psychic spying was real?

The answer isn't as satisfying as either side of the argument might want.

There were experimental results that researchers interpreted as significant.

There were individual sessions program personnel considered impressive.

There were also failures.

By the mid-1990s, the CIA commissioned an independent evaluation before deciding whether the intelligence program should continue.

According to the CIA's later historical summary, the review concluded that enough accurate remote-viewing experiences existed to raise questions about randomness, but that the phenomenon was too unreliable, inconsistent and sporadic to be useful for intelligence purposes.

The program was not restored.

That's very different from saying the CIA proved psychic powers.

But it's also very different from saying the government never investigated them.

It absolutely did.

Why Spend Decades Studying Something So Strange?

This might actually be the most interesting question.

Intelligence agencies don't necessarily have to believe something is true before investigating it.

They only need a reason to believe that if it were true, it would matter.

During the Cold War, imagine somebody telling military intelligence:

"There's a very good chance this doesn't work. But if it does, somebody could potentially obtain information about secured locations without ever entering them."

What would you do?

Probably test it.

Especially if you believed an adversary might be investigating similar possibilities.

And that's part of what makes this period so fascinating.

The Cold War wasn't merely a race involving missiles, aircraft, satellites and nuclear weapons.

At its strangest edges, it became a race to determine whether the human mind itself might possess abilities that nobody fully understood.

The Rh-Negative Question

For our community, there's another question that's difficult not to ask.

Were any of the people who proved particularly successful at remote viewing Rh-negative?

And if they were, was Rh-negative blood any more common among these participants than we would expect by chance?

At the moment, we don't know.

Importantly, the declassified personnel-selection records we've examined do not show the Army screening people according to ABO blood type or Rh factor.

Instead, they describe intelligence experience and characteristics such as intelligence, open-mindedness, maturity, stability, sensitivity, career performance and artistic qualities.

Health was considered during the selection process, but we found nothing in the documented criteria saying candidates were selected according to blood group.

So we cannot say that the military deliberately selected Rh-negative remote viewers.

But that's different from asking whether some of the people they happened to select were Rh-negative.

That's a question we'd love to investigate.

Maybe there's absolutely no relationship.

Maybe the proportion would look exactly like the general population.

Or maybe collecting enough information would reveal something worth investigating further.

The important thing is not to decide the answer before collecting the data.

If you are Rh-negative and participated in military remote viewing, Gateway training, the Monroe Institute or another documented government or military consciousness program, we'd especially like to hear from you.

Even if you weren't involved with the military, if you're Rh-negative and have personally completed Gateway or formal remote-viewing training, tell us about your experience.

What program did you participate in?

What happened?

Did you ever have an experience you couldn't easily explain?

And if any former military remote viewers happen to find this article and know their blood type, we'd certainly like to hear from you too.

What We Know and What We Don't

After stripping away decades of internet mythology, the documented story remains extraordinary.

We know American intelligence agencies funded remote-viewing research.

We know Army intelligence selected personnel and trained remote viewers.

We know intelligence applications were investigated.

We know SRI International participated in the research.

We know Army records document training connected to the Monroe Institute.

We know Gateway explored unusual states of consciousness.

We know government remote-viewing transcripts contain instructions involving perception across distance and specified points in time.

And we know the Monroe Institute still exists and continues offering remote-viewing and consciousness-related programs today.

What we don't know is equally important.

The documents do not prove that people literally separated their consciousness from their bodies.

They do not prove astral planes exist.

They do not establish reliable psychic access to the past or future.

And we have not found evidence that military remote-viewing programs selected participants according to Rh blood type.

After years of experimentation, remote viewing never became a dependable intelligence-gathering technology.

But maybe that's what makes this story so interesting.

We don't have to invent anything.

We don't need to add stories for which there is no evidence.

The actual documents are strange enough.

For decades, some of America's intelligence organizations seriously investigated one of humanity's oldest questions:

Is the human mind capable of perceiving something beyond the ordinary senses?

They spent years trying to find out.

And now we can read the files ourselves.

Sources and Further Reading

CIA History Staff, "Ask Molly: Did CIA Really Study Psychic Powers?" A useful official overview of CIA remote-viewing research, its transfer to DIA, the later evaluation and declassification of the records.

CIA — Did CIA Really Study Psychic Powers?

U.S. Army INSCOM, CENTER LANE Information Papers and Personnel Selection Procedures. This is one of the most interesting primary sources for the article. It describes the program's intelligence mission, human-subject approvals, the 251-person candidate pool, 117 interviews, psychological testing, characteristics sought in prospective remote viewers and CENTER LANE training. It also documents advanced training at the Monroe Institute of Applied Sciences in Virginia.

CIA Reading Room — CENTER LANE Information Papers and Personnel Selection Procedures

The original PDF version of the CENTER LANE personnel-selection and program documents can be viewed directly through the CIA Reading Room.

CIA Declassified PDF — CENTER LANE Personnel Selection Procedures

A later collection of CENTER LANE information papers prepared for the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency contains additional historical and personnel-selection material concerning the program.

CIA Declassified PDF — CENTER LANE Information Papers for DIA

Lt. Col. Wayne M. McDonnell, "Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process," June 9, 1983. This is the famous Army assessment discussing Gateway, Hemi-Sync, altered states of consciousness and theoretical attempts to explain the process.

CIA Reading Room — Search/FOIA record for Analysis and Assessment of the Gateway Process

The Monroe Institute continues operating today and offers an Introduction to Remote Viewing program. Its current course page describes instruction involving remote-viewing history, guided audio-supported meditation, practical training and a practice target, and identifies Joseph McMoneagle as Remote Viewer 001.

Monroe Institute — Introduction to Remote Viewing

Additional declassified STAR GATE, GRILL FLAME, CENTER LANE and remote-viewing records can be explored through the CIA's FOIA Electronic Reading Room.

CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room