Back to: Remote Viewing: Structured Non-Local Perception
Practice Exercise – Module 1
Practice 1 – Primary Source Engagement
Before moving to Module 2, spend at least an hour reading directly from the declassified Stargate documents. The CIA’s Electronic Reading Room at cia.gov/readingroom is the best source. Search for ‘Stargate’ or ‘SCANATE’ to locate the archive. You are looking specifically for session transcripts: documents that record what a viewer wrote or said during a session, before feedback was given. Then find the corresponding target photograph where it is available.
Read the transcript before looking at the photograph. This is important. Looking at the photograph first primes your pattern-matching in ways that will make the transcript seem more accurate than it would appear cold. The discipline of reading the transcript first is a small exercise in the same kind of perceptual honesty that the CRV protocol is built on.
As you read, notice what you can and cannot explain by inference, coincidence, or vague generality. Some language in session transcripts is general enough that it could apply to almost any target. Some is specific enough that it is difficult to attribute to educated guessing. What is specific? What is verifiable? Then look at the photograph and assess the correspondence honestly, without letting either the impulse to dismiss or the impulse to be impressed do your thinking for you.
A practical starting point: look for Pat Price’s sessions in the archive, or search the CIA reading room for transcripts from the SRI period in the mid-1970s. Some of the most striking early sessions are from this period. McMoneagle’s operational sessions from the 1980s are also well worth reading.
Written Exercise:
Write a 300 to 400 word account of one session transcript you examined. Your response should address all the following:
Identify at least two specific details in the transcript that correspond to verifiable features of the target photograph. Be precise about what the correspondence is, not just ‘the viewer mentioned water and the target was near water,’ but exactly what was said and exactly what the target shows.
Identify at least one detail in the transcript that does not correspond to the target, or that is so vague as to be consistent with almost any target.
Note what you find most notable about the session overall. Not in the sense of ‘this is amazing’ or ‘this is unconvincing,’ but in the sense of what the session reveals about the quality and texture of the data.
Consider at least two alternative explanations for what you observed, and assess how adequate you find each of them.
End with one question the transcript raises that you don’t yet know how to answer.
Assessment – Module 1
Evidence Evaluation Essay – 500 to 600 Words
What does the Stargate Program demonstrate about institutional engagement with anomalous phenomena? This is a question about epistemology and institutional sociology as much as it is about remote viewing specifically.
Your essay should address the following:
What did twenty-three years of government-funded research establish? Be specific. What did the statistical record show? What did the operational record demonstrate? What did the program’s longevity and institutional trajectory suggest?
What did the program fail to establish? Be equally honest here. What questions remained unanswered? What capabilities never reliably materialized? What theoretical framework, if any, was settled?
What does the gap between the statistical evidence and the decision to terminate tell us? Draw specifically on the contrast between Utts’s assessment and Hyman’s. What does each position represent, and what does the fact that the program was terminated despite Utts’s findings reveal how evidence gets weighted in high-stakes institutional contexts?
The goal of this essay is not to defend or prosecute remote viewing as a phenomenon. It is to think clearly about how evidence is evaluated, and how it is sometimes not evaluated, in institutional contexts. Strong essays will apply the analytical pressure evenly, neither excusing the weaknesses of the pro-remote viewing position nor ignoring the philosophical difficulties in Hyman’s dissent.
Formatting note: this is a short analytical essay, not a list of responses to the questions above. Let the questions orient your thinking, then write a coherent argument.
Community Discussion Post – The Great Work Platform
Discussion Thread – Module 1: What Stopped You Cold?
There’s a moment in most people’s first encounter with the Stargate declassified record when something stops them. Not necessarily convinces them. Stops them. A session transcript that’s too specific to dismiss easily. A statistical finding that won’t go away no matter how many alternative explanations you try. A career biography of one of the principal figures that doesn’t match the caricature you were expecting.
I want to hear about that moment for you.
After completing the Practice Exercise for Module 1, and after sitting with the Essential Questions, share one of the following with the community:
The specific thing in the primary record; a session transcript, a statistical finding, a biographical detail, something in the declassified archive, that you found hardest to explain away. Not the most dramatic thing. The thing that required the most honest intellectual work to evaluate fairly.
OR: The specific thing that you found easiest to explain away, and what that tells you about where your own skeptical filters are strongest. Both are useful. Both are honest.
There’s no right answer here. The person who finds the Utts assessment definitively convincing and the person who finds Hyman’s dissent entirely reasonable are both engaging with the material honestly if they’re doing so with genuine attention rather than reflexive defense.
What I hope this thread will become is a record of careful, honest engagement with genuinely difficult evidence. That’s the same quality of attention the CRV protocol is trying to train. In a real sense, doing this well is already practice.
One question to anchor your response: What is the minimum you would need to see to revise your prior position, in either direction?
Discussion Prompts to guide your post:
Share which session transcript or program document you found most compelling, and specifically why. Not in general terms, but with reference to details.
Where did you find your own skeptical filters most active? What did they protect you from examining closely?
What question emerged from your primary source reading that you didn’t have going in?
How does what you encountered in the declassified record connect to your broader understanding of consciousness, to what you already hold as possible, or to what you’ve been uncertain about?
Aim for 200 to 300 words. Precision matters more than length. Tell us what happened in your engagement with this material, not what you think you should have found.