If my scanner was not 2000 miles away in a box awaiting freedom, I would share some what-I-believe-to-be-on-the-verge-of-impressive scribblings. That is, if I wanted to spoil the experience for anyone that might be inclined to watch Ed Dames’ Operation Mindazzle: Military Remote Viewing Psychic Training Course.

If I wanted to spoil the experience, I would be more specific in this scribble description and say that, in accordance with Major Ed Dames and F.M. Bonsall’s instructions on said DVD, in a little box I drew, there are objects, almost exact representations of the target, and then a certain type of line, that is apparently a representation of a certain element present within the target.

Forgive my vagueness, but the point is—I believe I actually may have remote viewed. Not just with the first practicum, but the second also. Yes, the second scribbling was even more exact; I wish I could share. (I hate spoilers.) I was absolutely stunned.

I’ve always had a vague interest in remote viewing; I like things that make use of real, tangible techniques. I’ve read a bit about it, but always without a practical interest. It’s hard to ignore remote viewing’s provocative alarmist grandiosity and ultimatums; its penchant for the fantastical—apocalyptic visions, moon bases, aliens, angels, motherships.

One might expect New Ageyness; it’s there, inextricable, but it’s somehow nicely stripped of fluff. Maybe remote viewing is like this: it’s the whole love and light shebang mythos wanting to be witnessed objectively, meaning extracted.

Despite my success with the scribblings, I’m skeptical of remote viewing as it is commonly presented in its holistic form. In Operation Mindazzle, Dames asserts there are angels standing by our sides, preventing attacks, saving us from ourselves, so to speak. He explains that over the course of all the years of experience, remote viewers consistently ‘view’ an intelligent presence alongside us. The deduction is that this presence is an angelic one. An audience member questions the use of that particular terminology--that loaded assumption. From Dames’ quick, somewhat terse response, (‘…yes, yes, you could use another term, but if angel works, why not use it?’) I got the feeling it was a common question. It certainly was mine.

For a practice that relies so heavily on emotional detachment, it seems quite intrusive (and convenient) when western religious entities make an appearance. Perhaps that is part of Dames’ larger appeal though; even through the straightforward, established, apparently verifiable techniques and results that remote viewing employs, the fantastical magical world is still present.

The trouble is, even though remote viewing seems to really work, there’s the matter of interpretation. The decipherment of meaning is exactly where personalities, cultural indoctrination, and belief systems come in. So there’s an intelligent presence viewed alongside us—why is that not the ego? The Higher Self? A quantum version of one sprouting off into another world at that particular moment of viewing?

What if the success of remote viewing relies on some yet-to-be understood quantum method or function, and the presence is the remote viewer herself? There are endless ways of interpreting the presence. To name it ‘angel’ seems random and unwarranted, to say the least. Why the need to name the presence at all? Especially, since Dames himself, in discussing the angel question, admits that science-minded and military types become rather uneasy with such proclamations.

There’s simply no reason I can see to inject established and loaded belief systems into the remote viewing methodology. It makes for a sense of extremes; on one hand there is the cold, unemotional detachment of the viewing techniques, on the other, there’s the warmth, generic feel-good protection of angels at the end.

It just doesn’t seem to fit; Dames and Bonsall are emphatic about discarding the personality and emotions within the remote viewing exercises. I loved that. It’s rather the opposite of traditional psychic/ESP techniques, which rely heavily emotions, feeling, and interpretation. Many times during the excercises, the instructors reminded the audience to disregard the personality and any interpretation; the body itself is some kind of interpretive device—an instrument naturally tuned into the collective unconscious, and non-reliant on conscious effort.

Although this is quite basic within remote viewing lore, it’s the first time I suppose I’ve really paid attention to the idea. I love it for its simplicity and apparent truth. Perhaps the most impressive nugget within the DVD was an analogy Dames made. He described the remote viewing gathering of information akin to catching the vaguest glimpses—he demonstrated this many times, standing facing the audience, and quickly snapping his head around to the back of the room.

With those very quick glances, we would not describe a blackboard, but perhaps a dark rectangle; an overhead projector would likewise be reduced to its elements; and because our body recognizes it, we may only have a mere sense of ‘light.’

It’s something I could believe in. Many times when I can’t think of the name of something, in trying to remember, I will be haunted by some bizarre connection I have not consciously made; for example, there was a restaurant named “Cooper’s” and I kept thinking it had something to do with SpaghettiOs. Obviously, I knew the restaurant didn’t serve SpaghettiOs, but my body/mind made that connection on some level—when we got to the restaurant and saw the sign, the double ‘oo’s in Cooper’s looked a bit like the SpaghettiOs font.

Perhaps that’s a bad example, but I’ve noticed all kinds of pertinent connections like this. It seems to me, that if what we designate as psychic abilities are real, then it’ll have to do with these aspects of unconscious bodily knowledge and information gathering. Besides, I simply cannot dismiss those right-on remote viewing scribblings I made; the operation positively dazzled my mind.

Operation Mindazzle is available at Netflix.

Photo credit: Angel_by_brumie, Bram and Vera, creative commons licensing.

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