8 | RUSSELL TARG – Physicist/Remote Viewing and ESP
Shownotes
Russell Targ, a physicist who retired as a senior staff scientist from Lockheed Martin, was a pioneer in the development of the laser and laser technology for peaceful application. He then cofounded the Stanford Research Institute’s (SRI) investigation into psychic abilities, primarily via Remote Viewing, which was funded by the CIA during the 1970s and 1980s. A prolific writer, he most recently authored The Reality of ESP: A Physicist’s Proof of Psychic Abilities. Other books: Limitless Mind: A Guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness; Do You See What I See? Memoirs of a Blind Biker; Lasers and Love, ESP and the CIA, and the Meaning of Life. He is co-author of Mind Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Abilities; The Mind Race: Understanding and Using Psychic Abilities; Miracles of Mind: Remote Viewing and Spiritual Healing; The Heart of the Mind: How to Experience God Without Belief; and, The End of Suffering: Fearless Living in Troubled Times. Ressell also is an editor, publisher, songwriter, producer, and teacher who has had extensive engagement with Buddhism and was a longtime leader of a study group for A Course in Miracles.
Russell’s mission – “I consider that my purpose is to discover my own timeless awareness, and then teach that.”
Russell’s one-line message to the world – “Since we are all created from the same stardust, we can greatly diminish our suffering, by moving from our ego-based craving and fear, to timeless awareness, and freedom.”
- Russell’s was a pioneer in developing the laser
- There are more than 5 million YouTube views of Russ Targ’s cancelled TEDx talk! Too “controversial” for TED. But people want to see the story
- Third Eye Spies: Russell’s documentary about remote viewing
- – Russell as a childhood magician: his intro to ESP in surprising flashes while doing stage magic
- The American Psychological Association Journal
- Carl Jung and Linus Pauling on meaningful coincidence
- Melbourne Christopher – consultant to the SRI program
- Psychics at the end of the 19th century tuned into what later was validated by science:
- Dora Kuntz – founder of therapeutic touch
- Helena Blavatsky
- Charles Webster Leadbeater
- Annie Besant
- Lucifer Magazine – articles on philosophical, theosophical, scientific and religious topics
- Andrija Puharich – a medical and parapsychological researcher, medical inventor, physician and author, who brought Uri Geller and Peter Hurkos to the United States
- Wernher von Braun – the leading figure in the development of rocket technology in Germany and rocket technology and space science in the United States
- Harold E. Puthoff – laser pioneer and co-author of Fundamentals of Quantum Electronics
- Remote viewing is describing what is going on in a distant place
- The Reality of ESP: A Physicist’s Proof of Psychic Abilities by Russell Targ
- The CIA funds Russell’s ESP lab at Stanford Research Institute (SRI)
- Russell developed an app to teach ESP
- Edgar Mitchell – NASA astronaut and the sixth person to walk on the moon
- Ingo Swann – New York psychic, visionary artist, co-creator of the Stargate Project using remote viewing
- Pat Price – Ex police officer and remote viewer
- Christopher (Kit) Greene – remote viewer
- Examples of successes of SRI remote viewing:
- President Jimmy Carter gets SRI to find a downed Russian airplane
- Helping find kidnapped Patty Hearst
- Predicting the future — a failed Chinese atomic bomb test
- Nonlocality — entanglement where particles born together are permanently interrelated
- Wikipedia shamefully labels scientific work that’s outside of scientific materialism as pseudoscience
- Remote viewing: the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target via (ESP) or “sensing” with the mind.
- Quantum physics – nonlocality as described by science
- Spoon bending
- Uri Geller – spoon-bending and mind-reading
- Gary Sinclair – Suzanne’s spoon bending friend
- Uri Geller: Magician or Mystic? by Jonathan Margolis
- Russell was impacted by Ramana’s work with non-duality (podcast guest episode 3)
- Buddhism – Modern science has verified the timeless awareness the Buddhists understood 1000’s of years ago
- The Precious Treasury of the Basic Space of Phenomena by Longchen Rabjam – Dzogchen teachings of vajrayana Buddhism
- The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avatamsaka by Thomas Cleary
- Self Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness by Padmasambhava
- Basic Space of Phenomena – gives direct transmission even if you don’t understand all the language
- Gangaji – Russell’s teacher from whom people got direct transmissions
- Evolutionary Ideas on how to shift our worldview – insecurity and inequality makes unity difficult
- Marianne Williamson and the Course in Miracles
- Russell Targ’s exTEDx West Hollywood talk has 4 million views and adds 100,000 more each month
- Elizabeth Targ – Russell’s daughter
Brilliant exposition of a reality that is denied to avoid recognising that consciousness is a supra physical phenomenon
We are inching up on changing that situation these days thanks to evidence from work like Russell’s not fitting the old scientific materialistic model. A good thing is that this talk, which is online at another source without my ID on it, has more than 6 million views and hundreds of comments. It was so good for Russell and for the cause that I didn’t make them take it down, although they violated my rights putting it up — and making money on it!!!!
It seems becoming a “Judgeless Witness” (how I was taught) is a prerequisite to “Timeless Awareness.”
It seems Remote Viewing is a prerequisite for viewing the Akashic Records.
My personal experience, but I know I am not that special.
By viewing the Akashic Records, we could be somewhere other than the train station when the train wreck occurs.
This is more that we need to get Russell, who is steeped in Buddhist precepts, to comment on. All that I know about remote viewing involves things in 3D reality, but I’d be interested in how Russell would relate that activity to what’s outside that box.
Although I no longer concoct my shamanic brew from a single bag of precepts, after years of drinking it as an ordained Black Hat Sect Tibetan Tantric Buddhist, I thank you for your response. Good enough sometimes to just be heard. I frequently ask questions the teacher is not prepared to answer. Why I am no longer confined to the Buddhist path. Then I get to find the answer myself, and the adventure begins. I do honor your narrowing the focus.
I have followed Russell’s work for years. He is amazing. Don’t say that often these days.
I like the way you put it. And the way you think. It makes life more interesting to have such good penpals.
We consider it an enormous step along the path when you realise you can get all your answers yourself if you keep your wits about you and pick the answers up as they roll past you. It’s all there all of the time for everyone but it seems people are not able to “read” what has been placed in front of them and choose rather to follow a teacher – father figure. Here in New Zealand if we see or hear anything twice in the same day we consider there is something we need to know. A simple example, you will be driving along behind a dog grooming van and then your friend that owns 3 dogs stops talk to you and then your eyes fall on today’s N Z Herald and there is an article about dogs. If we kept our wits about us we get the message – and it will be something to do with dogs, their behaviours, the way they are trained, or a random meeting with a complete stranger who owns a dog may share some words of wisdom with us at the local café that takes us to the next step.
I’ve never been to New Zealand and maybe synchronicities are taken more seriously there which would account for your generalization. And, I don’t know about that dog example, but I get what your intent is. It’s a category worth paying attention to that some people are very sensitive to, but not so sweeping as to be the be-all and end-all to run your life by whereby teachers become unnecessary. The guru scene, which has faded from the grip of it we were in a few decades ago — thank Rajneesh’s fall from grace for that shift — did have a sheep aspect to it when at the same time there was valuable teaching about our godlike nature going on. We do seem to progress in coming fully into our power, but it’s two steps forward one step back.
I wish Mr. Targ would be kind enough to organize a remote viewing for the lost MH 370 airplane of Malaysia Airline which went missing years ago.
That could be a good idea. I’ll ask Russell!
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Fascinating account of “remote viewing” — how it was developed and used by the CIA as per Russell Targ, the “3rd Eye Spy” (the title of his film). What I learned from this amazing podcast is that whatever you’re interested in could be that you are naturally gifted in that area. With Targ growing up loving magic, lo and behold he becomes the expert in the magical field of ESP. This man is a genius and what a wonderful story of how “pseudoscience” became legitimate to the Stanford Research Institute, to the CIA, to the Department of Defense, and more. Targ is a remarkable revolutionary. All hail the open mind! Thank you, Suzanne!
Thanks, James. We are at an in-between time when what needs to happen is that science needs to open its narrow parameters to correspond to how our understanding has gone from Newtonian to quantum. The pejorative idea of “pseudoscience” needs to stop getting applied to what has become legitimate scientific material!
What a fabulous interview. Suzanne and Russell’s long-term friendship, his depth and breadth of fascinating knowledge and experience, and her heart and humor in drawing his stories from him — made for a fascinating and delightful journey for this listener. Thank you, Suzanne. Once again you’ve brought us into contact with your amazing connections and their incredible wisdom — a gift you’ve been practicing for decades!
Thanks, Laurel. I so enjoy talking to people I know, which has been one of my criteria for my podcasts so far (as well as choosing people who have followers so that, in its early stages, the podcasts get delivered to wide audiences). But, I will run out of those people and even now I’m trying to get Andrew Yang because I’m so familiar with Universal Basic Income (a major program I produced in 2014 about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im-c8rODDlY). I’ve got my fingers crossed that I can make fast friends of guests I don’t know, so the tone stays personal!
Excellent interview! I always love it when highly qualified genius physicists like Russell are also mystics who live the reality that we are non-local awareness. The only point of disagreement/disconnect for me was his comments near the end on American Society and how some people are suffering due to the”inequality” and that the government needs to step in (perhaps not his exact words.). I am glad you brushed him past Hillary Clinton as possibly being a good leader and onto to Marianne Williamson who, in my experience, lives the wisdom of Oneness . Since we are infinite non-local awareness and responsible 100% for our lives as Russell believes, then we have created our own reality–good or bad. We are 100% responsible for our plight.
Aren’t those profound thoughts that we could spend a lot of time tossing around! I’d like you to say something about where you disagreed. And, being responsible for ourselves is a conversation. You could make a case for it being that shit happens and what we are responsible for is how we react to it. Marianne has had some issues walking her talk, but it’s the right talk and I wish she’d gotten more attention for how smart her perspectives are.
Wonderful to hear someone speaking the truth without flowery emotional embellishment and no half-truths. We do all of these things here in New Zealand but here there is an apparent conflict with other teachings that say it is really hard to do and you have to practice for hours.
Of the different roads to enlightenment, some of them are speedways and some take a long time to navigate. What Russell is doing involves more of an attunement to what’s there for the realization, that he encourages you to make, than what involves training the mind like the Zen folks who get to deeper and deeper places over lots of time.
Absolutely fabulous! What a fascinating man! Thank you so much for enlightening the world with these Podcasts!
I love turning people on to what turns me on. Do pass along what you like, Devorah, to help get the word out!