A Spiritual Perspective on Remote Viewing

One of the more extraordinary of the stories about Edgar Cayce’s psychic ability is the time he was preparing to do a reading for a client in a distant location. As he, he noted that the client was not present at the location mentioned in the client’s letter requesting the reading. In a moment, Cayce announced, “Oh, here he comes now” and began the reading. The client had just returned home.

A few years back, on a television program called “Put it to the Test,” they showed a demonstration of Joseph McMoneagle, who had worked as a “psychic spy” for the CIA. In the session, McMoneagle was asked to psychically spy a location far away known only to a couple of individuals. It was the Los Angeles harbor. McMoneagle does a pretty good sketch of the major visual elements of the scene. As he does so, a large freighter passes through that point in the harbor. McMoneagle notes that something has come onto the scene that is blocking the view. The television reporter was flabbergasted at the immediacy and accuracy of McMoneagle’s demonstrable psychic abilities.

That particular television program was in response to the startling revelation that the CIA had been using psychic spies. In an unusual break with secrecy, the existence of “Stargate,” the code name for the government project to use the clairvoyant skill of remote viewing as an intelligence gathering method, was headline news. The fallout of this revelation was gradual “coming out” of persons who had participated as psychic spies. Another fallout was that remote viewing catapulted from an arcane laboratory methodology to the subject of many new consulting firms serving corporations and investment firms who wanted to gain the latest advantage.

The impression created about remote viewing from the publicity surrounding its birth into public awareness was that it was a “psychic power” with all the ambivalence that the word power evokes. It could be used for competitive advantage and personal profit. It was lacking in spiritual value. The term remote viewing, with its technological tone, adds to that impression of sterility. What would be a spiritual use of remote viewing? Edgar Cayce once surmised that the highest use of psychic ability would be to hear the voice of God. As remote viewing is outgrowing its birthing rags, it is beginning to approach the idealism of Cayce’s vision. It would seem that intuition, or psychic ability, first had to be put into the most sterile, technological and practical of terms to gain recognition, and now can be rejoined with its spiritual roots.

A supreme example of this evolution has its seeds in the military’s Stargate program itself. It is the book by F. Holmes “Skip” Atwater, Captain of my ship: Master of my soul (Hampton Roads). Atwater was in Army Intelligence when he “happened” to be Johnny on the spot with his knowledge of remote viewing to create the military’s psychic spying operation. He was, in fact, McMoneagle’s trainer. I used the word happened deliberately, as the subtitle of Atwater’s book is “Living with Guidance.” As he tells his life’s story, he had many psychic experiences as a child. His parents, members of the Unity Church, normalized his experiences with responses that made him feel that “everyone knew that.” His parents also taught him about spiritual guidance. As a teenager, he used his abilities to see into his hot rod’s engine to facilitate repairs. He was guided to join the army, to apply for the intelligence division, and to then start the remote viewing operation. After retiring from the Army, Atwater joined the psychic training organization, The Monroe Institute, near Charlottesville, Virginia. In this atmosphere, Atwater expanded the remote viewing methodology to embrace spiritual guidance. He proposes a variation of Cayce’s vision of “oneness” with the idea of “All That Is.” Psychic ability is a natural byproduct of our being one with “All That Is.” He explains that remote viewing is not really “traveling” or “seeing,” but merely an expression of our being “All That Is.”

Atwater’s tone is down to earth, personable, and reassuring. Reading the book makes you feel that you, too, can realize your connection with “All That Is,” to know your spiritual identity, to realize your purpose for this lifetime, and to gain the necessary guidance for the next step of your mission. The book certainly turned around my feelings about remote viewing. In his final words, echoing Cayce’s ideal of “individuality in oneness” Atwater writes,

“Open your heart. And with an open heart, speak the truth. Say to yourself from your heart, ‘I reveal the truth and realize that I Am.’ Put a smile on your face and carry love in your heart. Show the world you know that you are a divine expression of God I Am. See you around the campfire.”