Remote Viewing (RV): The name of a method of psychoenergetic perception. A term coined by SRI-International and defined as “the acquisition and description, by mental means, of information blocked from ordinary perception by distance, shielding or time.”
[Smith, Paul H. Coordinate Remote Viewing. May 1986, DIA Manual]
We can identify 12 principles to distinguish remote viewing (in general) from other psychic disciplines. The article “Remote Viewing Principles” discusses these 12 principles of remote viewing.
It was at the ASPR in 1971 when Ingo Swann first used the term “remote viewing.” Ingo wrote:
“… it was coined in 1971–72 by myself and Dr. Janet Mitchell, at the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) in New York, in association with Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler and Dr. Karlis Osis. It was coined to identify a particular kind of experiment—not a particular kind of psi ability.
There is a substantial definitional difference between coining a term to identify a type of ESP experiment and an ESP ability. It is very difficult to define a psychic ability. But it is not hard to define an experiment.
Experiments have what in science are called “protocols”, more simply put as “steps that govern how the experiment is conducted”.
[…] Without at all thinking much about it, and before the end of 1971, we began referring to the long-distance experiments as remote-viewing ones, since this term seemed the most suitable. Since the psi-perceptual-processes that might account for the “seeing” were a mystery, it is again to be understood that the term remote-viewing did not refer to them, or to any novel ESP ability. From the start-up of its usage, remote-viewing referred to the entire experimental model, and the experiment was one only because of the feedback that could be supplied by telephoning the distant weather agency.
In fact and indeed without the feedback, one cannot tell whether any verifiable “seeing” had taken place or not, cannot tell how good or bad it was […]. Feedback, then, is not trivial or incidental, to the remote-viewing process and protocols. It is crucial to them.
To simplify all this, we can resort to a easy-to-understand formula. Remote-viewing consists of five absolutely necessary ingredients:
- subject, [with]
- active ESP abilities, [directed at]
- distant target [including shielded or distant in time]
- subject’s recorded responses
- confirmatory positive feedback
all of which equals (6) the remote-viewing model. Nothing less is remote viewing.
Those alleging themselves to be remote-viewers, then, cannot simply just “remote view”, but are obliged also to show positive evidence of their “viewings”, e.g., positive feedback. Without the feedback, such viewers are merely offering unsupported accounts that may or may not be of psychic origin. Remote-viewing is neither a novel psi ability, not a convenient replacement term for psi, clairvoyance, or ESP.
[Swann, Ingo: On Remote Viewing, UFOs, and Extraterrestrials, Fate Magazine, September 1993]