Ingo Swann
Encyclopedia
Ingo Swann is an artist and author, best known for his work as a co-creator (according to his collaborators Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff) of the discipline of remote viewing
, specifically the Stargate Project
. He has written several books on remote viewing or related topics.
Swann does not identify himself as a "psychic
," preferring to describe himself as a "consciousness researcher" who had sometimes experienced "altered states of consciousness." Swann has stated, "I don't get tested, I only work with researchers on well-designed experiments." Swann is dissatisfied in a role as a passive subject. He feels he must contribute to the preliminary design of the research. According to Russell Targ
and Harold Puthoff, there have been "Swann-inspired innovations" that have led to impressive results in parapsychology. Experiments not controlled by Swann have not been very successful. These are rarely mentioned, and if so, only in passing.
Swann helped develop the process of remote viewing
at the Stanford Research Institute in experiments that caught the attention of the Central Intelligence Agency
. He is commonly credited with proposing the idea of Coordinate Remote Viewing, a process in which viewers would view a location given nothing but its geographical coordinates, which was developed and tested by Puthoff and Targ with CIA funding. Due to the popularity of Uri Geller
in the seventies a critical examination of Ingo Swann's paranormal claims was basically overlooked by skeptics and historians. Uri Geller comments very favorably on Ingo Swann. Geller says, "If you were blind and a man appeared who could teach you to see with mind power, you would revere him as a guru. So why is Ingo Swann ignored by publishers and forced to publish his astounding life story on the Internet?" Both Geller and Swann were tested by two experimenters, Russell Targ
and Harold Puthoff
, who concluded that Geller and Swann did indeed have unique skills. However, others have strongly disputed the scientific validity of Targ and Puthoff's experiments. In a 1983 interview magician Milbourne Christopher
remarked Swann is "one of the cleverest in the field." Details and transcripts of the SRI remote viewing experiments themselves were found to be edited and even unobtainable.
asks the questions why were the target objects in the same room as the subject? Why were they so close to the subject? And finally, why wasn't an observer also in the room at the time of the experiment?
Psychological scales were developed for rating the quality and clarity (as subjectively described) by Swann of his OOB vision, which varied from time to time. The results were evaluated by blind judging. A psychologist, either Miss Bonnie Preskari or Dr. Carole K. Silfen, was asked to match up Swann's responses without knowing which target they were meant for. She matched all the eight sessions. Dr. Osis stressed the odds about Swann being correct were forty thousand to one. There is no record of any experiments being performed in the dark.
Together, Dr. Silfen and Swann prepared an unofficial report of later out-of-body experiments and circulated it to 500 members of the ASPR, before the ASPR board was aware of it. According to Swann, Dr. Silfen has disappeared and cannot be located. He is searching for her and asks for your help.
According to Swann, in April 1972 a move was made at the ASPR in New York to discredit him and throw him out because he was a scientologist.
Then there are different versions of the following events. Puthoff states that after about a five-second delay, Heberd says it was a ten to fifteen minute delay, the frequency of the oscillation doubled for about 30 seconds. Heberd continues, when the curve burped, Swann asked, "Is that what I am supposed to do?" Swann said he responded,"Is that an effect?" Then according to Heberd, Swann crossed the room taking his attention away from the chart recorder. Swann says he took his mind off the machine and was sketching. Others watched the recorder to see if the irregularity would be repeated. It was. Puthoff asked Swann, "Did you do that too?" Here Swann says he again responded, "Is that an effect?" According to Puthoff Swann said he was then tired and couldn’t “hold it any longer” and let go. The chart recorder pattern returned to normal.
Heberd supports Puthoff's version that in the second instance Heberd suggested he would be more impressed if Swann could stop the field change altogether. Heberd denies he told James Randi
's that he never suggested it.
Swann recalls he heard, “Can you do that again?” from Puthoff. Only Swann says his feats frightened some doctoral candidates. Two "virtually ran" from the room and one collided with a "totally visible" structure support.
Puthoff writes Dr. Heberd suggested all along there must be something wrong with the equipment. The following day it was certain the magnetometer was malfunctioning. "The equipment was behaving erratically; it was not possible to obtain a stable background signal for calibration." Therefore the experiment was not repeated. Swann relates this SNAFU
in his book, Remote Viewing: The Real Story. In his CIA report, paranormal expert, Dr. Kenneth A. Kress, does not record anything about Heberd's malfunctioning suggestions. Kress only writes, "These variations were never seen before or after this visit." Though Swann was to spend a year at SRI, in their book, Targ and Puthoff present no further data and, Swann does not mention he was involved in, any other PK experiments with the magnetometer than those that occurred and were recorded on June 6, 1972.
Immediately after Puthoff wrote a brief paper in a draft form. Rather than publishing the results in a scientific journal inviting peer review, this paper was circulated hand to hand throughout research and academic institutions across the U.S.A., and Puthoff accepted invitations to speak. This paper caught the attention of the CIA and two spooks paid a visit to Hal Puthoff at SRI and met Ingo Swann. Later this paper was published as a part of a conference proceedings.
Soon Targ and Puthoff perform more experiments with Swann and the controls are tightened to eliminate the possibility of error. This time Swann is given the latitude and longitude of 10 targets, in the end there will be 10 runs for a total of 100. Only the evaluations of the 10 targets from the 10th run, the last, are disclosed. The results of the targets from the previous 90 (runs 1-9) are ignored. For the 10th run Swann has 7 hits, 2 neutral and 1 miss. The experiments come to a close. Targ and Puthoff are positive "Something was happening, but they are not clear what it is." (This method of selecting a small number of "guesses" from a larger, sometimes never disclosed larger number, is known as the free response method in remote viewing.)
According to Swann and Standford Research International, his RV has been correct probably 95% of the time. His personally trained students RV were 85% correct, 85% of the time. See:Stargate Project
Jupiter
and Jupiter's moons, prior to the Voyager probe's
visit there in 1979.
Swann asked for 30 minutes of silence. According to Swann, his ability to see Jupiter took about 3-and-a-half minutes. In the session he made several reports on the physical features of Jupiter, such as its surface, atmosphere and weather. Swann's statement that Jupiter had planetary rings, like Saturn
, was controversial at the time. The Voyager probe later confirmed the existence of the rings.
The following are Swann's exact statements:
6:06:20 "Very high in the atmosphere there are crystal
s... they glitter. Maybe the stripes are like bands of crystals, maybe like rings of Saturn
, though not far out like that. Very close within the atmosphere."(Unintelligible sentence.) "I bet you they'll reflect radio probes. Is that possible if you had a cloud of crystals that were assaulted by different radio waves
?"
are not inside the atmosphere and rather than being made of crystal, Jupiter's rings are formed by charged (dust) particles of various sizes. Most of these particles are very tiny (about 1 micrometre across). There are two forces that are exerted on these particles by Jupiter: a gravitational force and an electromagnetic force. The gravitational force is stronger than the electromagnetic force for particles with size of 1 micrometre and it provides the centripetal acceleration that is required to keep these particles in circular motion around Jupiter.
Throughout their lifetimes these particles are ground down by the energetic particles that are abundant in Jupiter's magnetosphere
and eventually they become so small (about 0.03 micrometre across) that the electromagnetic force overpowers the gravitational force and the particles leave the rings and fall into Jupiter's atmosphere. The average lifetime of these particles is about 1000 years, a very short time by cosmological standards.
However, Jupiter's rings are a permanent feature because these tiny particles are regenerated continually by collisions of interplanetary Micrometeoroids with boulder-size objects within the rings.
Swann's total observations lasted for about 20 minutes. He made no mention of the many moons of Jupiter, which as of February 2004 counted 63. The raw data comprised only four pages. But according to Swann the confirmatory data appeared throughout the published scientific and technical articles and papers. It was decided that all of these should be included in their entirety to ensure that no scientific passage was inadvertently used out of context. The feedback data therefore amounted to about 300 pages. Swann states, "Only the mountains remained unconfirmed. When skeptics elected to amuse themselves regarding the Probe it was this single item they focused on."
An examination by Randi
of the 65 statements made by Ingo Swann and Harold Sherman concluded that 37 percent of the statements were incorrect. Of the statements, 7 were correct yet obvious, 11 were correct and available widely in reference books, 5 were probably true (scientific speculation), one was correct but not available from reference books, 9 were too vague to verify, 2 were probably incorrect and 30 were certainly incorrect. Randi's evaluation of the 31 claims about Jupiter by Swann identified 6 as true, 1 as very likely, 3 as probable, 4 as obvious, 1 as "probably not," 11 as wrong, 1 as "not known," and 4 criticized for being vague or nonspecific in various ways, e.g., "it's liquid" and "surface gives high infrared count, and heat is held down."
Swann has stated he hates James Randi's guts.
published in The Journal of Neuropsychiatry & Clinical Neurosciences. The results with Ingo Swann suggested that during his remote viewing there were associated measurable changes in brain activity. There was bipolar electroencephalographic activity over the occipital, temporal and frontal lobes. Persinger concluded that there was "significant congruence" between the stimuli and Swann's electroencephalographic activity.
and Peter Hurkos
were super sensitive sleuths.
Authors Arthur Lyons and Marcello Truzzi, Ph.D., also a founder of the International Remote Viewing Association, wrote the Croiset and Hurkos cases were "pure bunk" in their 1991 book The Blue Sense: Psychic Detectives and Crime.
and Saucer Smear. Swann, writing "in appreciation of 'Saucer Smear' and its Esteemed Editor", writes that "although many of its readers might view 'Saucer Smear' merely as a droll ufology gossip rag, in the larger picture it is rather more accurately a profound 'window' opening up onto the sociology of ufology. Therefore its cumulative issues constitute a precious historical archive."
In his 1998 autobiography Penetration: The Question of Extraterrestrial and Human Telepathy, Swann describes his work with individuals in an unknown agency who study extraterrestrials
, his remote viewing of a secret E.T. base on the hidden side of the moon and his "shocking" experience with a sexy scantily dressed female E.T. in a Los Angeles
supermarket. He concludes that extraterrestrials are living on earth in humanoid bodies. A friend warns him that there are many extraterrestrials, that many are "bio-androids", and that they are aware their only foes on earth are psychics. While Swann and an individual known as "Mr. Axelrod" are secretly watching a UFO appear and suck up the water of a lake, they are discovered and attacked by the UFO. Swann is injured but is dragged to safety by his colleagues.
Remote viewing
Remote viewing is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target using paranormal means, in particular, extra-sensory perception or "sensing with mind"...
, specifically the Stargate Project
Stargate Project
The Stargate Project was the umbrella code name of one of several sub-projects established by the U.S. Federal Government to investigate claims of psychic phenomena with potential military and domestic applications, particularly "remote viewing": the purported ability to psychically "see" events,...
. He has written several books on remote viewing or related topics.
Swann does not identify himself as a "psychic
Psychic
A psychic is a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception , or is said by others to have such abilities. It is also used to describe theatrical performers who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cold reading, and hot...
," preferring to describe himself as a "consciousness researcher" who had sometimes experienced "altered states of consciousness." Swann has stated, "I don't get tested, I only work with researchers on well-designed experiments." Swann is dissatisfied in a role as a passive subject. He feels he must contribute to the preliminary design of the research. According to Russell Targ
Russell Targ
Russell Targ is an American physicist and author, an ESP researcher, and pioneer in the earliest development of the laser....
and Harold Puthoff, there have been "Swann-inspired innovations" that have led to impressive results in parapsychology. Experiments not controlled by Swann have not been very successful. These are rarely mentioned, and if so, only in passing.
Swann helped develop the process of remote viewing
Remote viewing
Remote viewing is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target using paranormal means, in particular, extra-sensory perception or "sensing with mind"...
at the Stanford Research Institute in experiments that caught the attention of the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
. He is commonly credited with proposing the idea of Coordinate Remote Viewing, a process in which viewers would view a location given nothing but its geographical coordinates, which was developed and tested by Puthoff and Targ with CIA funding. Due to the popularity of Uri Geller
Uri Geller
Uri Geller is a self-proclaimed psychic known for his trademark television performances of spoon bending and other supposed psychic effects. Throughout the years, Geller has been accused of using simple conjuring tricks to achieve the effects of psychokinesis and telepathy...
in the seventies a critical examination of Ingo Swann's paranormal claims was basically overlooked by skeptics and historians. Uri Geller comments very favorably on Ingo Swann. Geller says, "If you were blind and a man appeared who could teach you to see with mind power, you would revere him as a guru. So why is Ingo Swann ignored by publishers and forced to publish his astounding life story on the Internet?" Both Geller and Swann were tested by two experimenters, Russell Targ
Russell Targ
Russell Targ is an American physicist and author, an ESP researcher, and pioneer in the earliest development of the laser....
and Harold Puthoff
Harold E. Puthoff
Harold E. Puthoff is an American physicist who, earlier in his career was involved in research on paranormal topics. In 1967, Puthoff earned a Ph.D. from Stanford University...
, who concluded that Geller and Swann did indeed have unique skills. However, others have strongly disputed the scientific validity of Targ and Puthoff's experiments. In a 1983 interview magician Milbourne Christopher
Milbourne Christopher
Milbourne Christopher was an American illusionist.President of the Society of American Magicians, an honorary vice-president to the Magic Circle, and one of the founding members of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, Christopher authored several books, including a biography of Harry Houdini, and...
remarked Swann is "one of the cleverest in the field." Details and transcripts of the SRI remote viewing experiments themselves were found to be edited and even unobtainable.
Out of body experiment for Karlis Osis and the ASPR
In the summer of 1972, American Society for Psychical Research Newsletter Dr. Karlis Osis, director of research for the ASPR, described his personal controlled out-of-body experiment with Swann. The targets that Swann was to attempt to describe and illustrate were on a shelf two feet from the ceiling and several feet above Swann's head. Dr. Osis does not describe the height of the ceiling. Swann suggests, unclearly, the ceiling was 14 feet in height. The room was illuminated by two kitchen-style overhead fixtures. Swann sat alone in the chamber with wires from electrodes fastened to his head running through the wall behind him. Swann sat just beneath the target tray. He was given a clipboard to use for sketching. Any movement while drawing did not result in "artefacts" in the brain readout. Although his out-stretched hand might not have extended far enough to reach the suspended shelf, the clipboard that he used for sketching could have been employed as an extension. Perhaps with a mirror held by the clip at the high end, the lower end grasped by the fingers of his extended hand. In Swann's book To Kiss Earth Goodbye there is a photograph of the objects on the shelf. Swann wrote that he was aware of most of the objects on shelf above his head, but he did not know it held four numbers on a side. A side that would not have been visible if a reflecting surface had been angled near the end. Writing about this experiment master magician Milbourne ChristopherMilbourne Christopher
Milbourne Christopher was an American illusionist.President of the Society of American Magicians, an honorary vice-president to the Magic Circle, and one of the founding members of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, Christopher authored several books, including a biography of Harry Houdini, and...
asks the questions why were the target objects in the same room as the subject? Why were they so close to the subject? And finally, why wasn't an observer also in the room at the time of the experiment?
Psychological scales were developed for rating the quality and clarity (as subjectively described) by Swann of his OOB vision, which varied from time to time. The results were evaluated by blind judging. A psychologist, either Miss Bonnie Preskari or Dr. Carole K. Silfen, was asked to match up Swann's responses without knowing which target they were meant for. She matched all the eight sessions. Dr. Osis stressed the odds about Swann being correct were forty thousand to one. There is no record of any experiments being performed in the dark.
Together, Dr. Silfen and Swann prepared an unofficial report of later out-of-body experiments and circulated it to 500 members of the ASPR, before the ASPR board was aware of it. According to Swann, Dr. Silfen has disappeared and cannot be located. He is searching for her and asks for your help.
According to Swann, in April 1972 a move was made at the ASPR in New York to discredit him and throw him out because he was a scientologist.
Different versions of the magnetometer psychokinesis tests
When Ingo Swann arrived at SRI Harold Puthoff decided he would first be tested for psychokinesis, PK. On June 6, 1972, the two men paid a visit to Dr. Arthur Heberd and his quark detector, a magnetometer, at the Varian Physics Building. The well-shielded magnetometer had a small magnetic probe in a vault five feet beneath the floor. The oscillation had been running silently, for about an hour tracing out a stable pattern on the chart recorder. Putoff asked Swann if he could affect the magetometer’s magnetic field. Swann says he focused his attention on the interior of the magnetometer and was getting nothing.Then there are different versions of the following events. Puthoff states that after about a five-second delay, Heberd says it was a ten to fifteen minute delay, the frequency of the oscillation doubled for about 30 seconds. Heberd continues, when the curve burped, Swann asked, "Is that what I am supposed to do?" Swann said he responded,"Is that an effect?" Then according to Heberd, Swann crossed the room taking his attention away from the chart recorder. Swann says he took his mind off the machine and was sketching. Others watched the recorder to see if the irregularity would be repeated. It was. Puthoff asked Swann, "Did you do that too?" Here Swann says he again responded, "Is that an effect?" According to Puthoff Swann said he was then tired and couldn’t “hold it any longer” and let go. The chart recorder pattern returned to normal.
Heberd supports Puthoff's version that in the second instance Heberd suggested he would be more impressed if Swann could stop the field change altogether. Heberd denies he told James Randi
James Randi
James Randi is a Canadian-American stage magician and scientific skeptic best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudoscience. Randi is the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation...
's that he never suggested it.
Swann recalls he heard, “Can you do that again?” from Puthoff. Only Swann says his feats frightened some doctoral candidates. Two "virtually ran" from the room and one collided with a "totally visible" structure support.
Puthoff writes Dr. Heberd suggested all along there must be something wrong with the equipment. The following day it was certain the magnetometer was malfunctioning. "The equipment was behaving erratically; it was not possible to obtain a stable background signal for calibration." Therefore the experiment was not repeated. Swann relates this SNAFU
SNAFU
SNAFU is an acronym that stands for situation normal: all fucked up. It is sometimes bowdlerized to all fouled up or similar. In simple terms, it means that the normal situation is in a bad state, as it always is, therefore nothing unexpected. It is usually used in jest, or as a sign of frustration...
in his book, Remote Viewing: The Real Story. In his CIA report, paranormal expert, Dr. Kenneth A. Kress, does not record anything about Heberd's malfunctioning suggestions. Kress only writes, "These variations were never seen before or after this visit." Though Swann was to spend a year at SRI, in their book, Targ and Puthoff present no further data and, Swann does not mention he was involved in, any other PK experiments with the magnetometer than those that occurred and were recorded on June 6, 1972.
Immediately after Puthoff wrote a brief paper in a draft form. Rather than publishing the results in a scientific journal inviting peer review, this paper was circulated hand to hand throughout research and academic institutions across the U.S.A., and Puthoff accepted invitations to speak. This paper caught the attention of the CIA and two spooks paid a visit to Hal Puthoff at SRI and met Ingo Swann. Later this paper was published as a part of a conference proceedings.
Early Coordinate Remote Viewing experiments
Targ and Puthoff write about their pilot experiments, "We couldn't overlook the possibility that perhaps Ingo knew the geographical features of the earth and their approximate latitude and longitude. (It is Swann who suggests these Coordinate Remote Viewing tests, not the experimenters. He is in control.) "Or it was possible that we were inadvertently cueing the subject (Swann), since we as experimenters knew what the answers were."Soon Targ and Puthoff perform more experiments with Swann and the controls are tightened to eliminate the possibility of error. This time Swann is given the latitude and longitude of 10 targets, in the end there will be 10 runs for a total of 100. Only the evaluations of the 10 targets from the 10th run, the last, are disclosed. The results of the targets from the previous 90 (runs 1-9) are ignored. For the 10th run Swann has 7 hits, 2 neutral and 1 miss. The experiments come to a close. Targ and Puthoff are positive "Something was happening, but they are not clear what it is." (This method of selecting a small number of "guesses" from a larger, sometimes never disclosed larger number, is known as the free response method in remote viewing.)
According to Swann and Standford Research International, his RV has been correct probably 95% of the time. His personally trained students RV were 85% correct, 85% of the time. See:Stargate Project
Stargate Project
The Stargate Project was the umbrella code name of one of several sub-projects established by the U.S. Federal Government to investigate claims of psychic phenomena with potential military and domestic applications, particularly "remote viewing": the purported ability to psychically "see" events,...
Swann's Jupiter rings
Ingo Swann proposed a study to Targ and Puthoff. At first they resisted, for the resulting descriptions would be impossible to verify. Yet, on the evening 27 April 1973 Targ and Puthoff recorded Swann's remote viewing session of the planetPlanet
A planet is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, science,...
Jupiter
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...
and Jupiter's moons, prior to the Voyager probe's
Voyager 1
The Voyager 1 spacecraft is a 722-kilogram space probe launched by NASA in 1977, to study the outer Solar System and eventually interstellar space. Operating for as of today , the spacecraft receives routine commands and transmits data back to the Deep Space Network. At a distance of as of...
visit there in 1979.
Swann asked for 30 minutes of silence. According to Swann, his ability to see Jupiter took about 3-and-a-half minutes. In the session he made several reports on the physical features of Jupiter, such as its surface, atmosphere and weather. Swann's statement that Jupiter had planetary rings, like Saturn
Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus , the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol represents the Roman god's sickle.Saturn,...
, was controversial at the time. The Voyager probe later confirmed the existence of the rings.
The following are Swann's exact statements:
6:06:20 "Very high in the atmosphere there are crystal
Crystal
A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are arranged in an orderly repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions. The scientific study of crystals and crystal formation is known as crystallography...
s... they glitter. Maybe the stripes are like bands of crystals, maybe like rings of Saturn
Rings of Saturn
The rings of Saturn are the most extensive planetary ring system of any planet in the Solar System. They consist of countless small particles, ranging in size from micrometres to metres, that form clumps that in turn orbit about Saturn...
, though not far out like that. Very close within the atmosphere."(Unintelligible sentence.) "I bet you they'll reflect radio probes. Is that possible if you had a cloud of crystals that were assaulted by different radio waves
Radio waves
Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum longer than infrared light. Radio waves have frequencies from 300 GHz to as low as 3 kHz, and corresponding wavelengths from 1 millimeter to 100 kilometers. Like all other electromagnetic waves,...
?"
Analysis of Swann's observations
The Rings of JupiterRings of Jupiter
The planet Jupiter has a system of rings, known as the rings of Jupiter or the Jovian ring system. It was the third ring system to be discovered in the Solar System, after those of Saturn and Uranus. It was first observed in 1979 by the Voyager 1 space probe and thoroughly investigated in the 1990s...
are not inside the atmosphere and rather than being made of crystal, Jupiter's rings are formed by charged (dust) particles of various sizes. Most of these particles are very tiny (about 1 micrometre across). There are two forces that are exerted on these particles by Jupiter: a gravitational force and an electromagnetic force. The gravitational force is stronger than the electromagnetic force for particles with size of 1 micrometre and it provides the centripetal acceleration that is required to keep these particles in circular motion around Jupiter.
Throughout their lifetimes these particles are ground down by the energetic particles that are abundant in Jupiter's magnetosphere
Jupiter's magnetosphere
The magnetosphere of Jupiter is the cavity created in the solar wind by the planet's magnetic field. Extending up to seven million kilometers in the Sun's direction and almost to the orbit of Saturn in the opposite direction, Jupiter's magnetosphere is the largest and most powerful of any planetary...
and eventually they become so small (about 0.03 micrometre across) that the electromagnetic force overpowers the gravitational force and the particles leave the rings and fall into Jupiter's atmosphere. The average lifetime of these particles is about 1000 years, a very short time by cosmological standards.
However, Jupiter's rings are a permanent feature because these tiny particles are regenerated continually by collisions of interplanetary Micrometeoroids with boulder-size objects within the rings.
Swann's total observations lasted for about 20 minutes. He made no mention of the many moons of Jupiter, which as of February 2004 counted 63. The raw data comprised only four pages. But according to Swann the confirmatory data appeared throughout the published scientific and technical articles and papers. It was decided that all of these should be included in their entirety to ensure that no scientific passage was inadvertently used out of context. The feedback data therefore amounted to about 300 pages. Swann states, "Only the mountains remained unconfirmed. When skeptics elected to amuse themselves regarding the Probe it was this single item they focused on."
An examination by Randi
James Randi
James Randi is a Canadian-American stage magician and scientific skeptic best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudoscience. Randi is the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation...
of the 65 statements made by Ingo Swann and Harold Sherman concluded that 37 percent of the statements were incorrect. Of the statements, 7 were correct yet obvious, 11 were correct and available widely in reference books, 5 were probably true (scientific speculation), one was correct but not available from reference books, 9 were too vague to verify, 2 were probably incorrect and 30 were certainly incorrect. Randi's evaluation of the 31 claims about Jupiter by Swann identified 6 as true, 1 as very likely, 3 as probable, 4 as obvious, 1 as "probably not," 11 as wrong, 1 as "not known," and 4 criticized for being vague or nonspecific in various ways, e.g., "it's liquid" and "surface gives high infrared count, and heat is held down."
Swann has stated he hates James Randi's guts.
Ingo Swann's brain activity during remote viewing
In November 2001, there was an article by Michael PersingerMichael Persinger
Michael A. Persinger is a cognitive neuroscience researcher and university professor with over 200 peer-reviewed publications. He has worked at Laurentian University, located in Sudbury, Ontario, since 1971.-Early life:...
published in The Journal of Neuropsychiatry & Clinical Neurosciences. The results with Ingo Swann suggested that during his remote viewing there were associated measurable changes in brain activity. There was bipolar electroencephalographic activity over the occipital, temporal and frontal lobes. Persinger concluded that there was "significant congruence" between the stimuli and Swann's electroencephalographic activity.
Swann and psychic detectives
Swann reported that out of the twenty-five criminal cases he worked between 1972-1979 twenty-two were flops and three were successes. According to Swann, Gerard CroisetGerard Croiset
Gerard Croiset a.k.a. Gerard Boekbinder was a Dutch parapsychologist, psychometrist and psychic.-Biography:...
and Peter Hurkos
Peter Hurkos
Peter Hurkos , born Pieter van der Hurk, was a Dutchman who allegedly manifested extra-sensory perception following a head injury and coma resulting from a fall from a ladder when he was age 30. During World War II he was a member of the Dutch Resistance against the Nazis and was imprisoned in...
were super sensitive sleuths.
Authors Arthur Lyons and Marcello Truzzi, Ph.D., also a founder of the International Remote Viewing Association, wrote the Croiset and Hurkos cases were "pure bunk" in their 1991 book The Blue Sense: Psychic Detectives and Crime.
Ufology
Ingo Swann is a supporter of ufologyUfology
Ufology is a neologism coined to describe the collective efforts of those who study reports and associated evidence of unidentified flying objects . UFOs have been subject to various investigations over the years by governments, independent groups, and scientists...
and Saucer Smear. Swann, writing "in appreciation of 'Saucer Smear' and its Esteemed Editor", writes that "although many of its readers might view 'Saucer Smear' merely as a droll ufology gossip rag, in the larger picture it is rather more accurately a profound 'window' opening up onto the sociology of ufology. Therefore its cumulative issues constitute a precious historical archive."
In his 1998 autobiography Penetration: The Question of Extraterrestrial and Human Telepathy, Swann describes his work with individuals in an unknown agency who study extraterrestrials
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...
, his remote viewing of a secret E.T. base on the hidden side of the moon and his "shocking" experience with a sexy scantily dressed female E.T. in a Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
supermarket. He concludes that extraterrestrials are living on earth in humanoid bodies. A friend warns him that there are many extraterrestrials, that many are "bio-androids", and that they are aware their only foes on earth are psychics. While Swann and an individual known as "Mr. Axelrod" are secretly watching a UFO appear and suck up the water of a lake, they are discovered and attacked by the UFO. Swann is injured but is dragged to safety by his colleagues.
Further reading
- Swann, Ingo, Penetration: The Question of Extraterrestrial and Human Telepathy, Ingo Swann Books, 1998 http://archive.alienzoo.com/conspiracytheory/ingoswann.html
- Ronson, Jon, The Men Who Stare at GoatsThe Men Who Stare at GoatsThe Men Who Stare at Goats is a book by Jon Ronson about the U.S. Army's exploration of New Age concepts and the potential military applications of the paranormal. The title refers to attempts to kill goats by staring at them...
Simon & Schuster, 2004, ISBN 0-7432-4192-4, The military budget cuts after Vietnam and how it all began. - Schnabel, Jim, Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies, Dell, 1997, ISBN 0-440-22306-7
- Buchanan, Lyn, The Seventh Sense: The Secrets Of Remote Viewing As Told By A "Psychic Spy" For The U.S. Military, ISBN 0-7434-6268-8
- Smith, Paul H, Reading the Enemy's Mind : Inside Star Gate—America's Psychic Espionage Program, Forge Books 2005, ISBN 0-312-87515-0
- McMoneagle, Joseph, The Stargate Chronicles: Memoirs of a Psychic Spy, Hampton Roads 2002, ISBN 1-57174-225-5
External links
- Superpowers of the Human Biomind - Ingo Swann's comprehensive site
- Swann's research work
- http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ingo+swann&aq=f Ingo Swann speaks on YouTube
- http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/Your17Senses.html Ingo Swann's reworked (12 Sept 1996) presentation to the Members of the Society for Enlightenment and Transformation at the United Nations. Delivered 21 Mar 1994,