Remote Viewing

The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS)—named after the concept of the Noosphere developed by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin—was founded in order to encourage and conduct research on noetic theory and human potentials. IONS was established in 1973 by Edgar Mitchell, together with ex-Nazi and NASA rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun, and billionaire investor Paul Nathaniel Temple, Jr., as Chairman Emeritus.[1] Temple was a major funder of both IONS and Veriede’s The Fellowship, through his Three Swallows Foundation.[2] IONS funded remote-viewing experiments at SRI, until the CIA eventually acknowledged responsibility for them, under what is known as Project Stargate.

The Stargate Project was the code name for a US Army unit established in 1978 at Fort Meade, by the Defense Intelligence Agency and SRI International in California contractor, to investigate the potential for psychic phenomena in military and domestic applications. This primarily involved remote viewing, the purported ability to psychically “see” events, sites, or information from a great distance. Although not mentioned by name, Project Stargate is the subject of Jon Ronson’s book The Men Who Stare At Goats (2004), and its related Channel 4 documentaries, which examine the subject of New Age ideas influencing the US military. The book was also the basis for a 2009 British-American war parody comedy film starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey.

Being influenced by the occult, secret CIA projects aimed to use psychedelic drugs to create a subject capable of making contact with the spirit world, denizens of a netherworld more popularly referred to now as “extraterrestrials.” The CIA’s Mk-Ultra “mind-control” program was a strange amalgam that involved attempts to induce such contact and other psychic experiences, coupled with the field of cybernetics, with the aim of producing not just the personal computer, but especially artificial intelligence, with the end-goal being the creation of a all-knowing global network of computers, equated with the Masonic all-seeing eye on the reverse side of the American dollar bill.

Remote-viewing and ESP are achieved through mediumship, sometimes referred to as demonic possession, or contact with discarnate entities, commonly known as “extra-terrestrials.” Remote-viewing and ESP represented the central mysteries of the occult, or spirit possession, otherwise known as mediumship, and typically induced through magical ritual. In early occult and spiritualist literature, remote viewing, also referred altered states of consciousness, was known as telesthesia and travelling clairvoyance. Rosemary Guiley, an American writer on the subject of the occult and paranormal, described it as “seeing remote or hidden objects clairvoyantly with the inner eye, or in alleged out-of-body travel.”[3] It is known in the occult as astral projection, a supposed form of telepathy. It is founded on the assumption of the existence of a soul or consciousness called an “astral body,” separate from the physical body, which supposedly capable of travelling the universe where it interacts with other astral bodies and is capable of implanting ideas into other people’s minds. According to Hermeticism, Neoplatonism and later Theosophist and Rosicrucian thought the astral body is an intermediate body of light linking the rational soul to the physical body while the astral plane is an intermediate world of light between Heaven and Earth, composed of the spheres of the planets and stars. These astral spheres were held to be populated by angels, demons and spirits.[4]

Emanuel Swedenborg was one of the first practitioners to write extensively about the out-of-body experience. The idea of the astral figured prominently in the work of the Eliphas Levi, a leading figure of the nineteenth-century Occult Revival, after which it was adopted and developed further by Theosophy, and used afterwards by other esoteric movements, including the Golden Dawn. In occult traditions, practices range from inducing trance states to the mental construction of a second body—called the Body of Light by Aleister Crowley—through visualization and controlled breathing, followed by the transfer of consciousness to the secondary body by a mental act of will.[5]

Andrija Puharich was a mentor to Bob Monroe, a radio broadcasting executive who became known for his research into out-of-body experiences and for founding the Monroe Institute. Emanuel Swedenborg was one of the first practitioners to write extensively about the out-of-body experience. The idea of the astral figured prominently in the work of the Eliphas Levi, a leading figure of the nineteenth-century Occult Revival, whence it was adopted and developed further by Theosophy, and used afterwards by other esoteric movements, including the Golden Dawn. In occult traditions, practices range from inducing trance states to the mental construction of a second body, called the Body of Light by Aleister, through visualization and controlled breathing, followed by the transfer of consciousness to the secondary body by a mental act of will.[6]

One in ten people have an out-of-body experience (OBE) once, or more commonly, several times in their life.[7] OBEs can be induced by brain traumas, sensory deprivation, near-death experiences, dissociative and psychedelic drugs, dehydration, sleep, and electrical stimulation of the brain.[8] Those experiencing OBEs sometimes report a preceding and initiating lucid-dream state. In many cases, people report being on the verge of sleep, or being already asleep shortly before the experience.[9] Falling asleep physically without losing awareness. Some individuals have reported perceptions similar to descriptions of astral projection that were induced through various hallucinogenic and hypnotic means, including self-hypnosis.[10] OBEs can be induced by hallucinogens such as ketamine, DMT, MDA, and LSD. Another form of spontaneous OBE is the near-death experience (NDE).

The “Mind Awake, Body Asleep” state is widely suggested as a cause of OBEs, voluntary and otherwise.[11] Deliberately teetering between awake and asleep states is known to cause spontaneous trance episodes at the onset of sleep which are ultimately helpful when attempting to induce an OBE. By moving deeper and deeper into relaxation, one eventually encounters a “slipping” feeling if the mind is still alert. This slipping is reported to feel like leaving the physical body. Some consider progressive relaxation a passive form of sensory deprivation. Thomas Edison, who was a member of the Theosophical Society, used such states to tackle problems while working on his inventions. Salvador Dali was said to use a “paranoiac-critical” method to gain odd visions which inspired his paintings.[12]

According to Monroe, it was Puharich who taught him how to alter his consciousness on demand, resulting in an out-of-body experiences. Monroe’s book 1971 book, Journeys Out of the Body, which became a hit and sold 100,000 copies, is credited with popularizing the term “out-of-body experience.” Monroe wrote in his memoirs that one of his first tests was to visit Puharich. Monroe apparently accurately described the location, but Puharich had no recollection of the contact. When Monroe started using his OBE experiences for sexual escapades in the other plane, Puharich denounced Monroe as a fraud.

The SRI project aimed to investigate claims of psychic phenomena with potential military and domestic application, particularly “remote viewing.” In 1970, in response to claims by American intelligence sources that the Soviet Union’s “psychotronic” research had produced results, the CIA initiated funding for a new program known as SCANATE. Ironically, the Russian project was initiated in response to claims reported by French newspapers that the Americans were using ESP on their Nautilus submarine to communicate with the shore. [13]

Laser physicists and parapsychologists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff led a CIA/DIA-funded program at SRI, to investigate paranormal abilities of Uri Geller, Ingo Swann, Pat Price, Joseph McMoneagle and others, as part of the Stargate Project. At least three of the key remote-viewers at SRI—Hal Puthoff, Ingo Swann and Pat Price—were former leaders in Hubbard’s Church of Scientology. Puthoff, the SRI’s senior researcher, was once a leading Scientologist. Price, a former police chief, after being trained as a remote-viewer, went to work for the CIA. Ingo Swann, a New York artist, was a Class VII Operating Thetan and a founder of the Scientology Center in Los Angeles. Puthoff and Targ’s lab assistant was a Scientologist married to a minister of the church. When Swann joined SRI, he stated openly that fourteen “Clears” participated in the experiments.”[14] Swann went on to train remote-viewers at the Pentagon.[15]

Noetic Science 

In the early 1970s, Puthoff and Targ had joined the Electronics and Bioengineering Laboratory at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) where they initiated studies of the paranormal that were, at first, supported with private funding from the Parapsychology Foundation and the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). IONS was founded in order to encourage and conduct research on noetic theory and human potentials, exploring topics of paranormal phenomena such as spontaneous remission, meditation, consciousness, alternative healing practices, consciousness-based healthcare, spirituality, human potential, psychic abilities, psychokinesis and survival of consciousness after bodily death. The words “Noosphere” and “noetic” both derive from the Greek nous, meaning “mind or ways of knowing.” Teilhard de Chardin borrowed the use of the term from William James, who made reference to a “noetic faculty.” As defined by James in 1902, “noetic” refers to “states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority…”[16]

IONS’s directors have included Willis Harman, James Fadiman of IFAS and Howard Rheingold. In May 1974, Harman had led a SRI study titled “Changing Images of Man.” The report was prepared by a team that included Margaret Mead, B. F. Skinner, Ervin Laszlo and Sir Geoffrey Vickers of British intelligence. Others involved in this project included Carl Rogers, James Fadiman, Ralph Metzner and Joseph Campbell. The stated aim of the study was to change the image of mankind from that of industrial progress to one of “spiritualism.” The report stressed the importance of the United States in promoting Masonic ideals, effectively creating the ideal Masonic state.[17]

In Global Mind Change: The Promise of the 21st Century, a book sponsored by IONS, Harman remarked that, “we are living through one of the most fundamental shifts in history—a change in the actual belief system of Western society. No economic, political, or military power can compare with the power of a change of mind. By deliberately changing their images of reality, people are changing the world.”[18] The answer, he posited, was a reconsideration of the empiricism of modern Western societies, and a return to the marriage between science and mysticism that was exemplified in Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. According to Harman:

The essential premise of Freemasonry was that there are transcendental realms of reality in which we coexist, and of which we potentially can have conscious knowledge. While the patters and forces of these realms are inaccessible to the physical senses, they are available for exploration through looking into the deep mind. They play important roles in shaping evolutionary and human events, and can be called upon for power and guidance.[19]

Harman believed that the symbol of the pyramid with the floating capstone on the Great Seal “indicates that the nation will flourish only as its leaders are guided by supraconscious intuition,” which he defined as “divine insight.” The phrase novus order seclorum, meaning a “new order of the ages,” indicates the birth of not just another nation, but of a new spiritually-based New World Order. According to Harman:

…The power of these symbols on the collective psyche is such, however, that if the American nation is to regain its earlier position of moral leadership in the world it will be through an effort focused around these symbols and meanings, and no other.[20]

IONS founder Edgar Mitchell, the sixth astronaut to walk on the moon, claimed to have undergone a cosmic consciousness experience on his return flight to earth. Mitchell was founded IONS to encourage and conduct research on human potentials. IONS plays a central role in Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol about Freemasonry. IONS, it claims, “conducts, sponsors, and collaborates on leading-edge research into the potentials and powers of consciousness, exploring phenomena that do not necessarily fit conventional scientific models while maintaining a commitment to scientific rigor.”[21] According to Dan Brown, these are ancient secrets that have been courageously preserved by secret societies from persecution by the Catholic Church, and which represent latent potential in ourselves which can allow humans to become “as gods.”

ESPionage

As recounted by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, in The Stargate Conspiracy, Israeli-born Uri Geller—a one-time stage magician who became famous for his television performances of spoon-bending and other supposed psychic effects—was brought into the US intelligence community under the original patronage of Andrija Puharich. Like Puharich, Geller was also at times in the employ of Mossad and Shin Bet.[22] Edgar Mitchell, the founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), knew Puharich since 1970, and in 1972 sponsored Geller during his tests with American scientists, including the tests at SRI, and was invited to brief the CIA on their results when George Bush was head of the organization.[23]

The CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency set up a program called ESPionage, financing research conducted by SRI, which in 1974 hired Jack Sarfatti and the Fundamental Fysiks Group to help with its research into Geller. Jack Sarfatti is an American theoretical physicist educated at Cornell, where as he explained, the “CIA finds many of its academics.”[24] Several of his professors had worked on the Manhattan Project. From 1967 to 1971 Sarfatti worked as assistant professor of physics at San Diego State University, and in 1971–1972 worked at Birkbeck College, London with David Bohm, an American scientist who has been described as one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the twentieth century. Sarfatti also studied at the Cornell Space Science Centre, the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment, and the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich. In 1973–1974 he conducted research into mini black holes at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy.

Sarfatti was interested in the heritage of his name, a Sephardic Jewish surname, which literally means “French” in Hebrew. Sarfatti recounted that when he attended a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1980, he met with David Padwa, who had studied the family’s history. Padwa, a mutual friend of Beat Poet Gregory Corso, and had travelled with Ram Dass to India. According to Padwa, they could be traced by to Medieval French rabbi Rashi de Troyes.[25]

Padwa recounted the Jewish tradition that one of Rashi’s daughters went to Spain and that her descendants formed the Italian branch of the Sarfatis after the expulsion of the Ladinos peaking Spanish Jews in 1492. Jack also mentioned Samuel Sarfatti, the personal physician to Pope Julius II, and recounted that Samuel was a friend of Michelangelo, and had used his influence with the Pope to get Michelangelo the commission to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.[26] Sarfatti also claims to be “distantly” related to Margherita Sarfatti, Mussolini’s Jewish mistress and biographer. Sarfatti notes that Margherita’s father was Amedeo Grassini was a long time close personal friend and financier to Pope Pius X, was called “The Pope’s Jew,” and that Margherita was called “The Uncrowned Queen of Italy” in the 1920’s.[27]

Sarfatti, whose politics lean to the right, according to Kaiser,[28] dated a woman whose father was Dr. Robert Dickson Crane, a friend of Pat Buchanan and the former adviser to the late President of the United States Richard Nixon, and is former Deputy Director (for Planning) of the National Security Council. In 1962, Crane became one of the four co-founders of the first Washington-based foreign-policy think-tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Sarfatti claims that Crane sent him a manuscript on the Kabbalah and the mystical union between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The woman’s grandfather was Luftwaffe hero Hans Ulrich Rudel, a close friend of Savitri Devi and Otto Skorzeny, and one of the most popular and visible figures of the post-war neo-Nazi scene. [29] Rudel was also close friends with Savitri Devi. With the assistance of Otto Skorzeny, Rudel played an important role in recruiting large numbers of former Nazi fugitives from Argentina for key posts in Egypt.

Space Kids

While serving as his “literary agent,” influential counterculture guru and Esalen teacher Ira Einhorn introduced Sarfatti to Arthur M. Young, and also offered to introduce him to Steward Brand.[30] According to Sarfatti, Einhorn was very concerned about “Soviet breakthroughs in psychotronic weapons of mind control at a distance using ELF and sound waves.” [31] Einhorn’s concerns were related to claims made by Puharich during a lecture at King’s College in London, when he warned the audience that the humming in the ears experienced by millions of people around the world, riots in Canada, the Peking earthquake in that same year, and Legionnaire’s disease, were all the result of a new Soviet weapon, which demonstrated the potential for mind control on a global scale. Puharich claimed the Soviets were at least 20 years ahead of the Americans in this area.[32] Puharich further claimed to have been working for the Canadian government to investigate the effects of low frequency radiation exploited by the Soviets, and had recently advised President Jimmy Carter and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Puharich asserted that, based on the work of Nikola Tesla, the Soviets had built two transmitters near Riga and Gomel in Western USSR, intended to control people, as the ELF are close to those of the human brain at the time of psychic activity. Various pulse rates can cause effects ranging from drowsiness to aggression. The only counter-measure, according to Puharich, is to meditate in order to produce brain wave pattern to negate the effect.[33]

Einhorn, referred to the group of scientists with Puharich as part of his “psychic mafia,” as a collection of researchers committed to bringing psychic and paranormal phenomena into the mainstream.[34] In the early 1970s, Sarfatti and Einhorn had joined Puharich and Geller at his new headquarters in Ossining, New York. At Ossining, known as his “Turkey Farm,” Puharich experimented on the children, referred to as Geller Kids or Space Kids, in order to contact extraterrestrial intelligences. Puharich had achieved the level of master hypnotist, providing him such abilities as the “instant command technique,” and regularly hypnotized his young subjects in the belief that their powers allowed them to communicate with “aliens.” Astronaut Gordon Cooper briefly described how Puharich used a Faraday cage for experiments in his book, Leap of Faith.[35] As Steven Levy wrote, “The Kids describe strange cities with science-fiction trappings and claim to be messengers from these distant civilisations.”[36] The purpose of the Space Kids project was also to determine whether the children possessed the ability as intelligence tools. Puharich trained the children in remote viewing, providing target locations that included military or intelligence installations, including the Pentagon, the Kremlin and even the White House.[37]

Einhorn later achieved notoriety as the “Unicorn Killer,” after he beat his ex-girlfriend Holly Maddux to death, and then stored her body in a locker in his apartment for more than a year before she was discovered by the police. Einhorn spent weeks at Esalen after he was indicted for the murder. Senator Arlen Specter was his defense attorney and one of the Bronfmans from Toronto allegedly paid his legal fees. Specter served as assistant counsel for the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of JFK and helped devise the “single-bullet theory.” In his own defense, Einhorn claimed that Maddux was murdered by CIA agents who attempted to frame Esalen for the crime due to Einhorn’s investigations on the Cold War and “psychotronics.”[38]

Theoretical Fysiks

Sarfatti describes that he was approached by a British agent who told him in 1974, “Doctor Sarfatti, it is my duty to inform you of a psychic war raging across the continents between the Soviet Union and your country.”[39] Sarfatti confessed, “I was then simply a young, inexperienced, naive ‘useful edit’ in a very sophisticates and successful covert psychological operation run by Brendan O’Regan and Harold Chipman, who was the CIA chief responsible for all mind-control research in the Bay Area in the 70s.” [40] O’Regan was former consultant to the Center for the Study of Social Policy at SRI, associate editor of the International Journal of Psychoenergetic Systems, research coordinator for Buckminster Fuller, and vice-president of research at IONS in 1975, until his death in 1992.

Sarfatti’s Fundamental Fysiks Group was an informal band of physicists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the 1970s. The group was founded by Elizabeth Rauscher of SRI and included Henry Stapp, Fred Alan Wolf, Nick Herbert, Fritjof Capra, John Clauser, Philippe Eberhard, Saul-Paul Sirag and George Weissman. Sarfatti and Fred Wolf helped to organize a series of tests at Birkbeck College led by John Hasted. On June 21 and 22, 1974, Hasted and Sarfatti joined David Bohm, Arthur Koestler, Arthur C. Clarke, and two of psychic Uri Geller’s associates, Ted Bastin and Brendan O’Regan, to watch Geller appear to bend four brass Yale keys and a 1 cm disk, affect a Geiger counter and deflect a compass needle. The successful results of testing with Geller generated interest within the Department of Defense. Ray Hyman, professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, was asked by the Director of Behavioral Research for ARPA to go to SRI and investigate. Hyman’s report was that Geller was a “complete fraud” and as a consequence Targ and Puthoff lost their government contract.

According to historian of science David Kaiser, in his book, How the Hippies Saved Physics, the Fundamental Fysiks Group helped to nurture some of the alternative ideas in quantum physics that today form the basis of quantum information science.[41] The group became celebrities in San Francisco. City of San Francisco Magazine devoted two pages to them in 1975, shortly after the magazine was acquired by the film director Francis Ford Coppola. The spread included a photograph of Sarfatti, Saul-Paul Sirag, Fred Alan Wolf and Nick Herbert, and discussed them “going into trances, working at telepathy, [and] dipping into their subconscious in experiments toward psychic mobility.”[42]

According to Kaiser, SRI asked Jack Sarfatti and the Fundamental Fysiks Group to use quantum theory, and specifically Bell’s theorem, to explain what Geller appeared to be doing.[43] Outside government, groups within the Human Potential movement were also interested in quantum theory. Werner Erhard, founder of Erhard Seminars Training (EST), came into contact with Sarfatti and Fred Wolf. Among the activities of the EST Foundation was an annual conference in theoretical physics, which attracted leading names in theoretical physics of the era, including Stephen Hawking, Leonard Susskind and Richard Feynman. Erhard was especially interested in theoretical physics. Although he was born John Paul Rosenberg, from a Jewish father, in 1960 he chose to change his name, naming himself after then West German economics minister Ludwig Erhard and the German theoretical physicist a Werner Heisenberg (1901 – 1976).

The rumor was that Erhard said he changed his name to “give up Jewish weakness for German strength.” [44] Heisenberg was one of the key pioneers of quantum mechanics, known for this development of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, upon which he built his philosophy. Heisenberg was criticized by the Nazis as a “White Jew,” but was protected from persecution by Heinrich Himmler, and was rehabilitated to the physics community during the Third Reich.[45] In 1939, shortly after the discovery of nuclear fission, Heisenberg was one of the principal scientists of the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club. In December 1944, Heisenberg lectured in neutral Switzerland. The OSS sent former major league baseball catcher Moe Berg to attend the lecture carrying a pistol, with orders to shoot Heisenberg if his lecture indicated that Germany was close to completing an atomic bomb. Heisenberg did not give such an indication, so Berg decided not to shoot him. After the war, Heisenberg was arrested under Operation Alsos and detained in England under Operation Epsilon. He was named director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, shortly thereafter the Max Planck Institute for Physics, originally the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, founded in 1917.[46] An agreement between the American Rockefeller Foundation and the Nazi government made it possible to fund a building for the Institute in Berlin. Heisenberg was its director until 1958.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Herbert and Sirag organized a yearly Esalen Seminar on the “Nature of Reality,” bringing together participants to discuss their interpretation of quantum mechanics. With Richard Shoup of Xerox PARC, Herbert constructed a “Metaphase Typewriter,” a “quantum operated” device whose purpose was “to communicate with disembodied spirits.”[47] Sarfatti achieved some notoriety among Esalen circles as well for an invention that was supposed to transmit coded information faster than light that he purportedly remote-viewed the design of through contact with extra-terrestrials, or artificial intelligences from our future. [48] Sirag lived with Barbara Honegger, a source for the October Surprise conspiracy, who worked with Jim Hickman, Brendan O’Regan and Esalen founder Michael Murphy.[49] It was Russell Targ who had communicated the details of SRI’s studies in remote-viewing to Michael Murphy. [50] Honegger was a member of the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign team and a Reagan White House policy analyst. Honegger also claimed that policy decisions for the basing of MX missiles were made by the Reagan staff under the belief that remote-viewing worked.[51]

In 1975, Erhard, Sarfatti and Michael Murphy set up a non-profit think tank at Esalen, the Physics-Consciousness Research Group (PCRG) with Sarfatti as president and Saul-Paul Sirag vice-president. The group included the Wolf, Herbert and Sirag, along with Fritjof Capra, Saul Paul, Henry Dakin, Robert Anton Wilson, Uri Geller, Barbara Honneger, Brendan O’Regan, George Leonard, Gary Zukav, Ira Einhorn, and artist Lynn Hershmann. Financed by Erhard, Jean Lanier and George Koopman, the PCRG funded the creation of books like Sarfatti’s Space-Time and Beyond, Capra’s The Tao of Physics, Gary Zukav’s The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of The Illuminati, and David McClelland’s The Roots of Consciousness. Koopman, a close friend of Dan Akroyd, related that the PCRG was the inspiration for the film Ghost Busters. According to Sarfatti, Koopman “provided money through military contracts with the Air Force and the U.S. Army Tank Command funneled through his company Insgroup in Irvine, California.”[52]

Many of the PCRG’s members, Sarfatti reports, including John Lilly and Claudio Naranjo, had participated in the first Arica training in Chile. Naranjo, like Idries Shah, was also a member of the US Club of Rome, and in 1969 he was sought out as a consultant for the Education Policy Research Center, created by Willis Harman at SRI.[53] Sarfatti reported that Koopman had also successfully spied on the Arica organization, which was started in Chile by high ranking Nazi fugitives, ‘“who were masters of the occult.”[54] Sarfatti was told by Jan Brewer that the Nazi “Fourth Reich” was using Arica to influence the New Age.[55] Brewer eventually became the 22nd Governor of the state of Arizona, from 2009 to 2015, and recently endorsed the candidacy of Donald Trump for president of the US, praising his views on immigration.

Lab Nine

In 1971, under Puharich’s supervision, Geller had started to channel “Spectra,” an entity which claimed to be a conscious super-computer aboard a spaceship. When Puharich suggested to the entity there might be a connection with The Nine he had contacted earlier, Spectra agreed. The Nine claimed that they had programed Geller with his powers as a young child, and that he was the chosen savior of mankind and had been given the ability to contact flying saucers and perform paranormal phenomena such as psychokinesis, spoon bending, telepathy and teleportation. According to Puharich the computers sent messages to warn humanity that a disaster is likely to occur if humans do not change their ways. Through Geller, The Nine claimed to have been behind the UFO sightings starting with Kenneth Arnold in 1947, and alerted Puharich to his life’s mission, which was to use Geller’s talents to alert the world to an imminent mass landing of spaceships that would bring representatives of The Nine.

Geller finally turned his back on The Nine, saying: “I think somebody is playing games with us. Perhaps they are a civilization of clowns.”[56] Puharich had to find other channels. He joined up with British aristocrat and former racing driver Sir John Whitmore and Florida-based psychic and healer Phyllis Schlemmer, who had reportedly also done work for Israeli intelligence, who became the spokesperson for The Nine. Puharich, Whitmore and Schlemmer then set up Lab Nine at Puharich’s estate in Ossining. The Nine’s disciples had included multi-millionaire businessmen, members of Canada’s Bronfman family, European nobility, scientists from SRI, AMORC member Gene Roddenberry the creator of Star Trek, and Einhorn. Einhorn claimed to have backing from the local telephone company and from the Bronfmans to recruit scientists like Sarfatti.[57] Lab Nine broke up in 1978 after a series of mysterious events that culminated in an arson attack on the Ossining estate, and he fled to Mexico, claiming that he was being persecuted by the CIA. The persecution was supposedly the result of his efforts to expose the scientific developments of the Soviets in mind control.

Puharich and Whitmore commissioned British writer Stuart Holroyd to write an account of their adventures, which appeared in 1977 as Prelude to the Landing on Planet Earth. In this book the Nine confessed to being the Elohim of the Old Testament, and the Aeons of Gnosticism who visited Earth from the star of Sirius. Their spokesperson was an entity called “Tom” who was revealed as being Atum, the creator-god of the ancient Egyptian religion, and with the other nine composing the Great Ennead of Heliopolis.

Another Nine channeller was an Englishwoman named Jenny O’Connor, who was introduced to Werner Erhard through Whitmore. Jenny and The Nine were installed at Esalen for a period overlapping with visits by physicist Heinz Pagels, Congressman Charlie Rose, Ira Einhorn, and high ranking Russians from Georgy Arbatov’s Moscow Institute of US and Canada, which was influential during Gorbachev’s time.[58]

Through Jenny, The Nine counseled John C. Lilly to set aside his research projects and go to the dolphins and spend some time with them in their natural habitat.[59] The 1980 movie Altered States, starting William Hurt, is partly based on Lilly’s life. Lilly is known for his work on dolphin-human communication, as well as his experiments using hallucinogens while floating in isolation tanks. Lilly’s Communications Research Institute (CRI), founded in 1958 to study dolphins in the Virgin Islands, was partially funded by the Air Force, NASA, NIHM, the National Science Foundation, and the Navy.[60] In 1963, Gregory Bateson was hired as the associate director of research for Lilly’s CRI.[61] Lilly apparently gave dolphins LSD and told a story of one dolphin who seduced a man into having sex with her in a holding tank.[62]

Jenny and The Nine became so influential at Esalen that they held seminars and were, strangely enough, listed on the Institute’s staff, with Richard Price seeking their advice for administrative decisions, which included ordering the sacking of its chief finance officer and the reorganization of its entire management structure. Mother Jones commented on the development with the headline: “Esalen Slides off the Cliff.” According to Eric Erickson, who lived and worked at Esalen for more than 25 years, “the Nine were much better known for performing the role of extraterrestrial hatchet men than for giving psychic insight into how Esalen might actually improve operations.”[63]

[1] Jesse Hong Xiong. The Outline of Parapsychology (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2010), p. 190.

[2] Constance Cumbey. “‘The Family’ and its Hijacking of Evangelicalism.” News With Views ( August 16, 2008).

[3] Rosemary Guiley. Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal Experience (Harper San Francisco, 1991). p. 507.

[4] E.R. Dodds. Proclus: The Elements of Theology. A revised text with translation, introduction, and commentary, 2nd edition 1963, Appendix.

[5] John Greer. “Astral Projection.” In The New Encyclopedia of the Occult (Llewellyn Worldwide, 1967).

[6] Ibid.

[7] Susan Blackmore. “A Postal Survey of OBEs and Other Experiences” Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 52 (1984).

[8] Jane Aspell & Olaf Blanke. Understanding the out-of-body experience from a neuroscientific perspective in Psychological Scientific Perspectives on Out of Body and Near Death Experiences Psychology Research Progress (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2009).

[9] “SOBEs.” Oberf.org. Retrieved 2011-10-06: http://www.oberf.org/sobe_stories.htm

[10] Brian Regal. Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia (Greenwood, 2009). p. 29.

[11] Frederick Aardema. Focus 10: Mind Awake/Body Asleep (2012). Retrieved June 18, 2012: http://www.explorations-in-consciousness.com/focus10.html

[12] Robert Bruce. Astral Dynamics: The Complete Book of Out-of-Body Experiences (2009), p. 208-9.

[13] Kripal. Esalen, p. 317.

[14] Ingo Swann, “The Emergence of Project SCANATE— The First Espionage-Worthy Remote Viewing Experiment Requested by the CIA (Summer, 1973)” ms., sci.psychology.misc. newsgroup, posted January 24, 1996.

[15] Picknett & Prince. Stargate Conspiracy, p. 110.

[16] Cassandra Vieten. “What Are Noetic Sciences?” Psychology Today (May 10. 2011).

[17] Picknett & Prince. The Stargate Conspiracy, p. 319.

[18] Willis Harman. Global Mind Change: The Promise of the 21st Century (Berrett-Koehler Publishers. 1998), p. 161.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid., p. 189.

[21] Liliane Desjardins. The Imprint Journey: A Path of Lasting Transformation Into Your Authentic Self (Life Scripts Press, 2012).

[22] Jim Schnabel. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies (Dell, 1997), p. 133)

[23] Edgar Mitchell. The Way of the Explorer, (GP Putnam’s Sons, 1996), p. 91.

[24] Constantine. Virtual Government, p. 137.

[25] “King David Through Rashi.” Davidic Dynasty. Retrieved from http://www.davidicdynasty.org/king-david-through-rashi/

[26] Jack Sarfatti. “Evidence for Back From The Future Messages.” Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/32056344/Evidence_for_Back_From_The_Future_Messages

[27] Ibid.

[28] Kaiser. How the Hippies Saved Physics, p. 63.

[29] Ibid., p. 138.

[30] Constantine. Virtual Government, p. 137.

[31] Sarfatti. “In the Thick of It”.

[32] Farooq Hussain. “Is Legionnaire’s disease a Russian plot?” New Scientist (December 15, 1977), p. 710.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Picknett & Prince, Stargate Conspiracy (New York: Berkley, 1999), p. 173

[35] L. Gordon Cooper. Leap of Faith (New York: Harpertorch, 2000), p. 22.

[36] Picknett & Prince. Stargate Conspiracy, p. 226.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Dave Lindorff. “For Ira Einhorn, a fate worse than death,” Salon (Friday, October 18, 2002),

[39] Ibid., p. 137.

[40] Ibid., p. 139.

[41] Hugh Gusterson. “Physics: Quantum outsiders,” Nature, 476, 278–279, (August 18, 2011).

[42] David Kaiser. How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival (W. W. Norton & Company Inc, 2011), p. xviii.

[43] David Kaiser. “How the Hippies Saved Physics” (2010), from c. 23:44 mins.]

[44] Sarfatti. “In the Thick of It.”

[45] Samuel A. Goudsmit, ALSOS (Tomash Publishers, 1986) pp. 117–119.

[46] “A brief history of modern physics.” Max Planck Institute for Physics

 Retrieved from https://www.mpp.mpg.de/en/about-us/history/

[47] Nick Herbert, “Nick Herbert”. Retrieved from http://www2.cruzio.com/~quanta/

[48] Sarfatti, “In the Thick of It.”

[49] Ibid.

[50] Sarah Laskow. “How a Famed New Age Retreat Center Helped End the Cold War” Atlas Obsura (December 8, 2015).

[51] Ibid.

[52] Ibid.

[53]   Claudio Naranjo. World Public Library. Retrieved from http://www.worldlibrary.org/articles/claudio_naranjo

[54] Constantine. Virtual Government, p. 138.

[55] Sarfatti, “In the Thick of It.”

[56] Andrija Puharich. Uri: The Original and Authorized Biography of Uri Geller (London: Futura, 1974), pp. 14-15.

[57] Constantine. Virtual Government, p. 120.

[58] Sarfatti. “In the Thick of It.”

[59] Joan Ocean. “A Letter About My Friend John C. Lilly. M.D.” (October 2, 2001). Retrieved from https://www.joanocean.com/lillyltr.html

[60] David Lipset. Gregory Bateson: The Legacy of a Scientist (Prentice Hall, 1980), p. 241.

[61] Ibid.

[62] Kripal. Esalen, p. 178.

[63] Kripal. Esalen, p. 366.

Volume Five

1. Team B

2. Secret Team

3. The Reagan Doctrine

4. Reaganomics

5. Second New Right

6. Project Monarch

7. Down Under

8. Sex, Lies and Wiretaps

9. Noosphere

10. Project Stargate

11. New Age

12. Psychic Warriors

13. Disclosure

14. Christofascism

15. The Clash of Civilizations

16. Black Order

17. Sacred Geopolitics

18. Third Secret of Fatima

19. Order of Eurasia