Customer Reviews

Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Abilities (Studies in Consciousness)

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Putoff and Targ were among the first scientists to put anomalous cognition under the scientific spotlight. Through their work at SRI, remote viewing became a reproducible phenomenon in scientific laboratories. In reading this book I gained a more intimate knowledge of those exciting early days. It comes across on a personal and honest recounting of their experiences and experiments, and the people they worked with (within the limits of military program secrecy obligations they were under at the time).

This book is certainly a valuable library addition for anyone seriously interested in the historical roots and facts concerning remote viewing.

This is the most expansive and far reaching Remote Viewing book ever written. Russell Targ draws on an absolutely amazing career that spans the dimensions of thought. Mind-Reach redefines cutting egde. Within the borders of this book is the story of remote-viewing at its most intimate and deep regions. Russell has truly championed the peaceful use of psychic energy. I thank Russell for his continued honest approach to exposing, allowing for universal discovery and exemplifying true transparency in the remote viewing arena. I highly suggest to the amazon readers out there to get all of Russell's other books as well. His daughter, the late Elisabeth Targ was and continues to be a true pioneer as well and continues to work from the other side to further the exploration of conciousness. Elisabeth's spirit shines brightly and lives on in the hearts and minds of everyone she touched.

Margaret Mead says:
"This is a clear, straightforward account of a set of successful experiments that demonstrate the existence of 'remote viewing,' a hitherto unvalidated human capacity."

This book is a lucid and fascinating record of historic experiments-historic because they put the seal of "hard" physical science upon evidence that some degree of psychic ability is universal-a phenomenon straight out of science fiction that actually happened, and can be made to happen again in any laboratory! The scientists even offer a "recipe" for developing your own ESP "information channel."

Richard Bach of Jonathan Livingston Seagull fame, who served as a subject, writes: "It's too late now to burn their files; what they've found is already being duplicated and expanded in laboratories around the world. As I am coming to know more of the powers that I have, so are thousands of others, so will the readers of this book."

The Targ-Puthoff "mind-reach" experiments at Stanford Research Institute were the subject of unprecedented articles in the international journal of science, Nature and in the prestigious Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, whose editors comment, in part: "One of the engineers we consulted said, 'This is the kind of thing that I would not believe in even if it existed.' In any event, the paper itself may be the most readable ever published in this journal and few readers will finish without wondering...if indeed ESP might be possible after all."

As The New York Times wrote, in an editorial quoting in part from Nature's editors: "The scientific community has been put on notice 'that there is something worthy of their attention and scrutiny' in the possibilities of extra-sensory perception."

I am so happy that I read this book! Puthoff and Targ really packed an incredible amount of in-depth, tantalizing information in this short read. At only about 225 pages, it is amazing how many different topics they cover, from Ingo Swan and Remote Viewing (which Mr. Swann and they basically pioneered), to their work with Uri Geller, and on to various other dimensions of this fascinating world of science and the "paranormal." Makes for very entertaining and intelligent reading. What a blessing it's back in print!

I was very excited to receive and begin reading this book after I watched "The Men Who Stare At Goats" and became interested in why the Government funded remote viewing research for 20+ years. This book is an interesting account of how experiments in remote viewing and psychic phenomenon were carried out in the early to mid 70's @ Stanford.

However, after having read the book it strikes me that the way the experiments were conducted would not be considered a tightly controlled experiment by today's scientific standards. Reading copies of the actual transcripts I did find what I would consider to be leading questions and cues. And in one part of the book Targ (one of the researchers) talks about how they were so impressed by Swann's abilities (he was the first subject) that they took him out for a steak dinner to celebrate. Clearly this could lead one to believe that the experimenters liked Swann and wanted him to succeed, even if subconsciously and thus may have inadvertently presented clues to him. In today's views on science, it would be considered highly inappropriate to take your subject out to dinner!

Even more surprising perhaps was the selection of another subject Hella Hammid whom Targ had known for more than a dozen years, and this was a subject they had selected in order to see if they could take an "ordinary" person and train them for lack of better terminology to have psi abilities. Obviously it's not wise to choose your pal of 10+ years for your research subject. And perhaps worst of all, they conclude (the book and their studies it seems) by "observing" Uri Geller who even his supporters now concede that he was simply little more than a magician. I used "observing" in quotes there because that is essentially what the experimenters at Stanford were doing, observing him rather than having him perform under tightly controlled conditions, and I dare say they allowed him to trick them. This was perhaps the biggest problem for me in the book and in my mind this along with the other aforementioned items destroys their credibility as researchers, at least in this realm.

However, regarding psi abilities, I still believe that there is likely some aspect of our cognitive abilities that we are simply not fully tapping into. I don't think of it as paranormal but rather a cognitive ability that is something that is not readily controlled by the subject. In other words there are good days and bad days. Some images come through clearly while others do not. It's usually described as a channel of information - often garbled with other unrelated images or noise. The trick apparently is to know what to filter out and what is relevant. If this is true, it would account for why it is not always statistically significant or reproducible.

There is still some unshared data out there, some was in this book and I enjoyed it for that

Targ is a scholar of a difficult field of research, but makes the case that psi is happening in many ways for many people.My skepticism was put on hold from scholarly research like this.Something interesting is happening.

The is a real classic in the field of psychic development and remote viewing. Its great to see it back in print!

If ESP, including remote viewing, telepathy and psychokinesis actually worked, we would be living in a much different world. Osama bin Laden would be unable to hide from the US military. Missing persons like Elizabeth Smart wouldn't go missing for long. Casinos would be out of business very quickly. But ESP doesn't work, and thus the world is as we know it.

So then, how can reports like those in Mind-Reach be explained? I have my doubts as to the accuracy of the account in Mind-Reach, but even taking it at face value, weaknesses in the experiments are obvious. In one remote viewing experiment, the viewer describes an A-frame building with a 4-sided ornament on the wall. This is matched to a windmill. In another experiment, the viewer describes an A-frame building with a 4-sided ornament on the wall. This time it is matched to a church. In another experiment, a viewer observing a nature sanctuary draws a tunnel of regular geometric shapes. This is matched to a utility tower near the site. Compare this drawing to the pedestrian overpass depicted in another experiment. One has to wonder.

For a skeptical report of the research of Targ and Puthoff, read Flim-Flam by James Randi, chapter 7 (ISBN-13: 978-0879751982). If you want a more academic treatment, try some of these:
MARKS D, INFORMATION-TRANSMISSION IN REMOTE VIEWING EXPERIMENTS, NATURE 292 : 177 1981
MARKS D, SENSORY CUES INVALIDATE REMOTE VIEWING EXPERIMENTS, NATURE 292 : 177 1981
MARKS D, SCOTT C, REMOTE VIEWING EXPOSED, NATURE 319 (6053): 444-444 FEB 6 1986