Paul H. Smith, Ph.D.
Paul H. Smith, Ph.D., Major, US Army (ret.) is the author of Reading the Enemy's Mind: Inside Star Gate - America's Psychic Espionage Program (a Readers Digest book bonus and Editor's Choice selection). Smith served for seven years in the U.S. government's remote viewing program at Ft. Meade, MD. During 1984 he became one of only a handful of government personnel to be personally trained in coordinate remote viewing (CRV) by Ingo Swann. Smith was the primary author of the program's CRV training manual and served as theory instructor for new CRV trainees, as well as recruiting officer, unit security officer, and unit historian. He is credited with over a thousand training and operational remote viewing sessions during his time with the military unit at Ft. Meade. He was transferred out of the program in 1990 to serve in Desert Storm with the 101st Airborne Division, and retired from the Army in 1996. He recieved his doctoral degree in philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin in 2009.
Paul is president of Remote Viewing Instructional Services, Inc., a company offering remote viewing training and is the author and co-producer of the Learn Dowsing DVD training program. He is a founding member, past president, and currently serves on the board of directors of the International Remote Viewing Association.
IRVA 2010 - Dowsing: An Introductory Workshop
Abstract:
As a practical follow-up to his 2007 Remote Viewing Conference talk The Shotgun Wedding Between Dowsing and Remote Viewing, Paul will lead a hands-on introductory dowsing workshop. IRVA will provide a simple pendulum so the attendees can learn the difference between discrete and continuum dowsing. The attendees will also have the opportunity to try out their skills on a several elementary dowsing tasks.
IRVA 2010 - Panel Member: The Remote Viewing Training Controversy:
Does it work? Is it necessary? Is there evidence?
Abstract:
Some members of the remote viewing community are surprised when they learn that IRVA's directors and officers often have widely differing opinions about remote viewing and its practice. Of course, there is no reason why IRVA's leadership should be any more uniform in its beliefs than are the leaders of other organizations of comparable size and interest. Indeed, much can be learned from differences of opinion, and it is often healthy to air these in a setting from which all may benefit. One such controversy is whether formal remote viewing training (as offered, for example, by Lyn Buchanan and Paul H. Smith of IRVA's board) is really of any value or use. On the other side of the issue are two other IRVA board members, Stephan Schwartz and Russell Targ who both have argued that one can learn all one needs to know to do remote viewing in fifteen minutes. They question the value of long term training programs as offered by Smith, Buchanan, and others. Recently, both Targ and Schwartz have added to their argument. In his 2009 Remote Viewing Conference presentation Russell Targ took purveyors of remote viewing training to task for presenting what he sees as an overly complex methodology for which no evidence for success has been offered. Stephan Schwartz has expressed a similar complaint in various online postings. Together they suggest that a traditional double-blind judging approach should be used to either support or reject the claims by remote viewing instructors as to the success of their training approach. For this panel, both sides will come together to express and discuss their views, with audience participation encouraged for the final segment.
IRVA 2009 - Smoking Gun III:
Evidence for Successful Remote Viewing Applications in the Real World
Abstract:
This is the third in a series of "Smoking Gun" presentations showing powerful evidence for the reality of remote viewing. The first "Smoking Gun" was at the 2004 Remote Viewing Conference, where I showed many accurate remote viewings done by my own students and a few others. The second "Smoking Gun" was at the 2006 Remote Viewing Conference when, thanks to public release of 90,000 pages of declassified Star Gate Program documents, I was able to show the actual results of some of the remarkably successful remote viewing work done by military remote viewers. My presentation for the 2009 Remote Viewing Conference moves on from prior work to look at the successes of a simple protocol with immense promise for now and into the future to apply the power of our non-local human minds in very practical ways. I will show you startling examples, and I will show you evidence for this potent way to use our own minds to produce valuable and useful results.
IRVA 2009 - Panel Discussion:
Remote Viewing and the Nature of Consciousness
Abstract:
The nature of consciousness is a hot-button topic today. Psychologists, neuroscientists, philosophers, and other professionals continue to engage in an ongoing debate as to what consciousness means. In reality, we may never know. Is it a product of the biological and classical physical interactions of the human brain; or is it something more fundamental, perhaps electromagnetic, or the result of quantum physics principles that we don't yet fully understand. Could it be something even more profound than that -- something beyond the scope of science and physics, any kind of physics, for us to understand?
Because consciousness seems to play a central role in remote viewing, and the underlying faculty that makes remote viewing work may be central to consciousness, this year's conference committee invites panel members with differing views and expertise to address this question: Just what is the connection between remote viewing and consciousness, and what does it tells us about human nature?
IRVA 2007 - Searching, Finding, Locating -
The Shotgun Wedding Between Dowsing and Remote Viewing
Abstract:
Doubters often ask, "Well, if remote viewing works, then why hasn't a remote viewer found Osama bin Laden?" My usual response is: "How do you know a remote viewer hasn't?" since it is quite possible a remote viewer has located bin Laden, but because of such skeptical doubters, no one has paid the necessary attention. The fact is, such questions reflect a profound misunderstanding of what remote viewing is, and what it can do. While remote viewing can be used (and often is) for the so-called "search problem" -- that is, trying to discover the location of someone or something that is missing -- it is not ideal for that specialized purpose
Remote viewing is a descriptive process. In other words, a remote viewer can describe the setting and surroundings of a missing child, a drug-smuggling ship, a terrorist headquarters, or dangerous enemy missiles. But it is a poor choice if what you need is an address or specific geographical location for those targets. So remote viewers can find missing things...they just can't locate them. In the military remote viewing program we often encountered this problem, and over time worked out some useful methods for dealing with it, sometimes with great success. In my presentation I will talk you through the problem, and then introduce you to the solutions we developed, showing actual results straight from the CIA's own once-secret archives. I will then lead you through and illustrate methods we employed, to help you gain a first-hand understanding of the "search problem" and how it might be solved.
IRVA 2006 - Smoking Gun II: Astonishing Evidence From the Archives
Abstract:
The presentation focuses on real cases of remote viewing (ESP) spy work done by actual remote viewers in the military's psychic espionage program. Included in the presentation are original images and documents from the CIA's archives from the official Star Gate remote viewing program showing some of the spectacular work done by these military psychic spies in support of national defense during the Cold War.
IRVA 2004 - Smoking Gun: Extraordinary Claims vs. Exceptional Proof
Abstract:
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof
has long been the battle cry of those who criticize claims of the
paranormal -- particularly when it comes to extra-sensory perception (ESP). Providing such "extraordinary proof" is made
doubly hard because the critics raise the standards of what is acceptable as evidence whenever parapsychologists meet the
previous standards. The playing field is not level.
The truth is that the evidence for ESP has long ago gone beyond the "normal" standards of evidence to the exceptional and is rapidly approaching the extraordinary. I will talk briefly about why the insistence on extraordinary proof, but will spend most of my time showing you the actual evidence, starting with summaries of some of the state-of-the-art parapsychology research (presentiment, staring, Ganzfeld experiments, and perhaps others) but spending the lions' share of the time displaying and discussing for you many actual remote viewing results. Even the most doubtful will find it hard to dismiss the "exceptional" evidence they will see in the course of this presentation.
IRVA 2004 - Associative Remote Viewing: Introduction and Exercise
IRVA 2002 - Operational Failure:
Why it's hard for an operational RVer to remote view photos -- and what you can do about it
IRVA 2001 - Remote Viewing's Biggest Buggaboo:
How we come to think we know what really isn't so
Abstract:
Is it real, or is my mind just making it up? This is always the question remote viewers must ask themselves. Mental "noise" is the one thing that gets in the way of every attempt to "be psychic." How can you tell the difference between noise and signal? Did you know that there is psychological research that can help us understand this phenomenon... and that there are ways to work around it when we can, and adapt to it when we cannot? Come hear one of the leading teachers of remote viewing explain what it is, what it ain't, and what you can do about it!