Leonard (Lyn) Buchanan

Lyn Buchanan

Leonard (Lyn) Buchanan is the Executive Director of Problems>Solutions>Innovations(P>S>I) which started as a small data analysis company in the Washington, D.C. area in 1992 after Lyn’s retirement from the military.

In late 1995, when the US government declassified their Remote Viewing project, information became public about Lyn’s prior involvement with that project as one of the unit’s Remote Viewers, Database Manager, Property Book Officer and as the unit’s Trainer. Public demands for training and applications became great, and P>S>I moved into the remote viewing field full time, bringing with it Lyn’s extensive databasing capabilities. At the present time, P>S>I possesses the most complete body of data on the applications of remote viewing in real-world applications.

The U.S. government used a specialized form of remote viewing known as Controlled Remote Viewing (CRV). Lyn’s involvement with CRV came about by a long, strange, and circuitous series of events, some parts of which are still classified. Lyn was brought into the unit in 1984 and remained there on special assignment for the rest of his military career.

As a young man, Lyn had been a military computer expert for the Nike Ajax/Nike Hercules guided missile systems. He had a 12-year break in service, during which he gained a BA in Psychology, a BA in Linguistics, and an MA in Linguistic Psychology. He then taught foreign languages in East Texas. Re-entering the service in 1974, he became a military linguist, specializing in German, Russian, and Spanish.

After re-entering the military, he was stationed in Japan for four years, where he also gained a proficiency in Japanese and Mongolian, becoming the only Mongolian linguist in all branches of the US military. After his assignment to Japan, he returned to the Defense Language Institute for another year to attend their higher-level Russian course and became one of only 12 Russian Scientific Research Linguists in the US Army. He was then assigned to a 4 year stint at the US Intelligence Field Station in Augsburg, Germany, a station which deals with mostly tactical traffic and very little scientific research traffic. But his skills and experience with computers proved to be very rare, right at a time when the military was just getting itself computerized. Here, he was also utilized as a systems designer and programmer for the many and varied US- and foreign-manufactured mainframe and mini-computers which were used at the Field Station.

Lyn has been plagued throughout his life with “psychokenetic” events. One fateful day in Augsburg, such an event, parts of which are still classified, happened and brought about official recognition and record of his “ability”. Shortly thereafter, the commander of the U.S. Intelligence and Security Command decided, because of these abilities, to transfer him to the special “psychic spying” unit at Ft. Meade, Maryland, where he planned to have Lyn affect and/or destroy enemy computer systems. This plan was aborted for funding reasons, and Lyn became one of the unit’s Controlled Remote Viewers instead.

After retirement from the U.S. Army in 1992, he settled down with his wife and youngest son in Mechanicsville, Maryland. He began working for a “beltway bandit” (a term used for computer consultant companies which surround the Washington D.C. beltway, and make their fortunes working mainly governmental contracts). At the same time, he began building his own company, Problems>Solutions>Innovations (P>S>I). P>S>I was originally a data analysis company only.

During these years, he continued training people within the intelligence community who were privy to the existence of CRV and to the fact that he had been the unit’s trainer. In December 1995, however, the CIA effectively declassified the government’s connection to and use of CRV, and the existence of the military unit. The public became aware of CRV, and P>S>I quickly took on the role of training CRV to the public, keeping research data on the trained “CRVers”, and developing new, civilian applications for the technology.

Lyn has a personal drive to take this technology completely out of the “spooky” realm and find the scientific and technological causes behind it. To this end, he maintains a strict database on all operations in order to conduct as much research as possible.

Adding his computer skills to the CRV process, Lyn has developed techniques for enhancing the results of organized CRV efforts. He has developed computerized analysis techniques for identifying, categorizing and predicting viewer error rates. He has developed and maintains a database which tracks a trained viewer’s individual strengths and weaknesses. He has also designed and written computer programs for the specific areas of CRV training,to aid and guide the student’s progress.

In addition to providing standard computer systems-oriented data analysis and programming services, he also provides remote viewing services and training to both individuals and organizations. He also performs a free public service to police and other public-funded investigative organizations and agencies.

This work was originally done under “The Assigned Witness Program”. The name for the program came about by chance one day when Lyn was working with an investigator. He asked the investigator what information was needed most. The investigator replied, “Well, what we really need is a witness.” “No problem”, Lyn replied, “we can assign one.” For the first time, the investigator realized the scope of this new tool, and asked, “Do you mean that you can assign someone to actually witness something that has already happened?” Lyn replied, “That’s what we do.”

    Presentations

    IRVA 2022 – Visions for the Futures

    IRVA 2020 – IRVA Founders Panel

    The International Remote Viewing Association was founded in March, 1999 by a group of some of the most influential figures from both the scientific and applications sides of the field. This panel discussion will be led by several of those early founders, discussing a range of topics – from the past, present, and future of remote viewing, to questions raised by our conference attendees. Truly a highlight of the 2020 conference!

    IRVA 2020 – Ideograms

    Lyn Buchanan will present his theory and teaching methods of ideograms, the unconscious “squiggle” produced at the beginning of a remote viewing session.

    IRVA 2017 – How to Get Unstuck

    If you’ve ever done remote viewing, then you’ve experienced that awful moment when you realize that nothing more is coming to you or the same information comes again and again. Ingo Swann gave two protocols that will break you out of that situation and get you going again. Lyn will show you what they are, and how to use them.

    IRVA 2012 – Remote Influencing — Is it real?

    There are many misconceptions about remote influencing, what it is/isn’t, how it is/isn’t done, what it can/can’t do, etc. In this lecture, Lyn Buchanan will explain all those things in easy and clear language, as well as give a brief overview of the methods and tools which have proven most effective – and warnings about the dangers involved in its improper usage as well as the benefits of its correct usage. This will be a clear, but comprehensive coverage of this rarely discussed and little understood subject.

    IRVA 2011 – What Humans Perceive and How it Affects Our Viewing

    Visually, we see only a part of the spectrum, but remote viewers have reported seeing atomic radiation. Viewers have accurately reported sounds beyond the limits of our hearing. Are there still certain limits that we can’t view beyond? Yes. This study discusses those “outer limits” which are imposed on our viewing by still unsuspected human limitations, and ways we’ve found to overcome even those.

    IRVA 2010 – Ten Things Guaranteed to Make You a Better Psychic/Remote Viewer/Controlled Remote Viewer

    Just like every other human endeavor, the use of one’s psychic abilities can be accomplished poorly or well, leading, respectively, to failure or success in the results gained. Lyn Buchanan’s lecture will provide ten recommendations for enhancing the success potential — from trained and adept practitioners of Controlled Remote Viewing to psychics. These tips do not require any special or additional training, rather only personal practice, and will help improve paranormal performance regardless of the protocol or methodology one uses, or the category of work engaged in.

    IRVA 2010 – Panel Member: The Remote Viewing Training Controversy: Does it work? Is it necessary? Is there evidence?

    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 – Developing Standards in the Remote Viewing Industry

    Co-Presenter:Mr. Lyn Buchanan with Ms. Coleen Marenich
    Part 2:Describing the creation of a business model for CRV work to be offered commercially.
    Operational business standards have been developed which make Controlled Remote Viewing a viable asset to the business world. These standards will be reviewed by Lyn Buchanan who will focus on describing the creation of a business model for CRV work to be offered commercially. Three key areas will be defined during this Co-presentation showing where developing new standards has been critical to meeting the demand for top quality, professional remote viewing services. These areas are: 1) viewer training; 2) project management; and 3) business standards.

    IRVA 2007 – The Setting of Standards

    The field of parapsychology has had an informal “code of ethics” for a long time. This included such things as “don’t use it for your own profit”, “don’t use it to harm others”, etc. But the ethics were more bits of hard-learned advice between practitioners than standards which the general public could use to trust and rely on the practitioners. So, practitioners became suspect and mistrusted.
    Today, as remote viewing begins to serve the general public (in matters such as police and governmental work, archeological, medical, financial, and business matters, to name just a few), it becomes necessary to expand the intra-field advice. It must become standards of ethics, workmanship, and professionalism which can meet the needs of a struggling world. Practitioners in this field should be guided by these standards in order to provide the trust and reliability which has been absent for so long.

    Surprisingly, quite a bit of work has already been done to set these standards. Not surprisingly, there is much more which needs to be done. To become a professional field, the field of remote viewing must set professional standards of ethics, conduct, qualification levels, and must address the modern needs of reporting, databasing, contracting, providing professional responsibility for results, and meeting the same demands made of any modern profession.
    Lyn Buchanan’s lecture will cover what has been done, what still needs to be done, and how these standards are necessary for bringing remote viewing out of what the world sees as cultist and occultist, and into the professional, workaday world for serving mankind.

    IRVA 2007 – Panel Discussion: A Remote Viewer’s Code of Ethics

    Ethics as applied to remote viewing will be defined and explored by the panel with audience participation. Among the issues that will be discussed are targeting rules, what boundaries should be imposed on using the skill, and tasker as well as viewer ethics.

    IRVA 2006 – The Real Future of CRV: Where are we going from here?

    IRVA 2004 – It’s About Time

    The presentation will be about that most elusive aspect of remote viewing: time. It is a factor which plays an important role in every remote viewing session we do, and one which causes people the most confusion. What time is, how it loops, goes backwards, bends and twists to bedevil viewers, how it affects our sessions and findings, what understandings we need to have of it, and how to control where we are in it will be just a few of the considerations of this presentation.

    IRVA 2002 – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Scoring Remote Viewing Sessions

    There has been a lot of controversy and confusion about how sessions are scored. Most of the confusion stems from the fact that the various scoring methods give such widely differing scores. This presentation will review the various scoring methods and the purposes behind them, and show the relationships between them.

    IRVA 2001 – How to succeed at not failing:Selecting training and practice targets to give you the edge

    Three of the most pervasive problems with new remote viewers are:
    That they externalize success and internalize failure. That is, let a session go well and they say, “Wow! This stuff really works!” But let the session go badly and they say, “I can’t do this. I’m no good.”
    That new viewers want to go out and save the world on the first day of training instead of learning slowly, building one success on another, beginning with easy targets and working their way up to the most difficult ones. Beginning viewers almost always want to take on targets which tend to make them fail.

    Students who repeatedly meet with failure quit whereas those who repeatedly have success keep going.

    It has been known for a long time that some targets lend themselves to being remote viewed, and others don’t. There are many levels of difficulty in between. Matching target difficulty to the student’s level of ability is a very important step for any trainer, and for people who are training themselves. But it is also a very hard one, if you don’t have a method. The viewer needs a target which will be difficult enough to cause learning, but not so difficult as to be defeating. Add to that the fact that a viewer may be weak in one aspect of viewing, and strong in some other aspect, and the task of proper target selection becomes a very daunting one. Because of the sheer difficulty of the situation, many instructors resort to selecting targets totally at random. Other instructors resort to selecting group targets, forcing them to ignore that students are trying to learn as individuals.
    To date, there has not been a practical, non-complex method for determining which targets are right and which are inappropriate for each level and plateau of the student’s progress. Lyn Buchanan has devised such a method which can be used by trainers everywhere, no matter what their discipline.
    The method will be discussed with examples and audience participation. This hour is designed to give you take-home skills which you can use either as a trainer, for creating “swap” targets for other viewers, for devising target pools for viewer groups, or simply for guiding a friend, spouse, or fellow viewer who selects targets for you to practice on. The hour will be part presentation and part workshop, so bring a pen and notepad, and be ready to do some hands-on work.

    IRVA 2000 – The Assigned Witness Program: The Future Of Applied Remote Viewing

    Video