The Seventh Sense: The Secrets of Remote Viewing as Told by a "Psychic Spy" for the U.S. Military [Paperback]

Tom Clancy meets the Psychic Friends Network in this almost plausible primer on the history, theory and practice of paranormal intelligence gathering. The author is a veteran of the Army-CIA Project STAR GATE psychic espionage unit, where he specialized in a form of ESP known as "controlled remote viewing," whose practitioners can supposedly see events from a distance in time and space. His feats, he claims, included reading Saddam's mind during the Gulf War, divining the health and prospects of the American hostages in Iran, predicting the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and remotely viewing the surface of Mars; he even wonders whether he didn't have something to do with the fall of communism. Project STAR GATE really did exist, and Buchanan's low-key tone, full of military jargon and acronyms, detailed protocols and much griping about army red tape, lends credibility to his account of life as a GI clairvoyant. Himself the head of a psychic training and consulting firm, he insists that remote viewing is both a "martial art" to be mastered through training and rote drill, and an "application-oriented science" for use in "police work, medical diagnostics and business," rather than the romantic and familial fortune-telling that is the bread and butter of the psychic industry. Skeptics will vigorously dispute Buchanan's claims for the efficacy of remote viewing, but true believers in search of government certification for their views will be greatly reassured by this odd and interesting book. Photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The more you read, the more you wonder if this expose is really a put-on. But, finally, the author, at least, seems to believe what he is saying--which is that, for the last quarter century, the U.S. military has been training personnel to provide intelligence through psychic means. Buchanan claims to have been one of the best of the government's "remote viewers." He even suggests that through subliminal messaging, he may have been partly responsible for Mikhail Gorbachev's dismantling of communism! Naturally, this is all pretty interesting stuff, and even though the organization is muddled, and the discourse tends to the paranoid, the book is temptingly wide ranging, covering everything from Buchanan's various assignments (Iranian hostage situation, Desert Storm) to how to develop one's own "seventh sense." Even though Buchanan makes it clear that this is not a "how-to," he does introduce the principles on which remote viewing is based. Whether it's the new frontier or simply far-fetched, there is no doubt that remote viewing is a hot topic in the making. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

For the past thirty years, the United States government has secretly trained a select corps of military personnel in the art of "remote viewing" -- the psychic ability to perceive the thoughts and experiences of others through the power of the human mind....

Now, for the first time, Lyn Buchanan -- a world-renowned expert on remote viewing and its potential -- tells the complete, candid story of his experiences. Assigned for nearly a decade to a clandestine U.S. Army intelligence group, Buchanan trained military personnel who utilized their inherent psychic abilities as a data-collection tool during the Iran hostage crisis, the Chernobyl disaster, and the Gulf War.

In this incredible account, Buchanan tells how he was selected for his unique psychic abilities, and how he was transformed from an ordinary soldier into one of our nation's leading psychic spies. Working on top-secret government and military projects using "mental espionage" created permanent, life-altering changes within Buchanan. Now, after many years of analysis and interpretation, he reveals the techniques and mental exercises used to train remote viewers, and demonstrates that each of us carries a dormant psychic ability that we can explore and use ourselves.

For anyone interested in a hard, scientific look at the reality of psychic covert operations in the world today, or anyone who has ever wondered if he or she could have the inherent skills to become a remote viewer, this fascinating chronicle of life as a psychic spy will reveal the answers.

Leonard "Lyn" Buchanan is now retired from U.S. Army intelligence. He has used remote viewing to assist police and federal agents in locating missing children, and founded Problems>Solutions>Innovations, a company that helps corporations develop solutions for intelligence-related data acquisition. Considered to be one of the best Remote Viewing trainers, he lives in Alamogordo, New Mexico, with his wife, Linda. Visit his Web site at www.crviewer.com.

Chapter One

April Fool's Day, 1984

On April Fool's, a decade hence,

A hole appears within a fence.

I will be called to patch it.

The part which leaves is very great.

Then I will learn about my fate.

I must work hard to match it.

Predictive poem -- Lyn Buchanan April Fool's Day, 1974

April Fool's Day seemed somehow appropriate as the day to report to my new military unit. No one had told me where it was. In spite of a very shallow and clandestine briefing at a Czech restaurant in Germany, I wasn't really sure of what the unit did, or for that matter what I would be doing in it. To top that off, I had been given two different sets of orders: one "official" set, printed on paper, and a totally different set, given verbally. The official orders said that I was to report to HHQ Co, 902 MIBn, INSCOM, Ft. Meade. Translated into human speech, that stands for Headquarters & Headquarters Company, 902nd Military Intelligence Battalion, Intelligence and Security Command, located at Fort Meade, Maryland.

But the verbal orders I had received said that I should not go anywhere near the 902nd. Upon reaching Fort Meade, Maryland, I was to check in at the military guest quarters and call a certain phone number to let a special agent know that I had arrived. Under no circumstances was I to report in to the 902nd, as my written orders stated. In effect, I had been instructed to go AWOL the first day of my new assignment.

My wife, Linda, my seven-year-old son, Lael, and I arrived at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport late in the evening of April 1, 1984. It is customary for a soldier and his family to call the unit to which he is reporting and have a staff driver pick them up. I couldn't do that, due to the verbal orders. We took a cab from the airport to the Fort Meade Guest House. The desk clerk asked for my orders and said that he would call the unit and let them know I was in. He was somewhat perplexed when I asked him not to.

In the room, I pulled out the napkin which had been given to me in the Czech restaurant in Germany. The hand-scrawled phone number on it was for a private residence in the Fort Meade area. A man's voice answered, and said that we should all wait in the parking lot in front of the guest house. He would come right by.

When we arrived in the parking lot, a dense, misty fog had rolled in, making the whole scene look like something out of a Hollywood spy movie. The guest house is far removed from the other base facilities, so the darkness was oppressive. All we could see through the swirling fog was the fuzzy, eerie glow of the guest house's neon sign at the edge of the parking lot. We stood quietly, feeling small drops of mist sweeping against our faces in the moist night breeze. With the fog, the world had gone deathly quiet, and nothing could be heard except our own breathing and the electric crackle of the neon sign's transformer. Even Lael, an active and impatient seven-year-old still on German time, was subdued by the surrounding mystery.

I looked at my wife and marveled at the courage of this woman who would accompany me anywhere in the world, on nothing more than faith that I would do the right thing. I wondered how she could keep that faith even at times like this, when she knew that I had absolutely no idea of what I was getting us into. She looked back at me and gave the slightest of smiles. The silent mist swirled and we shifted from one foot to the other and waited.

* * *

The events leading up to my new assignment at Fort Meade were, quite frankly, odd. I had been working at the U.S. Army Field Station in Augsburg, Germany, for a little over two years. I had originally been assigned there as a Russian linguist, but through some devious manipulation, had worked my way into the Computer Operations and Coordination section.

At that time, the coordination of the computers at the field station was a large task, since we had almost a hundred different computer systems with several different countries of origin. The computer systems did not "talk" to each other, and there was constant conflict among the data fields, the computers, and the people and countries who ran them.

I had been there almost a year when I received the order to design a program that would tie the field station's many computer systems together into a single reporting entity. Another sergeant -- I'll call him Doug -- felt that he should have gotten the job and was very hostile toward me for the selection. During the following two months, Doug repeatedly got into my programming code and placed "bombs" there, as his means of revenge. I confronted him several times, but it only fanned the flames. In frustration and as a total last resort, I reported him to his superiors, who threatened him with disciplinary action if he did it again. There were no more interruptions from Doug and in another month I had the program running and tested.

Now I had to make the necessary demonstration briefing to the commanders of the various U.S. military branches and the military commanders of more than a dozen different NATO countries that had personnel at the field station. When the day came to make the demonstration, I arrived early, checked and rechecked the program for errors or flaws. There was none. I ran it through all the testing procedures and made certain the presentation would go smoothly. Everything checked out perfectly. Right before presentation time, I went to the bathroom to make certain my hair was well combed and there were no scuffs on my spit-shined shoes or wrinkles in my uniform. At the appointed time, the commanding officers of every military unit attached to the field station began to assemble for the briefing on the new computer program.

I went through the initial song and dance about the need for such a program, what problems it would solve, what benefits would be reaped, and so on. I then turned and hit the computer's enter key to begin the demonstration. The computer screen went blank. Something had gone wrong. I turned back to the chuckling audience and searched for something to say when I saw Doug standing in the doorway. He grinned menacingly and pointed a finger at me. "Gotcha!" he mouthed, and turned to leave.

Something welled up in me then, which had not happened in years: an uncontrollable rage. Earlier in life, I had been one of those "poltergeist" children. I had learned in my early teens that when I allow myself to get truly angry, things around me go crazy. As Doug turned to leave, things did exactly that.

When I was about twelve years old, odd things began to happen in the form of objects around me moving or bumping, or suddenly falling for no apparent reason. It was bothersome to others, but to me, it was odd and interesting. It felt as if it was something I was doing so I began trying to learn what it could be. I learned that I could sometimes cause a few small things to happen -- simple things -- at will. They were not enough to really impress anyone, but they were enough to spur me onward. I devised some mental exercises to help me "flex my mind muscles." I developed a "little voice" that would give the orders and help keep things organized. I understood completely that it was just a device of my own making, and not a real voice. It was not an entity of any kind, a spirit, or even an alter ego. I was not really hearing things. It was just a gimmick I had devised to separate my regular thoughts from those that were supposed to make the weird things happen. I was never afraid of it, and actually thought of it as a really neat plaything. I had complete control over it.

Through this and some other exercises that I devised, I learned to make bigger things happen, and could make the smaller things happen with little effort. But as I got better at it, the things that happened "by themselves" got stronger, too. I practiced and learned more control, so these spurious incidents became less frequent, but when they did happen, they were much more noticeable. A couple of times, the little voice had done something by itself to get me out of a fight or embarrassment, but for the most part, the unbidden incidents were just funny little things. In fact, they were usually harmless pranks, at the most. They happened without my volition, and I would often see the humor in them and appreciate the unexpected cleverness behind them.

Around age fourteen, though, with hormones rising, I began competing for the attention of young girls. One day I was showing off, trying to impress the cute redheaded girl who attracted me so. I succeeded by showing her one of the tricks I had learned to do with the little voice inside my head. It did impress her, all right. In fact, she was so impressed that she went home and told her father -- the Pentecostal minister. The following day, he and two of his deacons met me after school and asked for a demonstration. As soon as this demonstration succeeded, they all slammed their hands onto my head and pushed me down to the sidewalk, screaming to God to cast the Devil out of me.

I was brought up in "Deep East Texas," otherwise known as the Bible Belt. There, if the preacher said something, then God must have said it, too. They had suddenly and forcefully turned my little trick into a sin against God. They were trying to rid me of an evil which had not been there before they tried. I was scared to death and so shaken from the incident that I had nightmares for a month.

What had been nothing more than an amusing and interesting plaything now had its roots in ominous evil. It still didn't feel wrong, but what if the Devil had just been tricking me? What if he had just been preparing me for doing some great and sinfully evil deed? What if the Devil had dark and occult plans for me and I hadn't been Christian enough to know it? What a stupid and horrible Christian I had become! What a depraved sinner I had turned into! I decided that I would stop doing my neat things, and thanked God for warning me of my sins in time.

I now know that the subconscious mind, once given ...