Russell Targ - Banned TED Talk about Psychic Abilities

Taken from the youtube description:

Published on Nov 10, 2016
Russell Targ is a physicist who spent several decades working in a US government program exploring "remote viewing" - an apparently anomalous extended characteristic of the mind. Targ is convinced the effect is real. This talk was originally slated as part of a TEDx event in Hollywood in 2013, but the organization pulled their support when they learned about the subjects.

Some of you may know who Russell Targ is, taken from Wikipedia:

Russell Targ (born April 11, 1934) is an American physicist, parapsychologist and author who is best known for his work on remote viewing.[1]

Targ originally became known for early work in lasers and laser applications. He joined Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in 1972 where he and Harold Puthoff coined the term "remote viewing" for the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target using parapsychological means. Targ's work on remote viewing has been characterized as pseudoscience[2][3] and has also been criticized for lack of rigor.[4][5]

In Hollywood, sometime in 2013, he gave a TED Talk on Psychic Abilities and went into some interesting detail regarding his work on Remote Viewing at Stanford Research Institute.

Targ is a friend & colleague of Ingo Swann, Hal Puthoff, & Dr. Jacques Vallee. Ingo Swann has since passed.

You all know there's going to be a Scientology reference in this thread, right?

So Ingo Swann & Hal Puthoff are known Scientologists. Russell Targ & The Church of Scientology both separately claim to have no relation to the other. But then again the same can be said about Ingo Swann before he died.

Here is what Mark 'Marty' Rathbun says about Targ in one of his blogs:

The Tao of Physics, again, is a great – relatively easy to follow – place to start on that score. There is not a single generic phenomenon (unpatentable) that Hubbard attempted to monopolize by complicating and masquerading with his inimitable, sci-fi fanasty universe view that is not explained in simple, scientifically-supported terms by Capra.

One last word of advice. Should absorbing intellect not crippled by compliance to two-value logic prove impossible for the binary thinking scientologist, a primer may be in order. The End of Suffering by Russell Targ and J.J. Hurtak gives a wonderful introduction to four-valued logic, the real thing Hubbard began to introduce – but ultimately eschewed in scientology – under the heading of ‘infinity logic’.

And here is another reference to Targ & his relation to Puthoff & Scientology:

Russell Targ was co-founder of the Stanford Research Institute´s CIA funded Remote Viewing program in Menlo Park, California during the 1970´s.. Russell Targ´s partner at Stanford Research Institute was chief researcher Dr. Harold Puthoff. Puthoff was a high ranking 'Operating Thetan' for the Church of Scientology and was also working under the auspices of the CIA's MK-ULTRA program along with Targ when this meeting took place. William Thetford, the co-'scribe' of ACIM, was also under the payroll of the CIA during the same period, conducting research under MK-ULTRA SubProject 130: Personality Theory at Columbia University. In 1998 Russell Targ wrote a book entitled Miracles of Space. Targ and Scientology claim Targ was never a member of the ´church.´

And here is a website that claims that Targ & Puthoff were lizard shapeshifters:

These are/were all satanist reptilian shapeshifters:

Hubbard, Crowley, the Bolivars (MPD), Carl Jung (MPD/MPDH; supposedly Jung was running engram chains using a Wheatstone Bridge, long before Hubbard did), Lewis Carrol, Jack Parsons (MPD), Marjorie Cameron, Capt. Bill Robertson (and others associated with freezone.de; at least Capt. Bill was MPD), Jack Yaeger, Guillaume LeSevre, David Miscavige (and his father Ron, both MPD/MPDH), Alethia Taylor, Louis Farrakhan, Eddie Frencher (MPD), Earl Cooley (MPD), John Galusha, Mike Goldstein, Edgar Mitchell, Peaches Geldof (like her parents; all MPD), John Travolta (MPD), Priscilla and Lisa-Marie Presley (both MPD; Elvis was not a shapeshifter or satanist, but was mind-controlled), Charles Manson, Nancy Cartwright, Van Morrison, Patrick Swayze, Jerry GarCIA, J.D. Salinger, Christopher Reeve, Shirley MacLaine, Brad Pitt, Jerry Seinfeld, Hal Puthoff, Russell Targ and Pat Price.
All staff of the CST have always been gov't shapeshifting satanists.

Back to the TED Talk,

Personally I have always had my suspicions about Remote Viewing & the researchers at SRI. They are shrouded in obscurity, which is ripe for all kinds of conspiracy. But they have consistently been lacking the hard, empirical, peer reviewed, scientific veracity required to convince the Scientific Establishment (whatever your thoughts on that may or may not be). That being said, their work was still enough to impress the folks in the Black Ops division of the CIA. And because of that, they were able to publish most of their work and disseminate it to the public.

I liked how in the beginning, Targ made the connection between principals of Non Locality as they are described both in Quantum Mechanics (modern) & in Buddhist Cosmology (ancient). For anyone interested in learning more about that connection, I will suggest to you one of my favorite books, Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics & Consciousness.

In the end, watching this video was the first time I've ever seen or heard Russell Targ speak publicly. He seems like a normal old man, witty, cynical, and tired. Their appears to be nothing dark and conspiratorial about him.

What say you ATS?

A very fascinating transcript of an interview with a Scientology defector/whistleblower:

An interview with 'Dane Tops': The man who blew the Church of Scientology wide open

But I was utterly surprised when a legendary whistleblower in the Church of Scientology introduced himself to me and told me that what he had to share had something to do with Black Operations. Kerry, who has never studied Scientology, agreed that this whistleblower was very much in the ranks of regular Camelot whistleblowers. We decided to do an interview.

So: we bring you Dane Tops - an almost mythical figure in Scientology history who has never before come forward to tell his story - which is extraordinary even by Camelot standards: all about how the Church of Scientology was taken over in the early 1980s, and the courageous and astonishing way in which Dane blew the whistle, which resulted in tens of thousands of members realizing what was going on - and leaving. Put the coffee on (a lot of it!), read carefully, and Enjoy.

ESP actually seems very real a problem we are having in relation to scientific inquiry at issue would be is establishing same outside of Psi research fundamentally.

What a fascinating subject. S&F for bringing it up

a reply to: ColdWisdom

Would you say the reason the CIA/government has allowed Scientology to keep up with what they are doing is because it is like one giant ongoing experiment in mind control?

The CIA benefits from all the free research they have from the church's programs and the church tweaks the programs over the years ensuring not only more money from their members but additional experimental material it can hand over to the government.

Enjoyed the video also..thanks again.

a reply to: Watcher777

Would you say the reason the CIA/government has allowed Scientology to keep up with what they are doing is because it is like one giant ongoing experiment in mind control?

That is an emphatic yes. Although, that is only one aspect of the puzzle that the intelligence agencies were trying to solve.

The CIA benefits from all the free research they have from the church's programs and the church tweaks the programs over the years ensuring not only more money from their members but additional experimental material it can hand over to the government.

Correct. The entire agreement was cloak & dagger by design, and understood by both parties. However, it is import to note that in 1965 Hubbard imposed a ban on members of the clergy and administration forbidding them from working in any US government intelligence agency.

December 1965

L. Ron Hubbard forbids access to
confidential Scientology upper levels for anyone connected
to "police spy organizations and government spy
organizations" including CIA, IRS, FBI, and NSA.

Scientology: Remote Viewing Timeline

What's interesting about that is the fact that Puthoff & Swann, and possibly Targ were still members of the church (although not publicly), while simultaneously being employed by the CIA, DIA, & NSA, as well as divisions of the army intelligence community. The intelligence agencies knew they were Scientologists, it's sort of an example of the old saying keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer. And I imagine it was that way for Hubbard as well.

a reply to: ColdWisdom

Personally I have always had my suspicions about Remote Viewing & the researchers at SRI. They are shrouded in obscurity, which is ripe for all kinds of conspiracy. But they have consistently been lacking the hard, empirical, peer reviewed, scientific veracity required to convince the Scientific Establishment (whatever your thoughts on that may or may not be). That being said, their work was still enough to impress the folks in the Black Ops division of the CIA. And because of that, they were able to publish most of their work and disseminate it to the public.

I worked as a "contractor" for SRI in the early 90's. It's what brought me to CA from NY. As a frame of reference, I worked then (and do now again) in the field of AI research. Both pure research as well as applied research.

Yes, they are a "unique" bunch to say the least. In order to do the work on the projects they wanted me on, I had to get clearance. Wasn't that hard to do at the time as it was pre 9/11 and I was only a few years out of college at the time so hadn't yet had time to get into any kind of real trouble. Also, SRI/DARPA had some juice and the process was pretty quick.

Most of the things I worked on were related to the SDI initiative started by our beloved Ronnie Reagan. The work was interesting as hell and I flew all over the place meeting and working with a lot of really smart people at various gov't agencies as well as in the private sector. In my opinion, the Navy guys (ONI) were hands down the smartest and most able of all. Navy spends an awful lot of time, money & manpower in space.

I will say that the SRI guys were a very spooky lot. Pun definitely intended. And for a highly classified organization, they did a piss poor job of keeping the various TS/SCI projects actually compartmentalized. But they did it on purpose, and for their own purposes. Plus things were a lot looser then. For instance the SCIF's in 1990-1995 bear almost no resemblance to the SCIF's today.

Some of the guys there definitely gave me the willies but they left me alone for the most part to do my work as I wasn't a direct employee of SRI, I worked for DARPA (in as much as anyone works for DARPA) and they paid SRI for my salary, expenses etc.

One thing I am very thankful to them for is I was able to get a few grad degrees from Stanford for free while I was there. And for a young guy who just recently married and had a new baby a year after I got to Palo Alto, the costs wouldn't have been a trivial matter for us. Housing prices in CA were nuts even back then.

I never met anyone doing Remote Viewing work while I was there, or if I did, I didn't know it. But SRI worked on all kinds of crazy stuff...truly. Hell, my AI work was relatively tame compared to some of the things others worked on.

But you're right not to trust anything publicly available from them. And the guys from Santa Monica were even more nuts than the PA folks. I think the only ones able to control them were the DARPA guys as they held all the purse strings.

Not sure if that helps and sorry for the long winded response. Your OP brought back a lot of memories...

a reply to: Riffrafter

Thank you for that insightful addition to this thread my friend.

a reply to: ColdWisdom

My own crazy idea is this bunch at SRI were used as stooges for Cold War espionage. They genuinely believed they were psychic heroes and had their beliefs amplified by Intel trickery. It'd serve the purpose of unsettling the Soviets and offering cover for US assets in the USSR and US advanced satellite tech.

They've been allowed to blab away about their activities which implies they were low-value pawns in a greater game. Wouldn't they otherwise be bound by national security concerns? I reckon they were a "look over here" shell game hence being allowed to publish books and do TV.

Could Targ have been a controlling influence amongst the group? He comes across as a genuinely nice guy and probably is. Nevertheless I've heard an interview with him talking of betting on the silver market using 'psychic' abilities. Where's the Bugatti? The private jets? That type of tale (imo) stops with him; it can't be fed. Unless I'm mistaken (possible!), he said he was instrumental, first-hand-involved in profiting from silver.

Ingo on the other hand seemed far more vulnerable to being manipulated. Not only was he a hard-wired believer and all-round nice guy, he trusted people. It's the impression he created in interviews and how others have described him as well.

The ideas here don't necessarily rule out the existence of statistical outliers or 'psychic phenomena.' They've been spoken about for centuries and have their own existence beyond Cold War America. I just find the overall scale of what these guys have claimed to be too much to believe. Also, guess what? Listening to them all talk is compelling and they do encourage a certain suspension of disbelief. If scepticism isn't immune from them, what chance did anyone else have?

Looks like a good thread and I'll be more on-topic after watching the video tonight.

a reply to: Kandinsky

I was waiting for you to drop by. Glad you did my friend.

Given all of the research that I have done on this topic and these many individuals, I feel that your take on this is the most logical & pragmatic hypothesis I have ever heard.

I believe that there is something to remote viewing. But I think that its successes are the result of a different kind of phenomenon, sort of like a hack in a sense that hackers exploit vulnerabilities in a system via unconventional means to reach their prize - the other side of the wall. Swann most likely had a genuine belief in his own abilities and probably Puthoff as well. It's more like remote viewing is exploiting a statistical anomaly, or a scientific outlier as you had put it.

At the end of the day, whether the mechanism for obtaining the target information is really psychic in nature is irrelevant. If the target information is obtained, it validates the (proposed) technique being used by the remote viewers. There are ways of extrapolating information from targets given the unconscious mind's ability to interpret patterns and cues. One of the things Targ mentions in the TED Talk is certain cues that happen spontaneously during a magician's performance where once the magician has observed this cue from his target, he uses it to extrapolate the information from his target almost algorithmically.

Now taking that in to consideration, it would seem that certain people like Ingo Swann and even Uri Gellar (yes team Xenu at SRI studied him as well) probably became very proficient at this method over time and would be able to systematically increase their accuracy rate simply by exploiting this hack. And again, it's a hack in a sense that it isn't inherently psychic as we define psychic empirically, but rather it is yielding results often enough that could otherwise only (seemingly) be obtained psychically. And finally, they could be hacking results and the results could be reinforcing their belief in their own genuine abilities, all while still remaining non psychical.

Russel Targ
Andrija Puharich
Geller
Turkey Farm
Black ops covering deeper black ops.
Aquino
Boy's Town
Lawrence "Larry" King
Santiniketan Park Association

You found a rabbit hole, you really don't want to know how deep. Makes Pizza Gate look simple.

originally posted by: pianopraze
Russel Targ
Andrija Puharich
Geller
Turkey Farm
Black ops covering deeper black ops.
Aquino
Boy's Town
Lawrence "Larry" King
Santiniketan Park Association

You found a rabbit hole, you really don't want to know how deep. Makes Pizza Gate look simple.

Now if I remember correctly, when confronted with the staggering evidence of fraud and trickery regarding Gellar, Dr. Jacques Vallee said something like this:

I have worked with Gellar at SRI, and I have seen his debunking on the Carson show. Now I'm not saying that he is a genuine psychic, but that doesn't mean that there aren't psychic things happening around him all the time.

I'll have to flip through his books sometime to find the exact quote. But do you guys see the significance of the last part of what he said?

He is redefining his perception on the phenomenon as it is observed, being able to produce what appears to be psychic phenomena without being genuinely psychic is bordering on the lines of the hypothesis I proposed about the mind hacks that Swann & Price were pulling off.

originally posted by: ColdWisdom

originally posted by: pianopraze
Russel Targ
Andrija Puharich
Geller
Turkey Farm
Black ops covering deeper black ops.
Aquino
Boy's Town
Lawrence "Larry" King
Santiniketan Park Association

You found a rabbit hole, you really don't want to know how deep. Makes Pizza Gate look simple.

Now if I remember correctly, when confronted with the staggering evidence of fraud and trickery regarding Gellar, Dr. Jacques Vallee said something like this:

I have worked with Gellar at SRI, and I have seen his debunking on the Carson show. Now I'm not saying that he is a genuine psychic, but that doesn't mean that there aren't psychic things happening around him all the time.

I'll have to flip through his books sometime to find the exact quote. But do you guys see the significance of the last part of what he said?

He is redefining his perception on the phenomenon as it is observed, being able to produce what appears to be psychic phenomena without being genuinely psychic is bordering on the lines of the hypothesis I proposed about the mind hacks that Swann & Price were pulling off.

Gellor is tied to Targ and CIA through SRI.

Watch the tapes, very interesting.

a reply to: pianopraze

It was actually Puharich that introduced Gellar to the team at SRI.

Which reminds me of another quote by Dr. Vallee that I am probably going to butcher.

He has on one or more occasion subtly alluded to the fact that:

"In fiction you can get away with saying the things that you cannot normally say in public"

This was said to good ole George Noory once on C2C am, it totally went over poor George's head (I assume) because he never pressed Vallee to elaborate on that any further.

Another butchered quote came from some journal Vallee wrote in near the late 70s.

I wrote about a (can't remember) in my fictional piece when no more than a year later the government started to (can't remember) just like in my novel. And THEN I wrote (in a fictional piece) about a psychic who bends spoons and summons UFOs, and no more than two years later was I arranged to meet with Uri Gellar at SRI.

Maybe TheGUT can come in and correct for my hazy memory. But essentially, Vallee was implying that Gellar appeared to be a planted psy-op. Planted by the government, that is. So it seems that even Vallee (who appeared to be the most legit scientist out of the SRI team) was a victim of the mind control experiments. It's like the government agencies were always one or more steps ahead of Vallee and even toying with him at his expense for who know what reason.

Could this be why Vallee is allowed to dissent books like Messengers of Deception to the public?

And by the way, how many of you all knew Vallee writes fiction? I haven't read any of his fiction yet, I have tried to trace down the work he is referring to about the spoon bending psychic. No avail. Info on his works of fiction are even more scarce & obscure than his scientific journals.

Suspicious much?

originally posted by: ColdWisdom
a reply to: pianopraze

It was actually Puharich that introduced Gellar to the team at SRI.

Which reminds me of another quote by Dr. Vallee that I am probably going to butcher.

He has on one or more occasion subtly alluded to the fact that:

"In fiction you can get away with saying the things that you cannot normally say in public"

This was said to good ole George Noory once on C2C am, it totally went over poor George's head (I assume) because he never pressed Vallee to elaborate on that any further.

Another butchered quote came from some journal Vallee wrote in near the late 70s.

I wrote about a (can't remember) in my fictional piece when no more than a year later the government started to (can't remember) just like in my novel. And THEN I wrote (in a fictional piece) about a psychic who bends spoons and summons UFOs, and no more than two years later was I arranged to meet with Uri Gellar at SRI.

Maybe TheGUT can come in and correct for my hazy memory. But essentially, Vallee was implying that Gellar appeared to be a planted psy-op. Planted by the government, that is. So it seems that even Vallee (who appeared to be the most legit scientist out of the SRI team) was a victim of the mind control experiments. It's like the government agencies were always one or more steps ahead of Vallee and even toying with him at his expense for who know what reason.

Could this be why Vallee is allowed to dissent books like Messengers of Deception to the public?

And by the way, how many of you all knew Vallee writes fiction? I haven't read any of his fiction yet, I have tried to trace down the work he is referring to about the spoon bending psychic. No avail. Info on his works of fiction are even more scarce & obscure than his scientific journals.

Suspicious much?

I agree. The truth is much stranger than any fiction yet written.

Targ talkes about the fish in his memoirs. Lots of fish died. And people having heart attacks walking on treadmills. Did you know he was so good of saying and not saying things that he was able to get a drivers license even though he was legally unqualified because of his bad eyesight? The more times you read and the more you know, the more Targ said in his memoir.

Yes, and those with whom Puharich was tied to is even more interesting than Gellor.

Gellor was and wasn't the real deal. Now Swann....



They really pissed of the NSA once, and they paid them a visit.

But that wasn't a black op even though it was a secret program. Swan though mentioned things black in a video once... just before he died.

a reply to: pianopraze

They really pissed of the NSA once, and they paid them a visit.

Please do elaborate on that one as it has piqued my curiosity.

originally posted by: ColdWisdom
a reply to: pianopraze

They really pissed of the NSA once, and they paid them a visit.

Please do elaborate on that one as it has piqued my curiosity.

I think it was during one of their periodic demonstrations to get funding they were tasked with reviewing a facility and they did. But they were off by a few hundred yards and actually viewed a top secret NSA facility they weren't supposed too. So the NSA paid them a visit demanding how they new so much or described the facility so well or some such.

Edit to add: my memory is not very good and comes and goes. I think they were actually upset because of the name of a file they mentioned in the remote viewing session.

www.irva.org...

In the movie "The men who stared at goats" which is based off a book by the same name, it has an interesting scene. They open a door and see a man being split by trauma based mind control. The one guy in the movie looks to the other and says "what was that?" The other guy replies "the dark side."

Actually the movie and book was based of the new earth battalion that was, of sorts, a cover of what they did at fort mead and SRI. Like I said the rabbit hole is deep and black on this one.

a reply to: Riffrafter

This is a very interesting thread and I'm glad I stumbled upon it...

But I gotta admit, your post intrigued me the most so far. I'd love to know more.

I wish you were at liberty to give us a few vague subject themes to clue us into what kinda research was going on around you, you said you did AI research and I can imagine plenty from that, but what other types of topics were being researched?

Can you give us anything without violating your nda?

Like what were they researching around you? Statistics? Anomalies? X-files? A vague one word description would be sufficient because I can interpolate a lot from it. Thanks even if you can't give me anything to ponder beyond what you already stated.

a reply to: pianopraze

I think it was during one of their periodic demonstrations to get funding they were tasked with reviewing a facility and they did. But they were off by a few hundred yards and actually viewed a top secret NSA facility they weren't supposed too. So the NSA paid them a visit demanding how they new so much or described the facility so well or some such.

Ah yes, I am indeed familiar with that story as it is documented in the timeline I linked to in my third post.

Puthoff was in the NSA before he went to SRI. Seems to me like he may have already been familiar with the location and description of the secret bunker.

a reply to: ColdWisdom

It was what they viewed in the place that pissed the NSA off I think. But again my memory is bad.

Indeed. Lots of connections. Although before they picked it up it was one of the sub projects of mk ultra with project paper clip scientists.