The Amazing Mystery of the Invisible Majority

Archived from the former firedocs blog. 21 February 2007

The TKR Project was created at a time-point when methods people seemed at war with one another, the social politics of personalities were so bad that even humor couldn't be used, and the exclusionary nature of this vs. that version of psi methodology used for RV created chaos. Someone using a method like TDS, should they dare say something in public, was likely to end up in a fight about how someone disliked their trainer, rather than any intelligent conversation about viewing. It was impossible. I would say, please can't we focus on the subject not the person? And those defending the person disliked me for not defending them, and those against the person disliked me for not attacking them, and nobody (as usual) wanted to talk about actual RV.

I felt, and still feel, that the entire field/subject of RV was fragile and under threat. From fraud and marketing revisions to actual government disinformation. It would only take a couple high profile lawsuits to get a law made against selling training. Hypnosis for example has come insanely close to being legislated out of the hands of any but PhDs more than once, and were it not for PhDs with a lot of clout fighting to keep it more free, it'd be a done deal. RV has a whole lot less to support it should any legal threat arise. And I suspect if the gov't wanted that threat to arise and spawn legislation or law, it would. Maybe it hasn't simply because as a field we haven't yet seemed altogether competent enough to be a genuine danger to all the secrets some sources want to keep. Eventually we will though, and what then? If we are still a field of a bunch of individuals in chaos; if we are still a field that is 99.9% focused on money-based drives and only .1% on actual hands-on viewing, our field will be very, very easy to kill.

Far more powerful, more public, more funded, more media famous, more credential'd-expert fields have vanished from the map of knowledge over the last century. It is my intent that RV not go this way. I document history and make archives, I try to promote current participation and create archives, and I work to keep a focus on hands-on viewing, as well as on all-viewers-integration, because I believe these are the things that are the most strength for RV as a field and subject. I don't want to see history totally revised, the field suppressed or twisted, and its future marginalized if not nearly extinguished by the issues against it. The only thing that bothers me is how many people allegedly care about RV but seem to have utterly zero drive to do anything proactive in its favor.

The nature of RV's current reality is that nearly the only thing driving the 'field' forward is money, and here and there a little ego-altruism: yet the minute "corporatism and cash" become the only real "driving" motives in a field (let alone ego), truth and reality and historical accuracy are a thing of the past. The field was founded on science, but due to lack of funding, the layman's quarter is really the only thing moving much. It's a tragedy. But the strength of a field, like online archives, is built on the conglomerate, cumulative input of many. If even a very small percentage of those many would make the effort to do whatever they feel supports the larger field -- anything -- the field as a whole would be vastly stronger.

***

So the TKR project was created to bring people together. To let CRV and TRV and SRV and TDS and HRVG and psychics and video-trained viewers and book- or web- trained viewers and self trained viewers hang out in one place, as if they were people who had something in common, which they are. Like the old fable about the sons and the bundle of sticks, there is strength in numbers.

People can hang out there and still think their method is the way, the truth and the light, and still think that everybody with XRV is a deluded incompetent fool, but chances are if they actually *did* hang out there and view and look at sessions, they would gradually be forced to recognize that anybody serious about RV deserves some respect for it, that most all the methods can produce good data, etc.

The Galleries was something I figured would let every method demonstrate what it was best configured for. This is, in a layman's sense, though not scientific, still great research. Anybody right now can go look at a ton of sessions done on the same target, by many people, in many methods, sometimes more than one session on the same target, and can actually SEE how things come through, what varies by method, and what targets so often come through well (the fireworks at the olympics) vs. come through badly (the volcanic mud cauldron). When we see that, it's not an 'answer' without real science, but is it not a lot more education than we as laymen had before? Sure, "that's been studied", all the money and years of research that most of us will never see more than a few old white papers about; 95%+ of it will never be known to us. We will learn on our own if we will at all; nobody is going to help us. That's just one example. Getting people together to view can provide a whole lot of education to onlooking viewers.

In terms of differences in methods, some of what we see is apparent, of course; task a formal-method person with anything nebulous and they'll get physical symbology all through the session instead of literal data, because the target isn't literal, and the method is designed for things literal. The psychics however might be able to tell you about it. On the other hand, the psychics often have only a few lines of info (though it may be brilliant) on a target, and they may only be able to do that 1 in 5 or 1 in 20 times; whereas part of the side-point of the methods was to build in more consistency, and the common structure combined with a great deal more data (and of specific types usually) is often better suited to certain approaches to tasking, not to mention evaluation. I happen to think both have a strength, and that a good tasker, a good team, could utilize people with different methods and strengths in a positive way.

Some methods are more internal (visualizing components), while some are solely external. Some are altered state and some are not. I believed that if we had viewers of many methods working tasks, over time, we would be able to compare. Not that any viewer represents their method; but that generalities like I mention above start to become more clear when you get a bulk of things together. And people might eventually consider trying what they saw done, getting more educated.

I think curiosity is natural. I trained in CRV, and then I trained with graduate students in TRV and SRV, and I even spent awhile working in the free public docs put out for TDS, and I've waded through the regular and advanced HRVG manuals, as well as pieces of Silva, Scientology, occult disciplines, etc. (And now, years later, I'm lucky to remember any of them very well LOL.) I think everything is interesting. Bringing people together often provides more "cross cultural" and "inter- disciplinary" minds.

And I think some frameworks are better for some people than others, and it might have more to do with the people than with the framework. Or as we said in the TKR statement of intent when we opened the project:

TKR's Formal Founding Intent

There are many roads to personal and psychic development, and every individual chooses their own. Some roads are more appropriate for a given person, and this might have little to do with the road and much to do with the person. It is the right (and even spiritual obligation) of every person to get as clear a view as they can of the road(s) they might wish to walk, and to set forth in whatever direction and manner they choose.

In a subject so wide it applies to the innate faculties of every human being, there's room for many roads to lead to the same goal, without any crowding more hazardous than highly spirited competition. The evolution and strength of the field of Remote Viewing is of value to the human race: the information and communion provides important roads to the development of us as persons and as a species. The Remote Viewing field faces many challenges, and some are severe. The more community the field can muster, despite diversity, the better (and longer) the field can be of service to and for our people.

The Ten Thousand Roads (TKR) Remote Viewing and Dowsing project has something for everybody. TKR charges nothing, pays all server and traffic costs, handles all software issues, and staffs the online areas. Our staff represents many Remote Viewing methods and affiliations, to provide balance and fairness to all. This includes at various times TRV, SRV, CRV, HRVG, ERV, TDS, self-trained, un-trained, natural 'psychics', all interested and involved at least peripherally in the Remote Viewing or dowsing fields.

This project might allow more inter-disciplinary understanding, from having in one place (separate yet near) different perspectives. This could be a good thing. How much the potential is fulfilled will be up to those who participate, of course. Come play!

Intending the best! July 4, 2003.

I thought if people talked together and played together, there might be some friction, but gradually the field at large would be stronger for it, because people would see what the others could do and realize there was reason for that.

***

It sort of altered my plans that most of the "warring factions" never showed up at all. Instead, their conspicuous absence led to a much higher ratio in the project of internal method, altered state method, and unstructured method, viewers. I defended and built-in their right to be there too, as long as they would work inside an RV protocol, but it goes without saying that since my background is the methods world, and the vast majority of the field online is made up of methods-trained people, I expected the dominant viewing to be of that. But I've been unable to budge people to participate.

When I do get someone to give me any reason, I hear things like, "__[insert trainer name]__ doesn't want us to view there, because __[insert amazing amounts of often hilariously (or infuriatingly) untrue gossip here]___". Which makes me feel like it's a conflict of interest between making money vs. supporting RV, on the part of someone who'd do that, since they aren't offering the same tools to their viewers as an option, and it rather seems like the biggest resistance is either that the viewers will be abysmal and hurt their income by being a bad example to others, or the viewers will see others doing well with a different method (or no method) which will hurt their income by sending them to different trainers or no trainers for all the next- course levels and options and so on. And maybe the people who say that are not telling the truth, although I sort of doubt this as a few of them I've known for years.

But in the end, if even a fraction of that is true, it only hurts RV at large, by diminishing the strength of the community, attempts to withhold support from the most proactive and time/money-invested free offering resource the field has (though I think IRVA could rightly claim equal effort at the least), definitely does not help viewers, who only benefit from practice (and the formal method schools of thought have been using target pools for eons so that should be no issue) and since more viewers are semi-'alone with it' than not, that's really important. And all that why... because it isn't their particular niche, it doesn't make them money, it doesn't set them in stone as the only/ primary expert? I don't know why, maybe that is not the reason, that is just all my imagination can come up with, given the circumstance. Maybe it is unkind of me or even paranoid of me to imagine that is the reason. But since nobody is giving me any other explanation that sounds fair concerning the reasons, I'm forced to guess.

I ask people. All the time! Aside from that, which is rare but occasionally the response, I don't get any reasons. "Why does the group of people claiming the most expertise avoid demonstration of anything?" It's like a great mystery of RV.

And after awhile, over time, it does rather irk me. My occasional attitude on TKR stems from that.

Understand I built a project just for CRV in 1997. Paul and Joe and Gene and Greg as I recall were on the private message board willing to answer more in-depth personal viewer questions; that was very kind of them. And almost nobody came. Let alone viewed actively enough to have questions for them. Pointedly because the primary trainer I built it at the encouraged-behest-of, for personal-politic reasons, refused to tell anybody it existed, even when asked point blank. (Despite many people who told me they actually bought training after he told them about the great internet follow-up available--which back then, was only that.) I spent a huge amount of time and money on it, while working and raising a toddler, and I resented, a lot, the effort put in, and the life I gave up from my time and my kids' time, for nothing.

The old VWR list was the outreach arm of that project, but that's all people remember, thanks to stupid amounts of time spent making its archives. So you see it's not just a modern day issue. I have a history with building things just to support methods viewers and nobody bothering to view, to show up, to even do so out of nothing more than a minimal effort to support a good resource for the field at large.

Years later I built TKR. This time it's for everybody, not just CRV. And guess what. Again, CRV - and as a helluva coincidence, the other methods based on the original CRV -- won't show up and pointedly WILL NOT VIEW.

Good thing I invited everybody from any viewing direction, or me and the staff would still be sitting there alone.

Tunde (CRV and TDS), Daz (CRV and SRV), Josh (TRV), Dave (TDS) and Marv (CRV) are the primary methods viewers "that I know about" who are actively viewing online in a way that at least once in awhile, someone else besides some teeeny private group sees -- and all of them are gonzo on proper protocol, which is a blessed relief. There may be more in the galleries that just enter a summary or some data from a paper session of course (I know of probably two dozen other galleries viewers who were *trained* in a formal method, I just don't know that they use it; they don't seem to, or they are very sparse with the data they share.).

I don't know more than a tiny fraction of the people in the dojo, so it's hard to say. Frankly I keep wondering where the heck they are all coming from, since I honestly thought that around 400-500max was the whole field. There's over 4,300 registrations now. Some of them are bound to be duplicates. But still.

At this point, far more of the methods-trained field has never heard of me than knows me, so I can't even take the fact that they don't view in protocol publicly in any way personally (as if every single person from every single method is avoiding every single public opportunity to view that my projects sponsor, all because I am so evil. Of course, zillions will go drool on Ed Dames and hand over money to better-learn how we're all gonna die... again. Go figure). Even if there was a hefty dose of that it couldn't be the only reason. In part because this problem of apparent-non-viewing dates back to the 90's, when the 700-1000 emails in my box average per week suggested that a whole lot of people knew me and had nothing against me. (That was before I questioned the method, the trainers, and made an even-bigger deal of insisting that 'all methods' be included in things, at which point I got emails like, "You've betrayed your own!!" and I assume my public charm was pretty well lost.)

I could understand some, even most, people saying "I prefer to view alone" or "only with my friends" or whatever. In fact I would *expect* that. That's one reason that TKR has "offsite" tasking/viewing tools -- to support people working OUTside the project, with nifty tools nobody else could afford to build. But not the overwhelming percentage of people we are talking about here.

Maybe I should quit expecting groups of people who call themselves viewers to view enough that at least a teeeeeeny fractional % of them would end up, sometimes, with in-protocol sessions seen by others. Maybe the bizarre invisibility of methods viewers working in protocol publicly is for some deep dark secretive reason that nobody has ever figured out, which has nothing whatsoever to do with insecurity -- which I call cowardice but then Daz beats me up for that and he's a black belt, so, let's just stick with "insecurity" shall we. Maybe I have it all wrong. I might. I sure hope so. And for years now I keep waiting for someone to give me some more reasonable explanation.

Any time now.