Astral Projection vs Remote Viewing: Stargate Project, Ingo Swann, and CRV Protocols
By DailyDestiny Editorial Team
If a CIA Stargate video left you wondering whether remote viewing is just astral projection, this guide shows you how they really differ. Compare methods, key viewers, Ingo Swann's protocol, a first home session and the theories behind both.
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What Was the Stargate Project and What Did It Find?
Imagine you fell down a late-night YouTube hole and watched a documentary about the CIA paying psychics to spy on the Soviet Union. Now you can't stop wondering: is remote viewing just astral projection with a military badge, and if the government took it seriously, should you?
The short answer: no. In remote viewing you stay seated and awake, writing down impressions of a hidden target. In astral projection you feel yourself leave your body and travel. The US government studied remote viewing for 23 years in what became the Stargate Project, with mixed, still debated results.
It began when the CIA learned the Soviet Union was investing heavily in psychic research and funded physicists Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff at Stanford Research Institute to test whether remote viewing could give reliable intelligence. Early experiments with Ingo Swann and Pat Price were impressive enough to keep the money coming.
The program ran under several code names, managed by the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Army. At its height it had about six to eight operational viewers, mostly at Fort Meade, Maryland, targeting Soviet submarine bases, weapons facilities, hostage locations and more.
Claimed successes include identifying a new Soviet submarine class at Semipalatinsk, locating a downed Soviet Tu-22 bomber in Africa and describing a hostage location in Italy.
In 1995 the American Institutes for Research reviewed it, commissioning statistician Jessica Utts and skeptic Ray Hyman. Utts found the evidence for an anomalous effect strong and consistent, with effect sizes comparable to many accepted medical interventions. Hyman agreed results beat chance but blamed methodological flaws. The program ended in 1995 mainly because its data was hard to fit into intelligence analysis, not because it was definitively debunked.
Declassified documents, released through FOIA requests, show a more nuanced picture than believers or skeptics usually give: genuine operational successes, but many failed or unclear sessions too. Accuracy varied a lot between viewers and sessions, making remote viewing unreliable as a sole source but possibly useful as a supplement.
Its key legacy for you is Controlled Remote Viewing, which turned a mystified practice into a teachable skill. It also showed anomalous perception could be studied systematically inside institutions.
Did the CIA conclude that remote viewing works?
Its position was ambiguous. The 1995 AIR review found a statistically significant lab effect but no established intelligence value. Jessica Utts stated unequivocally that the results were not due to chance. Ray Hyman could not point to specific flaws that explained the results but remained unconvinced.
It ended because that value was judged too low to fund, not because remote viewing was disproven.
What were the most notable Stargate successes?
Joe McMoneagle reportedly described a new class of Soviet submarine being built at a secret facility months before satellites confirmed it. Pat Price reportedly gave accurate descriptions of a Soviet research facility at Semipalatinsk, including building layouts and equipment. Viewers reportedly helped locate hostages and identify activity at foreign weapons sites.
These claims are in declassified files but still debated, since classified operations are hard to verify independently.
Why was the Stargate program terminated?
The Cold War's end made intelligence gathering less urgent, the 1995 AIR review was mixed, CIA skepticism eroded support, and results varied too much for analysts to act on confidently. The decision was practical, not scientific: even real anomalous information, if inconsistent, is hard to plug into normal analysis.
Who Were the Key Remote Viewers of the Stargate Program?
If you pictured glamorous psychics, the real team may surprise you: a small group of soldiers and civilian psychics, mostly working from two unremarkable wooden buildings at Fort Meade, Maryland.
Ingo Swann and Pat Price were the two civilian viewers at Stanford Research Institute whose early sessions convinced sponsors that remote viewing was worth funding at all. Price's descriptions of the Soviet facility at Semipalatinsk are the most cited sessions from that period.
Joe McMoneagle was named Remote Viewer No. 001 when the Army unit formed. He became its longest-serving and most decorated operational viewer and received the Legion of Merit for intelligence contributions through the unit.
Skip Atwater, the operations and training officer who screened candidates, later became president of the Monroe Institute, the clearest personal link between remote viewing and the out-of-body accounts collected in Astral Travel Experiences: Documented Journeys, Scientific Cases, and Common Reports.
Paul H. Smith and Lyn Buchanan trained in CRV under Swann and taught it publicly after declassification, Smith through his book Reading the Enemy's Mind.
Mel Riley, an Army imagery analyst, served two separate tours.
Ed Dames and David Morehouse became the most visible and most disputed figures after the program closed: Dames through televised predictions that other former viewers called damaging, Morehouse through his memoir Psychic Warrior.
The roster was strikingly ordinary. Atwater screened for a profile: intuitive, artistic, and able to sit with incomplete information without forcing a conclusion. Several had no prior psychic interest and were startled by their own target-matching data.
Former members later split sharply over how accurate the operational work really was. If you met remote viewing through media, where one dramatic claim stands in for many mixed, carefully logged sessions, that argument is a useful reality check.
Who was Joe McMoneagle and what did he remote view?
He was Stargate's Remote Viewer No. 001 and its longest-serving operational viewer, recruited into the Fort Meade unit after a near-death experience abroad opened him to non-ordinary perception, the kind of onset examined in Out-of-Body Experiences Explained: Science, NDEs, and Consciousness Research.
His most cited session describes a large Soviet construction hall near water holding an unusually large submarine with angled missile tubes, recorded before imagery confirmed a new vessel class. He later worked with the Monroe Institute and argues that remote viewing is a perceptual discipline needing thousands of hours, not a gift.
What was Pat Price known for?
Pat Price, a former police commissioner, joined the Stanford Research Institute experiments in the early 1970s and became known for unusually specific, confident descriptions of classified sites. His Semipalatinsk sessions included sketches of structures and equipment that sponsors treated as significant, and his work on a coordinate-based demonstration of a US site is part of why funding continued.
Price died suddenly in the mid-1970s, one reason his sessions are discussed far more than replicated. He is remembered as the natural talent beside Swann, the methodical protocol builder.
Did Stargate viewers describe leaving their bodies?
Most explicitly denied it in standard CRV sessions, describing fragmentary impressions arriving while they sat wide awake at a desk with a pen.
The exception was Extended Remote Viewing, a deeper altered state, where several reported something closer to being at the target, with a sense of position, movement and viewpoint. McMoneagle and Atwater both had substantial out-of-body experience outside the unit. But a session is judged on the written record, never on how it felt.
How Controlled Remote Viewing Compares to Astral Projection Techniques
If you try both, this is where you will feel the difference most. Controlled Remote Viewing (CRV), developed by Ingo Swann and refined in the military program, is a highly structured six-stage protocol. Projection has no such script.
In CRV, you work with a monitor who gives you only a coordinate or reference number. You have no conscious idea what the target is. Then you move through the stages:
Stage 1: record first spontaneous impressions, called ideograms, which are automatic gestures in response to the target signal.
Stage 2: basic sensory impressions: colours, textures, temperatures, sounds, smells.
Stage 3: dimensional data: sizes, shapes, spatial relationships.
Stage 4: the target's emotional and aesthetic qualities.
Stage 5: more detailed probing of specific target elements.
Stage 6: three-dimensional modelling or detailed sketching.
You stay seated and alert, writing on paper. No relaxation, no separation, no feeling of travel; you just record impressions in a format built to keep your analytical mind out of the way.
Projection is the opposite: the full felt experience of being somewhere in a non-physical body, seeing, hearing and feeling it, with no recording protocol. One is like taking careful notes from a radio signal; the other is like stepping into the scene.
CRV was deliberately built to strip away the metaphysics and create a skill that could be taught, practised and judged objectively. Swann insisted remote viewing was a form of perception, not a mystical experience, and that the structure was essential to keep the analytical mind from contaminating raw data with interpretation.
Projection traditions treat the experience itself as the point: being out of the body, travelling to other dimensions and meeting non-physical beings. So the goals differ: CRV aims to extract accurate information about physical targets, while astral projection aims to explore consciousness and non-physical reality.
Can remote viewing techniques improve astral projection accuracy?
Yes. CRV's idea of analytical overlay, your conscious mind interpreting and possibly distorting raw data, applies just as much to projection. Learning to observe and record without interpreting can make your observations clearer and more accurate. Some practitioners use a modified CRV format in their post-projection journals.
Did any Stargate viewers practise astral projection?
Several had experience with projection and related practices. Joe McMoneagle, the most decorated viewer, had his first psychic experiences through a near-death experience and later worked extensively with the Monroe Institute. Skip Atwater, the operations officer, later became the Monroe Institute's president.
The communities have overlapped from the start.
Is CRV harder or easier to learn than astral projection?
CRV is generally easier to start: most students produce target-matching data within their first few sessions, and the structure cuts the frustration of open-ended practice. But high accuracy takes months to years. Projection may take longer the first time but gives a more immersive kind of perception. The curves differ rather than one being easier.
How to Run Your First Remote Viewing Session at Home
You can try this tonight with very little: a target pool prepared by someone else, a random reference number, a quiet room, blank paper, and a promise to record before identifying anything.
Set up: a partner picks five or six photos with strong, distinct content (a waterfall, a bridge, a crowded market, a single tall structure) and seals each in an opaque envelope labelled with a random eight-digit number.
Begin: take one envelope unopened, sit at a desk, write the number at the top and give yourself thirty seconds of stillness.
Ideogram: put the pen on the page and make a quick reflexive mark without deciding what it means.
Work outward in CRV order: raw sensory data first (colours, textures, temperatures, sounds, smells), then dimensions (tall, flat, enclosed, open), then emotional tone, then a sketch.
Catch the nouns: anything that arrives as a name, like bridge, church or airport, goes in a separate column labelled AOL and is set aside, not chased.
Finish and check: sessions run fifteen to twenty-five minutes. Only then open the envelope. That feedback is your training signal; skip it and you plateau fast.
With no relaxation induction, vibrational stage or exit technique, beginners often get something usable on the first try.
The most common beginner mistake is poor targets. Vague or indoor scenes give feedback so fuzzy you can't tell a hit from a miss. Good first targets have one dominant feature and a clear sensory signature: a lighthouse on a rocky coast, a snowy mountain pass, a busy fish market.
The second mistake is scoring yourself generously. Judge only what you wrote before opening the envelope. Keep every session in a bound notebook with the date, reference number and a short accuracy note. Skill shows up across dozens of sessions, not one hit, the way fitness shows up over months, not one workout.
If you also practise out-of-body work, log both in the same notebook. For the projection side, see Astral Projection for Beginners: Your 30-Day Plan to First Experience.
What equipment do you need for a remote viewing session?
Plain unlined paper, a pen that doesn't skip, a desk and chair, a quiet room and a sealed target envelope prepared by someone else. No pencils (the record should be permanent) and no lines (sketches go wherever the impression goes).
You don't need headphones, binaural audio or darkness, a real practical difference from astral projection, where sound tools and lighting matter, as Astral Projection Meditation: Guided Scripts, Binaural Beats, and Exit Techniques explains. The hard rule is not knowing the target, so solo practice needs a partner, a shuffled pool built weeks earlier, or an online target service that withholds feedback until you submit.
How long does it take to get accurate at remote viewing?
Most CRV students produce recognisably target-matching data in their first handful of sessions, but instructors talk of a few hundred logged sessions before you trust your output.
Progress is uneven: strong runs are usually followed by a slump, often from trying too hard or guessing the target. Real milestones: catching analytical overlay in the moment, and sketching structure before naming it.
Can you remote view a target you already know about?
That is called front-loading, and beginners are told to avoid it, because memory and expectation fill the page long before any anomalous impression arrives. The blind protocol exists to keep your own knowledge out of the record.
Stargate sometimes used partial front-loading, telling a viewer only a fragment such as "the target is a person", but as an intelligence trade-off, not training. At home, stay fully blind; a hit on a known target proves nothing.
What Ingo Swann Contributed to Understanding Non-Physical Perception
If you think psychic ability is something you either have or don't, Swann argued otherwise. He was arguably the most important bridge between experiential psychic traditions and the science of anomalous cognition.
His main contribution was showing that remote perception could be systematised and taught, when it had been seen as a rare, inexplicable gift. Swann broke the process into stages, trained viewers to spot and set aside analytical interference, and gave immediate feedback on accuracy. In his view, that made remote viewing a reliable skill for most people willing to practise.
His model separated the signal line, direct non-analytical perception of the target, from analytical overlay, your conscious mind's attempt to interpret and name the raw data. That distinction has proved enormously useful, in remote viewing and beyond.
He proposed that all humans have latent perceptual abilities beyond the five senses, which he termed the "eight martinis" level, referring to how much alcohol a skeptic would need to drink to accept the results. He argued these abilities are suppressed by social conditioning and analytical habits rather than absent. His book Penetration described his claimed remote viewing of the Moon's surface, including structures he interpreted as evidence of non-human activity.
His most scientifically significant work may be his early experiments at the American Society for Psychical Research, where he was reported to influence the readings of a shielded magnetometer through mental intention. At Stanford Research Institute, he and Pat Price described distant locations with accuracy that independent judges rated significantly above chance.
His 1973 Jupiter viewing described features, including a ring system, unknown to science then but later confirmed by the Pioneer 10 and Voyager missions. Skeptics dispute its significance, noting that some details were wrong and that ring systems had been theoretically predicted. Still, it remains one of the most discussed cases in remote viewing history.
What is analytical overlay and why is it important?
Analytical overlay, or AOL, is Swann's term for your conscious mind trying to identify and interpret raw data before it has fully arrived. Say you sense a large dark shape with hard edges and instantly label it a building, when the target is actually a mountain or a ship. That early label closes off perception and locks in a possibly wrong reading. Noticing AOL and setting it aside is perhaps the most important skill in remote viewing, and in projection too.
How did Swann view the relationship between remote viewing and astral projection?
He called remote viewing a perceptual skill, not a travelling experience, and did not feel his awareness leave his body. But he acknowledged the overlap and respected astral projection as a related but different kind of non-physical perception. He suggested both might tap the same underlying information field through different routes: remote viewing through structured perception, astral projection through immersive experience.
Can Swann's techniques be learned from books?
The basic CRV protocol is documented in several books, including Swann's own unpublished training manual, Paul Smith's Reading the Enemy's Mind and David Morehouse's Psychic Warrior.
Most practitioners still recommend an experienced instructor at first, because feedback and session management are hard to learn from text. Several former Stargate viewers offer training, and CRV schools run online courses.
What Are the Practical Uses of Each Practice?
Which suits you depends on what you want: information, or an inner experience.
Remote viewing suits information gathering. Practitioners have applied it to finding lost objects, weighing business decisions, predicting market trends, helping with missing persons cases and archaeological research. The International Remote Viewing Association documents ongoing uses. Its specific impressions and sketches are easier to act on than projection's whole-scene stories.
Astral projection suits personal growth, exploring consciousness and therapeutic uses. Projectors use it to face fears, explore identity and consciousness, ease death anxiety through what they experience as non-physical existence, process grief by meeting what they perceive as loved ones who have died, and spark creativity. This is the one for you if you want meaning rather than data.
Both have been used for healing: remote viewers in medical intuitive work, trying to perceive the source of a patient's illness; projectors by sending healing energy and perceiving astral-body imbalances that match physical ailments. Neither has been validated in controlled clinical trials, though anecdotal reports of benefit are common. If you are unwell, please see a doctor rather than relying on either.
There are hybrids too. Extended Remote Viewing (ERV), developed within Stargate, uses a deeper altered state, closer to projection, with CRV's recording discipline, usually lying down, allowing more immersive target contact. Some report experiences indistinguishable from projection.
Associative Remote Viewing (ARV) targets future events: you describe a future feedback photo, with different photos assigned to different outcomes. It has been used for sports prediction and market forecasting, with results above chance in some studies. Supporters see these uses as signs that non-ordinary perception may be useful beyond spiritual growth.
Has remote viewing been used successfully in criminal investigations?
With mixed results. Some viewers claim useful leads in missing persons cases, and police have occasionally consulted psychic viewers. But no criminal case has been publicly solved through remote viewing alone, and courts do not accept remote viewing data as evidence.
The International Remote Viewing Association takes a cautious line, acknowledging possible usefulness while warning against overstating abilities or making claims that can't be verified.
Can astral projection be used for healing others?
Many projectors report sending healing energy, visiting ill people's energy bodies and directing intention toward recovery. Robert Bruce describes astral healing techniques in detail.
The evidence is entirely anecdotal and has not been tested in controlled clinical studies. The practice does have a long history in shamanic traditions, where the healer journeys in non-ordinary reality to retrieve lost soul parts or remove spiritual intrusions. Whether it works through real energy or through the placebo effect of the healer's focused, caring intention is unknown.
Which practice is more useful for personal growth?
Most people who have tried both say astral projection, because it is immersive. Practitioners describe the experience of awareness existing apart from the body as deeply changing how they see identity, death and reality.
Remote viewing is an impressive perceptual skill, but it usually doesn't change people as deeply, because it is analytical rather than experiential. Still, the discipline you build through CRV can make your astral projection clearer and sharper.
How Consciousness Models Try to Explain Both
If you need a "how could this even work?" before trying something, these are the main theories. None is proven, so read them as maps, not the territory.
Filter theory, from Edward Kelly and colleagues at the University of Virginia, proposes that your brain normally narrows consciousness to your body and surroundings. Loosen the filter a little and information from distant places gets in (remote viewing); loosen it a lot and awareness experiences itself apart from the body (projection).
My Big TOE, Thomas Campbell's model, says consciousness is fundamental and the physical world a computed virtual environment, like a simulation. Both practices reach data in the information system beneath it. Remote viewing reaches data about the physical simulation; astral projection reaches other simulations or the underlying system itself.
The entanglement model, from Dean Radin at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, suggests consciousness may work through non-local connections like quantum entanglement, allowing instant information transfer at any distance. This would account for remote viewing's reported distance-independence and astral projection's reported perception of far-off places.
None has been empirically validated, but they are serious attempts by credentialed researchers.
Links to theoretical physics remain active speculation. David Bohm's implicate order is a deeper, interconnected level of reality from which the visible explicate order unfolds. In this view, remote viewing draws information from the implicate order, where distance does not apply, and astral projection is consciousness reaching the implicate order directly.
The holographic universe model, popularised by Michael Talbot and drawing on Bohm and neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, suggests that information about the whole is contained in every part, like each piece of a hologram holding the full picture. That would make non-local access theoretically possible. These ideas remain speculative, but suggest these experiences are not necessarily incompatible with theoretical physics, even if they challenge materialist readings of it.
Why is distance said not to affect remote viewing accuracy?
Multiple studies in the Stargate program and at SRI reported that accuracy did not fall as the distance between viewer and target grew. That does not fit any signal-based model, since physical signals weaken with distance.
It does fit non-local models, whether quantum entanglement, an implicate order or awareness outside normal space and time. Supporters call this one of the strongest arguments against a conventional physical explanation.
Does simulation theory explain astral projection?
Thomas Campbell's simulation model is one of the more internally consistent frameworks for it. If physical reality is a computed virtual environment inside a larger consciousness system, astral projection would be consciousness reaching the system outside its usual physical rendering. Other rule sets, meaning other simulations, could account for the non-physical places projectors describe.
It also explains why projectors report a thought-responsive astral environment: in a consciousness-based simulation, intent shapes what is rendered. In its strongest form it can't be falsified, but it explains many anomalous experiences.
Is there any scientific consensus on how non-local perception works?
No. The phenomenon itself is still disputed, and a significant part of the scientific community rejects the evidence for remote viewing and astral projection as not rigorous enough.
Among researchers who accept the evidence, proposed mechanisms range from quantum entanglement to electromagnetic field interactions to consciousness as a fundamental rather than emergent property of reality. That reflects both how hard the problem is and mainstream science's reluctance to engage with phenomena that challenge core assumptions about consciousness and reality.
Questions people ask
What is the main difference between astral projection and remote viewing?
In remote viewing you stay anchored in your body and receive impressions of a distant target, like receiving a fax. In astral projection you feel your awareness leave your body and actually go there. Remote viewing uses structured protocols for recording impressions; projection uses relaxation and separation techniques. Remote viewing was designed to be repeatable and trainable for military intelligence, while projection grew from spiritual and esoteric traditions.
Was remote viewing really used by the US military?
Yes. The US government funded remote viewing from 1972 to 1995 under code names including Scanate, Gondola Wish, Grill Flame, Center Lane, Sun Streak and finally Stargate. Based mainly at Fort Meade, Maryland, and Stanford Research Institute in California, viewers targeted Soviet military installations, hostage locations and more. A 1995 CIA-commissioned review by statistician Jessica Utts and skeptic Ray Hyman split: Utts called the statistical evidence robust, Hyman called it insufficient. The program was declassified and terminated in 1995.
Who was Ingo Swann and why is he important?
Ingo Swann was an artist and psychic and the most influential figure in remote viewing history. Working with physicists Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff at Stanford Research Institute from 1972, he helped develop what became Controlled Remote Viewing, and was reported to beat chance in many lab experiments. His 1973 viewing of Jupiter, describing features later confirmed by Pioneer 10, is one of the field's most cited cases. He insisted remote viewing was a learnable perceptual skill, not a mystical gift.
Can you learn both remote viewing and astral projection?
Yes, and many people do. Both ask you to quiet your analytical mind, stay receptive and perceive through non-ordinary channels. Remote viewing's disciplined recording can sharpen your projection observations, and projection's depth of non-physical awareness can deepen remote viewing sensitivity. Some use projection for open exploration and remote viewing for targeted information.
Is remote viewing more scientific than astral projection?
It has been easier to test, because it makes specific, checkable claims about physical targets. Hundreds of formal experiments have been run, many double-blind, and meta-analyses have generally found small but statistically significant effects. Projection is harder to test because it involves subjective experience of places that may not be physically checkable. Its claim, that awareness actually leaves the body, is also bolder than remote viewing's claim that distant information can be reached through anomalous perception.
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