The CIA’s Secret Experiments with Astral Projection the secret impact
Throughout the 20th century, various CIA programs researched remote viewing and out-of-body experiences seeking to unlock their espionage potentials.
We do know the CIA invested significant time and millions of dollars exploring whether astral projection and psychic abilities could provide an advantage in the Cold War. Declassified documents reveal some of what these covert experiments uncovered about the mysteries of consciousness.
After WWII, with the start of the Cold War, the CIA was determined to close the intelligence gap with the Soviet Union. This led them to become very interested in unconventional areas of research like astral projection and psychic phenomena.
In 1947, the CIA began Project Grudge to analyze reports of unidentified flying objects as potential security threats. The project later evolved into more extensive programs investigating psychic phenomena like remote viewing.
That same year, the CIA reviewed research by amateur astral projection researcher Sylvan Muldoon. His books claimed humans could project an invisible astral body that could travel independent of the physical body.
In the early 1970s, laser physicist Russell Targ and parapsychologist Harold Puthoff caught the CIA’s attention with their research on clairvoyance and psychic abilities at Stanford Research Institute (SRI).
Targ and Puthoff’s initial CIA-funded work involved testing psychic Uri Geller to verify his claims of telekinesis and extrasensory perception. Then they explored training psychics for remote viewing experiments. Impressed with results of this preliminary research, the CIA gave Targ and Puthoff approval to start a new operative program expanding their psychic investigations.
In 1972, Targ and Puthoff’s new CIA-backed program was named Stargate Project. It aimed to have military personnel astrally project and use clairvoyance for overseas espionage and reconnaissance.
The psychics would describe military bases and activities at remote locations that could not be easily surveilled otherwise. This was called controlled remote viewing (CRV) and became the main protocol for the Stargate program.
CRV training started by teaching projectors to enter a calm, meditative state to access their psychic perception. They would then mentally project and report back visual information on targets the CIA provided, which were verified by third-parties later.
Stargate remote viewers were also encouraged to try perceiving signals directly from enemies’ minds via telepathic abilities.
In the beginning, Stargate results appeared promising enough that the CIA invested substantially more into the psychic research and expansion of remote viewing training. By the late 1970s, multiple military projectors at Fort Meade and remote sites were being trained in CRV for practical field use. The CIA was spending about $20 million per year at the Stargate program’s peak, demonstrating their strong initial confidence.
Reports suggested Stargate remote viewers could perceive detailed information on secret Soviet sites that provided strategic advantages. This may have included preemptively spying on military preparations.
The CIA also recruited renowned astral projection researcher Robert Monroe to provide input on psychic training protocols based on his OBE methods.
Note: In esotericism, astral projection (also known as astral travel, soul journey, soul wandering, spiritual journey, spiritual travel) is an intentional out-of-body experience (OBE) in which a subtle body, known as the astral body or body of light through which consciousness functions separately from the physical body, travels throughout the astral plane.
