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Why
Bother With ESP?
By
Russell Targ
Remote viewing is not necessarily a spiritual path, but it can lead
us there, giving us the mind-quieting tools and experience to follow
some of the well-trodden paths that have been described for millennia.
More important, our experience with remote viewing shows without a doubt
that we can learn to expand our unconditioned awareness through all
of space and time – to directly explore the timeless existence
described by the mystics. Allowing your awareness to expand into this
feeling of spaciousness is one of the great rewards of this practice;
you open the gates, and out flows who you are.
 It
is increasingly recognized that our physical and mental health require
that we take personal initiative to control our chattering minds. The
quiet mind has the opportunity to experience what has been called “the
peace that passeth understanding.” As I described earlier, between
the inflow of remote viewing and the outflow of spiritual healing, we
can experience the overwhelming peace and oceanic connection that is
available to each of us in the present moment. In the present, there
is neither perception nor intention – just pure awareness. Our
ability to share this experience of freedom, love, and spaciousness
is what gives meaning to our lives. With our present technology of television,
video games, e-mail, and computers, however, we run the risk of never
having another quiet moment. This represents the greatest loss we could
possibly experience.
Carl Sagan was a great astronomer and a celebrated teacher, but he found
the idea of God to be incomprehensible. Why couldn't this brilliant
man find God? From my observations and reading, I think it was because
he could never be quiet. Beyond that, as an astronomer he thought God
was to be found on the outside, rather than on the inside. Powerful
telescopes will not help us in our search for love, peace, or God.
In fact, much suffering is caused by looking on the outside for what
is actually on the inside. I believe that the spiritual practice that
works for the twenty-first century is, first of all, to resolutely desire
freedom from the conditioned awareness of our story and our past, and
then to find a way to be still. Many wisdom teachers seem to agree that
in order to discover who we really are, we must find a path that allows
us to surrender fear, coveting, and craving, then quiet the mind in
spite of all the advertising designed to create needs that make us suffer.
My personal goal has been, for many years, to turn a rocket scientist
into a human being. I have believed that a human being could experience
more meaning in life and more peace of mind than a rocket scientist.
I have been a professional scientist for more than forty years, in the
fields of both laser physics and parapsychology research. Although I
was trained as a physicist, over the past twenty-five years I have somehow
coauthored five books – all of which have “mind” in their
titles. While physics attempts to reveal the mysteries of the material
universe, it has curiously little to say about mind or consciousness.
Over the years, I have become passionate about understanding the nature
of consciousness and how it allows our awareness to transcend space
and time – for, indeed, it does. For more than a decade, I toiled
with thousands of my fellow engineers in the aerospace slave pits of
a large defense contractor in Palo Alto, California. I was well paid,
and I had created an exciting research program to put lasers on commercial
airplanes, enabling them to detect and avoid dangerous wind hazards.
We had even designed a system to do this kind of laser-based remote
sensing from outer space, allowing me to think of myself as a “rocket
scientist.” The bad news is that my inner space was filled with
fear, resentment, anger, and desperation.
I've managed to move myself from a wage-slave mentality of fear
and desperation, to a life that is focused increasingly on gratitude
and love. My purpose in writing this book is to be helpful – to
help others find peace as I have now found. It may be hard to imagine,
but the significant love available to us transcends girlfriends, boyfriends,
romance, or sex. The love that I'm talking about is the love that exists
at our core. If you are vigilant, no one can ever separate you from
that love.
I am not encouraging you to believe in any particular doctrine, since
I know from my own experience that many people, especially scientists,
would rather suffer fear, anxiety, and depression than believe anything
that might be thought silly or doctrinaire. Silliness, for a scientist,
is a fate worse than death. I am, however, telling you that life is
much, much more enjoyable from where I stand now.
Based
on: LIMITLESS MIND (New World Library) by Russell Targ,
physicist and co-founder of the Stanford Research Institute program
on remote viewing and psychic phenomena.
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