1.  Definitions:

            a.  Subconscious: Existing in the mind but not immediately available to consciousness; affecting thought, feeling, and behavior without entering awareness. The mental activities just below the threshold of consciousness.

            b.  Subliminal: Existing or functioning outside the area of conscious awareness; influencing thought, feeling, or behavior in a manner unperceived by personal or subjective consciousness; designed to influence the mind on levels other than that of conscious awareness and especially by presentation too brief to be consciously perceived.

            c.  Limen: The threshold of consciousness; the interface between the subconscious and conscious.

            d.  Liminal: At the limen; verging on consciousness.

            e.  Supraliminal: Above the limen; in the realm of conscious awareness.

            f.  Conscious: Perceiving, apprehending, or noticing with a degree of controlled thought or observation; recognizing as something external. Present especially to the senses. Involving rational power, perception, and awareness. By definition, the "conscious" part of the human being is that portion of the human consciousness which is linked most closely to and limited by the material world.

            g.  Autonomic Nervous System (ANS): A part of the vertebrate nervous system that innervates smooth and cardiac muscle and glandular tissues, governs actions that are more or less automatic, and consists of the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system (Webster's 3rd Int. Unabr.).

            h.  Ideogram (I): The reflexive mark made on the paper as a result of the impingement of the signal on the autonomic nervous system and its subsequent transmittal through this system to the arm and hand muscles, which transfers it through the pen onto the paper.

            i.  Analytic Overlay (AOL): Conscious subjective interpretation of signal line data, which may or may not be relevant to the site. (Discussed at length in STRUCTURE.)

            j.  Automatic vs. Autonomic: Reception and movement of the signal line information through the viewer's system ** and into objectification is an autonomic process as opposed to an automatic one, which itself implies an action arising and subsiding entirely within the system rather than from without.

(Note: in the original document, "j." was a typo, listed as a second "i.")

** NOTE: When the word "system" is used without qualifiers such as "autonomic," etc., it refers in a general sense to all the integrated and integrative biological (and perhaps metaphysical as well) elements and components of the viewer himself which enable him to function in this mode known as "remote viewing."

         RV theory relies on a rather Freudian model of human consciousness levels. The lowest level of consciousness is paradoxically named the "unconscious." All this label really means is that that part of our mental processes we know as physical "awareness" or "consciousness" does not have access to what goes on there. It is apparently this part of the individual's psyche that first detects and receives the signal line. From here it is passed to the autonomic nervous system. When the signal line impinges on the ANS, the information is converted into a reflexive nervous response conducted through muscular channels controlled by the ANS. If so allowed, this response will manifest itself as an ideogram. At the same time, the signal is passed up through the subconscious, across the limen, and into the lower fringes of the consciousness. This is the highest state of consciousness from the standpoint of human material awareness. However, the normal waking consciousness poses certain problems for remote viewing, occasioned largely because of the linear, analytic thought processes which are societally enhanced and ingrained from our earliest stages of cognitive development. While extremely useful in a society relying heavily on quantitative data and technological development, such analytic thinking hampers remote viewing by the manufacture of what is known as "analytic overlay," or AOL. As the signal line surges up across the limen and into the threshold areas of consciousness, the mind's conscious analytic process feels duty-bound to assign coherence to what at first blush seems virtually incomprehensible data coming from an unaccustomed source. It must in other words make a "logical" assessment based on the impressions being received. Essentially, the mind jumps to one or a number of instantaneous conclusions about the incoming information without waiting for sufficient information to make an accurate judgement. This process is completely reflexive, and happens even when not desired by the individual involved. Instead of allowing wholistic "right-brain" processes (through which the signal line apparently manifests itself) to assemble a complete and accurate concept, untrained "left brain"-based analytic processes seize upon whatever bit of information seems most familiar and forms an AOL construct based on it.

For example, a viewer has been given the coordinates to a large, steel girder bridge. A flash of a complex, metal, manmade structure may impinge on the limenary regions of the viewer's mind, but so briefly that no coherent response can be made to it. The conscious mind, working at a much greater speed than the viewer expects, perceives bits and pieces such as angles, riveted girders, and a sense of being "roofed over" and paved, whereupon it suggests to the physical awareness of the viewer that the site is the outside of a large sports stadium. The "image" is of course wrong, but is at least composed of factual elements, though these have been combined by the viewer's over-eager analytical processes to form an erroneous conclusion.

         1.  Definitions:

            a. Overtraining: The state reached when the individual's learning system is over-saturated and is "burned out," analogous to a muscle that has been overworked and can no longer extend or contract until it is allowed to rest and rebuild fibers that have been broken down by the stress, or reinforce those that have been newly acquired by new demands placed upon the muscle.

            b.  Absorption: Assimilation, as by incorporation or by the digestive process.

            c.  Cognitron: A cognitron is an assemblage of neurons, linked together by interconnecting synapses, and which when stimulated by the mind's recall system produce a composite concept of their various subparts. Each neuron is charged with an element of the overall concept, which when combined with the elements of its fellow neurons produces the final concept which the cognitron represents. As a human learns new facts, skills or behaviors, neurons are connecting into new cognitrons, the connecting synapses of which are more and more reinforced with use.

            d.  Neuron: "A nerve cell with all its processes." The apparent fundamental physical building block of mental and nervous processes. Neurons are the basic element in the formation of cognitrons, and may be linked into varying configurations by the formation or rearrangement of synapse chains.

            e.  Synapse: The interstices between neurons over which nerve impulses must travel to carry information from the senses, organs, and muscles to the brain and back, and to conduct mental processes.

            f.  Learning Curve: The graphic representation of the standard success-to-session ratio of a remote viewer trainee. The typical curve demonstrates high success for the first one to a few attempts, a sudden and drastic drop in success, then a gradual improvement curve until a relatively high plateau is reached.

            g.  First-Time Effect: In any human activity or skill a phenomenon exists known as "beginner's luck." In remote viewing, this phenomenon is manifest as especially successful performance at the first attempt at psychic functioning, after which the success rate drops sharply, to be built up again gradually through further training. This effect is hypothesized to result from the initial excitation of hereditary but dormant psi-conducting neuronal channels which, when first stimulated by attempted psychoenergetic functioning "catch the analytic system off guard," as it were, allowing high-grade functioning with little other system interference. Once the initial novelty wears off, the analytic systems which have been trained for years to screen all mental functions attempt to account for and control the newly awakened neural pathways, thereby generating increasing amounts of masking "mental noise," or AOL.

            h. Noise: The effect of the various types of overlay, inclemencies, etc. that serve to obscure or confuse the viewer's reception and accurate decoding of the signal line. Noise must be dealt with properly and in structure to allow the viewer to accurately recognize the difference between valid signal and his own incorrect internal processes.

            Learning theory for RV methodology is governed by the idea that the student should "quit on a high point." Traditionally, the learning of a skill concentrates on rote repetition, reiterating the skill a large number of times until it is consistently performed correctly. Recent developments in learning theory which have been applied with particular success in sports training methodology indicate that the rote repetition concept tends more to reinforce incorrect performance as opposed to developing the proper behavior or skill. Much success has been realized by implementing the concept of "quitting on a high point." That is, when a skill or behavior has been executed correctly, taking an extended break from the training at that point allows the learning processes to "remember" the correct behavior by strengthening the neurological relays that have been established in the brain by the correct procedure.

            The phenomenon of overtraining is a very real danger in the training cycle, generally brought about by pushing ahead with training until the learning system of the viewer is totally saturated and cannot absorb any more. This results in system collapse, which in effect is a total failure to function psychically at all. To avoid this, the normal practice has been to work an appropriate number of sessions a day (anywhere from one to several, depending on each individual trainee's capacity and level of training and experience) for a set number of days or weeks (also individually dependent), with a lay off period between training periods to allow time for assimilation or "absorption." Even with this precaution, overtraining can sometimes strike, and the only remedy becomes a total training layoff, then a gradual reintroduction. It is extremely important that the viewer inform the monitor when he is feeling especially good about his performance in remote viewing training, so that a training break may be initiated on this high point. To continue to push beyond this threatens a slide into overtraining.

            It is very important that should the viewer in the course of the training session become aware that he has experienced some important "cognition" or understanding, or if the monitor perceives that this is the case, the session must here also be halted. This allows time both for the cognition to be fully matriculated into the viewer's system and for the accompanying elation of discovery to dissipate.

            The fact that CRV methodology is arranged into six distinct stages implies that there is a learning progression from one stage to the next. To determine when a student viewer is ready to advance to the next stage, certain milestones are looked for. Though the peculiarities of each stage make certain of these criteria relevant only to that specific stage, general rules may still be outlined. When a viewer has consistently demonstrated control and replication of all pertinent stage elements and has operated "noise free" (i.e., properly handling AOL and other system distractions in structure) for five or six sessions, he is ready to write a stage summation essay and move on to the introductory lectures for the next stage.

            Essay writing is an important part of the CRV training, and serves as a sort of intellectual "objectification" of the material learned. Through student essays the instructor is able to determine how thoroughly and accurately the student has internalized the concepts taught.

         F.  Reference Material:

            1. Theory: Dixon, Norman, Preconscious Processing, New York: Wiley, 1981.

            2. Learning Theory:

               a. Fukushima, K. and Miyake, S., "A Self-organizing Neural Network with a Function of Associative Memory: Feed-back Type Cognition," Biological Cybernetics, 28 (1978), pp. 201-208.

               b. Fukushima, K. "Neocognitron: A Self-organizing Neural Network Model for a Mechanism of Pattern Recognition Unaffected by Shift in Position," Biological Cybernetics, 36 (1980), pp. 197-202.

               c. Linn, Louis, "The Discriminating Function of the Ego," Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 23 (1954), pp. 38-47.

               d. Shevrin, H., and Dickman, Scott, "The Psychological Unconscious: A Necessary Assumption for All Psychological Theory?" American Psychologist, vol. 35, no. 5 (May 1980), pp. 421-434.

               e. Westlake, P.R., "The Possibilities of Neural Holographic Processes within the Brain," Kybernetic, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 129-153.      

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