(This interview originally apppeared in Black Belt Magazine’s November 2005 issue. I wanted to find it online, but couldnt, so, decided to put it up here for the first time. Fogan goes in depth with Major Dames, one the main names behind Remote Viewing, about how chi kung can lead to amazing mental powers. Of course the military wants to weaponize these powers, but what else is new with any energy source they come across.)
Whenever you hear Maj.Ed Dames,U.S. Army (retired), being interviewed on a radio program—the ever-popular Coast to Coast AM, for example—you hear him make fleeting references to military research and the martial arts. The comments are so intriguing that we at Black Belt felt compelled to make contact with the man, who s perhaps best-known for his research into remote viewing, and probe his mind…
Black Belt: What’s your military background?
Ed Dames: I was the operations and training officer for the country’s psi-spy unit, a psychic intelligence unit [with] the Department of Defense. It was a top-secret unit, and knowledge about it became public only in 1992. Ted Koppel got wind that the unit existed, and it was going out the door. The [main] skill is called remote viewing. I’ve been teaching it for 21 years, and I still use it in my work.
BB: What exactly is remote viewing?
Dames: Remote viewing is not the same as being psychic; it’s a trained skill. You can be born a klutz but still be taught how to walk a tightrope or ski. It’s like that. We turned it into a skill. The protocols were developed after many years of studying the way naturally gifted psychics cognitively do what they do. That was modeled, then the model was adapted to train other people how to do it.
BB: Is the rest of the world interested in remote viewing?
Dames: I also direct the Matrix Intelligence Agency, which is a private consulting firm and the center for mind warfare in America—travel around the world to teach. Unfortunately, America is falling way behind the Chinese. We’re now 15 or 20 years behind the Chinese in terms of mind warfare.
BB: Why? Is it because Americans find it hard to accept?
Dames: Yeah. The Chinese don’t have [those limitations]. I have a close friend who owns the largest private hospital in Asia. When I talk to the doctors—some of the best doctors in Asia—about remote viewing, they’re enthusiastic and want me to teach them. But the doctors in that hospital who’ve been trained in America are skeptics because they’ve bought into the Western paradigm, the “show me” paradigm. When I saw, as a young man in China, people break boards or bend tire irons with their throats I knew it was true because it fit my paradigm— though it stretched it. However, to be able to achieve action at a distance—to use telekinesis or psychokinesis—pushes the envelope too far for the Western paradigm. And it’s not supported at all in America. In Asia, it’s quite different. Not only is it supported, but it’s accepted readily. They’ve seen these kinds of paranormal abilities in children and chi kung masters.
BB: Was remote viewing developed in Asia? Is that why they’re ahead of us?
Dames No. We’re ahead of the Chinese in terms of remote viewing and the passive side of paranormal ability. But we’re behind them in terms of the dynamic. I want to make a distinction between the ability of chi kung masters to achieve a physical action and the ability to achieve action at a distance. Those appear to be two different modalities.
BB: What specifically are the differences?
Dames: The chi kung masters that you and I are familiar with—and many of them, of course, are not familiar to anyone because they’re extremely private—use human will to [take] human potential to the maximum in terms of conquering the body.But the other modality—using the mind to achieve action at a distance, achieving mind over matter—requires a different type of discipline. Some children are born with this ability, and chi kung masters in China have been able to model the behavior of these children and do what the children do. And science in China supports these children. They don’t say, “Don’t you ever do that again,” or “This is evil,”—the Western paradigm at work.
BB: Why is it so important that the United States not fall behind the Chinese?
Dames: [In the past,] I had to provide input to the National Intelligence Institute, which [produces] a written report that goes to the president and many other people in the intelligence arena. One of those reports dealt with the study of paranormal abilities in other countries—we don’t want to be scooped on a future battlefield by somebody that has developed this. That’s why we looked at the Russians and the Chinese. The Russians attempted to stop hearts. They experimented with frogs and rabbits, and their goal was to stop the hearts of U.S. policy leaders and the president. They failed. The Chinese, however, aren’t focusing on affecting living systems. They’re focusing on what I wanted to do in our unit: affecting electronics—specifically, the guidance systems on missiles. Now, the Russians attempted that, too, but very early they pulled out. However, the Chinese are very active in affecting electronics. So far, from what I know, the distance has been local—let’s say, within the same room. But their goal is to affect electronics on sensitive enemy systems.
BB: How is that possible?
Dames: When a chi kung master passes his hand through the side of a glass jar to pull out an object—sometimes a thread with something attached, and this is on film—the glass and the object undergo a fundamental change in state. The state they’re in is one that’s unknown to science. Nothing is hurt; nothing changes. When the glass and the object—even if it’s a living system, like an insect—are inspected, they’re OK. There’s no permanent change. It’s an amazing thing. This phenomenon is one we aren’t studying in America because we don’t even accept what we see with our eyes and cameras. And when we do accept it, it scares us because it doesn’t fit our paradigm.
BB: Did you have any chi kung masters in China teach you these techniques?
Dames: My only experience in China was with pa kua chang. I also did Chinese boxing in Taiwan for about a year before eventually gravitating to taekwondo. The martial arts were an important part of my life for about 10 years.
BB: Does the United States need to watch out for weapons programs of this nature undertaken by other countries’ militaries?
Dames: Yes, especially China and India. Russia has no program whatsoever. America has stopped completely. Here, it’s all done privately now.
BB: China and India played pivotal roles in the development of the martial arts. What makes them more prone to believing in the potential of the power of the mind?
Dames: We were born out of the Western scientific method, and it requires two things: replicability and theory. Without the theory, science doesn’t buy it. Acupuncture is a good example. Acupuncture was only begrudgingly accepted in the West after many years, even though it has replicability. What we do has replicability. We can do the same thing every time. But because there is no theory, science is loathe to touch it. Philosophy in China and India is very different, and a different philosophy [gives] a different science. A different science [gives] a different technology and lifestyle. It’s all about what you believe in your mind.
Before Roger Bannister became the first person to break the four-minute mile in 1954, people wondered if a human being could run that fast. And science was saying, “No, you can’t because the heart and lungs can’t do that.” Well, as soon as Bannister broke the record, the record fell six more times in the next two years.
BB: What is the part of the mind, the process, that controls the body in physical pursuits like that?
Dames: Belief. Belief first, and then choice, and then will. First of all, you have to believe that you can do it. That’s why role models are so important. We don’t know what we’re capable of. [Most people] live and die without ever knowing what they can do. But when someone shows you how to do it, it’s very different. I never believed I could break a brick with my hand. If somebody would have told me that as a kid, I would have gone insane. But it’s coherence that matters. Focus and coherence—to be able to focus your consciousness in this field is really important. Any chi kung master would agree with me on that. I’ll give you an idea about focus: It’s very easy to teach kids telepathy. When my sons were young, I would give them 50 cents if they could tell me what color I was thinking of. And they could get 10 out of 10 after a lot of practice. But it couldn’t work the other way around— “Dad, tell me what color I’m thinking of,”—because a kid can’t focus. They go right from pink to green to brown to silver because kids can’t hold their minds still. But an adult, with practice, can.
BB: Have chi kung powers ever been used to “persuade” leaders of other countries to do something?
Dames: Yeah. The buzzword in the industry is “remote influencing.”
BB: How much work are you doing on that—if you’re allowed to say?
Dames: We’re giving short shrift [to it] and I’ll tell you why. Let’s use the BTK [serial killer] as an example. I had considered training my team to [influence] that individual’s mind, but to what avail? Wouldn’t it be better to use our resources to find his house—which we were doing when he was captured—rather than monkey with his head? I mean, his head was already monkeyed with long ago.
We did attempt to use these techniques in the military against Saddam Hussein to some degree. They’re not perfected; and until they’re perfected, things can go wrong—very wrong. That’s why chi kung masters are important to study: They have so much mental discipline. Tibetan monks are the same way. That kind of discipline is important in our work.
BB: If a nation perfects its methods harnessing the mind for use against an enemy, will it be possible to disable equipment and even eliminate certain individuals?
Dames: In the West, our key interest was shutting down electronic systems, but the Russians used it extensively to spy on presidents and the National Security Council. And my team spied on the Soviet Defense Council. I called it the “war in the ether.” They knew about us, and we knew about them. 1 met my counterpart, the Soviet operations officer, after the Cold War was over. That was fun.
BB: Will mind power be the weapon of the future?
Dames: Oh, yes. It may be another 30 years, but that’s where it’s going. That’s the new revolution. When we influence something, many times it’s not as an individual. It’s as a group. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So in the future, you’ll have units that do this.
