The US Army Funded Astral Projection and Hypnosis Research in the 80s - Motherboard

McDonnell's assessment, collected from his experience at the secluded institute, formed the basis of a 29-page Army document that featured detailed explanations of hypnosis, holograms, and out-of-body experiences. The document placed these phenomena in the context of larger ideas of consciousness, energy, space-time, quantum subatomic particles, and so-called astral projection, a practice that aims to transport consciousness around a metaphysical plane—a central idea in McDonnell's assessment.

McDonnell cited a metaphor penned by Monroe Institute employee Melissa Jager in order to illustrate the nature of hypnosis. The metaphor says that a normal state of consciousness is like a lamp, which emits light in a "chaotic, incoherent way." However, a hypnotized state of consciousness is said to be like a laser beam, whose thoughts and energy are focused like a "disciplined stream" of light.

The explanations in the 29-page document also feature hand-drawn visual aids illustrating the more complex topics. Image: CIA

Image: CIA

Image: CIA

"Intuitional insights of not only personal but of a practical and professional nature would seem to be within bounds of reasonable expectations," McDonnell wrote, in reference to parapsychology.

In other words, Commander McDonnell concluded, hypnosis and astral projection are worth the Army's while.

Officers accepted into Project Center Lane underwent hypnosis and practiced reaching the so-called "astral plane," with the goal of learning foreign languages and undergoing what the documents only refer to as "habit control training."

According to one of the declassified Army files, 251 Army intelligence candidates were selected for the first year of experimentation. Of those candidates, 117 were interviewed under the impression that they were taking a survey. The document gives no specifics about the survey itself, but does indicates that the interviewer asked fairly direct questions about "psychoenergetics."

"Individuals who had objections to the military use of psychoenergetics were not considered for the final selection," the document reads. "Additionally, individuals who displayed an unreasonable enthusiasm for psychoenergetics, occult fanatics and mystical zealots were not considered for final selection."

Between 30 and 35 of the original 251 candidates were said to have "desired" traits, such as open-mindedness and intelligence, that made them suited for the program.

Intelligence officers who were accepted to the program were sent to the Monroe Institute. Officers would then listen to the "Hemi-Sync" audio. After this, one of the institute's research associates would guide intelligence officers into the astral plane, a psychic space in which the institute said that the officers supposedly could heighten their sensory experiences, heal their bodies, travel into the past or future, or even solve real-world dilemmas without the restraints of a physical body.

Another technique known as "remote viewing" was also employed upon government employees of an unknown agency, according to a declassified document from 1982. The document doesn't specifically mention the Army or the Monroe Institute, but it precisely follows the description of remote viewing which was explained in detail in a 1983 document that explicitly mentions the facility.

The goal of the psychic session was to make the subject remotely view Mars in the year 1 million B.C. According to the transcript, an interviewer read coordinates and verbal cues to a subject, who claimed to see dust storms, alien structures, and even an ancient alien race."Very tall, again, very large people," the unidentified subject said, according to the transcript. "But they're thin. They look thin because of their height. And they dress like—oh, hell—it's like a real light silk. But it's not flowing type of clothing. It's cut to fit. They're ancient people. They're dying. It's past their time or age. They're very philosophic about it. They're looking for a way to survive and they just can't."I reached out to the US Army Intelligence and Security Command, the specific intelligence unit that had a relationship with the Monroe Institute, for any information about its use of Hemi-Sync technology. Ron Young, an INSCOM representative, told me in an email that after checking with the unit's division at Fort Meade, Maryland, "no records are on file for the technology you request information on."Young pointed out that the US Army Operational Group (AOG), featured in the heading of a 1983 document, was disbanded in 1995, after which all files relevant to the Monroe Institute were transferred to whichever agency absorbed the AOG. (The files were later released under a Freedom of Information Act request.) Young couldn't tell me which agency absorbed the AOG.

A Far Out Plutonian Ode

It’s practically beyond belief to see the initial photographs of Pluto we’ve received through the 12-watt transmitter of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft from 3 billion miles away. Stunning high resolutions of icy mountains as tall as Hyndman and a toy box full of planetary mysteries for sunny mission astronomers to gleefully analyze in coming years – and this success merely 112 years after the Wright Brothers.

Meanwhile, here on solid Earth, most people have forgotten the protests over the 24 pounds of Idaho made plutonium that’s powering this extraordinary mission. According to the January 16, 2006 N.Y. Times: “NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy put the probability of an early-launch accident that would cause plutonium to be released at 1 in 350 chances.”

The Times also reported in 2006 that NASA estimated the cost of decontamination, should there be a serious accident with plutonium released during the launch, at anywhere from $241 million to $1.3 billion per square mile, depending on the size of the area.

 This is not a farfetched scenario. Of the 28 U.S. space missions that used plutonium preceding 2006, three had accidents, the worst in 1964 in which a plutonium-powered satellite broke up and spread toxic radioactivity wide over our planet.

Interestingly, soon after the European Space Agency begin using solar energy to power spacecraft past Jupiter, NASA retracted its earlier claims that plutonium would be needed for spacecraft to be operational beyond Mars and admitted that solar will work in deep space. Naturally, this affects the future of the highly profitable market of INL plutonium production.

Recently, I read an interesting Reddit article that speculated about the increasing speeds we will likely achieve in future space travel. The author suggested that within a few generations, we may develop probes capable of reaching the Outer Oort Cloud within a few days. Not only that, but we could even possess the capability of capturing an earlier probe and then retrieving it for education purposes to a contemporary space museum.

If humanity achieves this great ability in another 112 years, I would beseech future generations that they do not return the New Horizons spacecraft full of deadly plutonium to a museum back on delicate Earth, but rather create a safe outpost museum on faraway Pluto. This would also make a perfectly fitting final resting place for some of Clyde Tombaugh's ashes, which are aboard that very spacecraft, as he was the original 

discoverer of Pluto. 

And if you’ve read his book Plutonian Ode in which leading Beat Poet Alan Ginsberg protested broadly about this most deadly element under the sun, I think you’ll agree that he probably would have smiled at this pie-in-the-sky idea.

https://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article41562174.html