I will always think of Russell Targ fondly as the man who made it possible for a while for me to fulfill, in a small way, one of my dreams. As it happened, he had the same dream. We wanted to bring back into print classic books that investigated psychic phenomena from a scientific point of view. The hope, of course, was that some people who only talk “scientific” might be reached through such books in a way they could never be reached by someone speaking “psychic.”
Together we published eleven books in what we called the Studies in Consciousness series, Russell picking the titles. The eleven books shared a classy cover design created especially for the series. (It has been a disappointment to me that the series did not meet enough commercial success to warrant continuing, for there are some very good books there.)
But long before I met Russell, I knew his name as part of Puthoff-and-Targ, always said just that way.
Puthoff-and-Targ-Hall Puthoff and Russell Targ-were the unlikely fathers or anyway the midwives of remote viewing as a scientific discipline. Together they brought psychic functioning out of the intellectual ghetto to which it had long been consigned by the materialist paradigm, and also moved it beyond the “interesting-but-irrelevant” category that seemed to be the legacy of the card-guessing experiments and statistical correlation experiments of ESP-research pioneer J.B. Rhine.
After all, it’s hard to consider psychic ability irrelevant if the CIA, DIA, NIS, and an uncounted alphabet-soup of other federal agencies come to rely on it. When Project Stargate, having to justify its funding by results, did so year by year for more than 20 years, it’s hard to say there was no value to remote viewing (unless, like Thomas Gates in 1995, you’re willing to go on national TV and lie about it.)
To bring psychic functioning out of the laboratory and into the day-by-day of decision-making was an epochal achievement-particularly given the danger to their professional reputations inherent in investigating and then promoting a subject so subject to ridicule from the arrogant but uninformed.
Do You See What I See? is subtitled “Memoirs of a Blind Biker,” and as a memoir it is very interesting. Between the tales of the remote-viewing program that I had heard from Joe McMoneagle and Skip Atwater, among others, and general knowledge about the progress of Puthoff-and-Targ, I thought I more or less knew the outlines of Russell’s career. Then I read Do You See What I See? Some of the following bits of information I knew, some I didn’t. I’ll bet you didn’t know that:
* his father was William Targ, who published (among other things) The Godfather by Mario Puzo.
* his sister married chess wizard Bobby Fischer.
* he knew Ayn Rand and Alan Greenspan.
* he was friends with Alan Alda.
* he spent many years working for defense industries.
* he was a pioneer in laser research.
* he once used his remote-viewing skills to hunt sunken treasure.
* he is a serious student of Dzogchen Buddhism.
But this book is far more than a memoir. It is a sustained appeal, using events from his very interesting life, to persuade us to live our lives in a way that will bring us less pain and confusion. It boils down to “I myself give the meaning to whatever I experience.” Sounds simple, but it will mean more to you when you read this book, and for that lesson alone Do You See What I See? would be valuable. The fact that it is entertaining and in fact fascinating is just so much the better.