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"In your country, is it necessary to believe in God to do the work you are doing?"
I usually try to be very forthcoming with questioners, but this one really brought me to a standstill. I finally told him that I, like Einstein, Spinoza, and many others, believe that there is a transcendent organizing principle, or intelligence, in the universe. Today I would add that our psychic research strongly supports the idea of a universal mind-to-mind connection, or community of spirit, which some people associate with God. Of course, I did not choose to tell my Soviet colleague that it was the Central Intelligence Agency's desire to peer into the depth of his country that had begun leading me to these newfound spiritual insights. There is a great American tradition for finding God after being a spy for the CIA!
The following year, my colleagues and I were taking part in the first Soviet-American collaboration to investigate psychic remote sensing. Soviet psychology professor Rubin Agazumson, from Yerevan in Soviet Armenia, convinced his superiors at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow to invite us to demonstrate the remote-viewing abilities. Before we arrived, Agazumson had already replicated our remote-viewing findings, working with his graduate students. Remarkably, he had managed to integrate his passionate Eastern Orthodox religious faith with his excitement over his psi research. His main interest was in exploring the generality of man's community of spirit, rather than the more specific function of remote behavior modification, which, unfortunately, was the application that most interested his government and associates.
After our visit to the Academy, we went to a Moscow apartment and got ready to send a psychic probe halfway around the world to the streets of San Francisco. With the obligatory glass of vodka in hand, I was about to participate in an experiment in a land where psychic experiences have been taken for granted for centuries.
Date: October 17, 1984
Location: Moscow, USSR
Time: 6:00 p.m.

 
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