How Remote Viewing & The Gateway Process Shattered a Memory Champion’s Worldview | Nelson Dellis

THIRD EYE DROPS

Memory champion Nelson Dellis recounts his transition from a strict materialist to an explorer of remote viewing and out-of-body experiences

Key takeaways

• Nelson Dellist was recruited by a trading firm to perform associative remote viewing tasks to predict market movements.
• During his sessions, Dellis reported an accuracy rate of approximately 58% in binary outcome predictions.
• The Monroe Institute's Gateway Experience provided Dellis with profound out-of-body experiences, including perceiving distant objects.
• Memory palace techniques involve encoding information into sensory-rich mental landscapes to facilitate retrieval.
• Historical research at SRI by Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ laid the groundwork for the Stargate program.

Main topics

• Remote Viewing
• Memory Palace Techniques
• The Stargate Program

Notable quotes

I was really like, my first instinct was like, okay, this is a scam.

Conclusion

An intriguing look at how extreme cognitive training can bridge the ga

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) What is going on here? This is Speaker 4 (0:01) wild. I was just minding my own business, being a memory guy, winning championships, breaking records, teaching people. It had become my career. I got on the call with a guy, right out the bat, just said, you know, have you ever heard of remote viewing? And I was like, no, I must have sounded so dumb. I didn't know. So he then further questioned me. Have you heard of Stargate program? Speaker 2 (0:24) Then I was like, yeah, I think I'd heard about Speaker 4 (0:27) this. I found some rabbit hole one night on YouTube or something, but it never really stuck with me. He then started to go into what it means and what remote viewing is. I was really like, my first instinct was like, okay, this is a scam. He's going to start asking me for money or something. Speaker 3 (0:42) Yeah. But he didn't. There are more chapters to this journey. You guys eventually go to Monroe Institute. You do the Gateway Retreat. You have some, let's just call them, very interesting experiences. Speaker 4 (0:55) Yeah, when I got there, one of the first days, I said to a person I had made friends with, and I said, hey, before we go to our little check unit, she was in an upstairs room. I was in the corner here. Write down a four-digit number. Put it on your desk. The goal being to go and try to... float over there and see it. And my whole session was around trying to perceive that number. And I remember the first, like, must have been the first 30 minutes. I'm just nothing. I'm very relaxed. Like, I was like relaxed and let go of this expectation. And that's when I started to see like things that ping my ears where I saw kind Speaker 1 (1:32) of a wall and Speaker 4 (1:33) then it opened again and I was looking at a desk, a wooden desk. And I could see this card, this note card. that had four digits on it. Speaker 3 (1:45) Nelson, you're truly one of the most brilliant and impressive minds I've ever encountered. And I know that you're going to reject that, which makes it even more true. But for people that don't know, man, you're a multi-time U.S. memory champion. But on top of that, you've become interested in a lot of things that I am like very, very centrally interested in. The mind, Psy, what's going on with consciousness itself. all of this stuff. And in particular, you have this like insane story about becoming interested in remote viewing. So it's gonna be a fabulous conversation, man. Speaker 4 (2:22) Yeah. Well, first of all, thanks for having me on your show. It was a pleasure getting to hang with you recently on Chris's tour. But yeah, thanks for the compliments. And yeah, I would love to dive further into that for your audience. Where do you want to start? Yeah, no, it's truly well deserved, man. Speaker 3 (2:40) I think we have to start. with remote viewing because... Speaker 3 (2:45) Also, for people that don't know, you and Chris are really good friends. You've been friends for, I don't know, how did you guys meet, by the way? Speaker 4 (2:52) Yeah, I mean, that's part of this whole story, too. I mean, I had dabbled with remote viewing already before. Well, no. No, it was after. But it plays a part into Chris and I getting closer. But he, you know, he's a magician. He's interested in the mind. So he was... I don't know how he found me, but he was looking for something about memory. You know, a lot of magic tricks involve a memorized stack. A mnemonica stack is a very common one, which is like a fixed order that magicians all use. And, you know, however you get it memorized is up to you. But nobody has a technique for it. They just take as long as they need to memorize it. There are other stacks that have like a kind of hard to notice, but an order that help you memorize it. But either way. I think he was interested in memorizing, for real, quickly, cards. So he found me on Instagram and reached out to me. And it was a funny story because I had a friend growing up. Well, he wasn't even a friend. A close friend of mine, a female friend, had a boyfriend who was terrible to her. And his name was Chris Ramsey. So I had to hang out with a Chris Ramsey like 20 years ago. Never liked the guy, but she was, you know, she couldn't get out of the relationship. So when I saw Chris Ramsey in my inbox on Instagram, I was like, what the heck does this guy want? Like, my God. But it had a checkmark next to it. So I was like, what is this guy been up to? He's like crushing it. No, it was the puzzle guy. So I didn't know Chris, but I had definitely seen his videos. And I was like, oh, my God. My channel was just starting, kind of gaining some traction. I was like, oh, this would be amazing if he wants to work together. And he did. He wanted to. Learned from me. We did a couple of videos. He flew me up there. And that's where it all started. Speaker 3 (4:40) That's funny. Doing the repair work, resurrecting the good name of the Ramseys, of the Chris Ramseys. But yeah, no, I ask because early on in Chris's channel, your guys' collaboration is actually what turned me on to his work in general. And that series that you guys did on remote viewing and going to Monroe Institute really lit a wick. within you know my wonder because so so this was very early on in the days of chris's channel area 52 You know, it's become well known as this massive podcast now. But early on, it was all centered around these big investigations, which were essentially like these documentary deep dives on different subjects. And the ones that and the one that you guys collaborated on was remote viewing Monroe Institute and sort of a I guess sort of an amalgamation of of Psy stuff. There's Speaker 2 (5:34) just an overwhelming amount of evidence that says this is. a real thing. Speaker 1 (5:38) I am the former operations and training officer for the Department of Defense Stargate program. My name is Joseph McMonagle. I was the first one recruited for the Stargate program. It Speaker 4 (5:52) was another kind of like crack in my reality. Speaker 2 (5:55) I was like, I really don't know anything. I fully believe what he is telling us. I got to rethink my worldview now. Speaker 1 (6:03) My unconscious has been doing something I have no idea, but now it's about ready to go. That is a psychic disincentive right there. Speaker 4 (6:11) If that's true, what does that mean about the universe? But Speaker 3 (6:15) it primarily revolved around out-of-body stuff and remote viewing. And your story, man, about how you got... sort of like recruited in this weird sort of like gray market Speaker 2 (6:27) way Speaker 3 (6:27) to start doing remote viewing is just so wild dude so please tell Speaker 4 (6:32) that story yeah yeah so yeah i'll share that story and then weave it into how chris kind of played a part after that um yeah i was just minding my own business being a memory guy um i had been doing it at that point when i i got into that when was that that was Yeah, about 10, 11 years I've been doing memory training. Nothing supernatural about what I do. practical memory training and thinking in my mind and, you know, storing information. Maybe that's, that's, that's paranormal to some extent. We can get into that later, but I never thought that, you know, it's just like, we all have memory. This is just a very structured, organized approach. And, um, that's what I had been doing, winning championships, breaking records, um, teaching people had become my career. And, um, over the years, there's been people who approach me to do documentaries. you know, to speak to groups, schools, companies. And then there's always kind of like curious projects that have come at my doorstep. And for example, like joining a card counting team. That was a fun experience. I wanted to get a group, a ragtag group of memory athletes and have them learn blackjack card counting techniques and use memory techniques to have an extra advantage. So I'm always open. Eared to things that people might approach me for, for the use of memory that I might not even think of. So that's, I'm saying that because that's, this is what that was. There was a Facebook group that I'm a part of where they posted a very, not cryptic, but just very vague posts about, you know, side work for a memory athlete that there was a firm or some company looking for a couple of memory athletes to do some part-time work. That's literally all it said. And I don't even know if I remember the name that had posted it. I was just curious. You know, this is like a side gig, part-time memory stuff. Like how hard could it be? That's kind of cool. So I just typed my name in as a comment. And then I got an email back from someone saying, yeah, when can you talk? Blah, blah, blah. At that point, they told me it was an investing firm or a trading firm. And then, yeah, I got on the call with a guy. Speaker 4 (8:57) who right out the bat just said, you know, have you ever heard of remote viewing? And I was like, no, I must have sounded so dumb. I didn't know. So he then further kind of explained or questioned me, have you heard of the Stargate program? And then I was like, yeah, I think I'd heard about this. I don't know where I'd heard about it, maybe down some rabbit hole one night on YouTube or something, but it never really stuck with me. It wasn't anything that I took seriously. It just kind of was interested in us. Like, oh, wow, that would be cool if it was true, but I don't believe it. But anyways, he then started to go into what it means and what it was and what remote viewing is. And I was really like, my first instinct was like, okay, this is a scam. He's going to start asking me for money or something. Invest in me and go through this, whatever, you know, something. Speaker 3 (9:53) But Speaker 4 (9:54) he didn't. He was like, well, we will pay you, you know. Speaker 4 (10:00) monthly and then they were going to train me how to remote view they had a coach they had hired a coach a member um a remote viewing coach and uh they were going to have me work for a month every day uh and there was another memory athlete involved too actually a good friend of mine we discovered that we were both kind of um working on this thing and i'll talk about him later because he's interesting Speaker 3 (10:27) Sorry to interrupt. Has he come out to be publicly that he was part of this as well? No. He is from... Speaker 4 (10:35) You can probably guess what country, but you can guess he's from a country where they are very by the book, very rigid, and stuff like this does not work that way. And I think his reputation also... Speaker 4 (10:53) He was very concerned about it, whether it got out. So he, you know, made sure that I didn't share it. I haven't shared. But, yeah, he didn't have the same experience I did. He was very good. Apparently his results were better than mine. But he, and we talked about it a lot, but he always said, you Speaker 2 (11:12) know, it Speaker 4 (11:13) was just luck, you know, confirmation bias, you know, or, you know, small sample size. He just, I was like, nah. Okay. Anyways. That's Speaker 3 (11:23) really interesting. Yeah. Speaker 4 (11:25) Yeah. So ultimately I worked for a month with this guy. And then what we were training for eventually was to remote view or do associative remote viewing for daily tasks that would be for predicting the market. You know, this. This trading firm was owned by some guy who I never met, honestly. I never even talked to him. I was talking to his underlings. And they must have had a lot of FU money that they wanted to try different things with. And they had a team of remote viewers who I didn't meet. I only knew my other memory athlete guy. I guess the other people were not memory athletes from what I understood. But we were joining that team. And what they would do is they would collect. We would each do a session. before the market. I forget if we did it. Speaker 4 (12:17) before the day ended for the next day or must have been that I wasn't too involved in like how my results were being applied. I just did the task, but they would cool our results kind of to get more, Speaker 3 (12:30) you know, and this was like a few years ago now, right? Like this wasn't just like if they're like, why are the details foggy? He's a Speaker 4 (12:39) member of champion. You should remember exactly Speaker 3 (12:41) how this Speaker 4 (12:41) went. It's probably something. Yeah, I just wasn't. I just wasn't brought in the loop. Like, I did my task. I was going to be given a portion of the earnings. But it became very clear that this group was not very organized because I never saw any of the results. Like, I kept asking, like, can I see, have we started? earning you know like how are we doing and and how are we doing as a group how am i doing and i got information about how i was doing but not necessarily the group so and it actually fizzled out pretty quickly i remember that year i ended up going to everest in may so i started training i trained for the month of february and then we started doing these uh weekly tasks i think we did three a week um uh monday was a friday um something like that and then Speaker 3 (13:34) uh We didn't say this already, but Nelson also climbs mountains. I Speaker 4 (13:40) love to climb mountains, yes. So I was on an expedition that year and still kept it up. I was like, really? I should back up a bit in a moment just to talk about my experience there. But I was really into it at that point and didn't want to stop and thought I was part of something kind of. life-changing for me that I discovered this thing and was starting to kind of believe in it. But then the tasks started being less regular, the communication got worse, and then it just, no silence, like nothing. And there ended up being something that happened with the CEO of the company that I don't really want to talk about because it was kind of... Speaker 3 (14:23) Like legal Speaker 4 (14:24) stuff, right? Legal stuff. Nothing to do with remote viewing or anything. See, nothing's like that. It was just like he was involved in some shady stuff. Speaker 3 (14:32) Super scary stuff, Speaker 4 (14:33) yeah. And Speaker 3 (14:33) I Speaker 4 (14:33) think he went to prison. Wow. I wanted to back the way. I mean, it sort of makes sense Speaker 3 (14:40) that if you're doing like really weird. Fringe stuff. Attempting, yeah, below the belt, potentially unscrupulous things to try to. you know, get an advantage in the market, maybe you're also open. I mean, there's a big chasm between various different things, but we won't get into that. But it wasn't, Speaker 4 (15:00) like, I got paid. I got paid in crypto, which I still have. But they paid, at least during the training. I never got any money from the earnings on their fund. But I was told that the fund that we remote viewers were working with was $1.1 million. So it was sizable, you know, which was why it was enticing. Speaker 3 (15:23) And that's what it grew to or that's Speaker 4 (15:25) where it started? That's what it started. That was the bankroll or whatever you want to call it, however you want to position it. But my experience going through it, you know, the first thing I thought when I signed up for this, because my wife was like, don't do this. This is a waste of time. It sounds like a scam. I was like, no, no, no, they're going to pay me. And she was like, yeah, sure, sure. There's going to be an ask. It's going to be you paying them. Speaker 3 (15:44) Yeah. Speaker 4 (15:45) And you're doing something that doesn't even exist. She doesn't. really believe that that's off neither neither did i but um then we you know i did a few sessions and i was just like you know what if i get paid which i think i will be cool make a few bucks um and then i'll have a cool story you know like how wild that i got pulled into this and you know whether it's totally bogus or ends up being something cool um but i remember the first few sessions just being like this is so ridiculous like I'm pulling shit out of my ass. That's what it feels like. I kept asking him, I'm like, where am I getting information? Like out of nothing. And he's like, yeah, that's precisely it. And all this paranormal woo-woo jargon that I was just like not prepared for. But I went along and did everything that he told me. And then I started to get little hits here. And I, of course, fight it and be like. what's going on here you know is he setting this up subliminally and i'm getting him right he's leading me to these answers and you know or maybe it's just confirmation bias or just like actually just luck um but then i started to get hits that were just too impossible to explain away um not that i would get everything right but i was pretty good i think my success my hit rate uh was like 58 or something like that And in associative remote viewing, you're basically choosing between two outcomes and two images. You're remote viewing and then judging yourself which image outcome A, which represents outcome A or outcome B, which then translated behind the scenes to the market or the specific stock going up or down, right? A binary case. And I would get it right 58 % of the time. You know, if you're truly guessing, it should be closer to 50. Was the sample size high? I mean, we didn't really get to do. How many did I do? I mean, it must have been when we're actually doing stuff. You know, I worked through like June or something. So it was three or so a week. You know, it wasn't many. So, you know, let's Speaker 3 (18:04) let's back up just a little bit and bring people up to speed on the differences in these different kinds of remote viewing. Because I think what most people imagine is, you know, there's like the sort of coordinate remote viewing sort of. military tasking or you're trying to view or get information from a distant source yeah and that that is one kind of remote viewing and that's what most people know of but also alongside that in the project stargate days which again why not let's back up further and talk about that for a minute um there's this formerly classified program started in the 70s at um uh sri stanford research institute under the um These two physicists, Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ. Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ, the story goes, eventually start collaborating with this psychic named Ingo Swann. And this guy, Ingo Swann, essentially helps them develop this technique of psychic spying that they later call remote viewing. Speaker 2 (19:06) Psychics who are referred to as remote viewers took part in a wide range of operations. from locating hostages kidnapped by Islamic terrorist groups to tracing the paths of fugitive criminals within the United States. Now, in the world of remote viewing, one name stands out. Ingo Swann. Speaker 1 (19:23) Ingo Swann claims to have used this astral body to travel to distant planets. He tells us how it feels to travel in this energy body. Speaker 2 (19:32) This individual was instrumental in the development and advancement of remote viewing as a technique and helped bring it to the attention of the U.S. government. Swann, a renowned artist and psychic, is often credited with developing the first systematic approach to remote viewing in the 70s. He'd already gained some fame for his psychic abilities and was approached by scientists at SRI to participate in the research on psychic phenomena. He soon began to work with Dr. Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ, two of the leading researchers in the field of parapsychology. It was at SRI that Swan developed his unique approach to remote viewing, which he called coordinate remote viewing. That Speaker 3 (20:11) they later call remote viewing. And there's actually, I've found out some interesting history lately that shines a light on groups that were probably connected to the U.S. intelligence apparatus doing this before this, which is very interesting. You probably actually have heard of this because you said you started to read Phenomena by Annie Jacobson. But early on in that book, she talks a lot about this guy, Andrea Puharich, or Puharich, however you say that name. Dude, I've been talking to this guy, Greg Malozy, on the show once. one episode that's out, another one that's about to come out. And dude, he was essentially doing remote viewing in these weird, like he put people in the Faraday cage. Yeah. Get them in a hypnotic state or in a very slow brainwave state and query them with questions, oftentimes trying to get them to access information from distant places or out of people's minds. And he is, so he's a documentarian who has a documentary coming out on Puharik. And he said that there's just a library of tapes and recordings of just insane stuff like hypnosis, channeling sessions, remote viewing type stuff. And I asked him, I'm like, dude, do you think you are sitting on some potentially classified stuff? And he's like, yeah, 100%. And we both just laughed because it's just insane how he stumbled into all this information. But the thing, the bow on all of this stuff is the standard story, if you, it's even in Phenomenon, I believe, is, you know, Puharik is doing this stuff before this SRI crew invents remote viewing. And, but he's around and they're aware of him and he's sort of in the orbit. He ends up collaborating with Uri Geller. They also sort of distance themselves from Uri Geller because, you know, he has this very. Yeah. We'll just say controversial reputation as both a stage magician and somebody who claims to have actual psychic abilities. But though they distance themselves from him. There's actually footage of Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff in Ossining with Puharik and Uri Geller. So there's more connections there than they want to admit. And Greg also uncovered, I think, an invoice or a receipt from SRI of them paying Puharik. So it's actually more connected than people think. But anyway, sorry for the... for the sidebar. But anyway, so that's sort of the story. In the 70s, you have this protocol called remote viewing that gets developed, and it's extremely controversial at the time, but it does well enough that it persists for, like, decades. And basically, every intelligence agency uses them and their team to try to get intelligence, seemingly. It goes from this... small group at SRI into the army's hands under the DIA later and keeps going for years and years after that. That's where you get these people like Joe McMoneagle, Paul Smith, et cetera, et cetera. So that's sort of the setup. And along the way, there are multiple kinds of remote viewing and multiple kinds of protocols developed. So the one you're talking about is associative remote viewing. Can you explain a little bit how that? how that works exactly. Speaker 4 (23:45) Yeah. And I should even mention that, you know, I think. I think what Ingo Swann did that popularized remote viewing, I mean, it just gave some kind of extrasensory perception a name and a protocol, like a list of steps to do it, to hand over to someone and teach them. And I think from that, as it kind of permeated through different departments and programs, you know, there's different styles of it. And even today, if you find someone teaching remote viewing. there's probably different approaches but generally it's the same idea you know that you're obviously coming up with uh intuition thoughts from your intuition um and painting a picture um you know through uh without kind of naming things um descriptive things so uh you know people do it in different ways the guy that taught me i think he was of um Speaker 4 (24:46) I think he came from major Ed Dames. Ed Speaker 3 (24:49) May. Speaker 4 (24:49) Or Ed Dames, yeah. Not Ed May. Not Ed May. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ed May, Speaker 3 (24:52) someone else. Speaker 4 (24:53) Yeah. And so he came from a different kind of branch of that. Yeah. Some poo-poo that way. Others, you know, find it the same. It's funny, but it's all kind of the same. But anyways. Yeah. Speaker 3 (25:06) And we should, sorry to interrupt again, but we should. After this, we should sidebar into Ed Dames because he passed away recently. He did. Yeah, he did. And to your point, yeah, he's a very controversial part of this school of remote viewers. And you and Chris actually met him, right? Yeah. Or was it just Chris? Speaker 4 (25:24) No, no. We went together. He was the first person we got a hold of that agreed to spend time with us. And we spent a whole day and a half with him. Great. Nice guy. Some crazy wild ideas. But we all do. Speaker 3 (25:44) Well, he's known as the guy who had an obsession with anomalous or esoteric targets. That's true. Yeah. So when he was at Fort Meade with all these other remote viewers, he would often be like, he would try to have them, he would task them when they weren't doing anything, like try to remote this UFO thing that happened. Try to remote view. you know, the Ark of the Covenant, try to remote view all these distant planets and stuff like that, which. Speaker 3 (26:16) is super interesting you know like why not you know yeah yeah totally but yeah but then these guys who are more results oriented and sensitive to the idea that your your bias your desire is going to get it is going to start to um contaminate the results obviously and plus you're never going to get the feedback on what you know on on if this can be real or not Speaker 4 (26:42) yeah yeah you see You don't know. True remote viewing, you get feedback like, are you correct or not? Speaker 3 (26:50) Friends, I have been cooking up the goods over in the members section on YouTube and at patreon.com forward slash third eyedrops. What are said goods and was cooking really the best verb you could summon on this occasion? Well, to the former question, said goods are weekly. at least roughly exclusive content that you are never going to see here on the main feed, with some of your favorite guests, by the way. Case in point, I am slowly working on a doc that I shot at Contact in the Desert this year with a number of your favorite beings on the topic of UFOs and consciousness, and I will be releasing the full unedited conversations with all of those people only on the members channel and on Patreon. If you do join up, over at patreon.com forward slash third eyedrops, you will get access to all of those exclusive videos, plus a patron-only Discord and occasional live hangs and more. And yes, of course, the doc will be coming out on the main feed if I didn't make that clear. So much love for watching, my friends. While I have you, tickle that algorithm, like, subscribe, review if you are listening on Spotify. Speaker 2 (28:02) contaminate the results, obviously. And plus, you're never going Speaker 3 (28:05) to get the feedback on what you know, on if this can be real or not. Speaker 4 (28:08) Yeah. You don't know. True remote viewing, you get feedback like, are you correct or not? And that's, I mean, even according to Ed May, he thinks that all you're doing is just seeing that result in the future. So if you don't get the feedback, you're not going to be able to remote view well or at all. Speaker 4 (28:31) But yeah, so the associative remote viewing is a way to take this remote viewing protocol, but apply it to things that could happen in the future. And there's ways to do it for situations that don't have just two simple outcomes, but that's the easiest. I'll give you some examples later about doing it for things that are more than binary. Speaker 4 (28:57) So things like sports betting is a great example, whether a team wins or not, whether a player hits their expected points or not, or if the stock goes up or down. And the way it works is that there's a tasker, like there would be in any remote viewing task, where they choose a task number and some... Speaker 4 (29:27) Well, sometimes these are set up differently where it's ideally even the tasker would be by not. Right. Speaker 3 (29:37) They wouldn't know. Speaker 4 (29:38) Would they be blind, right, to what the actual result or the target is, but they would assign it. But in associative remote viewing, you have a task number where the remote viewer will do the task, will try to remote view like they usually would. But behind the scenes, there's two outcomes, outcome A and outcome B. And I think I was never a tasker, so I've only done this kind of by myself to play around with associative remote viewing. But I kind of just have meant, I say mentally out loud or out loud on paper, what outcome A is, you know, team A, team whatever wins and what outcome B is. they lose, right? Or the other team wins. And then there's some randomizing of some image for each situation that the remote viewer doesn't see. And they do their session. And then afterwards, they're revealed each photo. And ideally, an independent party will judge based on a myriad of factors. some kind of scoring system, how accurate your session was to either photo A or photo B. And whichever one scores better, that's your prediction,