Russell Targ  is a physicist, an author, a pioneer in the development of the laser and laser applications, and a cofounder of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) investigation of psychic abilities in the 1970s and 1980s. SRI is a research and development think tank in Menlo Park, California. His work in the psychic area, commonly referred to as remote viewing, has been published in Nature, The Proceedings of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE), and the Proceedings of the American Association the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Targ has a bachelor’s degree in physics from Queens College and did his graduate work in physics at Columbia University. He has received two National Aeronautics and Space- Administration awards for inventions and contributions to lasers and laser communications. In 1983 and 1984 he accepted invitations to present remote viewing demonstrations and to address the USSR Academy of Science on this research.

He is the author or co-author of nine books dealing with the scientific investigation of psychic abilities and Buddhist approaches to the transformation of consciousness, including Mind Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Ability (with E. Harold Puthoff, 1977, 2005); Miracles of Mind: Exploring Nonlocal Consciousness and Spiritual Healing (with Jane Katra, 1998); and Limitless Mind: A Guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness (2004). He also wrote an autobiography, Do You See What I See: Memoirs of a Blind Biker in 2008. His current book is The Reality of ESP: A Physicist’s Proof of Psychic Abilities.

As a senior staff scientist at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, Targ developed airborne laser systems for the detection of wind shear and air turbulence. Having retired in 1997, he now writes books on psychic research and teaches remote viewing worldwide.

In discussions of the reality of psychic, or "psi" phenomena, especially from the scientific perspective, it is normal, and expected, to be skeptical and question it's validity. However, Psi has been shown to exist in thousands of experiments. There are disagreements over how to interpret the evidence, but virtually all scientists who have actually studied the evidence, including the skeptics, now agree that something interesting is going on that merits serious scientific attention.

A great place to start your research is with Targ, by visiting his website at http://www.esprsearch.com

Another great place would be to browse through a selected list of downloadable, peer-reviewed journal articles reporting on the studies of psychic phenomena, compiled by Dr. Dean Radin, Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

Are we connected to one another and our Earth, or are we separate from everything that we know? The answer to this question has troubled physicists, philosophers, and the like, for millennia.

While contemporary physicists, such as John Wheeler, had no problem accepting our intimate connection with the universe itself, his friend and colleague Albert Einstein did. Before Einstein died, he expressed his deep frustration with the idea that we may in fact in live a world where we are so connected where we can actually influence matter in one place while we are somewhere else. Einstein called his phenomena "spooky action at a distance."

For us to have such a relationship, if it does exist, there must be something, some field, that our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and beliefs move through to connects us to one another.

The idea that is everything is connected by some kind of energy, a field, was actually a very popular idea in the late 1800’s. During this time, a spiritual revolution unfolded, provoking scientists to determine whether or not the universe is connected at some level. Scientists at this time named this field the “ether” field. In our modern time, the term “ether” has since been deemed invalid in the scientific community, and any reference to it is not taken credibly.

In 1887, two very famous researchers, Michelson and Morley, decided to once and for all settle the argument of whether everything is connected by a field, or if everything is separate.
 
Their experiment can be likened to going outside, moistening your finger, and in the moment you did so, if you felt no wind against your finger, you conclude that no air exists. This of course is not true, because the air may not be moving at that time and place that you performed the measurement.
 
Michelson and Morley believed that this field that connects all things, the “ether” field, was a living vibrating pulsating field of energy, which should be in motion, and if that motion could be detected they could then determine whether the field exists.
 
The researchers designed an experiment using an interferometer. The experiment consisted of shooting a beam of light against one mirror that would split that beam of light into two different mirrors in different places that would reflect those beams of light to a collecting mirror. The experiment was based on the idea that if there was a field was in motion, the two beams of light would not come back to the same place at the same time, and that an interference pattern would be observed. In sum, the scientists were looking for an interference pattern in the beams of light to determine if a field that connects all things exists.
 
After conducting this experiment in 1887 and 1888, the researchers did not observe an interference pattern and they published their findings, no such field exists, in peer-reviewed scientific journals (Michelson & Morley, 1887). Modern scientists describe that the results of this were poorly interpreted.

It was the interpretation of the results of the Michelson and Morley experiment that were carried into scientific experiments from 1887 until only recently, carrying the false assumption that there is no field, that everything is separate from everything else, that there is no field of energy that connects what is happening in one place to what is happening somewhere else. This concept is antithetical to that of our ancient ancestors, who began with the idea that everything is connected to everything else. For thousands of years, indigenous people around the world began with assumption that everything is connected and they then devoted that time, of thousands of years, to learn and understand what that connection meant in their lives, to apply in in their lives, to become better people, to build stronger families and communities.
 
Science, for 300 years, has struggled to determine if this field actually exists. Since 1887, our modern scientific paradigm has been built around the concept that everything is separate. That is until recently…
 
In 1987, there was an experiment, similar to the Michelson and Morley experiment, conducted under the auspices of the United States Air Force. While the U.S. Air Force had access to better equipment than Michelson and Morley did 100 years earlier, the same principle was used. During this experiment, the Air Force sanctioned experiment determined that there is a field of energy that connects all things (Silvertooth, 1986). Not only did the researchers determine that the field existed, but it existed in the exact same parameters as Michelson and Morley expected it to exist; the equipment that they were using that was not sophisticated enough to prove it.
 
The results, published in the prestigious journal Nature, in August 1986, almost 100 years later, caused the scientific community to acknowledge that they have been falsely assuming that everything is separated.
 
To be clear, there is no longer a question of whether a field exists that connects all things. The question that now rises is “What does it mean in our lives?”
 
This field, no longer called the “ether” field has been given many new names, such as “the field” as Lynne McTaggart names it. It is also known as the “quantum field,” “God,” “source,” “the matrix,” or “the divine matrix.”

The movie The Matrix was based on the idea that suggests there is another world that exists in this field that we simply cannot see, from our perspective, from where we are right now in this time and space (just because we cant see it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist), and that what happens in this field (that we cannot see) actually influences, and in many case drives, the events that we see in our every day lives.
 
Much of our current science has been based on the false assumption that everything is separate. We now know that is assumption is not true. We know that the field exists and that we are in fact connected to this field. But what does this field do?
 
The field fulfills three fundamental capacities:

1. The field is the container for all things. Everything that we know exists within this field, including the entire universe. Nothing, as we now, exists beyond this field. All things are happening within this field.
2. The field is a bridge between us and the world around us; between our inner and outer worlds. This is important when discussing healing and prayers that sent across the world.
3. The field is a mirror in the world around us for what we claim to be true in the world within us. To be clear, we all have beliefs and expectations about what is true and what is possible, something conscious or subconscious. The world is always revealing to us what our true beliefs are, the quality of our relationships, our careers, our friends, our abundance, our healing and health. These are all examples of the field mirroring to us what it is that we claim to be true in our deepest, sometimes subconscious beliefs.

 
There now is no longer any controversy as to whether or not the field exists, or whether of not we are connected. But how deeply are we connected? What does this field mean for us?
 
Relatively recently, in 1997, the results of an innovative experiment, that were published worldwide via mainstream peer-reviewed journals, performed by physicist Nicolas Gisin at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, offer a clue to answer these questions.

Photons are what atoms are made of. Photons are light particles that the stuff of this world is made of, including you and I.
 
Researchers set out to determine how field is influenced by photons. Using extremely sophisticated scientific equipment, researchers were able to isolate a single photon and split that photon in half, thereby creating twin-photons, two photons with the exact same properties. These photons were placed into a specialized device, in which they were able to shoot the photons, the particles of light, through fiber optic cables in opposite directions from where they began. Each of the fiber optic cables was 7 miles long. Thus, when the photons reached their destination they were a total of 14 miles apart.

The researchers then “tickled”, or influenced, one photon in one place and were able to observe the other photon to see what would happen to the other photon. The researchers observed that when one photon was influenced in one place, the other photon acted like it had the exact same experience as the original photon being influenced, even though the researchers weren’t directly touching it. When one photon was influenced to rotate in a certain direction, the other photon rotated in the exact same direction at the exact same time, down to the nanosecond. When one photon was artificially charged, the other photon would respond exactly as the first at the exact same time, acquiring the same charge. These photons were responding to the same stimuli even though they were not physically connected. This experiment validates the concept of quantum entanglement (Tittel, Brendel, Gisin, Herzog, Zbinden & Gisin, 1998).

Entanglement suggests that once matter is joined physically (those twin-photons used to be one photon) it remains connected energetically. Even when matter is no longer physically touching, it remains energetically linked, regardless of their location in space. This implies once matter is connected, it is always connected.

This experiment, conducted on a small level, reveals to us something very significant on a very large level. Entanglement implies that once physical matter is connected, even when it is separated, even when it is torn apart, regardless of its distance, whether across the room, across nations, across the world, or across the cosmos, that that separate matter is actually still connected.

Let’s go back, way, way back to the very beginning: the Big Bang. The time when there was a primal release of energy and the universe began to expand in the way that it continues today. If we could go back to the instant just before the Big Bang happened and observe the status of the universe; If we took all of the space out of in between all of the atoms in the universe today, remove the space, and compress all physical matter in the universe, we would see it compressed into a solid ball of matter about the size of a single green pea. Just after the instant of the Big Bang, the universe existed as a single extremely dense and hot ball of matter.

At the moment of the big bang, this green pea began to expand very, very quickly, and what was once physically connected in that small space became the physical matter that continues to expand in the universe today. It is this expansion that we can observe today that gives researchers the belief that the big bang occurred.

We can observe that the universe is expanding. If we reverse the trajectory of this expansion, using mathematical models, back in time to a place that is called the singularity. The singularity is the single green pea, the place where everything was once physically connected.

As the results of the experiment suggest, once matter is connected physically, it remains connected energetically. At the instant of the big bang, all matter was connected: all of the matter in my body, all of the matter in your body, all of the matter on this planet, all of the matter from every star in the universe, it all came from this single green pea. If all the matter was once connected, and it is now expanding and separate as it is today, are we still connected energetically?

The results twin-photon experiment suggests the answer is yes. We are all deeply connected. But what does this connection mean? How deep does this connection go? Does this connection beyond the level of photons into our physical world? We are all made of atoms, which are made of photons, the same photons that were used in the experiment at the quantum level.

The twin-photon experiment helps us understand why all matter was originally connected when the universe was formed, some 13.8 billion years ago, to begin with; and why that connection still exists in our world and in our lives today.

The field does more than just connect things through entanglement. The field is not only entangled, it is holographic.

In a hologram, each fragment of a something is mirror of that whole something. Every piece, regardless of how big or small, of a hologram mirrors the whole. A hologram is a self-similar pattern at all scales. For example, if we had a two-dimensional holographic image printed on a piece of paper and cut that image into a million pieces, of any shape and size, and we took the smallest of those pieces and observed it under a microscope, in that smallest fragment of that hologram, we would see the entire pattern as if it was seen in the original uncut image; this is the holographic principle.

The holographic principle, combined with the results of the twin-photon experiment, suggests that if we make a change in one place, that change is mirrored throughout the rest of the hologram.

Think of the universe, for example, as a whole. If we were to cut that whole in half, and then cut that half into quarters, and continue this over and over, like the holographic image, until we a infinite amount of pieces. If we made a change in one of those infinitesimally small pieces (just one place) of the universe, on the level that the hologram recognizes, that change would be mirrored throughout the rest of the entire universe.

In the twin-photon experiment, the photons separated 14 miles in distance from one another acted as if they were having the same experience, in the same instant in time, without being physically disturbed.

The two photons were connected, via entanglement. But for the photons to be mirrored, a conventional scientist would postulate (using linear thinking) that the information of the disturbance traveled, or transmitted, from point A to point B. This linear thinking, assumes, based on current laws of physics, that the disturbance would have to travel across time and space. However, the response time that lapsed between the photon phenomena, where one photon was "tickled" and the other photon 14 miles away mirrored the same experience, was measured using atomic clocks. The researchers observed that there was no time difference, no lag; the experience occurred simultaneously. The nano-instant that one of these photons had the experience, the other one did as well. It is holographic principle that reveals to us what is occurred in this phenomenon. The information did not travel from the first photon to the second - it didn’t need to. In a hologram, the information is already there.

In a hologram, here equals there. The holographic principle suggests that at the energetic level, each of us is able to create tremendous and significant changes in our bodies and in our lives.

From the false assumption, in order for us to create change, we must make that change happen one thing, one task, and one person at a time. With this new assumption in mind, that everything is connected, we do not need to make a change itself happen, we can accomplish positive change in our world and in our lives through demonstrating a personal change in thinning, a shift that is reflected holographically in the field.

As our ancient ancestors, and modern mystics alike, have suggested, as we are able to shift our beliefs and thinking, the world can embrace those changes and mirror them, rather than going to each person, one at a time and make one change after another.

Here is a mechanism that gives us the words to explain the seemingly miraculous experiences that we find in our lives. For example, when our prayers benefit our loved ones whether we are sitting together in the same room or half way around the world. We now know, that we are deeply connected, as the most fundamental level, we are entangled. And with the holographic principle in mind, we are able to love one another and share that love in ways that we only dreamed possible before we understood this principle.

At the instant before the big bang, all mattered was connected. Are we still connected? The evidence suggests, yes, we are in fact connected.

Braden, G. (2018). Confirming Our Connections. [video] Missing Links, S1:Ep5. Available at: http://gaia.com [Accessed 3 Apr. 2019].

Browne, M. (1997). Far Apart, 2 Particles Respond Faster Than Light. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/22/science/far-apart-2-particles-respond-faster-than-light.html [Accessed 3 Apr. 2019].
 
Michelson, A., Morley, E. (1887). "On the Relative Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous Ether". American Journal of Science. 34 (203): 333–345. https://doi.org/0.2475/ajs.s3-34.203.333.

Silvertooth, E. (1986). Special relativity. Nature, 322(6080), pp.590-590. https://doi.org/10.1038/322590b0

Tittel, W., Brendel, J., Gisin, B., Herzog, T., Zbinden, H. and Gisin, N. (1998). Experimental demonstration of quantum correlations over more than 10 km. Physical Review A, 57(5), pp.3229-3232. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.57.3229