The CIA’s Secret Documents about Soviet Black Magic Assassins

https://www.dailygrail.com/2020/05/the-cias-secret-documents-about-soviet-black-magic-assassins/

According to émigrés and intelligence reports, the KGB and GRU (military  intelligence) had scoured the mystical eastern vastnesses of the Soviet  Union in order to find the toughest Siberian shamans, the best-trained  Tibetan priests, the most powerful Mongolian chi gong masters.  At Special Department No. 8 in Siberia, according to August Stern,  shamans tried to use their PK powers to make people fall off streetcars,  or to kill small animals. An émigré parapsychologist named Larissa  Vilenskaya claimed that at I.M. Kogan’s lab she was once shown a film of  a PK master listening to a foreign politician on the radio, and trying  to send detrimental psi particles his way.

I put the quote up top so I don't spoil it with my commentary. In the early 1980s I was staff writer at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which had been founded by Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who had a psychedelic experience during a spacewalk (he told me that every US astronaut and Soviet cosmonaut told him that they had similar experiences). It was not then, nor is it now, some kind of cult woo-woo institution; IONS applied the scientific method and skeptical scrutiny to the study of human potential beyond the limits of contemporary science. The President was Willis Harman, a very interesting guy whose work with futurism at Stanford Research Institute attracted my attention -- I also shared his interest in consciousness. Willis was a very button-down and straight-laced in appearance and demeanor, but he was as strong in his belief in psychedelics as Terence McKenna. Harman was an electrical engineering professor at Stanford in the 1950s, when an old friend from his small rural home town dropped by, a fellow named Al Hubbard (do read the link -- a fascinating and little-known character in US history) turned him on to LSD way before Tim Leary and others.

I co-authored a book with Harman, Higher Creativity, which is still in print. As part of my research I compiled stories of all the scientific breakthroughs and artistic work that had been inspired by dreams. One of the directors and backers of the Institute, Henry Dakin, offered to teach me how to use a computer to write with. It was a CP/M machine with 8 inch floppy disks -- you have to be an old to know those terms. After I learned Wordstar, we moved the machine from Dakin's lab to a house in Pacific Heights with a fantastic view of the bay. It had formerly been the home of one of former mayor Alioto's sons, and one of the rooms had a (now empty) hot tub, which is where I asked to put the machine. So I wrote much of the book in that hot tub. I had a walkman and played ambient music while I wrote.

I learned how to use the computer at Henry's lab in Pacific Heights -- which later housed Apple's Multimedia Lab. He showed me to a room with a computer, floppy disks, and a manual for Wordstar (early word processing program) that was literally stapled together. Another novice was brought into the room to learn with me. Her name was Larissa Velinskya, a recent Soviet emigre that Henry sponsored. She spoke little English and I spoke no Russian. I had not thought about here in a long time, until I ran across the article quoted above. Dakin was involved in a number of efforts with the US State Dept and the Soviet Union. He sponsored a study by Esalen and Russian scientists about extraordinary human potential. I later learned that this also involved meetings at Esalen with what turned out to be Gorbachev's people:

Henry’s deep concern over the escalating arms race grew in the 1980s,  and resulted in his increasing support to many activist groups that were  pioneering novel forms of citizen diplomacy such as Esalen’s  Soviet-American Exchange Program. Ever-expanding activities required  more space, so Henry transformed an auto-body shop at 3220 Sacramento  Street into a unique office complex, multi-media and cultural networking  center for citizen activists to hold public and private events. https://thinkingleaders.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/henry-dakin-a-remarkable-man/