HackNoGood: This article below will cover the Interview with Shawn Ryan and Skip Atwater. I used Grok to format and piece some things together and at the very end I will implement my “What If” portion, enjoy!
Skip Atwater: From Cold War Remote Viewing to a Bizarre Alien Encounter
Frederick Holmes Atwater also known as Skip Atwater stands as one of the most influential figures in the history of remote viewing and consciousness research. A former U.S. Army counterintelligence officer, he played a central role in developing the military’s top-secret psychic intelligence programs during the Cold War. His work helped launch the renowned Stargate Project, which trained soldiers to gather intelligence using the power of the mind. After retiring from the Army, Atwater continued his explorations at The Monroe Institute and now serves as President of the International Remote Viewing Association (IRVA). His experiences span decades of classified operations, personal psychic phenomena, and startling encounters that challenge our understanding of reality.
This article explores Atwater’s remarkable journey, with special focus on his insights into consciousness and a personal encounter that revealed an entirely new way of thinking about interstellar travel.
Early Signs of Psychic Ability
Atwater’s connection to non-ordinary states of awareness began in childhood. He described spontaneous out-of-body experiences, intuitive insights, and moments when he seemed to access information beyond the physical senses. These early episodes were not treated as unusual in his household; instead, they were accepted as natural parts of life. Such experiences laid the foundation for his later work, showing him that consciousness could operate independently of the body and conventional limits of space and time.
Building the Stargate Project
Drafted into the Army during the Vietnam era, Atwater served in counterintelligence. While researching ways to enhance human performance, he discovered scientific literature on psychic phenomena. This led him to recruit and train intelligence officers in remote viewing—a structured protocol for perceiving distant or hidden targets using only the mind.
Under Atwater’s guidance, the program evolved into the Stargate Project. Participants achieved impressive results, including accurate descriptions of Soviet military sites and other sensitive targets. Atwater emphasized rigorous training and scientific evaluation, working closely with researchers at Stanford Research Institute (SRI). One of the program’s early stars, Pat Price, produced remarkably detailed sessions that astonished intelligence officials.
Project 8200 and the Search for Hidden Bases
A major chapter in Atwater’s story involves Project 8200. Using transcripts from Pat Price’s remote viewing sessions, Atwater tasked trained viewers with exploring alleged underground facilities. The results described four mountain locations around the world such as Mount Hayes in Alaska, sites in Australia, Spain/France, and Africa where advanced equipment, metallic ships, and non-human personnel appeared to operate.
Viewers consistently reported similar details: vast interior chambers, monitoring technology, and beings who seemed detached yet purposeful. These sessions suggested the facilities were not aggressive outposts but monitoring stations. Atwater documented the findings carefully, noting the remarkable consistency across independent viewers. While the project remained classified for years, it highlighted remote viewing’s potential to uncover information unavailable through conventional means.
The Twist the Cube Analogy
One of the most striking moments in Atwater’s account comes from a personal experience aboard what he described as an extraterrestrial craft. During an out-of-body state, he encountered beings who communicated directly with him. When he asked how they traveled to distant stars such as Alpha Centauri the response was unexpected.
The beings explained that interstellar travel does not rely on moving at high speeds across vast distances. Instead, it involves a shift in consciousness. They used a simple demonstration with a Rubik’s Cube. Each face of the cube represented alignments of the periodic table of elements. By “twisting the cube,” the alignment changes, placing the traveler in a different location relative to the universe. No long journey through space is required; the shift happens instantly through a change in conscious state.
Atwater later reflected that even without physically twisting the cube, simply turning it to another face achieves the same result. The beings confirmed his understanding mentally. This analogy suggests that advanced travel is fundamentally an act of aligning consciousness with different configurations of reality.
Consciousness as the True Interface
Throughout his work and experiences, Atwater stresses one core idea: consciousness is the primary interface with the universe. Remote viewing, out-of-body states, and even potential contact with other intelligences all occur when the mind reaches a state free from ordinary physical constraints.
He draws on concepts like quantum non-locality, where particles remain connected regardless of distance. In this view, everything exists everywhere and everywhen. Time itself is a human construct for organizing life on Earth; animals and other beings do not experience it the same way. When consciousness enters an expanded state through training, meditation, or spontaneous events it can access information or locations beyond the body’s limitations.
Atwater’s message is clear: these abilities are not supernatural quirks but natural extensions of human potential. The mind, properly tuned, becomes a tool for exploration far more powerful than any machine.
Life After the Military
Following retirement, Atwater joined The Monroe Institute as Research Director, where he focused on expanding human consciousness through audio-guided techniques and scientific study. He authored the book Captain of My Ship, Master of My Soul, sharing his personal and professional journey. He has also published technical papers and spoken at conferences worldwide.
Today, as President of IRVA, Atwater continues to promote ethical and effective use of remote viewing. He appears regularly on radio programs, documentaries, and seminars, helping others understand the practical and profound implications of consciousness research.
Why This Story Matters
Skip Atwater’s experiences bridge the worlds of military intelligence, scientific inquiry, and frontier consciousness exploration. From training remote viewers during the Cold War to receiving direct guidance on interstellar travel, his story suggests that humanity’s next great leaps may come not from faster rockets, but from deeper understanding of the mind itself.
The “Twist the Cube” analogy offers a simple yet profound model: by shifting our conscious alignment, we may access realities that currently seem impossibly distant. As Atwater’s work shows, these capabilities already exist within us we simply need to learn how to use them.
For those interested in exploring further, Atwater’s book and the full Shawn Ryan Show interview provide rich details of his life and discoveries. His journey reminds us that the greatest frontiers may lie not in outer space, but in the vast, unexplored territory of human consciousness.
HackNoGood’s thoughts below.
There is always a book lol.
Atwater’s Rubik’s Cube encounter merits particular attention. The entity reportedly chose a simple, everyday object to explain a profoundly complex concept in terms a human intelligence officer could process.
The deeper insight, however, likely lies not in the visual spectacle of twisting the cube, but in the mathematics and algorithms behind solving it. Anyone who has wrestled with a Rubik’s Cube understands the difference: random turns produce only chaos and frustration. Real progress comes from applying precise, well-defined algorithms, specific sequences of moves designed to relocate individual pieces without collapsing the entire structure.
If Atwater’s experience holds any truth, the being was suggesting that interstellar travel operates on a similar principle. Rather than brute-force propulsion across vast distances, it involves executing the correct “algorithm” of consciousness to realign one’s position within the periodic table of reality itself.
Skepticism is healthy and warranted here. Yet the analogy opens intriguing possibilities. Could consciousness function as an advanced computational interface, capable of applying higher-order mathematical operations to shift between different universal configurations? Might it achieve resonance with distant coordinates through precise internal state changes, much like solving a multidimensional puzzle? Or is it simply the most effective way an advanced intelligence could translate something far beyond human physics into a language we can grasp?
Thoughts?