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TORKELSON: New way to travel - no ticket needed

By Jean Torkelson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published December 1, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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"Today we're going to go places!"

That's Susan Van Atta, facing 20 people in the opening moments of a conference 10 days ago in Boulder.

No, she's not booking holiday travel. She's teaching out of body travel, also known as "astral travel" or "remote viewing." Example: With a previous group, Susan and her husband, Mike, used mind travel to guide students to Zeta Reticuli, a pair of stars 39 light years from Earth.

During a chat, Susan looks at me warily.

"Am I going to get locked up after this interview?" she asks, in mock suspicion.

Welcome to a weekend sponsored by the Remote Viewing Club of Denver. If only newspaper space was as mind-bendingly limitless as the "remote viewing" phenomenon. Suffice it to say we're talking about training the mind to leave the body to go places, even help police solve crimes.

The leader is Mike Van Atta, an affable, low-key fellow in his 50s. He loads me up with stacks of documents on the phenomenon - how respected scientists study it, how the U.S. military has used it for years to peer into enemy records, and vice versa . . .

The Van Attas start by training people to remotely view an object, hidden in a box. I contribute an object, which only I know. (How the group did, in a moment).

First, the lesson begins with a meditation to "tap into the universal consciousness." Soon, the rookies are being guided to the top of the Washington Monument, using just their minds. What do they see? Several call out they see a security guard, a man in uniform. From the back, a mischief-maker pipes up: "A Republican?"

The audience includes a registered nurse, massage therapists, teachers. Some already believe, some wonder. I wonder how this nice couple in their 50s, with regular families and jobs, got involved.

Both share a sense of humor and a desire to "get close to divine consciousness," as Mike put it. He says he was a private investigator who got intrigued after learning remote viewing had helped solve missing- person cases.

Since I did a story five years ago, Van Atta has become "Rev. Mike." He says he's battled cancer seven times but "mind traveled" 40 years into the future and found a cure. (What he brought back: good diet, healthy living, no animal proteins.) Now he's started a side ministry, "Leaving Planet Cancer," which he operates at sacredmtnsanctuary .com. It promises "traveling to divine healing sites to meet with spirit healers." (He also includes a legal disclaimer - basically, don't substitute astral travel for medical care.)

What did I put in the box? The group calls out their visions: "a black shiny thing," "oblong," "giving off weak energy."

It was my black, oblong, low-on-batteries tape recorder. Think what you will.

And what do the Van Attas' grown kids think? Cheerily, Susan says: "They know that we're different."