First-Time Effect

Excerpt from the original CRV manual by Paul H. Smith:

In any human activity or skill a phenomenon exists known as “beginner’s luck.” In remote viewing, this phenomenon is manifest as especially successful performance at the first attempt at psychic functioning, after which the success rate drops sharply, to be built up again gradually through further training. This effect is hypothesized to result from the initial excitation of hereditary but dormant psi conducting neuronal channels which, when first stimulated by attempted psychoenergetic functioning “catch the analytic system off guard, as it were, allowing high-grade functioning with little other system interference. Once the initial novelty wears off, the analytic systems which have been trained for years to screen all mental functions attempt to account for and control the newly awakened neural pathways, thereby generating increasing amounts of masking “mental noise”, or AOL.