Clinical Corner
A version of this article appeared as my column, PSYCHIC FRONTIERS in the June 2003 issue of FATE magazine.
Being Psychic: Noticing You Already Are
When people say “I had a paranormal experience,” these days they’re generally referring to having had a ghostly or similarly unexplained encounter. But the reality is that experiences of apparitions, hauntings and poltergeists are significantly less frequent than most psychic experiences.
When it comes to psychic abilities and experiences, most people focus their attention around the informational psi abilities of ESP, rather than the interactions that occur with psychokinesis (PK -- mind over matter), or mind matter interaction (MMI) as it’s known in Parapsychology today. PK/MMI may simply be happening unnoticed as it may occur around us in very small ways – such as your mood affecting your computer (okay, maybe that is just Windows acting up, but not every time!).
I’m often asked whether people
have precognitive experiences (Future) more frequently than telepathic or
clairvoyant experiences (Present). That’s a tough question to answer, since
there seems to more cultural focus on the Future than the Present or Past when
it comes to psi. This cultural focus on the Future is so strong that the
overwhelming majority of adults, nearly every day, check on a forecast of the
day’s events – events which often turn out slightly or completely wrong.
I’m talking about watching/listening/reading the weather forecast. We are a
people who like planning our day, week, month, year…Future.
To be honest, it’s likely we’re having all kinds of experiences all the time, but without taking conscious notice of them, they fall into the same category as all the “stuff” we perceive but don’t take note of with our regular perceptions. For people to really notice any psychic experiences there usually needs to be some kind of emotional kick to the message, something that allows it to grab your attention. That could be a feeling in the pit of your stomach when it happens, a repetition of the experience until you take note, a very vivid perception, or even simply something about that bit of information floating into your consciousness (even while dreaming) simply seems different than regular experience and perceptions.
There appear to be a couple of factors clearly involved in consciously increasing one’s psychic abilities. The first is noticing what’s happening in your perceptions and interactions that could be psychic. The second is belief and acceptance of not only the abilities overall, but that you have them.
It’s very clear that just about everyone has some level of psychic perception. It’s also clear that we simply don’t notice or acknowledge those perceptions unless they really are attention grabbers, or we make a concerted conscious effort to do so. But why is this so?
The late psychic Alex Tanous (who worked largely with the American Society for Psychical Research in NY in the 80s) once told me that information perceived with psi is not much different than the input gathered by our normal senses. We rarely take notice of every sound, smell or sight around us. In fact, we learn to screen out a good percentage of “noise” (visual and olfactory and even touch-related irrelevant perceptions as well as sound-related noise). Most people walk around simply not noticing what’s not important to them personally.
This may be a survival-related necessity. If we could not screen out as much as we do, if we could not select what our attention goes to, we could easily achieve sensory overload.
The same is true of information coming to us through psychic perception channels. Imagine if you actually could read people’s minds, but were unable to screen out everything except what you directed your attention to. That would be like using a radio that tried to play all stations at once. It would be a mess of undecipherable information. Imagine if you suddenly began picking up information beyond the range of your sight and hearing, but again were unable to fine-tune it. Imagine if you began picking up every bit of your immediate and distant personal future, or that of the world, again without screening or attending to what was important. How could you even live your life in any sort of normal way if you always knew what was coming next, and how could you even pretend to live in the Present if you were also perceiving the Future?
It would be enough to make somebody crazy, or at the very least annoyed and disturbed and often questioning one’s sanity. There are people who have spontaneous psychic openings – uncontrolled drops of the natural filters that keep us from experiencing too much. In another article, I’ll address ways to protect yourself psychically, but as it happens taking conscious control of the development of the experiences also shuts down the unconscious gaps in psychic perceptions.
We do have psychic information coming to us all the time, but something in us allows us to focus our attention on what’s most important in the moment. That’s usually the information coming from the very local area through our normal senses. However, there are ways one can learn to take note of the psychic input.
It was actually Alex Tanous who first suggested this to me, but he didn’t take personal credit for coming up with it. He suggested spending a few minutes each day using one’s conscious focus of attention, directed first at the normal senses. Spend a few minutes every day consciously noting everything you see. Don’t just scan the environment around you, really see and take notice. Then do the same with your hearing, especially noticing the background noises (and even the noises your own body makes). Switch to smell, then to the sense of taste, noting even how you smell and what your mouth tastes like (and maybe add in a few items to smell and taste). Finish up with the sense of touch, noticing even how your clothing feels next to your body – remember, we touch with much more than our fingers. You might even spend a short time on your sense of balance, changing your position and noticing how that feels.
After practicing this for a while, you may realize a few interesting things. First of all, you may notice things around you that went previously unnoticed. You may notice your memory of things picked up by your senses improving. And you may notice some extra bits of information that can’t be connected to the normal sense-perceptions. When that happens, start focusing your attention on the extras. Those are likely psi-related perceptions.
Many psychics I’ve spoken with over the years have said that the above process of noticing the psychic experiences and perceptions we’re already having is a great first step to consciously increasing one’s psi abilities. What’s even better is that noticing these experiences seems to encourage that part of us that reaches out for information psychically, so that the experiences increase.
Research has indicated that while we may not consciously be aware of being psychic, our physiological reactions certainly give away that we are aware at some level. The research in Remote Staring, where subjects physiologies were measured to see if there was an unconscious reaction to being stared at, has shown the body is aware even if the conscious mind is not. Research in what’s being called presentiment – the body senses and reacts to stimuli in advance of the stimuli being revealed to the senses – also indicates that we are precognitively scanning the environment to some degree.
All of this is occurring below conscious awareness. So, if we could learn to consciously become aware of our psychic perceptions, perhaps we could direct the perception process in ways we direct or sight and hearing.
But now the other major factor rears its ugly head: Belief.
Past studies in Parapsychology have linked Belief to lab experiments. The Sheep-Goat Effect, first described by Gertrude Schmeidler – “sheep” being believers in psi and “goats” disbelievers -- showed that believers tended to score above chance, while disbelievers tended to score below chance. Even if psi didn’t exist, this would be an interesting effect to examine. In light of psi’s existence, it indicates that disbelief can do more than just make psi “quiet,” it can cause one to avoid correct responses (after all, it wouldn’t do for a disbeliever to provide positive data for something he/she can’t accept).
The belief in the possibility of psi seems to provide safe ground for someone to be a bit psychic. The belief that psi is a reality would seem to allow for more noticeable experiences and expressions of psi ability. However, believing that psi exists and believing that you are psychic is not the same thing. There are many who believe in psychics but can’t for a moment accept that they, too, are psychic.
If I am looking at the issue of increasing my psychic abilities beyond simply noticing what’s already there, I need to examine my beliefs around those abilities, and whether I can accept that I might be psychic. Accepting that I might be psychic, is less effective than accepting/believing that I can be psychic (or that I already am). The final step is beyond believing. It’s knowing that I am psychic, and can use the psi perceptual processes I have.
Beyond this is the issue of how much I can do with my psychic abilities. It appears that people have varying talents when it comes to psi, and different ways it comes through. Some people seem better at telepathic expression, others better with precognitive abilities. Some can “read” objects held in the hand, others can “read” people better (or animals). Psi perceptions might come through visually, or be “heard” internally, or felt (or even smelled). Some people are simply better at PK than ESP.
But how powerful can one’s psychic abilities be? Is “powerful” even the right word? Do we say someone has powerful seeing ability because he can see better/farther than most of us? Are people with a broader range and more sensitive hearing more “powerful” than the rest of us? In other words, unless you’re comparing psychic abilities to superpowers we’re talking about how sensitive someone is, how good these particular perceptions are. Or, in the case of PK, we’re talking about how “strong” someone is (okay, “powerful” could be an appropriate adjective with PK).
Belief in ESP and PK, and further belief that “I can do it” does seem to enhance how frequent the experiences happen, and how sensitive/strong they are, especially when coupled with noticing what’s already been going on. But are there limits to what one can do with psi and are those limits simply set by Belief and Acceptance of what’s possible?
Since I was a graduate student, several people in and around the field of Parapsychology have referenced a threshold of belief, a “boggle threshold” of how much one can do with psi before our belief in psi is challenged. In other words, how sensitive can one be and how much information can one pick up without those perceptions challenging us, making our minds boggle. If a psychic experience seems to be on the threshold or beyond of what we believe is possible with psi, then it may not happen again.
In other words, just as we set limits on what human beings can and cannot do in athletics and other physical performance and in more intellectual and creative endeavors, we also set limits on what psi can do/manifest. The limits we set on those more normal forms of human performance become limits until someone (usually more than one someone) breaks past them and shows us the impossible is really possible. Our beliefs in limits on what’s possible with psychic abilities and experiences may actually create those limits as well.
We need to get past those mental limitations we’re setting with psi in general, and our own psi in particular. We need to see what’s possible, rather than say what’s impossible.
To become more psychic, it may simply be a matter of noticing how psychic we already are, and shaping our beliefs to accept this, to encourage this, and to push past the limits we’re told to believe.
Something to think about.