Becoming Psychic: Spiritual Lessons for Focusing Your Hidden Abilities
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Becoming Psychic: Spiritual Lessons for Focusing Your Hidden Abilities
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Overview
Becoming Psychic provides a lively dialogue between a clinical psychologist who believes that he has had a number of psychic (or "paranormal") experiences and a research psychologist and parapsychologist who attempts to put these reports in a scientific framework. The anecdotes make for fascinating reading and the scientific responses are relayed in a reader-friendly manner. Readers who have had similar experiences can begin to understand their own glimpses of future events, remarkable recoveries from major or minor illnesses, or knowledge of what is happening to a loved one hundreds of miles away.
Paul Von Ward, author of Our Solarian Legacy, writes in the Introduction: "Becoming Psychic is a book for everyone who seeks meaning among the non-ordinary experiences of life. Telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokenesis, precognition, mind/body healing, prayer, and synchronicity are all illustrated in personal terms by Dr. Kierulff and placed in scientific context by Stanley Krippner—a successful merging of the perspectives of the experiencer and the scientist."
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781632658340 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 08/11/2004 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 382 KB |
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The First Way to Become Psychic: Mind Reading
We have to be courageous enough to admit that science is not the only truth in human existence. While it plays an essential part, it doesn't explain all human reality ... [and] it does not satisfy all human needs.
— Robert J. Sarno
When I was a kid, my family, friends, and neighbors assumed that nobody, anywhere, ever, was psychic. The word "psychic" pointed to something that didn't exist.
"You must be psychic," people would say if someone guessed what was on their mind. They didn't mean it, though, because they didn't believe the word psychic denoted anything real.
And they would declare, "Hey, I'm not a mind reader, you know!" as a way of telling me not to expect them to grasp what I wanted from them if I didn't come right out and say it.
Despite the skepticism, things psychic roused my curiosity, particularly telepathy, which seemed unfathomable. How could anyone possibly read someone else's mind?
What would it be like to be telepathic, if telepathy were real? What would a person feel inside while being telepathic or doing telepathy? If you could read somebody's mind, would the information appear in words, like a printed page, with the letters shimmering in your head?
Telepathy seemed impossible, not only to do it, but even to imagine it.
The first apparently telepathic transaction I witnessed involved my pal Stark Switzer. Rambunctious and in our early 20s, Stark and I encountered a guy — tall, thin, bearded, cloaked in a leather vest and dark brown leggings — working as a "seer" at a Renaissance Faire. It was a hot day. Sceptered lords, hooded executioners, scruffy peasants, buxom wenches, and armor-clad knights milled around, while this fellow stood quietly amid the throng, looking mellow, calm, and medieval.
Given the guy was promoting himself as a seer, Stark challenged him, requesting proof of something psychic. I figured it was just an act, and the man would admit to being no more a real seer than the guys on horses were real knights. Instead, the willowy fellow stood stock still and took on a mood of abstraction. Replying with an understanding plucked from invisible realms, he eyed Stark and said, "You're in law school now." He paused. "But you're thinking of studying medicine, instead."
The seer was dead on. He knew what was going on in Switzer's life. And neither of us had ever seen this guy before!
I remember the impact. Switzer usually didn't show his emotions, but I could tell the seer had shaken him.
As we walked away, I whispered emphatically, "That guy couldn't have read your mind!" Fresh out of college, full of contempt for people who believed in nonsense like telepathy, I declared, "It's impossible," even though I had just seen and heard the evidence.
That first encounter with telepathy took place when I was a callow youth. Years later, experiences with a psychic medium in New York City changed my attitude about mind reading. Later, with my junior high students at a private school in Beverly Hills, I began playing telepathy games.
If you tell anecdotes just to tell anecdotes, they have limited value. But if you describe experiences in your life in order to share what you learned from them, they become invaluable.
— Gary Zukav
Puppy Boy (1975)
"I'm thinking of a whole number," I said, walking across the school's wide expanse of lawn, accompanied by Billy, a pupil gifted in mathematics. He turned to look at me, his bright, cheerful eyes mirroring his joyous outlook on life.
"I'm going to send it to you," I told him. "Mentally. A whole number. See if you can get it."
Billy gamboled along like a happy puppy.
The number I sent him was zero. As I was concentrating on sending zero, the end of a cut log caught my eye. It formed a circle, and I focused on sending Billy that circle, the cross section of the log.
After about 30 seconds, the boy ventured, "Zero?"
I was impressed. But by saying "whole numbers" rather than "counting numbers," I might have provided a clue, so I devised a tighter challenge. "I'm going to send you a number between one and a hundred."
I sent him 17. After a minute, he said, "71," which delighted me, because he correctly identified both numerals, although he changed their order.
Billy was talented in math, but his telepathic abilities were not limited to the domain of numbers. During a rainy-day recess, Billy sent me a color. To guard against deception, the sender would write down the color and give it to a classmate. As I closed my eyes and tuned in, my imagination poured a bucket of red paint over my head. "Red?" I guessed. Indeed, the boy had been sending me red, and the piece of paper confirmed it.
Billy's easygoing trust and rapport probably contributed to our telepathic triumphs. With him, I learned that telepathy is more accurately described as "mind seeing" rather than "mind reading." Visualization characterizes the experience. No books, pages, or words, just images that correspond — amazingly enough! — with the hidden contents and intentions of another's mind.
Skeptics might object. "You knew that boy so well you could have guessed red was his favorite color." Or, "You saw him print R-E-D when he gave the paper to his classmate." Or, "He might have given you a clue by glancing at something red just before he sent the color." Yes, that could all be true, but we're just beginning here, and the evidence for telepathy will build up as we go along.
The point of the "Puppy Boy" story is simple: To become telepathic, you've got to try it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Try it in a playful spirit with someone who isn't afraid of you and isn't afraid of telepathy. If you don't know an adult who fits the bill, play telepathy games with a child.
When the two parties in a telepathic exchange haven't known each other for more than a minute, as in the following example, mind reading seems even more impressive.
Everyday life ... proves that reality is full of the most extraordinary things.
— Gabriel García Marquez
Chipper, Stout, and Telepathic (1981)
A bushy-bearded man wearing a white turban gestured to me from outside a café. I pushed off from the palm tree I'd been leaning against, sauntered over, and sat down across from him, asking the waiter for iced tea — not hot tea — because Pattaya Beach, south of Bangkok, sweltered during that Asian spring.
I had embarked from Subic Bay in the Philippines, sailed by the coast of South Vietnam, and anchored in the Gulf of Siam, where I boarded a launch to enjoy four days of liberty on shore. It was 1981, and I was working for Chapman College teaching psychology classes aboard a U.S. Navy LST, a landing ship for tanks.
The café occupied a corner in a sedate commercial neighborhood just a block north of a beachfront strip where hookers, sailors, and other sex-seekers scoped out the action in crowded little bars. I hoped this turbaned fellow who'd invited me to join him was a Thai national interested in something other than hustling me.
"Give me cien dólares, and I will say you el futuro," the stout walnut-colored fellow said. Bits of Spanish, German, and Italian mingled with his English. He made his living off tourists, I noted with disappointment, but he bubbled over with good vibes. So, as I ran my fingers over the smooth tops and rough edges of the table's multicolored ceramic tiles, I considered his proposal.
"Tell me my future," I responded in a playful mood, "and I'll give you what it's worth."
With a cheerful nod of his head, he pulled out a ballpoint pen and wrote on a napkin.
I asked him where he was born.
"Kashmir."
Lifting the napkin, he wadded it and handed it to me, instructing me to hold the scrunched and indecipherable paper in my left hand. That done, he directed me to write, on a different napkin, the name of my mother, my favorite flower, the number of my brothers and sisters, and the name of someone who loved me. I wrote "Barbara, roses, one sister, one brother," and the name of my girlfriend.
I handed the second napkin to the jolly Kashmiri. He took it and told me to open my left hand. Unfolding the napkin, I read what he'd scribbled: "Barbara, roses, 1 S, 1 B, Carolyn."
He'd written the answers before he asked me the questions. He'd anticipated my responses by reading my mind!
With that demonstration, he captured my full attention. We'd never met before, we had no acquaintances in common, and he couldn't have guessed my favorite flower, the number of my siblings, and the names of my mother and girlfriend. His knowledge of me was limited to the fact that I spoke English with an American accent. The rest was telepathy. That yogi rifled through my mind like a burglar in a bank vault.
But there may be a fly in the ointment. After reading this Bangkok seer story, researcher Jean Burns commented, "This much detail is not typical of telepathy. On the other hand, this would be a typical magic trick, which would only require that the 'seer' misdirect your attention and switch wads of paper after you had written your answers. Are you sure there weren't interruptions to this process when other, apparently mundane, things were going on? Perhaps somebody dropped something and you picked it up, or something of the sort? This story is unconvincing to anyone who has seen what can be done with magic tricks."
Convincing or not, I still have the two napkins, one with my handwriting, one with the yogi's. But alas, they don't prove the yogi wrote his answers before I did. Trickery, if that's what it was, might have unfurled like this:
1. Yogi scribbles something meaningless on napkin, crumples it, hands it to me. I hold it in my left hand.
2. Yogi tells me to write down personal information on another napkin, crumple it, and give it to him to hold.
3. Yogi drops a knife, fork, wallet, amulet, whatever, near me, near my left side, and, being a nice, polite, middle-class American, and unaware of the possibility of deception, I let go of the crumpled napkin in my left hand and pick up whatever the yogi dropped.
4. For a second or two, I am distracted and not watching him.
5. The yogi rapidly pockets the napkin in his hand, copies the info onto another napkin, crumples it, and substitutes it for the one I was holding in my left hand (the one I let go of when I ducked down to pick up whatever he dropped).
6. I emerge from having bent down under the table, I return the dropped knife, fork, wallet, amulet, whatever, to the yogi, I pick up the crumpled napkin, which I assume is the one he wrote on before he asked me for my personal info (using, amazingly enough, telepathy), but which is, in reality, the one he wrote on after he looked at the info on the napkin I handed to him before my gaze dropped to the ground, looking for the thing he dropped.
Very clever, these Kashmiris.
Even without the possibility of deceit, such a story could never convince a skeptic, but for those who place their faith in the rigors of experimental design, Dr. Krippner's commentary about scientific research into telepathy (page 29) should offer persuasive evidence.
Back at the south-of-Bangkok café, the yogi predicted, "You'll be rich and famous."
"I don't care about that," I said. "I just want to have a good name."
The transaction completed, I pulled out my wallet and gave him some folding green. He thanked me and said he'd see me again, in California.
If I see him again, as he foretold, will I meet a man who was genuinely telepathic on that warm, humid day in Pattaya Beach, or will he confess to having hustled me?
He won't be hard to recognize. There aren't that many stout, chipper, turbaned, walnut-colored Kashmiris in California.
The resistance to nonlocal mental effects is based largely on the assumption that there is no legitimate theory within science to support these phenomena: they can't happen, and any evidence to the contrary must be flawed. This reasoning is simply wrong.
— Larry Dossey
Mechanisms, Wave Functions, and Fields
Some people dismiss psychic mysteries because there is no known mechanism, wave function, or field to account for the transmission of psychic information and influence. If such a thing were to be discovered, we could build a vertical, analytic explanation on top of it. (For a description of the important differences between vertical-analytic explanations and horizontal-metaphorical-analogous explanations, see Appendices B and C.)
But just because psi (psychic phenomena) can't be measured or analyzed doesn't mean it should be dismissed. After all, electricity was operating long before anyone named it, calibrated it, or even conceived of it. Things psychic are in a position similar to the obscure state things electrical abided in for millions of years prior to Benjamin Franklin's key-on-a-kite-in-the-clouds experiment, Luigi Galvani's investigation of twitching frogs' legs, and Michael Faraday's development of the dynamo.
I had a dream that illustrated this point. A fellow pointed up at the sky and said, "There are galaxies out there." I looked but saw nothing but clouds in a wash of hazy blue. No hint of anything like a galaxy.
"They're out there," he said.
I thought about that. Could I possibly believe him? Could I believe in something I couldn't see?
Galaxies aren't noticeable during the day because their faint light is overwhelmed by the sun, but they're still up in the sky and out in the universe even though we can't see them without a telescope. Would any educated person reject the idea of galaxies simply because they couldn't see them? I suspect not, not today, but before the invention of the telescope, everybody would have.
The galaxies were there, however, regardless of belief or disbelief.
Psychic mysteries are in a similar spot. They are there, even though they're unexplained and currently unexplainable, except by analogy. They are there, even though we haven't invented the telescope, microscope, or "psi-scope" that can discern them. (Except for the human mind, of course, which is the best and only psi-scope we've got.)
One reason to embrace psychic mysteries, despite the lack of vertical-analytic explanations, is that it's possible there are no underlying layers on which to build an analytic explanation. Psychic mysteries may be primary phenomena, not dependent on smaller components, and therefore impossible to analyze in the usual scientific fashion.
The secularly well educated tend to believe that psi — anything psychic — is bunk. However, that belief is supported not by science, but only illusion, the presumption of a world of dead, soul-less matter.
This book contests the false comfort, pseudo-surety, and arrogance of materialism — the philosophy that known forms of physical matter and material energy can account for everything, including thought, will, mind reading, remote viewing, moving physical objects by mental power, seeing the future, and distant healing by intention. If matter and material energy can't account for it, it doesn't exist, say materialists.
All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force. ... We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.
— Max Planck
The Spiritual Lessons of Telepathy
The two of us sat side by side on the sofa in the family room of my parents' home. In a tone of acute distress, my then 16-yearold son Benjamin said, "I'm all alone." His darting eyes and anguished look reflected the discomfort associated with one of life's existential givens, isolation.
"That's a profound realization," I said, "and quite true." I paused to let him digest that.
"But we can talk," I said after a moment, "and talking allows us to share our feelings and ideas." I paused again. "So we don't have to be all alone, and lonely, within our individual minds."
His eyes quit jumping around, his shoulders dropped a little, and after a few seconds he looked at me with a steady gaze. "Yeah!" he said, calm and cool again.
Ordinary verbal communication, when deep and honest, can alleviate loneliness. Even without speech, however, the gulf separating us is spanned by telepathy.
In a dream, I asked a short, strong-looking man to guess what number I was thinking of. "Between 17 and four," I specified. The number I had in mind was six. He guessed "Six," and I said, "Hey, you're right!"
Straight-faced, looking into my eyes with a quiet but adamant gaze, he asked, "Why am I not surprised?" Although his response was in the form of a simple question, he was actually posing a riddle.
I was shocked that he wasn't surprised. I couldn't figure it out. While I was still dreaming, the only explanation I could come up with was that he was so telepathic he had a straight pipeline to God and all things psychic. It scared me a little, how unshakable this guy was, how certain he was of his ability to know what was in and on my mind.
When I woke up, it occurred to me the reason the man in the dream wasn't surprised he could guess the number I had in mind was because he knew he was part of my mind. But to me, in the dream, it seemed that he and I were separate individuals, so I was astounded by his prescience.
But he wasn't astounded.
The message in the dream is that we are all figures in the mind of God, and that's why, if we're awake and aware of who we are, it shouldn't surprise us that we can know what's in someone else's mind. The reason is simple. There is no "somebody else." Psychically speaking, we are all part of each other, part of the One, part of the single underlying and overarching Unity.
The metaphor in that dream captured my imagination. We are all ideas within the Divine Mind.
Then, in this way know God: as having all things in Himself as thoughts, the whole Cosmos itself.
— Hermes
"Since there is only one mind, all of us are telepathically communicating all the time," writes Marianne Williamson. Dream figures that pop up within a single mind communicate with one another. We human figures can communicate with each other telepathically because we reside within the same mind, or we are the same mind, the Divine Mind. This Divine Mind explanation-by-analogy is not meant to discourage the scientific investigation of telepathy. Rather, such explanations can help us overcome our reluctance to use telepathy, even though the mystery of it remains unsolved.
Metaphorical explanations aside, telepathy may eventually be explained by science as a function of brain activity and electromagnetic waves, but the glory of the connection will still be there.
It may not remain a mystery forever, but telepathy will still be momentous. The spiritual lesson of telepathy is this: the sense of separation, aloneness, and abandonment is an illusion.
We are all connected.
What awesome significance that simple realization holds.
We are joined, not only to family and friends, but to absolute strangers as well. Does it mean we should care about everyone, because underneath the appearance of separation we are bonded to them as surely as to close family or beloved friends? Does it mean we are called to care about, and to love, everyone?
Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
As the younger generation puts it, we are but different levels of the same mall. Or to employ a parallel metaphor, we are but different levels of the same Mind.
A Lifelong Lesson
A football surprised me.
It was 1950. I was 8 years old. The back of a Kellogg's cereal box advertised a contest — "Draw a Monster." Send a 25-cent-piece and two box tops to Battle Creek, Michigan, and you had a chance to win a football.
Older guys on my block played football in the street. Maybe if I owned a football, they'd let me play with them.
I drew a monster. It looked crude and funny. It didn't look scary. It couldn't win a football. Downhearted, I showed it to my dad.
"Try anyway," he advised. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."
So I sent the drawing out in the mail, along with the box tops and a quarter.
Six weeks later, the mailman delivered a carton with my name on it. I got a knife and cut it open. White laces. Dimpled brown leather. A football!
I tried for something I felt was impossible, and I got it.
That lesson was never lost.
In 1979, I met Stanley Krippner for the first time.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Becoming Psychic"
by .
Copyright © 2004 Stephen Kierulff and Stanley Krippner.
Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Preface,
Chapter 1. The First Way to Become Psychic: Mind Reading Puppy Boy (1975),
Chapter 2. The Second Way to Become Psychic: Remote Viewing Real-Life Psi,
Chapter 3. The Third Way to Become Psychic: Moving Matter With Mind Up Close and Psychokinetic (1976),
Chapter 4. The Fourth Way to Become Psychic: Healing From a Distance,
Chapter 5. The Fifth Way to Become Psychic: Seeing the Future,
Chapter 6. Becoming More Receptive to Synchronicity,
Chapter 7. The Spiritual Lessons of Psi,
Epilogue,
Appendix A: Attachment Versus Uplift,
Appendix B: Telepathy "Explained",
Appendix C: Vertical Versus Horizontal Explanations,
Appendix D: Definitions,
Appendix E: Professional Psychics Who Participate With the Edgar Cayce Institute for Intuitive Studies,
Appendix F: Alternative and Supplementary Healers, Psychics, and Organizations,
Appendix G: Professed Psychics and Healers,
Appendix H: Psychic Training Schools, Research Centers, Workshops, and Programs,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,
About the Authors,