Tag: psychic

Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory

Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory

A con-man and a highly talented psychic fall in love and have children with extraordinary talents. But this doesn’t automatically give them an extraordinary life. They struggle to hold down jobs and support each other, while mourning the loss of one of their members and a career in showmanship.

One night, years before this story takes place, the Telemachus family was on a late night show, introducing themselves to the world. But a skeptic proved a portion of their act to be fake and the family’s bookings all fell through. One of the members of the family, Frankie, blames the skeptic for the mediocre life they are living now… and worse.

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“Archibald was a necessary evil,” Grandpa Teddy said. “He was the voice of the skeptic. If your mother had shown him up, the audience would have loved us for it. We could have gone to the stratosphere with that act.” “He was evil,” Frankie said. … “He killed Grandma Mo…” pg 19, ebook.

Though the head of the family, Grandpa Teddy, doesn’t have any legitimate powers to speak of (except a talent for manipulating cards), his children have a veritable cornucopia of abilities. Frankie can move metal objects with his mind, when he’s not under stress. Irene can tell if someone is telling her a lie. And the youngest, Buddy, can see the future so clearly that he calls his perceptions “memories”.

And their children have different powers too.

“That they were psychic was another Telemachus Family Fact, in the same category as being half Greek and half Irish, Cubs fans and White Sox haters, and Catholic.” pg 27, ebook.

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The strength of this story is in the characters themselves. You really enjoy learning who these people are and seeing how they prevent themselves from being great. It’s also just a fun story about a large, semi-dysfunctional family. As someone from a large family myself, I felt right at home in this world (minus the extraordinary powers and most of the dysfunction).

One of my favorite characters, though he was a bit of a rogue, was Grandpa Teddy. He’s trying to keep his herd-of-cats family all pointed in the same direction while not having the advantage of extraordinary abilities beyond his own quick mind.

“The problem with getting old was that each day had to compete with the thousands of others gone by. How wonderful would a day have to be to win such a beauty contest? To even make it into the finals?” pg 196

I also liked Irene, the daughter who could tell if you were lying to her. I never considered how much the small untruths we tell each other grease the wheels of relationships and civil discourse.

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This might be a good pick for a book club read. There are plenty of issues to discuss and powerful moments to dissect.

I may have enjoyed this book more if it had been primarily about the family’s abilities rather than real life drama. But I’m into superhero stories and epic fantasy. For readers who like to think about the impossible but not read a story where that sort of thing is the norm, this book may fit the bill.

Thanks for reading!

Limitless Mind: A Guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness by Russell Targ

Limitless Mind: A Guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness by Russell Targ
limitless mind

Russell Targ is one of the founding members of the Stanford Research Institute’s studies of psychic phenomena. He worked with Hal Puthoff and Ingo Swann to develop the remote viewing protocols for the CIA.

Remote viewing, though lambasted in popular culture in such films as “Men who Stare at Goats,” is an actual practice. It was utilized by United States and Russian militaries with some success or complete failure- depending on who you ask.

I thought that a handbook on remote viewing from this seminal scientist would delve more into the nitty-gritty of the practice. But, it doesn’t.

Targ does give a broad outline of what remote reviewing is. He also give examples of his research, but it wasn’t all that I had hoped it would be.

Limitless Mind is, however, packed with information about psychic studies from the late 1800’s until the current time. Targ discusses the studies from multiple countries covering such diverse topics as spoon bending, distance healing and psychic diagnosis.

If the reader is looking for remote viewing techniques only, I’d recommend Remote Viewing: The Complete User’s Manual for Coordinate Remote Viewing or The Seventh Sense: The Secrets of Remote Viewing as Told by a “Psychic Spy” for the U.S. Military.

Thanks for reading!

Journeys Out of the Body: The Classic Work on Out-of-Body Experience by Robert A. Monroe

Journeys Out of the Body: The Classic Work on Out-of-Body Experience by Robert A. Monroe
journeys out of the body

A ground breaking work into the mystery that is the out-of-body experience by a leading researcher in the field.

Ultimately, Journeys Out of the Body left me with more questions than answers, but, for the most part, I enjoyed the ride.

Charles Tart’s introduction is excellent: “… OOBE’s are a universal human experience, not in the sense that they happen to large numbers of people, but in that they have happened all through recorded history, and there are marked similarities in the experience among people who are otherwise extremely different in terms of cultural background. One can find reports of OOBEs by housewives in Kansas which closely resemble accounts of OOBEs from ancient Egyptian or oriental sources.” pg 8.

That statement reminded me of the near death experiences described in Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences: How Understanding NDEs Can Help Us Live More Fully by Penny Sartori. OOBEs like NDEs are a human experience rather than a cultural one.

Munroe points out a curious habit of society that I’ve noticed:“Many (in spiritual and occult circles) have deep professional jealousy for each other, and often are inclined to be suspicious of techniques and theories propounded outside their particular activity. They may even subtly deride or look with tolerant, superior amusement at results unrelated to their specialty.“ pg 37.

Why can’t we all just get along? I bet we’d learn more that way.

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Munroe’s thoughts on the “natural” home for what he calls the “second body”, astral body, or body of light: “The Second Body is basically not of this physical world. To apply it to visits to George’s house or other physical destinations is like asking a diver to swim down to the ocean bed without scuba gear or pressure suit. He can do it, but not for long, and not too many times.” pg 75-76.

That was why Munroe believes that out of body experiences are so hard to substantiate. When explorers are looking for evidence from the physical world, it isn’t the natural place for that consciousness to be.

Munroe talks about going to an alternate dimension in his explorations. He quotes a college professor about the possibility of this: “Dr. Leon M. Lederman, professor of physics at Columbia University, has stated: “Basic physics is completely consistent with the cosmological conception of a literal antiworld of stars and planets composed of atoms of antimatter, which is to say negative nuclei surrounded by positive electrons. We can now entertain the intriguing idea that these antiworlds are populated by antipeople, who antiscientists are perhaps even now excited by the discovery of matter.” pg 100

I think that would make a great science fiction novel. Has anybody written anything like that?

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I had imagined that learning about out of body experiences would be empowering and uplifting but parts of Munroe’s account didn’t really leave me feeling that way.

Take this journal entry in which he describes aliens and the loss of his belief system: “Then they seemed to soar up into the sky, while I called after them, pleading… By this time, it was getting light, and I sat down and cried, great deep sobs as I have never cried before, because then I knew without any qualification or future hope of change that the God of my childhood, of the churches, of religion throughout the world was not as we worshiped him to be- that for the rest of my life, I would “suffer” the loss of this illusion. Are we, then, just leftover laboratory animals? Or perhaps the experiment is still “in process.” pg 262.

Very, very bleak and, it just didn’t feel right to me. However, Munroe believes this is true and I felt very sad for him.

If you are interested in more information about OBEs, you may want to read Soul Traveler: A Guide to Out-of-Body Experiences and the Wonders Beyond by Albert Taylor or Multidimensional Man by Jurgen Ziewe.

If you want more one-on-one experiences with aliens, try The Key: A True Encounter by Whitley Shrieber.

Thanks for reading!

The New Science of the Paranormal: From the Research Lab to Real Life by Carl Llewellyn Weschcke & Joe H Slate, PhD.

The New Science of the Paranormal: From the Research Lab to Real Life by Carl Llewellyn Weschcke & Joe H Slate, PhD.

Carl Llewellyn Weschcke died last year- may he rest in peace. I eagerly looked forward to reading The New Science of the Paranormal, one of his last (I’m guessing) books that we will ever see from him.

The primary message in here is one of self empowerment and the potential for anyone to develop powers that could be considered “paranormal”. What an appropriate departing lesson from a man who ran a publishing firm dedicated to bringing the occult and mysterious to light.

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The New Science of the Paranormal isn’t an “easy” read in that it includes a lot of tables and metaphysical philosophizing about the new age and levels of spiritual evolution.

To me, the most engaging bits were the accounts of students and researchers trying to swing a pendulum with their minds or use dowsing rods to predict the gender of unborn babies.  The scientific experiments that were included are fascinating in their implications.

Also, many of the techniques like water gazing and hand prints in the sand are not ones that I had been exposed to. I’ll definitely be trying some of this out on my own.

“The objective study of paranormal power can dispel many of the myths and “stories” surrounding the topic, including the belief that very few individuals possess paranormal powers. Although certain individuals, often called “advanced beings” or “gifted psychics”, may appear to be extraordinarily empowered, everyone to some degree possesses paranormal potential. Not unlike intelligence, the distribution of paranormal potential within the general population seems to occur in a so-called “normal curve”…

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Empowerment: “We are more than we think we are, but we don’t know we are until we develop that level of awareness and related sense of perception. We must grow to become more than we are and all we can be.”

Water gazing, who knew? : “Validated in the lab setting and successfully applied beyond the lab, water gazing is among the most effective self-empowerment techniques known. Whether to increase creativity in writing and art, activate telepathic sending and receiving, facilitating clairvoyance, improve memory, promote successful goal attainment, or generate a state of mental, physical, and spiritual attunement, the powers of water gazing appear to be without limits.”

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The Crumpled Paper technique was also surprising in its incredible amount of potential uses. Actually, this whole book kind of blew my mind. Perhaps I was dreaming too small.

A bit reminiscent of Abraham Hicks: “…one simple self-administered procedure is: Pay Attention to Your ‘Feelings.’ By that, we don’t mean to get all emotional when ‘feeling’ an idea, concept, event, situation, person, etc., but rather to analyze: what your feelings are telling you, what is it you are sensing, what is the basis for your emotional reaction, etc. And then let yourself explore the ‘answers’ to those questions.”

Know thyself. A message as old as the Delphic oracles.

I’ll close with a quotation included in Chapter Twelve: “Not in the clamor of the crowded street, Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, But in ourselves are triumph and defeat.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Poets” (1876)

Thank you to NetGalley and Llewellyn Publishing for a free digital ARC of this book!  And, thank you for reading!

Tell Me What You See: Remote Viewing Cases from the World’s Premier Psychic Spy by Edward Dames

Tell Me What You See: Remote Viewing Cases from the World’s Premier Psychic Spy by Edward Dames

Tell Me What You See: Remote Viewing Cases from the World’s Premier Psychic Spy  is a book about remote viewing written by Edward Dames.

Remote viewing is a military protocol by which a “viewer” goes into a meditative state, sends his or her consciousness “out” to a target, and then reports on what he or she perceives while there.

In this book, Dames writes story after story about using this protocol for the government. And, later, cases that he and his group worked on, as a private company.

Confession time again: I love to read fringe-y non-fiction.  From the paranormal to the other worldly, I can’t get enough of it.

Books by former remote viewers from the military are such a trip to read.

These guys were/are on the cutting edge of consciousness exploration. It makes me wonder what humans are potentially capable of, but we don’t know it yet.

It also makes me wonder what else is out there to be perceived.

Don’t go to these books for feel good stories. I’m sure that it is because remote viewers were all trained as human weapons to root out threats to the government, but they all seem so dark and obsessed with shadows.

Even when Dames sets out to have a “fun” RV session on the Ark of the Covenant, his viewers see mainly blood shed and despair.

The methods used in Dames’ sessions were different from others that I’ve read.

David Morehouse and Lyn Buchanan, also former military RVers, described RV sessions in which separate viewers with handlers would run through coordinates. They would do this in completely secluded rooms. Later, the different sessions would be put together to try to create a complete picture.

Dames, on the other hand, described group RV sessions in which he’d act as the handler and give out the coordinates to the group. Then, his viewers would sit in a group setting and say what they were seeing, as they saw it.

I found this approach to be interesting. I wonder which technique had more accurate results.

What is RV?: “Remote viewing is about reaching beyond the five senses into the unconscious mind, to look inside and miraculously gather information stored like web pages on a cosmic computer. Even more miraculous is that we all have the innate potential to do this, a prescient sixth sense.” pg 16

The way the mainstream considers RV: “It’s part of my regular curriculum to discuss how badly the authorities treat remote viewing. … What people can’t pigeonhole they often reject. We were dealing with a system that treats what we do like watching someone have a seizure from behind a two-way mirror- uninvolved yet shamefully fascinated.” pg 27

Which is why I was surprised when he so vehemently rejects the contributions of the natural psychics, mediums, channelers to his military unit: “Gauvin and his broomstick pals were running us into the ground… Angela’s channeling was bound to be judged useless and scrapped and then maybe she’d go back to her crystal ball. … Who knew, by participating in an actual session maybe she’d catch on to how remote viewing really works. Maybe.” pg 120-121

Unlike mainstream folks, those types of spiritual “witches”, as Dames describes them, don’t need to be convinced that there are levels of perception beyond those utilized in day-to-day life.

If he had taken the time to look beyond their strange methods and encourage them to organize their natural talents within developed protocols, I think Dames could have found some powerful allies within the military RV program.

But, that’s not how he played it. Instead, you were either completely with Dames or against him. I suppose it goes back to his role as a soldier.

Dames’ comparison of RV to out-of-body experiences: “OBEs aren’t anything new. The concept has been around and practiced for thousands of years, dating back to the monks of ancient China and India. Their wizened mystics called it “astral projection,” a practice where, either awake or dreaming, certain adept individuals could cast off their earthly skin and propel their consciousness- astral body- into unknown spirit dimensions across time and space.” pg 153

And possibilities for RV in the future: “The ability to remote view is the next step in the evolution of the mind… What started out as a military tool based on the desperate need of warriors seeking to destroy their enemies in battle has now developed into an invaluable instrument in the search for enlightenment. Remote viewing is a teachable psychic-like skill anyone can learn. What is often overlooked is its potential to help us more deeply experience life.” pg 257 I would say so.

If you’re interested in more books like Tell Me What You See, you may want to look into The Seventh Sense: The Secrets of Remote Viewing as Told by a “Psychic Spy” for the U.S. Military by Lyn Buchanan or Remote Viewing: The Complete User’s Manual for Coordinate Remote Viewing by David Morehouse.

Thanks for reading!