In his excellent book, The Reality of ESP, A Physicist’s Proof of Psychic Abilities, Russell Targ states that the reason he continues to give workshops to awaken students’ awareness of their psychical abilities is that those who are ready will remain awake and excited by their new potential, while the others who are not ready will simply go back to sleep -no harm done.
In the Silva Basic Lecture Series, a course in which people learn to awaken their psychic abilities, students are taught to use their newly awakened abilities to see others as brothers and sisters and to leave the world a better place. Students are also taught that if they plan to use the abilities to harm, the abilities will not be awakened.
So, the first question a person might consider when deciding whether or not to pursue a psychic life, psychic education, and/or whether to seek out the paranormal, is why? Because, like the development of any talent, there is plenty of bad to take with the good.
Developing psychic abilities will not bring power over others. Unfortunately, we live during times when responsibility is shunned and a claim of victim is socially acceptable when things don’t go our way. As a society, we haven’t evolved much from the days of the devil made me do it. The reality is, the only way we gain power over another is if they give up their power and hand it to us. Most ethical psychics will shun that. God knows I do. I don’t mind helping people but I share knowledge and experience with the idea they will take it and own it and make their own decisions how it may be useful.
Psychic Wins Lotto. Plenty of times, including today, I see or hear someone comment,often in a voice dripping with sarcasm, that they never see the headline Psychic Wins Lotto. Let’s think about that for a minute. If a psychic did win the lottery, do you think he or she would tell everyone about it? First off, few would believe him/her. Secondly, others would ask them to show off, like they are performers at a circus. Prove it. And thirdly, people would beg them, harass them, and threaten them to use that ability to help them win the lottery.
The reality is plenty of psychics have won the lottery and it is documented. Jose Silva is one of them. He has a wonderful story he tells in his autobiography I Have a Hunch in which he dreams of numbers that he uses to find a winning lottery ticket. Additionally, many Silva grads have gone on to win lotteries. A few of these stories are documented in Everyday Miracles and the Silva Method.
Nature vs. Nurture. I personally believe most people are born with various psychic abilities. Most of us tune them out for a variety of reasons. Others take them for granted and don’t even see them as a sixth sense. Whether or not we are aware of these abilities, it is possible to take classes to bring them to the surface. Some of the courses, such as Silva, come with a money back guarantee. While the methods taught may indeed teach people a way to tap into their psychic abilities, they can also confound natural psychics.
One of the IRVA presenters explained that he suggests natural psychics use their own faculties and not try to learn Remote Viewing, because in his experience, natural psychics don’t do well learning the RV methods as they were taught in the Stargate program. The information may be gained but it’s better, in many cases, for natural psychics to do it the way they do it naturally than to try to unlearn what is instinctive and supercede it with someone else’s method. In point of fact, it could actually leave a natural psychic unable to have any success at all because the method won’t work for them.
The approach I took to this was to integrate what I learned in Silva with my own natural abilities. I also study material I believe will help me have a better understanding of the science of psi. Sometimes it’s simply hearing how someone else does it and thinking “Yep, that’s how I do it, too.” Sometimes it’s “Wow, I never thought to do it that way. I’ll give it a try.” And sometimes it’s just “Hm, never thought of that.”
Every psychic’s experience will be unique. As my fictional psychic investigator Kerry Murphy points out in The Company She Keeps, even two clair-audients won’t have the same abilities. While psychics may have common perspectives, psychic experiences are so personal and so intimate, it’s hard to generalize them, let alone duplicate them.
