ESP and Family Secrets

ESP and Family Secrets
Henry Reed
Don encountered at a business convention his
old flame, Peggy. They found their attraction for each other to be as intense as
it had been in college. One thing led to another and they were well on their way
to enjoy an intimate reunion. Then, at a crucial moment, Don awoke from this
delectable dream. He had little time to nurse his disappointment, however,
because his wife woke up and muttered, "Don, honey, do we know anyone named
Peggy?" Don sleepily said he didn't think so and rolled over.
When Don told me this story, a new idea about a
powerful motivator of ESP came to me. Telepathy seems to love to sniff out
secrets!
Surveys show that spontaneous telepathy involve
people who are close. It would seem as if the emotional connection between
people, the bond of intimacy, provides the channel for telepathic communication.
Laboratory studies support this impression. Friends and intimates perform better
in ESP experiments than do strangers.
Nothing seems to pull on the emotional strings
that tie people together like trouble that threatens the bond between them. A
mother senses her child is in trouble and rushes to the scene just in time. A
husband feels there's something wrong at home and calls. The ringing of the
phone awakens his wife who was drifting asleep from leaking gas.
Louisa Rhine, wife of the founder of America's
first ESP laboratory, at Duke University, received thousands of letters
detailing stories such as these. Accidents, deaths, illnesses, these and other
threats to loved ones were precipitators of ESP. "Crisis ESP" is the name given
to what is perhaps the most common context for spontaneous telepathy.
Although crises such as accidents and deaths
may be the largest known source of ESP, secrets may actually be an even more
common, although unknown, unrecognized or unacknowledged culprit. As Don's story
suggests, secrets might stimulate ESP. In the case of secrets, however, the very
same reason that motivates the original secrecy, may also suppress the
acknowledgement of the ESP!
Looking for some corroboration of this idea, I
searched through Louisa Rhine's collection of case studies of spontaneous ESP as
found in her books, ESP in Life and Lab, Hidden Dimensions of the Mind, and The
Invisible Picture. I did find a few stories similar to Don's, showing that a
wife can be quite sensitive to her husband's wandering feelings.
A wife who had never really known jealousy of
her husband, for example, had a dream where she saw him leaning against a wall
with a woman in front of him. He had both of his arms around her and they were
talking and laughing. The next day she asked her husband in a joking sort of
way, "If you were against a wall last night standing with a woman holding her in
your arms, who might that woman be?" He laughed and said, "I didn't do anything
wrong honey, that was just the waitress at the restaurant. She came over to me
and said "how's my sweetie?" How did you happen to know?" The wife started to
tell him the dream but then for some reason decided that she didn't want him to
know about it. So she said she just happened to have gone down for a cup of
coffee and happened to see him there.
In relationships, secrets can be a form of
lying. Keeping certain facts hidden can be a form of deception. It also is a
barrier to intimacy. As a relationship is forming, and curiosity is high, such
secrets may be especially vulnerable to detection.
Louisa Rhine tells the story of a woman working
as a waitress in a cafeteria who met a young man who flirted with her. They went
out on a date and fell in love. One day he said he had to make a business trip
to Boston but would return in a week. That night, she had a dream in which she
saw a "sad, frail woman with dark brown hair and in the last stages of
pregnancy" who told her that she was the man's wife. The next day, the waitress
happened to hear from somebody that the man had not gone on a business trip, but
was going to see his wife who, he had learned, was about to have a baby. When
the man did return she confronted him with this information, and learned that it
was the truth.
In another case, it was the man who wrote to
Louisa. He was away from home on a business trip with friends. They ran into
some girls and he became somewhat smitten with one of them. After that trip he
phoned her a couple of times from his home town. The next time he traveled to
New York, he called her, they had a date and they ended up spending the night
together. When they woke up the next morning, she had what she thought was a
funny dream, which she told him. In her dream, she saw the man was married to a
slim woman with dark hair and a black tooth in front of her mouth. She described
their house on the waterfront with its array of boats. In the dream, the
couple's daughter came up to the dreamer and said, "Oh, you go out with my
father." Hearing this dream shocked the man because everything, with the
exception of children, was accurate. He didn't let on that the dream was
accurate, but began to distance himself from the woman and gradually broke off
the relationship. She never knew her dream was psychic.
The child's innocent reaction in the woman's
dream rings a bell in our sleuthing for secrets exposed through ESP. Children
have a way of voicing what is intended to remain silent, as in the infamous
exclamation, "The emperor has no clothes!" Most any parent will testify that
their children seem to be past masters at picking up or reacting to the parent's
thoughts and feelings.
Just how closely children are tuned into their
parents has been amply documented by Berthold Schwarz. In his book,
Parent-Child Telepathy
this psychiatrist presented the diary he and his wife kept of the ESP that
occurred between themselves and their own children.
ESP made it hard for Dr. and Mrs. Schwarz to
keep presents a secret from their children. Little Lisa, whose birthday near
Thanksgiving was but a month away from Christmas, seemed especially telepathic
about presents. When Lisa was about to have her second birthday, mom was looking
at Dad's appointment book, and was thinking about writing in Lisa's birthday. At
that very moment, Lisa announced, "Draw a birthday cake!" When the parents
discussed wrapping Christmas presents for the children next door, Lisa started
talking to herself about a truck with little cars in a garage and then went on
to talk about putting her cereal in an oven. They were astounded to hear this as
one of the presents they had bought for the boy next door was a toy car
transport truck and a toy oven for Lisa. They were locked away in separate boxes
in a closet in dad's office. Upon hearing Lisa's fantasy, they went and checked
on the boxes, which were securely unopened. One fall morning, just before she
turned five, Lisa announced, "Last night I dreamed of a spinning wheel! Lisa
wants a spinning wheel for Christmas!" The day before, mother had been out
shopping and saw a spinning wheel and bought it for Lisa. She didn't bring it
into the house until the children were in bed.
Another common type of secret-baring telepathy
was the the Schwarz children's knack for suddenly making a comment aloud that
seemed as if in direct response to something one of the parents was silently
thinking. In one instance, when Lisa was three, she and mom were resting
together in bed. Lisa was holding a Santa Claus doll and talking to it about
what she wanted for Christmas. Mother was trying to fall off asleep and was
thinking about how her children had grown so much. As she thought to herself, "I
have no baby anymore," Lisa asked her, "Do you want Santa to bring you a baby
sister?" Mother was surprised because the daughter had never, to her knowledge,
mentioned a baby sister before.
As any parent can attest, sometimes children's
questions can probe into embarrassing areas. Imagine what it must have been
like, then, at the Schwarz house, when the children's questions probed thoughts
the parents were keeping to themselves.
The family was sitting around the dinner table.
Dad's quietly thinking to himself. Nine year old Lisa asked mom how come Dad's
not talking. Mom says he has a sore throat and is saving his voice. In fact,
however, he was thinking over a letter he received from a friend asking for his
intervention in a touchy situation. He was imagining just how he could
diplomatically navigate through the mess without hurting any feelings. Just
then, Lisa asked, "Mother, is there such a word as 'diplomatics'?" That word
brought father out of his reverie. He asked her, "Why would you say that?" She
said, "I don't know I just made it up." Lisa didn't know what the word meant and
had to go look it up in the dictionary.
Among family members, a secret can be its own
kind of crisis. A family is bound by intimacy. Several individuals become one
functioning unit. Secrets, whatever their nature, create boundaries between the
individual family members. ESP serves to bridge these boundaries and keep the
bond intact.
Not only are parents sensitive to dangers
confronting their children, but children can have a telepathic capacity to be
alert to threats to the well-being of their parents. Parents often try to shield
their children from their problems or worries, but the secrecy almost seems like
a magnet to attract the child's attention.
Dr. Schwarz writes of a time when he and his
wife were in the kitchen discussing their budget because of pressing financial
concerns. Suddenly their daughter's voice comes over the intercom announcing,
"Mommy, see my art show! I will sell pictures, $2 a piece! Invite friends you
don't know and Eric will invite children from school." Lisa was five years old
at the time and Dr. Schwarz noted that several months ago she had seen on
television the story of Hans Brinker. She was impressed by the way little
children could earn money to help their impoverished family. Lisa, however, had
no idea of her parents' financial worries because they had always made a point
of keeping those matters away from their children.
Sometimes secrets consist of momentary
feelings, such as anger, that the person doesn't feel comfortable about
expressing. At a subconscious level, however, other family members may perceive
the existence of such secret feelings as a threat to togetherness. That threat
may motivate the use of ESP to breach the secret and restore intimacy.
Dr. Schwarz recorded an instance where he was
upset with his wife. He was feeling secretly angry and thought he'd better leave
their summer retreat and get back to his city office before there was some big
fight. Just as he was making this secret decision to leave earlier than would
normally be the plan, six year old daughter Lisa walked up to him and said
"Daddy, are you leaving today?" Gottcha!--Caught in the act of his secret
thoughts, he had no choice but to reconsider.
I was excited to find that Dr. Schwarz noted in
his book that on many occasions, the nature of the coincidental remark made by
the child was of such a surprising personal nature that he had a hard time
recording it for his study. As the children grew older, this sort of thing
happened more and more often.
Certainly the Schwarz family record supports
the idea that secrets can be a prime motivator of telepathy. Furthermore, if ESP
serves to maintain subconscious, intimate contact among family members when the
people involved might not otherwise choose to openly discuss certain matters,
then it is likely that there is a large pool of ESP cases that never come to
light. Don didn't reveal to his wife Peggy, for example, that her comment had
been psychic. The ESP remained a secret known only to him. His wife's veiled
message nevertheless hit the mark.
Some parapsychologists have speculated that one
reason it has been so hard to establish credibility for ESP is the factor of
fear. Among other things, ESP represents a threat to secrecy and becomes a
potential for invasion of privacy. It would be ironic, therefore, if one of the
main motivators of everyday ESP events also serves as a powerful motivator to
suppress the evidence for ESP.
Amused and animated by this potential irony, I
decided to go out on my own search for examples of ESP exposing secrets, to see
how hard it might be to find them. For my first attempt, I approached someone
who I thought would have a number of ESP type coincidences to share. I asked
her, "Have you ever had an experience where your children or spouse made an off
the wall comment, or perhaps told you a bit of a dream, that made you realize
that they, perhaps without knowing it themselves, had tapped into a secret of
yours--that they seemed to be picking up on something that you wished they
hadn't?" The woman looked at me, paused, then a stern look came upon her face.
She said, "Yes, that happened to me once, with one of my daughters." She
blushed, she said, "But it is too personal to tell you about!"
Although this person gave me no story for my
research, her reaction was more than enough confirmation for my idea. In fact,
it seemed like a synchronistic blessing, convincing me that there is a large
pool of personal experiences out there related to the unwanted exposure of
secrets through ESP. I therefore placed a notice in my "Psi Research" column in
Venture Inward magazine about my ideas concerning the role of ESP in uncovering
family secrets. I encouraged people to come forward with their stories, even
anonymously.
I quickly received over twenty letters in
reply. Most concerned marital infidelities. The second most frequent category
were adults having dreams about secrets their parents kept from them as
children--I guess children never really grow beyond the ability to discover
their parent's secrets. There were a couple concerning realizing someone was
pregnant, or health concerns and a few miscellaneous topics, including two
claiming the revelation of undetected murders!
One of the first letters I received in response
came unsigned, but was clearly from a woman. She didn't mention the nature of
the secret that had been exposed. The tone of the letter showed that the she
still felt a great deal of hurt from the secret she had uncovered through a
dream. It was a recent event, and still hurt.
Extramarital contacts seem to be a potent
source for telepathic secret-smashing. One woman wrote me about how she
uncovered her husband's affair through dreams. She had a dream where he told her
that he loved another woman. She woke up crying from the dream and her husband
comforted her, assuring there was no basis to the dream. Later, however, he
confessed. When he did so, he said to her the exact words she had heard him say
in her dream.
Another woman wrote to me that twice she
dreamed of her husband's infidelities. In both cases, when she told him the
dream, the details were so surprisingly accurate, he involuntarily confessed on
the spot. A few years later, she had a similar experience, but without the aid
of a dream. In this case, he had been staying late at work, complaining that
they had been unable to hire extra help for the summer. One night when he came
home, she heard a voice in her shout out, and she repeated it aloud, "who is the
new person who's working with you?" She was surprised to hear her say these
words, for they were in direct contradiction to what her husband had been
telling her. He confessed that they did have extra help. It was a woman and she
and he were having an affair.
Human feelings being as they are, it is not
that uncommon for people to have a jealousy dream in which they see their spouse
or lover entangled with someone else. It would make good sense to treat such
dreams as pictures of our own worries. Consider this dream, for example, sent to
me by a woman from Massachusetts:
"My husband and I were in a gray stone castle.
I was standing on a balcony looking down over a huge ballroom. At least a
hundred people were dancing. It was a breathtakingly beautiful sight like a
fabulous theatrical production. I went to look for my husband. I walked into a
room and saw him there with a half-dressed woman. They were as startled to see
me as I was to see them. Then, with a smirk on her face, the woman told me she
was a lawyer who had come to consult with my husband on a legal matter. He
backed up her ridiculous story. My shock and anger now turned to fury and the
woman became afraid of me. She grabbed her dress, coat and handbag and ran from
the room."
The wife thought the dream was "only symbolic."
Two weeks later, however, when she and her husband were out shopping at a large
mall, a woman came running up to them. She created a very loud and humiliating
scene. From the woman's remarks it was clear that she was involved with our
dreamer's husband. The wife was amazed at this revelation and gave the woman
quite a stare--who was this woman? Suddenly the wife recognized her: she was the
woman of her dream!
Another woman wrote that one day a good friend
phoned her, quite upset, and relayed this story: After eight years of marriage,
she fell in love with her husband's brother. She kept these feelings to herself
for a long time, but one day, the brother came over to the house and they had an
intimate encounter. Within five minutes of their liaison, the phone rang. It was
the woman's husband. He cried out over the phone, "Did you just make love to
somebody?" The wife was overwhelmed with disbelief. All she could do was reply,
"What?" The husband said, "I know this sounds crazy, but I just had this
incredibly strong feeling that you were with another man." The phone call left
the wife stunned and she picked up the phone and recounted the incident to her
friend, confessing the whole story.
One woman wrote me about a dinner conversation
with her husband that proved surprising. She found herself blurting out of the
blue some derogatory comments about a woman her husband knew. She thought it
odd, as she hadn't seen or heard of this woman for over a year. Her husband was
surprised too, so surprised, in fact, that he confessed that he had a sexual
encounter with that woman just that afternoon.
In this case, the wife didn't know her remarks
were telepathically motivated until the husband's response. Her making
spontaneous comments with no apparent reason is quite reminiscent, when you
think about it, of the many examples told by Dr. Schwarz about his children. As
we saw, his children would make innocent remarks, unknowingly telepathic, yet
have no understanding of why they said the things they did. This woman's story
shows that this form of telepathic response is certainly not limited to
children.
Pregnancies are also a source of telepathic
events. I received a letter from a woman who told about her sister who once made
an unexpected visit. Her wedding had been mysteriously cancelled, but she didn't
want to talk about it. Only after the sister left did it dawn on the woman that
her sister was pregnant. She called her, exposed the secret and offered to help.
The revelation allowed her sister to open up and reveal all that had been
troubling her.
A woman from Virginia wrote me that during her
pregnancy, she and her husband were discussing the effects of child bearing upon
the body. Relative to the topic of the mother's genetic inheritance the husband
asked about how his sister-in-law had fared with her baby. The wife was
surprised at the question, as her sister had no children--at least as far as the
husband knew. The truth of the matter was that years before she and her husband
met, her sister had a child out of wedlock and gave it up for adoption. It was a
well kept family secret--at least that is what this woman thought until her
husband's "innocent" question.
Many parents wrote me confirming the impression
that children often seem psychic about presents heading their way. I received
one story of a gift for an adult identified through ESP. A grown woman is back
with her parents at Christmas. They are about finished with the present
exchanging, when Dad announces that he has one more gift, a special one for his
wife, "something you've always wanted." At that remark, the daughter blurts out,
"The brooch!" Indeed it was the brooch, a piece of jewelry that mom had lost
twelve years before. Dad had recently found it behind a book and kept it for a
Christmas surprise. Just like Schwarz's children, the child in this woman could
sense the present before it was opened, even though it wasn't for her.
Lost or secret wills have played their role in
human history. It shouldn't be a surprise, then, that wills would appear in the
history of telepathic coincidences. One of the most well documented cases of
apparently psychic dreaming, by the way, involved the discovery of a secret
will.
In this case, when James Chaffin, a North
Carolina farmer, died in 1921, his last remaining will left his entire estate to
his third son, leaving his wife and other sons without any inheritance. One of
these other sons began to have bizarre dreams involving his dead father.
Finally, in one dream, the father said to him that he would find his true will
in the pocket of his overcoat. The son went to his mother with this dream and
learned that she had given her husband's overcoat to the boy's brother. He went
to his brother's home, examined the overcoat and found that the lining of one
pocket had been stitched together. Cutting it open, he found a note that said to
look at the 27th chapter of Genesis in grandfather's bible. He went back home
and enlisted his mother's help to find that bible. When they located it, the
pages containing the 27th chapter of Genesis had been folded to create a pocket.
In the pocket was a sheet of paper, another will, dated 14 years after the
earlier one. It divided his estate equally among his sons and asked that they
provide for their mother. Witnesses and a court decided that this will was truly
in the father's distinctive handwriting and that this was his final will.
In a more recent example, a woman wrote me that
she had a dream where she saw her grandparents handling a long scroll, a box and
a set of keys. She wrote to her grandmother about this dream. Her grandmother
replied that she must have dreamed of their secret will. They kept it in a
safety deposit box at the local bank.
As we've seen with the Schwarz family, children
also seem able to uncover secret problems between the parents. It also happens,
for some unknown reason, after the children are grown. Perhaps after a safe
distance of several years, a remaining, subliminal curiosity or wound prompts
the discovery of an old secret. Consider these two examples:
One woman wrote me from Tulsa, Oklahoma, about
a dream concerning her father and her brother. The dream occurred after the
brother had died of kidney failure related to diabetes. She had always been
concerned about the hostility that her father had for this brother. The brother
once confided to her that he thought that perhaps he had been adopted--that was
the only way he could explain his father's apparent dislike for him. Apparently
feelings surrounding the mourning of her brother's death lead to her having the
dream. In the dream she was at the kitchen table of her childhood home. The
strange thing about the dream, however, was that she was experiencing the dream
from the perspective of her father, actually seeing through his eyes. Looking
about the family, the father saw his wife and his daughter as they actually
were, but he looked upon the boy as small, dark and unattractive. Then the
dreamer suddenly became aware of the father's thoughts: "This is not my son."
The father felt anger and disappointment. When the daughter went to her father
and told him this dream, he didn't believe that she had actually dreamed this,
but suspected instead that her mother had betrayed their secret, that the boy's
father was another man!
Another woman, from Springfield, Illinois,
wrote me a letter telling a very interesting story, also involving a dream. It
happened during the occasion of the fifth anniversary of her father's death. He
and her mother had been married for 45 years. She had known only peace and
harmony between her parents when she was growing up at home, and could not
believe that her dream was true:
She, her brother and her parents are living in
Springfield in either a motel or rented house. Although she and her brother were
adults in the dream, and their father appeared as he did when he died at age 69,
the mother looked 45 years younger, like in her high school graduation picture.
She was young and pretty, but she had on a formal maid uniform, long-sleeved,
black dress with white collar and cuffs. The parents were arguing about mother's
returning to live in Keokuk, Iowa. He had promised her that they would "go home"
shortly after moving to Springfield; and she was calling in the promise. She had
made arrangements to return to Keokuk after visiting friends elsewhere, and
expected, and extracted a promise from her husband to join her there by
Christmas. He finally agreed to that date. The dreamer and her brother were
amazed at the whole conversation. Mom had a train ticket and was prepared to
leave that day. The dreamer was totally devastated at the fact that not only
were the parents not planning on taking the children with them; the mother had
no plans and did not invite the children to come along. The dreamer is
"thinking" that she will not ever see her mother and she can't stand the pain of
the thought. She begins to run from the "house," crying heartily. Her mother
follows her out, tries to comfort her, and they both return inside hugging and
crying. But mother has still not either changed her mind or asked the daughter
to go with her. The dreamer woke up crying."
A few days after this dream, the woman took her
children to visit her mother. During a moment alone with mom, she told her the
dream. Her mother was quite surprised by the dream, but confirmed its details.
The scene in question occurred while her mother was pregnant with her and her
older brother was about six months old. Unknown to this woman, her mother had
worked as a maid while she was a teenager, married to the father, whose work
required them to move to a town the mother disliked. Where they were going to
live, or when they would move back to Springfield, was a source of intense
arguments. On this particular occasion, it may have been one of those moments
when the mother considered ending the marriage or having an abortion. The
abortion, of course, would have meant that our dreamer would not have been born
to later have this dream.
A child's ESP, tuned to issues important for
his or her own survival, may tap into parental areas the adults would consider
quite private. It can go the other way, too. Most parents will attest to the
fact, for example, that they seem to have feelers for when their children are
getting into mischief. I received three letters involving parents using
something akin to ESP to alert them to their children's misbehavior. In each
case, I'm sure the youngster in question thought the parent was prying. These
stories do raise the question about the possibility of invading privacy through
ESP.
The first letter of this sort comes from a man
who recalled a troubling situation involving his mother's detecting his use of
drugs. He writes that on two separate occasions, he suddenly had the thought
flash through his mind, "Mom has discovered my stash!" In each case, he
dismissed the idea, sure that his secret cache of marijuana was safe from
detection and that he was just being paranoid. He was wrong to dismiss his inner
prompting. In both instances, his mother had indeed just then uncovered his
secret. Whether she used ESP herself to do so is unknown.
One woman wrote about how ESP tipped her off to
her son's secret. She had returned from an out of town trip, and went to go to
bed. There were the same clean sheets she had left on the bed, for some reason
she got instantly angry and had an image of her son bringing a girl into that
bed. She changed the sheets, and found a long hair. When she confronted her son,
he confessed to a secret liaison. Years later, she offered him and his new wife
who were visiting the use of her bed. He refused. She didn't understand. He said
it was because of "that incident" years ago. She had forgotten all about it, but
he hadn't. He said he didn't want his mother there with them in bed.
Another mother wrote me about a time when she
was cleaning house that she found herself daydreaming about her son, who was
spending the day with friends. In her reverie, she saw her son and his friends
in a toy store. Her son was insisting that his friend not take anything but the
friend ignored the advice and pocketed some small item. Just then, the phone
rang. It was her son. The police had come and arrested his friend at a toy
store. He had been caught shoplifting. Her son was surprised to learn that his
mom already knew what had happened. Some time later, she overheard him say to
his friends, "My mom knows everything I do!"
Perhaps the parent's interest and knowledge
about their children never stops. Consider this story, concerning a grown woman,
a minister from Broomfield, Colorado. She was taking an adult education course
on the history of women and had written for a book entitled, Women of Ideas (and
What Men Have Done to Them). She enjoyed the book and exchanged one round of
letters with the author. During her course, the class considered the theory that
earlier generations of women had helped suppress their daughter's education,
rationalizing that reading might drive them mad! She thought this theory a bit
extreme, but then a puzzling event seemed to confirm its validity. Without
warning, her mother appeared from out of town on her doorstep. The mother seemed
almost panic stricken and marched into the house and went directly into her
living room, where she kept a large bookcase. The mother immediately located the
book, Women of Ideas, grabbed it from the shelf and castigated her daughter,
"When I catch you reading stuff like that, I'm afraid you will lose your mind!"
The woman has no explanation for this most
unusual event. Mother had apparently tuned into her daughter's "secret" book.
The book was something that the mother apparently thought would do damage to the
intimate bond she had with her daughter concerning certain attitudes. Her
surprise raid unwittingly confirmed the book's theory of the generational
suppression of women's education. This story also shows that ESP doesn't merely
stumble onto secrets, but seems to ferret them out in a manner consistent with
the motivations of the people involved in the relationship.
Traditional parapsychology recognizes that the
personal bonds of intimacy favors the occurrence of spontaneous ESP, but has
rarely attempted to probe more deeply into the subject. Perhaps they believe
that the sentimentality involved clouds scientific thinking. That's why
sometimes stories like the ones we've presented here are referred to as
"coincidence."
Many people who have had encountered incidents
like those we've described here experience them as outcomes of the connections
they feel with their intimates. Sometimes their bodies react to the incidents in
dramatic ways, as if encountering a shock wave. One's hair stands up on end.
There's a jolting feeling in the stomach. These people know in their hearts that
these experiences are not just coincidences.
What does it mean to say that something is just
a coincidence? It's a way of saying there is no relationship, no intimate
connection between two events. It's a way of denying the closeness that
otherwise might be uncomfortable. It's similar to the way people sometimes will
refer to a lover as "we're just friends" to minimize the intimate nature of the
relationship. When ESP uncovers a secret, it's understandable that someone might
wish to discount the incident as "just coincidence," just as a person caught in
the grips of a spouse's suspicion might protest, "you're just imagining things."
It's an attempt to deny the connection, to remain free of the implied claim of
the bond of intimacy.
No wonder, then, that it's hard to get people
to divulge those times when secrets have been exposed through ESP. The letters I
received have convinced me there's a whole book of such stories. I'm hoping that
this article will prompt more people to write me about their story of ESP
revealing a well-guarded secret. These stories are important more than simply
for their human interest. They touch on important factors that demonstrate the
connection between the human and the spiritual dimension of telepathy.
The human dimension has to do with the guilt
and shame that motivate secrets and tend to isolate us from each other. The
spiritual dimension has to do with God's love that created us and that continues
to unite us with one another.
Remember Eden. In that lovely paradise, after
Adam and Eve eat of the apple, they respond to their new consciousness by
erecting two barriers. In shame they separate themselves from each other by a
boundary of fig leaves. In fear and guilt they separate themselves from God.
Like children who cover their eyes and proclaim to their parents, "You can't see
me!" Adam and Eve believe that it's possible to separate themselves from God by
hiding in the bushes. Having granted them free will, God also grants them their
privacy and pretends not to see them until they emerge on their own.
Hiding in the bushes and wearing fig leaves are
symbolic acts of separation and pulling away from a pre-existing oneness with
the Creator and all life. These acts also transform the nature of telepathy,
from a natural sense of connectedness to a magical act of mind reading.
Stories of telepathy exposing secrets, from the
amusing to the awful, replay the Garden of Eden mythology. They show how we hide
from one another when we choose actions that are not consistent with our ideals.
They show that we are aware, at the level of the subconscious mind where we are
indeed connected, that our thoughts and deeds have consequences for one another,
especially for those who are bonded to us in love. That love reaches out and
breaches the separation the secret created and offers a renewed opportunity for
reunion.
These stories suggest that psychic development
is not a matter of developing some new power through mental exercises. It is
more a matter of opening up to love. In an atmosphere of love, with due respect
to our ideals, we can discern the difference between our right to privacy and
the false need for secrecy.
God grants us free will. Sometimes we need
privacy in order to pursue our God given freedom. Privacy is of a different
nature than secrecy. We need secrecy when we choose to use our free will in ways
that not in the interest of harmony. Those who love us will grant us privacy yet
abhor secrecy. There is no hiding from those who love us.
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