Try this simple test: think of a number, then close your eyes and concentrate on it as hard as you can for half a minute. Do it now.
Concentration is essentially a muscular action, rather than a mental exercise. To concentrate harder is to increase the level of muscular tension that accompanies the mental action. Did you squeeze your eyes tightly shut as you concentrated on your number? Did you wrinkle your brow, grit your teeth or clench your fists? Most people do all of these things when they are trying to hold a certain thought in their mind: in fact the tension involved is counterproductive to clear thinking – and to clairvoyance.
It is extremely difficult for most people to make “wild” guesses or predictions. The brain has a well-established circuitry for dealing with the problems and decisions that it has to deal with. All the evidence is weighed up in an instant and an immediate, logical evaluation is made. Unless this familiar pattern is disrupted, there is little chance of establishing a new “psychic route”.
Exercise 1:
This exercise should be carried out in a dimly lit room (not completely dark) at a time when there is no possibility of your being disturbed. The room should be warm and well-ventilated.
Sit upright on a hard-backed chair, with your feet together on the floor and your hands folded loosely in front of you. Close your eyes and simply sit there for a few minutes, allowing your thoughts to wander. Open your eyes and become aware of the details of your surroundings. Adopt a “listening” attitude.
Carefully study everything in your range of vision – but do not shift your position. Observe the floor, the walls, the various objects in the room. Make a mental note of as many details as you can. Next, allow your attention to expand to become aware of your general location. “See” the rest of the building in your mind’s eye; the street outside, the surrounding area… Send your mind on an aerial recon-naissance of the city or the countryside around you. Get a strong sense of you exact location.
Mentally return to the room, and once again probe it with your senses. Don’t just see it; smell, taste, hear and feel everything around you. Try to extend your senses. “Feel” the walls from your chair. “Taste” the air in the room. Listen for the beat of your heart. Do not make any attempt to analyze these sensations; simply note them for what they are.
After 10 or 15 minutes, close your eyes again and go through the mental reconnaissance process once more, this time keeping your eyes closed. “See” the room, the furniture and so on, in your mind. Visualize your surroundings as clearly and in as much detail as you can.
After five or 10 minutes of this, take a few deep breaths and end the exercise.
Most people have lost touch with their senses. The object of this exercise is to enable you to become more familiar with the range of your sensory process, to become aware of the relationship between the between your senses and your mental scope, and to strengthen your sense of self-location.
This exercise should be carried out two or three times a week, for 20 minutes to one hour at a time.
Exercise 2:
See if you can guess the identity of the next person to call you on the telephone. Straightway you will probably limit your choice to those people who be most likely to call you. Already you have made a logical assessment. Never mind. Just make your choice and – this is most important – write down the name of the person you feel will be the next to call. I suggest that you keep a large notebook specially for this purpose, to record all your impressions, predictions and guesses. Write down the date, time and your guess or prediction. If it turns out that you were correct, write this down. If you were wrong, this must also be faithfully recorded. A typical entry should look something like this:
Sat/May 23/2.20pm – I feel that the next person to telephone me will be John. Outcome: 2.30pm – Incorrect. The next caller was my sister, Jane.
You can make predictions and guesses about almost anything: the color of the next car to pass, the title of the next song to be played on the radio, and so on. You could even try predicting the following day’s newspaper headlines. It is important that you keep a full and accurate record of all your hunches and predictions, whether they are right or wrong. Do not afraid to be wrong. The fear of getting it wrong is what leads some professional psychics to become adept at phrasing their pronouncements in such a way as to be retractable if incorrect: “I see you surrounded by flowers – have you celebrated a special occasion recently? No? Well, perhaps there’s a wedding invitation on the way?”
This kind of “fudging” discourages rather than develops ESP…
Soon you will begin to know when your impressions are right or wrong, and you will learn to recognize the unmistakable feeling that accompanies high-quality psychic “flashes” of recognition.
Look To Your Past To Predict The Future
Memory plays a major part in the way we perceive the world around us, and in the way we form our impressions. Memory is especially important when it comes to psychic impressions. For example, a premon-ition of, say, a house on fire, will often have strong elements of a remembered fire.
When I demonstrate clairvoyance by telling people about things that have happened or will happen to them, I feel as if I am remembering these events. And when the impressions come, it is a similar sensation to that which occurs when one’s dream is “broken” – when you see or hear something that triggers recollection of a dream you’d forgotten.
Sometimes the “memory” comes to me in a rush, all at once. I meet someone for the first time and in an instant I “remember” various events from his or her life – including events that have not yet happened. More often, however, the “memory” is vague and fragmentary.
Memory is the psychic route. When you want to pick up psychic impressions from people or objects, do not attempt to project your mind into the future. Instead, you should behave as if the information you want was once known to you, but you have since forgotten it. Do not look for visions or voices in your ear: ESP impressions rarely come this way. Be receptive, instead, to the memory process.
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Adapted from How to Develop Your ESP, by Zak Martin, published by Harper-Collins. Distributed in the U.S. by Sterling Publishers, N.Y..