| Test Your Psychic Powers | |
Me? If I was asked to predict what day it was going to be tomorrow, I'd get it wrong three times out of five. I seem to have no powers of extrasensory perception, telepathy, clairvoyance, or precognition. I can recall only one time that I predicted something correctly. I had just arrived at Penn Station in New York, and a string quartet had set up to play for commuters and arriving and departing passengers. As soon as I saw them I knew they were going to play a certain Mozart piece. Sure enough, of all things, that is indeed what they played. A lucky guess or premonition?
Most people have probably had such experiences one or more times in their lives. How about you? Would you like to test the power of your psychic mind - to find out, perhaps, just how strong your telepathic abilities are? There are several interactive online tests that allow you to see how well you do at predicting or influencing randomly chosen events. Here's how I scored on the tests. Try them yourself and let me know how you scored.
Test 1: The Color WheelThe ESP Tester is provided by the Association for Research and Enlightenment, an organization founded by Edgar Cayce. You will need the Shockwave plug-in to run it. The test consists of a color wheel on which radiate 10 colors. The computer has chosen one of these colors, and it's your task to click on the one you "sense" that it is. If you get an exact match, you receive 25 points; if you're one color away, 5 points, 2 colors away, 1 point; otherwise no points. You get 20 tries, and at the end you receive a score, 400 being perfect. Here's how I did:
- Trial 1: I scored an amazing 108 points - getting four exact matches in a row! It's a score they rate as "very good."
- Trial 2: I scored just 48 points - "below chance."
- Trial 3: I scored 81 points - "above chance."
- Trial 1: I scored 5 hits out of 20 trials - only 19% above chance.
- Trial 2: I scored 8 out of 20 - 100% above chance.
- Trial 3: I scored 3 out of 20 - 25% below chance.
- A PSI-Hitting Recipe which reveals the factors for favorable ESP results, including cold readings -- and even making money!
- Paranormal Confessions: Psychic Phenomena where, if I get fed up with trying my own psychic powers, I can at least read true tales of ESP and premonition.
A number of psi researchers have summarized some of the factors believed to consistently favor the production of psychic phenomena under controlled laboratory conditions. Taking their various suggestions into account, here's a short recipe for learning to harness your own psychic potentials:
Reduction of sensory input [quiet your senses] A good dose of relaxation A pinch of enthusiasm and confidence Shifting of awareness toward internal processes [pay attention to what's going on between your ears] Non-analytic, intuitive "right-brain" mode of functioning [try to pay attention to images, feelings and emotions] An orientation toward creative spontaneity rather than habit A feeling of relatedness with the world [If in an experiment] A positive and warm subject-experimenter relationship Feedback about your psi performance