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I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Thinking About: Being Psychic

There was a funny incident at work this week. I was talking to a colleague and noticed that she was bundling together a bunch of cable-ties. “62” I said. “What?” she replied. “62 cable-ties”. “How did you know?” she enquired, looking confused. Of course I didn’t know and told her so. “Are there really 62?” I enquired. She nodded and looked a little spooked out.

Actually this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Some years ago after a long day, after an even longer week, a group of us were tidying some stuff away when the Boss asked how many instruction sheets we had left over. They were in envelopes so I picked up a handful of them and waved them in front of my face. “27” I said. The Boss gave me a rather unkind look and advised me to count them properly. Which I did – to find that there were indeed 27 envelopes.

Even stranger, some years earlier I was doing A Level Psychology at college when another study group needed volunteers for a set of ESP experiments. The one I was given was guessing the suit of playing cards as each one was presented face down to me. As I guessed one after the other the girl conducting the experiment began to look more and more uncomfortable. After a few minutes she suddenly looked relieved. I enquired what the matter was and she told me that until that moment I had correctly guessed 29 cards in the correct sequence.

During my teenage years I experienced déjà vu on an almost monthly basis and for my own amusement told people exactly what was going to happen in the next few minutes. More often than not I was right. On another occasion I heard my brother call my name from another part of the house so I went looking for him. When I asked him what he wanted he informed me that he hadn’t called me. He was going to but then decided against it. Both my Mother and I have had dreams that have come true – though famously she got my sex wrong before the birth. We also have been known to answer the phone before it rings. In fact I did that just last week at work.

The guys at work have a good laugh about my ‘psychic abilities’ and I do find them highly amusing. You might find it odd that I don’t believe that there is anything supernatural going on – or even anything particularly strange. I know lots of people who have had prophetic dreams, or déjà vu or any number of so-called psychic experiences. As far as I am concerned it’s just a normal non-supernatural part of life. The brain is an incredibly complex organ which we are only just beginning to understand. So-called ‘psychic’ abilities are nothing more, I suspect, than the brain doing things that we have always been able to do – except that now in this high-tech age we have forgotten that we can. So if weird stuff happens to you from time to time my advice is to enjoy it while it lasts and not to take it too seriously.

15 comments:

Juggling Mother said...

I would say you are innately numerical and subconsciously counting nthe items. A very useful ability if you train it - I knew a guy who made a very good living at casino's:)

Mike aka MonolithTMA said...

I'm totally going to start a religion to worship you and your psychic abilities. ;-)

VV said...

I went through very psychic times from birth through my mid-20s. I spent time with different people trying to understand it, develop it, control it. It was interesting but it was not fun or entertaining because of some of the things I saw and experienced. It got to be too much for me, so over time I learned how to block things out. Now the only things that seem to get through are things that are critical for protecting my safety and I'm cool with that.

Thomas Fummo said...

what number am I thinking right now?

:-p

no but seriously though.
next stop... telekinesis!

dbackdad said...

The answer is "42", obviously. :-)

I do think that we have means of perceiving things outside the normal senses. Other animals do. Many animals have the ability to sense magnetic fields (that's how they migrate) or heightened normal senses. I'm sure these traits are more attuned in some humans. Plus, some people could have particularly developed senses of logic and proportion. As JM said, your mind may just be really adept at calculating on the fly the number of things based on the the bits of data it picks up unconsciously.

CyberKitten said...

JM said: I would say you are innately numerical and subconsciously counting the items.

..and just think - I failed my Maths A level! I think the counting thing is pretty innate to (probably) most of us and would be a good survival trait.

JM said: A very useful ability if you train it - I knew a guy who made a very good living at casino's:)

Counting cards? I might be good at that [laughs] It only works if I don't think about it. Once I do, it vanishes like mist in the sunshine.

mike said: I'm totally going to start a religion to worship you and your psychic abilities. ;-)

[laughs] Just wait until I get this levitation thing sorted first - which actually reminds me of a recuring dream I used to have....

V V said: Now the only things that seem to get through are things that are critical for protecting my safety and I'm cool with that.

Excellent. Having a 'spider sense' is *so* useful - especially when it starts tingling.....

TF said: no but seriously though.
next stop... telekinesis!

I wish....! [grin] Which reminds me... another thing I used to be able to do was make traffic lights go Green! I'd forgotten about that... [laughs]

dbackdad said: I do think that we have means of perceiving things outside the normal senses.

Definitely. There's a lot more going on than we give our five senses credit for and our brain is a very good information processor - so it shouldn't come as any great surprise that we can sometimes do things that on the face of it seem pretty incredible.

dbackdad said: As JM said, your mind may just be really adept at calculating on the fly the number of things based on the the bits of data it picks up unconsciously.

Most definitely. I've always been able to see patterns between things that other people just don't get. Part of it is because my interests and reading has been wide enough for me to draw infrerences about widely divergent pieces of information. It's just the way my brain is wired. The counting things 'on the fly' is probably another part of that. As I said earlier though - my Maths ability in school was somewhat less that adequate to take me very far and all it takes for my brain to freeze is a single page of equations.... I was often told off for jumping steps in calculations though... [muses]

Ali P said...

WITCH!!! Burn him!!! :-)

VV said...

Spidey sense is cool except when it happens on a first date and you have to explain and hope you don't look like a freak. I was out with M. We were driving back 30 miles from a movie we'd seen in a nearby town. As we're driving on the highway I had this terrible sense of sadness come over me. I remembered thinking "it's so sad, I'll never see my kids again, I'll never know if this relationship with M would ever amount to anything." M looks over and sees the sad look on my face and asks what's wrong. So I tell her about my sadness. She says she doesn't get it. I say, "There's going to be an accident in the median of the highway a couple miles ahead. We're going to be one car too many in the left lane as people hit the brakes to look at the accident and we'll be killed, squished from front and back by cars." Then I snap out of my sadness, realizing I can do something about this, so I immediately demand she get in the right lane. I apologize. I say I know I'm a freak and you don't ever have to see me again, just get in the right lane. Well, a few minutes later we come up over a small hill and see a car spun out in the median and all the cars in the left lane hit their brakes. We sail right by in the right lane. Well, freak or not, M stuck with me. So I get things like that, but they're very rare. Don't know why or where the images come from, just glad they've been there to save my neck.

CyberKitten said...

V V - With that kind of skill M would've been a fool *not* to stick with you!

I must say that I'm *very* impressed. That makes my stuff look like party tricks [looks impressed].

I mean - Precognition is... so COOL!

VV said...

Precognition is only cool if you can actually do something about it. It's awful when you see horrible things but don't have enough information to understand where and when something will happen or to whom. The guilt and frustration was too much, not to mention the sick images, thus learning how to block such things. Also, you tend to feel crazy when it happens. I personally think it's like radio waves, sometimes we tune into something, other times it's just static. I think all people have the same ability to tune in, we've just grown used to ignoring subtle signals.

Karla said...

Hmmm. I'm surprised you have first hand experience like that and still put them down to natural explanations. To me that takes a lot of faith!

CyberKitten said...

V V said: Precognition is only cool if you can actually do something about it. It's awful when you see horrible things but don't have enough information to understand where and when something will happen or to whom.

Ah... Not so good then [frowns]

karla said: I'm surprised you have first hand experience like that and still put them down to natural explanations. To me that takes a lot of faith!

Its just that I don't automatically look for a supernatural explanation to things. First I look for a natural one. When it isn't immediately apparent I put it down as 'unknown'. I think that's *much* more sensible than inventing things like gods & demons to 'explain' things.

VV said...

I think "supernatural" is actually natural, we just haven't figured out how it works yet. There's probably some primitive area of our brains that is able to pick up or transmit signals (electric, electromagnetic, who knows) and for some people this area is more developed, just like some people have natural musical abilities or artistic abilities. I have faith that eventually we'll develop technology that helps us figure out what's going on.

Karla said...

the supernatural does confirm the natural. i think people think that if they believe in the supernatural they will somehow be assenting that the natural isn't real. But in reality both can and do co-exist and work well together.

CyberKitten said...

karla said: the supernatural does confirm the natural.

No it doesn't.

karla said: But in reality both can and do co-exist and work well together.

Oh... I *so* disagree.....