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SCIENCE

With the Right Information and a Little Practice Anyone Can be Psychic

by Bruce David

I took the Silva course in 1982.  They promised that after forty hours of instruction I’d be able to project my mind to any point or place on this planet and accurately diagnose something that was medically wrong with a person I had never met.  When the course was over, I did just that.  And so did all 15 of the other students in the class.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As a kid growing up in New Jersey, I came to accept that my dad was psychic. It wasn’t because he was always catching me when I was up to no good, although that did factor in.  I remember hitch-hiking on route 46 when I was 16 -- hitch-hiking was common back then -- as some kid pulls up in his car. Jumping out, he screams that I’m trying to steal his girlfriend -- news to me -- and, suddenly I’m getting the shit kicked out of me.  Since this was a good seven miles from my town I was shocked seconds later when my old man pulls up in his 1958 Oldsmobile to rescue me.  To this day I can’t think of any reason for him to have been there.  And he never gave me a straight answer when I asked about it.

As a Junior in High School, I started my own experiments with ESP.  Sitting in home room one day, I impulsively asked my buddy, Jim, to think of a number from one to ten without telling me what it was.  I guessed the correct number. He thought of another number and I correctly guessed that one too.  Then the next one, and the next.  

Jim wanted to see how he would do.  He guessed the number I was thinking and every subsequent number I came up with.  Trying to shake things up we switched to guessing uncle, aunt, sister, brother, mother, father...Again we batted 100% between us.  For the entire day...from home room to art class to the Study Hall.

The next day, however, was like it never happened.  I don’t think we even mentioned it.  Ever.  

I’m still in high school when I wake up in bed screaming.  I’d dreamt I was in a military barracks, sitting on a foot locker at the end of a bunk bed, midway along two rows of bunk beds and lockers that formed a corridor leading to the exit.  Blocking the exit was a red faced, screaming Training Instructor wearing heavily starched military fatigues. Behind him stood another guy similarly attired, this one younger, with a sardonic, twisted smile on his face.  It was the smile of a person taking pleasure in someone else's discomfit.  If anything, I found the smile even more disturbing than the screaming instructor.  All the time I’m thinking OHMIGOD!  I’ve joined the military!  What a mistake!

Looking around my bedroom I sigh in relief.  I remember actually thinking, I’m still in high school.  It was only a dream.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that it was a warning dream.   A year later I was actually at the Air Force basic training base in Lackland, Texas, sitting on the same locker I’d been sitting on in my dream, getting yelled at by the same Training Instructor.  And there, just behind the screaming instructor was the guy with the twisted, sardonic smile -- a recruit like myself, I now realized, only one further ahead in his training, a guy who had already experienced the dread and shock felt by brand new recruits.

I was eventually stationed in Germany.  Bored one night at the Airman’s Club, I did the kind of card trick I’d leaned from my father.  Fanning the cards out so the person opposite me couldn’t see the face cards, I’d tell him to pick, say, the Queen of Hearts, while looking into my eyes -- not at the deck.  Nine out of ten times they’d get the right card no matter where I placed it in the spread.  

I was an instant hit.  So much so that I kept the act going for a couple weeks. But then, one day while walking into the club, I saw a couple people turn around to point at me.  “That’s him,” they seemed to say.  It creeped me out; I resolved to end my little show business career.  

It wasn’t until my early forties, when I stumbled onto a book by Jose Silva called the Silva Mind Control Method (now in release as The Silva Method), that I once again got serious about ESP.  Practicing the exercises in the book -- which promised to make you psychic -- it didn’t take long for me to get some mind blowing results:

I had just put together a film deal with a major corporation known more for its food business than making movies.  It was my idea and my money that financed the deal but when the corporation’s executives came to Los Angeles to set up our production company they’d only deal with my front man, a guy who had made a few low budget films.  They were having a small dinner party for him when I decided to project my mind to the event using the Silva method. “Dump your partner and come under our umbrella with a six figure salary,”  I imagined one executive saying as I lay on my couch, eyes closed.   

The next morning, when my partner called, his first words were “you’re never gonna guess what they said.”  I didn’t respond.  “They told me to dump you and come in under their umbrella,” he volunteered.  Of course, he assured me he’d rejected the offer.  

Strangely, I wasn’t upset by my partner’s words. Instead, I was impressed with myself.  Hell, I figured, if I got these kind of results from the book, what would I get if I took the course they offered?  Plunking down my money, I signed up.  

The course consists mostly of meditation exercises designed to excite the mind’s imaging skills.  “Visualize a steel cylinder,” the instructor intoned as we went into our “level” or meditative state.  “Now project your mind into the steel cylinder.  What do you see?  What do you smell?  Reach out and hit the steel cylinder with your fist.  What kind of sound does it make?”  Ditto, copper, lead, nickel.  Even leaves.  Just try doing that for a couple of minutes if you really want to annoy yourself.     

The final day of class students are paired off with each other to do their first true psychic exercises, armed with the names of people they know.  The girl I was paired with went to her meditation level first.  I gave her the name and location of my eighty-two year old father.   She ticked off every single one of his medical problems.  That was impressive!  Then I gave her my sister’s name and location.  She correctly identified each of my sister’s medical issues as well. She even got something I had totally forgotten about. “Do I see a missing ovary?” she asked.  Wow!

Now it was my turn to go to level.  I was panicking.  My classmate had hit two home runs.  I couldn’t match that.  But I did.  In fact, the final case came in like a polaroid.  I could see this four year old kid just as clearly as if I was looking at a photograph.  “He’s mentally handicapped,” I said.  “That’s a hit,” she answered.  I was stunned.

Now a Silva “graduate,” I went on to use my reawakened psychic skills to great effect.  For example, my partner in the movie project and I were locked in a death struggle.  At issue was the deal he had made with the corporation funding us.   I’d had to rely on him to protect me since he was the front guy but somehow the deal he’d made worked out better for him than for me.

As things went downhill, I realized he was planning to lock me out of our office on the studio lot.  So it became imperative I copy certain financial records that would help me in court, if necessary.  But that could only be done when no one else was around.

I went to the office that weekend.  The records were in a file cabinet that was locked.  I have no skills at picking locks but -- feeling more than a little foolish -- I opened up a paper clip and projected my mind into the lock using the Silva method.  Seeing (in my mind’s eye) what I took to be the lock’s trip mechanism, I stuck the straightened out part of the paper clip into the key hole and, when I saw it was lined up just right, I pushed.  The lock popped open. The files were mine!  

Then there was the business with my dad.  I was living in L.A. and he still lived in New Jersey.  I had awakened at two in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep.  So I decided to do a Silva exercise.  Since I knew my dad was in the hospital -- I had been told it was routine, nothing to worry about --  I projected my mind to him in an effort to send some healing energy.  When I was done with the energy part of the exercise my dad and I talked about ESP and my belief that it suggested a reality beyond death.  Then, as we spoke, I watched him die.

My eyes popped open.  Still in bed, I berated myself for making up such a negative meditation.  What the hell was wrong with me?  But early that morning my phone rang to inform me my dad had passed away at exactly the time I'd had my experience.  I’ve always felt that I was with him at the time of his death.

When I finally got married I used the Silva method to program for twin boys. Ultimately my wife and I bought a nice house on the top of a mountain in Southern California to raise the kids. But getting married and having kids is not a good move if you want to be psychic.  Simply stated, you no longer have the time to keep your skills polished.  Wives and kids need a lot of attention.

It didn’t help that my wife wasn’t a believer.  Of course I would, on occasion, give her a demonstration of my psychic ability but that would only annoy her. Like the time when the kids were six.  We were at a restaurant when, over dinner, I mentioned to the boys that I could, in effect, see through walls.  My wife broke into mocking laughter.  “Prove it,” she challenged.  With my kids looking at me expectantly, I turned to a restaurant wall and began describing, in great detail, the kitchen behind it.  There’s the sink.  To the left, the dishes, to the right a large stove and over to the center, an island with pots and pans hanging down, a phone on the left wall...

“How are we going to know if you’re right?” my wife demanded.   The problem was solved moments later when a waiter approached our table.   His description of the kitchen matched mine perfectly.  I was redeemed in front of my kids but my wife was furious.

A couple months ago my boys turned 18.  It was time, I decided, for them to take the Silva course.  I drove them down to the class kicking and screaming. “We don’t believe this stuff,” they complained.  “I’m paying $500 for each one of you,” I countered.  “Would I be shelling out that kind of money if it didn’t work?”  

The course is only 20 hours long now -- one weekend.  Honestly, it’s not as good.  You need the forty hours to get the right side of your brain really humming.  In the old days, you’d see the biggest yahoos humbled by their experience on the final day, when their new skills were put to the test.  I remember one guy, cowboy shirt, jeans, boots and huge belt buckle bragging “This is nonsense.  I’m only here because my wife forced me to come.”  At the end of the forty hours, however,  the guy had the same pasty faced expression that I’m sure I had when I first completed the course. It can be a mind blowing experience.

This time I didn’t see any of that.  This time, after the final exercise, there were a lot of people who were confused and needing reassurance, even though, for the most part, they did okay.  My kids were in that group.  

“I just guessed,” Jordan said, explaining why his hits didn’t count.

“It always seems like you’re guessing,” I tried explaining.  “But given all the possible things that can go wrong with the human body, all the diseases and problems you can have, you have to ask yourself, how did I guess so well.”

Taylor seemed more accepting.  That evening when we got home, he used the Silva “three finger” technique to find his cell phone.  It had been missing for an entire month but now, fingers pressed together, he walked straight to it.  (It was buried under a chair’s pillow). Even so, he has not pursued his new found skills.  Guess he’s like his dad.  Maybe when he’s forty.

As for me, I got another Polaroid.  An old guy in a chair with a cane. “He’s crippled,” I said.  “That’s a hit,” my partner answered.