Feeling the Future
Just about everybody has had an intuition or a hunch or a “gut feeling” about a future event. But can we really feel the future? Some scientists are attempting to find out. I’ve decided to describe Daryl Bem’s Experiment 2 from his (2011) publication, Feeling the Future (see reference below). Dr. Bem, a respected research psychologist, magician, and debunker of ESP (psi) demonstrations, seems to me an ideal person to conduct research on hunches. Also, the procedure of the experiment is relatively simple, and the results are statistically quite unlikely to be due to chance. PARTICIPANTS: 150 Cornell undergraduates. 107 women, 43 men. METHOD: Procedure: There were three steps in this experiment, all fully automated on a computer in order to reduce...
Read MoreMagic, Science, and Psi
A magic show! Undergrads and grad students alike eagerly crammed the auditorium to see one of our psychology professors, Daryl Bem, present an hour of tricks, illusions, and sleight-of-hand. Bem, who had joined the Psychology faculty at Stanford in 1971, was a respected research scientist. And he proved to be a great showman. By the final curtain, I was ready to believe in magic. But Dr. Bem was not only a professional magician. He also debunked demonstrations of ESP (ExtraSensory Perception- today called “psi.”) For example, he appeared in an Introductory Psychology video series in which he revealed how a magician “sets up” card and mind-reading tricks. (See the Annenberg Learning website for the series produced by Dr. Phillip Zimbardo called “Discovering...
Read MoreAnimal Prophecies
In the last post, I described the power animal, or guardian spirit, as a primary source of special powers and knowledge for the shaman. Often, these spirit beings assist in divination. Divination refers to acquiring knowledge (through nonordinary means) about something hidden (eg., the cause of an illness) or about the future (eg., the success of a hunting trip). (See Harner’s “The Way of the Shaman,” Harper & Row, 1990.) A prophesying power animal plays a role in my novel, “A Second Chance Life.” In the following scene, Jude tells his friend Sara about a raccoon who he believes is quite extraordinary: In the hush of the closed-up car, Jude said, “Well, I guess it all began when I was seven. See, I wanted a puppy real bad. A little puppy I could play with,...
Read MoreSpirit Allies
In my novel “A Second Chance Life,” Sam, an Indian healer, has a dream involving his spirit ally (or guardian spirit): “That night, Cougar, Sam’s guardian spirit for the last several years, padded into his dreams, into the cabin. Sam lay on his side in the bunk, arms folded under his head, and watched the cat, belly brushing the floor, slink silently to the cot where Jude lay sprawled, a leg dangling over the side. The beast whuffed a bare toe, then glided to snuffle at Jude’s face, her whiskers twitching forward, the big cat’s way of breathing in the essence of a man. Cougar stepped onto the cot, bracing her muscled body on front legs. She nosed Jude’s shirt and with claws sheathed, pawed off the tangled blankets. She studied the sleeping man-form, then...
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