Precognition?

Last night as I was watching news video on television, Hilary Clinton came down some steps toward the camera, looking fit and smiling. I was suddenly hit with a premonition that she has, or will have, a physical problem that will prevent her from completing a term as President of the United States. The area that I sensed would be the focus of the problem was her mid-body, generally from the lower rib cage to the thighs.

It was quite a strong feeling, accompanied by the psychic "electrical shock" that I've experienced with valid precognition in the past. I was completely unprepared for it, but it was my immediate interpretation that, "This woman will never finish a term as president."

I hestitated to post this, but I'm doing so, just for the record.

Things Which Science Has Not Explained

A journalist has compiled a list of things science has yet to explain. While I don’t particularly admire his list, it occurs to me that the best way to evaluate the state of science has always been to consider phenomena which scientists have been unable to explain and which, better still, contradict their current theories. It is through those chinks in the armor of accepted scientific knowledge that great new discoveries come. . . although at first considered the dubious notions of an eccentric or heretic.

Here’s the list of “Ten Unexplained Phenomena”, by Benjamin Radford (omitting most of his discussion):

1. The Placebo Effect. ‘The placebo effect demonstrates that people can cause a relief in medical symptoms or suffering by believing the cures to be effective -- whether they actually are or not. Using processes only poorly understood, the body's ability to heal itself is far more amazing than anything modern medicine could create.’

2. Extrasensory Perception (ESP). Contrary to Mr. Radford’s insinuations, this is one of the best proved phenomena on his list, and the one most likely to crack the façade of conventional scientific wisdom. The most impressive evidence is probably the ability of a “receiver” to draw strikingly accurate pictures of something the “sender” is viewing in another place, a phenomenon that has been demonstrated repeatedly since at least the 1930’s. “Psychic detectives” are proving their usefulness in crime solving again and again.

3. Near-Death Experiences.

4. UFOs (“Unidentified Aerial Phenomena”).

5. Déjà vu.

6. Ghosts.

7. Mysterious Disappearances. (I remember a convincing account of a man who was seen by his family simply to vanish as he was walking toward them across a field. No explanation was ever discovered. A number of ships have been found with their crews inexplicably missing. Objects as well as persons sometimes mysteriously disappear. When I was a teenager I was alone in a second story bedroom with a towel which I threw on the bed; when I turned a moment later to pick it up, it was not there; repeated searches failed to find it. Most people also know of situations in which unsuccessful search after search of an area is made for some item which was placed there, and after the item has been given up for lost it is found in plain view in the area previously searched.)

8. Intuition; Sixth Sense. It seems Mr. Radford is referring to ‘hunches’ about things which are going to happen, but he does not use the term “precognition” or “premonition”.

9. Bigfoot. I’ve never been interested in Bigfoot or the Abominable Snowman, but the Loch Ness Monster holds a certain appeal.

10. The Taos Hum. ‘Some residents and visitors in the small city of Taos, New Mexico, have for years been annoyed and puzzled by a mysterious and faint low-frequency hum in the desert air.’


I add the following phenomena of my own selection, which fail to fit within current scientific theories.

1. Premonitions; precognition. Foreknowledge of events occurs frequently in many people’s lives, even if on the mundane level of knowing the telephone is about to ring. “I started thinking about you a few seconds ago!” Often precognition is much more striking and important.

2. Miracle cures; spontaneous and medically inexplicable remissions of deadly illnesses.

3. Dowsing.

4. Synchronicity. We tend to call them “coincidences” but the courses of our lives are often affected in startling ways by synchronicities. . . especially if we pay attention to those startling “coincidences” and try to detect what they may be telling us.

5. Psychokinesis. Although not as well established as ESP, the ability of humans to influence physical objects outside their bodies with “the mind” has been demonstrated. I feel that this is accomplished not by trying to direct a force from one’s head or hands at an object as if shooting a rifle at a target – but instead by going beneath the surface, so to speak, and influencing the common energy or power which underlies both the human influencer and the object.

6. Poltergeists. These destructive spirits or forces are not ghosts. They may be a form of involuntary psychokinesis. Poltergeist phenomena are so far off of science’s charts, yet so well verified and so relatively common, that they are prime candidates for forcing revisions in scientists’ theories about how the universe works. Unfortunately many scientists, as humans trying to protect their territories, prefer stubbornly to deny a well documented phenomenon rather than to dismantle their existing theories.

7. Aging. Science still does not know what causes people to dry up, shrivel and wrinkle, lose hair, lose strength, become fragile, and gradually suffer loss of bodily functions.


In conclusion, I respect science and its applications, especially when I have a painless tooth extraction or drive my car to the next town instead of walking twenty miles, but what pass for “explanations” by science are often just labels rather than explanations. Giving names to things and diagramming them or describing them with numbers can give the illusion of explanation. True,it is an advance in knowledge to find that aging and intelligence have a genetic basis, but it is more a discovery of a fresh path for investigation than an explanation of why people get old in spite of periodically renewing all the cells in their bodies. Even if scientists reach the point of being able to say, “This gene is responsible for shutting down body functions at a certain point and bringing on old age,” will they really have explained why aging occurs? Is saying “a gene does it” any different, really, from saying, “Something in our bodies, placed there by something, for some reason, keeps us from staying young”?

My Own Kind of Miracle

The "Flammarion Woodcut"


On rare days I’ve had trouble coming up with a subject for FLIGHTS OF PEGASUS, but now I’m having trouble deciding which of several ideas I want to pursue. To create continuity I’ve decided to give an account of the most improbable thing that has happened to me . . . other than just being here.

When I was living in Pompano Beach, Florida, I quickly became aware of a bright glow in the western sky at night. As soon as I learned that the light emanated from the Pompano Park Harness Track my own track was determined. I’d already manifested an interest in gambling, propelled not by the ambition to win large amounts of money, but rather by the belief I could discover a system that would make me world famous (and incidentally win large amounts of money).

It’s interesting that I sailed into life with an innate faith that there was a “key” to unlock the mysteries of everything if only I could find it. I never considered that the inner workings of the universe might be impenetrable. I assumed that if I gathered enough data and did enough research on any subject – whether horse racing, casino gambling, the stock market, psychic phenomena, the workings of the universe -- I would find the key and be able to explain and predict outcomes.

And so I became a regular at Pompano Park in the evenings, laden with a notebook and racing records, looking for patterns. For some reason I wasn’t as drawn to handicapping and the recent condition of horses (probably the only sources of a “system” that might actually win over time) as I was to the mystique of patterns, but I looked at everything for a possible answer. I spent more time poring over racing records and manipulating numbers (before the days of computers) than I did at the track. After hundreds of hours I had discovered one mysterious thing, but not the key to winning: Any system that seems foolproof when applied to all previous races will fail as soon as one actually uses it for betting. That was a more interesting discovery than anything else I learned about wagering systems, and I’m not the first person to mention it.

At any rate, weeks went by and I was no further ahead financially than I had been on the first day. Once I really thought I had found the answer when I began talking with a man who followed the harness races around the country in the company of his mother. He told me to pay attention only to the changing odds on the electric board up until the starting bell. Did a horse’s odds start high or low compared to the morning line? Was there a “drastic drop” at some point? And so forth. The idea was that the races were mostly fixed – probably true – and the betting of those in the know would give clues as to which horse was the planned winner. Well, that provided me with entertainment for many hours and many sheets of paper, with the usual so-so results after an initial appearance of success.

By the latter part of the season, when I went to the track I was burdened not only with a very heavy notebook but with very negative emotions. One night – a turning point in my life – I was sitting behind three women who obviously had never been to the races before. As I lost money on every race using my scientific research systems, they were winning frequently. What was their method?

I leaned forward and listened closely before each race.

“Here’s a horse named Lady Jane. I have an Aunt Jane and I’d die if that horse won and I didn’t bet on it.”

“Look here: The first two numbers of my social security number.”

“My dog was named ‘Flash’. Look at this!”

As I saw them win with such a “system” I began to hear that silent voice in my consciousness that I’ve learned always to heed: “Throw away the papers,” it said again and again. “Throw away the papers and bet what comes into your head.”

It wasn’t easy to do, but I climbed a few grandstand stairs and dropped my entire collection of paperwork, including the night’s racing programme, into a trash can. I turned, feeling unburdened, and suddenly the number “9” came into my head like a bubble popping on the surface of black water. I went to a window, bought a ticket on 9 to win, place, or show, and went back to my seat. Yes, to my amazement, 9 pulled ahead in the straightaway and finished first by a length.

I felt dizzy, but not so dizzy that I didn’t notice the number “11” popping to the surface of my consciousness. I bet on 11 and it won the next race. After losing for days, I went on to bet correctly on six consecutive races. At that point I was feeling very tired, drained, and I realized that I was beginning to have doubts, to grope for the next number instead of just having it presented to me, and I went home.

To me, nothing less than a miracle had happened. But was it a one-time coincidence? No, it wasn’t. For ten days I returned to the track every night it was open and won almost every race I bet on, at least 8 out of 10. If I’d had more money, and had the confidence to risk a lot of it, I would have improved my bank balance tremendously, but my “reasoning mind”, that analytical monkey cage, regarded what was happening as impossible and so I remained in the cautious experimental stage.

There were three things I particularly noticed:

1. There was a definite feeling that distinguished a “real” number, a real precognition, from a merely imagined number. It was the sensation of a mild electrical shock at the very instant the number popped into consciousness. Without that sensation, I was just fishing.

2. The first impression was always the genuine one, even though it might pass so quickly as to be almost imperceptible. Any further impression was just a guess.

3. The winning number of the next race came to me most often at the moment the number of the winner of the present race was first flashed onto the electric board amid cheers and groans – mostly groans except when the favorite won.

I’m going to continue this in another post, but I’ll conclude for now by telling you that during the same period I went to the Jai Alai fronton on a few afternoons and had the same success, using nothing more than each number that floated up into my mind. I won no less than 5 out of 6. At both Jai Alai and the race track I never lost a bet when I really felt the electric “pop” as a number came to me. The few losers were due either to my not being “given” a number but betting anyway, or to my mentally searching for a number.


To be continued.