I went to what was then called a 'biofeedback' workshop in Denver,
Colorado, circa 1973-4. The two men who taught it passed around
little [looking back, Thought Technology] devices. [I won't swear
to it, but I'm about 90% certain one of them was Peter Tompkins before I
had any clue who that was.] There was a clip you put on a finger
tip, and I distinctly remember them telling us it read your
'brainwaves'. I'm sure they did not mean to deceive us, but having
been a biofeedback therapist, I now know it must have measured blood
flow, providing a fair semblance of heart rhythm. We were taught
to go into "an alpha state" in which one's breathing,
brainwaves, and heart rate slowed into a range associated with
relaxation, which they correlated to the alpha range [8-11 hz.] within the scale of
beta-alpha-theta-delta brainwaves.
There was an odd number of us immediately gathered in this university
auditorium, and they asked us to pair up with someone we didn't
know. Looking around I spotted a sweet little old lady sitting
perhaps a dozen rows behind where our small group was gathered. I
assumed she was part of our group and had this naive idea maybe she was
just shy, so I went back and asked if she would be my partner, and she
immediately agreed. Over the course of the entire weekend, we did
a non-stop series of partner experiments that were intended to
demonstrate that we are all naturally psychic and can access this
ability in any number of ways. One person was the experiencer, and
the partner was the observer, and we did each experiment at least twice
so we both played both roles.
At the end of the two-day event, we did a
survey which resulted in averaging out to a whopping 95% accuracy by all
counts in the outcomes of the experiments for our small group of 16
students. My friend who had dragged me to this, not exactly
kicking and screaming, told me that she had also given the whole weekend
a '95'. Everything about what she knew to be true was remarkably
so except that her partner had said she saw her standing in front of a
red car holding a baby with a husband in tow, and my friend was single
and childless, even boyfriend-less. We kept in touch and about two
years later out of the blue she reminded me of this particular weekend
and what her partner had seen. And one day she found herself
standing by their new red car, now married and with her new baby in her
arms!! It was quite a funny jarring to suddenly be in the picture
as her partner had described even before she could imagine such
circumstances herself.
For one of the most memorable experiments we were asked to think of two
people we knew very well that our partner could not possibly know,
providing the name, gender, age, and location of each person; i.e., we
were each doing this experiment twice as experiencers. The witness
would give this information [for one person at a time] to the
experiencer who, by this time, should be in the alpha state; heshe
also had been instructed secretly to give us every positive
encouragement and never say anything negative, even if the experiencer's
feedback was flat wrong. The experiencer was instructed to say
whatever came to mind, 'off the top of hir
head' without any hesitation, the idea being not to second-guess or
censure anything, since usually [and this proved to be so in our
experiments] what first came up tended to be most accurate.
This other person, who turned out to be a spiritual teacher [though I
did not know this at the time, and that's another story!], Laurel
Elizabeth Keyes, gave me a woman's name and other pertinent
information. Best I could, I just tried to say whatever popped in,
no matter how it sounded, or in this case felt, for I instantly felt
myself to be trapped in this dark, warm, moist, charcoal-grey 'box' of
tissue like the inside of burned out lungs or lung tissue, like a heavy
film of moist soot after a terrible fire. It was very cramped and
uncomfortable and this woman seemed very depressed, although I
experienced it as if I were she. Laurel asked me what this woman
looked like and later said I described her to a 'T', except for one
detail; I had said she was very thin, but turns out she was quite
overweight. The experiment came to a halt, and our witness partner
told us all about the person we had attempted to tune into. Laurel
said this woman had progressed lung cancer and was indeed quite
depressed. She also said I may have tuned into her appearing very
thin because this was what she had longed to be.
The experiment began again, and Laurel gave me her second name. I
do not remember the name of the first person, but I certainly remember
this one. You have to picture this: I am partnered with this
conservatively dressed, retiring, endearing, 'classic' little old lady
[she was 78 years young], and out pops the name "White Cloud"
and related data which I've long forgotten.
This time the experience was visual rather
than kinesthetic or feeling-focused. I 'saw' this woman and was
instantly embattled within the whole time this particular round went
on. I struggled not to just feed back a lot of stereotypic stuff
that went along with a name like that, and at the same time, fighting
not to censure anything even so. I was also well into the
beginnings of a suspicion that Laurel was somehow in cahoots with the
two men who led this workshop! Because no matter what fell out of
my mouth, Laurel was agreeing with everything that I said.
Remember, I did not know that the witnesses had been given a secret
instruction to always give very positive and encouraging feedback, no
matter what. Somehow I must have managed to suspend most of the
conflict enough to carry out the experiment. It was quite clearly
seen -- this woman's home, these large glass windows looking out on a
gorgeous Rocky-Mountain vista; the inside was all in cream whites -- big
white couch, white carpet, Native American rugs and other artifacts;
White Cloud was pictured with long Native American black hair, maybe in
her 30s-40s ... Laurel asked me at one point how her right or left leg
was, and I described a fairly intense bruise and that it seemed to be
healing well, and almost [surprisingly] as much to herself as to me,
Laurel said, "Oh, that's good to hear," as if I were actually
describing something she herself did not know, but trusted as if from
someone who actually saw! The feedback I shortly received from my
partner was that White Cloud had had some form of injury recently -- a
fall, I believe, and that the status as I saw her leg was probably
accurate. What I had described in her home actually looked like
this, and my details of her were on the mark as well.
Now, I was totally convinced there was some kind of weird conspiracy
between Laurel and the two men. After all, this was so new to me
as an experience; I couldn't have been that accurate!
Almost smugly, I thought I was about to find out the truth, for the
tables were now turned, and I gave her the name of a very unusual man
who was the leader of a spiritual group in another part of the
country. This was early 1970s, and though this fellow, Richard
Keininger, had written a book, I felt quite confident this woman could
not possibly know about him. But except for her mentioning a child
I knew nothing about -- a 'son' -- everything she said seemed to fit
quite well my knowledge of this person. I never to then nor since
heard that he had had a son, I had lived in the community he had started
and was well acquainted with his family.
My attitude was 'suspended' for the moment, 50/50. I then gave her
the name of one of my grandmothers, who had passed over maybe two years
previously, and I never felt entirely like she had clearly passed away
from this world, which had concerned me. But this was not
uppermost in my mind at the moment. I chose her purposely because
she had graduated from her earthly life, since at the time I had
wondered if this made a difference, like could someone tell the
difference in these experiments.
There sat Laurel with her eyes softly closed and waiting for the name,
and when I gave it, she lit up like a Roman candle, clasped her hands
together in front of her with a big grin and said, "She's your
grandmother!"
You have to know, here I was in Colorado. I had been born and
raised in North Carolina, did not know anyone anywhere outside the South
where I grew up until after I moved out of that area of the
country. My grandmother did not have the same last name,
etc. Was I ever buffaloed! And Laurel proceeded to tell me
all sorts of accurate details about her, including a favorite chair she
loved to sit in, her beautiful blue-veined hands holding a favorite
book, the Bible; in fact she was a bit of a Bible scholar and a very
religious woman. At the end of it, I told Laurel that she had been
absolutely right on all counts. I did mention that she had 'died',
and I had wondered if she would pick this up. As I was telling her
this, Laurel looked surprised and muttered something almost under her
breath about how could she have missed that. We talked about this
briefly, and Laurel wondered if Grandmother still did not know she had
physically left this world.
Why would Laurel have felt she may have missed something that apparently
to her way of thinking should have been clear if not obvious, I
wondered. Of course this woman was a total stranger, but several
things she had said just did not fit the stereotypic sweet,
conservatively dressed little old lady image at all. But all that
really is another ... [yes] .. breadcrumb's
worth of story.
