How to develop psychic potential

Mark Thurston

Venture Inward, May/June 1985

Mark Thurston, Ph.D., is Director of Educational Development for the A.R.E. and the author of Discovering Your Soul's Purpose.

Do you have ESP? If you're like most people, you can remember a few isolated experiences of psychic ability. They may include infrequent telepathic or precognitive dreams, an irresistible hunch concerning a business problem which led to a good decision, or strong feelings about a close family member which later proved to be true. But would you go so far as to call yourself "Psychic"?

The Edgar Cayce readings have a remarkable perspective on psychic ability. They invite us to see ESP not as a strange curiosity but as the natural byproduct of spiritual growth. Many readings relate psychic perception to activities of the soul (e.g., "The psychic, then, is of the soul..." 5752-1). This principle, however, does not equate one's level of psychic sensitivity to one's level of spiritual development. It merely suggests that if we are to understand the process by which ESP operates, we will need to examine forces and activities going on deep within ourselves, even at a non-material level.

Many people asked Edgar Cayce how to develop their own psychic ability. Like most of us, they had had sporadic psychic experiences, and they were looking for ways to make such experiences happen more frequently. Interestingly, the readings suggest that psychic ability can be developed, much like any talent or skill. Specific techniques were recommended along with certain cautions concerning proper ideals and attitudes.

In late 1984 and early 1985, several hundred A.R.E. members participated in a 5-month-long home-study experimental research project designed to test certain hypotheses from the Cayce readings about developing psychic ability. A major assumption in the design of this project was that results might be evident within a month if an individual sincerely began to apply a series of developmental exercises found in the readings. There are at least two cases in which individuals were told in their personal readings from Edgar Cayce that they could develop greater psychic sensitivity in less than 30 days. In one instance a man was instructed concerning the use of meditation periods (called "solitudes") to enhance psychic sensitivity. In another case a man was told how to complete a specific training exercise in order to develop greater telepathic abilities.

Q- 7. How long will it be necessary for the body to go into these solitudes before this body will have the use of a psychic power?
A-7. Twenty to 30 days. 137-3

Q-6. Give ... the principle and technique of conscious telepathy.
A-6. The consciousness of His abiding presence. For, He is all power, all thought, the answer to every question. For, as these attune more and more to the awareness of His presence, the desire to know of those influences that may be revealed causes the awareness to become materially practical.

First, begin between selves. Set a definite time, and each at that moment put down what the other is doing. Do this for 20 days. And ye will find ye have the key to telepathy. 2533-7

Participants in this home-study research project completed a 4-week series of training exercises and applications to measure psychic sensitivity. During the first week, each participant studied a brief manual of excerpts from the Cayce readings on the nature of psychic ability and psychic development, and began to put into application the attunement fife style suggested in the readings for enhancing psychic sensitivity. This life style included a daily review of ideals, meditation, the use of pre-sleep suggestion, the study of both the Bible and other spirituality inspirational material, physical exercise, spinal adjustments, periodic castor oil packs, and a basic attunement diet.

During the second week, participants kept a journal log of spontaneous psychic impressions. They were asked to focus their attention upon four principal avenues mentioned in the Cayce readings along which psychic impressions are most likely to come into conscious awareness.

The first avenue is dreams. Many parapsychologists feel that the dream state is the most fertile and safest realm of human experience in which to explore psychic sensitivity. Participants were asked to keep a careful record of their dreams in a journal provided for them, staying alert for dreams which might prove to have a telepathic, clairvoyant or precognitive quality.

The second avenue involves the hypnogogic state. In several instances the readings suggest that a person who desires to develop greater psychic ability pay special attention to images which arise from the unconscious mind as he or she is falling asleep or is awakening in the morning. Here again participants were asked to record such impressions in their journal.

The third channel for receiving psychic information comes through outward signs or indicators, what the readings sometimes refer to as "omens." The intent here is not to foster superstition but to be alert to the way in which outward events in life often provide a kind of literal or symbolic guidance to the individual who will attune his or her sensitivities to receiving it. Those familiar with Carl Jung's notion of a law of synchronicity will recognize a strong parallel here to what the readings describe in this third avenue for receiving psychic impressions.

A final channel for psychic sensitivity to which each participant paid careful attention was feelings, intuitions, and hunches. Often ESP manifests in our conscious awareness through a "knowing things without being able to give a material or physical reason for same as reading 2443-1 describes it. Participants were encouraged to keep a record in their journals of all such strong feelings, intuitions, or hunches, so that they could later look back and see if any of them proved to be accurate.

During this second week of the research project there was no specific psychic test to be completed. Since the readings stress that psychic experiences often arise in a rather spontaneous fashion (in response to our desires to be of service in the world or attune ourselves to God's will), this project allowed an opportunity for each participant to monitor for several days the likely channels through which such spontaneous psychic impressions might manifest. At the end of the week, each participant was asked to evaluate the extent to which he or she received impressions which proved to be psychic. The numeric ratings provided by the 96 participants who had completed the project by February I indicated a strong favoritism for dreams, and for feelings, intuitions, and hunches.

During the third week of the project the focus shifted to a more specific psychic task. Each participant was given the name and home address of one of five target persons. Participants were asked to keep a record of all possible impressions which might have a psychic quality during a 7-day period. In other words, each participant was asked to give something like a "reading" for one target person who was specifically asking for guidance in dealing with challenging fife situations. In giving such a "reading," each participant was invited to draw upon the four avenues that had been practiced in the previous week. On a special form each individual recorded one or more dreams from the week which he or she intuitively felt might have some psychic value. They also recorded any synchronistic signs that they observed during the week -- feelings, hunches, and intuitions, along with a impressions or images that came from the hypnogogic state.

In addition, there was an objective questionnaire that each participant filled out concerning his or her target subject. This questionnaire asked the participant to draw upon all potentially psychic impressions from the week and to answer a number of objective questions, such as the height, eye color, hair color, vocation marital status, hobbies, etc., of the target. Those objective questionnaires became one way in which psychic accuracy was measured for this third week of the project.

The report forms and questionnaires mailed back to our research staff dealing with this third week of the project were scored and evaluated in the following ways. First, the objective questionnaires were scored by the target persons themselves. The given target person received a stack of photocopied questionnaires and were asked to sort the questionnaires into two equal stacks. One stack was to contain questionnaires which did the best job of accurately describing the target person's characteristics; the other one contained those who did the poorest job. Unbeknownst to the target person completing this sort, only half of the photocopied questionnaires were completed by research participants who had actually tried to tune in to that very target person. The other half were from participants who had tried to tune in to another target person of the same sex as the actual target person.

For two of the target persons completing such a sort, the results were statistically significant. At a rate of accuracy that would happen by chance less than one time out of 100, these two target persons were each able to accurately identify questionnaires from participants who had in fact been tuning in to them.

The second way in which the results from the third week were scored involved all of the material submitted by each participant, both the "open-ended" report form as well as the questionnaire. In this case the target person was asked to read and evaluate only materials from participants who had actually had him or her as a target person. For this evaluation the target person was asked once again to sort the submitted materials into three distinct groups of approximate equal quantity. One group was for those participants who had done an especially good job as measured by their dreams, hypnogogic images, synchronistic signs, feelings, and hunches, as well as the objective questionnaire. Another group consisted of those who did especially poorly and a final group consisted of those who were "middle of the road." This grouping allowed us to assign a numeric score to the performance of each participant for the third week.

During the fourth week research participants completed an exercise much like the third week. However, in this case their tar-get person was personally selected. Each participant was asked to choose a relative, friend or acquaintance for which there was a strong desire to either improve the relationship or to obtain some kind of specific guidance in better serving that individual. Once again, participants worked with all four avenues by which to receive psychic impressions, and at the end of the week they were asked to evaluate the relative helpfulness of each of the four channels. As reported for the second week, dreams and feelings/hunches were given much higher ratings than the other two avenues. Each participant was also asked to make a self-evaluation score on a scale of zero to 10 concerning how successful they thought they were in obtaining a useful and applicable answer for how to deal with the relationship.

One of the most interesting aspects of the analysis of this research project involves a comparison of measures of success in psychic ability (i.e., either the objective scores calculated from materials mailed in from week three, or the self evaluation score from week four) compared to a record each participant kept on a daily log sheet. The exercises for enhancing psychic ability which each participant began to practice in the first week were continued throughout all 28 days and each participant kept a daily log of whether or not a specific exercise was in fact completed for a given day.

There were several interesting findings relating measures of ESP to factors from the daily log. The number of correct responses on the objective questionnaire for week three was significantly correlated with the frequency with which participants completed the use of pre-sleep suggestion, not just during that third week but throughout the full first three weeks of the project. There was one other significant correlation related to the results from the third week of the project. Participants' overall success in tuning in to the target person was meaningfully related to the extent to which they reported closely following the overall diet for attunement recommended in the readings.

There were two significant correlations between data from the daily logs and the self-reported success with psychic guidance in the fourth week of the project. The participants who reported having more frequently reviewed their ideals on a daily basis were more likely to have reported a high success score for their efforts during this week. Interestingly there was a significantly negative correlation between self-reported success during this last week and the frequency with which individuals received spinal adjustments. That is, the more often a person got spinal adjustments during this week, the more likely they were to have reported a low score on this particular test. Of course, all of these analyses are to be taken only as being suggestive of possible relationships. Because of the size of our participant pool in this project as well as the lack of control inherent in home-study research projects, none of these conclusions can be seen as definitive, but instead only as tentative. They point to areas for further research.

There was one other interesting set of I results which came not from comparing ESP scores to items in the daily log, but by doing an internal analysis of items in the daily log itself. In that log, participants not only kept track of their daily compliance with nine procedures recommended in the Cayce readings for enhancing psychic sensitivity, they also made a daily measure of their standing on two attitudinal/emotional scales. One scale was the extent to which they felt compassion and love for others as opposed to irritation and discord. The second evaluation asked participants on a daily basis to rate the extent to which they felt trust in life as opposed to anxiety and worry. With both of these scales daily ratings were made on a range of zero to 10.

By analyzing the compiled logs of all participants, several clear patterns emerged. On a highly consistent basis two items among the nine in the development regimen were related to an enhanced sense of compassion and love for others (as opposed to antagonism) and to a heightened sense of trust in fife (as opposed to anxiety and worry). Those two items were the study of inspirational material (other than or in addition to the Bible) and the inclusion of a regular physical exercise period for the day. Interestingly, these two items were both highly correlated with heightened compassion and heightened trust both for the same week as well as the following week. For example, participants who reported a higher number of physical exercise periods during week two were also more likely to report higher ratings for compassion and trust in week two as well as heightened reports for compassion and for trust in week three. Remarkably, this correlation was observed through all four weeks of the project.

Some of these findings may seem rather incidental to the broader question of how people can be trained to develop their own psychic sensitivities. However, if we keep in mind that the Cayce readings always present psychic ability in the broader context of caring for others as well as the experience of trust in the oneness of all fife, then perhaps some of these correlations are just as significant as those results which take into account more direct measures of ESP.

Our plans for the future include making available to everyone materials at least as extensive as those used in this project for guiding the development of psychic ability We plan to compile a home-study course in how to awaken your psychic ability and to use it in constructive ways in daily living. Until the course is available a publication from the A.R.E. Press, Understand and Develop Your ESP, may help.