TELEPATHY

What is it like to have telepathy? What does a person ‘see’ in their minds when they pick up telepathic signals? Can a person really read other people’s thoughts, word for word?

I always believed that telepathy meant that thoughts could be read verbatim, as though the psychic was hearing them being spoken. But while researching some of the more famous psychics, I realized that this isn’t normally the case.

More often than not, telepathic mind-reading comes through as feelings and impressions, often more visual than aural. And although some people have such strong psychic abilities that they can accurately and clearly discern a person’s thoughts, most others rely on a more intuitive approach.

Remote-viewing, which is a scientifically standardized method of clairvoyance, is more like the average person’s telepathic abilities. Remote-viewing entails a method of picking up information in bits and pieces that flash on the ‘mental screen’, and these build into a more formal picture or impression as they note them down. Only after a remote-viewer has become more familiar with detecting these flashes of information and getting a feel for the process, do they become more proficient. But rarely do they ever develop their abilities to the point that they can see the full target. The same is true for telepathy, and few psychics have the ability to pick up what a person is thinking, word for word.

Most psychics who perform on stage rely on very simple impressions, such as asking someone to think of a number, name, or image, which they try to pick up. Or they will simply relate whatever impressions they receive, such as a person’s feelings or the basic content of their thoughts. This can be seen when a psychic relates such things as the recent death of someone who was close to the person, or the hope that the person has of getting a job they recently applied for. These types of thoughts are picked up because there is a lot of emotional content behind them, and the type of emotion can help to guide the psychic in determining the fuller content of their thoughts. Besides the emotion, they might also pick up the flash of an image, such as a funeral procession or a busy office environment. They might also pick up a simple word or two, such as ‘dad’ or ‘job’. Many stage psychics rely on building up the fuller content of what a person is thinking by seeking feedback on each piece of information they receive, which tells them if they’re on the right track. Feedback is very important in developing psychic abilities, and is a standard part of the remote-viewing process.

All of us have some telepathic or clairvoyant abilities. Most of us just don’t recognize it. The fact that we rely so strongly on other mental skills to get by in life has allowed our natural psychic abilities to wither from disuse. But this doesn’t mean that they aren’t there and can’t be developed. It’s really just a matter of learning how to shut out the habitual thinking modes and paying more attention to what occurs when you do.

Remote Viewing Made Simple

By Anthony Forwood

Copyright 2011 © All rights reserved

We all have psychic abilities, but most of us don’t recognize it and disregard this sixth sense, often confusing what comes through our weak psychic faculties as a product of the imagination. Sometimes, when it’s more recognizable for what it really is, we might call it intuition. We’ve become so dependent on our five senses and on using our logical faculties that we fail to notice and properly understand the messages that come through our psychic channels. They are being drowned out by the constant noise of our own thoughts.

The fact is, we all have the same psychic faculties, but few of us have ever developed them to any extent. It seems as though only the gifted or those who have been practicing for a very long time can do anything that might be significant, so few people make any effort to develop their psychic abilities at all.

Some people might think that it’s hard to develop these abilities, and requires a lot of time, mental effort, and regimental practice. Nothing could be more false. The best success comes when there is little time taken, minimal mental effort made, and attempts are made spontaneously. All that’s required are a few simple guidelines and enough interest to be willing to make a few attempts. That interest will undoubtedly grow when you soon realize that your psychic abilities are actually much stronger than you had previously thought.

Remote viewing is a good way to test and develop your psychic abilities. It can be reduced to a very simple procedure that only requires a minimum of effort and involvement. All that’s needed is a pen and paper, a quiet and relaxing place to sit, and someone else who will select a target object to be remotely ‘viewed’.

Remote viewing is a scientifically developed method of clairvoyance that the US military and intelligence agencies saw enough promise in early on to have continued to secretly fund its research and development for twenty years, and with amazing results. In that time, they worked out all the factors involved and refined the method so that anyone can quickly learn to remote view successfully. Remote viewing uses simple techniques that help a person to more easily and accurately recognize and record information coming from their psychic channels, and offers the ability to measure performance and learn how to improve on it.

Remote viewing involves a two-stage process: data acquisition, and data analysis. In the first stage, the viewer sits comfortably, relaxes their mind, focuses their attention on the target object, and records on paper whatever mental impressions come up. In the second stage, the results are compared to the target and similarities and differences are noted. The analysis stage is kept until later for a reason. During the first stage, the viewer must avoid all thoughts they might have about the impressions they are recording, so as not to allow for any influence of the intellect or imagination to misinterpret anything. This is crucial to success.

Once a person learns how to remote-view and makes their first few attempts, they will realize that they have some real psychic talent. With further practice and experience, a person will get a better feel for it and will become more proficient over time. Their psychic channels will become stronger and more in tune with the other mental faculties that otherwise interfere.

What You Need to Know

In order to remote-view effectively, there are only a few things that should be understood beforehand:

1. The first thing you need to understand is that your mind is most receptive to psychic information when it is relaxed and not occupied with any thoughts. If you sit in a comfortable position and relax to the point that your mind is in this relaxed alpha state, you’ll most easily be able to recognize any psychic impressions that arise. Early on, they’ll usually seem like flashes of nonsense from the imagination, but these spontaneous impressions are telling pieces of information, and these are what you put down on paper.

2. The second thing you need to know is that your intuition is capable of providing accurate information from the subconscious that is not available through the normal senses. This goes against our common understandings of reality, so we tend to eliminate these impressions from our thoughts as soon as they arise, if they even get that far before our preconscious brain processes do it for us.

3. The third thing to understand is that the subconscious responds to our psychic queries instantaneously, so that the psychic impressions we get are often missed because they are overridden by the noise of our louder and more familiar mental activity that comes immediately after, essentially burying the psychic impressions with logical second-guessing.

4. The fourth thing to understand is that, at least early on, psychic impressions tend to come through to conscious awareness in garbled bits and pieces, as the experiments I did that I wrote about earlier have shown. It takes time and practice to develop clear information channels.

5. The fifth thing you need to understand is that feedback is crucial to the development of your psychic faculties. The remote-viewer needs to be able to check the accuracy of their psychic impressions against the actual target in order to improve their skill. Without feedback, they won’t be able to tell where they were accurate and where they were off, which will help them refine their psychic perception. Trying to remote-view something does little good unless it can later be compared with what was picked up mentally. Also, this feedback should come sooner rather than later, so that there is still a clear memory of the mental impressions received at the time of the remote viewing session, and so that the target does not change in the meantime.

6. The sixth thing to understand is that, at least early on, simple targets with only a few outstanding details are much easier to remote-view than complex targets with a lot of detail. Therefore, it helps to begin with relatively uncomplicated targets, such as a simple line drawing or a unique and easily distinguishable but otherwise plain object. A plain decorative vase is good, but a vase with a striking image painted on it might cause details of the image to be picked up rather than the vase itself. I prefer to have someone make a line drawing of something that’s simple and easy to draw. If they can’t draw very well, another idea is to have them select an object that is distinct in its form but otherwise simple in detail, such as a key, a desk fan, a shoe, etc.

The Remote-Viewing Session

Psychic information will come in bits and pieces, so during the remote-viewer just sits quietly and lets the mind do its thing while keeping their attention focused on what they are attempting but without trying to force anything. All random mental impressions that arise are taken note of, either by making quick sketches or by recording short descriptions. Very little time should be given to these activities, since they can easily call up the logical faculties, which need to be avoided at this stage. Any analysis of what is being received should wait until later on. The remote-viewer simply records what they are receiving, and shouldn’t think about any of it when they do. This is what interferes with accurate psychic impressions more than anything else. Just relax, put your mind on the target objective, drop any vocalized thoughts that arise, and wait for a spontaneous mental impression to occur in the short moments when your mind is otherwise inactive. An impression will occur immediately at these moments. Make a quick sketch or jot down a word or two to define the impression, and then go back to relaxing and putting your mind on the target objective while dropping all thoughts. Catch the next impression and make another sketch or write another word or two.

This stage of the remote viewing shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, since the subconscious will provide information immediately, and anything not received within the first few minutes tends to become more forced and less accurate. Never try to force impressions to come. They will come spontaneously. If you’re not getting any spontaneous impressions, something is wrong with your approach. Usually, it’s because the logical faculties are interfering or the mind is too occupied with other noisy thoughts. Pay attention to whether either of these are causing the interference.

After having spent a short while recording the spontaneous and seemingly random impressions received while focusing the mind on the target, the remote viewer goes over their sketches and drawings and fills in any further details of their impressions that were missed, but must continue to remain nonjudgmental and not try to interpret anything beyond what they had picked up while engaged in the remote-viewing session. Once this is done, the analysis stage can begin.

In my own first experiments in remote-viewing (posted earlier), I received virtually all of the basic information contained in the drawings I was using as targets, but this information was expressed in bits and pieces that were totally unrecognizable for what they represented. Only after receiving feedback on my attempts did I see the relationship of my initial psychic impressions to the actual targets, which were expressed more accurately through the sketches I made during the session, even though the information still wasn’t properly ordered. In analyzing my results against the target, I was able to see the similarities and differences, and learn from that. Remembering the initial mental impressions that were received and comparing them to how they were represented on paper can also teach something that the remote-viewer can use to improve their skills. Recognizing the right mental state and the attitude in your approach also helps to understand what works and what doesn’t.

Evaluating Your Results

Your first results will not likely be perfectly spot-on representations of the target, but they will probably reflect some of the smaller details, even though they will probably be out of order or misinterpreted. There is a certain scale of accuracy that can be measured by the number of details involved. The higher the number of significant details you get accurately, the better. The more properly ordered they are, the better. The less superfluous details there are, the better. The less missing details there are, the better. What comprises a detail depends on the chosen target. Some targets are easier to break down into individual pieces of information, while others are less so. Simple line drawings using distinct shapes are far easier to break down than are drawings using more complex shapes that are not easily recognizable. There should be enough room in selecting the target for variety of detail, however, so that the chances of getting something close to the actual target by sheer luck are reduced as much as possible. Limiting the possible targets to just a few choices invites the ability to guess, so allow the person who chooses the target to be creative.

In my own experiments, my first target was a simple drawing of the Star of David, and the second target was a simple heart shape with a cupid’s arrow piercing it’s center at a forty-five degree angle. These turned out to be good targets, since they both incorporated certain details and omitted others that made the comparisons to my sketches easy to evaluate. The Star of David incorporated only straight lines, certain specific angles between those lines, and had no arcs or circles. If my results had included circles or arcs, or other angles, this would have gone against me. In the second experiment, the target involved different details, and the most complex part of it was the heart shape, which is what I failed to get accurately. However, I drew a large circle to represent the heart shape, rather than a square or triangle or anything else that would have been even less accurate. I had at least discerned that there was roundness to the peripheral part of the drawing. My greatest success was in the fact that I got the straight line of the arrow in the proper central position and at the proper angle, and didn’t add any superfluous detail. Missing minor details is better than overdoing it, since it’s easier to judge if you are getting the basic details even if you aren’t getting every detail in the drawing.

Further Comments

Although any serious development of psychic abilities should include a great deal of reading up on the subject in order to gain a conceptual understanding of what’s going on and why certain factors are beneficial and others not, this is not necessary if you’re just interested in seeing how well you might do. However, after you discover that you do indeed have some noticeable abilities, you might be encouraged to start researching the subject, and this will help to keep your interest alive and inspire you to keep experimenting from time to time. I encourage anyone who is interested in remote viewing to get a hold of Ingo Swann’s ‘Natural ESP’, which is probably out of print but can still be found in many libraries. Ingo Swann developed the protocols for the US government’s remote-viewing program that started in the early 1970s, and he lays them out in a very thorough and easy to understand manner, explaining the mechanics of what is going on in the mind during remote-viewing and how to avoid the problems that might interfere with accurate results.

The success rate of remote-viewers is very rarely ever 100%, and the average rate of 65% for those who are skilled at it is normal. However, this success rate can be enhanced to almost 100% by putting a number of remote-viewers on the same target, and evaluating their results together. Those details that are similar among the different results are more likely to be accurate, while those that are dissimilar are more likely to be wrong.

Remote-viewing is not just about ‘seeing’ distant objects. It can also include more subjective things, such as emotional feelings, smells, tastes, etc. Some people are more in tune with these sorts of things than with purely visual impressions. Even the subject matter of something, such as that of a book, can be picked up. A picture of a university might elicit in the viewer a sense of learning and education, but they may still fail to get the impression of the building in the picture. This is an indication that the viewer picks up this sort of information about targets better than they do physical characteristics, and this should not be discredited.

Advanced remote-viewing can involve the ability to influence a target, and this is where telekinetics comes into play. Some government remote-viewers are said to have been trained in this in order to affect the health and even the minds of others.

Some remote-viewers are able to look into the future, but there seems to be a certain limit to the accuracy, based on probabilities. The same limit in accuracy is seen in virtually all psychic events that deal with the future. The further into the future one looks, the less accurate the predictions are. This is due to the increasing number of possible events that can affect the outcome over time. To remote-view tomorrow’s headlines is far easier than to remote-view next year’s headlines, because much of what will culminate in the outcome of tomorrow’s headlines will already be in the process of fulfillment, while next year’s headlines have more of a chance of being influenced by a greater number of intermediate events that could result in a change in outcome. Even the prediction itself can cause a change that will result in it not occurring. In this case, the knowledge of such a possible outcome might be enough to change the events that would have led up to the predicted outcome. This leads us to reconsider many of the stories we hear about people who have premonitory dreams of future catastrophes that never occur.

Some practiced remote-viewers have described eventually being able to actually astral-travel to the target location, and what they describe during these experiences is exactly the same as what is described by anyone who has astral-traveled. They report having a visceral body and they can move through solid objects and orient themselves at any point in space. They are able to watch events as though being invisible but otherwise fully present.

It is also possible to sense when you are being remote-viewed, and even to prevent others from invading your privacy in this way. The US government has apparently incorporated this into their security measures at top secret facilities, as have other governments, as a response to their discoveries in this field and the possibility of psychic spying. These security measures are apparently enhanced by psychotronic technologies that were developed separately and are based on the discoveries of such men as Wilhelm Reich and Robert Pavlita.

My Experiments in Telekinesis

My interest in psychism led me to set up a simple method so that I could test my telekinetic abilities (mind affecting matter). I constructed a pinwheel device in which a square of folded paper is balanced on the end of an upright pin that's pushed through a cork that supports it, and the paper can spin freely. This device sits on a shelf in a corner of the room where it's out of the way of breezes and can be clearly seen from wherever I am in the room. This way, I can test myself at any time at my leisure.

I chose this device because telekinetic abilities are usually very weak in most people, and so the least amount of physical force needed to show telekinetic effects are preferable. It's only the friction of the paper on the pin that needs to be overcome, which is a lot less than trying to move a heavy object that requires a lot more kinetic energy.

In my earliest tests, I used my hands and fingers as the energy output points and kept them fairly close to the device, about six to eighteen inches away, and imagined energy from my fingertips pushing against the pinwheel. After not very long in trying, I was able to move the paper sporadically, and only in one direction, eventually making more than one revolution. This was slow and took a fairly long time, but in that time the pinwheel never reversed itself - it would move a little bit counterclockwise (my chosen direction), then stop and waver before moving a little more in the same direction. It seemed like I was keeping it from spinning in the opposite direction whenever it wavered, and readjusting my focus on it would start it moving in the desired direction again.

What I noticed almost immediately was that any slight movements of my hands or fingers usually caused a reciprocal slight movement or stop of the pinwheel. Also, the variation in the distance seemed to have an effect, as though there were certain distances that were more conducive to these telekinetic effects than others. These observations have continued over a number of years now, and I'm finding that there's a certain balancing act that must be kept up between focus and position. Exact positioning and stillness of the hand or body while concentrating on what I'm trying to do seem to be vitally important. Even very slight movements out of position have an effect. This has led me to consider that there might be certain positions or locations that are more conducive than others (which seems to be the case), and that these positions or locations are affected by natural emanations from the Earth itself, or which are otherwise flowing through those particular areas more freely than in their immediate surroundings. This idea is supported by what is already known about ley lines and power spots on Earth's surface, as well as the work of Wilhelm Reich in studying a subtle energy he called 'orgone'. I've also found that these stronger and weaker areas of energy are either very close together (within millimeters), or are always immediately adjacent to areas of opposite energies. Moving between two such positions of opposite energies that are very close to each other can cause the pinwheel to waver back and forth or rock very slightly. I've been able to keep it rocking for up to ten minutes steady, or to push it in one direction in very small increments.

It should be pointed out that slight air currents in the room can cause the pinwheel to move as well, so in all my experiments I make sure that there are no such currents. To assure that these aren't what are causing the pinwheel to move, I've hung a strand of thread from the ceiling so it hangs near the pinwheel, so that any air currents will move the thread as well. I have yet to see the thread move when the pinwheel does. I also watch both the pinwheel and the thread from time to time without attempting to do anything, just to see how easily they move at other times. When there are breezes, they both move quite easily, but the pinwheel tends to move randomly in both directions, back and forth. For this reason, in my tests I always attempt to keep it moving in only one direction, and this is precisely what it will do

I've also noticed that my physiological state has a definite effect on these tests. When I'm tired, the energy is weak, and when I'm feeling exceptionally alive and vibrant it's particularly strong. I've also noticed that physical exertion prior to doing any tests seems to bring the energy up. Recently wetted hands also seem to interfere with telekinetic abilities.

Another thing that I've noticed is that as soon as I see the pinwheel start to move, my natural inclination is to stop concentrating on making it move and instead to analyze the movement just produced, and this causes the pinwheel to suddenly stop. When I focus my attention back on moving it, it responds again. This suggests that the logical faculties (left-brain activity) interrupt the effect, which shows that psychic abilities rely on the temporary suspension of these faculties.

Whether the movement of the pinwheel is caused by energy emitting from a person's body or by energy currents flowing throughout the space around us, or something else entirely, my experiments with the pinwheel have so far produced clear evidence that there is a subtle force that we can direct over at least short distances to influence the movement of physical objects by small degrees. The ability to influence distant objects through this force seems to increase relatively quickly with time and practice, indicating that a person's sensitivity to the energy only needs to be recognized and made familiar in order to be able to begin to control it.

Over time, I've tested myself at further distances from the pinwheel with equal success. I've also used just my eyes, rather than my hands and fingers, as the energy output points, with equal success.

I've spent some time feeling out the subtle energies involved and I'm getting familiar with coaxing the pinwheel to move by imagining this energy extending from my fingers or eyes and flowing to the pinwheel to strike it or stream past along its side edge to skim it and push it to spinning as the energy stream passed close to it. I find that the pinwheel will often respond better when I do this. I've also noticed that there are certain points on the pinwheel that, when focused on, more easily cause it to move than other points.

Often, when I've been spending some time and effort in attempting to move the pinwheel in a particular direction but with little success in making it move at all, immediately after I break my concentration the pinwheel moves significantly in the opposite direction to the one I was trying to move it in, sometimes for several revolutions.

Throughout all my tests, I've been able to discern certain subtle differences between success and failure that have to do with the mental activity that's going on at any given time during an experiment. I've noted that success requires a somewhat dissociated state of mind, in that there should be no analytical thoughts whatsoever, and only the thought of the wheel moving as I would like it to. As soon as a slight movement occurs, it's a natural response to note the fact, and this causes me to make a comparison of its present position with its former position, in effect taking a measurement, which introduces the mind's logical processing, and this interferes with psychic functioning. This can all occur in fractions of a second, but through practice and experience, I've gained a greater awareness that it's taking place, and I can clearly see the relationship between the mind's state and the effect it has (or doesn't have) on the pinwheel. When my mind is not making any analytical observations, and is simply focused on a mental image of the wheel turning as desired while I'm staring at it, the wheel will begin to move. The motion is usually very slight at first, and this seems to be because I tend to react to the movement, bringing in the analytical mind, and this causes the movement to cease immediately. These two opposing mental states and their effects on the pinwheel can be observed quite easily now that I've become aware of them. My automatic reaction to analyze each movement tends to cause the pinwheel to start and stop in tiny motions, but it always moves in the direction intended, which signifies that a telekinetic effect is taking place.

It should also be noted that sometimes the pinwheel will tend to move in the opposite direction to that desired, but otherwise moves just as well, and it's my belief at this point that this is due to the fact that there are both positive and negative energies at work here, with one predominating over the other. The cause of this might be any combination of my mental attitude, my biological condition, and naturally occurring geophysical effects.

I notice that most of the time the pinwheel moves ever so slightly and I lose focus before it moves more than a few millimeters or so, and it often settles immediately back to its original position (but not always) when my focus is lost. It seems as though a very weak force is being exerted that is hardly strong enough to move the pinwheel at all, and longer periods of proper mental focus are required to move the wheel to any significant degree.

That these short movements result in the wheel immediately returning to its original position is odd, and I've wondered if this is just a trick of the eye, but I've been testing this, and have found several factors that indicate it's not any sort of illusion. First of all, these slight movements don't always follow with an immediate return to its original position, but just stops where it is until it moves a little more in the same direction, eventually moving a noticeable amount. When each slight movement is countered by a return to the original position, this will persist, whereas when it doesn't return, the movements are otherwise just the same. Second, my awareness of my mental state and its immediate effect are associated with the movements and counter-movements, and it can be observed that the mental state precedes the respective physical response in the wheel. It is my attempts to check that the wheel actually moved that causes it to just as quickly return to its original position, and it's when I stop analyzing or thinking about what's going on that it moves. I can see the wheel move just as soon as I visualize it moving, and stop just as soon as I analyze the movement.

Feedback is an important factor in developing psychic abilities, but in this case, it interferes too soon. It is too immediate, and the act of analyzing the first signs of movement of the pinwheel can easily become a habit that gets harder and harder to break if you don't catch yourself early enough and fight the urge to do so. In a way, fighting this urge is like practicing meditation, in that you must avoid engaging in all thoughts other than the one that you are meditating on.

Since I started experimenting with the pinwheel, I've noticed a definite improvement in my abilities. Although they're still not very strong, I've found that they're coming more under my control as I get a feel for them and learn what tends to work most effectively for me. Much of my learning is guided by intuition, which is appropriate, since this comes to us through the psychic channels.

Testing Remote Viewing and Psi Ability: Experiment #2

My second attempt at remote-viewing was similar to the first, and the results were just as amazing. I asked a friend to take a piece of paper and to draw something simple on it and leave it in her room at a specific location, and after a few hours I would attempt to psychically determine what it was and draw what I sensed.

When I was ready, I sat down and just took note of what immediate visual impressions came to my mind, and drew them on paper. I ignored any impressions that came through too clearly, knowing that the psychic information that came through wasn't likely to be so accurate, and assuming that these impressions I ignored were probably from my imagination. I spent very little time at this task, only a minute or two, and drew a circle and then another much smaller circle at its center. After another few seconds I got the impulse to add two diagonal lines that crossed through the larger circle from bottom left to top right, and these passed just outside of the smaller circle, to either side of it. 

When I later received the target drawing, it was revealed to be a simple heart shape with an arrow piercing through it. The arrow was drawn diagonally, from bottom left to top right. The fact that I had drawn an object (the larger circle) with its center marked (the smaller circle) and something crossing through it at the angle I did is a remarkable similarity to what the target drawing actually was. This experiment certainly boosted my confidence in the ability to receive fairly accurate information through even the simplest remote-viewing procedures. 

One thing of note should be made. The person I had make this second target drawing is a very emotionally sensitive person who I have a certain level of rapport with, and this may have enhanced the ability to send/receive information psychically. 

As you can see, my second attempt at remote viewing was an improvement over the first attempt, requiring less time and effort and through a single drawing attempt, rather than several. Although these are the only tests I've done so far, they reveal to me that remote viewing works, and that the average person can develop these abilities and improve them with continued experience, and through an understanding of the processes involved. I recommend Ingo Swann's book for anybody wishing to learn and experiment in these activities. The first test raised my confidence in my abilities, and I believe that this was reflected in the greater success in the second attempt, even though they were conducted almost two years apart. Confidence and belief in the potential ability to do this are clearly important factors in succeeding. 

I'll be posting something pertaining to the power of belief later on. Stay tuned...

Anthony Forwood

Testing Remote Viewing and Psi Ability: Experiment #1

I have done some tests in remote viewing, loosely following the protocols set out by 

Ingo Swann in his book, Natural ESP. I was very surprised by the results. 

In the first experiment, I had another person draw on paper a simple image of their 

choosing, doing so while alone and leaving the drawing in a predetermined place where 

I could not access it physically (a locked room). The person was instructed to let me 

know when the drawing was finished and in the location agreed upon, at which point I 

would try to remotely view it and draw my impressions. 

When I was ready, I sat in silence and allowed my mind to open up, allowing random 

visual impressions to flow freely, and when any impressions arose, I made quick 

representations on paper. By the end of ten or fifteen minutes, I had recorded two or 

three different impressions. Each impression was different, but all were similar in 

certain respects. One of these impressions was of a star-like formation of crossed 

lines, such as an asterisk or the spokes of a bicycle wheel without the tire rim 

included. A second impression was of a simple lattice-work pattern that was angled so 

that a series of lines formed slight trapezoids or angled squares in uniform rows. 

Later on, after this remote viewing attempt, I received the target drawing for 

comparison. It had been a simple line drawing of a Star of David. Although this was 

not what I had visualized or drawn, there were nevertheless certain significant 

correlations to my recorded impressions. First of all, the target drawing and my 

star-like drawing both contained identical symmetrical factors. Second, my second 

impression of an angled lattice-work pattern could be easily compared to the angles of 

the crossed lines in the target drawing. A Star of David consists of 30 and 60 degree 

angles, and these were the approximate degrees of the angles I saw in my mind and drew, 

rather than lateral, horizontal, or 45 degree angles. Third, both of my drawings 

reflected the stark line-work of the target drawing. 

As a first attempt at any remote viewing experiments, I am amazed at how accurate my 

impressions were, the more I consider them. The effort I made to focus on the target 

was not at all hard, and I simply waited passively for seemingly random mental 

impressions of a visual nature to arise, after thinking about the drawing at the 

location it was placed at. I did not consider the mental impressions as necessarily 

having to be anything that can be drawn, and in fact, the lattice-work pattern I 

visualized was not of a two-dimensional nature and had light and shade effects that 

made it seem more three-dimensional. But in putting it on paper it actually became 

more consistent with the actual target. 

It seems that from this last point, the final definitive impression was not complete 

until it had been reinterpreted from a mental impression into a drawing. This may 

indicate that my subconscious knew that the impression would be more accurately 

coordinated with the actual target once it was consciously drawn out, which it 

certainly was. 

Together, both of my drawings contained all of the information that made up the target 

drawing, but they just didn't have the proper relationships to one another. Ingo Swann 

calls this 'lack of fusion', and states that it indicates that a lot of accurate 

information is getting through, but the preconscious processes of the brain are not 

properly combining them. The psychic channel is open but still too weak to send more 

than bits and pieces of the total target drawing. If I had combined the elements of 

both received impressions, all of the basic relationships of the target drawing would 

have been present, and the target would have been easier to recognize. Swann says that 

lack of fusion is often apparent when the target is too complex for the psychic channel 

to bear. This was my very first attempt at remote viewing and I spent very little time 

at it and applied very little effort, and my psychic channel was weak and undeveloped, 

so something as simple as a line drawing of a Star of David was still complex enough to 

overwhelm the channel with information, and it was only able to send some of the 

information, or it was coming through in bits and pieces that didn't properly come 

together again either because the preconscious processes interfered, or because some of 

the information was still absent. Swann states that lack of fusion can also be a good 

indication that the ESP core is about to get more efficient. 

In comparing my two drawings to the target drawing, I also realize that the actual 

mental impressions I had received were not all that similar to either the target 

drawing or the two-dimensional line drawings that were produced to represent them, and 

it was the final drawings that more closely resembled the target drawing. The 

preconscious processes, with their various levels of filtering that the information 

must avoid in order to come through clearly and accurately, and the necessity of having 

to translate that information from its more abstract mental impression into a two-

dimensional line drawing, can both cause errors in interpretation. In my case, it may 

be that the necessity of translating my impressions back to paper was subconsciously 

understood. Swann states that the more prominent elements will be received and 

recognized first, and smaller details will come through later, just as with our normal 

visual impressions. Between my first and second drawing, I can see this. The first 

impression and resulting drawing consisted of 1) lines at 2) relative angles that were 

3) symmetrically positioned. The complexity of the target beyond that was lacking, but 

otherwise the main elements of the target were present. In my second drawing, greater 

detail was included, but was again misinterpreted. A close examination of the lattice-

work pattern I drew reveals 4) sets of parallel lines and 5) only horizontal and 60 

degree angles. A Star of David is made up of three sets of parallel lines at 0, 60, and 

120 degrees. This appears to indicate that between my two drawings, virtually all of 

the information was received but misinterpreted because it was broken up. There were no 

erroneous elements involved in either of my drawings. All the necessary information was 

present and nothing extra. It was only the way it was recombined that was flawed, and 

this occurred in the mental impression, before it was translated to paper. This 

suggests that the preconscious processes interfered, and understanding this will lead 

to resolving the problem as the subconscious learns to interpret psychic information 

more accurately. 

This first attempt at remote viewing was quite remarkable, in my opinion, and my 

success was probably helped greatly by the fact that I had been studying the subject 

quite heavily and had a clear understanding of the processes involved and was open to 

whatever might happen, knowing the statistical averages and not expecting too much 

beyond that. I appear to have done fairly well. 

Anthony Forwood

People Who Hear Voices

Both within the community of UFO enthusiasts and without, there are those who claim to be in communication with what they often describe as ‘higher intelligences’, and who receive these communications either through channeling or automatic writing, but also at times through what seems to be direct telepathic means. Very often, these people become the central figures in a certain kind of UFO or psychic group that borders on cultism. Examples of such figures in the past are Joseph Smith (founder of the Mormon Church), Edgar Cayce, and Uri Geller, all of who were seen as mediums through which such a ‘higher intelligence’ communicated, and they gained a certain following by people who believed that this higher intelligence was exactly what it purported to be: an incarnate being (or council of beings) that was working through these chosen mediums or telepathic receivers to deliver important information to the human race.

These groups, consisting of people from virtually all sectors of society (often including supposedly highly intelligent people in prominent positions), are so fascinated by the fact that their medium seems to be communicating with a disembodied intelligence and receiving information that they could not possibly know but some of which seems to be later verified, that these followers buy into these communications wholeheartedly, and feel compelled to believe whatever else they might be told by this source.

In certain cases, such as with Uri Geller, psychic phenomena are often associated with the contact they have with these ‘higher intelligences’. However these phenomena might be caused, whether they are real or fraudulent, they seem to be used to influence those receiving the communications into believing in the ‘higher intelligence’ through a show of the latter’s superior knowledge and abilities. Uri Geller himself claims that he acquired his amazing psychic abilities after he had a UFO experience when he was a very small child, crediting the UFO operators as the source of his special gift.

These groups that claim to be in communication with these ‘higher intelligences’ often come to think of themselves as a special group, and are often told as much by these entities, which only encourages these people to believe that such entities are real and what they communicate is truthful and to be taken seriously. These ‘higher intelligences’ always speak as though they only want the best for the human species, but they almost always demand blind trust in what they say.

These groups, and the medium who is central to them, very often attract people in very influential positions within our society, including very high-ranking politicians, corporate leaders, religious leaders, and members of the scientific body. This is scary, when you consider the sort of philosophies that are espoused within these communications. They speak of such things as ending war and cleaning up our environment, which are obviously good, but they also speak of a single world government and the human race’s place beneath these ‘superior’ beings. This is obviously not good. In general, these communications consistently warn of impending doom for the human race if we don’t take their direction and accept their leadership. Of course, they always express themselves in the most benevolent sounding tones, and so these followers believe that the communications must be sincere.

The problem with these sorts of groups is that whoever or whatever these ‘higher intelligences’ are, they can acquire a significant amount of power through those who believe in them, and take over those people’s lives in the process. This can have an eventual negative effect on society as a whole, should these people begin to act in response to these communications.

Heaven’s Gate is an example of one such group, and although the intentions of its followers were quite sincere in their beliefs, they were led by their leader, Marshall Applewhite, into killing themselves in a mass suicide, based on the belief that they were going to be resurrected into a higher plane of existence by a ‘higher intelligence’ that was traveling to Earth on a spacecraft that was following behind the Hale-Bopp comet. This group exemplifies the amount of power that these communications can have over those who believe them.

The ‘higher intelligences’ that communicate to such groups always promise to transform those who will follow them, but this transformation only ever equates to a change in their beliefs, and through the hope of a promised change in humanity, these people tend to change their attitudes, at least for a while, until they eventually become disenchanted and lose their faith in the communications. Many followers, however, will never admit to a loss of faith, and will continue to seek such ‘higher intelligences’ that might provide the sort of pseudo-spiritual guidance that the former ‘higher intelligence’ did before.

There are many others besides the mediums of such groups who also believe that they are in communication with such entities, but do not acquire a following, usually because they consider their relationship with these entities to be a personal one. Often, these people initially experience what they describe as a UFO abduction, and thereafter they continually receive what they believe to be telepathic communications from their ‘abductors’. Often, the people who receive such communications undergo major changes in their perspective of themselves and their world. In many ways this is good, because they begin to care more for things, and they feel that they are special and therefore appreciated, even if it’s only by these entities. On the other hand, they might also come to feel somewhat self-important, thinking that they’re superior to others because they’ve been chosen for these communications. Often, they come to believe that they’re genetically related to these entities, and therefore superior to other humans.

There is a great danger in all of this. Nobody can be certain that these entities are who and what they claim to be, or where they reside, or if their communications are at all valid beyond what’s obviously true and already known. The entities speak as though they are very wise and extremely intelligent, but this may just be an act. Nothing that they have ever been reported to impart has ever shown them to be any more intelligent than the average member of the human species, although they might seem impressive with their often confusing mystical or technical ramblings.

The followers of these ‘higher intelligences’ tend to believe that the entities are able to cause major events to happen, and are accredited with causing certain particular people to achieve certain goals that fulfill some agenda. This gives these entities the semblance of a certain godliness, and this is dangerous for those who believe in them, and by extension, for the rest of us. However they might do these things, we must realize that only because our science has not found a way to explain them, this doesn’t mean that they can’t somehow be done, either through sheer trickery, or perhaps through some technological means that we don’t yet know about. Of course, it’s not at all inconceivable that they’re able to use actual psychic means to facilitate these actions and events.

The philosophies that are communicated need to be given consideration for what they might reveal about these entities. Although they are somewhat different from group to group, there is an underlying similarity between them all that can be easily discerned. We must realize here that these entities may be very earthly and human in nature, and as such, they carry no greater power or intelligence than those who believe in and accept them as some form of superior being. Those who have posed as gods in times past have always had to use mystique and guile to provoke their followers to act in accordance with their wishes, and these ‘gods’ have always had to remain hidden from view, working through the efforts of their followers to achieve their purported goals. These ‘gods’ have also delivered the same general message as well, expressing the need for the human species to accept their guidance and allow their supposedly higher wisdom to replace our self-determination as a species in our evolution and development. These entities speak with a great deal of confusing terms and what sounds like scientific and religious superiority, but is only meaningless rhetoric when examined more closely. What they say boils down to what Jacques Vallee describes in Messengers of Deception as “an unquestioned faith in external intervention that will bring simple answers to mankind”.

The message is the same as what those who dream of power would have us believe, if they could. It’s the same message as we find in those religious institutions that strive to dictate what the masses should believe, and in the same fashion of using the fear of an opposing force that wishes only to enslave us, such as we see in the personification of good and evil in the figures of a messiah and of a devil, a Christ and an Anti-Christ, angels and demons, good sprits and bad spirits, etc. The language used may be different, but the underlying concepts are always the same. We are to believe that we’re going to be saved by these entities, but we must first blindly show our faith and trust in them.

The entities behind these communications rely on the fact that many people have become dissatisfied with our current world and our leaders, and the fact that our science has failed to provide us with any sense of purpose and is only leading us into ever-greater dangers for ourselves and for the rest of the planet. This is a theme that’s on the minds of many people at this point in our history, when it already seems that the biblical Apocalypse is just about upon us, and using the conditioned fears and beliefs surrounding this long-established prophecy of our ‘End Times’ to encourage followers to believe that these entities are here to initiate its fulfillment. This plays on people’s desire to not have to take responsibility for their predicament, that our failure as a society has resulted in the need for such intervention, and that it’s the only solution.

There’s really nothing new or original about what these communications impart. Other than the confusing and often uninterpretable statements they often make, the message is otherwise the same as any religion has used to subjugate the masses and goad them into submission through fear and empty promises. The only real difference with these more modern forms of ‘spiritual’ communications is that they seem to be designed to put the listener into a semi-hypnotic state using its form of confusing verbiage, at which point a more specific message is conveyed that can have subliminal effects on their thoughts and beliefs.

In Jacque Vallee’s book, Messengers of Deception, he puts forward the idea that these entities do not come from outer space, nor from another plane of existence, as they often claim, but are in fact human like the rest of us, and might be using psychotronic technologies to create the illusion of UFO encounters and contact with superior beings. Such technologies do exist, and they’ve been in development since at least the 1940s, both in Russia and the US. These technologies are directly associated with secret military projects in mind-control techniques, which in itself reveals the sort of mindset we’re dealing with in military circles in general. If we consider this mindset further, we can see that they take their authoritarian roles and superior privileges too far in most situations that they are involved in, revealing that they have become a force unto themselves, operating outside of and beyond the role that they were initially designated to fill, and taking privileges that were never given to them. This marks them as a possible source for these communications.

When incredible technologies exist that are not known about, people scoff at the suggestion that they exist because they don’t believe that anyone could possibly keep such a secret for very long before the existence of these technologies was revealed. These people will say the same thing about government secrets of any type, and this has been the logic used again and again to reject a large number of allegations against the government over the years, the most prominent being those more popular allegations of government conspiracies that we hear about. However, the very fact that these allegations arise reveals that the secrets do in fact get out, and when they’re such persistent and long-standing allegations, such as with the JFK assassination for instance, this only reveals even more so that secrets are not being kept as well as some might hope. So, when we hear someone scoff at the suggestion that certain technologies couldn’t possibly exist in such secrecy for very long, we can only agree, and point to the evidence that exposes them as being real and not so secret. Such doubters are only doubters because they don’t look for the evidence, and instead find ways to discredit it because it doesn’t suit their beliefs to accept it. But mind-control technologies are very real, and there is a wealth of documented evidence to prove this fact beyond any doubt. The actual magnitude of what these technologies are capable of is uncertain, but what is known is that they can cause the sorts of experiences that people seem to have in relation to both the UFO enigma and paranormal activity. Telepathic communications with what appear to be disembodied entities can certainly be artificially induced.

Are all these people receiving these communications from the same single source? This can’t be answered with certainty, but there are many similarities in the message contents that suggest that they are. So, what is the intended goal? It seems that these communications are part of a bigger agenda, an experiment in social manipulation that relates to altering beliefs about who we are as humans and what our destiny is. This manipulation, if that’s what it is, exploits the mystery of the UFO enigma as a means to convince people that these entities are who and what they claim to be. However, whether the UFOs are actually associated with these entities is another matter altogether.

Jacque Vallee offers two possible explanations for the UFO enigma that reveals its relationship to these groups who believe they’re communicating with higher intelligences. The first is that this is all a ploy being orchestrated by an unknown group or groups for the purpose of political exploitation, influencing these groups and the public as a whole for their own ends. This explanation rests on the possibility that these UFOs are not from somewhere else, but are manifestations that are somehow created by humans. The second possibility is that an unknown group or groups are exploiting an otherwise real UFO phenomenon by fabricating many of the UFO reports and creating an entire mythology surrounding them for their own ends. Vallee states that it’s not necessarily the UFO phenomenon itself, but the beliefs surrounding it that are being manipulated by a human group or groups who have their own objectives. He also states that he believes that whoever these people might be that are orchestrating this, they probably have a good understanding of what the real UFO enigma is all about, and therefore know how to exploit it without revealing their deception. Whether or not those behind the telepathic communications have actually made contact with the real UFO operators – and are possibly in collusion with them – is another matter.

Vallee lists six possible effects on our society that the UFO enigma could cause, whether or not they are real:

1. A widening gap between the scientific community and the public, due to the skepticism regarding this issue that’s being promoted by the former;
2. Humans will tend to not see themselves as masters of their own destinies, and instead give credit to what are perceived as superior beings;
3. The enigma promotes the idea that we need political unification, and draws our attention away from our planet and the need to care for it better;
4. The UFO ‘contactee’ groups that we’ve discussed here may become the basis for a new form of religion based on the ideologies that are communicated to these groups;
5. The irrational faith put into the belief in extraterrestrial intervention may end our support for scientific rationality as more and more people come to believe that this enigma is beyond the capability of science to explain;
6. The ideologies expressed in communications with these ‘higher intelligences’ will promote race superiority and totalitarian systems that will eliminate democracy.

Whatever is going on in the shadows at the human level surrounding the UFO enigma, it’s making the issue much more complex and difficult to reach the truth, and this can only be purposeful. Two factors that have become related to this issue and which only confuse it further are the incidents of crop circles and cattle mutilations.

Crop circles seem to suggest an attempt at communication by the UFO operators through some sort of mathematical symbology, and this has left many UFO investigators wasting valuable time attempting to understand these glyphs and their possible meaning. At best, they’re an attempt to make us think that the UFO operators are highly intelligent and are trying to tell us something. If there really is a tie between crop circles and a ‘higher intelligence’, one would think that this would have been communicated more easily through the mediums of the UFO groups we’ve just discussed, or that the purpose of these glyphs would have been clarified through such communications. No such explanation seems to have ever been received.

Cattle mutilations seem to suggest that whoever is responsible for the UFOs is attempting to instill fear of the UFO operators in the public’s mind, while at the same time wasting the time and efforts of UFO investigators by diverting their attention and adding confusion to the entire enigma. For all we know, these mutilations have nothing at all to do with the real situation, and are merely subterfuge created by one or more human groups who are exploiting the UFO enigma for their own ends.

Out of all of the mysterious aspects surrounding the UFO enigma, it’s those people who hear these voices in their heads that can be most easily accounted for. These voices are not schizophrenic delusions, and they are not created from their own imaginations. There is too much similarity between individual cases to allow for such a coincidence. They can best be explained as the effects of certain psychotronic technologies that have been in development for some years, and the voices are being projected into these people’s heads for the very reasons that Vallee suggests: to manipulate people’s beliefs and create an expectation or even a longing for an intervention by what we would consider superior entities who will save us from our own failures as an inferior human race.

We must not forget that at least some of the UFO accounts are indeed real and not human in origin. This is supported by the fact that sightings, and even contacts, have been occurring throughout our history.

The rise in the popularity of UFOs began in the mid-twentieth century, soon after World War II. Western society was in the process of change, propelled by the advances made in science during the war effort that were offering new and previously unimagined products and technologies. This opened up not just new markets and opportunities for industry, but also new ideas and the possibility to pursue them. This was largely reflected in the burgeoning field of science fiction at that time, which introduced many of these new ideas to the public at large. At the same time, television was taking over radio as the medium for news and entertainment, and this offered a greater opportunity for those in power to experiment in manipulating the perceptions of the public not only through sound but also through images and visual effects.

The idea of conquering space also began to bloom at this time, first as fictional entertainment, then as a real possibility. The ideas that had been promulgated by science fiction were capturing the hearts and minds of the people, and it was an opportunity for those in power to exploit. Religious traditions were dying fast in the modernized world, and people were open to new ideals that placed them in the position of masters of their own destinies, and for some, masters of the destinies of others. God was dead, and the new hopes and promises of science seemed to be an adequate replacement that would sooth our fears and uncertainties about the mysteries of this great universe. Nothing seemed impossible anymore.

Those in power saw the opportunities for increasing their own advantages by directing and manipulating the affairs of ordinary people in certain ways. They began to take advantage of the ability to distort perceptions through the new media of television, merging imagination with reality. In the process, they realized that people were often unable to distinguish between the two unless they were told which was which, and this led those in power to consider how they might take advantage of this for their own ends. They saw that these distortions in sensory perceptions also led to distortions in people’s beliefs, and this led them to considering ways that they might use this to benefit themselves. This could be done through psychology as well as technology.

The war had helped tremendously to advance technologies based on electromagnetic phenomena, and much of this was in the hands of the military organs of the major governments, still out of reach of public awareness due to the secretive nature that had been fostered by the war mentality. As long as the full extent of these technologies remained out of public awareness, they could be used to manipulate public perceptions without concern for the public realizing what might be going on.

Are psychotronic technologies the means by which these communications from ‘higher intelligences’ have been received by individuals, either as unconscious mediums or consciously through apparent telepathic transmissions? To doubt that this is possible only opens us up to being exploited more easily. To educate ourselves about what is possible and has already been achieved in this area of science will only help to secure us against such exploitation.

The Power of Self-Affirmations

Self-talk has definite power to affect personal situations and outcomes. Such self-talk, when not purposefully directed, is little more than mental chatter to us, but when it is purposefully and intentionally directed, it is able to affect energies that will build up to the point that they can cause the outcomes that reflect one’s thoughts.

As we have already discussed in previous chapters, whatever we might think in our minds has an effect on our external reality through the subconscious connection we have with everything else. It is therefore of vital importance that we are always careful of our ongoing mental dialogue, and that we learn to direct its content as much as possible to reflect the expression of desired outcomes, and not undesirable ones. In order to do so, it is very helpful to use what are known as self-affirmations. These are nothing more than short, purposefully directed statements that reflect a desired situation or outcome. They are very powerful when properly applied. In most religions, this mental force is directed through prayer, which has the same effect, although the guidelines for the most effectual results are often not understood or followed, and so the results are often ineffectual or misdirected.

The guidelines listed below should therefore be followed when using self-affirmations in order to gain the best results from your efforts in using them:

• They should be as concise as possible. A short and precise sentence is more direct and understandable than one that is long and convaluted with detail. This is because self-affirmations are meant to speak to the subconscious, and the subconscious doesn’t use analytical processes, which are the domain of the conscious mind and therefore should be kept out of the whole process as much as possible. A short sentence that rolls off the tongue nicely, when repeated over and over, will work well in tapping into the subconscious mind as you implant your instructions. If you can’t keep your affirmation short, consider making it in two or three separate sentences that can either be said one after the other with a short pause between each, or individually at different times of the day.
• They should be worded in the positive sense. This means that you should avoid use of the words ‘no’, ‘not’, ‘never’, etc. The idea is to establish positive, creative energy, which is important in manifesting equally positive outcomes.
• They should be stated in the present tense whenever possible. Use the word ‘is’ or ‘can’ rather than ‘will’, etc. This establishes in the subconscious a certain sense of immediacy, and keeps it engaged in fulfilling its instructions during the moments that the conscious mind is active with other things and the subconscious is free to work in the background.
• They become more powerful the more often they are repeated. Repetition is a part of the language of the subconscious. By using your affirmations like a rhythmic mantra, you tap the subconscious mind and put it in a more suggestible state. As you repeat your affirmation over and over, you’ll learn to keep it going in the background of your mind while you do other things. If you do this ritually, you’ll eventually be able to hold your full attention on other thoughts while still repeating your affirmation. This doesn’t mean that you must repeat the affirmation until you’re exhausted. In fact, it’s only necessary to spend a lot of time repeating an affirmation at first, in order to initiate a good connection with the subconscious and establish the instructions you want it to carry out, but once that connection is established, you only need to spend from a few minutes to no more than an hour each day repeating a particular affirmation. After the subconscious has clearly received its instructions, it only needs regular reinforcement. In the end, however, more repetition means more attention given by the subconscious to any particular instruction.
• They are more powerful when combined with corresponding physical or mental images. Images are another part of the language of the subconscious. Any sensory input you can give to the subconscious that helps to reflect what you want will also help in making your instructions clear. This can be done with photographs or anything else that symbolically reflects your desired outcome.
• They should only be applied with positive intentions. It is recommended that you always apply self-affirmations towards positive goals. This is for the same reason that it is important that they are positive in the way they are worded. Negative intentions are disharmonic, and will have an equally negative effect on the amount of power the subconscious has in fulfilling your goal.

Self-affirmations are goal oriented, and yet, because they operate at a subconscious level, there is no need to be consciously concerned with how those goals might manifest themselves. It simply needs to be consciously accepted that the power of the subconscious is able to affect events at a deeper level than we are consciously aware of, and let it do its work.

Having doubt in the power of the subconscious is debilitating to the suggestive power of self-affirmations, and will counter the effects because it is itself a form of instruction to the subconscious.

The subconscious acts like a computer in that it takes instructions from the operator and fulfills them without question, providing output that correlates with the instructions given to it. Like a computer, this process can be almost instantaneous for simpler instructions, or it may require some time for more complex instructions. Once it is given its instructions, it works in the background to generate results.

When you give a computer an instruction to do an operation, such as sorting a list of words into alphabetical order, it will begin to follow those instructions exactly. But if, while it is performing those instructions, you interrupt it with new instructions to randomize that same list, it will stop sorting and thenceforth begin randomizing. This is analogous to what happens when you first apply a self-affirmation and then counter it with doubtful thoughts. The subconscious takes all conscious thoughts and self-talk as instructions and tries to fulfill them as they are given. For this reason it is important to overpower any doubtful thoughts you may have regarding the goals your self-affirmations are designed to achieve. Positive and negative thoughts have equal but opposing power, and so it is important to be sure that any thoughts that are negative to achieving your goal must be outweighed by positive thoughts to achieving it. This is why the repetition of affirmations makes them more powerful. You add weight to them with each repetition. Therefore, for every thought that is negative to your desired outcome, you must apply a greater amount of positive thoughts to compensate.

It should be noted that there is a direct relationship between the repetition of thoughts and the repetition of actions that develop into habits (as discussed in previous chapters). In both cases, the repetition directs the subconscious to automate a response to the given stimulus. With habitual actions, we learn to make them without conscious direction. In the same way, our habitual thoughts tend to arise without conscious direction, and this causes us to learn self-defeating attitudes if we are not careful. This negative and self-defeating attitude has come to afflict each of us more than we realize, and only when we begin to consider the contents of our habitual self-talk and how it tends to defeat us can we begin to see how much we limit our own potential.

I will give an actual example of my first attempt to use a self-affirmation, and the success that resulted. There was a certain young lady from my past who I hadn’t seen or heard from in more than two years, and I was interested in seeing her again, just to settle my mind that she was still alive and doing well. I was curious about the power of using affirmations at this time, and so I decided to put it to use to see what results I might get. So, for the next few weeks, as I strolled around town in my leisure time, I repeated an affirmation that instructed my subconscious to allow me to see her again. I did this each evening, repeating the affirmation over and over to myself as I walked about. Then one evening while I was doing this I looked across the street, and there was my lady friend, who smiled and waved at me. I was dumb-struck. I had no idea that I would actually run into her, and so I had not been prepared to approach her when I saw her. The best that I could do was to wave back as I continued on my stroll. But I was very convinced that this was more than just a coincidence because it was the only time I have ever run into her and several years have since passed in which I still frequent the same area but have never seen her again.