Do Humans Have Psychic Ability? (Part One):

By Tony Sivalelli, Author, Ambassador to Conscious Vitality

 As we discover there is potentially more to the human mind, the next question may be how much more we can unlock in the near future.  Many people do believe there is more to being human (which might just be more of a ‘universal’ term) and that now is the time to look at this, and many scientific minds are leading the way.  One area that we may be on the fringe of opening up to, with new discoveries coming in the near future, may be what has been called a psychic ability.  Psy is from the Greek word Psi,  meaning the mind and this also extends to psychic or ionic’s meaning ‘waves’ – so, literally ‘mind waves’ can be construed.

This so-called ‘sixth sense’ has been looked at for some time and it has been a subject of controversy since man’s recorded beginnings.

There are many alleged stories and legends that come with most human cultures, and the existence of individuals who may have possessed what could be referred to as psychic ability are among them.  The claim of heightened sensory perceptions has always been part of many early religious texts.  In fact, there are several doctrines that mention spiritual masters who were said to have had heightened abilities that went well beyond the norm of their time, and even beyond what we currently understand today.

These abilities have been referred to as clairvoyant, prophetic and mystic, while the people themselves have been called seers, prophets, psychics, witches, magicians, oracles, and more.

Historically speaking most everyone has heard of ‘Nostradamus’ (Michel de Nostredame), the French physician of the 1500’s who would often use quatrains, (a stanza within a poem that also used varying rhyming patterns), to describe alleged future events.

Russian mystic ‘Rasputin’ (Gregori Rasputin) of the early twentieth Century was said to be not only wise but also prophetic.  At times he was also called a healer and was perceived by some to have power over others.

There have been many native medicine men who were also shamans to their respective lands that lent guidance to their people through-out history. 

There have also been stories of people who have had so called ‘premonitions’ which can be described as ‘glimpses into future events’.  One example is the story of the morning of April 14th 1865, when Union General Ulysses S. Grant’s wife Julia, who dabbled in the occult, had a ‘strong feeling’ (a premonition) that something bad was going to happen to her husband if he attended the Ford Theatre that night. After a hearty argument, she finally convinced her husband not to go. It was later discovered that General Grant’s name was on John Wilkes Booth’s planned assassination list.  It was the night Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.  

Of the early 1900’s is Edgar Cayce.  Cayce was a very gifted man, born in Kentucky in the late 1800’s, he was called the ‘sleeping prophet’ because he would literally lie down and then go into a trance-like state.  From there he made a connection to another realm in which he could allegedly look at a person’s past lives or so-called future events, he even gave cures for some medical ailments.  It was even said Cayce could channel other intelligences.  Then, once awakened, he would have little or no memory of the information that he had just given.  Cayce had done over 14,000 readings.  Much of his work, recorded at the time of each session done, is on file today at the ‘Association for Research and Enlightenment’ located in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Cayce had also referenced the old world of Atlantis, he said it to be an ancient past civilization on Earth that had advanced technologies and more.  Anyone interested in researching the subject of so called psychic ability should look into Edgar Cayce.

Modern Psychic Phenomena and Developments:  

Of more recent times, in the latter part of the twentieth century, there was Peter Hurkos and Uri Geller. Both men often used ‘psychometry,’ which is an alleged psychic technique that enables one to divine facts about an objects’ owner by handling objects that are, or were, connected to the what, or whom, information is being sought.  Commonly used items for this practice are jewelry, clothing, wallets or photos.  How this practice works is that once the object is held by the psychic, they then claim to be able to see or feel the object’s aura which has a remaining distinct connection in relation to the subject of interest.

Andrija Puharich, a medical doctor and parapsychology researcher, had felt Hurkos and Geller were two of the best psychics he had ever tested.  He had done extensive testing on both men which took place over separate time periods.  Puharich went over much of this information in two books he authored titled, ‘Beyond Telepathy’ (Doubleday, 1962) and ‘Uri: A Journal of the Mystery of Uri Geller’ (Doubleday, 1974).  The story of Hurkos was that he was a gifted painter and at age 30 (1941) fell from a ladder and suffered a head injury and was in a coma.  When he came out of the coma he then felt an ability of some kind to often connect certain articles and/or properties to people who had reference to them. I once saw  an old black and white TV show clip of Peter Hurkos, it was while I attended The Farsight Institute (GA) during my introduction to Scientific Remote Viewing (1997).  Hurkos was a guest on a talk show (1960s) and he literally went into the audience and was given random articles by certain people and after handling them for a few moments he gave, what most who participated in the audience felt, were very accurate readings (again called psychometry).  To me at that time it was quite apparent either the show was all a fraud or Mr. Hukos had some real ability to connect to another aspect of being human that we do not really understand.

For Uri Geller he had practiced as a magician and illusionist early in his career while also being known for having impressive psychic abilities.  It was in the late 1960s that Geller started to get noted for psychic abilities.  He, like Hurkos, then went on certain television shows and started to display some of his acclaimed gift.  After that Geller was then asked to participate in displaying his abilities to the scientific community and that area of expertise also had a ‘tie-in’ to the intelligence community.  From there Geller was offered tasks to define certain drawings or objects that were literally ‘set-up’ many miles away from him.  Some of Geller’s drawings were quite impressive and have been showcased publicly.  One was what he described as a group of balls or bubbles and he drew them on top of each other going downward to a point and the actual target was a bunch of hanging grapes.  There were other reported successes as well.

Uri Geller was also noted to have the ability to bend metals, for instance a spoon and he allegedly claimed he had distant contact with what he felt may have been extraterrestrials.

From there Geller was in a sense ‘recruited’ to do some investigative type-works by other research communities.  It should also be noted that Geller has also had his share of skeptics.  Some which felt Geller, and most all ‘psychics’, were mere entertainers that could trick people and played on people’s desire to believe.  Others felt although there may have been some slight of hand performances per say, Geller simply performed just too many feats and some had no doubt been quite real and had been witnessed by several reputable observers. 

From there Stanford Research Institute (SRI) got involved and later we will go into a bit more about the early 1970s and how the military got hold of a group of scientists from SRI and how the idea of what is now called ‘Remote Viewing’ was born and so-called ‘psychic’ spies were actually trained.