Psychic exercise post I submitted for my Atlantic University TP6100 Course – January 15, 2020.
I had to rack my brain a bit to come up with an incidence in my life that might be considered spontaneous psychic experience. I’ve spent a great deal of time around physics and mediums over the past year whose stories will make your head spin, but unfortunately, this is not so much in my case…although I’m working on it!
The experience occurred approximately 40 years ago. I was a senior in high school and had gone out the night before with some friends since Thanksgiving break had just begun. This was in the days before instant communications, social media, or even cable sports and we were most likely in the back of some parking lot drinking beers so we weren’t anywhere near a television. When I saw my Dad first thing early the next morning, he asked me who won the Sugar Ray Leonard-Roberto Duran fight the night before, which was held on November 25, 1980. Without skipping a beat, I confidently said, “Sugar Ray knocked him out in 8 rounds.” I had no idea where the information came from, and I wasn’t even that much of a boxing fan. He kinda laughed at how quickly I answered, and said: “Yeah, right, how do you know?,” and he kept walking.
I discovered later in the day that I was, in fact, correct, that Sugar Ray had knocked him out in 8-rounds, which is now known as the no mas fight since that’s what Duran said to Leonard in that round. No mas, which obviously means “no more” in Spanish, is now part of our cultural lexicon as a result of the fight and I still use it from time-to-time. After learning I was correct, I told my Dad that I had no previous information about the fight when he asked me about it that morning and that I just blurted it out from apparently “nowhere.” I was excited about my newly discovered skills. But providing additional data points to the theory that Western parents “educate out” their kids’ potential psychic abilities, he basically told me I was crazy and that I must have heard it somewhere along the way.
I was debating as to whether I should even relate this story until I came across a couple of passages from Broughton’s book we read this week as part of our assignment. In describing intuitive experiences, he notes that the person “just ‘knows’ something, and often that knowledge comes with an unexpected degree of conviction” (1991, p. 15). This was clearly the case with me when my Dad inquired about the fight. The other passage is equally relevant. Broughton also suggests that in a “surprisingly large number” of apparent psychic experiences “the information conveyed is trivial” (1991, p. 18).
This particular story for some reason has always stuck with me. I can’t say it’s changed my life in any tangible way, and because of it’s “trivialness,” it was certainly not confusing or troubling. As I reflected on this assignment, it dawned on me that maybe it was a placeholder of sorts. In other words, it’s a bit like the technique of “foreshadowing,” where the meaning of it for me as a 18-year old held little value but now that I find myself pursuing this master’s, I can look back at it with a different set of eyes. LIke foreshadowing in a book or movie, it may have been setting the stage for where I’d end up later. And it may also be an invitation for me to comb through my life looking for other traces of spontaneous psychic experiences.
Reference
Broughton, R. (1991). Parapsychology: the controversial science, New York: Ballantine Books.