Chapter One
The Falling Chandelier
All good science starts with observation, and humans throughout history have been recording observations about their psychic experiences. My father coined the generic term "extrasensory perception" (ESP) to cover the three basic types of these experiences: precognition, clairvoyance, and telepathy. In each instance, the mind receives information in an unusual way, without the help of the five known senses.
Precognition
The following mother's experience is an illustration of precognition—the ability to foresee an event before it happens; to break the barrier of time and peer into the future.
The Falling Chandelier
A young woman in Washington State, whom I will call Amanda, woke up at 2:30 a.m. so upset by a terrifying dream that she had to wake her husband and tell him about it. She had dreamed the large chandelier that hung over their baby's bed in the next room had fallen into the crib and crushed the baby. In the dream, Amanda could see herself and her husband standing amid the wreckage. The clock on the baby's dresser read 4:35 a.m. In the dream, she could hear the rain on the windowpane and the wind blowing outside. When she told her husband of the dream, he just laughed at her. He said it was a silly dream, and she should forget it and go back to sleep. In a matter of moments, he did just that himself, but Amanda could not sleep. The dream was too frightening. Finally, she got out of bed and went to the baby's room, picked her up, and brought her back to their bed. She looked out the window and saw a full moon. The weather was calm. Feeling foolish, she got back into their bed with the baby. About two hours later, they were wakened by a resounding crash. She jumped up, followed by her husband, and ran to the nursery. There, where the baby would have been lying, was the chandelier in the smashed crib. They looked at each other in amazement, then at the clock by the crib. It was 4:35 a.m. Stunned, they listened to the sound of rain on the windowpane and the wind howling outside.
The dream Amanda had several hours in advance of the accident had essentially come true. In her dream, she had foreseen the future in remarkable detail: the chandelier falling on her baby's crib, the time it would fall, and even the unexpected change in weather.
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Copyright © 2005 by Dr. Sally Rhine Feather and Michael Schmicker