Second Sight (6 page)

Once back in the silence, I found myself on a porch. “There are beautiful shrubs everywhere. The scent of jasmine is filling the air, and I can hear the sound of a lawn mower in the distance.”

Dr. Moss motioned for me to go on. Now I could hardly contain myself. Finding that I could reenter the scene at will, smell fragrances, and observe the landscape, design, and architecture of a house I'd never seen was like discovering that I could fly. The limits of my capabilities seemed endless. For the first time I knew there wasn't any reason to be afraid. I felt restored, vindicated, determined never to allow this experience to slip away. Eager to go on, I opened the front door and stepped forward into the living room.

“The house is nicely furnished but not lavish by any means. It isn't occupied,” I continued. “I hope I don't run into anyone. I don't want to intrude.” There were no signs of people, but I knew they were present. Dr. Moss didn't live alone. She had children, one or maybe two, and I had a feeling that other close relatives visited her a lot. There was a warmth, a family atmosphere. This surprised me; I guess I thought she worked all the time. It wasn't how I imagined her life to be, but I related it to her anyway, trying hard not to confuse my preconceptions with what I was actually seeing.

It had never occurred to me previously that I could consciously direct or focus my premonitions, looking at details the way I did in real life. Usually my visions had appeared unpredictably, in a flash, giving a general overview of a situation, then vanishing. The possibility that I might be able to turn my head left or right to explore various aspects of a room, for instance, or even choose to float above it, seemed incredible. I had entered an entirely new world.

I then found myself standing in the center of a large bedroom. “I'm now on the other side of the house but I haven't walked a single step to get there,” I told Dr. Moss, trying to convey my delight as I continued to look around. “I see a wide, double bed with a wooden headboard and a light-colored bedspread. On both sides of the bed are identical wooden tables.

“The right one has a single drawer where you've put some notes you've written to yourself. On the wall opposite the bed are two large windows. Between them is a long dresser that stands about waist high. There's an old faded photo on the top—it looks like you with your arm around a bright-faced teenage girl. Off to the right of that wall is a closet with your clothes in it. You left the door open.”

Now immersed in the reading, I forgot where I was. My only reality was the house, its rooms and hallways, scents and colors. All my previous concerns had been replaced by an intense curiosity to absorb each moment of this experience, as if I'd been starving for it my entire life.

When, finally, Dr. Moss told me it was time to stop, I felt incredibly invigorated. Whatever I'd been doing seemed natural—preferable, in fact, to my ordinary life. So preferable, actually, I suddenly realized that a part of me didn't want to come back, wished I could stay there forever. I began to feel a wrenching sensation in my stomach, a sense of loss, a sadness, as though I'd been taken from my home.

Perhaps because she sensed what I was experiencing, to reorient me Dr. Moss asked that I take a few deep breaths, begin to feel my arms, my legs, my toes, and then prepare to leave the house and return to her office. This gave me some time to catch up and get my bearings. Finally I opened my eyes and looked around. Dr. Moss sat quietly at her desk, smiling warmly. Even so, it took a few minutes to acclimate myself. It was like the lingering sensations of an extraordinary dream as you wake up, having part of yourself in both realities but being fully present in neither.

“How did I do?” I inquired cautiously at last, scared to hear Dr. Moss's response.

Leaning closer, she answered, “I think you did remarkably well. For the most part, your reading of my home was quite accurate.”

Her words caught me off guard. I could hardly speak. In effect I heard her saying, “You're all right. In fact, you've always been all right. There's never been anything to worry about.” I felt liberated, light, as if I'd won a race when nobody believed in me. But no one could dispute it; I had won, even when I hadn't believed in myself.

“You mean I'm clairvoyant?” I asked.

“Well, that's often used as another word for ‘psychic,'” she said. “So yes, you are.”

I tried not to look too excited. I didn't dare reveal any of my insecurities to Dr. Moss, but I'm certain she was aware of them. Wisely, she didn't press me to open up. I guess she knew I needed time for everything to sink in. In a scholarly tone, she proceeded to give me feedback on the reading, minimizing how phenomenal the whole situation was. In this, Dr. Moss was similar to many other scientists, striving to be objective by putting emotions on hold. To hear her discuss what had occurred, I could just as well have been sitting in algebra class listening to a teacher review the principles of a new theorem.

As she went on, Dr. Moss validated every significant specific I had described in her home. “It's quite common for psychics to pick up an exceptional amount of detail,” she informed me. “In fact, many psychics have told me that in this highly receptive state, colors appear more vibrant and objects seem more defined and compelling than they do in everyday life. Nuances we wouldn't ordinarily attend to stand out with a crispness that isn't otherwise present.”

I listened intently, transfixed. Despite my youth and inexperience, Dr. Moss was treating me as a colleague, an equal, never using her credentials or expertise to place herself above me. Not once, however, did I mistake her understated supportiveness as a lack of enthusiasm or interest. Rather, I saw it as a sign of her professionalism. It was clear that she had a deep respect for abilities such as mine, yet at the same time refused to glorify them or present them as anything but perfectly natural.

I could easily have spent the entire afternoon with her. There was so much I longed to know. Questions arose from my childhood: What do these abilities mean? Was I responsible for the dire events I was able to predict? Also, new questions arose from our meeting: Can I direct my abilities? Is it possible to look into another person's life whenever I like? How lucky I felt as I listened to her responses, the intelligence of this quite human but tough-minded researcher. With practice, she explained, I could learn to direct my abilities, which were now in an unformed, immature state, and happened spontaneously without conscious control. But, she continued, when psychic abilities ate fine-tuned, one can look into a person's life if the person is open. When someone is closed off and private, she continued, it's much harder to pick up information about them. The key now was for me to practice and get feedback on my readings. Though all people had some degree of psychic ability, she felt I had a talent.

And then, as it was clear she had to proceed with her workday, she asked, “How would you like to come work as a volunteer research assistant and psychic here at the lab?”

Dumbfounded for an instant, I doubted that I'd heard her correctly. But there was no mistake. She wanted me to join her UCLA staff! I accepted immediately and we agreed to meet at the lab the next day.

At exactly eleven, there I stood, facing the NPI, a towering red brick giant looming above me. Two large automatic doors swung open, I walked through a large central lobby and stepped into the elevator. For the past twenty-four hours I'd been fantasizing how the lab would look. I'd envisioned it as a huge place that took up an entire floor, with phones constantly ringing off the hook. I imagined a staff of scientists, both men and women, all wearing horn-rimmed black glasses and white lab coats like Dr. Moss's, and wondered what they'd think of me.

I exited the elevator on the seventh floor, took a right turn, and headed down a long beige-tiled corridor until I reached Room 23-189. I stood still for a moment, inhaled deeply, and then slowly pushed open the door.

At first I thought I must be in the wrong place. I panicked. The lab was not at all what I'd pictured. Off balance, I tried to steady myself. Then I saw Dr. Moss waving for me to come in. I was so relieved that for an instant I had an impulse to jump into her arms and ask her to hold me—an appalling thought for somebody who was trying so hard to appear mature.

The lab was one big room, slightly larger than a good-sized bedroom. There were no high-powered scientists in white coats, nor were there any experiments going on. There were just two guys in jeans, roughly my age, organizing piles of loose black-and-white photographs on narrow Formica desks lining the far left wall. They smiled and said hello.

The lab centered around a huge rectangular metallic structure about ten feet square called a sensory-deprivation chamber. This is where they did the Kirlian photography, a technique by which energy fields around the body could be photographed and documented. The chamber, which had one tiny window that filtered out all audible sound and most of the light, was artificially lit from the inside and could comfortably fit about four people. It reminded me of a giant refrigerator and was sealed as tightly as a vault. I poked my head through the entrance and saw photographic equipment inside. Even though the air reeked of the potent smell of film developer, I liked this space. It felt mysterious, as if something secret were going on. The rest of the lab was basically functional with a few desks, lots of files, and two telephones. When I looked out the window to the left, I could see Westwood Village in the distance, and to the right were fringes of the UCLA athletic field in the northern part of campus.

Dr. Moss was extraordinarily warm. She insisted that I call her Thelma, and I couldn't help but feel at home. One of the men, Barry, poured me a cup of coffee and invited me to sit down. A psychophysiologist and psychic responsible for many of the research projects, Barry was short and slight, spoke in rapid bursts, and gave the sense that he was tuned in to realms others didn't perceive. He was offbeat, energetic, and smart. I took to him immediately. Indirectly, Dr. Moss assigned me to him that day. For the next few weeks I dutifully followed him around and watched everything he did.

The lab soon became a wonderland for me. It was a gathering place for scientists, scholars, healers, and specialists in parapsychology to share their research and theories. For the first time I had the opportunity to meet other people who were psychic. They were not aging crystal-ball readers wearing turbans with smudged red lipstick and rouge, but real men and women with real jobs who dressed and acted—most of the time!—just like everybody else. I felt like I'd awakened on a different planet, a saner one, where I wasn't a freak or a crazy person. It was as if I'd been initiated into a secret society only a few people knew about, camouflaged and protected by the conservative exterior of the NPI.

I was a kid at the most spectacular carnival I ever could have imagined; each ride was better than the next. Nobody there cared what I wore or who my parents were. And, most important, I was encouraged to become psychic, as outrageously psychic as I could be, without any restrictions or rules. Besides what I'd felt with Jim and Terry, I'd never experienced such unconditional acceptance before. Everyone I met, everything I saw, including healings, Kirlian photographs of energy fields, and psychic spoon-bending demonstrations, brought me one step closer to myself and everything that had been untapped in my own heart.

Though it had now been years since my parents and I discussed my premonitions, it seemed that this aspect of my life, under the auspices of the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, wasn't as untenable to them. Their change of attitude was gradual, but universities were a familiar world they respected. Although I was studying phenomena conventional scientists didn't condone, if both Jim and UCLA approved of what I was doing maybe it had some merit. Since even my childhood premonitions were now being defined in an academic context, they became more acceptable: My mother began to speak about them once again and my father actually showed a visible interest. Compared to my being on drugs or drifting from job to job or dropping out of college, of course, they thought this was an improvement. As for Thelma, though my parents were skeptics, they were willing to keep an open mind about her work, mostly because she was a clinical psychologist.

Overall, I was relieved by their reaction, though still cautious. We took it slow, but my parents and I were beginning to trust each other. Nonetheless, my mother's response continued to possess a spin that made it less credible for me. She'd say that my childhood psychic experiences were “something I don't understand,” and she would again and again convey her fear that they would preclude me from fitting in, that others would deem me crazy. My mother believed in the importance of observing social norms, and she valued the opinion of the medical community. I knew that. Even so, I sensed that some other truth was being withheld. In any case, now I was a “research assistant” at NPI, something, it seemed, we could all live with.

Despite this validation, I didn't approach being at the lab with an attitude of deadly seriousness. I viewed the whole thing more with a sense of play. I didn't scrutinize the events I witnessed nor was I overly critical of them. After all, when someone is released from prison after many years they don't question their own freedom. For me, the lab was a wondrous gift, plain and simple.

Before drugs and the accident, I used to dance alone in my bedroom at sunset. With my arms spread wide, I would imagine myself flying like an eagle high above the canyon floor or twirling wildly like a whirling dervish, uncontrollable and free. Then, when life got painful and complicated, I shut down. I'd now begun to open up again. Sometimes after a day at the lab, I would come home and turn on Miles Davis, Vivaldi, or the Stones, depending on my mood, and let my body move in whatever way it liked. With nobody watching, as the sun set over the ocean, I'd once again extend my arms and begin to dance.

I was being born, but birth is seldom easy. I needed all the help I could get. Thank goodness for Barry; he nudged me along. If it had not been for him I might have put off going to his special group forever. I really wanted to check it out, but the mere thought terrified me. Once a week, members of this group got together to develop their psychic abilities—it wasn't a lecture course where I could hide in the back row and just listen. If I attended, I'd have to participate and practice my readings out loud in front of everyone. What if I couldn't do it? Suppose I wasn't able to perform on command? Though I'd been successful with Thelma, I was afraid my reading was a fluke. It had just spilled out of me, but I didn't have a clue what I did to make it happen or how to repeat it.