Monday, November 21, 2011

Book Review: The Sense of Being Stared At


This book combines both anecdotal and experimental evidence making the case for telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance. It does give some pretty compelling evidence, and in many cases, presents good summaries of the extensive research done into these areas.

Here is an example of one amazing experiment to test the question of how dogs know when their owner is coming home. Is it based on seeing their owner? Here's their owners car/bus/train? Based on an accurate sense of the time of day?

Here's how the experiment was constructed: A videocamera covered the area were the dogs normally waited for their owners. The owners carried a pager, and at a random time during the day were paged and instructed to come home immediately. So the experimental question: at what point do the dogs start spending a statistically significant greater amount of time in the place where they wait for their owner?

The answer: immediately following the point at which the owner receives the pager notification and plans to come home.

The conclusion: The experiment appears to indicate that dogs know their owners are coming home at the moment that their owners have the intention of coming home, way before there could be any physical evidence of their arrival.

Here is another amazing experiment that comes to mind: When subjects are trained to record their dreams immediately on awakening. While some dreams are fluff, many dreams refer to real-world events. About 50% refer to things that have happened in the past 48 hours, while about 50% refer to things that will happen in the NEXT 48 hours. Wow!

From a literary perspective, the book is OK, but I found myself speeding past certain sections. I'd rank it as a 3 out of 5 for writing, but 4 out of 5 for amazingness of content.


The Sense of Being Stared At: And Other Aspects of the Extended Mind by Rupert Sheldrake: Buy at Amazon

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