As I mentioned in the"Meet Hank Friedman" page, when I was about five years old, I had
one of the most profound spiritual experiences of my life. I was lying in bed, at night, about to
fall asleep, when I found myself being taken into the presence of God.
I was shown why I was born, what I was on Earth to accomplish, and how my life would
unfold. At the conclusion of this incredible journey, I was told,"and now you will forget
everything that was revealed to you, except the reality that this experience took place."
I opened my eyes, and knew that I had been given a great gift, and understood, even at
that early age, why I was not allowed to remember the details. (It would spoil the journey.) I
obviously didn't know what to do with my vision, other than to remember it.
As a young child with two older, and very competitive, sisters (5 and 8 years older), I
very much wanted to win whenever we played games together. Without realizing what I was
doing, when we played Monopoly, I would "talk" to the dice, and ask them to please get me to
specific squares. I would often get the roll I wanted. This skill grew with age, until no one would
play the game with me.
(When I was about 24, on one New Years Eve, my girlfriend and I were visiting another
couple and I mentioned this story. The other guy immediately challenged me and brought out a
Monopoly board to test my abilities. I announced out loud what move I was asking for, and
achieved 75% of the rolls I called in the first part of our game, and about 50% overall, by the
time I won the game. I guess I never lost the knack. I've had more friends, upon hearing this
story, ask me if I ever gambled at Las Vegas. The answer is no, I don't think I'm meant to use this
gift that way.)
It wasn't until I was in my early teens that my next psychic awakenings began. My two
sisters and I began playing with a Rhine deck of cards. (The ones that have different patterns on
each card: a square, a circle, a triangle, wavy lines, etc.) One of us would hold the card, while the
others tried to guess what was on it.
By chance, we should have guessed correctly about 5 out of 25 times. But instead, we
never went lower than 10 correct calls, and often scored higher! We then realized that our entire
family had quite a degree of ESP (as we called it in those days).
Later, we began playing the game Password (where there are two teams, and one person
of each team tries to guess the word his partner is holding). My sister Diane and I became so
psychically linked that we could guess the others' word almost immediately, and won handily
over all competition.
In my late teens, my abilities became so strong that I had to suppress them. What
happened was that I developed very strong short-term precognition. First, I became able to tell
who was calling on the telephone when it rang. (And in a household of very big talkers, and lots
of phone calls, that was no mean feat.)
Then I began to know when the phone was going to ring (and who it would be) ahead of
time. Once, my sister was about to leave to meet a friend. I told her "wait, your friend's about to
call back changing the plans." Sure enough, within a couple of minutes, her friend did call back
with a change of plans.
Then I was walking to school, on the way to take a test, and my final score appeared in
front of me. And I began knowing others' test scores ahead of time, and who was about to
approach me from behind with a "guess who?", etc. I was even beginning to develop a reputation
for being "strange".
It finally got so frequent that everything began happening twice for me: once in my
precognitive mind, and then a second time when it actually happened. You have no idea how
unpleasant that became.
I finally began to clench my whole body and mind forcefully, each time a precognition
would come, until I had "slammed the door shut" successfully. I didn't have any precognitive
experiences for years after that (except once a few years later, when I foresaw an entire year
accurately).
My firm footing on the Path began with, of all things, an act of President Nixon. I was in
graduate school in neurochemistry, and conducting my doctoral research. Even though the funds
for research had approved by Congress, Nixon withheld them from all of the schools across the
country. As a result, my advisor took me aside and told me to "take the Summer off, and take
whatever classes you want at the university, while we wait for the funds to be released."
I've always loved animals, so I signed up for a course in animal behavior. When I got to
the section of the college bookstore where the book for the course was placed, I happened to
notice, next to it, "The Psychology of Consciousness" by Robert Ornstein. Since consciousness
was really what I was interested in (and why I was studying neurochemistry) I bought the book,
read it, and was never the same.
I next went to the class that the book was offered for, which led me to SAT, an incredible
transformational group created by Claudio Naranjo, integrating practices from the Sufis, Tibetan
Buddhism, Hindu Meditation, Gestalt Therapy, and many other psychological and spiritual
disciplines.
In 1973, I attended a 5 day transformational intensive (run by SAT) where we were given
a non-stop "crusher course" in personal growth. For an entire week after that, I could hear
people's thoughts as clearly as if they had spoken them aloud. It was particularly telling in the
case of one of my housemates. I had incorrectly assumed that she was just mean, because she
could be very harsh and snappy for no reason. This week, however, when I could hear her
thoughts, I realized that she had no malice in her whatsoever, just pain and confusion. At the end
of the week, I approached her and apologized for pre-judging her, and told her,"I realize now that
you never mean to hurt anyone, you just don't know how to stop it."
The next week, her closest friend took me aside and said to me,"What did you say to her?
For years, we've been trying to get her to go into therapy, but she always resisted. Whatever you
said to her finally reached her, and she started therapy right away." I was touched and amazed
that, completely without meaning to, I had helped her see herself.
[End of Part One]
Do you want to read Part Two of Autobiography of a Psychic? click here
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Copyright © 1998 Hank Friedman
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