Lesson in Mind Over Matter
It was billed as a workshop in telekinesis--moving objects with the power of the mind--and most of the students wanted to believe. Really.
But although the catalogue of Learning Tree University promised that participants in a parapsychology workshop would discover and learn to control their innate psychic powers (“foster the ability to control dice and other objects mentally”), the class was more like a “power of positive thinking” workshop.
No step-by-step instructions on how to levitate socks and direct them into the laundry hamper while still in bed sipping the morning coffee. No advice on ensuring that the dice come up seven or 11 every time.
Instead Lee Domez, clad in a pale blue suit with a lavender striped tie and a teddy bear lapel pin, preached his philosophy of believe and let-believe.
In a small, freshly painted pale-pink conference room at the Learning Tree, a Chatsworth school with a widely varied curriculum, Domez flashed a toothy grin and spouted truisms, a good ol’ fashioned motivational pep talk, with a sprinkling of New Age terms thrown in.
“You have to be yourself,” said Domez, with the fervent zeal of a TV evangelist revealing the Truth. “You have to march to your own drummer.”
“We create our own situations, even if it’s only self-fulfilling prophesies,” he advised.
“All of us are in total charge of our own lives. If you don’t take charge of your life, I guarantee that there will be someone else to take charge for you.” Sounding like a self-help guru lecturing disciples, the silver-haired, silver-bearded Domez admonished the four women and three men in the class not to be afraid to explore the world of psychic phenomena.
“I salute each of you for being in a class like this,” he congratulated them.
“Each of us has experiences that are not logically explained, and we are afraid to discuss them,” he said, his three silver and turquoise rings and silver bracelets flashing as he gesticulated, his voice rising and falling melodramatically. “Why are we afraid to discuss them? Because there is a thing out there called society.
“There is so much prejudice against what we don’t know,” he said.
“Spend five minutes a day, center on who you are and just listen. You will be surprised with what you hear.”
But Domez was preaching to the converted, to people who have already dabbled in the realm of inexplicable phenomena and are not afraid to admit it.
One member of the class said she has seen her guardian angel. Another sees auras of color around people. A third told classmates that when people die they are just “making their transitions. It’s a spiritual world, and they are just living in another expression. I may not see them, but we are communicating spiritually.”
Tim, an Orange County computer programmer, talked about out-of-body experiences with the casual confidence of a world traveler telling a novice tourist about a trip to Outer Mongolia.
He told the class how his spirit left his body and went to a neighbor’s house, where he peeped in a window. The next day, he said, his neighbor confirmed his account of events inside the house.
Gwen, who lives in the Valley, spoke hesitantly about her premonitions of danger and ESP communication with a friend. With the shy manner of a young girl telling about her first kiss, Gwen explained after class that she had a vision of her uncle and a flame while on an evening hike with a friend during a camping trip. When they returned to her campfire several miles away, they found Gwen’s uncle passed out with his arm in the fire.
Several similar experiences have convinced Gwen that she may have psychic powers, and nervously, she is now setting out to explore the regions of the Unknown.
These weren’t the kind of students who needed urging to “open their minds” and drop their inhibitions. They accepted telekinesis as a possibility and wanted concrete how-to tips and a road map, or at least convincing evidence that there is such a thing.
After an hour, Domez addressed the subject of the day.
The possibility that objects can be moved with mind power alone cannot be ruled out, he proffers. What else, he asked, can explain the pyramids of Egypt?
“How did they move those big rocks in Egypt to build those pyramids? Those huge stones are nowhere in evidence around Giza. People say, ‘slave labor,’ but that’s not logical,” he said. “Even with our advanced technology today we could not duplicate that, and scientists have said that.”
With all other scientific explanations thus eliminated, that leaves telekinesis.
“One tenet stands above all else: You must have belief,” he said.
“Remember Uri Geller, who used to bend spoons and keys with his mind on television,” Domez began, but was interrupted by a class participant, an engineer from Israel.
“I knew him personally. We grew up together. That guy is a crook,” the engineer protested. “Maybe all these things are possible. I’m here to learn. But it’s obvious that what he was doing were all tricks.”
That was it. No flying socks. No odds-defying dice.
Class dismissed.