How did I get into this position and why was I imagining my son's car enveloped in white light?

The last thing I remembered was writing at my computer. Then suddenly I was at the desk next to the computer. My head was on my crossed arms. My eyes were closed. I was visual­izing (with intense concen­tration) my son's Volvo surrounded by protective white light. I don’t remember moving from the com­puter to the desk. But a friend had once told me that when a plane she was in took off, she always shut her eyes and visualized it surrounded by protective white light. I had adopted the habit.

On this particular day, my son was home from college for the summer and had stopped by my study to say he was driving into Santa Rosa from Bodega Bay, California, where we lived. I said fine and con­tinued to work at my com­puter. Then my head was on my arms on my desk. I have no memory of moving from the computer to the desk. I simply came to in the unfamiliar position.

About ten minutes later, my son ap­peared in the study door. I said I thought he was driving to Santa Rosa.

He said, “I was, but I’m too shaken up. I was going through the pass where the road is only two lanes, with rocks rising up on the left and a drop-off on the right. No soft shoul­der. Approaching a blind curve, the idiot driv­ing behind me started to pass. When I could see around the curve, I found the same thing happening: two cars were ap­proaching, and one was passing. Four cars, two lanes. I slowed down and pulled as far to the right as I could without going into the ravine. Some­how we managed not to hit.”

“How long ago was that?”

“About ten minutes.”

The same time that I had had that mys­te­rious and intense experience. I said, “I sur­rounded your car in white light.”

He simply said, “Thanks, Mom.” He was on summer vacation from UC Santa Cruz, which is not a college that attracts students who expect life to conform to the most staid versions of reality.

I can't explain the synchronicity I experienced that day. But I know I'm not alone in having a sixth sense. Zillions of people have had ex­peri­ences they can’t explain and don’t necessarily talk about for fear of being disbelieved and maybe laughed at. Although such experiences are often referred to as para­normal, enough of us admit to having them to sug­gest they're actually fairly normal – whether we like it or not. And we don't. We prefer explanations to mysteries. That's why we invented science.

One of the most common uses of our sixth sense is to call in a parking space when none is in view. For instance, once when my son was driving and we were searching unsuccessfully for a parking space in a mall, I finally said, "If you'll turn off the radio and not talk, so I can concentrate, I'll call in an empty space."

He humored me. With intense energy, I visualized the red lights of a car backing out of a parking space. In about thirty seconds, we spotted the red lights of a car backing out, and we pulled into the empty space. This wasn't a one-shot coincidence. I often do it. I even taught a skeptical friend to do it, and she reports it works for her, too.

In another mysterious experience, I was simply a witness. My mother telephoned and, in near hysteria, told me her engagement-ring diamond was lost. She had driven to a friend's house for lunch and as she parked, she glanced at her hands on the steering wheel and discovered that her platinum ring no longer held her emerald-cut diamond.

My husband heard me trying to comfort her and asked what had happened. I hold him. After a moment, he said, "Tell her it's in a gray metal track under the driver's seat."

To humor us, both my parents looked in the car but did not find the diamond. Later my brother-in-law looked and found nothing. Then I visited my parents, who lived on the West Coast while I lived on the East Coast, and I looked in the car for the diamond but didn't find it. Finally my husband visited my parents with me. One evening after dinner, he said to my father, "May I have a flashlight? I want to look for Betty's diamond."

My father thought this was ridiculous but got a flashlight. My husband looked around the car and found nothing. Finally, in the back seat, he said, "Damn it, diamond, where are you?!" In frustration, he struck the back of the driver's seat with his fist with such force that the seat rose. And there in the gray metal track on which the seat had rested was my mother's diamond.

When my husband went to her in the kitchen and silently opened his hand, she glanced at his palm and said, "I knew you wouldn't find it."

She was so sure her diamond was gone that she couldn't see it. He just stood there with his hand out, palm up, until she looked again. Then she came as close to shrieking as a lady may: "You found my diamond!"

She had the diamond returned to its setting, and my niece in Tel Aviv now has the ring (that's another story).

Congress has known for decades that something mysterious is going on. In fact, they've paid for research. Here is part of a report from a Congressional investigation (Survey of Science and Technology Issues Present and Future. Committee on Science and Technology. U.S. House of Representatives. Ninety-seventh Congress. June, 1981).

"Recent experiments in remote viewing and other studies in parapsychology suggest there is an ‘interconnectedness’ of human mind and other minds with matter…. Experiments on mind-to-mind interconnectedness have yielded some encouraging results…. The implications of these results is that the human mind may be able to obtain information independent of geography and time….”

Hmmmm …  Any of this ring a bell with you? Have you ever had an experience you can't explain?