Timothy Schultz:

I am very excited to be joined here today with Mitch Horowitz. He is a PEN Award-winning historian and author whose work explores metaphysics, parapsychology, and the unexplained. His books include The Miracle Club, Daydream Believer, and Modern Occultism, and he hosts the podcast Extraordinary Evidence, ESP is Real. Mitch, thank you so much for taking the time today. How are you doing?

Mitch Horowitz:

I'm great, thank you my man.

Timothy Schultz:

Yeah, thank you very much. Now, I want to dive right into this. On this program, oftentimes, I meet and interview people that have had an experience about something before it's happened in real life, particularly with people that won prizes or they've come across something that might seem sort of random, such as lottery wins. And, you know, this happened to me and happens to a lot of people that I've met and interviewed. So, what do you think is happening with people when they have a dream about something and then it happens in real life? Because I mean, this happened to me, I dreamt about winning the Powerball and won about three months later, but I believed and really, really convinced me it was going to happen. And so what are your thoughts on that type of thing?

Mitch Horowitz:

Well, let me respond to that in two parts. One of the things I really love about what you and your audience and your community are doing on this show is that you are responding to, I think, a rhetorical objection to ESP or precognition that critics often use as a kind of Oh, I guess verbal rejoinder, without really thinking through what they're saying. The most vociferous critics of ESP, and this happens all the time, and there are some very big names who say this, big names, who run from me and who will not debate me, which might be wise, depending on how you measure rational self-interest, but they will say, oh, if this ESP stuff is real, then why aren't people going to Vegas and getting rich, to which my answer is, and you answer it every day on this show, how do you know that that's not happening? How do you know that the winner of Powerball or the winner lottery or the winner at the blackjack table, who's facing daunting odds, to put it mildly, how do know that, that person isn't, are not themselves using this small but statistically significant spike in outcome that gets measured in the parapsychology lab. That may be exactly what's going on and we use language for these things all the time that we're comfortable with but we don't really have understanding of. Again, it comes down to this delivery mechanism. We talk of instinct. Well, I just had a feeling. I'm having a lucky run. Well, this is a, you know, it's a happy coincidence. It's a synchronicity. We all abide and recognize these things. We accept them as occurring, but we don't really know the delivery mechanism behind them. So I submit that the guy who's sitting down at the blackjack table, who's doing great, who is not counting cards or is not allowed to count cards by the casino. Which I think is unfair, but it's like punishing somebody for being good at math. But leaving that aside, you know, he may be sitting at that table and doing great and saying, well, you know, what can I tell you? You know, I just have a knack for it. Well, it may be exactly what you're just describing. And the delivery mechanism is the big question again. We have a really vast amount of data at this point, current data that's been collected say in the past 25-30 years around precognition and scientists including Dean Radin, Daryl Bem, Julia Mossbridge among others have worked so hard to design impeccable experiments testing for uh... Precognitive moments usually using bodily reactions as a measure of precognition for example if you show a person images that are disturbing in some way uh... There are certain bodily indicators like sweat adrenaline blood pressure that will spike when looking at a disturbing picture and what the scientists have found just to say one facet of their work is that If you... Show someone such pictures that elicit measurable bodily reactions, in a statistically significant number of cases, they will evince those bodily reactions moments before viewing the picture. Not in every case, but in enough cases so that it's a measurable statistical departure from your baseline average or accident. So we have vast amounts of this data. And as such, we have evidence of a precognitive effect. We have evidence of time not being this straight arrow that binds us to a linearity of events. And we know, we know that time is, is, we no longer speak really in terms of the so-called arrow of time, which is in. Inviolate concept in classical physics. But in fact, in special relativity and in quantum mechanics, the arrow of time is not inviolate, it's simply not. Einstein demonstrated that time bends under certain conditions, either of extreme velocity or extreme gravity, such as in a black hole. We know this to be literally true. Dig this, and this is an absolute fact. Absolute fact. And I challenge people to go to my work, look at my sources, and hold my feet to the fire if I'm even so much as exaggerating. Even in our own era, astronauts, while they're moving nowhere near the speed of light, they do evince measurable slowing of the aging process, minute but measurable slowing of the aging process. They're moving at extreme velocities, nowhere near light speed, which is what Einstein was using as his baseline. But even at slower velocities this can be measured. Time, linear time is not absolute. And furthermore, within quantum mechanics, we have mathematical formulae that demonstrate as a logical necessity that certain particulate objects like the positron actually move backward in time. We haven't been able to measure that as a physical verity. I'm not sure precisely how you would, but there are mathematical formulae. Richard Feynman won the Nobel Prize in Physics for mapping out the mathematical formula of a positron actually moving backwards in time. So the notion of an arrow of time belongs more to the 19th century than it does to the 21st. I'm saying all this because I'm affirming your supposition, which is that is precognition possible? Absolutely. Absolutely. I haven't even gotten into the retro-cognitive, retro-causal effects that Daryl Bem studied at Cornell, which have been so widely validated as confirmatory in meta-analysis. The big question, I guess, is how? How is any of this possible? That's the yawning mystery of our time. I think it falls to each generation to make a theoretical effort, even if we're not sure. My personal effort is I use the term selection versus the more commonly heard terms like manifestation, law of attraction. The only reason I don't use terms like manifestation and law of attraction, I have no intrinsic problem with them at all, but they're very often applied. The notion that we live under one mental super law. And as I was saying earlier, I'm not sure of how I feel about that, but I use the term selection because I really wonder, I really wondered Tim, if... It isn't the case that our biological senses, taste, touch, sight, whatever we use for perception. I wonder if these things are really just tools of measurement, not entirely different though, of course, biological than what somebody might use in a particle lab where I'm collapsing a lot of complexity into shorthand, but I think I'm doing so accurately, where if something is in a so-called wave state, and it's not until measurement that it becomes localized actual, it goes from being potential to being local, real. One could say that measurement or perception localizes. And it could be that individuals have the capacity to localize different realities by their sense of perception. So in other words, let's say you have a precognitive dream where you say the number 12, that's the winning number. It may be, it may be that there's an infinite number of winning numbers and that that's as real and potential as any other. But the fact that you've localized it through perception, in a sense, allows you to select or join that strand of reality, just as real as any others, just as actual as any other, but your perception localizes that into, let's say, your field of consciousness. So, that's one means of looking at it. Could be completely wrong. But I think every generation has to at least make the effort to say what is going on here because the world is really a lot damn stranger than we were raised to believe. And so there's got to be a mechanism. So that's one attempt to describe a mechanism

Timothy Schultz:

Well, it's fascinating. If you are enjoying this conversation and are interested in intuition, dreams, and synchronicities, I did put together a free guide called Seven Signs the Universe is Guiding You. It's completely free, and you can download it using the link below, but let's continue. Well, there's people out there that just seem to be very lucky people. They just have things go their way. People sometimes win multiple prizes, and they just seem like a lucky person. Everything is happening. For them. They feel this way and it continues to happen. So can our conscious mindset that we do consciously understand here, if we believe something, how much does that matter?

Mitch Horowitz:

Timothy Schultz:

You think that it is possible that that can help influence a seemingly random event.

Mitch Horowitz:

Yes, I do think so. And I would say to people. Don't be discouraged if it doesn't always work because I can tell you, all the things I'm talking about, including everything I've been discussing with regard to ESP, does not always work. The point is not that it's like a water faucet and you can turn it on and turn it off and you always get the same result. Heraclitus said nature likes to hide and it can be a jagged and fitful pattern. The point is to beat the curve. The point not to hold yourself to the impossible standard that, well, it worked last time, so it's damn well gonna work this time. Give yourself flexibility, it seems to me. The point to beat curve, not for it to always work, not for to always to work, because there are plenty of instances where some of the experiments I've been referencing do not work. And The point is not for a thing to always work, the point is for a things over time and across time to demonstrate a better than chance or better than accident result. And that's entirely real. So I ask people and I ask myself to give yourself a break. Don't expect that what I'm describing is gonna produce the same result every time.

Timothy Schultz:

And if you are trying to produce a result and you are trying your own experiments with this, you mentioned, I don't know if you use this word, but state akin to sleep right before you sleep or between being awake and asleep and a lot of teachers and people that are really into this will say that that's fertile ground to teach your subconscious of something. So what are your thoughts of that sort of thing?

Mitch Horowitz:

Timothy Schultz:

And when you do experiment, when you're visualizing or using affirmations, how important or unimportant do you think that the feeling is with that? Because some people swear by the feeling of it as if it's happening now.

Mitch Horowitz:

That's a big question. That's really big question, because... Take the case, the teaching of Neville Goddard. Neville is my intellectual hero. I love him. And Neville constantly emphasizes entering into the feeling state of the wish fulfilled. And I honor that, I honor. But I also have to note, as I was earlier, that life is grinding. People go through periods of grief, people go through depression, people go though anxiety, people experience fear. And we are not always able to summon a feeling state. We just can't always summon a feelings state at will. Neville, he was a beautiful man. He was just a beautiful, man. He was a natural performer. He was natural thespian. He began his life on the stage as an adult. And he may have had a great gift. For being able to enter into different feeling states as maybe a great method actor can do. And that's valuable and that's valid and that real. But I don't want to see the individual who is suffering and who is unable to enter that feeling state from being locked out of the royal road to consciousness, let's say. So in my work, I asked the question of whether there are substitutes for the feeling state. One of the substitutes that I suggest, and I write about this in my current book, Esoterika, is the question of whether a passionately felt, well-defined wish is itself enough to tap the causative or creative agencies of the psyche. A wish by its very nature must be starkly honest and really passionately felt. And I think that we are not always as in touch with our wishes as we believe we are. There's so much peer pressure in our culture. This peer pressure has probably grown even worse with the advent of social media, where we're coming into contact with so much noise. And so much judgment constantly. We're just not built for it, and yet there it is. And I encourage people in an atmosphere of total privacy, not telling anybody what they're doing, not confessing anything to anybody, to really allow themselves, you could do this during hypnagogia, for example, to really allows themselves to acknowledge within what their deepest wish is to themselves. And be starkly honest about it, a real wish when it comes is usually a little embarrassing, is usually something that we want to argue with because we're conditioned to think, oh, that sounds selfish or something like that. So here come all the perfuming terms. Well, you know, service and love for humanity and so on and so forth. And I laugh because we sometimes use certain perfumed ideas to hide ourselves from ourselves rather than just acknowledging, hey, this is my wish, this what I really want. Just get to know it, just get to it. Don't take for granted that one does know it because we repeat things to ourselves so frequently that the question of what is my Wish can almost seem overly familiar. Like, well of course I know my wish. Well, don't be so sure. Take a moment, take a beat. Who's doing the talking? Are you really in touch with stark truth within? And when you find that stark truth, don't go telling anybody. Just keep it, protect it, like you're carrying a candle through a rainstorm. Just protect it. It's yours. Don't submit it to other people's judgment or evaluation. I think knowing one's wish, by its very nature, evokes passions. And those passions relate to everything that we've been talking about, hopeful expectancy in the placebo or the ESP model, living from the feeling state, living from end in Neville's model. It could be that the wish evokes those same passions and those passions are available to us even when we're going through periods where we're unable to summon a particular feeling state or scene or image. The wish is always impassioned when it's true.

Timothy Schultz:

Well, it's very, very interesting. And when you have this wish, I want to get into a little bit with ESP or if you, because when I won the lottery, many people know this. Years ago, many that I meet and interview. But for me, it felt almost like an out-of-body experience where I felt like I went. It sounds crazy for anyone that's never experienced this, but I felt I went out of my body and I had already won. But I've had that experience with many other things in my life besides that. And this happens to many other people, many of which I've interviewed. And so the question is, because I believed after that that it was going to happen, and I told people, and I had this energy towards it, not necessarily with my win, but with anybody watching or listening to this, doesn't have to be about the lottery, but with anything, a random event. Seemingly random you believe it's going to happen. You've had a premonition or something like that that makes you believe something happens and then it happens how much of that is influenced by your energy belief or Feeling it or you're intentionally visualizing this versus it's already happened and Maybe it's causing retro causality because you're feeling it from the future which hasn't happened yet

Mitch Horowitz:

It may very well be when you were speaking of the out of body experience, it may very well be that through the sensitivity of your perception, through the wish, through the, the hopeful expectancy, the confidence that you felt that you had already, in effect, joined that strand of reality in which, well, you had the number, and this is the number. And it's one of an infinitude of outcomes that are as real as any other, but that through perception, you were capable of joining that strand of reality. And the out-of-body description is so interesting because maybe that's what this selection process feels like in the body. You know, people are always trying to explain what is the placebo response anyway? You know it's just endorphins being released, it's nothing more than anti-inflammatory enzymes being released and so forth and so on. Well. That may be so, but we don't know that that's the only thing that's going on. There may be a dozen different things going on of which those are two. And it may be that what we call placebo is what the spiritual appeal looks like in the body. Looks like in body. So it may that what you experienced is what selection, in the sense I'm using it, looks like. In the body. It feels like an out-of-body experience, and in a sense it very well is. I mean, if one accepts the possibility that perception is reality, you are, in a certain sense, it seems to me, moving among worlds. And you joined a strand of reality that was completely valid and real, and you have the evidence of that. It's fascinating, and you and some of your community may have a very special gift for that. You know, this is another of the questions that we face. J.B. Rhine, the great ESP researcher from Duke in the early 30s, J. B. Felt that certain individuals had a particular talent for ESP. This is what might be called the X-Men approach. Whereas Charles Honorton, who designed the Gonzfeld experiments, he felt, well, maybe ESP is more generally distributed throughout the population. Maybe we can demonstrate that by inducing people into this hypnagogic state. And he had a lot of success with those experiments. So it could be that both scientists were correct, that some people just have a special predilection for ESP. You and your community include people, perhaps, who do have a special predilection for selection, but it may also be generally dispersed throughout the population and that general disbursement may be better available to people through method. So we've been talking about method, the defining of the wish, the question of evoking hopeful expectancy. Of the use of hypnagogia, those are methods.

Timothy Schultz:

In the future, then, is part of this theoretically that the event has already happened in this other timeline, so it's influencing you're catching onto that, or it's influenced how you feel, what you're seeing. I mean, when it's so real, it doesn't have to be about the lottery, but anything because people have had premonitions since humankind has been here, I believe, but what are your thoughts? Of course.

Mitch Horowitz:

Well, I think that that's right. And it may be that we're so conditioned to think of time as a straight line. It may be the time is more like a ball of yarn and it's this spherical spiral where everything is bound up together and everything is playing out with this infinite nowness within this spherical spiral. We talk in terms of past, present, future, because we almost need to. That is probably a necessary illusion for us five sensory beings, at least as we experience life most of the time, to get through life. You and I make an appointment for this podcast. I can't say, well, there is no time. Tim will understand, you know, I have to be here. I have show up or everybody's confused that nothing works. So we need to agree. We need to speak generally and we need to live generally. I'll catch myself sometimes using colloquialisms, talking of past, present, future, maybe using some common expression and someone might object, hey, you're not supposed to believe that. Well, I have to speak and function and act in general terms or I can't get anywhere. If I don't go to the grocery store, the likelihood is the kitchen is gonna be empty. I have too. Bow to consensus reality. I have to bow to consensus experience. That doesn't mean that it's really the truth. I mean, consensus reality is that our earth is at the the center of the solar system. Well, we know that that's not true. Consensus reality feels like earth is flat. Well you know, with apologies to those who dissent, you know we know earth is spherical. So, so consensus reality. Is a bad way of measuring ultimacy, but we have to cooperate with it, or we can't function. So we have cooperate with this idea of linear reality. I guess if you look at scripture, you could compare it to Christ's statement, render it to Caesar, what is Caesar's? You know, you have to function within the world as it presents itself, or nothing is gonna work very well. But that doesn't mean it's ultimate. It doesn't means it's ultimately. So if one pictures time, whatever that is, it's really just a measuring device. We don't even know what time is. When we speak of time, we speak of measuring time rather than the thing itself. But if one pictures reality as a ball of yarn or a spherical spiral, then it stands to reason that everything is going on all at once and there exists an infinitude of events, outcomes. Past, present, future, all rolled up together. And it seems that the psyche can move among these different strands. One of the terms that's emerged in recent years is string theory, which says something not unlike what I'm describing, and that there's information and events going on all the time in different intersections of time or different dimensions. And we're only picking them up. Occasionally. I'm extrapolating, but that might be an explanation for UFO phenomena. That might be explanation for all kinds of anomalies. That might an explanation for Bigfoot and these other beings that testimony holds are as real as the words I'm speaking. And well, maybe they are, and maybe these beings are just as surprised to see us as we are to see them. And that within this spherical spiral there are infinitude, there are an infinitude of actualities, of realities, and we get in touch with them from time to time, and then we call it precognition, or we call it synchronicity, or we call it prophecy, or what have you. But the psyche is freer, is freer than we may know.

Timothy Schultz:

Do you think there's a collective consciousness beyond this, whether it's the quantum field or I don't know quite how to define it, but a collective intelligent consciousness, kind of binding these different realities, or is that what do you have a thought on that?

Mitch Horowitz:

Well, I'm very interested in what is sometimes called Hermeticism. Hermeticism is a modern term for a philosophy that grew out of the closing stages of ancient Egypt when Greek scribes began to write down some of the ancient esoteric Egyptian philosophies. And these things were written down in the city of Alexandria in the generations following the death of Cleopatra. And within the hermetic framework, which is to say, really within the ancient Egyptian framework, there exists a kind of great overmind called Nous, N-O-U-S in, in phonetic Greek, Nous. And this great infinite mind, this great over mind is said to be the source of all creation and that it creates by projecting thought images. Through different concentric circles of reality. And we human beings dwell within one of those concentric circles of reality, which might explain why we experience so many different laws and forces. The further and further you get from source or from this infinite mind, perhaps the more bound you are by a complexity of different laws and forces, the less free you are. But nonetheless, it stands to reason that as we were created by an infinite mind, so can we create through the faculty of mind or psyche. And in that sense, we are all participating in concentric circles of thought. And that could be referred to maybe as what Jung characterized as a collective unconscious. It's a little different, but it conforms to this idea that all of life belongs to this field of consciousness, let's say, my friends in the Transcendental Meditation Movement of which I'm a part. Referred to a unified field. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of an Over-Soul. The ancient Greek Egyptians wrote of a Nous, this infinite mind or this over mind. So they all seem to be circling around the same basic concept, which is yes, that we all belong to this greater reality of thought. It's a pool in which we all participate.

Timothy Schultz:

Yeah, I was curious because some people that I've met and interviewed have had experiences where they attribute their success or what they've done or they've won a prize or the lottery to gaining information from that or being guided. So some people have even dreamt about their loved ones that have crossed or people that they knew that told them a certain thing and then they went out and did that and then they won or that sort of thing. So do you think That's a, I take it you don't think that's a coincidence or?

Mitch Horowitz:

I on occasion it may be a coincidence. I think that accidents occur. But again, the question is not. Accuracy every single time and all the time. It's beating the curve, beating the curve. And I take stories like that very, very seriously. I think they're data. I think they are real. One of the pushback that critics use and I would say overuse is that they speak in terms of cognitive bias. They speak in terms of confirmation bias and things like that, which is really just a fancy term for prejudice. We all suffer from it, including the people who use those terms as cudgels to tell other people that they can't know themselves. I value individual testimony and experience. It seems to me that the very dictum, know thyself is meaningless if everything could be reduced to confirmation bias or... Results on a clinically designed study of perception. It strips the human being of any agency of self experience. What would the purpose of life even be in such a case? So I think there are instances where the mature sensitive individual really does have higher awareness and is capable of tracking that higher awareness based partly upon the emotional stakes. That it meant to that person. It's not just, gee, I was thinking about a white poodle and there came a white Poodle around the corner. Well, okay, how important is that to you? Maybe not so important, maybe it can be explained by coincidence or the so-called law of large numbers. But when something really pivotal and vital and something that the individual is intimately and emotionally invested in transpires by way of what might be called precognition or a prophetic dream or something of that nature, whatever terms a person wants to use, those emotional stakes heighten the uniqueness of that event in a way that goes beyond what any actuarial table can measure. So I place a lot of stock in individual testimony.

Timothy Schultz:

What about the reticular activating system or that sort of thing? Because some people are really into that. And you mentioned the poodle example. But if you are expecting for something to happen in your life, you're expecting to see a white poodle. Or even because of the show, this show, to win a prize or for something to happen like that. And then it does. Is the reticular activating system, how much does that matter, that you... You see what you expect to see, like the new car syndrome.

Mitch Horowitz:

Yeah, there's an important point there. And look, there are cognitive biases. There are cognitive bias. People say, I learned a new word and then I seem to see it everywhere. Well, it may be that I'm just noticing it because I've learned the thing or I'm seeing what I expect to see based on some kind of confirmation bias. And that's, I can't argue that into unimportance. I think that that matters, that's there, that that's real. But. When you're facing odds that are infinitesimally small, like winning the lottery, and you win, and it happens more than once, as it certainly has for some of your community or commensurate events, at that point, you've gone so far off the curve of actuality that it has to be described as an effect. It can't just be, well, you know, that's him, he's awfully lucky. I think it has be described. As an effect at a certain point, at a certain juncture. In fact, there are things that that cognitive psychologists would describe as impossible, but for the fact that they actually happened. A person can't be struck by lightning seven times, well, but for that fact that it's on the record books as having happened. And if one can associate a set of behaviors with the event, prove that the event is empirically real. Which obviously can be proven in some cases, prove that the event is statistically near impossible, which can be proved in some case, and then you correlate certain behaviors to the event, I think you've got a damn strong thesis on your hands.

Timothy Schultz:

From your experience from everything that you've have learned what behaviors lead to something happening more than is there something that happens more than others if someone gets struck by lightning seven times or someone wins the lottery multiple times is there's some commonality that most people...

Mitch Horowitz:

Well, that's really a wonderful question, and I've spent a lot of time considering that as a seeker, as a writer, as an historian. I try to look for those commonalities. For me, it's been the defined wish. I have had a certain wish that I've held since my earliest, earliest childhood. And I have, over the arc of my life, encountered the actuality of that wish, sometimes in ways that have proven absolutely startling to me. And it can be a jagged road. It can be an indirect road. There can be switchbacks. But the holding and the definition of a really well-defined wish is something that I personally have been able to correlate to outcome in my own experience. I also feel that all of the methods that we've been talking about, affirmation, visualization, the use of hypnagogia, the cultivation of hopeful expectancy, the cultivation, when possible, of the feeling state. My experience as a seeker has been that these things correlate to outcome.

Timothy Schultz:

Are you able to say what your wish was or is that has you've seen results?

Mitch Horowitz:

I won't say it explicitly, but I will give you a hint of it. I remember when I was a kid, I was very, very interested in public speaking. And I dreamt of public speaking, and I wanted to be a crackerjack public speaker. And I would stand or sit in front of a mirror. And practice public speaking, practice public speaking, I might put on a record of a great orator, like the recently deceased Jesse Jackson, and practice the oration that I heard from that individual in the mirror. And it struck me at a certain point. It struck me during the COVID lockdown, of all things, when so much of our lives had migrated to Zoom or Riverside or other. Visual apps like the one we're using right now. I'm doing that very thing right now, I'm do that very right now I am seated here, I'm making eye contact with you but I'm looking into an image as though a mirror, a two dimensional image as through a mirror and speaking publicly just as I did when I was a kid. So that might give you a hint of something.

Timothy Schultz:

Yes. Well, I love that. And you mentioned that you're into transcendental meditation. Have you had experiences where you have had your own premonitions or you felt that you went out of body or you had an experience of something and then it happened in real life that was.

Mitch Horowitz:

Well, within TM, there exists a... Concept called nature support and it's probably a term used by the Maharishi Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who brought the transcendental meditation technique from India to the United States and this notion of nature support is that when you are using your mantra and going into this of exquisite relaxation, the theory is that you are coming into contact with this so-called unified field of consciousness, at least that's the conceptual model. That practice results in what could be called nature support, which means that you flow better with surrounding circumstances and possibilities. So for me, TM has been a source of nature support. Where let's say for example I'll work and I'll work and all work and then some reward for that work like some really extraordinary media opportunity or writing opportunity or something like that just seems to arrive and I never could have predicted it foreseen it knowingly cultivated it but it's just it's There So It seems to me I'm not always able, in fact I'm rarely able, to define circumstances almost as conditions. In other words, if I say I'd like this particular writing job or whatever, I find that I'm able to receive exactly what's in my mind's eye. But the conditions, the conditions that are necessary for that thing to come to me will result in, if not the thing itself, something very similar, something very much like it, something that is immensely gratifying. And I ask people to remain flexible because sometimes great things will reach us in ways that are either very, very unfamiliar were by the same measure might be very mundane, so much so that we're prepared to dismiss them. And I think that we reject and we say no to extraordinary gifts in our lives, sometimes because we don't recognize we don't like the packaging. The philosopher, Jacob Needleman, was a kind of mentor to me. And at one point he said to me, what do you do when someone offers you a gift? And great student that I was, I stared back at him blankly. And he said, you accept it, you accept it. And so sometimes incredible things will come to us and we don't accept them because they're unfamiliar. They don't meet our mind's eye image of exactly what we want. So I receive all the time through TM, through the practices that you and I have been discussing, I receive it all the times and it can be uncanny, it really can. But it's not always conforming to the mind's eye picture of exactly how I think something is going to transpire.

Timothy Schultz:

Yeah, and do you have a specific example?

Mitch Horowitz:

Timothy Schultz:

Well, thank you very much for for sharing that. I'm glad that it did reach you and for anyone For anyone watching or listening to this who has their own wish. What is your best advice for them?

Mitch Horowitz:

My best advice for them is to be very private, Is to be very unembarrassed, is to starkly self-honest, and at a time when they have some privacy and uninterrupted period in their life, really sit down and allow the layers of memory to peel back, peel away. Go to your earliest cognized memories as a child, maybe age three, maybe age four. What were your earliest fantasies and dreams prior to... Peer pressure really getting its grip into us and that can be very valuable and come back to the present and allow yourself with total lack of embarrassment and total privacy to acknowledge your wish to yourself whatever it is this is an exercise in knowing ourselves not an exercise and what my neighbor Mike thinks is right or what my shrink thinks is right or. What my significant other thinks is right. This is an exercise in knowing oneself. Write it down. What is that wish? And keep it private. Keep it private, great things will come from that, I submit, great thing will come from that because we're often alienated from our own wishes and. The step, the most powerful, the single most powerful step toward actualization is acknowledgement. And I believe that from experience. And so that's what I suggest.

Timothy Schultz:

Thank you. Thank you very much. We are here with Mitch Horowitz. Mitch, where can people find more about you and find your books and everything that you're working on? I know you have a podcast.

Mitch Horowitz:

Well, the podcast is a historical podcast. It's a limited six episode podcast called Extraordinary Evidence. It's about ESP research. They can find me at my website, which is just my name, mitchhorowitz.com. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Instagram. My books can be found just anywhere you buy books. My most recent book is called Esoterika with a K and it has this wishing exercise in it that we've been discussing. The cover is by a fine artist named John Newsom who I really love and it's extraordinary and mysterious. And the book is a brief but really powerful journey into some of what we've. Talking about. So that's my latest. There's plenty of others, depending upon a person's interest. And throw my name into Google and there's plenty places to find me.

Timothy Schultz:

And we will link to your website as well in the description of this video if you're watching on YouTube or in the show notes if you are listening to this today. Mitch Horowitz, is there anything else that you wanted to say today that I didn't ask or that maybe I just don't know enough to ask or that you just want to say?

Mitch Horowitz:

I suppose the thing I just wanna say is that we all go through different phases of our search. And the phase that I'm going through right now and that I invite whoever wishes to join me in, because I think it's more powerful when we do things together as a group, is to expect great things. I'll put it that way. Expect great things and assert what you're looking for in its nowness and its truth right now in the here and now. There's a time and a place for different folds and facets of the search. But right now, that's what I'm interested in, asserting the actuality, the now-ness of your wish in the here and now. Let's do that together.

Timothy Schultz:

Well, that's beautiful. Right now, I am extremely grateful for you being here and for sharing your insights here today. I really am so grateful. And we will link to your website below. But thank you so much, Mitch, for your time today. It was such a pleasure meeting and listening to you today.

Mitch Horowitz:

Back at you. It's been a great pleasure. Thank you.

Timothy Schultz:

And thank you.