Helene Had­sell, the woman with the 50 year win­ning streak, is one curi­ous, extra­or­di­nary, bril­liant woman. I and every­one at the Silva Insti­tute would like to wish her a big, joy­ous happy birthday!

She turned 85 on June 1st and I’m sure this year will be bet­ter than the last and filled with both excite­ment and tranquility.

As a happy birth­day gift to Helene (and a gift to you), we want to share one of her best sto­ries. This story is no ordi­nary story. It is strange and may even scare some peo­ple. It is the type of story that can send a chill up your spine or give you the goosebumps.

Read, enjoy, and be inspired!

Encounter with a fel­low trav­eler

How about turn­ing off the boob tube ‘TV’ and develop some of the dor­mant tal­ents that are God given for you to enjoy? That’s just a sug­ges­tion for any­one that is ready to exper­i­ment. I’m cer­tain that most of you med­i­tate and it can be a plus for relax­ation, but how many of you con­cen­trate; I mean really con­cen­trate and project an object? I have. I got such a charge out of this fun exper­i­ment I squealed with delight when I succeeded.

This hap­pened in the late six­ties while on a lec­ture tour. Dur­ing the day I had free time to do as I pleased. The malls, parks, and art gal­leries was where I chose to spend my time. My favorite men­tal game dur­ing my trav­els as that time was to develop the power of concentration.

To start out I sat qui­etly and stud­ied my hand with such inten­sity that I was obliv­i­ous of not only my sur­round­ings, but also noises and smells. It took a lot of prac­tice, but when I focus on a project I am relent­less until I suc­ceed.  One thing I hadn’t expected was to ‘become one’ with my hand and actu­ally see through it. I could see the blood mov­ing through my veins as if I had a bird’s eye view of branches of a river. The bones of all sizes were locked together yet able to move freely. It was awesome.

The next tech­nique was to imag­ine an object, place it on the table and con­cen­trate on it until it became so real that some­one else could see it. This is called illu­sion. The per­son doing the pro­jec­tion can become so adept they can influ­ence every­one in his or her imme­di­ate perime­ter to see what they pro­jected. Fakirs in India are mas­ters of illu­sion. My goal, how­ever, was to be able to hold an object in one spot with con­cen­tra­tion, and make it appear so solid one would think it was the real thing and attempt to pick it up.

I con­fess I made a num­ber of attempts with this exper­i­ment with­out suc­cess but that day was dif­fer­ent.  I was in Boston at a park two blocks from my hotel, ready to exper­i­ment. I sat on a bench and men­tally pro­jected a shiny five-dollar gold piece on the side­walk. I used that object because it was some­thing that would draw atten­tion to a passer by and make him or her want to bend down to pick it up. Feel­ing con­fi­dent that I had pro­jected enough energy to make the gold piece look real, for I could see it, I began to study the peo­ple that walked past.

I noticed a young mother and her son com­ing.  The child, who must have been 2 to 3 years old, was tired of being in his stroller. He was hold­ing onto the side of the stroller while his mother was patiently guid­ing it. They were walk­ing at a slow pace. All of a sud­den the child’s face lit up and he stopped to reach down for my gold piece. He kept try­ing to retrieve it, but noth­ing hap­pened. The mother looked down to inves­ti­gate what he was try­ing to pick up.

“Honey there is noth­ing there,” she said.  He made sev­eral more attempts. All of a sud­den he turned and gave me the biggest grin as if he knew I had some­thing to do with his behav­ior. I smiled back, he turned and put his hand back on the stroller and as they moved away he kept look­ing back at me and grin­ning. I was elated as I real­ized I had been successful.

“If just one more per­son could con­firm for me that they could see the gold piece.” I didn’t have to long wait. An elderly man leisurely strolled my way, per­haps out for his daily walk. He appeared to be in deep thought, as his eyes were down­cast obliv­i­ous of me and the young cou­ple that passed him. Sud­denly he paused, for what seemed to be a sec­ond, and looked down on the spot where I had pro­jected the gold piece. No, he didn’t stoop to pick it up; instead he turned, grinned at me and said, “Young lady, I know what you’re doing, but you can’t fool a Fel­low Traveler.”

This is a fun exper­i­ment, if you are inter­ested in devel­op­ing con­cen­tra­tion. Again I remind you-practice-practice-practice.  While in Rus­sia, I was told by the pro­fes­sor, who was con­duct­ing exper­i­ments with vol­un­teers on con­cen­tra­tion, that one out of forty-three peo­ple could accom­plish this feat within fif­teen min­utes. The rest of the group with prac­tice was all able to do it within a three-month or less period.

Helene Had­sell

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