The invisible hand

warping reality, magic tricks off-limits

The teacher paused, looking up at his two students, Ken and me. We were sitting in a restaurant.

“Alright, let me show you what I mean.”

He stretched his arm across the table, and held his hand steady, palm down, over a small pile of after dinner mints. The mints had reflective silver wrappers, with thin iridescent turquoise stripes. His hand was about two inches above the table.

This was all happening very quickly. No planning. Just a spontaneous stretch of the arm across that table. We had no idea what was going on. So we just stared at his arm and hand, somewhat confused.

For the first few moments everything seemed normal, but within seconds my eyes widened. I looked at my friend. Ken, an engineer, seemed transfixed.

“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” I asked. Ken nodded his head slowly. Very slowly.

“What are you seeing?”

“Holes in his hand,” replied Ken after a very long pause. “I am seeing right through his hand and can see the mints.”

That was exactly what I was seeing too. Several holes had opened up, about the size of nickels and dimes. It was the strangest thing. And utterly unexpected. Like Ken, I was looking right through those holes and could see the mints laying on the tablecloth.

I knew how Ken was, how his mind worked. He was always the logical, dedicated skeptic. I asked him to stand up and look from various angles. He stood, and moved around the table. So did I. Regardless of the angle, we could both look through the holes in our teacher’s hand and could clearly see the silver wrappers.

Suddenly our teacher snatched his hand back, and both of us slumped back in our chairs, stunned and speechless.

- Nashville, 1997

NOTE: If you want to study and journey deeper and deeper into consciousness, in my opinion it’s important to just take things as they come. Not to judge. It comes with being a monastery. Even if the only monastery in sight is you.

To be clear, I’m not claiming in any of my accounts that some kind of ‘miracles’ took place. While I’ve witnessed inexplicable phenomenon, that’s just what it is: inexplicable. That’s why such things are called studies. Science will eventually catch up.