Secrets of The Psychics (Part 3 of 6)

Check out Supernatural drama series:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007m042

Are psychics power real or fake? This is a great documentary that try to answer that question.

Are some of us born with mysterious powers, able to move objects at will, read a person's thoughts, even cure physical ailments with the power of the mind? Follow master magician James Randi as he uncovers the secrets about psychics.

(narrator) If he does his job well
they want to be fooled.

(tutor) Uh, Sharla, could
you pass that back? Wendy?

(narrator) From the astrology test
each student was given a

detailed horoscope.

(tutor) Robin, could you
pass that over.

(narrator) They were told it was
drawn up by a professional

based on information they
had supplied about when

and where they were born.

Actually, these horoscopes
were not quite what they

appeared to be.

I'd like you to share something
with me if you'd be so kind,

just with a show
of hands...

(narrator) I asked the students to grade
them for accuracy on a scale of one to five;

five being the most accurate.

Uh, how many gave it
a one?

Let's see a show of hands.
Two, three, four and five.

Okay.

So we scored pretty highly
with this, then.

Let's do a little experiment.

You've got your horoscopes right
in front of you.

Take them in your hand like this
and hand them

over your shoulder to the person
behind you,

okay everybody?

And the guy at the end down
there you'll have to come up

to the front because these
people in

the front don't have one
now.

Okay?

Everybody change them
around?

Everybody's got one.

Open up somebody else's
horoscope and read it carefully, please.

(offscreen voice) This is the same thing.

Oh, it does!

This is the same as mine says!

What a surprise.

(narrator) They had all received the same
horoscope.

The personality descriptions
were generally true of everyone,

like recently you have had to recover from a disappointment.

Some of them seem specific
because they were so personal.

Your sexual adjustment has
presented some problems for
you.

And there were others that
anyone might hope would be true.

You have a great deal
of unused capacity.

People like to believe
certain things are true,

and they like to fall for
very specific, absolutely,

enormously accurate horoscopes,
right?

Of course they are.

Did you have a question?
Yes, I have a question.

(offscreen voice) So why do people persist
in ascribing to these systems?

That's the big question,
of course,

and psychologically that is
the most interesting question.

I think that people are
trying to get some control

over their lives.

By knowing more about
themselves of course they

get control over their lives,
but that's what we're doing,

all of us, each and every day of
our lives, whether it's financial,

whether it's emotional, whether it's a love interest,

whether it's health,

we're trying to get control of
our lives,

we're looking for power and
astrology offers you apparently

a very old and a very easy
formula

whereby you can do that sort of
thing.

What you've presented me
today is evidence that

this can be misused or
abused,

but you have not convinced me
that there is nothing to this.

Oh no, no, I didn't
intend to do that.

Okay, and I feel that your
exercise today was kind of

cynical and one-sided and
somehow it is wise to be

unbelieving of this sort of
thing.

Well, I can't prove it doesn't
work.

I can never prove it doesn't
work.

And I've seen a lot of times
where intellectuals have had,

have wanted to disprove mystical
things because since it

didn't fit into their framework

of beliefs ...
they wouldn't allow it.

But I can't prove to you
that Santa Claus doesn't exist.

I really can't.

I can't disprove anything.

I can't prove a negative,
but I can show you that

it's not very likely to be
true.

That's the best I can do.

(narrator) Needless to say, my
message isn't always popular.

My friend Ray Hyman is a
psychologist and he has an idea
why.

We seem to be taken, as
we're taking something

away and not giving
something in return,

and these people want something,
they're looking

for something and I think
we have to understand what

is it they're searching
for and what they're seeking.

(narrator) Ray has an insider's
perspective on these questions.

He once worked as a
professional palm reader.

On a recent visit to Florida he
allowed me to

observe while he
gave readings to two volunteers.

Now, I want to look at a
few other things before we

go very far.

I looked at your thumb,
it's the most important.

Ray started reading palms
to help put himself

through college.

There's a little narrowing
of the second joint here.

That, that's tact,
that's just tactfulness.

At the time he was convinced
there was nothing to it.

Ah, this is the
spiritual mental.

I had no belief that it
would work, but to be

convincing I did read the
books and I did study the

lines and told it as it's
supposed to be told and to

my surprise it worked, and then
it became a very

rapid believing in palm reading.

There's a break in your
lifeline;

this is your lifeline right
here,

so you've had some physical problems and you still may
have some problems here,

some medical problems
of some sort.

He was right about that;
that I have had some

health problems.

Is there anything
there about my mother?

About your mother - um,
the one thing that,

the thing that's clear is
that, uh, right from the

beginning, uh, you didn't
want to be dominated by her.

You wanted to make up your
own mind about what your

life was going to
be like and so on.

I have been very headstrong when
it comes to my mother,

and she has kind of tried to
dominate me sometimes and I've

rebelled against it.

At the same time you
wanted to be,

you wanted to be on your own
terms and stuff like that.

He was pretty right on
the money with a lot of things.

Maybe he's got some part
to himself that others are

not in touch with and
he knows these things.

....concerned about the
relationship between your

mother and yourself.

(narrator) As a palm reader Ray was
quite successful,

then a college friend bet him
that he would do just as

well if he told his
subjects the opposite of

what he read in their palms.

He decided to give it a try.

And I did this on my first client and she didn't say a
word;

she had no reaction at all which
is very spooky to me

because I'm used to feedback.

I thought it was because I
bombed, but it turned out

because she was so stunned
I was so accurate.

And this was really a
shock to me because I had

done everything wrong,
so I did the next client

wrong and then I realized
it doesn't make a

difference what you tell
them it's more what you

convince them how good you
are and what you get them to believe.

(narrator) As a professional psychologist,

Ray is very much aware of the
role that careful observation

can play in a reading.

You're living in a strange
world.

You'd be better if you're living
maybe 50,

40 years ago in some ways.

I've always said that, I
should've been born a long
time ago.

This present world is, is,
presents problems for you

and you're not
too happy with it.

You'd be much better...

From the way she was
dressed and so on, I could

say that she'd rather be living
in an earlier time than today;

in fact she was dressed for an
earlier time anyway.

There's a change.

There's been uh, there for
a while looked like you

had two jobs or two
careers, I'm not sure,

and, uh, very recently you have
switched.

In fact there's been a major
career change.

I've been in the same career for
six years.

Next year I'm thinking about
changing careers,

but I haven't done it yet so he
could just be a

little off on his timing.

If you set people up right
you can tell them most anything.

If they've really got a
creative and intelligent

mind they can make sense out
of naught.

How crazy it seems to be, they
can find a way of,

of reinterpreting it so it
really fits them like a glove.

This person wants
me to succeed.

I should work out
some accommodation.

Well you certainly
don't need someone to

deliberately fool you to
have what seems to be a

psychic experience.

Your mind can create one all
by itself.

Let's say you don't like
to fly and you're worried

about a trip you're going to
take then suddenly

during the flight the
plane suddenly, whoa,

drops a few thousand feet
because of a downdraft.

You might very well choose
to think that you had some

kind of psychic intuition
about this,

but what you forget is that
you've had that same queasy

feeling every time you've gotten
on an airplane and if it

doesn't fulfill itself,
you forget about it.

You see, the brain is
constantly searching for

relationships.

It's trying to work out
cause and effect so we can

know what to expect
in our lives.

That's natural.

The brain is very good at this
but it does make mistakes,

and one way to explain these
mistakes is by some kind

of psychic explanation.

My investigations have
taken me to dozens of countries,

but until recently one of the
most

interesting wasn't open to
scrutiny.

It's long been rumored that
Russia harbors

psychic talent like nowhere
else in the world.

The country has an
ancient,

mystical tradition, and the
government has encouraged

psychic research.

To Moscow?
That's right.

Any luggage to
check in, sir?

Two pieces.

Now that the country is
open to visitors, I wanted

to check things out for
myself.

I've seen the films that
came out during the Cold War.

Juno was a famous healer
who had Brezhnev as a client.

Karl Nikolaiev could
apparently turn on lights

with the force of his will.