Judith Orloff discusses her book Second Sight

What follows is an edited version of Judith Orloff’s Bodhi Tree Bookstore presentation.

Judith Orloff: I'm a psychiatrist. I'm also a psychic. This might seem like an oxymoron, but I hope to be a bridge somehow between the two. I'm interested in a world where the psychic and medicine are no longer polarized. They come together so harmoniously, that it seems unnatural to me that medicine should be so disparaging of spirituality.

In psychiatry, psychics are viewed as mentally disordered. Our culture cannot see what an incredibly healing tool the psychic can be. There's a wonderful book called The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It's about the Isle of Avalon, land of the psychic and the unknown. As Christianity, and logical, linear thinking came into our world, Avalon drifted into the mist, to the point that we lost contact with it. It's the Avalon inside our own hearts that we must connect with again.

As a psychiatrist, I see many patients who seem to have everything, but they're unhappy. They're out of touch with their inner calling, that which comes with connecting with ourselves, and a higher power. Without that intuitive bond, they become lost, because they live according to the expectations of others, not from their own, inner authority. I try to help them rediscover that guiding vitality.

Growing up as a psychic child, I felt like I was an alien in this world. I couldn't identify with being in a body -- it just all seemed so strange to me. But as I've grown on my spiritual path, I've discovered a sense of connection with myself, to my own body, to the earth and other people. To feel at home on earth is such a relief to me because for years, I felt like a stranger.

Now I see my path and n. It's to spread love. As we get closer to ourselves, we gain an empathy for our own place. This is not an enlightened planet, we have to face many challenges. But we can emerge triumphant if we courageously deal with what's put in front of us. Once we develop our inner insight, we become more attuned to the love inside of us, and then we can bond with our fellow humans. From there we expand outward into the world, and better it in some way.

I want to tell you some of my story. My path was filled with a lot of struggle, especially initially. I grew up in Los Angeles and my parents were doctors who didn't take kindly to the psychic at all. I had my first psychic experience at nine -- I dreamed that my grandfather came to tell me that he was dying. There was a great deal of love exchanged in the dream, but when I woke up I became very scared. So I ran into my parents' room and woke them up. "Grandpa just came to me in a dream," I cried, "He told me that he was going to die." Their response was, "Oh, no, dear you were just having a nightmare," and they returned me to bed. The next morning we got the call from my aunt. My grandfather had died during the night.

My parents looked at the incident as nothing more than an eerie coincidence. However, I continued to have a number of psychic experiences in which I predicted quite negative things. I predicted deaths, illnesses, earthquakes. I dreamed that my mother's friend, who was running for re-election for a judgeship in Philadelphia (he really was running), lost the election and was bitten on the hand by a strange woman. I told my mother about it and she said, "Why do you tell me these things?" Well it happened. He lost, and his daughter-in-law, who was a manic-depressive, had a psychotic break and bit his hand.

My mother said, "Never mention your predictions to me again." I became scared, for a long time. I didn't know if I was somehow causing these unhappy events. No-one said to me, "Oh no, dear, it's a wonderful thing that you predicted your grandfather's death. It's because you loved each other so much. Continue on being sensitive and tuning in." Now I believe that I had to struggle with my abilities in order to come to terms with them. I understand it stood me in good stead, in the end.

All the same, in the '60s, I turned to drugs, mainly to quell my sensitivities. And with drugs I stopped having premonitions. I didn't pick up all the energy around me. Before drugs, I couldn't go anywhere where there were crowds of people, because I picked up so much negative energy. I'd go home inundated by anxiety, depression, physical aches and pains . . . I had no idea what was happening. All I knew was that drugs blocked it all off.

It's amazing how there's a certain protection that sometimes kicks in when we're headed down the most destructive of paths. Suddenly things shift. Events and people align themselves in our lives. And everything changes, even if we don't ask for it consciously. That's what happened to me.

When I was 16 years old, I met a guy I was really attracted to. We hopped in a car in the middle of the night and drove up to the top of Tuna Canyon, in Malibu. It overlooks the whole coastline. We're driving along, talking and not looking at the road. When we got up to the top, suddenly the car screeched and plummeted off the edge of the cliff.

I remember the car beginning to turn over. We rolled over eight times. I remember seeing the moonlight streaming through the windows . . . then I was catapulted into this entirely other space. It was a tunnel, a long, cylindrical, beautiful, quiet, peaceful gleaming gray place. It was translucent. There were millions of atoms vibrating at enormous speeds. And I was held safe in this tunnel as we were tumbling over the cliff. It was a place of absolute sanctuary for me, like a cashmere blanket on a cold winter night. We landed at the edge of another cliff and suddenly, I was brought back into my body again, completely unscathed. I should have been killed, but I wasn't.

I didn't tell anyone about my experience. Yet I knew in my being that something enormously wonderful had happened. I just I didn't know what it was. At the same time my parents forced me to see a psychiatrist. I resisted like mad. Normally, the psychiatrist would have prescribed Thorazine, over-interpreted my visions, or diminished my experience. But for some reason, I was sent to a man who was able to appreciate me. He offered support. He saw I was struggling with my psychic abilities. His first idea was to put me in group therapy.

One day he came in and he seemed very depressed. I only half listened to him. I drifted off into what I can best call a trance, and was struck by a very clear vision of an automobile on the freeway next to a gasoline truck. Next thing, the truck exploded and killed the woman and her daughter in the car next to it. I must have gasped because the whole group turned to me and said, "What happened?" I shared what I'd seen. It turned out I was talking about my therapist's wife and daughter.

Despite his own crisis, he embarked on an incredible act of compassion. He admitted that this was too much for him, and he sent me to see Dr. Thelma Moss at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, who was a premier parapsychologist then.

The first thing she said to me was, "I want to test your abilities." She put her keys in my hand and said, "Please read these keys." It was an exercise known as psychometry. You hold a physical object in your hand and you can sense things about the person who owns it.

For the first time in my life, I was consciously able go into this psychic space. It was an incredibly liberating experience. I went right into her house, saw tremendous details about it, and I saw things about her family and so forth. It was a space that felt more natural to me than anywhere I'd ever been.

Thelma turned out to be my greatest mentor. She invited me to work with her as a researcher and a psychic. I was embraced into her lab as someone who belonged. Through her I met other healers and psychics. For the first time I felt validated.

We must support our children when they have psychic experiences. It creates such a difference in their lives. Play psychic games, lighten it up, reassure them when they pick up negative events. When we're predicting things initially, we can pick-up quite negative things and, to a child, it can be very scary. Negative things are often on a louder psychic signal, and are much easier to access. Once you start honing your skills you learn to pick-up a full range of psychic signals. We must help to explain these things, so they're not such a mystery.

While I was working with Thelma, I had a dream in which a voice came to me and told me that I should go to medical school to become a psychiatrist, so I would have the credentials to legitimize the whole psychic realm. Even though my parents were physicians, I felt I had nothing in common with doctors. I didn't feel drawn to medicine, I wasn't even interested in going to college.

But I knew enough to take heed of the dream. Whenever you have these kinds of dreams, be sure to listen to them, even if they seem impractical. If you listen to them, they can guide you to the most magical places and help you find your inner calling. Many people who don't listen to their hearts or their dreams end up very unsatisfied.

So I enrolled for one course -- geography -- just as I dreamed it, and even though it seemed uninteresting to me. But when I began listening to the teacher talk about the earth, the stars, how clouds were formed, and how lightning was made, I became completely enthralled. It turned me on to study. That one dream became the impetus that fueled me through pre-med, medical school, and my psychiatric residency at UCLA.

Ironically, I became entrenched in the science of medicine and psychiatry, and stayed away from my belief in the psychic. I was the Chief Resident of the Affective Disorders Clinic at UCLA, which deals with depression and manic-depression. Patients would come in, we would evaluate them, hand out medications, and basically, see them again to refill the prescription. There was no psychotherapy. All the same, a tremendous number of people got better. So, when I opened my practice of psychiatry, I fully intended it to be a traditional one. Despite my dream.

Then I met a woman who put me back on my path. She was not conscious of what she was doing, but she had an enormous effect on my life. Her name was Christine. She was my patient. She led an incredibly lonely life and was very depressed. I looked at the diagnostic criteria, the DSM IV, and I saw major depression. "Aha!" I thought, "She needs to be on anti-depressants." This is how psychiatrists think. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV is the bible of the American Psychiatric Association.

So I put her on anti-depressants and she bloomed. She made friends, got a boyfriend, she looked great. She said she felt happy. Then, one day in session with her, I drifted into a trance. And I saw she was going to attempt suicide. It was very confusing. As a psychiatrist, I saw clinically that she was doing wonderfully. Yet, I had this strong premonition.

I decided to trust my psychiatric expertise and ignore what I saw. Within the week she overdosed on her anti-depressants and ended up in a coma. It was a heart-wrenching wake-up call for me.

I sat on her hospital bed, looking at her hooked up to IVs and a respirator, and I totally re-evaluated my professional life. I had to incorporate the psychic into my practice. The penalty for not doing so was just way too high.

Over a period of years -- and it really took me years to feel comfortable with it -- I began telling my patients I was using psychic awareness with them. And another dream got me going on the book. I had a hard time talking about it, let alone writing about it. But I picked up a yellow pad of paper and got to work.

Question: Do you still prescribe the meds?
Orloff: I use medication, but I use it discerningly -- with the intuitive permission of the person I'm working with. Sometimes people enter a state where their biochemistry is so disrupted that they cannot function. Medication can help redress the imbalance so that patients can, hopefully, embark on their spiritual path from that point. Then they can strengthen themselves with spiritual practice, until getting off medication becomes a possibility.

Question: When tuning in to my inner voices, how do I separate static from the real?
Orloff: Throughout the years I've sought feedback from people to see where I've been accurate and where I've been off. Once I began seeing where I was accurate I began recognizing the feeling in my own being. When it's on, there's an ah-ha! I've noticed I've only gotten into trouble, when I've been overly invested in something.

The single most powerful tool to open up psychic awareness is meditation. Psychic information does not come through via the intellect but through this incredibly beautiful silent space that we can create in ourselves. We should seek to create and cultivate this place of silence on a daily basis, so that the psychic has open channels to come in.

Question: What kind of meditation do you recommend?
Orloff: I use a very simple type of meditation. I sit quietly, close my eyes, I take a bow in reverence to spirits, and I go inside. First I listen to the chatter of my mind, then I begin to refocus to my breath. From there I enter my inner space. Find out the method that moves you most, because if a technique does not move you, it becomes a drudgery. Don't be discouraged if nothing happens, because in the beginning, that's just par for the course.

Question: Sometimes I feel like I'm physically here, but I'm spiritually or consciously somewhere else.
Orloff: Begin to explore what that means to you. Sometimes it is easier to go up into the higher chakras than to fully commit to being here on earth. But we're only in the body for a very short period of time and it's really a blessing, despite all of the challenges that are happening here.

Question: I was terribly depressed. Suddenly I decided to go for the light. It was a very powerful experience, but I'm not sure what happened.
Orloff: I think you got in touch with the core of the universe. It's very courageous to fight for the light like that. Now you know your own strength. Ultimately, we might discover that light in our everyday life, without having to go through a crisis to get there. Yet, we need to clear our psychological issues so we can become more transparent vessels, psychically and spiritually.

Question: I'm an artist, and I'm not doing my work. From a spiritual and psychological point of view, what do you do to move through creative blocks?
Orloff: Well, there are times psychically when I'm not as astute as others, but I live with that. Creativity, like psychic information emerges from that open silent space where we are merely a vessel. We can't be uptight and open about it at the same time. So relax. Take that pressure off.

Question: Sometimes I wonder if, when I make choices, I should stick to them vehemently, or readily allow myself to consider other directions. I often have doubts about my decisions. How do you know a course of action is right?
Orloff: If I need direction, I often ask my dream-state the question before I go to sleep. Then I record my dreams for the next few days to find the answer. If we appeal to our subconscious, if we appeal to spirit, and if we have faith, the answers will come. We need to feel the pulse of our own lives and our own spirit.

What I'm trying to say in Second Sight is trust yourself and have faith in the voices that speak from inside. The more we become tuned in, the more synchronicities will occur, the more deja vus happen, the more our dreams will direct us to our joy.

The following is a brief review of Judith Orloff’s book:

Second Sight: A Psychiatrist Clairvoyant Tells Her Extraordinary Story . . . And Shows You How to Discover Your Psychic Gifts by Judith Orloff, M.D. (256 pp.)

            Respected, board certified psychiatrist Judith Orloff always knew she had psychic abilities. From her earliest memories, her dreams were filled with premonitions, while her waking moments were fraught with uncanny intuition and visceral empathy. Yet, when she opened her psychiatric practice, she put her gifts aside. It took the ignored premonition of a patient's suicide attempt to jolt Dr. Orloff into embracing the psychic as an invaluable asset in her clinical practice. Now, this pioneering physician defies medical taboos and delves into the mysterious realm of the psychic with the mind of a scientist. In Second Sight, she bravely shares her own journey of discovery and shows the way to develop the psychic talents she believes we all have. She teaches us how to recognize psychic experiences - from synchronicity to deja vu - in every day life; how to increase psychic awareness through meditation; how to tap into the power of psychic empathy; how to record and interpret dreams for guidance; how to enhance creativity - and, in the end, how to enrich our lives with clairvoyance and intuition.