|
He made no secret of the fact that he was attempting to recruit
me for a staff position at Maimonides. When Calvin realized that
I might be willing to consider such an offer, he sat down for a
heart-to-heart talk with me, and asked if there were any facets
of my position that were not satisfactory. I told him that I was
very interested in the content analysis work that we had been doing
and in the book that we were writing on this topic. My only discontent,
I told him, was that I felt a bit cut off from any parapsychological
stimulation. Calvin said nothing further and I thought the matter
had dropped. I knew that, despite his vast experience with dreams,
he was somewhat skeptical as to whether telepathy played any significant
role in the dreaming process.
Shortly after Ullman's visit, I was participating as an experimental subject myself in the dream project that Hall and I were conducting. One night in the laboratory I had the following dream: I am walking across some unknown college campus when I suddenly feel impelled to wander into the basement of a nearby building. Upon entering, I am surprised to see a considerable number of people gathered around a boxing ring located in the center of the basement. I proceed to join them. As I am standing around the edge of the ring, I find myself becoming very involved with the ongoing fight and start yelling verbal encouragement to one of the contestants who is not doing very well. My involvement becomes so intense that I throw various jabs and uppercuts myself and exhort my man in the ring to do the same. As the bell sounds to announce the end of the round, my interest in the boxing match suddenly fades and I wander out of the basement and begin to stroll across the campus again. I was then awakened for my dream report by Calvin. He entered the room and turned on the tape recorder. As I proceeded to describe my dream, I noticed a very strange look coming across Calvin's face. When I asked him if there was anything wrong, he said, "No, not really, but I'm just a bit surprised." When I asked him for a further explanation, he said that he had decided to try and accommodate my parapsychological interests by attempting a little experiment in telepathy that night. He had become bored with watching page after page of EEG paper unfold, and thought it might help to pass the time if he tried to send me a telepathic message. The situation he had attempted to send was the Sonny Liston Cassius Clay (Muhammed Ali) fight. To add a 94
|