[zachary baker]

Thanks for your very interesting personal history of prediction through intuition. To what extent do you feel that this “power” (small p) is a form of pattern recognition undertaken subconsciously, perhaps even simultaneously with the rise of the question, in the RH? I find I have made my most obviously successful predictions in the least effortful way, as if the first occurrence of an idea is the trustworthy one. Oddly this seems to be true across utterly diverse areas in my life. For example, as a musician, very often the best drum part for new composition turns out to be an extrapolation of what i played in the very first approach to an idea, often the very first time it arose, with no effort at all, just a kind of nonchalant acceptance of what i was playing, more as if the music was expressing me, emerging through me. This may be explained by the idea of a shared flow state consciousness but it always comes as a kind of magical state of grace, and has it’s own socio-spiritual context. Often the process that follows is much less effortless and over months and years as relationships stabilise the state of grace becomes rarer. Nonetheless, there have been many repetitions over my nearly 40 years of improvising composition with other musicians and I remain hopefully in anticipation of the next moment.

Alternatively, at the very beginning of a football (soccer) tournament a few years ago, as someone who is a level 1 of 10 expert – i really don’t follow much sport at all – i was convinced that the final would be between Italy and England and that it would be very closely fought, there would be foul play from Italy and England would eventually succumb. If only I’d put money on it as this is precisely what happened 2 weeks later. I suppose the point I am trying to make is that I had no business making such a prediction, i hardly even new the names of the players, but I was naiively sure of the way things would pan out and i think there must have been unconscious RH pattern recognition stuff going that for once was not forced to show it’s work and so came out pure and clear.