When we lived in small communities and rarely had contact with outside influences, it was easier to believe that our religion was "One True Religion". Now that we are a global community, and we have constant contact with other belief systems, this is not case. We find ourselves asking "Am I following right path?"

In last several decades, science has attempted to apply its methodologies to religion in hopes that clear answers would appear. While we do not yet have all answers, there are many patterns becoming clear.

One pattern that is becoming clear is that prayers made by followers of many religions seem to have an equal chance for success. This means that none of religions that exist today are "One True Religion". And experiments which showed us this also showed that there are specific qualities that contribute to a successful prayer. And of course, as in any science, if you know variables and how they influence outcome, you can manipulate those variables to give you what you want.

The process for growing a science is simple. You collect tons of information. You filter that information through various processes to determine if there is a pattern behind data. If you think you've found a pattern, perform an experiment to see if you can predict outcome based on your hypothesis. If experiment works, perform a few more to make sure. If experiment doesn't work, try to determine what caused difference.

Over past century or so, there have been many researchers trying to grow a science around mind's abilities. This pre-science has been called various names. Human-potential, parapsychology, psychology, metaphysics, and New Thought are a few of names this science has had.

Here are some of findings of hundreds of researchers. The mind is capable of transmitting and receiving information across vast distances to and from other minds without any discernable means of communication. The mind is capable of traversing not only space, but time as well. The mind can see into past and future, in places it has never been physically. The mind is capable of creating definite conditions, and directing course of events to bring these conditions into existence And mind is capable of tapping into same Power which created and sustains Universe!

Many religious figures have been seen to perform what have been called miracles. Do we really know that Power to create miracles is outside of capabilities of human mind? Scientific discovery says that human mind is completely capable of performing these miracles unaided by any outside agency.

Or, along another line, if you know that that sexy person you just met will become person of your dreams, but only after having some rough times, you can choose to stick with them and receive rewards of a satisfying relationship. Actually, benefits of knowing more information (physically or psychically obtained) is always availability of more choices, and ability to make wiser decisions.

Okay, so how can we develop our ability to use psychic senses reliably. That's trick, isn't it? While there have been those who were famous for their psychic abilities, they have been famous because they were unique. For most people, it seems that psychic abilities are far from reliable. Even psychics working on 900 lines, and those who make predictions for papers give inaccurate information. Is development of psychic abilities possible, or do we get what we get?

When I first started working with psychic abilities, my accuracy rate was a flat zero. Nothing outside of chance. If ability could not be developed, I would not have been able to improve that. Yet I did improve my accuracy rate. It wasn't easy, mainly because I couldn't find any good information on developing these abilities. Most of what I found were tests and games. And while simple exercise of an ability may make it improve, it didn't work well. So I went back to basics and started working on my own techniques of development.

To make a long story short(er), I found that working on physical senses (trying to focus my sight, hearing, and other senses to pick up every detail around me), a different type of meditation, and some light hypnosis worked amazingly well. I also found that if I tried too hard I blocked myself off from whatever I needed to make contact with to get psychic information.

I also found that I could use that same connection to make changes in world around me. The power of prayer and stories of spiritual healing also intrigued me. This is probably why I experimented with using psychic connection in this way.

So bottom line is that psychic abilities can be developed, and abilities manifest in different ways for different people. Also, psychic abilities can be used for more than gathering information, but can be used to create changes in world around you.