No Sacred Cows

by David G. McAfee

  So there might be a psychic that’s communicating with spirit and they can get that your dead uncle’s name is Jerry, but it doesn’t mean that information is really truly for the highest and best. What I’ve really learned, even in the last five years, is that there’s kind of a tax or a price that you pay having this ability. Dark and light is very real on this planet, so just because you can get clear answers it doesn’t mean there is stuff that comes along with that. You can be communicating with spirit, but that spirit … it’s just like you have an uncle, and you love your uncle, but he’s an addict. And when you hang out with him, you get a headache, you pick up his energy; it’s dangerous. He puts you in the car when he’s drinking and you could get in an accident. It’s a lot like that. You gotta be careful in who you are communicating with, and how, and the energy that comes along with it. The last five years of my continual daily development of my own ability has been refining and cleaning that up so it can be as squeaky clean as possible. So most people are just communicating with spirit and they don’t even know that’s what they’re doing, and there’s all this stuff that has no spam filter on it. Most psychics will leave their energy in your space, so you’ll get a reading from them, but not only is the reading coming through all their own stuff and their own consciousness, which taints it, then they can leave their energy in your space and program you … or weird stuff starts happening to you. Because no one really understands this, and all these things are invisible, they just give power to some person who’s giving them these answers and they don’t understand everything that possibly can come with it.

  McAfee: You believe some buildings are haunted and you’ve even called yourself a “healtor” and worked to “bust” ghosts at the Sunset Marquis Hotel and in other locations. Can you tell me about how séances work and how you know when a ghost is present or gone?

  Jusstine: I don’t really love calling it a séance, you know, I can’t help what the media portrays it as. But it was awesome because I did that in 1999 for the Sunset Marquis and they just recently did this clip on Fox News that I have not watched. But the manager of the hotel went on camera and told all these stories about how I changed the hotel and I changed his life and all this stuff … it was so amazing. I think that, if someone is in tune, all kinds of stuff can happen. So if you just have phenomena happening and where you live you feel the presence of someone else, there’s a million different things that can happen. If someone was heavily medicated or they just were stuck, like their physical body actually can get stuck around where they died. Somebody could have died in a home and their energy is still around the home and it stops it from selling, or it stops you from being able to comfortably live there. I can’t really, you know, how do you tell? It’s like you feel the energy and then you don’t feel the energy, for an outside person. I can’t really tell you what I go in and do. I don’t think some people would be able to tell … it just depends on how sensitive you are.

  McAfee: I don’t know if you’ve heard of this, but there are other reasons why somebody might get an eerie feeling that’s not from a ghost—like infrasound. Those are low-frequency sound waves that have been shown to give people a kind of creepy feeling.

  Jusstine: To me that’s just they’ve found some device to measure energy and they are calling it that. That’s something that’s stuck there.

  McAfee: Okay, well, let me give you an example. There’s a laboratory that everyone believes to be haunted and, after doing some research, they discover an air conditioner that was emitting infrasound. They fix the air conditioner, which stops the infrasound and stops the weird feelings. Do you think that was really a ghost that just happened to be attached to the air conditioner?

  Jusstine: I mean there’s a million different reasons of what could happen. It’s just all energy. But I’m not set on … you know, I don’t love doing that work—I just know how to do it and can really truly create a difference.

  McAfee: Do you believe pets and other nonhuman animals have spirits and ghosts, or is the afterlife exclusive to our species? Have you ever done any pet readings?

  Jusstine: Yes, I do believe that animals have spirits. I can read anything that somebody asks a question about. I don’t try to say I’m a pet psychic, but people ask about their pets all the time.

  McAfee: I’m sure you know that some religions consider psychics and mediums to be sacrilegious or even evil. Do you consider yourself a religious person? Do you believe in Heaven, Hell, reincarnation, or god(s)?

  Jusstine: I believe that every religion on this planet was changed by man’s consciousness and that people only view it that way because they’ve been told to view it that way by the powers that be that didn’t want people to connect with their intuition. Of course I believe in God. I was born and raised Jewish, and I now study higher spiritualism. I have no choice but to believe in reincarnation with what I’ve witnessed in my career, and everything I do is about my spirituality and healing other people and helping God’s plan on earth unfold on this planet. I don’t have any kind of issue with whatever anyone’s beliefs are.

  McAfee: You’ve said having a psychic reading with you is like “having twenty years of therapy.” Can you tell me some similarities and differences between what you do and the practice of a licensed therapist?

  Jusstine: Therapy is about figuring out things with your mind, and your mind is really like this file cabinet that basically just collects and files information. So if you go to your mind trying to figure out, “What’s my address?” You have it, right? But not if you go to your mind trying to figure out, “Why did he do that to me?” People are just playing out patterns, so I help people solve problems in an energetic way. Most people are focused on the physical, which is, “I don’t like my job. I’m going to look for another job and then I’m going to be happy!” Then three months later they realize they’re in the same position wrapped up in a different package. The difference between therapy and what I do is I help people solve their problems within themselves. I help them to solve their own problems energetically, where therapy is just spinning everything and trying to figure it out with your mind. So you might be able to make sense of why you were dropped when you were three years old on your head and that caused a bump, but that doesn’t solve the problem of why you have the bump.

  McAfee: You believe you can communicate with “individuals that have passed on to the other side.” Do you think the afterlife is something that can or will ever be proven scientifically?

  Jusstine: I do believe that there will one day be proof.

  McAfee: And do you think your work as a medium could help do that?

  Jusstine: Sure! I mean, I think that already has happened. It’s just that people don’t know about it or they don’t want to know about it. I am all about proof and evidence.

  McAfee: Have you had your powers tested under laboratory conditions? Would you be willing to undergo such testing? There are a number of groups and organizations that would pay millions of dollars for observable proof of psychic phenomena.

  Jusstine: No. I’m not interested in that. I never woke up and wanted to be psychic, and I’m not out to prove anything to anyone. I’ve done this job for 27 years and I’m very lucky that my life is taking me into things other than having to read people every day for a living. I really believe that my reputation speaks for itself. I think that’s so amazing for anyone who wants to undergo that testing, but I have no desire to do that, nor do I think that I would pass those tests. Here’s the thing: if I’m involved, I’m emotionally attached to getting it right. That’s why when I’ve done predictions of, you know, like who are the 5 out of 50 that are going to be nominated, and then I get it right, I’m shocked because I’m emotionally attached to getting it right. So I don’t really think that I would pass those tests.

  McAfee: Are you familiar with the practices of “cold reading” and “hot reading”? Do you ever use either of these methods with your clients?

  Jusstine: No. I know what cold read
ing is, but I have read people by phone. When I first started, I read people by instant message all over the world when AOL first started coming out. Then I’ve read people by phone all over the world, so like how do you cold read someone when you’re not looking at them and they’re in London and you’re in America? I think people that are fraudulent, trying to take people for big sums of money, use those to try to have power and control over other people.

  McAfee: You have said that you can’t give yourself gambling advice, but you have given gambling advice to others and you’ve predicted Hollywood awards winners and New York Times bestsellers. Can you tell me how these predictions work and what their limits are? Could you have, or did you, predict the recent $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot?

  Jusstine: It’s really about that person’s energy and, if they have the frequency of being the winner, they’re going to get the answer however they’re going to get it. I’ve definitely given people numbers. That’s happened on film. But that stuff is not fun for me, you know? I really love helping people transform what is happening inside of them.

  McAfee: But sometimes people do ask you for lucky numbers, or something, and you get a feeling of what numbers are good for them?

  Jusstine: I just tell them what I see!

  McAfee: Have you ever gotten an important reading wrong? Do you feel a sense of responsibility that comes with your abilities, or have you ever considered them a burden?

  Jusstine: Every single word that comes out of my mouth I’m incredibly cautious about. The number one thing is being able to have the gift to be able to communicate to someone that helps the whole thing to be a healing experience. I am a human being. I don’t doubt that I’ve gotten things wrong. I feel every reading is important because, if you’re sitting on my couch, even though you might just be a housewife, your reading is just as important as some political person who is trying to decide if they should join the president’s cabinet or not. I really just look at it as I show up and give my 110 percent for every person that’s sitting across from me. But again, I can only tell you what I see. Destiny is not set in stone. Because other people are involved in everything, things can change—energies can change.

  McAfee: Are there any other psychics that you agree with or disagree with, like Sylvia Browne or Theresa Caputo?

  Jusstine: For psychic ability, one of three things has to be present for it to be real. That’s comforting someone who is mourning by bringing proof and evidence of afterlife, through healing the sick, or inspiring the truth seeker. So anyone who is able to provide proof and evidence and do that, then that’s great. I don’t hang out with other psychics or follow other psychics … it’s not one of these things where psychics hang out with each other. I have a handful of friends that are some of world’s most powerful healers … we’re not talking about fluffy stuff. I mean really, truly, shifting, incredible things on this planet and healing things and changing energy. My whole life has been about studying from the masters and spiritual truths, and most people in this don’t, you know, they just come from such a different place. It’s not comfortable to hang out. I am a total admitted snob in this world.

  McAfee: Is there anything you’d like to say to people who, like me, are skeptical but open-minded?

  Jusstine: You should be skeptical. Why are you just gonna believe anything anyone says? You should absolutely be skeptical. Search for proof and evidence, but try to prove that it’s real over trying to prove it’s not if you’re genuinely trying to heal yourself or genuinely interested in that. You should be skeptical, otherwise you would have no awareness of your self and your life and boundaries.

  McAfee: Exactly. If you’re not skeptical, you could end up believing in anything anyone says.

  Jusstine: Yeah, and that’s unfortunately what most people do. I cannot tell you the number of really smart people I have cleaned up that have gone to stores with neon signs and given them $100,000 … really smart people that are embarrassed to tell anyone, so they don’t. I’ve helped people get money back in situations that were like impossible to get money back.

  After the interview, Jusstine and I used the remainder of our time for a traditional reading in which I asked her questions about my life and she made predictions about my future. She said it looks like I’m going to have two kids, and that “one is stronger than the other.” She noted that this prediction could fail, however, because kids are “totally free will.” She also said mental disorders, such as the obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) I told her about, are caused by “energies that are not our own in our space.”

  “You just have energy in your space that’s not yours,” Jusstine said during the reading. “Most of the time, OCD can be like entities and stuff attached to people.”

  I asked her about my career path, as well, and she said I have the ability to “have a voice that other people listen to.” She added that I had my own congregation in a past life and that “it didn’t end up having such a great outcome.”

  “I just started to see you in this past life, having a congregation and kind of channeling and speaking to people, but where you led them didn’t end up in a good place and your guilt and terror of being responsible for that, and not having a way to heal that, has led to you creating this system and patterning,” Jusstine said. “If you’re forever wrapped up in this, you won’t have to look at what’s really causing the pain underneath it, and that’s what you want to heal.”

  The questions I asked Alvarez and Jusstine, as well as similar nonconfrontational inquiries, can help you put many psychics to the test. But some fortune-tellers don’t utilize these cold or hot reading methods at all. There are also those who claim to tell the future through their dreams, astrological readings based on the stars, Ouija board games that purportedly connect the player to another realm, and more.

  PROPHETIC DREAMS

  Many of us have had dreams from time to time that we can link to events, but science has documented evidence showing how dream patterns work that disputes the notion that they can be predictive. If the current scientific understanding is wrong, however, this superhuman ability would be easily proven. Those who claim to have prophetic dreams would only have to keep a detailed dream journal. They could write down all their dreams, date the pages, and keep them safe in order to match future developments with events they had already written about. The future-telling dream claim, if it is to be believed, should be reasonably predictive of future events.

  The fact is that no one has proven these nighttime prophecies because dreams aren’t as specific and clear as they may seem in the moment or when recalling them afterward, and people don’t always remember the details right away. While we sleep, we see fragments of images and feel certain emotions, and then we tie those pieces together with a narrative and (often subconsciously) add details. Our dreams don’t always make sense, so we fill in the blanks with assumptions based on our prior experiences. The way dreams are formed makes them unworthy of consideration as evidence of prophecy, especially when they are being remembered after the fact and not recorded in real time.

  It’s often the case that a person wakes up not remembering any particular experience from rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, but then they see something in their daily life that reminds them and memories of a similar dream come flooding back. This real-life action could be completely unrelated to the events of the “vision,” but, because a dream is more like a series of quick slides than an HD video recording, the person might make that false connection. This is similar to the phenomenon of déjà vu, which is the feeling of having already experienced something and is essentially a memory illusion—a misfiring of the brain.27 Whether you attribute the sensation to a dream the night before, an experience last year, or an occurrence in a “past life,” déjà vu and other representations of paramnesia—or delusions based on memory—are well explained and can be reproduced in scientific studies28 and even caused by certain brain disorders, such as temporal lobe epilepsy.29

  The bottom li
ne is that, if you have a dream or thought that you think might be prophetic, you should apply skeptical scrutiny to your claim and ask yourself if you could be mistaken. Is it at least possible that your memory of the premonition isn’t as reliable as you think? Could your mind have filled in some of the details after the event?

  LUCID DREAMING, ASTRAL PROJECTION, AND REMOTE VIEWING

  Prophetic dreams should not be confused with lucid dreams, which are controlled fantasies concocted while we sleep. A person is said to be a “lucid dreamer” when they become aware of the fact that they are dreaming, and they are often able to manipulate events without completely waking up. There is nothing mystical about this phenomenon, and it can even be induced via electric scalp stimulation,30 but it is interesting nonetheless because it gives people power over their dream state. Research also suggests that frequent lucid dreamers are more likely to have greater gray matter volume in the frontopolar cortex,31 the area of the brain responsible for higher cognitive functions like planning and problem solving.32

  Lucid dreaming is also closely tied to astral projection, which believers say allows them to separate their astral souls from their physical bodies during presleep or meditation. My first experience with “astral travel” was when I was about 13 years old and I was told I could go anywhere in the universe while lying in bed if I followed specific instructions and imagined my soul separating from my body. I achieved some results, in that I had what you might describe as an astral journey, but what I didn’t know at the time was that I was actually dreaming lucidly. I was using my imagination to control my dreams and simulate out-of-body experiences, but I wasn’t literally going anywhere. I discovered this by setting up a series of tests in which I asked friends and family members to secretly write something on a piece of paper and place it somewhere in their room at night. I used my newfound skill to “travel” to their homes during my meditative state, but I was never able to discern what had been written because I was using my imagination and didn’t have access to that information. Similarly, zero scientific studies have shown that astral projection is a real phenomenon through which we can obtain information about the outside world.33 Benjamin Radford explains that people who practice astral projection “can’t give verifiable details or information about the places they’ve been or what they’ve seen.”