I’m sharing here nine stages about mind technique I found from a book “Future Memory“. Also, I’m sharing my thoughts and experiences of practicing this technique. Perhaps my experiences and observations help you easier and faster to acquire use of this technique. Please find my comments in italic between sections here below.

James Van Avery’s Future Memory Technique

Developing future memory is a very exciting process, which requires persistence and patience. Expect results that will give you an incomparable reward. Do all of the exercises in order and don’t skip ahead!

Sun Streak: “That’s right. Take time to relax and concentrate only to practicing this technique. The keywords here are “concentration” and “focus”. Before starting of practicing, I recommend to do some relaxing breathing for calming down and emptying your mind.”

Number One – Getting Started

Find a quiet resisting point during your daily routine. A prime time is when you have completed a chore or effort  you feel good about finishing or at the completion of a challenge that you have won. Whenever this feeling is sensed, use it to your advantage in the exercises to follow. It will assist in achieving good results.

Standing or walking is all right, but in the beginning, a sitting position is best. Gaze at a scene that has many items such as flowers, vase, table, rug, wall picture, telephone, your typically cluttered room will do just fine. When you feel you can remember a lot of items in the scene, close your eyes and start visualizing the scene. You will notice that many of the items that first drew your attention are easy to recall, at least you think so. Now open your eyes and compare. Do not spend more than  three seconds with your eyes closed. Keep your mind focused on your recall scene. Change the eye-closing time to fit your recall  pattern needs, sometimes a short time closed, like one second, then three seconds open. Be creative during this effort. Improving your memory is an art form, not a science.

Sun Streak: “I started practicing on bigger wall pictures where were less details, lying down in my bed. After improving my skills I continued on more complicate wall pictures, patterns of wallpapers and landscapes.”

Feel comfortable while performing this activity. Always say in your mind, “How did it look when I just saw it?” Visualize what the scene had in it during last gaze. Do this until you feel very confident that you can maintain complicated and accurate scenes in your memory recall bank. Play games with the scene and look for details that at first seemed insignificant. Scrutinize everything, like grains in woodwork, textures in carpet, small patterns in wallpaper, even dust on furniture. Become one with the scene. Bounce back and forth from memory to vision, eyes open then closed, open then closed – remember!

After doing this for a while and feeling very comfortable with it, mentally step outside of this process and observe what you are doing. Meanwhile, continue to remember more accurate details of the scene. Feel the parts of your mental process that are being activated during this procedure. Notice how simple the process is becoming and how sure you are of yourself – confidence! You may even feel you are falling into a trance, or entering a state of not knowing why you are doing this. Simply forget that you are even trying to remember.

Sun Streak: “Correct! The less you are THINKING that you are doing this (technique) the more you will enter into the scene you are recalling/observing. The more you go into the scene and the more you forget that you’re recalling/observing the better you will see/perceive the scene. Let go of everything and flow into (merge with) the scene as much you can/dare. At the beginning trying to do this you can feel or be afraid that you will lose control over yourself and all the process.”

Think of yourself becoming part of the scene, which should be easy now that you know so much about it. If this begins to happening, you are making a good progress.

After a while, you will notice you are getting stuck on insignificant details and focusing on smaller and smaller portions of the scene. It will become difficult to see the whole scene because your concentration will shift to the details. Periodically, put the details together to create the whole scene more accurately. Do not concentrate on any one scene for more than a minute. Keep speeding up this process the more comfortable you feel with it. Get in the habit of doing this with many scenes during the day when you find the time to relax and get into the flow.

This exercise is very important in the beginning to create a basic feeling for future memory visualizations. Keep repeating it until it becomes second nature. When you find yourself doing this without initiating it consciously, advance to the next exercise.

Sun Streak: “At the beginning of practicing I couldn’t see anything, although I knew from my remote viewing sessions and using Image Streaming (you will find the description of the technique amidst other similar ones from a book “Einstein Factor“) that I can see my eyes closed. After about two days practicing I reached to the right feeling and realization of how the contours and images emerge onto a screen of my mind’s eye. Just let them come and emerge, don’t push them to come. Just witness them without trying to describe or call them somehow. Realization of that made me happy like a little kid in a candy shop.

Usually I was starting of practicing FM technique right after awakening in the morning when my conscious mind hadn’t had completely woken up yet. During a day I also tried to practice about 10-15 minutes per every two hours. Last time during a day I usually practiced before falling in sleep.”

After about a week of practicing I noticed some funny things started to happen.

One morning when I was waking up I noticed some melody was “playing” in my mind. It was some familiar song, but I didn’t know exactly which one. I continued to my morning routines and tried not so much to pay attention to the melody.

After I was sitting down in a car the same melody/the song started to sound from a radio channel which my colleague was listening at this moment.

The next morning all repeated, only the melody/the song was different. I was waking up with a singing melody in my head and later on I was hearing it from a radio after I was sitting down in our car….

Even more… I was melting or sinking in some flow: all my activities flew in a row without any obstacles or delays. I tried to keep (and still keeping) myself to be relaxed and not to push any action. I was (and still) trying to keep all of events to flow freely.

Number Two – Imagination Is Real

After you feel you have mastered exercise number one and you are ready for some new material, slowly start injecting small amounts of imagination into the scenes. For instance, “I wonder what the vase is made of?” “How thick is the paint on the wood?” “What does the inside of the flower look like?” “How does the grain of the wood look inside the board?”

Use your imagination and visualize what things look like that have other objects in front of them. For instance, a book located behind a lamp. Items you cannot visually see, but imagine should look a certain way because they are symmetrical.

Do this with integrity such that you feel you are probably correct about your hunches. Don’t worry about comparing your imagined thoughts with what is actually in the scene. You are building confidence in your imagination that you have always taken for granted and assumed is not real.

Number Three – Mind Mirroring Reality

When you feel comfortable with the thought processes described in exercises one and two, spend a fair amount of time reflecting on how your mind works. Do this until you feel you have fully explored the activity of your recall process. Sometimes during all of this, thoughts appear to you that are not directly related to the scene being studied. This is known as clutter. Don’t worry; you can always filter out unrelated information later upon reexamination of your past thoughts. However, strive to subdue clutter and keep it to a minimum. The important thing here is to be aware of your own personal way of keeping track of information in your head. You will need to be very accurate in identifying mind wandering and clutter during future memory targeting.

Number Four – Record Keeping

I cannot stress enough, keep records! This is why I am taking the space to make it a separate exercise. You are probably saying, “I know what’s going on; why do I need to write anything down?”

Here’s why. If you do all of these exercises and stick with the technique, you are going to change a lot. It will be gradual at first and somewhat unobtrusive as the days go by. When you analyze your records, you will see your progress and notice changing patterns in your future awareness. When those really exciting scenes come into focus, you will be in the habit of keeping them like precious photographs you took of your first child or honeymoon. Some of the scenes will give you goose bumps and adrenaline surges, indicating that you are certain you have controlled your awareness to actually peer into the future.

If you can draw, use this talent to your advantage. If you can’t, do the best you can to learn. Sketching out your scenes is the best way of recording images. Words are good, but drawings are a whole lot better. When you target your future scenes, sketch them out before you go for the proof. Use lots of words and phrases to enhance the details on your sketches. Grade yourself on each sketch. Always give yourself partial credit for any accuracy. Parts of the sketch may be totally wrong, while other parts may be perfectly correct.

By studying your results, you will see what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong. This will be your best guide to perfection. Persistence will pay off, believe me.

Having records to refer to will help to show others in your life how you are doing. It will give you increased confidence when you are called on to demonstrate your skills. You will be able to help others by showing them your personal ideas that worked best.

Number Five – Patterns and Shapes

When perceiving scenes of future linear time events, always use the statement, “What will it look like when I see it in the next few minutes?” Never say, “What is it?”

Do not try to close, or guess exactly what an object or scene will be during this phase of your development. Never say what the object or scene actually is, only what it looks like. This is very important. Closing will come at a later time, but for now it will cause more harm than good.

This is one of the best exercises I have found to train yourself to actually project your consciousness slightly ahead in time and build confidence. It is good because you can do it all by yourself. No need for a partner who might give you negative feedback at this infant stage of learning. It will start your awareness moving in the right direction. Always trust your imagination. Don’t forget, it’s real!

Gather a stack of about twenty colorful magazines and a sketch pad. Say out loud to yourself, “What will the magazine page I will see in the next few minutes look like?” Be very specific about your question. Now draw general shapes of what you think will be on the page when you see it. Give yourself about two minutes to draw some fleeting images. Don’t try to dream up scenes. Let the pieces come to you. It will appear that you are getting a momentary glance at an unfamiliar object. Get in the habit of working quickly. Your imagination will turn to fantasy given too much time.

After you feel that you have given it your best shot, randomly grab any magazine, open it to any page, and stare at the page for about minute. Study it similar to the way you learned to observe scenes in exercise one. Now look at your sketch. Notice any similarities? If yes, give yourself a score. If not, look harder. Bounce your memory back to when you were first drawing your sketch. Do you remember things you didn’t include that do look like the picture you choose? Almost immediately you should notice some similarities. Give yourself a score right or wrong. Save all these sketches in a scrapbook. You will soon notice them getting better and better.

Some may be so good that you will be tempted to show others the amazing coincidene.

During this phase of your development, you will probably relate these similarities in your sketches with the selected photographs as coincidental, no matter how many times it happens. This will be all right for now, since you are just starting to become more aware.

There is something very important to watch out for in this exercise. It is known as overlay. If you attempt this exercise too many times in a row, you will have trouble clearing the previous scene from your consciousness. Pieces of past images start appearing in your new future memory scenes. With practice you will come to identify when this is happening. Be aware of it always. It can be somewhat difficult to identify. If it becomes too difficult to cancel out or identify, you are trying too hard. Think about something else for a while until your mind clears.

Another indication you are trying too hard is when you have drawn a beautiful sketch of shapes and objects and the page selected turns out to be all newsprint. Obviously, you were way off base. When this happens, you are projecting and not allowing the scene to come to you.

If you get tired of magazine pictures, you can use real life scenes. They work exactly the same and are much more interesting.

Your accuracy will be the same; however, you cannot compare and learn from your results. Comparison of magazine pictures and sketches is the best training device.

As you are walking down a hallway, visualize what it will look like when you turn the corner. Will there be boxes in the way? Are there any people in the hall? What will they look like? What are they doing, wearing? Ask yourself a lot of questions. Be creative. Make a game out of this effort so that you have fun. Keep your goals light. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Don’t push too hard as to stress the naturalness of the imagination process.

All through this exercise you should be looking for shapes and forms of light and dark. Contrast is very important. At this time they will appear to be in black and white. However, always strive to bring color into your visualizations. Images will appear blurry and smeary without sharp edges. You will notice some details periodically, though. When this starts happening regularly, you are ready for the next exercise.

Sun Streak: “Now, 29th August 2019 I have been practicing FM technique about for two and half months. I do every day at least twice a day exercise of stage five.

I have a pile of old gardening magazines where on every page has a photo or photos. I write on a top of a page a cue/ question: “How does look a picture on a page 21 from a magazine “Name of Magazine” launched out on November of 30th 2006?” Then I do some relaxing breaths, then repeating loudly, but calmly the question and after that I close my eyes and let the images emerge onto my mind’s eye. I ask about 7-8 times about every page and sketch down what I’m seeing and SENSING.

During seeing and studying the images let yourself completely free and loose of everything. Just observe what is emerging onto your mind’s screen. Concentrate only on your mind’s screen! Don’t push or don’t try to describe what you are seeing! Just let the images to flow and emerge!

Yesterday when I was in too stressed and wanted too hardly to see the images I ruined almost all my trials. Today, before exercising I calmed myself down and the results became great. Although I don´t see exact images I can see and sense general shapes, angles, slants, relationships between different details. Sometimes I also see colors of details. Still, I have some steps to go to completely acquire this stage.

Number Six – Identifying Details

Sun Streak: When I’m reaching to this stage I will publish a content of the next stage of exercise and share my thoughts and experiences. Until then, please patience 🙂 For now I have trained almost every day for two and half months.