Richard Broughton, author of Parapsychology: The Controversial Science, 1991, Ballentine Books, discussed this notion of luckiness as more than winning in games of chance. Broughton contends: "What we mean here would be a generalized success factor - getting more than one's share of life's breaks. The psi component of luck would be similar to what is seen in micro-PK experiments - shifting odds in one's favor - only here the RNG's are the innumerable chance processes one encounters in daily life."

Dr. Broughton makes an important point regarding luck in more generalized terms. Literature on luck invariably relates it back to winning money or success in games of chance. Luck, however, appears to be multi-faceted. It can be quite difficult at times to determine whether your luck is positive or negative.

There is a parable which describes a farmer whose good luck and bad luck seemed to converge. The farmer owned a horse that he depended on for plowing his fields. One day the horse ran away and a neighbor remarked on the bad luck that befell the farmer. "Good luck, bad luck, it's hard to tell" the farmer replied. The next day the horse came back and two others followed. "What good luck!" the neighbor proclaimed. "Hard to tell" the farmer replied. Later that day, the farmer's son went to ride one of the two new horses and was thrown hard, breaking his leg. "Sorry about the bad luck" said the neighbor. The farmer looked up to respond and saw some people approaching his land looking for young men to fight in a bloody civil war. When the soldiers spied the famer's son with a broken leg, then went on their way. Good luck and bad luck are not as obvious as one might assume.

Assuming on can 'control' their luck, what ingredients are involved that facilitate luckiness? Albert Carr, author of How to Attract Good Luck, (1978, Melvin Powers, Hollywood, CA) declares that a positive attitude creates a belief that good luck is within one's grasp. Goethe once wrote that luck and merit are traveling companions. Horace Levinson interpreted Goethe's message in Chance, Luck and Statistics, (1963, Dover Publications, New York, NY.) as "...the superior person is better to take advantage of the twists of fortune, but he appears to have luck with him for that very reason." Levinson's explanation suggests that a lucky person is one who creates a positive outcome regardless of the situation presented. Even though statisticians mainly argue convincingly that luck is random, it appears that it also may be possible to control luck or unluck through one's attitude or resourcefulness.

Pascal's randomness theory of luck is mathematically persuasive, and difficult to argue against given predictable casino profits. From this perspective, it seems that luck is merely a singularly favorable event or a favorable sequence in random distributions of chance events. However, if this is true, why do so many people believe in luck? Is it possible to control your luck through mental intention or by accepting a hunch as true and acting on it? Can a ripple be caused in the continuum of chance events thereby allowing the locus of control to shift to the observer? Perhaps luck isn't completely out of one's control. If future research on the role of PK and precognition prove promising, we may be able to direct our focus on positive outcomes of probabilisitic events, and cause those outcomes to actually occur.


Jannine M. Rebman is a Research Fellow at the Consciousness Research Laboratory, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. You may reach her at her email address.

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