It is highly likely that we are all psychic in some way. We are all familiar with phrases like “I knew that you would call” and “I had a feeling that this (or that) would happen.” Most people dismiss this without giving it much thought. It is also likely that in the past, before the evolvement of modern man, we were more finely attuned to these things and this enabled us to stay ahead of the game in more senses than one! In some, these abilities to attune to the energies of people and the world around them are closer to the surface than most. This is the psychic.
This ability enables them to link into the feelings and emotions of those around them. Normally they are not able to form a link with the Spirit realm. It is usually said that they are obtaining information from the ‘aura’ of the person receiving the reading. This enables them to make informed statements about them and may lead to past and present information being used to provide a possible future outcome or insight to a given situation. This includes objects, rooms and buildings, and is because the psychic is working on the material level in the physical world. A well-known observation that you are likely to hear is; “All mediums are psychics, but not all psychics are mediums.” It must be said that we have no fondness for this saying as it implies a superiority over one discipline by the other. This is not correct, for each is of equal value when used appropriately.
Research into Psychic phenomena is undertaken by the scientific community and this study is known as Parapsychology. In particular research is carried out by members of the Parapsychological Association which is an international professional society founded in 1957. Researchers tend to have a broad base of interest in the subject and come from many disciplines including, physics, psychology, philosophy, statistics, mathematics, computer science, chemistry, anthropology, and history. Their definition of Parapsychology “is the scientific and scholarly study of certain unusual events associated with human experience.”
You may also come across the term Psi. This is a neutral term developed in the study of parapsychological phenomena. It can be a useful phrase to use when trying to describe psychic and mediumistic functioning as a whole and is found in most parapsychology reporting.
The reason that we find it appropriate to mention parapsychology when discussing the difference between the psychic and medium is because of the profound implication eventual scientific acceptance of such phenomena has upon our understanding of both ourselves and the world. This is demonstrated in the Parapsychological Association’s own literature where they list the specific interest for each scientific discipline:
Physicists tend to be interested in parapsychology because of the implication that we have a gross misunderstanding about space and time and the transmission of energy and information.
Biologists are interested because psi implies the existence of additional, unexplained, methods of sensing the world.
Psychologists are interested for what psi implies about the nature of perception and memory.
Philosophers are interested because psi phenomena specifically address many age- old philosophical problems, including the role of the mind in the physical world, and the nature of the objective vs. the subjective.
Theologians and the general public tend to be interested because personal psi experiences are often accompanied by feelings of profound, ineffable meaning. As a result, psi is thought by some to have “spiritual” implications.
These may be heady scientific realms for most people’s tastes, but they are revealing and important to us as progressive scientific thinking and supportive results counter the criticism that “all this stuff is the result of weak minded people, wishful thinking and even fraud.”
For example, research into one area, telepathy, has demonstrated in over 7,000 sessions conducted world wide, by twenty four investigators, that test subjects scored an average of 34% in selecting the correct target image when transmitted by a sender. The statistical average for random selection would be 25%. Although this doesn’t sound much, this is described as being a “highly significant result” and is probably more so if you consider that laboratory conditions are not the best environment for this type of work and that 34% was an average, so some people were scoring much higher that this at times.
It is both correct and proper that the scientific community at large is sceptical about psychic research provided this unbiased, after all it is the job of science to measure and evaluate until an absolute proof of certainty can be demonstrated. Unfortunately, despite some of the findings that have been available for over one hundred years in some cases, acceptance of some of the things that are regularly demonstrated by gifted people would shake the very foundations of scientific wisdom. In so doing, it demolishes the egos of many powerful figures by showing what they had been teaching and holding as absolute truth is wrong. Therefore, there is powerful lobby that will resist, ridicule and seek to bury such findings that prove an embarrassment. At its very least, this is “sweeping under the carpet”; at worst it actually harms the scientific advancement of human understanding. A very simple example of this prejudice is the fact that sciences leading organ ‘Nature’ will not publish any PSI research what so ever.
In other sections of this blog you will find information about various types of divination that may be used by psychics and mediums, scrying in its many forms, tarot and many other forms of focus. For this is what it is, a method of opening up to the subjective clairvoyance of the experienced practitioner who can then make an interpretation of events past, present and future. (or at least possible outcomes, but this is an area worthy of its own essay) Once again we are forced to consider this concept of psi functioning being independence of time and space.
Marlene will sometimes use tarot for those wanting private sittings. Often a person will ask for a tarot reading almost as an expectation as to how things are done, even though it is not necessarily the case. A tool such as tarot may be useful where the practitioner knows the sitter, because the cards will take the reading into area’s that are unknown to the reader. Marlene’s own use of cards tends to be as a focus for subjective clairvoyance which then takes its own direction as Spirit links form. Tarot cards also have another very down to earth attribute, they give the sitter something to look at during the reading!
This article is part of our Psychic series.
Marlene Woolgar 
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