If you ever host a dinner party for a group of psychics, mediums and energy healers, and you need a good conversation piece, the psychic ability known as clairsentience is one of those topics that is sure to get the party started! Despite it being the most common 'garden-variety' psychic sense, it is also a complex concept that is sometimes misunderstood, and too often misrepresented.
Clairsentience is a very broad and general term, and therefore not easy to define. It is used to describe a much wider range of psychic experiences compared to, for example, clairvoyance (seeing) or clairaudience (hearing). I like to think of clairsentience as the basis or foundation for all the other 'clair senses'.
Furthermore, clairsentience is also confused with some of the other, lesser-known psychic abilities, such as claircognizance (knowing). Some simply consider it to be another term for 'empathy' or 'intuition'...which is a gross underestimation of what it means to truly be a claisentient psychic or medium. Although these psychic abilities may manifest along with the gift of clairsentience, they are not necessarily one and the same thing. To clarify what clairsentience really is, it is best to define the different types or categories of clairsentient experiences:
Clairaudience or 'psychic hearing’ is a remarkable and rare psychic ability. The term clairaudience is derived from the French for ‘clear hearing’ and it refers to the ability to hear sounds, voices and musical tones that cannot be heard by the normal human ear.
One of the most famous clairaudients in history was Joan of Arc, known as 'The Maid of Orléans.' She was a brave woman who led the French army in several successful battles. Joan claimed she heard the voices of saints and attributed her military decisions and victories to these direct messages from Heaven. Sadly, she was burned at the stake in 1431 for the crime of heresy. Her clairvoyant visions and auditory perceptions remain an ongoing topic of interest and have been attributed by modern scholars to all manner of medical ailments and mental causes, including schizophrenia, epilepsy and tuberculosis.
Professor Ralph Hoffman, a researcher in Psychiatry at Yale University, argues that the hearing of voices are known to occur during states of religious or creative inspiration, and are not necessarily signs of mental illness. Hoffman also cites the example of the renowned mystical poet and noverlist Rainer Maria Rilke, who one day heard the crystalline voice of an angel carried by the ocean wind. This profound experience inspired the writing of Rilke's famous work Duino Elegies.
Did you know that we sometimes dream the future? Ever had that nagging feeling that you have seen, or experienced, an event or situation before? I experience this phenomenon on a regular basis, and I also use the content of these lucid dreams with great success in my work.
Psychic dreams, however, are prophetic in nature. These special dreams offer us actual glimpses into future events and outcomes. Not only do we dream about the future, I also believe that we generate or create our future while we are in the dream state. I also believe that some of the events we shape during these dreams are what we later experience as moments of déjà vu.
So, how do you know you had a psychic or lucid dream? The experience seems to be different for everyone. My psychic dreams are usually very vivid and colorful, almost like watching film footage or a news clip on television. I also hear sounds or voices very clearly (or not at all), and I often see symbols that have a specific personal meaning or significance for me.