Clairvoyance - Fad or Fancy?

From time to time, the nature of Channelling should be revisited for the benefit of anyone who are newcomers to the study of different states of consciousness.

The apparent fads of the past in regard to a more entertainment oriented pastime-time should not rob individuals today of their own opportunity to evaluate, explore, and develop understandings about the different aspects of Spiritualism.  

Succeeding generations view phenomena and concepts usually with greater and greater openness and awareness.  The Berlin Wall, slavery, and the concept of a flat world have all fallen.  People in this century can fly across the country or around the world, not because the laws of physics have changed, only our understanding of them!  

When the Spiritualists, who were in the social upper classes of the late 1800's and early 1900's, were communicating in this fashion, they truly believed that a revolutionary way of thought and living was certainly on the horizon.  But fads always blow over.  When this inevitably occurs, the masses move on to something new.  The activities underlying the fad are forgotten by most.

Channelling / Mediumship, reached fad status in the 1980's.  This was not the first time.  At the turn of the century there were literally thousands of groups worldwide experimenting with Mediumship.  Abraham Lincoln reportedly utilized a Channel named Nettie Colburn to speak with a non-physical entity and guide repeatedly from 1861 to 1863, with witnesses present each time.  He is reported to have said "I think it more important than perhaps anyone present can understand".

Spiritualists know that some day communications with the spirit world will be as commonly accepted as the idea that the Earth rotates around the Sun.

Mediumship as a utility is very much akin to what many people think of as telepathy. Telepathy in the usually accepted meaning is the ‘reading’ of another mind in the physical world. We mediums cannot ‘read’ the mind of a Spirit person, we can only comprehend what they wish to impart.

 A very fair comparison can be drawn between common television and radio signal receptions. But since the most commonly used interactive, or two way, communications today takes place through an instrument known as telecommunications, we will start by comparing the person doing the channelling, i.e. the Medium to an ordinary phone.

By using a channel one physical being can communicate with another at apparent great distances.  However, in the case of a Mediumship, one can communicate across distances not measured in space, time, and / or distances that we know about, but between dimensions too!  This may sound a little like something out of Star Trek, but it is nonetheless true whether the so called ‘mainstream’ believes it or not. Every week Churches up and down the country prove this to be true. Thousands of mediums are active in this country alone.

Both the Spiritualist Medium and the telephone are instruments.  One instrument is telephonic and the other instrument is telepathic.  In both cases the instrument receives a signal of different types.  The instrument then converts the signal to a pattern recognizable by the recipient.  In the case of a telephone that pattern is sound, usually the spoken word.  With a Medium the communication patterns reproduced may include speech, handwriting, typing, facial expressions, body language, and any other pattern of communication that the human body is capable of. The ‘interpretation’ from image and impression into words that are easily understood is not always clear; because it also is depending on the experience of both the ‘sender’ and the ‘receiver’, and a good medium will always admit there is room for error by either parties.

In the near future, telephones will likely include video patterns as well as speech.  The videophone is very near to every day use as we sit here. Extending that scenario, it is probably quite descriptive to refer to a Medium as a consciousness phone.  Should there ever be a ‘video-phone’ for the spirit world to make use of, I am sure it will revolutionise the conscious world. But we mediums would be out of a very pleasant job!

 End.