Psychic Phenomena

Like the last post, this post isn’t about spirituality, but it is about non materiality again. In my own mind, I am very clear about the difference between the parapsychological (e.g. the paranormal) and the spiritual. The Kabbalistic ‘map’ of reality makes it quite clear that the parapsychological and the spiritual emanate from different worlds within existence.

Furthermore spiritual teachers have always warned seekers in pursuit of God not to get side tracked by paranormal phenomena from the psychological world. However, I am returning to the ‘psychic’ in this post because, firstly, it concerns the non- material world (as does the spiritual) and, secondly, the last post generated produced a spike in the number of visits to the blog..

So I thought I would record a couple of interesting experiences I had some decades back when I attended a weekend course in exploring one’s own psychic abilities run by the College for Psychic Studies in Kensington, London.

The first experience I’m going to re-tell took place half way through the morning of the first day. Half of us sat in a circle, facing outwards, and the other half stood behind us, moving from person to person, attempting to sense the boundary of each of the sitters’ astral bodies. I don’t know whether, in Kabbalistic terms, this would be the etheric body, which is the energetic counterpart of the physical body, or a person’s psychological presence (or maybe even something else.) One would feel for the presence of this astral body by starting with one’s hands wide either side of the sitter’s head and then bringing one’s hands slowly until they met some very slight resistance.

On some people this boundary was very clear (though I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess as to what was actually being felt.)  However, what really struck me was the way that the people standing behind me seem to affect my mood and emotions as they carried out the exercise trying to feel for my own astral body. With most people I felt this only faintly, but with one person I was able to tell when he had come into contact with whatever energy body was there, and furthermore, as he did so, my mood elevated considerably. I suddenly felt light, happy and full of energy. It was extremely marked.

I surreptitiously stole a glance at him as he moved on to the next person, and there was nothing about him to look at that might suggest somebody out of the ordinary. He told me later that he had not felt any particular emotion when we were partnered. I honestly can’t remember what happened when our positions were reversed, but from that day onwards I did become much more aware that there were some people who can lift your spirits just by standing close to you and others (there are rather more of these) who can completely drain you, emotionally. When feeling psychologically delicate, it became important to seek out the former and avoid the latter!

The next experience I want to relate is decidedly stranger. It was the last exercise of the course. Out of view of the rest of the group we each went into a room and placed an object which had been on our person (apart from large objects of clothing!) in a large velvet bag. Then that bag was brought back into the main room, and each of us drew an object out of it. We wouldn’t know who that object belonged to, but we had to hold it, to see if it would ‘tell’ us something about its owner. All we had to do was observe the object and hold it in our attention.

Almost immediately the thought popped into my mind that something ‘behind’ me was of significance. I mentally asked ‘in the next room?’, but then my attention seemed to be taken back further behind me. Shepherd’s Bush? Notting Hill? No, further west. Swindon? Bath? Cornwall? No, still didn’t feel right. The Atlantic? New York? No. California? Bingo! It felt like the mental equivalent of potting a billiard ball.  There was something of significance in California to the owner of this pen. It turned out that the owner of the pen was leaving that very evening to go to California, to stay with his spiritual guru.

About half the people in the group obtained similar results, and this was after only one weekend.

I haven’t particularly pursued this sort of training because I want to put any time available into spiritual rather than psychic pursuits. Furthermore I think you have to be psychologically extremely healthy to continue down that route, and at the time I definitely wasn’t, and knew it. However, in our modern society I think some sort of balance could be regained if such ‘sensitivity training’ could be extended to many more appropriate people.

Interestingly, another psychic experience came out of this group which taught me quite a bit about not getting involved in what might be the sewers of the psychological world unless you absolutely have to. I will write about this in my next post. It is an area where the spiritual and the psychic are constantly confused. Again, in our society’s tendency to officially ignore the non- material, the ignorance in this area has been responsible for a lot of unnecessary suffering.