Mediumship or Medium Communications
The survival of consciousness cannot be studied without considering the topic of Mediumship
(also known as Medium Communications) and the information that it can convey. For our purposes, mediumship is a process of training and tuning a human mind (the medium) to
enter an altered state of consciousness. Once in this altered state, the medium’s mind has access
to one or more discarnate entities (non-physical consciousness) enabling them to
communicate with living people (message recipients or "sitters") through the medium.
The degree of resonance and the relationship between the medium, the recipient and the entity have
a direct bearing on effectiveness of the information conveyed as well as the method of the communication used.
The medium can initiate the process of resonance but the desire to communicate, the method of communication,
and the chosen recipient will usually come from the entity. In general mediums seem to have the ability to
selectively establish a linkage with a specific entities requested by the recipient. In most cases the
non-physical intelligence that presents itself is usually the one(s) for which the communications was intended
by the recipient but there are occasionally some exceptions to this. In these cases it seems that sometimes
those on the other side are just as anxious to communicate as those on this side are.
As we have seen, Mediums facilitate communication between non-physical consciousness (entities) and
living human beings (recipients). This exchange differs from ADCs (After Death Communications) in
that it requires a third party who is a gifted medium rather than consisting of some form of communication
directly between a recipient and the entity. Often times the messages that a medium picks up can be crystal
clear and other times they may be garbled. Although they may be misinterpreted or misunderstood by the medium,
the messages are usually very meaningful to the intended recipient. These messages can be received by the medium
directly in the mind as visual images, auditorily as a voice in the head, or even perceived as feelings.
Psychic ability refers to non-ordinary perceptual mechanisms of communication between (physical) human
beings and do not require a medium to facilitate this information exchange. The more common of these
direct exchanges include the mechanisms of:
-
Clairsentience – Perceiving information by some mechanism associated with strong empathetic feelings
-
Clairvoyance – Perceiving visions in the mind without using the normal visual perceptual mechanisms
-
Clairaudience – Perceiving audio communications without using the normal audio hearing perceptual mechanisms
All of the above apply equally to mediumship and should not be connected only with psychic abilities.
These are the three principle modes of perception of mediums as well.
The most frequently experienced psychic ability is one we all have experienced at one time or another.
That, of course, is our intuition and is often referred to as our sixth sense. Examples of intuition would be
the so called “gut feelings”, the sense of being stared at, a feeling of foreboding, or a premonition of harm
or the pending loss of a loved one, especially where there are close emotional ties (say between a mother and
a child mortally wounded on the battlefield half a world away). Another common example is the synchronicity
(meaningful coincidence) of thinking about a friend that one has not heard from for quite a while, and then
receiving a telephone call, letter or some other type of correspondence from them soon after.
Some researchers speculate that the sixth sense is really a misnomer and that it should be named as our “first sense”
as it was probably developed by Nature before advanced perceptual mechanisms (like sight and hearing) evolved.
This capability is likely based on the quantum properties of entanglement and non-locality which are inherent
in all matter. These perceptual mechanisms evolved first to enable primitive organisms to perceive threats and
opportunities (e.g. food) in their environment. Like most functions evolved by nature, they are still present
in all organisms even though they may no longer be the preferred method that an organism uses to perceive their
environment, except, perhaps, when danger is lurking nearby which can stimulate our most primitive perceptual mechanisms.
Speculation exists that everyone is born with latent psychic abilities but, for most, it withers from lack
of use and also by the process of enculturation. For this reason this ability is mostly gone by the time
one reaches 7-10 years of age. However, even so, it can manifest later in life as the result of severe
emotional distress or a spiritually transformative event. Even without these stresses there is growing evidence
to suggest this ability is really a latent facility that can be restored with significant practice in a supportive environment.
According to common wisdom, everyone has psychic abilities to one degree or another. However, whether every person also has the
ability to be a medium is a matter for debate.
With regard to mediums, one hypothesis for the underlying mechanism proposes that a medium has the ability
to resonate with (or tune in) to the non-local consciousness of entities Just as a radio can be used to tune
into radio broadcasts of different frequencies. Another hypothesis proposes that mediums have a psychic ability
that is really tuning into the “field of non-local consciousness” of the recipient and just playing back information
that is stored in the memory or in the subconscious mind of the recipient. The shortcoming of the latter theory is
that it does not explain how information that was only known to the entity (as opposed to the recipient) is
identified and communicated back to recipient.
A third hypothesis claims that mediums are just very skillful at leading the people being read and no real
meaningful information is conveyed by “non-local” (e.g. psychic) means. Instead it is just based on skills
that lead or pull information by normal perceptual mechanisms, lucky guesses and even deception.
Although skeptics are quick to point out that both psychic abilities and mediumship are nothing more than wishful
thinking, over the last few hundred years there has been considerable anecdotal evidence (some from very credible
sources) that suggest that this phenomenon has some solid basis in fact (referenced below).
It is challenging for mainstream science to study subjective experiences such as these due to the constraints of traditional
scientific investigative methodologies used by researchers. However, when coupled with current theories of non-local
consciousness (see Consciousness Issues
and
Survival of Consciousness
on this website, these abilities are recognized to be more
credible than before.
There are two categories of mediumship that are of particular interest in supporting the idea of the survival of consciousness:
-
“Mental mediumship” – which refers to "tuning into entities” by hearing, sensing, or visualizing them or by direct
mental communications of meaningful symbols. In addition to entities with “higher consciousness” these entities
can be deceased friends and relatives of the recipient. Again, the primary purpose of the medium being to facilitate
the communication of messages from the entity to the recipient and to provide evidence of the continuity of consciousness.
-
“Physical mediumship” - which refers to materialization of entities, the production of objects by non-ordinary
(e.g. so called “super-natural) means, and other physical effects such as flickering lights, knocking, rapping,
or occurrence of other physical events in the medium’s vicinity.
With extensive practice, a medium can train their mind to achieve the requisite non-ordinary state of consciousness
by entering some type of trance, hypnotic state or other altered state of consciousness. These states permit
the entity to work through the medium, not only mentally but also sometimes physically.
Channeling is related to mediumship but in this case the "channel" receives some form of direct mental communications
from an entity and can assume a different personality in the process as if a part of their body takes on the personality
of the entity. These entities are typically spirit guides, an "Ascended Master", God, or other higher intelligences.
Messages are received mentally via the channel and are generally relayed to the recipients vocally or in writing.
An interesting side note of channeling is that, in some cases, the messages received and transcribed by the channel
are written backwards (i.e. right to left) or even upside down on the paper. In addition punctuation marks are sometimes
added (at the correct locations) after all the text has been transcribed while the channel is not looking at the paper.
How could the channel possibly know the correct locations to place the punctuation marks without looking?
Over the years numerous attempts have been made to validate these types of experiences. Recently several credible
scientific research programs have been started to investigate these phenomena in very tightly controlled environments.
For Example, Dr. Gary Schwartz (Chairman of Eternea) and his colleagues at the University of Arizona have conducted
various experiments to determine the accuracy of anomalous communications with entities using well known mediums.
Several other organizations are also conducting research into this phenomenon as well including:
Videos on Mediumship by Suzanne Giesemann
To Research Further
Check out additional references
on our Recommended Readings page
To learn more about mediums and examples of the kind of information they convey refer to the
Mediumship Case Study
or Suzanne Giesemann's videos above.
For additional information click on any of the following links:
Consciousness defined
Consciousness issues
Survival of Consciousness
Exceptional capabilities
Precognition
Spontaneous Healings
Spiritually Transformative Experiences
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