The Reality of Psychic Powers

The well-known actress Shirley Maclaine described in her book Out on a Limb (and included in the film version under the same name) her experiences with various psychic mediums who were able to actually relate to her details from her life that were not possibly known by them. She began from a skeptical mindset, normal for the modern Western mentality, but soon became aware that there were indeed individuals who could sense, experience and describe events in her life that had not been publicized and which were private occurrences in nature. They proved to her skeptical mindset their bona fides.

Many people have had such experiences, one way or another, which they, however, fail to understand, appreciate or value for their real significance. One individual reported having ‘seen’ several people in a dream state that he would, years later, meet in the physical world. He recognised them, understood by that experience the role they would play in his life, and in fact, the limits that that role would have, and the time of separation when that role was completed. He navigated through certain decisions based on this knowledge.

Certain law enforcement agencies have consulted psychics with mixed results. In some cases, the psychics were able to provide information and clues that helped solve the case, with facts that were otherwise unknown to the police at the time. In other cases, the agencies determined that the information was accurate but ‘too general’ to be of specific benefit. And in some other cases reviewed, there was little if any benefit. It is clear that not all psychics are of equal calibre and capability in these matters, and that not all circumstances can be equally amenable to psychic view of the matter. But it is clear that between reviews done by certain US agencies, including the Department of Justice (DOJ), CIA, the FBI and various local law enforcement agencies, the activity of qualified and competent psychics has indeed proven to be valuable and extremely useful in solving cases.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “The true and direct knowledge of vision of past, present and future begins with the opening of the psychical consciousness and the psychical faculties. The psychical consciousness is that of what is now often called the subliminal self, the subtle or dream self of Indian psychology, and its range of potential knowledge, almost infinite…, includes a very large power and many forms of insight into both the possibilities and the definite actualities of past, present and future. Its first faculty, that which most readily attracts attention, is its power of seeing by the psychical sense images of all things in time and space. As exercised by clairvoyants, mediums and others this is often, and indeed usually, a specialised faculty limited though often precise and accurate in action, and implies no development of the inner soul or the spiritual being or the higher intelligence. It is a door opened by chance or by an innate gift or by some kind of pressure between the waking and the subliminal mind and admitting only to the surface or the outskirts of the latter. All things in a certain power and action of the secret universal mind are represented by images, — not only visual but, if one may use the phrase, auditory and other images, — and a certain development of the subtle or psychical senses makes it possible, — if there is no interference of the constructing mind and its imaginations, if, that is to say, artificial or falsifying mental images do not intervene, if the psychical sense is free, sincere and passive, — to receive these representations or transcriptions with a perfect accuracy and not so much predict as to see in its correct images the present beyond the range of the physical sense, the past and the future. The accuracy of this kind of seeing depends on its being confined to a statement of the thing seen and the attempt to infer, interpret or otherwise go beyond the visual knowledge may lead to much error unless there is at the same time a strong psychical intuition fine, subtle and pure or a high development of the luminous intuitive intelligence.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XIX Occult Powers of the Subliminal, pp. 144-145