0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
When the Extraordinary Hits Home
energy passes through the healer and also the supplicant. And after
giving healing to a person, it is usual to wipe one’s hands. (Paper tow-
els are provided for healers in the sch for this reason.) On the other
hand, clairvoyance, which would appear to be a matter of the mind, is
often a matter of the body as well. For Michel, clairvoyance is a kind
of sensory bombardment: Sometimes he receives odors; for example,
the smell of bread baking, tastes, or sounds, images, or visions. And
sometimes he prefers to see in another way, through feeling.
It all blends in, hearing, seeing, feeling... I see, hear, feel, all at
the same time... from my guides, from the [spirits of] relatives
all around... Sometimes I tell my guides that I’m just going to do
clairsentience today, where I don’t see, I don’t hear, but I know. I
can describe your spirit guides without seeing them. I can see them
with my third eye, and I can tell you what you’re feeling. Clairsen-
tience, it’s knowing... It’s one of the strongest gifts, I find, and
the least known, clairsentience, You just know, it’s so strong, you
know it’s there. (Fieldnotes, Michel, September 9, 1999)
It was through bodily sensations that I first came to sense a differ-
ent level of perception than usual... feeling heat on one side of the
body and not the other, for example, or feeling sudden congestion
in the throat. Bodily experience then becomes a medium for another
kind of knowledge (McGuire 1996 ). Sometimes, it should be added,
the image or idea of a bodily sensation is a vehicle. One may not see
something as in a vision, but, rather, as Michel explains, as a mental
image. The idea of an aroma or taste may act as a stimulus for clair-
voyance without one’s actually feeling and tasting it.
As McGuire points out, in daily life we deal with bodily intelligence
in the form of “gut feelings” ( 1996 , 112 ). In retrospect, I realize that
my spontaneous impression of the sch as authentically spiritual was
based on a physical sensation, a rush of energy to the sinuses that
I had experienced a number of times during long meditations with
hundreds of others in an ashram. In closed groups such as the one
Michel directs, one becomes able to catch and hold fleeting physical
sensations or other impressions that one might normally miss, and
use them to orient clairvoyant perception. The body becomes a point
