Deirdre Meintel
Michel asks us to give healing to ourselves during the period when
we usually do clairvoyant exercises. We are to put our hands over
our hearts and close our eyes as usual. Good, I think, I need it. I
am emotionally shaken by a disturbing event earlier in the day. Still
feeling somewhat unsettled, I close my eyes, try to feel my heart
beating. A heart starts beating thunderously under my hand, it
seems to be popping out of my skin, like a cartoon image... and I
can feel a large hand enclosing mine! Whose heart is this, I wonder,
is it mine or his? It feels like the same heart, mine and his! I know
whose hand it is, it’s his... (Fieldnotes, March 21, 2003)“His” refers to the guide who had become familiar to me, the one Mi-
chel calls “your native guide.”^18 We return to this incident later.
“Picking up” (capter, in French) on things not usually visible is, from
a Spiritualist point of view, a generally human capacity, one that is per-
haps greater in some individuals than in others. Indeed, many people
who do not consider themselves clairvoyant have dreamt of people or
places before physically seeing them for the first time. To use an ex-
ample from a novel in Anthony Powell’s series, A Dance to the Music
of Time, many have had the experience of suddenly thinking of a per-
son from their past for the first time in years, only to cross paths with
the individual shortly thereafter. I myself had had such experiences,
and I was convinced, well before my acquaintance with Spiritualism,
that some few individuals have clairvoyant capacities.
Opening myself to such experiences in a Spiritualist context was
not only a means of gaining rapport. These experiences allowed me
understandings that are fundamental for comprehending that clair-
voyance is not reserved for a gifted few but is something open to or-
dinary individuals, including myself. However, it became clear early
on in the research that I would have to accept my own perceptions if
I were to participate at all. One who censors his or her own percep-
tions cannot begin the process of learning to see clairvoyantly. De-
censoring one’s own intuitions, sensations, and perceptions is an es-
sential precondition for experiencing how clairvoyance is done. True,
objective proofs are often lacking: I cannot prove to a skeptic that
the hand I felt was real and that it belonged to my native guide. But