On integrated psi senses
There are a number of different kinds of psi abilities — on a spiritual path they tend to converge into an integrated sense of the world as “more-than”.
In the psi abilities section I have basic articles on each of the senses, and advanced articles for students who need to manage emerging psi senses. This article describes the ideal end-result of psi senses or siddhis in a spiritual awakening.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
“You cannot describe the universe completely with any accuracy unless you're willing to admit that it's both physical and mental in nature.”
— Christopher Langan
Psi abilities and spiritual awakening are related — but not identical.
Psi abilities, or psychic powers are also called siddhis in Sanskrit. Most people on a spiritual path will develop psychic senses at some point on the path. But all rigorous spiritual traditions that can legitimately claim enlightenment as the end-result caution initiates not to pay too much attention to psi abilities. I like the term Yogi Bajan uses “glitter at the bottom of the ladder”.
The correct purpose of integrated psi senses
Identifying with psychic abilities overmuch — or using them for purposes for which they are not intended — will halt an awakening. Many people in the spiritual marketplace have acquired one or more psi abilities, and gotten distracted by them, forgetting to progress. This is often referred to as an ego-awakening and its sad for two reasons, first, the person doesn’t complete their awakening, and second, they deter others from seeking truth, usually because of predatory behavior.
Once again, I will use the metaphor of a calculator. Psi abilities are like a promising math student getting a calculator to do basic maths so they can work on calculus. If the student then spends all their time lording their ability to do basic math with a calculator over other students who are still doing sums longhand with a pencil and paper, they are missing the fucking point. Which is to work on calculus.
They are also being jerks, and not even working as hard as the students with pen and paper. They aren’t going to get any better at math. Also if you were the teacher, would you give them advanced computer modeling software? They haven’t learned calculus. If you’re a really nice teacher (nicer than me) you won’t hit them with a ruler, you’ll just wait until they figure out what a jerk they are being. The other students will eventually tell them anyway.
This is from experience. At first I thought I was really cool because I had a psychic senses calculator. Then I realized I was being a jerk, got my shins kicked by some other students, and started working on calculus problems. We all figure it out eventually.
So one of the steps on the spiritual path is to learn to stop attaching to psi abilities, use them properly, and let them come and go — and they do.
I want to note that some people have psychic abilities from childhood, most commonly this is one or two senses (empath, clairvoyant, mediumship, etc.). Unless the person also enters a spiritual path these abilities don’t change and tend to stay fairly stable throughout life. In contrast, a spiritual awakening changes the power source to the brain, and results in all five psychic senses coming on board and integrating, to create a second view of the world. This is multisensory perception of the world as it truly is, not as it appears to most people.
Integrated psi senses for skeptics
I’m not going to get into science vs. psi here, I’ve covered it pretty well in other blogs. Instead I’m going to talk about how I used my trained skepticism to validate my psi to myself.
I have been mildly psychic since birth, I didn’t really understand it as psi, I just knew I seemed to have more information about the world around me than other people. In my youth I ascribed this to being high-IQ or extra observant. I limited my belief in my psychic ability to that of precog dreams, which I knew I had.
This changed for me when I reached my mid-30s and underwent a sudden kundalini awakening. Within a month I experienced unmistakable psychic inputs from all five senses (sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing). I was completely overwhelmed by this information and it took me years to sort out what to do with it.
Becoming overwhelmed with new psychic inputs is super common. Lots of people find themselves dysfunctional and disoriented in the early stages of a new psychic sense, or during upgrades to psi senses. It’s just like the archetype of a newly-fledged superhero who doesnt’ know how to manage their abilities.
I highly recommend Mary Shutan’s book Managing Psychic Abilities to understand where you are at on the spectrum of psychic abilities, and to manage any drawbacks resulting from your abilities properly.
I have my scientific training to thank for my ability to integrate my new senses. Over the course of 10 years I carefully tracked every input I received, assiduously validated what I could, and let the rest pass as inexplicable.
This approach ended up being sanity-saving. I’ve seen other people with sudden spiritual awakenings have complete psychotic breaks, and strong psychics completely lose their emotional bearings. This information can incredibly difficult to integrate if it comes on abruptly. Lots of people need sensory deprivation and relative isolation until they can sort it out.
It’s absolutely critical that if you begin to develop psychic senses, you learn to validate what you receive within consensual reality. This can take a while and might involve a bit of legwork to write down what you experience, and track down what actually happened some time later.
Psi inputs often don’t make sense for a while, it can be months or years before you learn that you were right. This is a long process, and people who skip it almost never get any good at using their psi abilities. Lots of psi stuff is potentials, not actualities. People have free will, and they might not actuate their highest paths. You can get a very clear read of potential events, or soul contracts, but that doesn’t mean they will happen. Just like a blueprint doesn’t always match the finished building. Realizing that helps a lot in learning to accept inputs, without getting too fussed about outcomes. Normally in this process you learn to keep a lot of what you get to yourself because it might never happen anyway.
It turns out being a scientist and a skeptic really helps to stabilize my awakening. If you can get over the internal debate about psi senses, some healthy skepticism can actually make you a much better psychic.
Integrated psi senses for spiritual awakening
So we’ve covered the fact that psi senses aren’t always relevant, nor are they always reproducible. If our end goal is to be sane, and progress our spirituality, what do we do with psi senses?
Strong, stable psychics tend to accept that there is a lot of information they don’t have to process consciously, and there is a lot of inputs that simply aren’t relevant. Like a data stream flickering across your computer screen you can just let the numbers scroll at first without having to make sense of them. Eventually you will learn to pick patterns out of the information, but that comes with a lot of practice and observation.
Over time, and with spiritual work, an entire world emerges to the psychic senses that generally overlays and interacts with the physical world. A competent psychic, and/or an awakened spiritual master can easily differentiate this world from consensual reality, extrapolate meaning from it, and let the trivia go.
Furthermore a sane psychic will always know what is psi information, versus what is information from normal physical senses. They won’t mix them up, and they will change their behavior around people who don’t have psi input. They gatekeep psi information effectively, and seamlessly.
I have validated the psychic input I receive from all five of my senses with external, everyday methods. Over time I became more and more confident about what I recieved, and how useful it was. But in general I put very little emphasis on psi inputs unless I am actively working on spiritual problems.
Some examples (not comprehensive):
Sight: I am a strong clairvoyant. I can also see auras which is a fairly rare ability. This sense is getting stronger for me with time and the willingness to accept the information. The best depiction of auras I have seen corroborating my own experience is the paintings in the book The Personal Aura by Dora Kunz who had the gift from childhood. I also channel visual images/movies, have precognitive dreams, and have a rudimentary sight of non-embodied beings.
Smell: I learned I had clairolfactance in the hospital. It first started with smelling colon cancer. It’s a very distinctive smell and I first became aware of it in people who were confirmed colon cancer in the hospital, or friends who were later diagnosed with it. There is scientific evidence dogs can do the same. With time I learned I can also smell other forms of disease, kidney, female reproductive, etc.
Taste: I have clairgustance and can taste chemicals in food other people can’t. As an example I used to smoke tobacco but couldn’t handle vape e-cigarettes that other people seemed to love. I also cannot stomach bottled water because I can taste the BPH. I can tell when meat is mildly bad or was farmed with unethical practices. I can’t drink the K-cups coffee pods because I can taste very strong chemicals in them but other people don’t seem to notice at all.
Touch: Clairsentience is hard to describe, but it’s a psi sense of body sensation or touch. Feeling qi in the body and working with qigong is part of it. I feel the kundalini as a physical presence in my body but I can feel digestion, heartbeat, etc the same way and to a much greater degree than even world champion yogis I know. Occasionally with very strong spiritual inputs I will feel touch from discorporate entities, but this is rare for me.
Emotion: I’m a strong empath and I experience other people’s emotions as my own. This is a tough but rewarding ability to control. I feel people’s emotions more strongly whenever I touch them — particularly so if they touch me when I am not expecting it.
Hearing: My clairaudience is probably my least developed sense because of fears about insanity. I do hear words but it is not like regular hearing, the word is “impressed’ upon my mind. Like a lot of psychics I get high pitched tones and bells in my ear in presence of higher beings. I also hear snatches of songs that convey spiritual information but in the same way, not a sound, but an idea of a sound if that makes any sense.
Knowing: I have had claircognizance from birth. The ability to know things outside of direct experience, and independent of space and time. This is very much integrated with a high-baseline IQ and sometimes I have a hard time remembering where I know things from. Its really extended in recent years and I have to be careful not to appear a know-it-all, or accidentally download information I don’t need.
Some of these senses (clairvoyance and empath) I’ve had since birth and I am much more proficient and natural with them. The other senses appeared and all of them intensified during my awakening.
At first I experienced new psi abilities individually in episodes, they appeared one by one and didn’t really give a cohesive picture of the world. It’s kind of like a teenager whose arms and legs are lengthening and suddenly starts moving awkwardly. My use of the senses was disjointed, and they were often highly uncomfortable until my brain learned to modulate them (like adjusting a radio volume to the right strength). But over time and with spiritual work all these senses have become integrated and comfortable for me and I am able to use them in a coordinated fashion.
Now like most shaman, I live in a world that is partially discernable to other people, and partially discernible only to those with psychic senses (other psychics, my spirit guides, very young children, and animals). My psychic senses show me a world that is more subtle and detailed than the world of consensual reality. Most people in the spiritual or psychic communities will refer to ‘3D’ or ‘5D’ reality as a way of describing which paradigm they are operating from. 5D being reality outside of space and time, but incorporating regular 3D reality.
Unless I am in dream or in very peak states my psychic senses overlay and contain this reality, they don’t occur outside of it. Most times I perceive things in subtle form, which then over time become manifest in more obvious form. Like your dogs perking up when a neighbor reaches the mailbox, while you only hear them when the the doorbell starts to ring. I might see your aura looking brighter when you go on a diet, but before you lose weight.
Integrated psi senses conclusion
Being a scientist is a distinct advantage when it comes to discerning, and validating psychic senses.
Over time I have validated that I have five integrated psychic senses, that other people do not experience, that convey information about the world independent of space and time. Many of these senses are simply more refined versions of everyday senses. For instance tasting chemicals in food that science has independently validated are present.
I want to reiterate that psi senses are good things. Yes, there is a learning curve, and a maturity curve to acquiring and using these abilities — but I like my metaphorical calculator and its proven to be a useful tool in my spiritual education.
