PSYCHIC - (def). 1. Sensitive to phenomena lying outside range of normal experience. 2. Of soul or mind. 3. That appears to be outside the region of physical law.

Collins Compact English Dictionary

It was an overcast November day, one which had been singularly uneventful and disappointing so far. We had taken the three hour coach trip from Newcastle to Bamburgh, on the north east coast of England, with the sole intention of perusing the interior of the impressive twelfth century fortress castle, only to discover that it was to be closed to the public until the Easter of the following year. It was for this reason that Shona, Walter and I found ourselves in the only other accessible point of interest in the village, the parish church dedicated to St Aidan.

Aidan had first arrived in Northumbria from the island monastery on Iona in 635 AD at the request of the then king and later saint Oswald. He chose for his headquarters the Holy Island, Lindisfarne, which lies a few miles north of Bamburgh. Here he established one of the first Christian missions in Britain. He formed a special friendship with the king of Deira named Oswin, who became king of the southern half of Northumbria after the death of Oswald in 642 (with Oswy claiming kingship over the northern half, Bernicia). Oswin was killed near Catterick in North Yorkshire on 20th August 651 and for centuries his canonised body was laid at the Priory of Tynemouth, whereafter many who made pilgrimages to his shrine were said to have received miraculous healing. It is also said that St. Oswin appeared to some of the resident monks in visions and dreams and upon praying to him many disasters had been averted.

Walter and I knew of Oswin due to his connection with the priory which is near my home town of North Shields. Our partnership in a psychic quest had begun there gathering psychic information regarding the site's 1500 year history via direct communication with the minds of spirits and associated energies of the site. One fact which struck us as curious was the very short duration between the death of Oswin and that of Aidan at Bamburgh on the site of the current parish church a mere eleven days later.

There appeared to be a certain degree of fate guiding our journey that day in terms of the connections and associated names, dates and places with our own psychic quest based around the river Tyne. It was, therefore, no surprise to me that, merely minutes after entering the otherwise deserted church, Walter began gazing intently at the memorial shrine to St Aidan on the site of his death. The shrine consisted of a modest iron rail fronting a suspended lantern containing an illuminated silver cross. Walter then declared that he could see who he believed was Aidan himself standing behind the rail. This was no surprise to Walter as he had been seeing spirits of the dead, thought-forms, nature spirits and the auras of people and animals since early childhood, a gift which I do not share with the exception of a degree of aura sight.

It took a short time to ascertain that what he was seeing was not the actual earthbound spirit of the saint but a thought-form: the collective energy field formed by the concentration and devotion from the minds of many pilgrims and worshippers over many hundreds of years on the spot where he now appeared. This link was sufficient to enable Walter to piece together a few facts about the man including the reason for his death. It would appear that a passion for onions had led to an ulcerated stomach which finally resulted in a fatal haemorrhage.

All of this, which would normally have held my fascination, was giving me no cause for interest. There was definitely something else about the place which was tugging at Shona and me. My attention, during the time that Walter took his notes on the saint, was being strongly drawn to the rear of the church, just past a stone memorial to the local heroine Grace Darling who had saved several sailors from a watery grave in the 1800s.

It was here that the atmosphere around me became tangibly thicker, charged as though before an electrical storm. The gentle pressure which appeared around my head indicated that there was psychic activity close by which was certainly more powerful than that in the vicinity of Aidan's shrine. I sat down in a pew next to the aisle, let my mind go blank and gently opened up to whatever it was that was giving me such a huge clue to its presence.

Suddenly it was there; the definite impression of a young girl with dark hair standing to my right, though nothing was visible in the vicinity. A wave of deep emotion seemed to spread from my solar plexus area and filled my heart with immense sadness enveloping my mind to the exclusion of all else. I was transfixed. My eyes dripped tears down my face to the floor as I stared blankly, unable to move except for my arms. I raised my hands and reached into the aisle, my forearms resting on the back-rest of the pew and concentrated upon helping the earthbound spirit of the girl.

A familiar warmth and tingling sensation in the centre of my palms which accompanied the hot flush around my head indicated that I had already begun to channel healing energy, gently at first but soon with the force of will and love. I was rooted to the spot by the sheer force of energy flowing through my body and out of my hands to this little girl: how she must have needed it.

I managed a pathetically weak call to my companions who were soon by my side. Walter gazed through half closed eyes into the space before my hands. 'You've got a young girl there Ivan,' he began. 'She's got dark brown hair. I believe her name is Elizabeth and she's grieving for her father who was lost at sea on a fishing trip in the last century.'

By this time I was physically shaking with the force of the channelled energy and barely able to breathe deeply enough for comfort as there was so much activity in my heart and solar plexus area. 'She's smiling at you now and has taken your hands in hers and is patting them, telling you not to be upset.' This I could feel as if a cool breeze was blowing across the back of my hands. 'She wants you to take the candle she offers and also wishes for you to wash your hands in the bowl she is holding for you.'

I went along with the instructions and visualised the objects which I could not physically perceive. At the same time I gave the girl mental instructions to look for the light and therein seek her loved ones who would be coming to take her from this place to where she was supposed to be; a place of perfect love where there would be no more sadness. I explained that I would help to bring them and give her the energy she needed to pass over into their world. 'She's beginning to fade,' Walter informed me, and within a minute or two it was over. The girl had escaped the limbo of the earthbound state, bound by the grief for her father, and had passed into the next world with the help of the energy I had provided.

The sadness was replaced with elation as I sat back in my seat content with a job well done. But we weren't finished yet. There was someone else that Walter had seen while I was healing Elizabeth.

'She's dressed in a simple dress tied at the waist. She is middle aged and I think dates from several hundred years ago,' he told me, lowering himself to a crouching position as he gazed into the area six or seven feet beyond me near the end of the aisle.

'Do you get a name?' I asked him, seeking confirmation of my own psychic impression that it was Margaret. He paused for a moment and replied, 'It's Margaret.' (Sometimes it is essential to gain some degree of proof that what is happening is not just the product of and over-active imagination on behalf of the psychic.) 'She's crouched down due to a severe arthritic condition in her left hip. I wonder if you can do anything to help her.'

I had already begun to form an image in my mind of her appearance and prepared for the healing in my usual way which is basically to attune to the vibration of pure, unconditional love. I took up a crouched position to the rear of where I perceived the woman's spirit to be, placed my hands on either side of her hips and closed my eyes. Mentally I asked my guides in spirit to assist in giving the woman the healing she required and opened up as a channel for these energies.

A mere five minutes of this channelling resulted in the woman rising to her feet and fading into the world of spirit.

Walter was clearly impressed and continued to stare at me even after confirming that the woman had passed on. He had never been witness to such a sight as this in all of his years as a psychic. 'You are quite literally glowing like a nuclear reactor Ivan,' he exclaimed with a broad smile. 'Your aura extends to about four feet. It's pulsating with golden light and you've got a halo around your head which is shining like a lighthouse. And there's something that I've never seen before and it's quite beautiful: I can see your solar plexus chakra wide open like a lotus flower actually standing out through your jumper. I usually only see chakras in the absence of clothes. What's happening around you is quite spectacular.'

Unfortunately, though understandably, to all but the few open-minded of us - though increasingly less so - the events of the trip to Bamburgh would appear to be either a lunatic's delusion or the work of a fantasy fiction novelist. To many, the subject of psychic activity belongs to the world of the horror novel or film where any amount of devils and demons fight to possess the souls of the characters; or ghosts terrify the inhabitants of manor houses with their constant dragging of ironmongery. Tales abound of evil devil worshippers and human sacrifice with vengeance and death on every page. It is through this fear factor associated with the unknown or supernatural that the greatest misunderstandings of entirely natural phenomena find their roots.

The word psychic, to most people means simply a person who has the ability, or supposed ability, to see and/or communicate with the dead and predict future events. In fact, psychic, or psychism as I will refer to it, defined as the detection and utilisation of phenomena lying outside of what is usually termed normal, is this and much more. It manifests in very many ways and can be activated at any point in our lives.

It is as natural as life and death. It is as old as time. In fact it transcends time because time and space are mere logical relativities whose existence is dependent upon our point of perception within the macrocosm.

An acceptance of paranormal as normal is as fundamental and vital a step to our future evolution as that of accepting the true shape of the planet. Is it not the very role of science to place the supernatural unexplained into the realm of the understandable normal? The great wealth of scientific knowledge that exists today has grown synergistically like an inverted triangle from the fundamental point whereupon each answer to a question creates further questions, whose answers, when found, in turn spark the pursuance of greater and more complex truths. But we must first ask ourselves whether we have identified all the necessary questions on which to base our view of creation, and did we even ask the right question in the first place?

In view of this and all we have learned so far of ourselves and the mysteries of Creation, how crazy it would be to presume to know but a very small amount of all there is to know. Is it not a sensible assumption that there may in future be revelations in science which will prove as shattering to our collective psyche as the discovery that Jerusalem is not the centre of the world, that the Earth is not the centre of the Universe and that we are not living on a flat planet? It is through psychism in its many forms that we, as inhabitants of a predominantly scientific culture, can attain glimpses of the greater glory of Creation and experience those things which appear to exist solely in the background of that which we call real or the norm.

We are all born psychic, and as children are aware of things which are hidden to the average adult. It is during the growth and development process that our natural psychic abilities are closed down as we learn to deal with the increasingly logical and hostile scientific world. The current education system is based on the storage of facts carefully selected by the System to serve and perpetuate the status quo. The result of this is an increasingly exercised left brain, which is the body's logical and systematic base, often to the neglect of our right brain - the base of our intuitive, creative and psychic selves. In this way we become left-hemispherically dominant in order to merely survive the education process and simply get on in life. It has become a survival of the fittest; a competition for dominance over the other left-hemispherically system-serving people. Our true selves, our spiritual and infinitely creative selves, suffer terribly in the process, leaving some with little or no other purpose in life save to belong - mind, body and soul - to the status quo and those who control it.

How often do we see parents discourage their children's creativity and imagination in favour of logical pursuits, or chide their young for speaking openly about imaginary friends and unseen companions whilst stuffing their brains full of ridiculous facts and figures, tables and mind-numbing television? Eventually, the child comes to the realisation that what is entering the logical left-brain from the intuitive right-brain is incompatible to what is acceptable to the System and begins to actively stifle the information coming in via the right-brain's psychic centres and, as with any muscle that is no longer exercised regularly, it becomes disproportionately smaller. Finally, we arrive at a point where the child finds it impossible to recover those insights at will and spends most of the rest of its life with the nagging impression that there is more to this world; something which once made it a magical and wondrous place to be.

Very few of us manage to escape the initial stages of the systematic mind programming process and once ensnared are usually slaves for life. Unto the system are delivered the naive and impressionable blanks to be absorbed in society's acceptable norm, with the intention that these initiates of the status quo will one day become the inter-reliant cogs of the self-perpetuating monster-machine known as life. I wish I had a penny for every time I've heard a person's greatest ambition or lifetime's dreams rebuked with the phrase, 'Get real,' or 'You've got to live in the real world.' Is it not true that virtually every single historical figure who has initiated a great positive change and received our admiration for so doing, figures such as Galileo, Gandhi and Jesus, have aspired to ideals other than those purported as the norm for their time?

The sorry state of affairs in which we currently find ourselves is entirely avoidable and the solution lies in the activation of the greatest gifts we possess - our minds with the ability to think, question our reality and challenge our self-imposed parameters. The use of the word why will help to set us free.

Why do I live my life the way I do? Why do things appear so hopeless and where is the reason behind all of this? Why is it the accepted norm to destroy our planet and ourselves in the name of progress? Why do I spend my life conforming to someone else's values? Why do I spend my life doing that which I don't want to do in order to satisfy other people and provide them with profit? Why is there so much pain, suffering and starvation when there is more than enough for everyone on the planet? And why, oh why do we just sit back and put up with it?

The answer is surprisingly simple: we have forgotten who we are. And in forgetting who we are we have isolated ourselves from the rest of Creation.

We have forgotten that we are firstly and foremostly spiritual beings, entities of divine energy and are as droplets of water in the great ocean of cosmic consciousness. We are part of the whole of the thought-form energy which emanates from the infinite mind of the great Architect of the Universe, which has come to be known as the Godhead.

Everything that exists is God. Therefore, I am God, you are God, I am you and you are me and we are everything. Everything is energy. Mind is energy and we are all part of the same consciousness, the same mind. We can never totally divorce ourselves from the rest of Creation as energy cannot be destroyed only changed in form. So, as God is infinite, so too are we infinite. The conscious mind, the real us, is eternal: death is but a change in state of energy.

In the process of forgetting who we are we have effectively isolated ourselves into being slaves to the five senses. We only accept as real what can be explained in terms of what we can see, touch, taste, hear and smell and we have largely divorced ourselves from the other faculties of sense which enable us to perceive the further realms of God.

We have built our own reality as a prison around ourselves with windows too high to see out and locks with long forgotten combinations. We have only that which we brought in and our children are born into knowing only that which is already there. In doing so we increase their reliance on what is at hand - the status quo. And we strain to remember what was once known of the outside but fail as it was too long ago in the memories of our forefathers. Only legend and myth remain of what once was. Myth so far divorced from the realities of the captive world that they seem bizarre and ludicrous. So we mock and ridicule as insanity these ancient ways, these fanciful tales and those who would tell them. Even so, there are a few who feel in their hearts the truth of the legend and they dream of the day when the prison walls will crumble before them and the wider glory of the universe is laid open to all: to once again feel the freshness of the breeze, to see the stars and wonder at the vastness of the skies. Where the existence of the animal kingdom was supernatural legend and the rivers, forests, mountains and oceans were occult lore, now would they be called nature: where once the idea of seeing for miles and travelling great distances, to swim and to fly were paranormal concepts, now would these things be simple everyday normality.

Every day, all around the world, people are experiencing and questioning apparently supernatural phenomena; phenomena which challenge our present view of reality and which are unfathomable when confined to the scrutiny of five-sense-perception science.

As examples, let us look more closely at the different types of psychic phenomena experienced at Bamburgh.

• THE VISION
  One night, during a lucid dream, Walter had found himself standing before a window which depicted several keyhole motifs below which was an inscription in a foreign language. The place, he was certain, was Bamburgh castle. From behind him the voice of a woman told him that in deciphering the inscription he would gain a deeper insight into our current psychic quest. It was on the strength of this dream that we initiated the trip.

• SYNCHRONICITY (COINCIDENCE)
  It was because the castle was closed that we decided to search further afield to fill in the time until the return coach was due to leave. I had actually joked just after our arrival in Bamburgh how ironic it would be if the castle were closed until the summer, the concept having not even entered any of our minds until then.

• VISUAL PERCEPTION OF THOUGHT-FORM ENERGY
  It was apparent quite early on in the proceedings that what Walter saw at the shrine was not a spirit of the dead. Spirits usually respond to communication, moving and reacting accordingly. This figure, however, remained stock still as if in suspended animation. Churches are generally quite powerful areas of thought-form energy due to their nature as places of worship.

• FORMATION OF PSYCHIC LINK
  The information gathered by Walter on the life and death of St. Aidan was in part verified by further research. The exact cause of his death, however, has never been officially recognised. The ability to gain such specific psychic information as names and dates is one which Walter has demonstrated on many occasions and places him in the bracket of those known by some as 'super-psychics'.

• TUNING INTO SUBTLE ENERGY
  From the start it was apparent that Walter and I were attuned to two quite separate entities. I was pulled towards the rear of the church without knowing why and he was completely oblivious to anything but Aidan until I called him to the scene.

• MIND TO MIND COMMUNICATION
  I was able to instruct the two spirits to seek the light of the spirit dimension via direct telepathy because I was mentally attuned to their frequency. This was reciprocated by the young girl's concern for me and the patting of my hands.

• VISUAL PERCEPTION OF SPIRIT ENTITIES
  Walter was able to see and describe both the appearance and actions of the spirits as well as gaining information about who they were. His description of the girl corresponded exactly with my own mental picture even though I was unable to see her myself.

• CHANNELLING/HEALING
  I was able to direct healing energy from the higher planes and from the sea of energy that exists everywhere in order to assist the spirits' journeys to the next world.

• AURA SIGHT
  One of Walter's most useful abilities is to see the non-physical energy field which surrounds everyone, animals, plants, minerals and the Earth. On this occasion he had no difficulty due to the abundance of psychic energy that was being channelled through me.

Our work at Bamburgh involved many examples of psychism but by no means are they the only types of phenomena which are inexplicable to the conventional scientific fraternity. Others include :

• CLAIRVOYANCE
  Literally this means clear-sighted and refers to a person's ability to see beyond the range of normal perception e.g. to see the future or spirits of the dead. More specifically CLAIRAUDIENCE is the auditory perception of spirit heard as voices inside the ears.

• PROPHECY
  Many examples of this have been reported throughout history and is the prediction of future events. The Bible is full of prophets and in more recent times figures such as Nostradamus and Mother Shipton have achieved fame by predicting events which subsequently occur.

• ASTRAL PROJECTION
  This is the state in which the mind is free from the physical body, usually during sleep, and is, therefore, free to travel independently throughout the world and other realms of Creation at will.

• PSYCHOMETRY
  It is possible to read the history of objects by holding them and tuning into their vibrations. For example, some psychics, myself included, can give a reading from a piece of jewellery worn by the subject and this can lead to a vast amount of information, both about the wearer and the object itself.

• TELEPATHY
  Thought transference from one mind, the transmitter, to another, the receiver, has been shown to occur even under laboratory conditions. However, the exact mechanism involved has never been entirely accepted by science.

• TELEKINESIS
  The ability of the mind to cause physical matter to move has been demonstrated quite spectacularly many times. Perhaps the most famous examples of this have been the spoon-bending antics of Uri Geller.

• EMOTION
  You may be surprised that I have identified this most common everyday experience as an occult phenomenon. It is a fact that mainstream science is simply at a loss to identify exactly what causes emotions, the most exalted being love. This is simply because it exists independently of our five senses as energy and is perceived on a mind level before being manifest at the physical level through changes in our endocrine system.

The above are brief examples of some of the many phenomena experienced on a daily basis by millions of people world-wide which strain at the bonds of scientific reasoning. More of which later. There is no doubt, however, that one day, and that day is advancing rapidly, all of these apparent anomalies to reality will fall into the scope of conventional wisdom whether or not, by then, it will be called science.

There will be an emergence of the dominance of wisdom over mere cleverness. Unlike today, when scientists, politicians and other academics with qualifications falling out of their ears actively pursue the policies which have brought our world to the brink of nuclear destruction, environmental devastation and spiritual despair.

I can marvel at our clever technological achievements but I am at a loss to recognise the wisdom behind many of them. Instead, I bow before the greatness of the truths advanced by some of our so-called pagan ancestors who urge us to, 'Harm none, then do as you will.'

Psychism is the key we can use to unlock the doors to the many mansions of Creation. In the confusion caused by the domination of the five senses, it is no wonder that so many flock to psychics and mediums for evidence of survival after death and for guidance in our everyday lives. The spiritualist medium has the power to bring us into contact with departed loved ones and the healer is able to provide treatment of disease which transcends some of the greatest achievements of medical science.

This ability to reach out and bring into our mundane existence the promise of a better world with greater hope for the future has, unfortunately, also created a breeding ground for charlatans and greed-motivated fraudsters. A growth industry has developed amongst the 'cross my palm with silver' brigade, with the potential for harm. Indeed, many lives have been wrecked due to insensitive and occasionally totally erroneous advice given by fakes.

Even genuine psychic individuals who set themselves up in business in this area may be spiritually immature and, therefore, unable to give genuinely useful information which has only the client's best interests at heart. Fake predictions, messages of imminent deaths and false promises of healing or exorcism may have disastrous results in the psyche of some individuals, not to mention the damage to their bank balances. Some people who scoff at all mediumship and psychic ability do so quite understandably on the back of experiences with these unethical party tricksters and clever amateur psychologists.

Most psychic information should be to some degree verifiable by one of two methods. Firstly it would be folly to take on board any information with blind faith if the facts can be ascertained elsewhere from an organic source e.g. family historians or confirmation from trusted friends. Secondly, it would be reasonable to expect some degree of unprompted information which is already known to you in order to give credence to forthcoming information which is new and unsolicited. This will provide proof of the existence of at least a degree of genuine psychic ability.

We must be ever vigilant and questioning in order to avoid the abuses of the charlatan and ever suspicious of the person who demands vast sums of money for their psychic services. A great many psychics and healers charge no fee, or, if professional, charge a modest fee mainly to cover expenses. The ones who we find by trusted word of mouth are invariably the ones who should be approached in preference to those sought through anonymous advertisements.

There is not one of us without the potential for psychic ability. The adage, 'He can, who thinks he can,' is never more true than in this area of human experience. In the same way that everyone can hum a piece of music, but it takes a degree of natural ability and true dedication to achieve the status of a great opera singer, so it is with psychism, although there are a number of people born with astounding natural talents.

A vast divide exists between the spiritually evolved psychic and the dabbler in the supernatural. The motive of the former is purely a desire for the greater good of all, whilst the latter, though he or she may be genuine in intention to increase their awareness of their own potential, can be wide open to the temptation of greed and power over others and place his or her self in the hands of the ego. True psychic ability, in the hands of the spiritually enlightened who are aligned with truth and unconditional love is the greatest and most powerful force known to man, whereas the abuse of esoteric knowledge and psychic ability in the absence of its higher aspects will inevitably lead to misery, confusion and chaos.

That is not to say that all dabblers in the occult will necessarily come to harm; after all, the process of spiritual enlightenment has to begin somewhere and true lessons are not learned easily. Adversity, as they say, is the greatest teacher and it is by overcoming the desires and lusts of the ego and learning to 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' that we progress. Everyone is entitled to make mistakes and there are none amongst us who have not erred. It is the intention and motivation that divides the world of psychism between the enlightened and the mere experimenter, not the degree of ability or knowledge.

If we are true to ourselves and let conscience be our guide; if we remain open-minded, if we forever aspire to the truth in all things, then the psychic realms will be revealed to us and provide us with everything we need.