My healing work and my mediumship constantly overlap. Healing, I must
confess, is my first love and a tremendous challenge. However,
clairvoyance and survival evidence have a very important place in my
work, showing as they do the extraordinary powers of mind energy, and
proving that the mind survives the death of the physical body.
'Survival evidence' is the term used to describe messages from people
who are 'dead'. Mediums receive them either in the form of telepathic
communication from a dead person or by actually 'hearing' their voice,
through clairaudience. There are many different ways of hearing: voices
may be heard inside or outside your head, or the thought may just appear
telepathically in your mind. More often than not the medium
simultaneously receives a clairvoyant picture, which enables him to
describe the speaker to the sitter.
Clairvoyance means 'clear seeing'; it is the gift of clear vision,
usually into the future, and it has been used to help people throughout
the ages. It is an extension of the faculty of intuition, which everyone
has to some extent, and differs from survival evidence in that it does
not necessarily involve direct communication from individual minds. My
own explanation is that I tune in to universal energies, rather like
turning on a television set, and receive words and pictures as though I
am plugging into a vast telecommunications system.
There are several ways of receiving clairvoyance. Some seven years
ago I was given a lot of information about my own future and my family's
through automatic writing. I found myself covering sheets of paper every
day; a great deal of it has already come true, and I know there is more
to come!
Clairvoyance also enables you to see into the past. A few years ago I
visited Biggin Hill with some friends. I was sitting quietly in the sun
while they looked at the planes when suddenly the scene changed
dramatically. I was taken back to the time of the Second World War; I
watched, fascinated, as men in wartime flying gear and fitters in
dunagrees rushed to and fro. This flashback must have been only a few
minutes long, but it seemed to last forever.
I find that most of the clairvoyance I receive is positive. I never
forecast disasters; indeed, I am rarely given negative information,
thought I may get warnings which can avert unhappiness if they are
heeded. There are some mediums who predict disasters and death, this is
thoroughly irresponsible. Even if I received such information I would
question whether I was a hundred per cent right. But, being a very
positive person myself, I only attract positive minds.
I do have some reservations about clairvoyance, however. For some
people, wanting to know the future can become a sort of drug: they want
it again and again, especially when they are given information that
turns out to be accurate. Like any form of addiction this can be
dangerous, negating the person's independence and self-responsibility.
I have also been told many times by clients that after having
received clairvoyance they feel that they can sit back and allow things
to happen. Then, when the predicted events don't happen straight away,
they become frustrated and sometimes angry. When I realized that people
were sitting back and doing nothing I felt quite upset, and didn't want
to give any more clairvoyance - in fact my friends think I'm mean
because I am unwilling to give them sittings. But I honestly find that,
much more effective than predicting wonderful futures, is to tell people
about mind energy and encourage them to use it to create their own
wonderful futures!
Three years before I met Alan I visited a medium in London who told
me that the man with whom I was to share the rest of my life would come
to live with me when the daffodils were out. Every year as the daffodils
came and went, I used to joke about it. 'Where is this man?' I'd
complain to Janet. But I didn't take it too seriously, and carried on
with the rest of my life.
I love daffodils, and one autumn I planted a thousand bulbs in my
garden. It was about a month later that Michael Bentine told me that the
man who would share my life would be with me in the spring. The
following March, Alan and I were enjoying together the most beautiful
spring I can ever remember, with daffodils everywhere we went! I should
also have been told to plant my own!
Simply waiting for things to happen is negative. I teach positivity
and self-help; negativity of any kind is harmful, not only to ourselves
but also to those around us. However, giving clairvoyance is a part of
my work, and it is always interesting when my predictions are fulfilled.
This can take time: clairvoyance may show you the end of the road, but
not all the footsteps leading up to it or all the little paths leading
off it before you reach your destination. You have to walk that road and
work out your own life whether you know the future or not.
When people find they have to take the steps themselves, or start
going up one of those side-paths, they may think: This is nothing like
the clairvoyance I was given! Then, perhaps two years later, they'll
ring up to say: 'You'll never guess what's happened! Everything has
turned out exactly as forecast!'
You also get the skeptics, who, rather than sit back and wait, go and
do the opposite of what the medium has recommended! One of these is a
publisher friend called John: over a period of two or three years he
asked me regularly for clairvoyance, and then deliberately went against
any advice I gave him. This was partly because he didn't want his
decision-making influenced by anyone else, partly as an experiment to
see whether his behaviour would alter the outcome. In fact it never did;
what I predicted always happened!
This gift is part of my personality and there's no question of
switching it on and off. It can arrive at any time and any place. I can
be sitting at dinner enjoying the conversation, and suddenly I am given
information concerning one of the guests. When clairvoyance arrives
spontaneously like this, it is usually for a purpose. Sometimes it is to
convince the unconvinced. Because of the nature of Alan's work, we often
entertain; at one dinner-party I told an overseas client, who was
rather skeptical about my work, that his right-hand man would leave him
within three months. He said this was most unlikely; his colleague had
been with him for twelve years. About three weeks later he phoned Alan
to say that the man had given notice.
Usually the purpose of spontaneous clairvoyance is to comfort and
reassure someone who is anxious or under stress. I also feel that when
it comes unsought it is much more reliable than it might be if I were
giving sittings for hour after hour. Mediums often have to interpret the
information they receive; if they are unwell or tired, there is a risk
of their giving an incorrect interpretation. The well-being of the
client must always be uppermost in the clairvoyant's mind; I always make
sure that what I give to others has come to me so clearly that I can't
be mistaken.
My friend Louise received very detailed spontaneous clairvoyance on
her first visit to me for healing, which was also our first meeting. She
had just embarked on a second marriage and in the autumn of 1983 she and
her husband, anxious to start a new home together, had started looking
for a country cottage in Oxfordshire.
However, I immediately saw that they would be moving to Sussex, where
they would be near a commuter line. (Louise has to travel to London for
her work). Accordingly, the couple began house-hunting in Sussex. At
first they had no luck, but on her next visit I was still certain that
Sussex was where they would find their dream cottage. The clarity of the
pictures given to me was amazing; I could see the South Downs and the
surrounding countryside as if I were there.
And I had further information for Louise. 'Although you can go on
looking,' I said, 'the cottage will in fact find you' I described it to
her as I saw it: 'It has hills in the distance, it's surrounded by trees
and there is some sort of pond adjacent to it. Although there is a large
house next to it, I don't think you will be able to afford that one. The
cottage is not free at the moment, but you will be in it by next summer.
Within a week, Louise had received a phone call from her sister to
say that her husband's uncle had just died, leaving everything to his
sister. The property included a big house in Sussex which had been sold,
and a cottage next door which the sister was thinking of selling. Louise
asked me to go and see it with them; before we set out she showed me a
photograph of the cottage. I said: 'Yes, this is the house I saw. It
belongs to a woman who has only about three weeks to live.'
When we drove down there it was just as I had seen it: a charming
rosy brick cottage, next to a large beautiful but dilapidated house -
which the couple could certainly not have afforded! It was in a country
area, but near a commuter line. The garden, which included a sunken
lawn, was bordered by trees and had an uninterrupted view of the South
Downs at one end - all exactly as I had seen it. But I was puzzled. I
told Louise: 'This is just what I saw, but there is no water. I know
there was water'.
The new owner was very ill and was in fact to die within a month, but
before then Louise and her husband took me to meet her, along with a
young cousin. While I gave the sick woman some healing to relieve her
pain, Louise and her husband walked in the garden with the cousin. He
suddenly burst out in an embarrassed way: 'There's one thing I ought to
have told you about the house. When my uncle bought it, there was a pond
where the sunken lawn is, so it may be very damp!'
That was obviously where I had seen the water. Could the previous
owner have been giving me the information and showing me the scene as he
had seen it the first time? He had obviously loved the place, and I feel
sure that he wanted the next owners to love it, too. Louise tells me
that the house, with its calm beauty and ancient atmosphere, feels very
important to them both; it has not only given them roots, but is also a
source of inspiration to her husband, who is a writer.
The actual purchase was dragged out by legal complications and the
sale of Louise's London house, but in August 1984 they finally moved in.
A curious and pleasant postscript to the story is that not long
afterwards Alan and I moved to our present home, which is ten minutes'
walk away!
After their move, Louise wrote to me: 'During all this doubt and
worry, the power of your clairvoyance and the accuracy in detail after
detail and your assurance that we would eventually live in the cottage
kept our spirits and determination going.'
However, knowing it's all going to come right in the end doesn't mean
you can stop making an effort.
Another potential misuse of clairvoyance is when clients simply want
decision making taken out of their hands, which isn't good for anyone.
Sometimes I've asked these people, 'What do you want out of life?' and
received the answer, 'I want someone to tell me.' But we were all given
minds with which to plan our own lives. Most people know at heart what
they would like to achieve: the best help you can give yourself is to
visualize your goal in your mind and work steadily towards it.
It is your life, and there is always a choice. If you can train
yourself to have 'clear vision' by being positive and independent and
working hard for your ultimate goals, you hold your fate in your own
hands. It's always best to try to make positive decisions for yourself,
and only seek clairvoyance when the situation is confused.
One situation I have learned to avoid is giving clairvoyance to both
partners in a troubled relationship. The clairvoyant can only too easily
be used as a scapegoat; each partner can bring out information given in
confidence and use it as a weapon against the other, instead of taking
responsibility for their own feelings and opinions.
