Psychic or Intuitive Experiences

Types of Psychic or Intuitive Experiences

  1. Abstract intuition. Automatically knowing the answer to a problem without having to go through the logical steps of thinking and learning.
  2. Astral travel. Episodes in which the spirit (sometimes called the astral body, soul, or spirit personality) seems to leave the physical body and travel to another place, time, or dimension.
  3. Automatic writing. Writing or some other creative endeavor such as art or musical composition done without conscious thought by the experiencer; it is often assumed that a “spirit guide” connects in some way to the experiencer’s hand or arm and uses it to write messages, paint, draw, or play a musical instrument.
  4. Bilocation. The ability of an individual to appear in physical form at two distinct places at once.
  5. Channeling. A phenomenon in which the experiencer’s own personality or spirit seems to step aside, and another personality or spirit seems to use the experiencer’s physical body to communicate, write, or draw.  “Trance Channeling” is most common, where the experiencer goes into a trance during the channeling episode, and has no awareness or memory of the information being channeled through them.  “Conscious Channeling” is less common, where the experiencer has full awareness of the information being channeled through them as it occurs, and they retain memory of the experience and information afterwards.
  6. Clairaudience. Mentally perceiving or actually hearing sounds or voices that are beyond the range of natural hearing.
  7. Clairsentience. The ability to physically feel and know the true feelings and mental state of another, including the ability to locate pain in another by sensing it in one’s own body. Also may be a new ability to intuitively “know” correct information about another person, facilitated by: touching the person; looking at the person, looking at a photo of the person, and/or touching an object the person touched.
  8. Clairvoyance. The ability to visually perceive things beyond the normal range of vision, including: (1) The ability to see auras, subtle energy fields, or chakras; (2) the ability to see meaningful colors, patterns, or symbols which are not normally visible; (3) the ability to see objects, beings, or events that are concealed or beyond the natural range of sight (one type is called “remote viewing”).
  9. Communication with spirit guides. The ability to communicate with what seems to be a spirit helper, guardian angel, or guide by seeing, hearing, feeling, knowing, or smelling their presence.
  10. Higher Guidance or “Downloads”.  The ability to spontaneously receive intuitive guidance or warnings about life events, or to suddenly become aware of helpful previously unknown information,  by guidance which seems to come from Spirit or a Higher Source.  This higher guidance suddenly pops  into the Experiencer’s  awareness,  like a computer “download” of new information, and may be heard, seen,  intuitively known, or sensed.
  11. Materializations. The ability to make solid objects or persons appear out of thin air. Includes Stigmata.
  12. Mediumship. The ability to hear, see, and/or feel spirits of what seem to be disembodied deceased souls, and to communicate with these spirits.
  13. Out-of-Body Experiences. (OBE) Episodes in which the spirit or soul seems to leave the physical body, but remains within sight of or in the general location of the physical body.  Out-of-body experiences where the spirit travels away from the location of the physical body are called “astral travel” type of OBE.
  14. Past-life recall. The ability to know, see, or clearly sense what seems to be previous-life incarnations.  Past-life memories are often stimulated to surface spontaneously when one travels to a physical location on the planet where it seems the experiencer lived a past life, or  when one meets a person with whom it seems the experiencer lived a past life.
  15. Precognition. The ability to see, know, or emotionally sense the future; this includes having premonitions, prophetic dreams, and premonitory visions.
  16. Psychic or spiritual healing. The ability to heal others by touch (also called “the laying on of hands”), by one’s energy field, by prayers, or by focused mental thought; the related experience of being healed by the touch, energy field, prayers, or focused thoughts of another. 
  17. Psychometry. The ability to receive intuitive information about a person or object by touching either the person or the object with one’s hands.
  18. Stigmata. A type of materialization experience, with the spontaneous appearance of wounds, often discharging blood, which appear in locations that generally replicate the wounds of Jesus Christ on the cross. Many stigmatics enter a mystical state of consciousness during the stigmata materialization episode.
  19. Synchronicities and Meaningful Coincidences: A type of intuitive experience when events occur that appear to be significantly related, with no outward causal connection.
  20. Telekinesis. The ability to move objects by thought or mental influence.
  21. Telepyrokinesis. The ability to start fires by thought or mental influence (also called pyrokinesis).
  22. Telepathy. The ability to send and/or receive thoughts or mental images to or from another person.
  23. Transdimensional Experiences. a) Episodes in which the Experiencer temporarily enters what seems to be another dimension; or b) seeing beings or encountering entities which seem to originate from another dimension. Transdimensional experiences may be associated with a discontinuity or an incongruence in the passage of time, such as missing time, or a lengthy experience occurring in a very short earthly time frame.
  24. UFO Encounters. Many perceived UFOE contact or abduction experiences seem to be trans-dimensional psychic experiences, with the Experiencer being moved to other places or dimensions, seemingly by beings living on another space/time dimension, or beings from other dimensions entering ours. (See Transdimensional Experiences above). UFO Encounters are sometimes  perceived as an abduction during which the Experiencer is medically examined, other times as a contact when the Experiencer is taught spiritual lessons. NOTE: UFO sightings of lights or strange space craft in the sky may or may not fall into this trans-dimensional category.

[Reference: Yvonne Kason. Touched by the Light. 2019]

Psychic or Intuitive Experiences Are Not Always Positive

Some psychic or intuitive experiences may be frightening or intrusive:  Experiencers may sometimes feel distressed or even overwhelmed by their psychic or intuitive STE experiences. 

Distress from psychic STEs may occur due to:

  1. Excessive clairvoyance. Some STE Experiencers may at times feel “too wide open”, and find that they are having so frequent clairvoyant perceptions that it is distracting or even distressing to them. This may happen after a powerful opening STE such as a Near-Death Experience or a strong kundalini awakening.
  2. Excessive clairsentience. At times some STE Experiencers find they become so clairsentient, so sensitive to perceiving other people’s emotional or physical pain, that they feel too sensitive to tolerate going into crowded enclosed spaces such as buses, trains, airplanes, or even busy stores.
  3. Intrusive past-life memories. Some STE Experiencers may go through periods when they perceive past-lives of others or of themselves so readily, and so frequently, that it make social interactions challenging.
  4. Distressing or frightening NDEs. A small proportion of NDE Experiencers have a negative or distressing NDE. [See Near-Death Experiences].
  5. Psychic assault. Some Experiencers report distressing episodes when they are not able to block invasive sensations that seem sent to them by an unscrupulous or immoral person with strong psychic abilities. This may include intrusive thoughts, visual images, messages, or even physical sensations. The Experiencer often has a clear inner sense of the identity of the psychic invader.
  6. Possession states. Although rare, some reliable sources have reported instances when it seems that a spirit entity appears to have entered the Experiencer’s body against his or her will. The intruding entity seems to struggle to take control of the Experiencer’s actions or thoughts. [See references: Scott Peck, & Adam Crabtree]
  7. Walk-in. Sometimes called a “step-in”, this is a rare and poorly understood phenomenon when it appears that the spirit of a disembodied entity has taken over the body of an individual at their moment of death, or shortly thereafter. The entity’s spirit then lives in the deceased person’s physical body, keeping it alive. This may account for an abrupt and sometimes negative personality change in a person who was clinically dead and later resuscitated.

[References: Adam Crabtree, Yvonne Kason, and Scott Peck]

Suggested Further Reading on Psychic or Intuitive Experiences

Crabtree, Adam.  Multiple Man: Exploration in Possession and Multiple Personality. Don Mills; Ontario, Grafton, 1985.

Guiley, Rosemary Ellen.  Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal Experience. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991

Kason, Yvonne. Touched by the Light: Exploring Spiritually Transformative Experiences. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2019.

Peck, Scott.  People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil.  New York; Touchstone, 1983.

Ring, Kenneth. The Omega Project. New York: William Morrow, 1992.

Yogananda, Paramahansa.  Autobiography of a Yogi. Los Angeles, California: Self-Realization Fellowship, 2007.