The traditional ‘clair senses’ model of ‘psychic sensing’ does not adequately represent the sophisticated nuances of all the nonsensory psychic impressions that involve cognition, emotion, and intuition. Not only are these nonsensory impressions integral to all psychic channeling or reading, but they also represent the majority of everyday psychic perceptions. A perfect example of this long-standing dilemma is the ill-conceived notion of ‘clairsentience.’
Traditional descriptions for the so-called clairsentient ‘clair sense’ typically include a confusing assortment of empathic emotions, passions, and mood states; awkwardly clumped together with various physical sensations and medical symptoms; as well as all forms of intuition, and in some instances even cognitions.
The misconstrued notion of clairsentience is a baffling smorgasbord of psychic possibilities that I have struggled to make sense of myself for many years. Is it any wonder there is so much myth and misconception regarding true psychic perception? A blog intro I wrote on the subject years ago still holds true: “If you ever host a dinner party for a group of psychics, mediums and energy healers, and need a good conversation piece, the psychic ability known as ‘clairsentience’ is one of those topics that is sure to get the party started!”
In my own psychic development journey, the complex, varied definitions for clairsentience never made much sense to me and it took many years of study, research, personal reflection, and professional experience to eventually figure out why it really does not make no sense (pun intended). It is simply because these definitions are an attempt to ‘pigeonhole’ psychic feelings, knowings, sensations and intuitions into a restrictive, outmoded ‘sensory’ model of psychic perception — a futile attempt at forcing ‘extrasensory pegs’ into ‘sensory holes.’
What we traditionally think of as the psychic ability of clairsentience, is not a singular psychic sense or ‘clair sense.’ It is instead an umbrella term for a range of psychic preferences, or types of mind-soul impression. That is why this concept never really correlated well with my actual psychic experiences.
I now finally understood that the various nonsensory mind-soul impressions, customarily clumped together as so-called ‘subtypes’ of clairsentience, are instead distinct psychic preferences, namely clairempathy, clairsomatica, clairintuition, and claircognition. These nonsensory impressions are not mere ‘categories’ or ‘subtypes’ of clairsentience, because clairempathic feelings, clairsomatic sensations, and clairintuitive impressions are not only sentient in nature, but also sapient.
Sapience is the cognitive, intellectual, conceptual qualities of psychic awareness, or the ‘thought’ aspects of psychic impression, while sentience is the emotional, intuitive, somatic qualities, or the ‘feeling’ aspects. This also correlates with the perceptive differences between the two brain hemispheres, or the left brain and right brain.
Now I also understood why ‘clairsentience’ is commonly believed to be the first ‘clair sense’ to develop for most psychics and mediums[1], and why it is considered by some to be the most basic, fundamental, or ‘garden-variety’ psychic sense. For example, angel practitioner Maria G. Maas writes “the clairs of the intuitive process are mostly clairsentience and claircognizance, with clairsentience being the most common.”[2]
The truth is all psychics and mediums have the gift or capacity for clairsapient-clairsentient awareness. It is in fact our one and only true psychic ability. If there is indeed a ‘sixth sense,’ then it is sapient-sentient psychic awareness, or psychic thought-feeling. The range of psychic perceptions we therefore traditionally label as ‘subtypes’ of clairsentience are instead impressions of sapient-sentient awareness, and these impressions are perceived by psychics and mediums as a diverse, unlimited array of feelings, knowings, sensations, and intuitions.
THE CLAIR PREFERENCES
More than a century ago, author Charles Leadbeater writes “the astral body has no specialized sense-organs.”[3] Psychics and mediums do not perceive through separate reception channels or ‘clair senses.’ Yes, psychics and mediums mentally ‘feel, know, see, hear, smell, taste, and touch,’ but these psychic impressions do not enter our conscious awareness via different psychic ‘sense organs.’
Even parapsychology concedes that psi perceptions cannot truly be separated into distinct pigeonhole categories. In a 2017 meta-analysis of psychic perceptions associated with dreams, for example, the researchers conclude that in practice separate categories of psi phenomena “may be difficult to distinguish and tend to be defined operationally.”[4]
Instead of psychics and mediums having separate psychic senses or extrasensory pathways, the so-called ‘clair senses’ are perceptual preferences that differ from one psychic or medium to the next. Our potential mind-soul preferences are wide-ranging and eclectic, and they are ineffable, intrinsic, and subjective. No two psychics or mediums experience psychic impressions in exactly the same way.
For example, while one psychic medium might perceive a ‘love message from spirit’ as a clairvoyant vision of a ‘red rose,’ another might experience it as the clairolfactory ‘scent of a rose,’ or even clairaudiently hear the song Bed of Roses by rock band Bon Jovi. This ‘I love you’ energy data can be rendered as an endless array of different mind-soul impressions, but the essence of the original energy data remains the same, no matter who does the channeling or reading. Spirit is simply saying, “I love you.”
The traditional concept of the ‘clairs’ are therefore merely different labels for the various ‘end results’ of the same psychic ability or ‘sixth sense,’ namely the mind-soul capacity to transduce or channel energy data into conscious awareness. Instead of conceptualizing these ‘end-results’ or ‘products’ of psychic perception as different psychic abilities or separate ‘clair senses,’ it is more sensible to conceive of it as different psychic preferences, or ‘clair preferences,’ namely:
Claircognizance: cognitive, knowing, precognition, prescience
Clairempathy: affective, emotional, feeling, presentiment
Clairsomatica: somatosensory, sensation, foresensing
Clairvoyance: visual, seeing, foreseeing
Clairaudience: auditory, hearing, forehearing
Clairolfaction: olfactory, smelling, foresmelling
Clairgustance: gustatory, tasting, foretasting
Clairintuition: premonition, presage, foreboding
The ‘clairs’ are not separate musical instruments that can be played individually. Instead, they are separate notes produced by just one violin, with two strings. The violin is the mind-soul; the sheet music is the energy data or akashic information; reading the sheet music is achieving psychic resonance; the two strings are sapient and sentient awareness; and drawing the bow over it to create sound is transduction; and finally, the different musical notes and tones produced are impression preferences, ultimately perceived as the holistic, fused melodies and harmonies of psychic perception.
© 2022 Anthon St. Maarten
REFERENCES
[1] Williamson, L. (2009). Finding the Spirit Within: A Medium Shows the Way. Random House UK
[2] Maas, M. G. (2016). Angel Practitioner Handbook: A Foundation Guide. Balboa Press.
[3] Leadbeater, C.W. (1903). Clairvoyance. Second Edition. Theosophical Publishing Society.
[4] Storm, L. et al. (2017). On The Correspondence Between Dream Content And Target Material Under Laboratory Conditions: A Meta-Analysis Of Dream-Esp Studies, 1966-2016. International Journal Of Dream Research. Doi.Org.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anthon St. Maarten is a psychic medium and destiny coach with a global clientele of thought leaders, business executives, celebrities, politicians, academics, and luminaries in the arts and sciences in more than thirty countries spanning five continents.
He is also a metaphysics teacher, psychic development coach, podcaster, and spiritual blogger. Anthon is a hereditary psychic medium in professional practice since 2004 and a liberal arts post-graduate with a major in psychology.
Anthon publishes the spiritual life design blog, The S Word, and is the author of Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny and The Sensible Psychic: A Leading-Edge Guide To True Psychic Perception.
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