Are mediums a fraud? It may be tempting to think so, but there's more to mediums than contemporary society thinks. Two reasons for the rejection of mediums are that: 1) they do something we don't understand; 2) mediums themselves don't often say much about what they do, probably because they also can't rationally explain their powers. Where no clear explanations exist, we think something is a fraud.

The reason for silence on the part of mediums is that there isn't much to say. Rational explanations aren't only a waste of time, they're detrimental to the medium because analytical thought is antithetic to the state of mind that mediums use. They don't think; they receive, As a consequence, mediums don't do much-the less they do, the better it is.

It may seem insulting to say mediums don't do much, but this isn't an insult. Good mediums do nothing better than nearly anyone else. We don't appreciate this ability because we don't comprehend the art of doing nothing. Mediums often don't know the secret of their powers, because there's no secret to their ability. They do what comes most easily to them. There's no formal education. They simply do what they do.

There are some interesting things about a medium's consciousness. For example, mediums posses a sensitivity to stimuli that we've learned to screen out. With our current consciousness, we simply don't acknowledge everything that's around us. Mediums naturally possess true vision. What does that mean? It means mediums haven't adopted the selective vision that we normally use to define reality. They use their senses more intensely.

Some would say mediums are anomalies of nature. No. We are anomalies of nature. At one time, all humans had mediumistic talents. . . .

Prehistoric Times
Mediums may actually be the world's oldest profession: in ancient pre-verbal cultures, humans used a subtle form of communication that was very much like telepathy. We assume that early humans grunted and waved their arms to communicate, but the truth, more likely, is that communication was more sophisticated than we assume. Rather than relying on speech, early humans had the natural ability to sense all feeling and all movements in their environment and respond to them accordingly. In effect, early humans accessed parts of the brain that provided the most acute animal senses. That was how, without sophisticated weapons, early humans found food and protected themselves from both seen and unseen enemies.

Considering their heightened sensitivity, it's significant that early humans believed in spirits-many of them. Some spirits may have been what we call "ghosts," but, for early humanity, these were merely part of the general "spirit world." A few spirits were considered malevolent, but many were not. Spirits were merely part of daily life. One learned to either deal with spirits or call in a shaman to intervene.
It was when cortical consciousness began to evolve that humanity lost the capacity to communicate with the spirit world. As consciousness developed, this world increasingly began to be considered a fabrication of the imagination.

Continuing the Tradition
Unlike many of us, mediums may well maintain the traditional ability to tap into the same part of the brain that was accessible to early humanity. Yes, but why did they keep this talent? I have no explanation, other than to suggest that a genetic predisposition is responsible for their talent..
With the right genes, it's a matter of actualized predisposition . . . . and circumstance whether one becomes a medium or not. Over history, the talent for becoming a medium has very much been a family matter-very much in the same way that a talent for sorcery often is a family tradition. The talent is less "magic" than an acquired tendency to use the brain in a certain way. Perhaps, there's a marked tendency to right hemispheric dominance in the brain.

It would be interesting to see how mediums, in general, compare to others with right hemispheric dominance. What's the critical difference? Perhaps it's only a matter of believing one is receptive to another reality. There's nothing supernatural.

What Do Mediums Do Today?
In the language of today, what do mediums actually do? Mediums.have a natural ability to pick up active wave patterns that we can't hear, but which "speak" to those who are open to them. These waves are so subtle that they're out of the range of normal human hearing. Some animals have sensitive hearing that picks up these waves-which is why many animals react strongly to paranormal phenomena that's out of the range of human perception. It's likely that mediums tap into the part of the nervous system that responds to unaccustomed wave patterns.

Instead of hearing as we normally do, mediums, much like a radio receiver, "hear" though the lapping of sound waves against the body. This isn't to say that mediums actually hear in the same way that we do. Instead, they have the ability to take in waves and translate them into verbal images that impart meaning to the waves. A psychologist may say a medium picks up the intention driving sound waves.

Science and Mediums
Being a medium sounds neat and fairly straightforward, so.why does science thumb its nose at mediums? There must be problems. What are they?

As with much paranormal phenomena, consistency is the problem. At this time, it's impossible to test mediums so that a test yields coherent results that show up on demand. Paranormal phenomena is simply too variable! We must take into consideration that what mediums tell us is an interpretation, much as with astrology. The dynamic behind interpretation is consistent, but the interpreter is dealing with an influence that has a broad range of possibilities. For this reason, an insightful medium might research general feelings and the history of the place that he or she examines, then matches these up with actual events, This was essentially done at Delphi when a questioner looked for messages from the gods about specific matters.

At the oracle of Delphi, there were two steps to interacting with spirits. The first step was for specially trained priestesses to pick up energies from the spiritual world and to relate exactly what they experienced without thinking about the meaning of what they saw. The second step was for specially trained priests to hear what the priestesses experienced at the oracle and to interpret their visions. The motive behind this process was that different jobs used different areas of the brain, and that the most insightful interactions with the spirit world involved a meshing of two ways of seeing.

The New View
In an almost uncanny replay of traditions at Delphi, contemporary investigators of the paranormal today follow a similar mode of mixing mentalities: in addition to investigators that measure and make notes, mediums frequently add emotional input.

I'll be honest: I'm something of a skeptic. While mediums often provide colorful, and dramatic, input, I can't tell what's believable and what's not. As a writer, I appreciate a good story, but I can't help feeling that imagination is getting the upper hand in many investigations. No one likes a boring ghost story! How often do mediums feel compelled to feel something out of the ordinary?

On the other hand, I do believe there's a lot of subtle information that we miss. There's no reason to dispute that some individuals have heightened senses. Because I don't have these senses, there's no reason to believe that others can't have them.

It would probably help if I understood the process of mediums and I knew that mediums understood my process as a thinking person. I know I'm contradicting my premise that an investigation needs two minds, but I'm actually proposing that an investigator can individually develop these two minds in normal life-even out the range of paranormal Investigation. Even without curiosity about the paranormal, it seems we would profit psychologically from having a broad mind that has access to both minds. We would become open to what isn't part of our experience.

Is that possible? It is. Our obstacle is that a new approach to education doesn't yet exist. We don't yet know that the future of paranormal investigation doesn't depend on fancier tools; it depends on our ability to broaden our perceptions to such an extent that the paranormal seems normal. Mediums will have training, and not be viewed as a questionable source of information.

We shall, at last, emerge from the Dark\Ages of the modern world.

©2006 Angela Berquist, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.
Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

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