Reviewed by Tom Ruffles
Karen Harrison has compiled a readable guide to developing and using a range of psychic abilities, complete with exercises that will benefit both novices and by those with more experience. She covers theory and first steps before going on to a variety of techniques. Subsequent chapters examine clairvoyance, various types of spirit guides, dreaming, past lives, automatic writing, psychometry, communicating with animals, and conclude with guidance on good practices to ensure that these abilities are utilised in a safe and productive manner.
The key message is admirably simple: being psychic is about listening to and trusting your inner voice in order to evaluate information received without the use of the recognised senses. The book presents variations on this theme, showing the variety of techniques available to assist in that reception. Harrison has a lively informal style, and anyone wishing to try these activities will find the book packed with good advice, not least that we have responsibility for ourselves and our actions, and decisions about one’s life cannot be delegated to someone else.
In theory the target audience is everybody because we are told that these abilities are in all of us, even if dormant (or suppressed) in most. In practice the book is not going to be to everyone’s taste because some of it will pass an individual’s boggle threshold: contacting ascended masters and descriptions of various species of angels for example, interpreting the colours of clairvoyance, or communicating with dead pets. That’s fine because those not in tune with particular aspects, and who still feel that they would like to cultivate other areas of possible psychic functioning, can cherry-pick those parts of the book that are in tune with their views and which they feel comfortable attempting, while ignoring the rest.
It’s easy to be dismissive of books like this. You will not find double-blind experiments that rule out alternative explanations for the psychic’s information, and you can’t be sure that your recently-deceased cat has been reincarnated in a kitten (something Harrison believes happened to her pet), or that you really are communicating with the spirit world through your dreams, and not essentially engaging in wishful thinking or simply talking to yourself.
But at worst these exercises encourage sensitivity to the world around us, and empathy with others, even if we do not in fact have spirit guides, we do not communicate telepathically, and objects do not carry energy from their history that can be read. At best, who knows, there may be something in it all, and expending effort on psychic development may result in an enhanced awareness of a greater reality, and our part in it. Charging others for such services, however, is another matter entirely.