There are different types of mediumship. Some mediums actually see spirits and hear them as if they were physically present. Others see and hear them as mental images. It's also possible for some to combine the two.
Spirits don't appear "on demand." Sometimes they come, and sometimes they don't. I like to say that there really is "life after death" – in other words, spirits are not just hanging around out there in the ether waiting for someone on this side to contact them. They have things to do. When they do come through, they don't always answer specific questions. You won't always get an answer to, "Where did Aunt Sadie leave her will?" These types of issues become unimportant when someone has crossed. What is important from their point of view, is life itself, and the lessons their loved ones are learning. Sometimes they're able to manifest without the intervention of a medium – playing with electronics, turning computers or lights on or off. Other times, they can manifest as the feeling of a loving presence when someone in the family is feeling particularly down or distressed.
Mediumship and Channeling
The subtle bodies of a medium are more loosely connected together than they are in a regular person. This allows the subtle bodies to be easily disconnected and enables a non-physical entity to take temporary control of the medium's entire physical-etheric body or a large portion of their etheric body:- The medium's physical-etheric body can be temporarily possessed by a non-physical entity to enable it to communicate with physical humans. The medium's own emotional-mental body is displaced whilst the non-physical entity is in possession.
- The medium can temporarily relinquish some matter from their etheric body to allow a non-physical entity to manifest. The vibratory state of the etheric matter can be slowed down so that the etheric manifestation becomes visible to the human eye. Some of the etheric matter can even be temporarily condensed into physical matter to enable the entity to interact with the physical world.
Mediumship should not be considered a psychic power because it actually involves relinquishing one's power. A loosely connected subtle body is not a gift or a blessing; like clairvoyance it is a disability (but even more so). Mediumship is extremely detrimental to one's long-term physical, emotional and mental health, so the practice is not recommended.
Additional problems arise when mediums communicate with discarnate entities to acquire information about the spirit world (emotional world). People don't suddenly become more knowledgeable or enlightened when they die, so why would anyone believe a "dead" person over a "living" person? Any emotional-world entity that claims to be an ascended master, oversoul or archangel and offers "esoteric" knowledge is a fraud that cannot be trusted. True ascended masters do not communicate through mediums. The lowest world they operate in is the mental world, and they communicate by direct thought transfer into the minds of their advanced students (who remain fully present and fully lucid during the communication).
Channeling differs from mediumship in that the emotional-world entity does not take possession of the person's entire body; they just take control of the voice-box or the arm (in the case of automatic writing). True ascended masters do communicate in this way – they do not take control of anyone's body or any part of their body.
Less than 20% of psychics, mediums and channelers are completely genuine, so it is no wonder that they rarely stand up to scientific scrutiny. Of the discarnate entities that seek to communicate through psychics, mediums and channelers, approximately 50% are actively trying to mislead us by spreading false or distorted information, 45% are well meaning but ill-informed so can tell us very little, and only 5% are authentic spirit guides who provide trustworthy and useful information.
Clairvoyants and mediums often call the physical world the "material world", and the emotional world the "spiritual world". This implies that there are only two worlds and gives the impression that the beings in the higher "spiritual world" are more knowledgeable than we are in the "material world", but actually the reverse is true. Emotional consciousness contributes nothing to our understanding of reality; it is merely a driving-force to activate our mental consciousness. Beings that permanently reside in the emotional world do so because they have not activated their mental consciousness, so they know very little about the true nature of reality.
