Clairvoyance is a form of psychic ability. From the French for 'clear-seeing,' it refers to the faculty of supranormal sight, the
ability to perceive objects or people that cannot be discerned through the normal senses. It overlaps with other psychic abilities
such as clairaudience, clairsentience, telepathy, psychometry, metagnomy, precognition and remote viewing.
Clairvoyance normally requires some form of communication with the spirits or other nonphysical essences who give, or pretend to give,
the desired knowledge. The ability has been acknowledged and used in all cultures throughout history — by prophets, fortune-tellers,
shamans, wizards, witches and seers of all kinds. Western science began to investigate the phenomena in the 19th century, when
subjects treated by mesmerism displayed clairvoyance and other psychic abilities. Since then a substantial body of evidence has been
accumulated to support the existence of clairvoyance. As well as appearing to be a general ability among humans, it also appears to
exist in animals.
There have been anecdotal reports of clairvoyance and claims of clairvoyant abilities on the part of some throughout history in most
cultures. Often these have been associated with religious figures, offices, and practices. For example, ancient Hindu religious texts
list clairvoyance as one of the siddhis, skills that can be acquired through appropriate meditation and personal discipline.
The ancient Greeks believed that daimons, intermediate beings between human beings and the gods, whispered advice in the ears of men.
The Bible contains many episodes where God sends messengers to prophets and kings. Throughout history certain famous men and women,
Joan of Arc, for example, saw visions and heard voices of angels. But a large number of anecdotal
accounts of clairvoyance are of the spontaneous variety among the general populace. For example, many people report instances of
'knowing' in one form or another when a loved one has died or was in danger before receiving notification through normal channels
that such events have taken place. While anecdotal accounts do not provide scientific proof of clairvoyance, such common experiences
continue to motivate research into such phenomena.
Clairvoyance was one of the phenomena reported to have been observed in the behavior of somnambulists, people who were mesmerized
and in a trance state (nowadays equated with hypnosis by most people) in the time of Franz Anton Mesmer. The earliest recorded report
of somnambulistic clairvoyance is credited to the Marquis de Puysegur, a follower of Mesmer, who in 1784 was treating a local
dull-witted peasant named Victor Race. During treatment, Victor reportedly would go into trance and undergo a personality change,
becoming fluent and articulate, and giving diagnosis and prescription for his own disease as well as those of other patients, and
forgetting everything when he came out of the trance state. All this is in a manner reminiscent of the reported behaviors of the
20th century psychic Edgar Cayce. It is reported that although Puysegur used the term 'clairvoyance', he did not attribute any of
this to the paranormal since he accepted mesmerism as one of the natural sciences.
Clairvoyance was in times following a reported ability of some mediums during the spiritualist period of the late 19th and early
20th centuries, and was one of the aspects studied by members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Psychics of many
descriptions have claimed clairvoyant ability up to the present day.
While experimental research into clairvoyance began with SPR researchers, experimental studies became more systematic with the
efforts of J. B. Rhine and his associates at Duke University, and such research efforts continue to the present day. Perhaps the
most well-known studies of clairvoyance in recent times was the US government funded remote viewing project at SRI/SAIC during the
1970's through the mid-1990's.
Results of some parapsychological studies, such as the remote viewing studies, suggest that clairvoyance does exist (though that
interpretation is disputed strongly by critics), and that it does not in general require another person to send the information
being received, i.e. it can to some extent be distinguished from telepathy. However there are as yet no satisfactory experiments
designed that cleanly separate the various manifestations of ESP. Some parapsychologists have proposed that our different functional
labels (clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition) all refer to one basic underlying mechanism, although there is not yet any satisfactory
theory for what that mechanism would be.
Clairvoyance normally requires some form of communication with the spirits or other nonphysical essences who give, or pretend to give,
the desired knowledge. The ability has been acknowledged and used in all cultures throughout history — by prophets, fortune-tellers,
shamans, wizards, witches and seers of all kinds. Western science began to investigate the phenomena in the 19th century, when
subjects treated by mesmerism displayed clairvoyance and other psychic abilities. Since then a substantial body of evidence has been
accumulated to support the existence of clairvoyance. As well as appearing to be a general ability among humans, it also appears to
exist in animals.