Claircognizance Explained

Mystical philosophies and even major religions across time and culture have believed that it is possible to for some people know about things through mysterious and unusual means; it is only in the modern times, that such means began to be formally studied and were labeled extra-sensory perception, of which claircognizance is an example.

What is claircognizance?

At its simplest, claircognizance is the ability to know something without a physical explanation why one knows it. The etymological origins of the term can be traced back to 17th century French clair meaning clear and conoissance which is Old French for knowledge – thus when literally translated, claircognizance means ‘clear knowledge’. Sometimes claircognizance works as an intuitive sense that something is just right or just wrong without any logical explanation of why a person thinks so or how he/she has arrived at that knowledge.

Claircognizance is a form of extra-sensory perception of ESP by which certain individuals are able to acquire information through means other than the normal physical senses. While other forms of ESP would involve acquiring information through psychic visions, sounds, taste, touch and smell as in clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairgustance, clairsentience and clairalience respectively, this particular form of ESP does not co-relate to any physical sense at all. Claircognizance is simply ‘knowing’ certain things without being told or feeling anything.

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The information acquired through claircognizance can be of several kinds - It can be smaller insights about people and situations here and there. It can be an inspired idea or entire background of spirits and ghosts that relate to past lives and other times. Whatever the kind of information downloaded into the psychic’s kind, all claircognizance is characterized by this strong sense of knowing that goes beyond logic. yet another significant trait of claircognizance is the fact that the intuitive information comes into the thinking mind of the psychic, not into the mind’s eye as in clairvoyance or as an undefined ‘feeling’ as in clairsentience.

Marks of a claircognizant person

Individuals who are claircognizant tend to live on the mental level rather than the physical or merely emotional. They are often analytical and are good at understanding abstract concepts and solving problems. One of the traits of such psychics is that as children, they probably knew more than was usual for their age and seemed to have an answer for everything. They were most likely labelled know-it-alls while growing up.

Since claircognizance does not manifest itself in a dramatic way as clairvoyance or clairaudience, accounts of individuals with this capacity is less heard of. Claircognizance is no less powerful for being subtle. Anyone who had channelled information in written form, also known as ‘automatic writing’ is utilizing their claircognizance. Even in daily life a person with psychic potential can have moments of claircognizance when he or she is certain that someone is lying about something, despite evidence to the contrary or is simply knows that it would not be a good idea to accept the job you’ve just been offered, despite the fact that it seems perfect. In more evolved psychics, claircognizance can indicate what is going to happen in the future or even bring to the mind a truly inspired idea.

Explanations for Claircognizance

According to believers in the paranormal and spiritualism, claircognizance is brought about when the higher self or spirit guides of such psychics put information into their mind in the form of thought.
However skeptics oppose this idea and one of the grounds of their refusal to belief in the validity of claircognizance is that in the mind all thoughts are mixed up, so how can one possibly differentiate between those that emerge from the usual process of thinking and those that are the result of claircognizance.

Believers though point out an essential difference between conscious thoughts and claircognizant input - when a person is thinking, his/her conscious mind is in control. But when one receives claircognizant information, the conscious mind is only observing the information that is coming in and sometimes trying to interpret it - it is not generating the information. The claircognizant information just comes from nowhere – it often has nothing to do with what one was consciously thinking about.

Another difference pointed out by spiritualists and paranormal experts is that thoughts are usually ego-based and are generated by a desire to protect the self from failure, embarrassment or disappointment. Claircognizance on the other hand transcends those fears and comes from a place of wisdom. It is for this reason that claircognizance may only make sense in hindsight. A person’s normal thoughts won’t usually require him/her to take a leap of faith, whereas claircognizance might.

Rationalists and psychologists have identified a range of processes through which an individual may at a special kind of knowledge and yet feel that there was no obvious source of the knowledge. One of the most common of such processes is unconscious perception. Human beings are – on a subconscious level – always collecting date from their immediate environment and filing it away into appropriate recesses of the mind. Later when a situation demands they, once again unconsciously, infer from the collected information about the right choice to make and this may be experienced as claircognizant knowledge. At other times individuals may engage in selection bias, self-fulfilling prophecies and even fraud while making claims to claircognizance and point out how later events have borne out their predictions or psychic knowledge.