Metaphysical awareness, or spiritual experience, is often difficult to explain or understand while living in a left-brain dominant society. Many times the phrase “woo-woo” is used as a slightly condescending term to describe these events and experiences. The one having the experience is often left to doubt or feel misunderstood by the more rational types. I would like to address the qualifications of being a whole-brained thinker. By developing the right side of the brain, there is a definite permission given to the oneness, the seeing of spirits, and the understanding of the different dimensions that surround us. These attributes are all right-brain functions.

The word “clairvoyant” is derived from Latin roots through French to English and literally translates as “clear sight.” Most understand the word as meaning intuitive, psychic, telepathic, second-sighted, perceptive, or farsighted. The first element of the word can also mean “light” as in “clair de lune” — moonlight. It’s a lovely word and perhaps appropriate to a discussion of the right hemisphere of the brain. Brain hemispheres are intriguing subjects for study and they can help us to understand how different cultures function, how some people can experience unusual perceptions from extraordinary sources, and how, although we exist in a Western culture dominated by leftbrain thinking, each of us can develop our “clair” abilities:

• clairvoyance — seeing
• clairaudience — hearing
• clairsentience — sensing
• claircognition — knowing
• clair-olfactory — smelling

To better understand the right hemisphere, we might start by understanding modern industrial society’s obsessive dependence on left-brain thinking.