Difference between Psychic and Spiritualism

"The Seed of Truth"....... Silver Birch

Question: "I know the Indian races very often had people who were able to bring rain by perfoming some ceremony, or doing something. What has the spirit world got to do with this? Has it got anything to do with it?"
Answer: "No. There is a difference between knowledge of psychic laws and knowledge of spiritual laws. They are not entirely the same. People speak of astral and spiritual as if the two words could be exchanged, but they do not mean the same thing at all.

Now, the Indian races were instructed in many of the psychic laws which are concerned with the physical phenomena of your world. I mean the purely physical phenomena, and the ability to induce the elements to come within the local range of their ceremonies was something that was well known to the skilled and practiced medicine man.

You know, it is a very difficult question to answer simply, but it had nothing really to do with the spirit world; it had more to do with the psychic laws that are concerned with the physical phenomena of your earth. I do not think I have made it that clear, have I?"

Answer by questioner:"Yes, except what sort of laws do you mean?"

Answer:"I can give plenty of illustrations, but I am bearing in mind that they should be well understood. Take, for example, the clairvoyant. Now, there are many people in your world who are clairvoyant, but who have no contact with the spirit world. Their clairvoyance is part of their psychic make-up, and because of that they can touch psychic laws and see with their psychic eyes; but there is no one from the spirit world connected with that demonstration. They do not even see the dead. They see scenes; they have premonitions; they can see sometimes the future and into the past. Now all that can happen, but there is no touch with the spirit world at all. It is purely the natural psychic faculty of the cairvoyant. Is that quite clear?"

Reply by questioner: "That is something I should not have thought happened. I should not have thought that a clairvoyant giving evidence of seeing psychic things could do it without being in actual touch with the spirit world."

Response:Nevertheless, it is so, that many of you can exercise a psychic faculty now and have exercised the psychic faculty on the physical plane. It is an extension of the five senses. It does not touch the world of spirit at all. It does touch the psychic laws or the psychic factors which surround the physical laws. In much the same was as the fortune-teller, the genuine fortune-teller, or the genuine crystal-gazer can see and hear without any spirit intervention, so the medicine man, skilled in the use of his own psychic faculties, could harmonise those faculties by means of certain ceremonies and rituals with the power behind the physical law and produce rain. That is the clearest I can put it."

"That is very clear," said a sitter. "It is rather a fascinating subject to have touched on, because I find myself just wondering how far one could go."

"Quite a long way. In India there are many yogis who are very skilled, but they have no contact with the world of spirit. Many of them would be terrified if they saw a spirit." ..."They would be touching quite a different vibration. All mediumship is a co-operation of the spiritual and the psychic, and it is in the blending of the power that you have spirit communication. The ability to communicate with our world does not depend wholly on the psychic faculty of the instrument, but in the co-operation of a spirit guide or control with an instrument."

Paul: "I am sorry to be so dense, but I am not quite sure what is the difference between psychic and spiritual. I thought they were the same."

Silver Birch: Almost the same, but not quite. You can have all the psychic faculties, but they do not become spiritual faculties until they are used for a spiritual purpose in association with spiritual people in our world. You are naturally psychic, as well as physical, and you all have the faculties of the psychic body, but it is not until these faculties are developed and blended with the power of the spirit that they become spiritual gifts."