This blog is part of our 2021 Enlightenment Courses, an exclusive benefit for members of Edgar Cayce's A.R.E. Each month John Van Auken provides a lesson with a worksheet, a video, a blog, and in each issue of the member magazine, Venture Inward, he writes an article about this topic.  For 2021, the topic of study and practice is Enhancing, Our Minds, Intuition, and Dreams. Members can access all of the available material in the Member-only section of our website at


Understanding Our Soul's Senses

Each month I provide members with lessons from Edgar Cayce's teachings. This year the topic is Enhancing our Minds, Intuition, and Dreams. Lesson one focused on enhancing our mind, with details about Cayce's fundamental principle: "Mind is the Builder." The second lesson focused on enhancing our intuition, with details about his teaching: "All knowledge is as one knowledge. Hence may be attained from the universal force." The third lesson focused on enhancing our dream life, with his statement: “When the physical consciousness is at rest, the other-self communes with the SOUL of the body, see? Thus, correlating with that as the entity has accepted as its criterion or standard.” Next, we researched Cayce's practical, everyday ways to develop, experience, and grow stronger in our efforts to enhance our minds, intuition, and dream life. And most recently we studied key "Maps of the Mind" as developed and explained by Freud, Jung, and Cayce, with many diagrams and charts.

In this lesson we are going to look at humanity's longstanding understanding of the extrasensory awareness of our senses. We begin with the French word clair, meaning clear,” indicating an ability to gain information about an object, person, location, or event through a clearer” perception that produces a specific functional reaction beyond any organ or tissue. 

These abilities have been listed as: 

  • Clairvoyance (clear seeing)
  • Clairaudience (clear hearing)
  • Clairsentience (clear feeling)
  • Clairalience (clear smelling)
  • Clairgustance(clear tasting) 
  • Claircognizance(clear knowing) 

Obviously, the last one in this list is most closely related to intuition—having knowledge or becoming aware without any apparent physical stimulus. 

Lets go through each of these clearer senses." 

Clairvoyance is when visions past, present, and future come into our minds eye and mental imagery. It is a common perception during dreaming. However, it can also come during daily conscious activity. These can come as a flash or visual scene or lengthy visual story. Cayce explained that our soul lives beyond time and space, so, like a bird high above the river of life, it can see beyond the river's present course. Also, despite all appearances to the contrary, all minds are connected to a Collective Consciousness. Therefore, what otherare experiencing and thinking is knowable! 

Clairaudience is when words, sounds, voices, music come into our awareness, usually without the use of our ear drums. For example, I was the speaker at a huge conference of some 300 people when I got severe stage fright. I couldn't go on. The panic attack forced me to step out of the auditorium for a moment and pray. While I was praying a loud, commanding voice came from out of nowhere, and yelled at me to "Get up!" It said, "The great Egyptian can do this lecture! Now, do it!" I returned to the auditorium and told the MC to introduce me for I was ready! It ended up being one of my better presentations. 

Clairsentience is when feelings fill our being and body with sensations that have no connection to physical touch. These are often emotional feelings. For example, a female friend felt a dramatic inner-body gasp and knew immediately that her father had just passed on at that very moment. Here we have a love bond in which the very cells of her body were originally from her father's body, so the unseen connection was there to enable perception without phone calls or emails. 

Clairalience is smelling fragrances and odors that don't have any physical source. An example of this happened when I was participating in a Cayce Prayer-Healing group. One night as we went through our preparations for laying-on-of-hands healing, the whole room filled with the scent of roses. There were no roses in the house. We all smelled them! It filled us with faith and power. We felt that it was the scent of Jesus' presence with us, some among us felt it was Mother Mary's presence. 

Clairgustance (pronounced in English, claire-gus-tenceas in a guy's name Gus), this is tasting a substance that isn't actually in our mouths. It is from the Latin gustus which means to taste and the derivative root word gustō! Often examples of clairgustance occur with clairalience (smell) and are related to the presence or memory or spirit of a person or event. 

Claircognizance is knowing something about people or events from out of nowhere. Cayce often said that the information he received was coming from out of nowhere or everywhere! He explained that his mind was one with the All Knowing” Mind—referring to Gods Mind, a Universal Consciousness, and a Collective Consciousness to which all minds were connected. Since our conscious minds are connected to our subconscious mind, and our subconscious minds are connected to the collective consciousness, awareness of things, people, and events that are not presence may come to us. This knowing often comes in precognitive dreams. Precognitive knowing violates the principles of causality, that an effect does not happen before its cause. Paradoxes are common when dealing with terrestrial and celestial realities.  

Awakening to Our Soul Senses 

Cayce was very clear about how we awaken our soul senses. First, we must understand that soul perception is SUBTLE, delicate, and can be overwhelmed by gross senses and beliefs. Soul sensory information can also be distorted by selfish urges and longings, by ego, by wish-fulling desires. We need “inner attentiveness.” Remember the sayings, “think twice” and “count to ten”? These cause us to pause the outer dominant self to allow for inner to provide input before we act or react. 


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Watch an invitation from John Van Auken and learn more about this year's Enlightenment Courses.