Claire Broad, Psychic Mediumship and Science |427|

Claire Broad believes she’s learned what the dead are trying to teach us.

photo by: Skeptiko

Alex Tsakiris: [00:00:06] Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. I’m your host Alex Tsakiris and I have to admit that I’m always a little bit nervous before I interview psychics and mediums. I don’t know, I guess I feel a little bit exposed or something, like they’re going to read my mind and even though they tell me they don’t do that and they’re not on all of the time, I always have my doubts.

Maybe that’s why when Watkins Publishing contacted me about this new book from today’s guest, Claire Broad, I hesitated. But the truth is, I was also instantly intrigued by this really quite amazing medium and her desire to find a scientific understanding for all of these many incredible experiences she’s had in her life, and how that led to her becoming a medium, a much sought-after and respected medium.

So Claire, welcome. Thanks so much for joining me.

Claire Broad: [00:01:11] Thank you Alex. It’s great to be here, and hi to all of your listeners.

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Alex Tsakiris: [00:01:15] Claire has an absolutely terrific new book out with a kind of cheeky title, What the Dead Are Dying to Teach Us. So we’re going to talk a lot about that because it really does answer so many questions that I had going in. I mean, I kind of hit her and her publicist pretty hard saying, “Hey, I don’t do book interviews,” and I got through the book and I was like, “Man, I’ve got to do a book interview on this.”

Claire Broad: [00:01:42] Oh, that’s a compliment.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:01:45] But you know, you kind of understand the Skeptiko inquiry to perpetuate doubt vibe, so you’re open to that and we might go some other places.

Claire Broad: [00:01:58] Yeah, I’m open to all of that. I’m questioning just as much as anyone else, so I get the whole doubt thing. I’ve had it in buckets.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:02:06] Great, great. Well, you know, I think doubt is a very spiritual thing, and I think it’s much more of a spiritual thing than faith, but that might be something we talk about more.

So this new book, it’s great. You’ve also written another book, actually a bestselling book Answers from Heaven. You wrote that with Theresa Cheung. So you’re a pro at this, right?

Claire Broad: [00:02:35] Well, I wouldn’t say that. In the book I’ve just written, I explain how I did not ever see myself as a writer. It wasn’t something that was even on my radar as something that I thought I would do. I kept receiving messages from different mediums, spiritual practitioners, for the last 23 years telling me that I had come here to write books and I scoffed to be honest.

It wasn’t until Answers from Heaven came along, because because Theresa Cheung, who is a Sunday Times bestselling author and a Cambridge College graduate in theology, when she approached me asking for help to try and understand this minefield of a subject, which is mediumship and after-death communication, it wasn’t until that happened that I took it seriously. I’d dismissed those messages for all of those years and then suddenly it was like, “Ah-ha, okay, there’s something in this.”

So the first book was really an introduction. It was great because I was working with Dr. Julie Beischel on it, who we all know on Skeptiko as a mediumship scientist almost, or after-death communication scientist and Theresa Cheung, so it was an introduction to mediumship. But this second book, I feel is the one where there’s a bit more meat on the bone, because it not only talks about the science, but talks about my experiences and gets much more into it, rather than the first book, which was an introduction to, if that makes sense.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:04:07] Well, it does to me because I’m familiar with the books not to pump books, but…

Claire Broad: [00:04:13] No, we don’t want to pump books.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:04:15] No, the last thing we want to do is pump books. But no, it’s a fantastic book and I love the way that you interweave these stories about your life and your experiences, because we see the whole thing evolved for you.

I mean, what you said at the beginning, I got to tell you, people are going to hear that, and it sounds so cliché. It does. People dismiss this, “All my life mediums have been telling me I will write a book for the spirit world.” But then your story unfolds; four years old you’re having experiences, and you’re at the grave of your… I forget, your grandmother or your grandfather.

Claire Broad: [00:04:59] My grandfather, yeah.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:05:00] Your grandfather, and you’re announcing to everyone around, you know, like only a four-year-old could, and dreams and all of these really extraordinary experiences that you have, and it’s not that you weave that into some story, you just tell the story. And I think the reader is left with, “Well, of course, this this person is on a mission.”

Claire Broad: [00:05:26] Well, that’s the thing. What I really don’t want anyone to do, who sees my work or looks into the books or whatever, even listening to this, I don’t want anyone to believe me. Belief, like you were saying earlier, I don’t know, that’s the last thing I want. I’m trying to encourage people to explore for themselves, because that’s what I’ve had to do.

So basically what I tried to do was just, this is my truth, this has happened to me. The experiences that I’ve had are part of human experience. I’m not crazy. I’m not insane. And so how do I understand this? And if anywhere along the line, sharing these stories brings people any hope, or gives them a clearer idea about their own lives, or if they’re just questioning and curious like I am, then great.

I just feel, I know it sounds trite, but when you’ve been given so many messages over so many years ,by people who don’t know you at all, all saying exactly the same thing, and then when it plays out, as a person who is, you know, intelligent as I am, in the end you have to question whether there’s something in this. these people didn’t know each other, they don’t know me, there was no need for them to give me these messages. And they were so specific, even down to the date that I would start writing, the way it would happen, it just literally blew my mind. And I write in What the Dead Are Dying to Teach Us, that I doubted for years, even though I was exploring after-death communication, but in that moment, I just knew, “Come on now, you’ve got to own your truth.”

I don’t know about you Alex, but I’ve got someone always over the back of my shoulders, almost like this non-physical voice that is from the human world, telling me, “You’ve got it wrong, you’re delusional, and you’re leading people down the garden path here and materialistic science knows there’s nothing in this.” It’s always nagging away at me here, “Don’t don’t do the wrong thing.” But there comes this point when I had to realize, no one’s got the answers, and I’ve had these experiences and they’re valuable. They helped me and they’ve helped others, so let’s just own them and start a conversation, you know because I’m not daft and I’m not fraudulent, so what’s going on?

Alex Tsakiris: [00:07:58] Good enough and you know, I just would make one more comment about the book and then I’m going to play my little Skeptiko Jeopardy game that I like to play, where you can pick the categories.

But you go to great lengths to incorporate in a lot of frontier science in the book. So people are going to find that, and I think that that’s quite unique. So, you know, Julie Beischel, in her research, there it is. Remote viewing research, there it is. After-death communication statistics, peer-reviewed studies referenced, there it is.

So it is this weaving together of these stories of a medium, along with someone who is trying to make a case for a deeper scientific understanding of what’s going on.

Claire Broad: [00:08:49] I’m trying to create a bit of a shift in our perception. I don’t believe that materialistic science has got all of the answers. And so the scientists and researchers who are willing to explore consciousness studies, human potential and the true-life experiences of people, I’m working with them because I want to understand this myself. And even though I’m having an experience that I know is real for me, sometimes you need to connect with people outside of yourself, don’t you, to see, what are they thinking? What are they finding? Have I understood this right? I’m open to changing my mind. I truly am open to changing my mind.

I think that’s the true scientific process, isn’t it? That’s the true word of skeptical, is to be able to say, “I had that opinion or I drew that conclusion based on my experiences, but hey, this new piece of you know information is skewing my viewpoint now, changing my ideas,” or be flexible with it and not have to feel like I’ve taken a position so I’ve got to defend it. I don’t feel I’ve got defend any position.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:10:04] Awesome. I love it. So the Skeptiko Jeopardy board that I put together for you Claire.

Claire Broad: [00:10:13] Oh, I love it. Look at that.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:10:15] Dead Faith. Light and Dark. The Spiritual Path. Grief. Skeptics. Science. Time. ATBs, which you know what that is, but that will be a little mystery one for our audience.

You haven’t seen these. Sometimes I preview these to guests, but that didn’t work out this time. So you’re going to have to go in the dark and pick one of those.

Claire Broad: [00:10:43] Okay. Oh, well, I’m very drawn, just straight away to The Spiritual Path. So let’s start there.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:10:49] Okay. Well, I am drawn to The Spiritual Path as well. One of the things that I thought was just terrific about your book is, it revealed to me your spiritual path. That’s what I felt you were revealing to me and you were upfront about revealing that. But your spiritual path as a psychic medium, and I say psychic medium so that… Well, I don’t want to go over that old definition, you know, all mediums are psychics, not all psychics are mediums and all of that stuff. I throw it out there just so people understand and make that association with the general term, but I’m burying the lead here.

It really fascinated me that this is a spiritual journey for you that happens to include communication with the dead, and we might talk about that later. So talk about your spiritual path.

Claire Broad: [00:11:46] Sure. Well, I guess I’ll just start at the beginning really. You touched on it, in the fact that when I was four years old. I was standing in a cemetery with my mother and my grandmother. We were tidying up my grandfather’s plot. He’d only been dead about a year and I was just playing, as a four-year-old does, totally in the moment, just in my imagination with some stones and some water and a vase that was there for people to use, and I felt my grandfather come around me. The experience was totally overwhelming. He just almost like became me for a moment or I became him. And in my childlike inability to logically think about this, I just accepted the experience.

So, fast forward a little bit and as I get older and start to realize, “Hey, I don’t think we have understood the world or human experience as well as we might or consciousness,” I start to realize, I go back to that moment whenever I’m doubting having many psychic experiences and insights and contact, if you like, from the deceased, as I get older I go back to that moment when I’m four and I realized that where I was as a four-year-old was in a state of complete clear-mindedness and open-mindedness just in that moment. And it’s a beautiful place. It’s a place where anything is possible, where I wasn’t in a state of fear. I was just open to life and just being there experiencing it.

So for me, a spiritual pathway means, getting back to that space, where all is possible and I can be in touch with the greater reality, and that sounds trite but it’s peace.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:13:42] You know, it doesn’t as much sound trite as it does sound unique, because when we think about the spiritual path, as it’s generally termed, we think about religious people first of all, because that’s what we’re told to think about, when we think about the spiritual path. When I think about spiritual path, because it’s kind of my thing, I mean, this yoga thing and this non-dual thing has been a big part of my spiritual path. But when I look at that, I see some real differences between the spiritual path that we might find with some of the folks, Eckhart Tolle or Mickey Singer or Yogananda or Neem Karoli Baba. These are all people that are meaningful to me, in terms of a spiritual path.

But what I wanted to draw the contrast to is the spiritual path of this Vedic, yogic, kind of Eastern spiritual path. A lot of people are also familiar with the spiritual path, like in Zen or Buddhism and all of that stuff. It’s very much of a different spiritual path than your spiritual path, and I thought that just might be something interesting to talk about.

Your spiritual path is awesome. Your spiritual path is of service, of service to the spiritual world, but also in service to us here, us humans who are going through a lot of things. But I hear something different when I hear the spiritual path, as it’s many times described in the East, as this kind of removal from self, this kind of realization that there is the greater and I might want to take a step back or withdraw a little bit from my worldly materialistic involvement.

So that might be really specific to me, but it’s a question that’s been on my mind for a while and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the contrast, maybe between that Eastern spiritual path and the spiritual path that you’re describing.

Claire Broad: [00:15:49] Yeah, I mean, I actually don’t know if they are too different. I know that might sound on the front of it like that’s impossible. But the likes of Eckhart Tolle for instance, he’s a huge spiritual influence in my life too, because I recognize the truth in what he’s saying, about entering into the now, being in the moment, because that’s what I’m saying I experienced with my grandad. When I was in the moment, as a child and not in my logical thinking brain, then I was open to a transformative experience, and I hear them saying the same thing. I’ve heard the likes of Eckhart saying he heard a voice say to him, “Resist nothing,” when he went into a place of stillness and surrendered his mind.

And mediums, that’s exactly how they get trained. So the the terminology is different, but a medium is taught to sit in the power, the same thing. You become still, you learn to feel and sense your own energy, “Who am I? What do I feel like? How are my emotions?” “How does my physical body feel? What is my energy like?” And when you understand who you are and how you feel, then as you expand your awareness or your mind, so in the same way that Yogi’s do, then you become aware of a greater reality.

I hear in the East, the talk in yoga for instance, of opening up the chakras, the energy, chi, whatever you want to call it, pulling that energy up and out through you. It’s exactly the same in mediumship. You’re doing the same thing. You’re learning to be in your power, draw upon your own energy, expand your energy and awareness, and then somewhere there, the mind settles, it expands to a greater reality and you sense and feel the energies of others around you.

So, I feel that sometimes spiritual teachers stop there. They’re reticent of describing an afterlife, say, these days. They see the power in being able to get people in the moment and that’s enough, because we don’t have all of the answers for what happens next but they’re all saying the same thing. They’re all saying there is something more, something greater than ourselves, some intelligence that goes beyond our own understanding.

So I can read lots of the spiritual texts now, going from right across, from the Hermetica to Kabbalah to Christianity to Buddhism, and I can see the common threads. I will say it’s in the mystical texts, so I say Kabbalah rather than Jewish and I’m very drawn to the Gnostics rather than the Christians, because they’re the traditions that actually put people, from my perspective, actually in touch with the spiritual dimensions.

For instance, what I mean is, if you go into a church, as I did a lot when I was a child, you get told to pray, but you don’t get told how. You just put your hands together and, you know, you send your thoughts out. Whereas a lot of the old traditions, like the Gnostics, and I write about this in the book, actually explain about connecting into the afterlife and communicating and meditation and spirit contact. It’s all in there.  and it’s all in there. There’s nothing new here that I’m saying. So to me, it’s not a contradiction, it’s all part of the same. Does that make sense?

Alex Tsakiris: [00:19:25] It makes great sense. I thought that was a great answer so. So with that, let’s return to this Skeptiko Jeopardy board. Claire, where shall we go next?

Claire Broad: [00:19:37] Okay, let’s go Dead.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:19:40] Dead, good topic. You know, that is the main focal point of the book, What the Dead Are Dying to Teach Us, and I think you’re playing around there with the idea, but it does peeve me a little bit when mediums talk about the dead. I think you do a beautiful job in the book of talking about, that our understanding of death is flawed from the onset, and the fact that we are here, and if we’ve already experienced death by virtue of the fact that we’re talking with people who have passed, then we maybe need to rethink what we mean by that.

So that even might be a great place to start, just in terms of what you understand dead to be and how you understand it inside of this larger thing that we throw around called consciousness.

Claire Broad: [00:20:41] Yeah. I hate the word dead. To me it’s redundant, it’s a dead word, Dead to me means annihilation and from my personal experiences life is a continuum. So when you hear traditionally, I suppose, mediums talking about the dead, they’ve built an idea in their mind of literally, like a heavenly realm, where people are living and where we go and meet our loved ones. And I’m not saying it isn’t that, but I think it’s a whole lot more than that. I’m much more interested in, what does that imply about consciousness, and the nature of reality and what is reality?

So to me, I mean the play on title, What the Dead Are Dying to Teach Us, is from my experience of the communications that have happened over my lifetime, the dead don’t take themselves too seriously. There is a message of continued life. They do seem to just be very similar to how they were before, alright, slightly more enlightened with a bigger viewpoint, but there seems a definite continuation, and awareness, consciousness grows.  

Alex Tsakiris: [00:21:52] What will there’s there’s even a more dramatic shift. I think that you take in terms of perspective there in that our perspective of were here.

And this is solid Terra Firma and the dead are over there and what we hear continuously from a all sorts of different sources, whether it’s near death experience and they say I felt like I was arriving home or whether we hear an after death communication and they say, you know, they kind of talk down to us a little bit like, you know, we have to lower our vibration to get down to you.

So this this whole thing is shifted when we really start digging into. The way that you haven’t experiencing it and say, you know, that’s not really it. I mean you guys are kind of playing in the small game over here and there’s a much bigger game kind of involved.

Claire Broad: [00:22:44] Absolutely when I wrote answers from Heaven.

I was quite shocked that physicists contacted me because to me the book is a book of hope that book and an introduction as I said to the idea of an afterlife. That’s three research. So when physicists are contacting me telling me Claire we’ve read your book because we’re interested in your perception your ideas here because we know that the universe is holographic in nature multi-dimensional.

We’re trying to you know, what they were telling me is we’re not interested in medium 2, but we are interested in reality. And I started to realize then, you know, I need to change my whole idea about what spirit is. I don’t even like that word. I don’t know what you were to use Consciousness psyche awareness the non-physical aspect of me.

You know because otherwise, I think we conjure up pictures of spirit beings. And yes, okay. I’ve seen apparitions but this is something that could be all my perspective. It could be the mind. It could be Consciousness creating reality. You know, I’m I’m much more open to up playing with the idea of even what that means and and I feel it’s dimensional.

I feel it’s it’s energetic in some way just a different frequency and therefore perhaps the spirit Dimension is just this world. We can’t see it. I mean, you know the physical I can only sing about this in the book what naught Point naught 1 percent of everything around us anyway, and then we’ve got dark matter and then we’ve got Consciousness that we don’t even understand how you know, I’m trying to think okay.

I don’t want to be a simplistic now as Heaven and Earth and even help, you know to me it’s too small. I’m talking about the nature of reality. And I don’t care how I continue on afterwards. You know, it’s I’m came from tearing that I’m tearing that something is continuing afterwards.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:24:38] I think that’s wonderful.

I love the way you bounce between the. Uber complex that we can never comprehend and just being upfront about that and even having you know a little spirit guide channeling in the book where you’re

Claire Broad: [00:24:55] going

Alex Tsakiris: [00:24:55] through and says give up you’re not that’s not the goal here is to try and fit it all into some little box of your understanding and believe me.

You don’t have the capability to do it here is kind of the message. I’m hearing. But at the same time I appreciate that you returned to trying to give us that understanding trying to make the pieces that we do have fit together because that is our human nature to, and I guess that would.

Connect me to one other point that I wanted to raise about the Dead Issue and that is reincarnation because I thought you did an awesome job of handling that topic which can be really really difficult for spiritualism people for psychic mediums. I just had a delightful woman on Deborah diamond.

Written a terrific book and I really appreciate the work that she’s doing but she totally stumbles on The Reincarnation thing, right? I’m she’s a very accomplished meeting we get up to reincarnation goes. Well, isn’t that kind of a religious thing? I got religious thing. I mean, I guess there’s a religious Association to it, but.

You know University of Virginia Ian Stevenson Jim Tucker peer-reviewed research body marks on people have died violent deaths and come back, you know, the science here does not suggest. This is purely some quote-unquote religious thing you do an awesome job in your book of one tracing that there is that.

Kind of preconceived notion inside of spiritualism which I found fascinating because here is another thing where while these people do have their own Dogma. They do have their own ability to have a blind spot here and you’ve kind of. Push through that blind spot said yeah, you know that is the way I was trained.

So I was not open to that and then I became open to that and here’s what I discovered and it’s really quite wonderful. So one, tell us about your understanding of reincarnation and then how it fits into this larger question of the Dead. Okay.

Claire Broad: [00:27:12] Well, yes, I mean, I do understand why it is that spiritualist mediums of old if you like or you know traditionally even now are reticent to cover reincarnation.

It’s because traditionally. They can’t prove it and they we can’t prove the iron. I don’t think yet. We’re at a position where we proved in the afterlife scientifically calls me up. And otherwise we’ve known it, you know, so what we’re trying to do as you know is provide some evidence to suggest there’s something.

And of course we’ve reincarnation that become very difficult. You can tell a story you can tell your experiences, but it’s very hard to then get information that can then back up the possibility. So what I mean by that is, you know, if you bring a deceased loved one forward, they’re describing their personality their describing their life and then they tell you something or they tell their relatives something that the relative doesn’t know but that you can then go and find out.

There’s this real sort of nugget of well, how would they know that unless that person was still living in reincarnation there isn’t that you’re either saying I think you were something before or not. But

Alex Tsakiris: [00:28:24] so can I can I yeah, but in there for a minute and I want to return to this topic that we talked about with reincarnation, but I want to return to it in a minute because I want to switch gears for a minute because you’ve talked about something here that is really important to me and that is this whole.

Topic of Science and what that means and I’m going to kind of call you to task on something that you just said because it’s okay grunting and again in your book you do an awesome job of talking about all this Frontier science, you know precognition Julia Moss Bridge, you know, and then the mediumship science.

Julie by Shall who’s been on this both those people have been on this show and done a fantastic job Gary Schwarz, I could go on and on with the number of people that you reference in the book who have been on the show and it’s fantastic, but I think one thing I would. Disagree with you about in terms of science is we don’t have to prove this to science because we have to remember science has completely dropped the ball here.

They are mentally wrong about almost everything because they don’t understand Consciousness and they’ve driven there’s foot in the ground and taken Stu Hart position on Consciousness that essentially says it’s a product of the brain. Which means let’s be clear. It’s an illusion. And once you get question a wrong, you’re not allowed to move to question BCD that none of them are going to make any sense.

And what we wind up in is where we in people like yourself who are in this expanded view of Consciousness are referencing science that has spent its whole time as a Counterpoint to what this. Goofy, scientific Creed is we explain that for a minute? So Julie by Shoals work is fantastic, right? So she decided that there’s all this smoke around mediums and whether mediums are really. Doing what they say they’re doing, and she sought to test that. So she set up this double-blind triple line quadruple blind experiment and she proved that statistically mediums do return information. The can’t be explained by any other means but that’s merely a counter point to all this Skeptiko nonsense that we’ve had to put up with for years that says that none of this could possibly happen because we have this dorky idea of what the brain is and now I don’t want to repeat the same thing with reincarnation.

No, it’s not that we can’t prove reincarnation and Stevenson prove. He proved it in the sense that he shifts the burden of proof to anyone who says that reincarnation isn’t true. They’ve published enough good solid peer-reviewed data that the Occam’s razor now cuts on behalf of.

The reality of reincarnation so I think we have to get out of this rut in the road where we go where we bow down to science and say oh science. You’ve been wrong so many times, but please let me convince you once I’m here that I’m right. That’s not the game. We should be playing the game. We should be playing is to say okay.

You guys have been wrong. That’s okay. Let’s take your tools. Let’s take your techniques and let’s see if we can catapult you, too. Next level of truly understanding what this means. What is the meaning of reincarnation in terms of our larger understanding of consciousness? What is the meaning of after death communication?

What is the meaning of mediumship? How do all these pieces fit together? But I can’t I went on this huge rant, but I just didn’t not continue to bow down to these nitwits who have failed us time and time again and have failed the First Fundamental question of. Consciousness is an illusion they’re wrong and there’s just we don’t even have to play any games about it

Claire Broad: [00:32:37] now and I totally agree with you.

So, you know, this is why I in my book, I’m challenging even the people who will be reading who are spiritually because I’m saying the same thing. We have this idea that we need to make sure that we’re proving everything which I do still believe is very valuable to the client sitting in front of me in order for them to trust that there’s something more it kind of needs and for myself.

I needed to see it play out and prove itself. You know, there is it is valid to follow a process of scrutiny and and analyzing and logic it is but I’m I’m totally on board with what you’re saying. You know, we don’t understand Consciousness and therefore even the spiritualist needs to be able to own their experience and say look there is the science.

There is the research here suggesting something else. Maybe we need to know own our own experiences and stop worrying about that, you know say well I am experiencing, you know, a intelligence talking about a previous existence or a single taneous existence or something along those lines and. Up for that.

That’s what I’m trying to do in the book. And with you I’m fed up with it too.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:33:49] Well, no it and you do, you know a wonderful job because we all can’t just be raging Against the Machine and and you’re taking a more level-headed approach. I would just kind of take that one step further though, and I think.

You and other people who are doing the kind of really thoughtful work and not just thoughtful in that you’re in service to other people but thoughtful in terms of analyzing trying to figure out and understand your experience. I think you need to be in bold and to take an even. Stronger stance and saying the science is on my side because science is on your side and I think we have to stop being in the defensive position and saying.

I don’t know why you have a Skeptiko lobotomy in your head to the Skeptics. I don’t know why you believe weird things and no matter how much evidence is presented to you. You can’t overcome your belief system. I don’t know but I’m not going to play that game because the game is over. Science is on my side.

Consciousness is more we are more and there’s this larger picture that we have to understand. So I totally applaud where you’re coming from

Claire Broad: [00:35:10] and I think that’s what I’m trying to get. Gently I suppose is the word I’m using in the book. I’m trying to educate my readers. So that they see how much science is there?

I do not believe once you actually look at the research in this field and see the credible intelligent Minds behind it that you could possibly come away and say I still absolutely no there’s nothing to me. You are you then not read that you’ve not looked into it. You just dismissed it because it’s there and it’s and it’s giving me the courage to stand up and own my truth.

Because you know culturally, I’m fed up with I mean, you know, I was on the radio here in the UK going around the world and we can spread out with the first question always being well, how can you not prove your fraudulent? You know, it’s the first thing that always comes up and I just want to say oh God.

Can we just get past that? He’s you know, I’m not fraudulent that is an easy argument from that form the cynical point of view just to ban the out there all deluded. They’re all frauds, you know, and the book tries to show here and here and here and here go and have a look for yourself and then come back and tell me that I am deluded.

I’m not.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:36:25] Okay, very good. Well done Claire. I’m going to bring you back. Okay the board. Where would you like to go next or some good juicy ones in there? There

Claire Broad: [00:36:36] is light and dark. Let’s do it.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:36:41] This is a tough one. I think it’s a tough one for a lot of people and you know, I mentioned to you. I don’t know if this got on the air and the brief chat we had before, but this is a question that has kept coming up for me through skeptic.

Oh, not so much personally because I’ve never been someone who’s drawn to the dark, but. I am intrigued by the argument that people make that there’s this there is the dark and everything is gray and maybe we shouldn’t be so all light and love kind of thing. Your book really touched me in my heart but also for me and for a lot of guys you have to reach me intellectually in order to get to that heart that’s buried in there.

And I thought she did an awesome job of talking about how you can both recognize the dark acknowledge the dark and yet. Understand that the mission is to transcend that darkness and that that’s kind of okay. So where do you want to start with unraveling this really really big topic?

Claire Broad: [00:37:56] Well, I think the best place to start for people for the everyday person listening to you know, who is at least accepting that Consciousness is a Continuum and that there is.

disincarnate. Beings may be either than what you say, but that’s you know the best way I can put it out there and then the next thing is people start to fear it so I think tackling the fear is the first thing because any time in this work I tend to think like if I put it back to how things are here anytime we bring fear to what we do in our lives here.

We don’t have a great experience. We put ourselves down we become depressed. Perhaps we you know, if we’re anxious anxiety, you know, we become absent sometimes we can’t even move with stifled from the anxiety and fear in our lives and more and more people are. And so really for me the dark is those emotions that stopped us experiencing the highest expression of ourselves and some people enjoy that power that they have over somebody else.

In this world and I believe that in this spiritual Dimensions, if you want to use it like that the non-physical dimensions. There is the same opportunistic intelligence are seeking power enjoyment fulfillment off of people’s lower emotions, and

Alex Tsakiris: [00:39:29] I get that, and we all get that. I think the problem the issue where it gets gray is.

You live then the UK and it’s gray Aleister Crowley who I just had up on the screen worked for MI6, right? He was a spy he worked for the government. We came over he Wes and it’s the same thing, you know, whether it’s Parsons in the desert along with Crowley or whether it’s you know, the secret society whether it’s the pedo Pope, I mean this idea.

The that people are choosing the dark to you know, just dominate someone we get that, and we can all point at that and shame that what I think is more challenging to people is they say this is the nature of things. The nature is that we’re all going through this world and we’re all constantly being balancing the light and the dark and then I think people rightfully go one step further and they say you’re so light who is all light and love and let’s deconstruct them and I will find Darkness there.

I will find not so. Great Shadow stuff in that so

Claire Broad: [00:40:48] I agree. How do we

Alex Tsakiris: [00:40:50] that’s what I thought your book did is it kind of said yes, this is a natural part of all of us, but is this our mission? What is our mission? How does the darkness fit in our mission? And if you think darkness is part of your mission.

You give me pause to rethink how I might understand that do you get where I’m going with that?

Claire Broad: [00:41:15] I do I understand exactly for me. I believe that Consciousness is evolving all the time and in order to be able to evolve and we are doing that. We are the universe. Conscious of itself that we have to choose or reach upwards towards higher emotions.

I don’t actually believe I don’t believe even Aleister Crowley thought that everything he was doing was pure evil. Most people are doing something because they feel it’s the right course of action, you know, he was coming about his exactly. Because he’s apparently another great parenting. You know that complex relationship with his mom.

He was he was fighting back against control. He was prepared. He wanted to just be able to do what he wanted. You know, he wasn’t he it was complex. And so so and so is the evolution of things it isn’t you know that we suddenly move into a Heavenly state of being and everything is all wonderful and how boring would that be?

I mean I if I like to sit in the cloud plucking an instrument all day long for eternity, I think you know, I know that’s not what life. Is life is both things. It’s interesting. Actually. I’m going to go somewhere, you know, maybe this is controversial. But somebody said to me the other day you do believe God is evil then because I was saying the same thing I there’s light and dark in all of us.

It’s a choice, you know, the suffering helps us grow. We have a choice. We either choose to stay in it or we choose to move forward from it. And whether we do that in this world, or we do it in the next life. You know the choice is ours and so, you know, and I have to say that perhaps if there is a you know, Universal Consciousness or someone put it the other day Quantum Consciousness, then perhaps it’s all of that and we have the choice to swing between all aspects of that spectrum and and experience all levels of it.

And so therefore when you stamp back. You know, I know evil exists I’ve experienced it. But you know can do I have to get stuck in it. Do I have to be identified with it? Do I have to be ruled by it? Do I have to fear it now? I don’t I don’t, and I can move myself away from it. So I write in the book about intense.

It’s all about intention. And then when you are owning your own power owning your own mind and your own intention you move away. It has no control over you anymore.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:43:47] That’s awesome. You know the way I love it is the way one of my spiritual teachers told me is the secret of the ascent. Is to always look up so beautiful and I love how you kind of brought that home and away in terms of yes, we have to acknowledge the darkness.

I think you know because otherwise we get caught up in. Cultish activities for one and way or we get caught up in kind of being my optic or closed off not even open to what other people are experiencing suffering. That’s another way that we can do that but what you brought home clearly in your readings and in your work because you talk about your work with the clients and the people that come see you, is that what if it’s about.

Raising the moment that’s in front of you and transforming that moment to a higher. State and that’s what came through and I thought yes, what if that is what it’s about and then doesn’t that kind of universally fit with all this. So whether it’s Aleister Crowley or I think the other image I had up on the screen where the Memphis Three and.

Satanic Panic which wasn’t really a satanic panic but really some kids that were into satanic practices for whatever reason what if the whole thing is about reaching that moment and then transmuting that moment into something higher. That’s what I took away from your book.

Claire Broad: [00:45:22] Yeah.

That’s how I say it that is, you know, I mean even capsulated it beautifully, you know Eve I find that when you look at fear power the that. The dark side it disappears because it no longer holds power over you and then you can then start to reach up to something more. Joyful more, you know, it’s to me some of my darkest moments or more most painful experiences and they’ve always been a battle of my mind have led to my most empowered choices.

And freedoms because I’ve decided that I am not letting my life be defined by that. It takes a lot of guts courage and a lot of people get stuck in not being able to do that, but when you actually. Face that fear and with spirit communication there’s a lot of fear around it you realize that that that no longer holds any power.

So I have nothing to fear about it. You know, I do believe that dark and light coexist you talking about Duality, you know at one level of our reality. There’s definitely Duality you can look at what’s going on in the world. Now, you know, and people feel like the world’s literally, you know going to the dogs.

But I have I’m I’m of the Viewpoint that then the pendulum swings back the other way and once we decide hey that hasn’t worked we shuffled back a bit the other way, you know may take a bit of time but we do this dance and and as we do that, we grow we learned we evolve we transcend. To me that’s what it’s about in to ever higher and higher states of being and that’s what I take from those in the spirit who have come from higher states of awareness.

They’ve communicated that that’s what they’ve done. They are transforming ever higher into higher states of being into Bliss or you know, if we ever get there and even if we do do we want to stay there, I mean that becomes dull.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:47:26] Great, where should we go? Next?

Claire Broad: [00:47:29] Let’s go to hire a full beings heads

Alex Tsakiris: [00:47:34] great. So one of the things that you talk about in the book, Again, you kind of feel like you’re kind of telling the medium Secrets if you would all you know, I mean you have so much information out there that you won’t find other places and you don’t say that this is categorically the only answer it is from your experience, but I do get the sense that you’ve studied this and thought about this and are open-minded about this because I got to remember we’re going to return to reincarnation because it is a case in point of where.

To reach this block and then pushed through it. So. Return to reincarnation in a minute, but the things that you talked about in terms of H-E-B is your acronym for higher evolved beings, but you lay out the whole gamut here, you know spirit Spirit guides ascended masters Angels God, you don’t you don’t talk about it specifically, but I want to add it to the list, you know, the hungry ghosts, you know, this Spirit entity that.

We understand the evil on this side. We understand the people who seek darkness and seek that state of confusion that feeds into their own confusion in their own negative energy, but we don’t understand how that can happen on the other side. And then the trickster is even something different that we don’t understand we understand it again here why people kind of deceive in a fun playful way that doesn’t seem so.

In playful, but they do so I’ve kind of covered a lot of topics in this category here. But anywhere you want to start with higher evolved beings to the lower evolved beings would be great.

Claire Broad: [00:49:21] So I think I think the thing is for me. I always have to keep coming back to. The word Consciousness which is going to become like the word mindfulness the Fallen that we’re all just fed up with are in that word.

But I you know, it’s kind of loses its meaning in the end because what is consciousness but for me, I feel that these are archetypal descriptions of different levels of awareness. That’s the way I’m going to put it on different states of existence or states of being, so it seems like. For instance, which I talk about in the book Spirit Guardians and Spirit guides.

So, you know a spirit Guardians seems to be an intelligence that has had a physical Incarnation that has some understanding was like to be in physical form here and is wanting to reach out or reach back whatever forward whatever way we want to look at this whole time thing and help others through.

Experience because we all know how good it feels when we help someone else. It lifts us into higher feelings of Happiness about ourselves. We feel good about ourselves. It’s the same thing. They’re reaching out to others here because it makes them feel good. You know, there’s a benefit to them. So Guardians are Spirit intelligence is Spirit beings who walk with us through life and spirit guide seem to be teachers that come in at certain moments of time.

When we may need them. So for instance, there’s a surgeon May benefit from receiving some help or guidance from Spirit side alive, but they don’t need it all the time that the help is just there for the time they’re working and then I move on to well higher evolved beings, you know, there seems to be I don’t believe there’s a.

It implies this sort of hierarchy and I don’t believe that’s the case. I just think there are different states of being but a higher evolved being to me is some intelligence that could have been on this world in you know, incarnate in this planet or on other planets out there. Let’s face it.

It’s a big universe multiple Universe multiple dimensions. And actually what is a spirit person. They’re certainly not living on Earth. So, you know, they could be deemed as a higher evolved being or even alien, you know, extraterrestrial. However, you want to put it the not physical form. They’re not a human being so, you know, I talked about highly evolved beings as other intelligences out there in the universe that we don’t necessarily understand but they do creep into mediumship you hear channel is talking about them, you know, they make themselves known again if.

Frequency of communication is happening on a frequency. Why not same with angels I was and I’m not religious. So I dismissed the idea of angels for years. Why would a being with wings? That wasn’t even physical need Wings? Why would it need a Halo? You know, it didn’t make any sense to me. It was a mythical creature in amongst the myth of mysticism of a spiritual text until it was I came across.

Appeal being of light and intelligence. It clearly had not existed in our physical world before you know, so I grapple with it all I don’t just accept it all to me. I need to experience it first, but for sure there are other intelligences and I know that much, and I think it would be arrogant to just assume that it’s only human beings who are conscious that can exist.

You know, we’re limiting ourselves. In my viewpoint, you know even animals go on.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:53:06] Yeah, but that’s great. And you covered so much there. I reluctant even dive in deeper because we just keep going and going and

Claire Broad: [00:53:15] going with against the spirit suppose is a good one to make sure we cover isn’t it?

Alex Tsakiris: [00:53:20] Yeah, dude, let’s do talk about the tricksters and I think the hungry ghosts thing is very interesting because we just it further complicates our understanding and it raises this fear. Actor again in terms of if that can happen in this spiritual realm that seems to be so powerful than what what am I the mere human?

Claire Broad: [00:53:51] Well, that’s where I want to stop you there Alex. You know, this is the whole mission behind what I’m doing is to re change the idea that people hold about themselves. We Are Not Mere human beings. We have something much more awesome than that this physical experience this temporary. Form that I’ve taken as you said earlier isn’t even real at the quantum level, you know, it’s all smoke and mirrors.

I’m sitting here and I fall I know and could be ghostly. You know, I’m told that even though I’m taking this form. I’m not even really here. I’m just potential at the quantum level, you know, so we are much more than this mere human beings. We are that already right now. And so why would I need to fear something if I’m already it?

1. We give our power away even to guides and teachers. We give our power away. We need to understand that we are just as valuable and just as much a part of everything as they are. So the trickster Spirits I think comes down to the idea that we are no longer sensing and being aware of our environment anymore and they’re being opportunity opportunistic, but I have never experienced a trickster spirit.

I just have an experience. It’s not in my as I haven’t experienced any evil contact from Spirit. I feel the physical world much more. You know, I’m not saying that I haven’t had some negative experiences. I have they’re few and far between, but it’s really come down to my fear of what happened and my interpretation of what happened and my own imagination rather than the reality of it.

There’s nothing happy

Alex Tsakiris: [00:55:32] about your imagination which you point out in the book is again in you don’t hold onto any of these ideas too tightly because you’re so open to all the complexity and as your spirit guide says, you know white feather the, the unimaginable complexity that you can’t really wrap your arms around but would you do come back to is this idea that like draws like, you know, and if you we hear that and and it’s it can sound again it can sound kind of cliché but you make it more than that when you say, you know, really if you’re out there in your intent is to.

Transcend the negativity then that has a tremendous power that will lead you towards that is what’s your conclusion and

Claire Broad: [00:56:20] that’s my experience. But I used to be so frightened of all of this and I have found that the more I own my own self my own mental well-being my own ideas, you know, I am happier content.

I’m flying above all of that. Rubbish, it doesn’t even touch me anymore. You know, it might sound trite. It doesn’t mean it’s not a universal law. We all understand that like attracts like it happens in this world, you know,

Alex Tsakiris: [00:56:52] right we experience it all the time in so many different ways. I tell you what before we get too short on time because I could talk for a long time.

I could use. Your valuable time and talk for hours because people have to pick up this book because we’re scratching the surface and here’s somebody who gives answers, you’re going to have questions. You have questions like I do I get to talk to Claire and get them answered. You can read her book and get an answer.

I did want to return to The Reincarnation thing and because the tell kind of the more expanded story because I thought it was phenomenal in the book everything that you talked about in terms of your doubts. And then how those doubts were changed by your.

Claire Broad: [00:57:38] Yeah, so when I was a child, I had a dream I was about the age of three where I could I really experienced a nightmare where I was, I had my hands tied behind my back.

I was being stoned I could feel myself being standard feel the Searing Heat Of The Sun. I can feel sand underneath my feet. I have no idea where I was other than. I certainly wasn’t in England in the UK and and there was a hole in the ground where there were snakes. I was being pushed towards it and I fell into the snake pit could feel the snake bites and it was like I then emerged from a dark reality that I don’t know how to say it.

But in the dream is like this fighting to sort of emerge into into. No matter taken as I woke up and and I was saying to my mother at the time and she can remember it really clearly still she’ll back me up on this I’m saying I’ve just had a night. No, I just had a bad dream and she’s saying it’s a nightmare and I’m saying no it wasn’t it was a bad but we had this huge foodie bait because at that age I couldn’t even didn’t even understand the name a nightmare and but I accepted that as a dream for many years until obviously I had.

The experience to look back and start questioning what is consciousness because I started to realize in this that I was that would have been 1979 something like that. You know, there was no TV really in the UK. There are a few hours a day for children. I was not old enough to be allowed to watch anything past the Watershed.

There was no YouTube. There was no on-demand viewing. You know, my I would not have been exposed to that and it started to make me question. Hang on. How would I have even known about that or had that fear or and the thing about that dream was it changed my life instantly that I had an instant fear of snakes.

So it changed my behavior in this life straight off the bat. Then fast forward, you know as the mediumship starts to come into play. I spent a good 10 years developing this by the way, so I am really racing forward, you know, I start to receive communication sons from Spirit teachers telling me about previous experiences incarnations.

I’d had with them. That’s why they’re working with me. And then I go for a reading with a lady who’s a shamanic healer and all the sensor and she starts to tell me about a past life that I’d had that she could sense that can

Alex Tsakiris: [01:00:15] remember going to one thing in the street. I found

Claire Broad: [01:00:18] him.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:00:21] Can you cover all this in the book and you’re trying to you know to give us a good short summary of it, which

Claire Broad: [01:00:26] is no

Alex Tsakiris: [01:00:28] that’s okay.

What I found really interesting is. You are really working at your mediumship and you’re sitting in circle or sitting in triangle. Is it work for you? And then he doing all this work and you’re drawn not towards reincarnation because like you said you’re kind of told. Well don’t really look there.

There’s nothing for you there. So it really comes as kind of a surprise that you would even go and find this person. Who does this really talk about kind of obscure in these Realms, you know this chakra energy healing kind of thing. You were Skeptiko. Going in I thought that was great.

Claire Broad: [01:01:09] I am and I think actually a lot of the mediums that you me any medium will tell you there has they’re Skeptiko of other mediums, which we’ve been we have been sold.

This cultural thing even mediums have that we’ve got to prove everything. We’ve got to be a certain level that no other medium is good enough that there are all frauds out there. So we go in just like the general public worried about. Oh my God, we don’t let our guard down. We don’t want to be deluded here.

We’ve all bought into this. Ridiculous idea we need to get rid of and actually I didn’t seek this medium out a client said to me you have reached a certain level of achievement there. You need to go and see this medium. I’m going to pay for you to go and have an experience with as you can see the level at which you have now achieved and so she booked me a session with her and that was the Revelation because you work so differently.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:02:02] Kathy right. We should mention.

Claire Broad: [01:02:04] Yes Cathy mango Sochi Sochi. Yes. She started to tell me as she put her hands over my auric field all about my life. Now health issues. I’d had things that were going on with me that I absolutely work new were right now that I couldn’t question and then she started to say to me, you know, you’ve come here to write I’m being shown a past life.

That is back in Samaria. The significance of it is the Sumerians were one of the first people to leave writing and that you are being allowed to see this because it ties up with what’s going on with you now, and then she. You know partnership I had in that live. She described the people around me and that life.

She said to me she didn’t know me from Adam. You must be a medium you because you were a searing that life and then she tells me my husband’s name what my husband does how he’s with me in this life, but the people that are sitting with all what they’re doing now their jobs and everything

Alex Tsakiris: [01:03:06] and so

Claire Broad: [01:03:06] I was

Alex Tsakiris: [01:03:07] sorry is even more fantastic than my

Claire Broad: [01:03:11] kind of race through it.

Well,

Alex Tsakiris: [01:03:13] you know, it’s. Cinema graphic, it’s you are a priestess. And a Channeler or a medium in that community and you fall in love with the guard which is the male guard of the temple, which is forbidden and that is the crime that you commit that you’re killed for. I mean this stuff. You know, if you didn’t lay the whole thing out and say Hey, you know, I’m a medium for years old train forever, you know to try and develop these gifts and then was Skeptiko and then did this and then it tells you this you just glad on to that story you can go.

Oh come on. That’s just Disney to even believe but I came through.

Claire Broad: [01:04:02] It’s what came through I have the recordings of it. And and the thing is I was left with she tells me this Fantastical story that even I am finding hard to chew and but Mary’s it up with the people in my life. Now. That was the key thing.

So you didn’t just tell me all you fell in love with the God. She tells me and you’re married to the guard now and his name’s this and he’s jobs this and he looks like this and he’s sporting interest for this and you were a Seer and a priestess and you sat in a triangle and you sit in a triangle now and the people that you’re within that live your with here and once a scientist and one skeptic and you know, you left with this whole thing of hang on a minute, you know, I can’t accept that.

And throw that out now I have to either accept it all or I have to say she was wrong about my own husband’s name and he’s occupation. And you know, you just can’t so this is it I had to surrender. Am I right? That’s it. That’s it. I

Alex Tsakiris: [01:05:02] That’s it. I have a slide here, and we probably won’t get to it because we have other great stuff to talk about, but that’s what I mean when I say skeptical lobotomy. So if you want to just take a skeptical lobotomy at that point and say, “I have to shut down here and just believe all sorts of crazy stuff and invent some other way, how all of this other stuff can be true, but I can yet hold onto my belief system, that none of this could possibly be true,” then you go and do that, but you’re not really engaged in the conversation. We don’t have to treat you like you’re on a level playing field, we can just pat you on the head and send you on your way, if that’s the skeptical stance you take, because the logical stance is exactly what you said, which is, “How can I accept the impossibility that she would know all of those things?” Like you said, “My husband’s name,” dah, dah, dah, dah, all that stuff, and then reject the the rest.

It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t mean that you have to bring it in, full, you know, all in and completely embrace it, and then make that the whole point of your life, because you don’t. But it does mean you have to give it pause and get off that rant a little bit because it touches on something that I think is important to me. And the integrity that you bring to this, that I see, is that that caused you to shift your practice and how you work with other people, and I found that fascinating.

Claire Broad: [01:06:25] Yeah, because I had been pigeonholed, even in my own training, in order to reach a high standard of ability. The code of conduct was strict, which I’m very grateful for. but there comes a point even in that, and this is where we get to earlier, about the whole fact that spiritualists stump themselves even sometimes, because they’re trying to be like you say, ticking the boxes of this world rather than just letting the process unfold.

I had to just allow my own experiences to do the talking. Who was I to say, “This isn’t real and so therefore… or I can’t prove it, so I’m not using you?” I had to go with the flow, and I found that these higher evolved beings and intelligences were wanting to communicate to some clients. Some clients need the ground level stuff, you know, you went to the shops the other day, you bought red pair of shoes, dah, dah, dah. To me that’s boring now. Other clients wanted the high-level stuff, the deeper meanings, the philosophies, some answers, like you say, “Make sense of this, please.”

So I had cut myself off from receiving that in an effort to make sure I was credible. You know, no one wants to be seen as someone who’s completely lost the plot not able to think anymore. I was trying to be in this world. I was boxing myself in and I let go of that through that experience, yes.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:07:53] Awesome. Let me pick the next category because there’s a topic that you mentioned that you want to cover, and it really, really is an important topic and I’m glad that you brought it up. It’s the topic of grief. And again the way I’ve teed up this slide is, much like your book, you know, the data and then the experience and I want to interweave those together.

You mentioned Dr. Julie Beischel at the Windbridge Institute, and we both have a ton of respect and love for Julie. One of the things I thought she did a wonderful job of is diving into the grief issue and just getting all up in the sciences playing field and say, “Okay. I’ll play by your rules. You have this thing you’ve labeled out there and you call it grief and you say that people suffer from it and you’ve measured it. And then you’ve measured that how that can be alleviated in people and you’ve, said we can give them medication we can give them talk therapy. But then I came along and showed, with the data, with the peer reviewed research, that I can give them a medium reading with a good medium and it’s more efficacious than your drugs. It’s more efficacious than your talk therapy. It’s more efficacious than both of them combined and that’s the data. So you’ve got to own that data science,” which of course they don’t own.

And we have Claire here, and what you bring to the table  is to say, “I stand on the shoulders of all that, but I also have these experiences with people whose lives are stuck and they become transformed because I’m able to help them,” in a way that you don’t even totally understand a lot of times, but that seems to be part of what you’re here to do. So do you want to talk about the grief thing?

Claire Broad: [01:09:48] Sure, I mean, I think I’m so in tune with Dr. Julie Beischel actually with this, in as much as her focus is very much on the therapeutic quality because mediumship, for sure, in my experience, has transformative power, not my power, but it has the ability to give a person an experience to give them permission to move on in their lives.

So, a lot of people get stuck in grief, a lot of people that come see me feel that if they move on in their life their loved ones will think they’ve forgotten them. And what the mediumship shows is that, no, your loved ones are with you still, they’re experiencing your experiences, as, you know, we are all connected here, and that when you are happy, living a fulfilling life and honoring them, then you actually give them something positive. So the therapeutic quality of mediumship, with the information that comes through, and then the philosophy, if you like, I’m saying that’s a more philosophical outlook, gives them a reason to be able to live again.

And you know, there is a place for counseling, I make that clear in the book. I am not a qualified counselor, I am not able to deal with the real problems of mental health. I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about the everyday person who is suffering with grief, who feels that they don’t want to move on with their life because they are forgetting their loved one. They suddenly become to realize that they don’t need to, that death doesn’t end a life. I mean, sorry, death ends a life, it doesn’t end a relationship, that that relationship with their loved one continues on, and that their job now is to live well and fully. And I think that’s where it has this completely transformative quality that counseling, and medicine doesn’t have

Alex Tsakiris: [01:11:50] You know, maybe we could shift into some practical advice here, because you do offer it in the book, but we really need to get this out here, because no matter how many times we think people have heard this, there are people who encounter this and it hits him for the first time.

Someone is in that situation, what they say, they’re piqued, they’re interest is piqued by what you’re saying. How do they go about this? How do they go about making that connection with someone who might be able to help them? And I have to throw in here, you’re not doing an advertisement for yourself, for your book. It’s hard to be able to do that, because you’re so fantastically successful and popular. But in general, somebody feels a need to do this, you have some practical advice. Give us the big picture view of how they go about connecting with a medium in order to alleviate or try and deal with some grief issues.

Claire Broad: [01:12:49] Sure, okay. Well, I list about 10 tips in the book. So the top ones that I can think of here are, first of all, go and see a medium working. Lots of mediums are actually working in front of the public for that reason, so that you have a chance to go and see them and see whether you resonate with them. You get a sense their integrity. You can see whether that person is of any high quality at all. If you can go and see them work, do that.

Otherwise if you check out, simple things like their website speak volumes. I think websites speak volumes about people. You can see testimonials, you can see what other people are saying. If that medium is accredited, like Julie Beischel’s Windbridge Institute mediums, he Forever Family Foundation mediums, and in the UK, we’ve got the Spiritualists’ National Union and The Institute Of Spiritualist Mediums and there are organizations right across the world. If the medium has put themselves through some level of accreditation, that also helps. I mean, it doesn’t improve their connection with the spirit world, or the spirit world when I work with them, they’re going to anyway, but it means, I feel that person has taken the responsibility that they’re bearing on their shoulders more seriously. They want to make sure they working to a good code of conduct.

One thing I want to say here is money is not the way to gauge it, because there are some mediums who don’t charge anything, who do great readings, but there are some mediums who need to charge because, say for instance like me, I’m fully booked for two years normally in advance, the demand is so high, I now have to pay my bills. So I have to charge. So that doesn’t mean my integrity is any less than the person who isn’t charging. It’s just they’ve chosen to carry on with their own career or they’re doing it in their spare time, they don’t need the money. So I wanted to say, money isn’t the issue. Of course, if you are seeing someone charging hugely inflated prices, then you can question their own motives, but that that is not… and I think a lot of people look at that first and for me, that’s not the most important thing. It’s how they’re carrying themselves.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:15:07] You know, the one other thing I’d throw in there, just from my experience because in exploring this on the show, I’ve done a bunch of readings as a proxy sitter, you know, in between people, to kind of demonstrate this amazing phenomenon that that is mediumship.

But one of the things that I’ve found is that you can kind of take a scientific approach to this and get a lot of personal gain still. Let me explain what I mean. I’ve found, from my personal experience, and I want you to comment on this because you might totally disagree. But you can go into a reading, saying to the medium up front, “This is what would be most valuable to me, would be evidence that there is this connection. So I don’t need a lot of specific information, I just want evidence. So therefore, I’m not going to share much with you. I’m going to actually share nothing with you. That’s how I would prefer to do this.”

That’s how I’ve approached readings with multiple mediums that I’ve done, and you’ll find some mediums will say, “Hey, I’m sorry, I can’t work that way,” but I’ve found other mediums who said, “Sure, that’s no problem.” But at the end of the day, what it allowed me to do, when I reflected on it to say, as you said, “Wait a minute, I gave them nothing and they came with this.” So, I didn’t have those nagging questions of, “Hey, when I said this, were they playing off of that, were they doing some kind of cold reading thing?” So I just throw that out there.

Claire Broad: [01:16:42] Absolutely, I couldn’t agree with you more Alex. I do not want any information, and I say this in the book, “Don’t give any details.” There is a really good reason for this. It’s because mediums of conscious, we’re awake when we’re working, we’re not falling into some deep trance, and any information that you give up front gives the mediums brain something to chew over. They’re then under suggestion. Even I, as a medium, do not want to be under suggestion. I don’t want my brain active and in the way, I want to be still, paying attention and just receiving what’s coming in.

So, there’s an absolute way to go about it. Be pleasant to the medium, you can chat but don’t give any details. All I ask for my clients is, say, “Yes,” “No,” “I can understand that,” I don’t understand that,” but give me nothing more, because I need to be clear.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:17:39] Great. That’s great to hear. You know, like I said, we could go on and on because you’ve done such terrific work here and you’ve written just a great book that I really do hope people check out and if you listen this show, I don’t always say that. “What the Dead Are Dying to Teach Us.”

Our guest has been Claire Broad and it’s been absolutely terrific having you on. You did say there is a long waiting list for people to talk to you, but you do have an excellent web presence and people can check out your website. It’s clairebroadmedium.com. Correct, is that it?  

Claire Broad: [01:18:17] Correct, just clairebroad.com.  

Alex Tsakiris: [01:18:19] clairebroad.com and how else might people connect with you and either see you live or do other things to follow what’s going on with you?

Claire Broad: [01:18:30] Sure, so I encourage people to come over to my Facebook page, because there is a lovely community there, of people who are questioning, like me, and who share their own personal experiences and support one another. So that’s a great place to come. You can see me sharing videos and teachings and all sorts of things on there as well.

I am on Instagram and Twitter, but Facebook is my main space, and I’m also on YouTube sharing videos there. So, I do encourage people to come and engage with me and ask, you know, not ask me for readings over social media, but ask me questions, let’s chew over the fat, share with each other.

The private practice, it’s normal for it to be booked a couple of years in advance. I’m inundated with requests for readings, that’s probably not the way to go. So, public demonstrations within the UK. I’m all over the place, in spiritualist churches spiritual centers. I’m trying to open the out to as many places as I can go. But I’m a mom, we didn’t even touch on that. I’ve got a young family and I’m doing all of this around a very normal life.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:19:40] Awesome. Well, it’s just absolutely terrific work and it’s answered so many questions for me. So I thank you so much for joining me today Claire, and best of luck.

Claire Broad: [01:19:51] Thank you so much Alex. It’s a pleasure.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:19:53] Thanks again to Claire Broad for joining me today on Skeptiko. The one question I guess I would tee up from this show, what questions should science be asking of mediumship? We spent some time on this show talking about how dorky science’s inability to keep up with these extended consciousness findings/data has left them on the outside looking in. But if we turn that question around, what could science do? How could science contribute to this further understanding that we might gain from mediums and mediumship?

So if you’d like to weigh in on that question, I’d love to hear from you. Probably the best place to do it, to reach me and other Skeptiko listeners, and there are many, many really smart Skeptiko listeners that do weigh in on these topics. The best place to connect is through the Skeptiko Forum, which you can find at skeptikoforum.com or you can find through this Skeptiko website, S-K-E-P-T-I-K-O. While you’re there, of course, you can check out all of the previous shows, over 400 of them available to listen to from the website or download or subscribe through any of your favorite players that you might have.

I have a number of really terrific shows I’m so excited to bring to you. I do hope you stick around for all of that. Until next time take care and bye for now.

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