MEDIUMSHIP: INTUITIVE AND INSPIRED MEDIUMS

INTUITIVE MEDIUMS: 
Definition | Writing | Speaking | Tools for Discretion and Application
INSPIRED MEDIUMS: 
Definition | Need for Study | Presentient Mediums

Inspired Mediums

Definition

Inspired mediums, such as Allan Kardec himself, are those to whom the spirits suggest thoughts. They are a variety of the intuitive mediums, the difference being that in the inspired medium, the action of the spirits upon the medium is so subtle that even the medium himself does not feel it and only perceives that he is being helped in his ideas.  Consequently, it is even more difficult than with the intuitive medium to distinguish the medium's thought from that which is suggested.

We find the following description in "The Medium's Book" (items 182-183):

The peculiar characteristic of the inspirational medium is spontaneity.  And here let us remark that inspiration comes to us all, from spirits who influences us, for good or for evil, in every circumstance of our lives, and in every resolution we make, and it may therefore be truly said that, in this respect, everyone is a medium..... 

It is evident that we may include in this category the persons who, without being endowed with superior intelligence, and without any modification of their normal state, have flashes of intellectual lucidity which give them, for the moment, an unusual faculty of conception and of expression, and sometimes a presentiment of future events.  In what are rightly spoken of as "moments of inspiration," the flow of ideas is abundant, through the action of an involuntary, spontaneous, and almost feverish impulsion; it appears to us, at such times, as though some superior intelligence had come to our aid, and our mind seems to have been suddenly relieved of a burden.  

All those who are possessed of genius − artists, poets, scientific discoverers, great writers, etc, are doubtless spirits of superior advancement, able to comprehend and to conceive great ideas; and it is precisely because of this ability that the spirits who desire the accomplishment of some particular work select them as their instruments, suggesting to their minds the trains of thought required for their special ends, so that, in a majority of cases, "men of genius" are mediums without being aware of it.  Many of them, however, have a vague intuition of this extraneous help, and everyone who seeks inspiration performs, unconsciously, an act of evocation, whenever he makes an appeal to his good genius to come to his aid.

Kardec then adds a couple of questions that were asked to the spirits, along with the answers that were given by the latter:

        - Is inspiration confined to the revelation of great things?

       " No; it often has reference to the most commonplace circumstances of your daily life.  For instance, you may have thought of going somewhere, but a secret voice tells you not to go, because of a danger that is likely to be encountered; or it tells you to do something which you have not thought of doing; this is inspiration.  There are very few persons who are not more or less 'inspired' in this way, at certain moments"

       - May authors painters, musicians, and so on, be considered, in their moments of inspiration, as mediums?

      "Yes, for in such times, their soul is more free, more disengaged from matter, and recovers a  portion of its spiritual faculties; and it therefore receives, with greater facility, the communications of other spirits who inspire it with their own suggestions."