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I CHING An ancient Chinese system of divination, also known as the Book of Changes. The I Ching consists of 64 interrelated hexagrams along with commentaries. The hexagram formations can be used in divination are decided by the throwing of three coins three times or by tossing yarrow sticks. Each hexagram has a meaning and when lines of hexagrams are taken into account the oracle is capable of delivering more than 4,000 answers with repetition.

ILLUMINATI Secret brotherhood of magical practitioners. The brotherhood is rumored to have existed in ancient Egypt but the term was first used in the fifteenth century to describe adepts, especially those who possessed 'light or 'illumination' [i.e. see wisdom] from a higher source. The term associated with a number of secret societies and occult groups, such as the Rosicrucian's and Freemasons.

IMAGERY Mental images, thoughts, feelings and sensations that play an important role are psi activity, meditation, spiritual and psychic healing, mystical experiences and magic. Since ancient times imagery has been seen as a way to tap into the unconscious and harness its power.

Imagery is subjective, with studies showing that some people are better at imagery than others. It occurs spontaneously in drams and daydreams but, with training, research has shown it can be used for goal-orientated tasks. It is generally through that imagery training benefits psi ability, and since the nineteenth century parapsychologists have explored the in-between psi and imagery.

• Imagery is a right-brain function, which synthesis images, sounds and emotions. Experiments with psi imagery have shown that there are five mental processing stages involved:
• The image is presented unchanged to the conscious awareness
• The image is reorganised into recognizable patterns, but which are different to the original.
• The imagination and memory fill in missing elements
• The image is transformed into different, but similar, image
• The image stimulates associations; for example, a person may associate an image of a half-eaten apple with cancer. The association could have been formed because the night before a beloved relative died of cancer and she had left a half-eaten apple by her bedside.

It is thought that gifted psychics can receive their psi information in all five ways, or in one or two dominant ways, as the five mental processing stages are not necessarily sequential.

Process-orientated imagery [visualising carrying out the task] and goal-orientated imagery [visualising the task already completed] are used in creative visualisation techniques designed to improve health, relationships, career prospects, personal growth and fulfillment. Imagery is an absolutely essential part of martial arts training and individuals in sport and business use imagery to boost their chances of success. Studies of sportsmen and women show that physiological changes occur during creative visualisation and that their internal imagery is a highly effective way to boost performance [The Zone and The Entering the Field are commonly used terms and explored more in Steven's writing]

Imagery has also played an important role in many kinds of healing since the ancient Greeks recognised how important the mind-body link was to physical and emotional health. If disease is present both patient and healer image the relevant parts of the body is perfect health as a way of combating the diseases.

The Renaissance physician, Paracelsus said that the imagination has the power to cure or cause illness, but only in the last 40 years that Western medicine has begun to recognise the true healing potential of mental imagery. Since the 1970s imagery has been used as an alternative or supplemental treatment for a large number of illnesses, especially cancer. In Eastern medicine, meditation and yoga imagery is employed to reach illumination - a state where there is no thought and no imagery. In magic, imagery is used to imbue symbols with power and to effect spells. By visualising the symbol the magician or witch believes that he or she can access its power.

IMAGINATION is the ability to visualise and make sense of the universe in pictures and symbols not words. It is something that comes from with a person's own mind and involves images and sensations that do not demonstrate any basis in reality, yet. Imagination is sometimes confused with psychic skills such as telepathy and precognition but it is not the same. Psychics believe that imagination is the first stage in reawakening latent psychic potential because imagination involves mental images and pictures, and these images can have great power and meaning.

Exercises to stimulate your imagination

We often dismiss insights by telling ourselves that were imagined things, but a vivid imagination is believed to be the bridge between intuition and psychic development. To develop psychically you need to think in pictures and sensations, not words, and to allow yourself to dream, fantasize and play.
Here are some simple suggestions to develop your imagination as a path to psychic awakening. Let your imagination run free.

1 - Draw two shapes on a piece of paper. One is simply a straight vertical line no more than a few inches long. The second is shaped like a capital Y - again no more than a few inches long. Look at both these shapes for a minutes. Now cover up the Y shape and look at the vertical line. In your minds eye let the vertical line transform into the Y shape. See the line dividing and splitting into the Y. Try it again, only this time see one arm of the Y growing faster than the other. Do it again, and se one arm waiting for the other to complete before it moves. See in your minds eye one of the arms moving and, when it stops, see the other moving.

2 - Choose a picture you like. It can be a photo or a painting or a drawing. You want this to be uplifting experience, so try to pick something simple and calm rather than something crowded with detail. Find a place where you wont be disturbed and where you can relax. Take the picture with you. Get comfortable and take some deep breaths to help you relax. Tune out everything else and look at the pictures for a few minutes. Try to remember every detail in your picture. When you are ready, close your eyes and slowly melt into the picture. Stand in your imagined picture, look at everything and see it all in your head. Take a walk around in your picture. Enjoy the mood of the picture. If there are people there talk to them. Take a good look around. When you feel ready, slowly walk out of the picture and come back to reality.

3 - When the phone rings see if you can imagine who is on the other end before you pick it up. Do the same with your post. Imagine who has sent you a letter before you tear it open. And if you're feeling confident, see if you can image what will be in the next day's newspaper headlines.

Don't worry if you have more misses than hits with these exercises; the important thing is to get your imagination muscles working, because its you imagination that will take you on your first psychic adventure.

INDIGO CHILDREN During the later part of the 1970s Nancy Ann Tappe, a psychic and lecturer at the University of San Diego, noticed a change taking place in the colour of children's auras. Nancy believed that her ability to se auras was due to the fact that has been diagnosed with synesthesia, a condition where two neurological systems become crossed so that the senses get reversed. As part of her research and study Nancy published a book in 1982 called Understanding Your Life Through Color, and in this books she first mentioned the term indigo. A few years later, Lee Carol, a channeller for an entity he calls Kryon, and his wife, Jan Tober, presented Tappes research on varying colours of the aura in The Indigo Children and Indigo Celebration.

According to Tappe, from 1980 about 80 per cent of the babies being born had an indigo aura around them that she equated to their life mission and their life colour. From 1990 she suggested that there were about 90 per cent being born, and as many as 99 per cent by the year 2000. Prior to 1980 babies with indigo colour were born - so there are indigo adults - but it was after 1980 that a significant increase occurred.

Indigo is the colour of the third eye chakra, which an energy centre inside the head located between the eyebrows. This chakra stimulates clairvoyance, or the ability to see energy, visions and spirits, so, according to Tappe, many of the Indigo Children are classed as clairvoyant.

Tappe believed that Indigo Children have a warrior nature, a rebel with a cause' personality with absolutely no sense of guilt. They are often labeled hyperactive or aggressive but this is their purpose. They are here to break down old and out moded systems - legal, educational, medical and so on - and to force honesty and integrity on a global level.
According to Tappe and her followers, the Indigos re often mis-diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder [ADD] or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder [ADHD]. This is because of their warrior nature. Adults find it hard to handle their intense energy and think that the only way to calm them down is with powerful pharmaceutical drugs, like Ritalin. Tappe suggested that these children actually have right and left-brain alignment, something people the spiritual path strive for throughout their lifetime. They are highly sensitive, have psychic abilities and possess incredible wisdom. According to Tappe being and Indigo isn't easy, but it foretells a mission. The indigo Children are the ones who have come to raise the vibration of our planet and bring to humanity the age of enlighten.

How to recognise the Indigo Child

The Indigo Child is recognisable by his or her aura and by certain other traits, according to The Indigo Children website [owned by Kryon Writing's] www.indigochild.com :

• They come into the world with a feeling of royalty [and often act like it]. They have   a feeling of 'deserving to be here', and are surprised when others don't share it.
• Self-worth is not a big issue. They often tell the parents 'who they are'.
• They have difficult with authority without explanation or choice.
• They simply will not do certain things; for example, waiting in line is difficult for   them
• They get frustrated with systems that are rule orientated and don't require creative   thought.
• They often see better ways of doing things, both at home and in school, which   makes them seem like nonconformists.
• They seem anti-social unless they are with their own kind. If there are no other of   like consciousness around them they often turn inward. School is extremely •   difficult for them socially.
• They will not respond to 'guilt' discipline.
• They are not shy in letting you know what they need.

The Indigo Children website advises that if you recognise the characteristics of an Indigo Child in someone you know, it is important you give this child respect, support ad love. They need attention and stimulation and an outlet for their creativity. They need things explained to them, because 'I told you so' isn't an adequate reason for an Indigo. Give them a sense of direction, but above all empower them by giving them choices, responsibility and a sense of independence. If psychic ability manifests itself allow them to nurture and develop it.

INNER LIGHT SOCIETY English magical order founded in the mid to late 1920s by Dion Fortune as the Fraternity of the Inner Light, in 1946 after Fortunes death, the name was changed to Society of Inner Light.
According to its website [www.innerlight.org.uk ] it is a: 'Society for the study of Occultism, mysticism and Esoteric Psychology and the development of their practice. Its aims are Christian and its method are Western.

INSPIRATION The right brain function in which insight, information and intuition enable a person to make great leaps in through and creativity. Everyone experiences inspiration at some time or other in his or her lives. Some believe it comes from a divine source, while others believe it to come from supernatural sources. This is because when inspiration occurs it often feels as if the ideas come from outside of one, as if one has become the instrument not the instigator of ideas and creativity.

Research by the American Society for Psychical Research on the relationship between creativity and ESP demonstrates three factors in common: shared principles; positive motivation [the need to make contact with distant material]; relaxation and dissociation [the mind is most passive and receptive in these states].

Typically inspiration occurs suddenly and with great intensity, but it is though t to be the product of a long period of incubation where the unconscious integrates and collates information into new patterns, which are then pushed forward into consciousness. This was certainly the case, for instance, with Thomas Edison's discovery of the light bulb. The flash of inspiration came after years of research and experimentation. Sometimes, chills, burning, tingling and fuzzy feelings are said to accompany moments of inspiration - Beethoven said his body shivered when the inspiration occurred and his hair would stand on end. Inspiration only last for a few moments and if the insights are not written down or acted upon, the memory of them will fade.

INTUITION is a state of knowing something without being aware that you know it. It is a knowledge that seems to come from nowhere, a sudden revelation or insight without any logical evidence.

Intuition is commonly believed to a sixth sense, a form of ESP or an indication of potential psychic ability. Many psychologists, however, believe that intuition does not rely on a sixth sense; it is simply a case of knowing without being aware of how you know. Present understanding of how the brain works provides a logical explanation of this phenomenon. There is an overwhelming sea of awareness we all possess that never reaches conscious awareness. This is subliminal knowledge gleaned by the senses that completely bypasses consciousness. When some aspect of this awareness surfaces into the consciousness, it is called intuition.

It is thought that we have two system of awareness: conscious and intuitive. The conscious or logical mind [left brain function] is able verbalise what it experiences. It records information received by the five senses - seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling and tasting. The intuitive system [right brain function] is non-verbal. It picks up the same information from the five senses. It organises, processes, records and store the information for later use.

The minds intuitive awareness system is believed to be so efficient that it picks up millions of bits of information that conscious mind misses, and it stores this information continually throughout all the years of a person's life. As a result a vast storehouse of knowledge is stored in our subconscious without any conscious awareness of it. The intuitive mind never lies dormant and is always trying, through symbols, dream and feelings, to bring its information to conscious awareness. Sop when an intuitive insight occurs, it is not sign of ESP but rather information that has been gathered and stored on a subliminal level.

Some people seem naturally able to extract and use intuitive information fro the world around them. They seem to reach conclusions, solve problems and sense reality easily and in a mysterious way that other cannot. It is often said that these people are sensitive, talented, inspired, intelligent, creative and even psychic, but often these gifts are just the benefit of intuitive awareness - and there is growing evidence that this is an ability everyone posses and can develop to some degree.