![Ethereal shimmering image ](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2026-02/iStock-1442159774.jpg?itok=1zxLL2f1) # The Awakening of Paul Selig’s Psychic Talents February 13, 2026 Paul Selig is a teacher, author, and psychic from New York City. He received his MFA from Yale University, where he studied creative writing. His plays have been performed from New York to Lisbon and back to Los Angeles in the U.S. and internationally. Selig started teaching creative writing at Goddard College and New York University while still in his mid-20s. During his childhood and into adulthood, Selig described himself as an atheist. In 1987, Selig experienced an awakening of his psychic talents (perceiving auras, telepathy, mediumship) during the Harmonic Convergence of August 16th and 17th. As Selig marks in the interview (source below), the “fruits” of the Harmonic Convergence were the beginnings of his psychic powers. He started to see luminous auras around people. As he began working as an energy healer, he sensed his ability to work as a channel. First, he was able to “channel the living,” by which he means that he could channel the estranged relative of a client. Selig continued as an energy healer and a psychic until 2008, when those he calls the “guides” informed him that if he wanted to get serious about this, he needed to quit smoking. He did, and soon thereafter the guides began to dictate books in close succession. As Selig describes it, he first hears the words of the guides in his mind, and then he repeats them aloud. He also dialogues with the guides during their transmissions, asking them questions and, on occasion,receiving direct feedback from them about thoughts going through his mind during the sessions. Beginning with *I Am the Word* in 2010, Selig has published 12 books dictated by the guides. His books read like a wholly unique combination of Christian Gnosticism, Buddhist epistemology, other channeled literature (especially *A Course in Miracles* and *The Seth Materials*), New Thought, and Theosophy, all without being reducible to any or all of these sources. ## Source **“Channeling a Mystery: A Talk with Psychic Paul Selig”\[1\]** Selig has spoken about this experience in snippets through his books, but it is in his interviews that he has given the most complete account of the event that proved to be his awakening: > “I heard a voice telling me to get my act together, which was the first voice. A few months later, there was this thing called the Harmonic Convergence, and I heard people were going to be waking up. At that moment in my life—because I had gone from living in a world where there was no such thing as spirit to one in which perhaps there was—I thought, “Well, if there is a God, or something like that, and you wanted to wake up, why would it say ‘No’? It wouldn’t want you to be asleep.” > > “So I went up to the roof of the building I lived in, on 22nd Street, and I asked to be woken up. Somebody had given me a mantra and a crystal — I thought you needed the props in those days. I don’t know what happened. I may have been hyperventilating. I may never know. It was the experience of energy moving from the pit of my being up through what I now know are the chakras and out through the top of my head. The feeling left me frozen and swaying in this energy. I knew I was safe, and I knew it was something specific for me to experience. I think, in retrospect, having grown up without any evidence of the supernatural, I’d had some psychic experiences as a child, but I dismissed them. I needed something that was tangible.” > > “Around that time — maybe as a result of that experience, maybe not — I started seeing lights around people. So, there were fruits.” ## Bibliography The Assemblage. “Channeling a Mystery: A Talk with Psychic Paul Selig.” *The Assemblage Journal* (blog), September 28, 2017. [https://medium.com/the-assemblage-journal/channeling-a-mystery-a-talk-w…](https://medium.com/the-assemblage-journal/channeling-a-mystery-a-talk-with-psychic-paul-selig-731844466d13) Selig, Paul. *Alchemy*. New York: Essentials, 2020. ———. *Beyond the Known: Realization: A Channeled Text*. New York: St. Martin’s Essentials, 2019. ———. *I Am the Word: A Guide to the Consciousness of Man’s Self in a Transitioning Time*. New York: TarcherPerigee, 2010. ———. *The Book of Freedom*. New York: TarcherPerigee, 2018. ———. *The Book of Knowing and Worth: A Channeled Text*. New York: TarcherPerigee, 2013. ———. *The Book of Mastery: The Mastery Trilogy: Book I*. New York: TarcherPerigee, 2016. ———. *The Book of Truth: The Mastery Trilogy: Book II*. New York: TarcherPerigee, 2017. ———. *The Kingdom: A Channeled Text*. St. New York: Martin’s Essentials, 2021. Author Biography ### Matthew Dillon Matthew J. Dillon served as Research Associate and Program Lead for the Archive of Mystical Experience project at the Center for the Study of World Religions from 2023 to 2026. He earned his PhD from Rice University with specializations in Christian Studies and the History of Religions. His research examines the afterlives of ancient apocryphal and Gnostic sources in American religion. To that end, he published articles on conspirituality, neo-Gnostic churches, Gnosticism in the works of Grant Morrison, Gnosticism and attachment theory, James Hillman's psychology, and theoretical approaches to the study of Gnosticism. His first book, *The Kingdom Is Within You: The Nag Hammadi Library and Post-Christianity in America*, is under contract with the University of Virginia Press's American Spirituality series. During his appointment at the CSWR, Dillon led the development of the Archive of Mystical Experience database. He also created and hosted *Pop Apocalypse*, the CSWR's first podcast series, which explored gnostic, esoteric, mystical, and visionary currents in popular culture through conversations with artists, writers, scholars, and musicians. Episodes and recordings from the series remain available through the CSWR website and YouTube channel. [Pop Apocalypse (CSWR)](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/research-programming/transcendence-transformation/pop-apocalypse-podcast?utm_source=chatgpt.com) · [Pop Apocalypse YouTube Playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX_9feVneSp3MKVKN4mu_VdJ-hIdMtfPv&utm_source=chatgpt.com) ![Photo of Matt Dillon looking into the camera](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/2024-10/Matt%20Dillon%20serious%20headshot%20Harvard.jpeg?itok=67oo1WSo) See also:- [ Archive of Mystical Experiences ](/topic-tags/archive-mystical-experiences)