Paul Selig: What It Feels Like to See Energy Around People

What do you make of these little fire fireflies that you saw people? >> I never figured it out. I I mean they're spirit, but some, you know, when I taught college, and I did that for 25 years, they used to show up around my students when they had a bright idea like the little light the little light bulbs in a cartoon, you know, the idea light bulb. And I learned to say, "What what did you you just had an idea?" And they go, "How did you know? Paul is considered one of the foremost contributors to the field of chneled literature working in the world today. He was born in New York City, attended New York University and received his master's degree from Yale. And then in 1987, a spiritual experience left him clairvoyant. And we're going to hear more about that. 13 channelneled texts so far, I'm going to add written through Paul. He describes his work as the work of a spoken stenographer. So, we're going to hear more about what that means. And he's working for a group of nonhuman guides. In 2024, the channelneled book, A World Made New was published. And now in 2026, a new book. It's called Divine Union, the essential path to oneness. Paul, welcome. >> Thanks. Glad to be here. >> Well, we have to start with the event in 1987 from which you emerged as a clairvoyant. What happened? >> [clears throat] >> You know, it was I was about four months sober, I think. Actually, I'd heard a voice after I'd started praying for the first time a few months before that sort of told me how to get my act together. And I listened to the voice, which was the first voice. And I was beginning to think for the first time that maybe there was something that one might refer to as God. I'd been raised pretty much an atheist. And I heard that there was this thing happening called the harmonic convergence and people were going to be waking up. And nowadays it seems like there's some celestial event every five days and I don't put a lot of stock in it but at that time I thought well if there is a god and there is this thing happening and you ask to be woken up why would it want to say no? So, I went up to the roof of the building that I lived in in New York City um the night before this purported event and I had a crystal and I had a mantra. Somebody had given me one of each. I thought you needed those things to wake up. And I I had an experience um that people later said sounded like a spontaneous condalini awakening. I might have just been hyperventilating for all I know, but it was an experience of energy moving through my body from the base all the way up through the top of my head that kind of left me frozen and rocking in this energy and it was something that was quite palpable. You couldn't ignore it. Something was happening. I didn't know about breath work. I didn't even know what condundalini was. You know, the mantra it turned out was a condundalini mantra, but I didn't know what that meant. And um after that happened, I started seeing the lights around people like fireflies. That was the beginning of the clairvoyance. Um I think given what I had come from, I needed something that was palpable and discernable and would override my own skepticism. And I think that that experience did that for me because it was a tangible experience of energy. And that was the beginning of it. It was just little lights like fireflies that would pop up around people and I, you know, was feeling energy and seeing energy and I didn't know what to make of any of it really. I wasn't looking to get into this stuff, but that was the beginning. >> What do you make of these little fire fireflies that you saw on people? >> I never figured it out. I I mean their spirit but some you know when I taught college and I did that for 25 years they used to show up around my students when they had a bright idea like the little light the little light bulbs in a cartoon you know the idea light bulb and I learned to say what what did you you just had an idea and they go how did you know but I think that their spirit I don't seek them out they show up when they show up usually white sometimes a a beautiful blue the ones that appear over the crown center about 68 inches above the crown. I think maybe what people call the high self or the true self. I was doing an event once and they were popping like Polaroid light bulbs over everybody's head when they were sort of getting attuned and they were kind of waking up to a new potential. It's not the way that I work anymore. That was just an open door. It showed me that there was something more that my senses could perceive beyond what I had believed was. So my my psychic work now is quite different. >> Yeah. Let's hear more about that. I was reading about your story and it sounds like there was an acceleration of your work that happened quite dramatically starting from when you were 48 years old that then led into the creation of this series of channelneled texts. >> There were two accelerations. Um the first one when I was was when I was around 30 years old, maybe 5 years after that first experience and I studied a form of energy healing and I found I was volunteering at a center for people that were living with life challenging illness at the time. It was the height of the AIDS epidemic in New York City. I found that when I had my hands on people's bodies, I began to hear things for them which they would then verify and I could feel the energy as it would leave the body and I began to feel what was going on in the body which I really didn't have any context for. So I was opening up as a clare sensient and a clare audient without really understanding or knowing what those things were but they were certainly a byproduct of the training I had undertaken. I was studying with an old Irish lady, you know, Ethel Lombardi, who had been one of the first Raiki masters in the US, I think one of the first 13 um at the time, and she was teaching her own modality. At 48, I've been doing a group in my apartment to sit in the energy, and I was hearing from these guides, but I was mostly interested in the energy that would come through when they instructed. And they weren't lecturing. They were just bringing through coordinates and ways to work with energy. And I liked being in the energy in a group because again it was palpable. You couldn't fake it. It was all happening. We were all feeling it at the same time. When I was 48, the guides I work with said, "We need you to stop smoking cigarettes." I was a fourpack a day guy. And just like when I quit drinking, my psychic abilities began. When I quit smoking, everything changed. And I began taking dictation in lecture form. All I knew at the time was that I was talking more and for longer. I wasn't all that interested [clears throat] in the content. I just I was interested in the energy because, you know, who was I? And what was coming out of my mouth didn't matter nearly as much as this really concrete energetic vibration that would fill the room and then work on the bodies of the people that were there when I sat and tuned in. So that was the beginning and then that's when the books began. Once I became willing to transcribe the lectures, record and transcribe, I hadn't been willing to do that because I didn't like to hear myself channel and I still don't really, but a medium found out that I was not recording and was rather incensed and said, "You have to do this." And I did. And I had been a writer with the worst case of writer's block of anybody I've ever known. And I was chairing a master's program in writing at the time. It was a terrible, terrible feeling. But I found when I began to type these transcripts up, I was typing up these perfectly formed lectures that required no editing. And after I began to do that for maybe two months, the guides announced that they had a book to write. And if I would take two weeks, they would deliver it. And that was the first book which was called I am the word, which was dictated in 2009, published in 2010. What does it feel like for you when the guides are dictating through you? >> It's different now than it was when it first started. I felt like somebody had their lips pressed against my forehead and the vibration of the words would come here and then I would form them at my mouth. And I got into this pattern of whispering and repeating everything. It was like I was on a loop. It was like reading ticker tape. Phrase after phrase. I would just hear the phrase. I wouldn't know where the phrase was going, where the sentence was going, and certainly not the lecture or the paragraph because I was only hearing it parsed. The people in the room would hear the whole thing and be able to put it together. And now that I'm channeling directly where the energy just flows through me, it's kind of like being what I imagine uh a woodwind instrument might be like. Something is playing you. You're being played through. The sound is coming out. It's no longer phrase, phrase, phrase. It's now the words are just flowing and flushing through and out of me. And it's kind of a constant thing when I worked as whispering and repeating, which was how I did the first 12 books, I think. Um, I could retain a little bit because there was this sort of half-second delay where I could inquire about the teaching and that's not there anymore. So I retain next to nothing about what's come through me during the dictation. Um afterwards the first time I read the books that come through me now is when I do the audio books. I don't remember a whole lot of them. I might remember the larger gestures. Um but it's like being played. I I've called myself a radio, you know, and when I'm channeling I'm tuned into a station which I think of as the guides and they're playing through me. And when I read for people, which is a bit different, I'm turned into the person or the per the people that that person asks about and then I can hear them at a higher level. >> Why do you think, Paul, this has been your life assignment? Why were you chosen for this? Four packs of cigarettes a day. I mean, the whole thing is a little unlikely from a certain >> Yeah, it's all unlikely. Everything I was the last person that I would have suspected. When I look back though at my original writing when I was a bratty young playwright in my youth, the work that I was writing was all about transcendence. I just didn't understand what that meant. I knew that it was something that I was seeking. Um I had an experience at the time in my mid20s where I was waking up. I'd had this master's degree. I had writer's block. I was barely able to feed myself. Everybody that I knew seemed to be dying of AIDS all around me. It was kind of a perfect storm. I was if somebody hadn't taken me in and put me in a guest room, I probably would have been homeless at that time. And in a strange way, it was a bit of a perfect storm. And I was so willing at that time, I think, because perhaps I had to or because I had enough of an experience when I first heard that voice when I started to pray or when I had the experience on the roof that gave me something tangible. I was actually extremely devoted in a lot of ways in those early years when I was studying healing and I was working and you know what I felt at the time was if there is a god or something like a god which I hadn't been party to my my father was a holocaust survivor my mother had been raped by a minister there was no religion in the home that I grew up in at all at all um I didn't realize that My mother had had a history with that until was close to her death and she explained the story. But I think I don't know where I was going with this. Um I think the fact that I had a willingness at that time that was really full and a hunger that I hadn't named was was a big deal. And what I was going to say was, you know, to go from a planet where there is no such thing as God or source or whatever you want to call it to one in which there is is mindbending to say the least. It was like a whole other planet. And it did make everything else pale in comparison. It became there was a sense of vocation. I was not looking to have a career as a channeler. That happened once the book started coming through me. the last thing I think I ever would have thought of. I was actually someone that didn't really believe all that much in channeling. I'd read most of a Seth book when I was a grad student. Somebody had given it to me or I'd found it in a bin, you know, and I thought it was really interesting, but I didn't finish it. But I wasn't um I wasn't looking for this and I've never been a very good newager. So, I don't know beyond that. My guides have said, "Well, I've worked with them before. I've been prepared for this. I've got a little bit of past life information where I was doing work in the Renaissance, believe it or not, that was party to this. And it's the only name I've ever been given and it was when I was on jury duty and panicking because every time I went to the court, I would melt down and they finally gave me a name. Said, "Why is this happening?" They gave me a name. I They said, "Look it up." This is pre- internet. I found an encyclopedia. I looked up the name and it was somebody who'd been a philosopher who'd been on trial for heresy, you know. And I went, "Oh, it's the same teaching it seems like." So, who knows? That's about it.