Practically speaking: as an “accompanier” who supports the hand of the person writing, I sit next to the person and make sure that our chairs are parallel so as to avoid any torsion of the shoulders. The right hand is open facing upwards to the sky, with a cupping motion. I welcome the person’s left hand in my palm with my fingers folded back except for the index. His index is isolated and ready to push the keys on the computer keyboard in front of us. I take the necessary time to center myself and “listen” to my partner’s hand. This means that I put myself in a state of receptivity to perceive the beginning of movement.

After a few seconds, I feel animpulsion coming from his hand. The movement that I accompany is thus initiated. My partner’s hand takes me to the keys on the keyboard and words are formed.

Concerning terminology, and to simplify understanding for further reading, we will use the vocabulary from FC and refer to the facilitator as the person cupping the hand, and facilitated, the person who is being accompanied.

The hypothesis developed by the neurologist John Eccles[i] in which “The unity of the conscience or the soul comes from an entity located in another level of reality,” sheds light on what might happen/be happening during the facilitation process. Accepting the consequences of such a hypothesis allows many handicapped people to benefit from facilitated communication, without taking into consideration evolution towards possible autonomy.

Actually, no matter what the state of the accompanied person’s brain, the facilitator acts as a motor, sensorial and cognitive moderator, which means he “lends” his “communication tools” to his partner.

John Eccles’ hypothesis implies that any person, no matter what their handicap is, disposes of an intact conscience which deploys itself at a different level of reality than the cognitive and sensorial system. By making himself available to the person he is facilitating, the facilitator becomes the communication partner’s conscious receptor.  He can thus express himself using the brain of his facilitator, which will compensate the deficiencies of his own sensorial and cognitive possibilities. Therefore, the person I facilitate, benefits from my own vocabulary and my mental structures, made available via the hand I support.

The texts typed by non speaking people have a profound impact on their family, testifying to wisdom and a depth seemingly incompatible with the person’s exterior. Thanks to AIC the limits of appearance are transcended and the person finally has the right to be quoted. Here is a text by Muriel, an adult suffering from autistic disorders, describing a reality she has access to: “Sky’s light blooms into a bronze colored rainbow where I see the range of colors fan out over the space of time. I live in osmosis with the world and it is joy to open a crack to learn to be me. My fear is left on deposit on the mirror of my life.

“My life reflects on the mirror of your thought, like an image in a mirror. Head on is not my way. I attack myself rather than the other who is also me and I refer to my feeling of insufficiency. However, deep down, I know that the Whole is in me and that I am an integral part of the Whole (..) autism is not rrationality, but rationality so big that the world seems without sense.”

What do we really know about what is lived “consciously” by these people? Where does Facilitated Communication stop and where does Inner Communication begin? Also, maybe the people who cannot speak live constantly in this transpersonal environment? Extremely receptive to what their family and relations live, open to truths that go beyond the conscience of people referred to as “normal.”

The depth of their writing is unquestionable and in keeping with the hypothesis that life experiences exceed personal experiences.

Pierre Weil’s path nourished the evolution that contributed to the elaboration of Accompanied Inner Communication.