Theos-Talk Archives (September 2004 Message tt00419)

Madame Blavatsky in ISIS UNVEILED gives
an important key to understanding "seership":

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There are two kinds of seership -- that of 
the soul and that of the spirit. The seership 
of the ancient Pythoness, or of the modern 
mesmerized subject, vary but in the 
artificial modes adopted to induce the 
state of clairvoyance. But, as the visions 
of both depend upon the greater or less 
acuteness of the senses of the astral body, 
they differ very widely from the perfect, 
omniscient spiritual state; for, at best, 
the subject can get but glimpses of truth, 
through the veil which physical nature 
interposes. The astral principle, or mind 
. . . is the sentient soul, inseparable 
from our physical brain, which it holds in 
subjection, and is in its turn equally 
trammelled by it. This is the ego, the 
intellectual life-principle of man, his 
conscious entity. While it is yet within the material body, the 
clearness and correctness of its spiritual visions depend on its more 
or less intimate relation with its higher Principle. When this 
relation is such as to allow the most ethereal portions of the soul-
essence to act independently of its grosser particles and of the 
brain, it can unerringly comprehend what it sees; then only is it the 
pure, rational, supersentient soul. That state is known in India as 
the Samaddi. . . .When the body is in the state of dharana -- a total 
catalepsy of the physical frame -- the soul of the clairvoyant may 
liberate itself, and perceive things subjectively. And yet, as the 
sentient principle of the brain is alive and active, these pictures 
of the past, present, and future will be tinctured with the 
terrestrial perceptions of the objective world; the physical memory 
and fancy will be in the way of clear vision. But the seer-adept 
knows how to suspend the mechanical action of the brain. His visions 
will be as clear as truth itself, uncolored and undistorted, whereas, 
the clairvoyant, unable to control the vibrations of the astral 
waves, will perceive but more or less broken images through the 
medium of the brain. The seer can never take flickering shadows for 
realities, for his memory being as completely subjected to his will 
as the rest of the body, he receives impressions directly from his 
spirit. Between his subjective and objective selves there are no 
obstructive mediums. This is the real spiritual seership, in which, 
according to an expression of Plato, soul is raised above all 
inferior good. When we reach "that which is supreme, which is simple, 
pure, and unchangeable, without form, color, or human qualities: the 
God -- our Nous." 

This is the state which such seers as Plotinus and Apollonius termed 
the "Union to the Deity". . . but this state is as far above modern 
clairvoyance as the stars above glow-worms. Plotinus, as is well 
known, was a clairvoyant-seer during his whole and daily life; and 
yet, he had been united to his God but six times during the sixty-six 
years of his existence, as he himself confessed to Porphyry.
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ISIS UNVEILED, Volume 2, pp. 590-591