Theos-Talk Archives (September 2004 Message tt00460)

More from Blavatsky on "regularly initiated seers"

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>From Swedenborg onwards there have been many 
seers who profess to gather their knowledge 
of other worlds from actual observation, but 
such persons are isolated, and subject to 
the delusions of isolation. Any intelligent 
man will have an intuitive perception of this, 
expressing itself in a reluctance on his part 
to surrender himself entirely to the assurances 
of any such clairvoyants. But in the case of 
regularly initiated seers it must be remembered 
that we are dealing with a long — an extraordinarily 
long — series of persons who, warned of the 
confusing circumstances into which they pass 
when their spiritual perceptions are trained 
to range beyond material limits, are so enabled 
to penetrate to the actual realities of things, 
and who constitute a vast organized body of seers, who check 
each other's conclusions, test each other's discoveries and 
formulate their visions into a science of spirit as precise 
and entirely trustworthy as, in their humble way, are the 
conclusions, as far as they go, of any branch of physical 
science. Such initiates are in the position, as regards 
spiritual knowledge, that the regularly taught professor 
of a great university is in, as regards literary knowledge, 
and anyone can appreciate the superior claims of instruction 
which might be received from him, as compared with the 
crude and imperfect instruction which might be offered 
by the merely self- taught man. The initiate's speculations, 
in fact, are not spun at all; they are laid out before 
him by the accumulated wisdom of ages, and he has merely 
followed, verified and assimilated them.

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Quoted from:
"Spiritualism and Occult Truth" by H.P. Blavatsky
THE THEOSOPHIST, Vol. III. No. 5, February, 1882.
http://blavatsky.net/blavatsky/arts/SpiritualismAndOccutTruth.htm