Theos-Talk Archives (January 2005 Message tt00927)

Jan 26 2005

Dear C, P and friends:


I think these notes will be found helpful:

Dal

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1

 
SHALL WE TEACH CLAIRVOYANCE?

A Note of Warning


MY attention has been arrested by the address delivered in the Adyar course
by Dr. Daly and reported in the September Theosophist. It is entitled
"Clairvoyance."

Coming out in the Adyar course, it has a certain flavor of authority which
will appeal to many members of the Society and may cause them to adopt the
suggestions for practice given in the latter part of the address. Yet at the
same time it is very true that the Theosophical Society is not responsible
for the utterances of members in their private capacity.

The fact that clairvoyance is a power sought after by many persons cannot be
disputed, but the questions, Is it well to try to develop clairvoyance? and
Shall we teach it? have not yet been definitely decided. Hence I may be
permitted to give my views upon them.

At the outset I desire to declare my personal attitude on these questions
and my beliefs as to facts. In using the term "clairvoyance" I intend to
include in it all clear perception on that plane.

I. I have for many years been convinced by proofs furnished by others and
from personal experience that clairvoyance is a power belonging to man's
inner nature; and also that it is possessed by the animal kingdom.

2. This faculty is either inherited or educed by practice.

3. Those who have it by birth are generally physically diseased or nervously
deranged. The cases where clairvoyance is shown by a perfectly healthy and
well-balanced person are rare.

4. The records of spiritualism for over forty years in America conclusively
prove that clairvoyance cannot be safely sought after by persons who have no
competent guide; that its pursuit has done harm; and that almost every
medium to whom one puts the question "Am I able to develop clairvoyance?"
will reply "Yes."

5. There are no competent guides in this pursuit to be found here or in
Europe who are willing to teach one how to acquire it without danger.

6. The qualifications such a guide should possess render the finding of one
difficult if not impossible. They are: the power to look within and see
clearly the whole inner nature of the student; a complete knowledge of all
the planes upon which clairvoyance acts, including knowledge of the source,
the meaning, and the effect of all that is perceived by the clairvoyant; and
last, but not least, the power to stop at will the exercise of the power.
Evidently these requirements call for an adept.

Who are the teachers of clairvoyance, and those who advise that it be
practiced? In the main, the first are mediums, and any investigator knows
how little they know. Every one of them differs from every other in his
powers. The majority have only one sort of clairvoyance; here and there are
some who combine, at most, three classes of the faculty. 

Not a single one is able to mentally see behind the image or idea perceived,
and cannot say in a given case whether the image seen is the object itself
or the result of a thought from another mind. For in these planes of
perception the thoughts of men become as objective as material objects are
to our human eyes. It is true that a clairvoyant can tell you that what is
being thus perceived is not apprehended by the physical eye, but beyond that
he cannot go. Of this I have had hundreds of examples. In 99 out of 100
instances the seer mistook the thought from another mind for a clairvoyant
perception of a living person or physical object.

The seers of whom I speak see always according to their inner tendency,
which is governed by subtle laws of heredity which are wholly unknown to
scientific men and much more to mediums and seers. One will only reach the
symbolic plane; another that which is known to occultists as the positive
side of sound; another to the negative or positive aspects of the epidermis
and its emanations; and so on through innumerable layer after layer of
clairvoyance and octave after octave of vibrations. They all know but the
little they have experienced, and for any other person to seek to develop
the power is dangerous. The philosophy of it all, the laws that cause the
image to appear and disappear, are terra incognita.

The occult septenary scheme in nature with all its modifications produces
multiple effects, and no mere clairvoyant is able to see the truth that
underlies the simplest instance of clairvoyant perception. If a man moves
from one chair to another, immediately hundreds of possibilities arise for
the clairvoyant eye, and he alone who is a highly trained and philosophical
seer -- an Adept, in short -- can combine them all so as to arrive at true
clear-perception. In the simple act described almost all the centres of
force in the moving being go into operation, and each one produces its own
peculiar effect in the astral light. 

At once the motion made and thoughts aroused elicit their own sound, color,
motion in ether, amount of etheric light, symbolic picture, disturbance of
elemental forces, and so on through the great catalogue. Did but one wink
his eye, the same effects follow in due order. And the seer can perceive but
that which attunes itself to his own development and personal peculiarities,
all limited in force and degree.

What, may I ask, do clairvoyants know of the law of prevention or
encrustation which is acting always with many people? Nothing, absolutely
nothing. How do they explain those cases where, try as they will, they
cannot see anything whatever regarding certain things? Judging from human
nature and the sordidness of many schools of clairvoyance, are we not safe
in affirming that if there were any real or reliable clairvoyance about us
now-a-days among those who offer to teach it or take pay for it, long ago
fortunes would have been made by them, banks despoiled, lost articles found,
and friends more often reunited? Admitting that there have been sporadic
instances of success on these lines, does not the exception prove that true
clairvoyance is not understood or likely to be?

But what shall theosophists do? Stop all attempts at clairvoyance. And why?
Because it leads them slowly but surely - almost beyond recall into an
interior and exterior passive state where the will is gradually overpowered
and they are at last in the power of the demons who lurk around the
threshold of our consciousness. 

Above all, follow no advice to "sit for development." Madness lies that way.
The feathery touches which come upon the skin while trying these experiments
are said by mediums to be the gentle touches of "the spirits." But they are
not. They are caused by the ethereal fluids from within us making their way
out through the skin and thus producing the illusion of a touch. When enough
has gone out, then the victim is getting gradually negative, the future prey
for spooks and will-o'-the-wisp images.

"But what," they say, "shall we pursue and study?" Study the philosophy of
life, leave the decorations that line the road of spiritual development for
future lives, and practice altruism.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE	PATH, December, 1890
 
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2

Q. - Speaking of mankind as a whole, is it true that all have one key or
rate of vibration to which they respond?

H.P.B. - Human beings in general are like so many keys on the piano, each
having its own sound, and the combination of which produces other sounds in
endless variety. Like inanimate nature they have a key-note from which all
the varieties of character and constitution proceed by endless changes.
Remember what was said in Isis Unveiled at p. 16, Vol. I, "The Universe is
the combination of a thousand elements, and yet the expression of a single
spirit, - a chaos to the sense (physical), a cosmos to the reason" (manas).

Q. - So far this applies generally to nature. Does it explain the difference
between the adept and ordinary people?

H.P.B. - Yes. This difference is that an adept may be compared to that one
key which contains all the keys in the great harmony of nature. He has the
synthesis of all keys in his thoughts, whereas ordinary man has the same key
as a basis, but only acts and thinks on one or a few changes of this great
key, producing with his brain only a few chords out of the whole great
possible harmony.

Q. - Has this something to do with the fact that a disciple may hear the
voice of his master through the astral spaces, while another man cannot hear
or communicate with the adepts?

H.P.B. - This is because the brain of a chela is attuned by training to the
brain of the Master. His vibrations synchronize with those of the Adept, and
the untrained brain is not so attuned. So the chela's brain is abnormal,
looking at it from the standpoint of ordinary life, while that of the
ordinary man is normal for worldly purposes. The latter person may be
compared to those who are color-blind.

Q. - How am I to understand this?

H.P.B. - What is considered normal from the view of the physician is
considered abnormal from the view of occultism, and vice versâ. The
difference between a color-blind signal man who mistakes the lamps and the
adept who sees is that the one takes one color for another, while the adept
sees all the colors in every color and yet does not confuse them together.

Q. - Has the adept, then, raised his vibrations so as to have them the same
as those of nature as a whole?

H.P.B. - Yes; the highest adepts. But there are other adepts who, while
vastly in advance of all men, are still unable to vibrate to such a degree.

Q. - Can the adept produce at his will a vibration which will change one
color to another?

H.P.B. - He can produce a sound which will alter a color. It is the sound
which produces the color, and not the other or opposite. By correlating the
vibrations of a sound in the proper way a new color is made.

Q. - Is it true that on the astral plane every sound always produces a
color?

H.P.B. - Yes; but these are invisible because not yet correlated by the
human brain so as to become visible on the earth plane. 

Read Galton, who gives experiments with colors and sounds as seen by
psychics and sensitives, showing that many sensitive people always see a
color for every sound. The color-blind man has coming to him the same
vibrations as will show red, but not being able to sense these he alters the
amount, so to say, and then sees a color corresponding to the vibrations he
can perceive out of the whole quantity. His astral senses may see the true
color, but the physical eye has its own vibrations, and these, being on the
outer plane, overcome the others for the time, and the astral man is
compelled to report to the brain that it saw correctly. For in each case the
outer stimulus is sent to the inner man, who then is forced, as it were, to
accept the message and to confirm it for the time so far as it goes. 

But there are cases where the inner man is able to even then overcome the
outer defect and to make the brain see the difference. In many cases of
lunacy the confusion among the vibrations of all kinds is so enormous that
there is not correlation between the inner and the outer man, and we have
then a case of aberration. But even in some of these unfortunate cases the
person inside is all the time aware that he is not insane but cannot make
himself be understood. Thus often persons are driven really insane by wrong
treatment.”	OCCULT VIBRATIONS, W Q J Articles I 424-5

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3
THREE PLANES OF HUMAN LIFE

Jagrat - Swapna - Sushupti


PATH Aug. 1888 ( W.Q.J. Articles I 294 )



THE THREE PLANES OF HUMAN LIFE

Jagrata, Swapna, Sushupti:
[ Waking, Dreaming, Dreamless Sleep ]


I speak of ordinary men. 

The Adept, the Master, the Yogi, the Mahatma, the Buddha, each lives in more
than three states while incarnated upon this world, and they are fully
conscious of them all, while the ordinary man is only conscious of the first
- the waking-life, as the word conscious is now understood.

["THAT HIGH SPIRITS WORK ON EARTH in bodies of men, while those spirits are
still in the highest spheres, see S D, Vol. I. p. 233-234 and notes, also
note p. 235. On p. 235 it is clearly explained that the author does not mean
that which is called among the spiritualists "control" of mediums by a
spirit but the actual continuance of the status and function of the
incarnated spirit in the supersensuous regions, while actually using as its
own and working in a mortal envelope on earth. So that, according to her,
there are certain persons on this earth, living and working as ordinary
human beings and members of society, whose informing divine part is so
immeasurably high in development that they as such high beings have a
definite status and function in the "supersensuous regions." 

We should say-assuming the correctness of the author's statement-that she
herself was such a case, and that "H.P.B." whether hourly in the day or
night when all around was still had a "status and function" in other spheres
where she consciously carried on the work of that high station, whatever it
was. 

There were many events in her daily life know to those who were intimate
with her that this hint may ravel, or at least shed much light upon. And in
one of her letters this sentence appears-in substance-- 

"The difference between you and me is that your are not conscious except at
day, while I am conscious day and night, and have much to do and to endure
in both of these existences from which you, being thus half-conscious, are
happily saved."

In the Hindu books and teachings there is a reference to this when they
speak of high gnanees-that is, persons full of knowledge and spiritual
power-being attracted to this earth by certain acts and at certain times i
the history of nation, race, or city."  	
WQJ Articles, "HIDDEN HINTS IN THE S D," Vol. I, pp. 615-6 ]

Every theosophist who is in earnest ought to know the importance of these
three states, and especially how essential it is that one should not lose in
Swapna the memory of experiences in Sushupti, nor in Jagrata those of
Swapna, and vice versa.

Jagrata, our waking state, is the one in which we must be regenerated; where
we must come to a full consciousness of the Self within, for in no other is
salvation possible.

When a man dies he goes either to the Supreme Condition from which no return
against his will is possible, or to the other states - heaven, hell,
avitchi, devachan, what not - from which return to incarnation is
inevitable. But he cannot go to the Supreme State unless he has perfected
and regenerated himself; unless the wonderful and shining heights on which
the Masters stand have been reached while he is in a body. This
consummation, so devoutly desired, cannot be secured unless at some period
in his evolution the being takes the steps that lead to the final
attainment. These steps can and must be taken. In the very first is
contained the possibility of the last, for causes once put in motion
eternally produce their natural results.

Among those steps are an acquaintance with and understanding of the three
states first spoken of.

Jagrata acts on Swapna, producing dreams and suggestions, and either
disturbs the instructions that come down from the higher state or aids the
person through waking calmness and concentration which tend to lessen the
distortions of the mental experiences of dream life. Swapna again in its
turn acts on the waking state (Jagrata) by the good or bad suggestions made
to him in dreams. All experience and all religions are full of proofs of
this. In the fabled Garden of Eden the wily serpent whispered in the ear of
the sleeping mortal to the end that when awake he should violate the
command.

In Job it is said that God instructeth man in sleep, in dreams, and in
visions of the night. And the common introspective and dream life of the
most ordinary people needs no proof. Many cases are within my knowledge
where the man was led to commit acts against which his better nature
rebelled, the suggestion for the act coming to him in dream. It was because
the unholy state of his waking thoughts infected his dreams, and laid him
open to evil influences. By natural action and reaction he poisoned both
Jagrata and Swapna.

It is therefore our duty to purify and keep clear these two planes.
The third state common to all is Sushupti, which has been translated
"dreamless sleep." The translation is inadequate, for, while it is
dreamless, it is also a state in which even criminals commune through the
higher nature with spiritual beings and enter into the spiritual plane. It
is the great spiritual reservoir by means of which the tremendous momentum
toward evil living is held in check. And because it is involuntary with
them, it is constantly salutary in its effect.

In order to understand the subject better, it is well to consider a little
in detail what happens when one falls asleep, has dreams, and then enters
Sushupti. As his outer senses are dulled the brain begins to throw up
images, the reproductions of waking acts and thoughts, and soon he is
asleep. He has then entered a plane of experience which is as real as that
just quitted, only that it is of a different sort. We may roughly divide
this from the waking life by an imaginary partition on the one side, and
from Sushupti by another partition on the other. In this region he wanders
until he begins to rise beyond it into the higher. There no disturbances
come from the brain action, and the being is a partaker to the extent his
nature permits of the "banquet of the gods." But he has to return to waking
state, and he can get back by no other road than the one he came upon, for,
as Sushupti extends in every direction and Swapna under it also in every
direction, there is no possibility of emerging at once from Sushupti into
Jagrata. And this is true even though on returning no memory of any dream is
retained.

Now the ordinary non-concentrated man, by reason of the want of focus due to
multitudinous and confused thought, has put his Swapna field or state into
confusion, and in passing through it the useful and elevating experiences of
Sushupti become mixed up and distorted, not resulting in the benefit to him
as a waking person which is his right as well as his duty to have. Here
again is seen the lasting effect, either prejudicial or the opposite, of the
conduct and thoughts when awake.

So it appears, then, that what he should try to accomplish is such a
clearing up and vivification of Swapna state as shall result in removing the
confusion and distortion existing there, in order that upon emerging into
waking life he may retain a wider and brighter memory of what occurred in
Sushupti. This is done by an increase of concentration upon high thoughts,
upon noble purposes, upon all that is best and most spiritual in him while
awake. The best result cannot be accomplished in a week or a year, perhaps
not in a life, but, once begun, it will lead to the perfection of spiritual
cultivation in some incarnation hereafter.

By this course a centre of attraction is set up in him while awake, and to
that all his energies flow, so that it may be figured to ourselves as a
focus in the waking man. To this focal point-looking at it from that plane -
converge the rays from the whole waking man toward Swapna, carrying him into
dream - state with greater clearness. 

By reaction this creates another focus in Swapna, through which he can
emerge into Sushupti in a collected condition. Returning he goes by means of
these points through Swapna, and there, the confusion being lessened, he
enters into his usual waking state the possessor, to some extent at least,
of the benefits and knowledge of Sushupti. 

The difference between the man who is not concentrated and the one who is,
consists in this, that the first passes from one state to the other through
the imaginary partitions postulated above, just as sand does through a
sieve, while the concentrated man passes from one to the other similarly to
water through a pipe or the rays of the sun through a lens. In the first
case each stream of sand is a different experience, a different set of
confused and irregular thoughts, whereas the collected man goes and returns
the owner of regular and clear experience.

These thoughts are not intended to be exhaustive, but so far as they go it
is believed they are correct. The subject is one of enormous extent as well
as great importance, and theosophists are urged to purify, elevate, and
concentrate the thoughts and acts of their waking hours so that they shall
not continually and aimlessly, night after night and day succeeding day, go
into and return from these natural and wisely appointed states, no wiser, no
better able to help their fellow men. For by this way, as by the spider's
small thread, we may gain the free space of spiritual life.


EUSEBIO URBAN	PATH, August, 1888

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This is what ORIGINAL THEOSOPHY teaches


Dallas
 
==================================

-----Original Message-----
From: christina
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 8:09 AM
To: 
Subject: Re: TO READ IS A MISTAKE!



Is it not up to us to distinguish between the Seer and the 
clairvoyant.
Christina