Theos-Talk Archives (May 2005 Message tt00222)

May 6 2005


May 7, 2005

Dear M:

To me your experience shows how relatively inexperienced we all are. I can
understand desiring to validate -- but that desire may be of a quality that
only you know of. What caused a failure I don't know. 

The "will" has to be well trained and focussed for any success. This
implies motive as a stating point. 

I find in the "Key" a statement that is very general:


POWERS: SPIRITUAL AND PSYCHICAL

ENQUIRER. And what about the third object, to develop in man his latent
spiritual or psychic powers? 
 

THEOSOPHIST. This has to be achieved also by means of publications, in those
places where no lectures and personal teachings are possible. 

Our duty is TO KEEP ALIVE IN MAN HIS SPIRITUAL INTUITIONS. 

To oppose and counteract —after due investigation and proof of its
irrational nature— bigotry in every form, religious, scientific, or social,
and cant above all, whether as RELIGIOUS SECTARIANISM OR AS BELIEF IN
MIRACLES OR ANYTHING SUPERNATURAL. 

What we have to do is TO SEEK TO OBTAIN KNOWLEDGE OF ALL THE LAWS OF NATURE,
and to diffuse it. To encourage the study of those laws least understood by
modern people, the so-called Occult Sciences, based on the true knowledge of
nature, instead of, as at present, on superstitious beliefs based on blind
faith and authority. 

Popular folk-lore and traditions, however fanciful at times, when sifted MAY
LEAD TO THE DISCOVERY OF LONG-LOST, BUT IMPORTANT, SECRETS OF NATURE. 

The Society, therefore, aims at pursuing this line of inquiry, in the hope
of widening the field of scientific and philosophical observation. "	Key
48


In the "Ocean:"


The field of PSYCHIC FORCES, PHENOMENA, AND DYNAMICS is a vast
one. Such phenomena are seen and the forces exhibited every day
in all lands, but until a few years ago very little attention was
given to them by scientific persons, while a great deal of
ridicule was heaped upon those who related the occurrences or
averred belief in the psychic nature. 

This lack of AN ADEQUATE SYSTEM OF PSYCHOLOGY is a natural
consequence of the materialistic bias of science and the
paralyzing influence of dogmatic religion; the one ridiculing
effort and blocking the way, the other forbidding investigation.

The Roman Catholic branch of the Christian Church is in some
respects an exception, however. It has always admitted the
existence of the psychic world -- for it the realm of devils and
angels, but as angels manifest when they choose and devils are to
be shunned.

In man are the same powers and forces which are to be found anywhere in
NATURE. He is held by the Masters of Wisdom to be the highest product of the
whole system of evolution, and mirrors in himself every power, however
wonderful or terrible, of Nature; by the very fact of being such a mirror he
is man.

This has long been recognized in the East, ... 

LEVITATION OF THE BODY 

in apparent defiance of gravitation is a thing to be done with ease when the
process is completely mastered. It contravenes
no law. GRAVITATION IS ONLY HALF OF A LAW. The Oriental sage
admits gravity, if one wishes to adopt the term; but the real
term is attraction, the other half of the law being expressed by
the word repulsion, and both being governed by the great laws of
electrical force. 

Weight and stability depend on POLARITY, and
when the polarity of an object is altered in respect to the earth
immediately underneath it, then the object may rise. But as mere
objects are devoid of the consciousness found in man, they cannot
rise without certain other aids. The human body, however, will
rise in the air unsupported, like a bird, when its polarity is
thus changed. ...

COHESION

A third great law which enters into many of the phenomena of the
East and West is that of COHESION. The power of Cohesion is a
distinct power of itself, and not a result as is supposed. This
law and its action must be known if certain phenomena are to be
brought about, as, for instance, what the writer has seen, the
passing of one solid iron ring through another, or a stone
through a solid wall. Hence another force is used which can only
be called dispersion. Cohesion is the determinating force, for,
the moment the dispersing force is withdrawn, the cohesive force
restores the particles to their original position.

Following this out the Adept in such great dynamics is able to
disperse the atoms of an object -- excluding always the human
body -- to such a distance from each other as to render the
object invisible, and then can send them along a current formed
in the ether to any distance on the earth. At the desired point
the dispersing force is withdrawn, when immediately cohesion
reasserts itself and the object reappears intact. This may sound
like fiction, but being known to the Lodge and its disciples as
an actual fact, it is equally certain that Science will sooner or
later admit the proposition.

But the lay mind wonders how all these manipulations are 
possible, seeing that no instruments are spoken of. The 
instruments are in the body and brain of man. 

In the view of the Lodge "THE HUMAN BRAIN IS AN 
EXHAUSTLESS GENERATOR OF FORCE," and a 
complete knowledge of the inner chemical and dynamic laws 
of Nature, together with a trained mind, give the possessor the 
power to operate the laws to which I have referred. 

This will be man's possession in the
future, and would be his today were it not for blind dogmatism,
selfishness, and materialistic unbelief. ...

Using the same powers, the trained Adept can produce before the
eye, objective to the touch, material which was not visible
before, and in any desired shape. This would be called creation
by the vulgar, but it is simply evolution in your very presence.

Matter is held suspended in the air about us. Every particle of 
matter, visible or still unprecipitated, has been through all possible 
forms, and what the Adept does is to select any desired form, 
existing, as they all do, in the Astral Light and then by effort of the 
Will and Imagination to clothe the form with the matter by precipitation.

The object so made will fade away unless certain other processes
are resorted to which need not be here described, but if these
processes are used the object will remain permanently. And if it
is desired to make visible a message on paper or other surface,
the same laws and powers are used. The distinct --
photographically and sharply definite -- image of every line of
every letter or picture is formed in the mind, and then out of
the air is drawn the pigment to fall within the limits laid down
by the brain, "the exhaustless generator of force and form." ...

This, then, naturally leads to the proposition that THE HUMAN
WILL IS ALL POWERFUL and the Imagination is a most useful faculty
with a dynamic force. 

The Imagination is the picture-making power
of the human mind. In the ordinary average human person it has
not enough training or force to be more than a sort of dream, but
it may be trained. When trained it is the Constructor in the
Human Workshop. Arrived at that stage it makes a matrix in the
Astral substance through which effects objectively will flow.

It is the greatest power, after Will, in the human assemblage of
complicated instruments. The modern Western definition of
IMAGINATION is incomplete and wide of the mark. It is chiefly
used to designate fancy or misconception and at all times stands
for unreality. It is impossible to get another term as good
because one of the powers of the trained Imagination is that of
making an image. The word is derived from those signifying the
formation or reflection of an image. This faculty used, or rather
suffered to act, in an unregulated mode has given the West no
other idea than that covered by "fancy." So far as that goes it
is right but it may be pushed to a greater limit, which, when
reached causes the Imagination to evolve in the Astral substance
an actual image or form which may be then used in the same way as
an iron molder uses a mold of sand for the molten iron.

It is therefore the King faculty, inasmuch as the Will cannot do
its work if the Imagination be at all weak or untrained. For
instance, if the person desiring to precipitate from the air
wavers in the least with the image made in the Astral substance,
the pigment will fall upon the paper in a correspondingly
wavering and diffused manner.


TELEPATHY

To COMMUNICATE WITH ANOTHER MIND AT ANY DISTANCE 

the Adept attunes all the molecules of the brain and all the thoughts of
the mind so as to vibrate in unison with the mind to be affected,
and that other mind and brain have also to be either voluntarily
thrown into the same unison or fall into it voluntarily. So
though the Adept be at Bombay and his friend in New York, the
distance is no obstacle, as the inner senses are not dependent on
an ear, but may feel and see the thoughts and images in the mind
of the other person.

And when it is desired TO LOOK INTO THE MIND AND CATCH THE
THOUGHTS OF ANOTHER and the pictures all around him of all he has
thought and looked at, the Adept's inner sight and hearing are
directed to the mind to be seen, when at once all is visible.
But, as said before, only a rogue would do this, and the Adepts
do not do it except in strictly authorized cases. The modern man
sees no misdemeanor in looking into the secrets of another by
means of this power, but the Adepts say it is an invasion of the
rights of the other person.

No man has the right, even when he has the power in his hand, to
enter into the mind of another and pick out its secrets. This is
the law of the Lodge to all who seek, and if one sees that he is
about to discover the secrets of another he must at once withdraw
and proceed no further. If he proceeds his power is taken from
him in the case of a disciple; in the case of any other person he
must take the consequence of this sort of burglary.

For Nature has her laws and her policemen, and if we commit
felonies in the Astral world the great Law and the guardians of
it, for which no bribery is possible, will execute the penalty,
no matter how long we wait, even if it be for ten thousand years.
HERE IS ANOTHER SAFEGUARD FOR ETHICS AND MORALS.

But until men admit this system of philosophy, they will not 
deem it wrong to commit felonies in fields where their weak 
human law has no effect, but at the same time by thus refusing 
the philosophy they will put off the day when all
may have these great powers for the use of all.

APPORTATION

Among phenomena useful to notice are those consisting of the
MOVING OF OBJECTS WITHOUT PHYSICAL CONTACT. 
This may be done, and in more than one way. The first is to extrude 
from the physical body the Astral hand and arm, and with those 
grasp the object to be moved. This may be accomplished at a 
distance of as much as ten feet from the person. 

This will serve to some extent to explain several of the phenomena 
of mediums. In nearly all cases of such apportation the feat is 
accomplished by thus using the unseen but material Astral hand.

The second method is TO USE THE ELEMENTALS of which I have
spoken. They have the power when directed by the inner man to
carry objects by changing the polarity, and then we see, small objects
moving apparently unsupported. These elemental entities are used
when things are brought from longer distances than the length to
which the Astral members may be stretched. It is no argument
against this that mediums do not know they do so. They rarely if
ever know anything about how they accomplish any feat, and their
ignorance of the law is no proof of its non-existence. Those students 
who have seen the forces work from the inside will need no
argument on this.

CLAIRVOYANCE, CLAIRAUDIENCE, AND SECOND-SIGHT
are all related very closely. Every exercise of any one of them draws in at
the
same time both of the others. They are but variations of one
power. Sound is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the
Astral sphere, and as light goes with sound, sight obtains
simultaneously with hearing.

TO SEE AN IMAGE WITH THE ASTRAL SENSES 
means that at the same time there is a sound, and to hear the latter 
infers the presence of a related image in Astral substance. It is perfectly 
well known to the true student of occultism that every sound produces
instantaneously an image, and this, so long known in the Orient,
has lately been demonstrated in the West in the production to the
eye of sound pictures on a stretched tympanum. This part of the
subject can be gone into very much further with the aid of
occultism, but it is a dangerous one. 

In the ASTRAL LIGHT ARE PICTURES of all things whatsoever that
happened to any person, and as well also pictures of those events
to come the causes for which are sufficiently well marked and
made. If the causes are yet indefinite, so will be the images of
the future. But for the mass of events for several years to come
all the producing and efficient causes are always laid down with
enough definiteness to permit the seer to see them in advance as
if present. By means of these pictures, seen with the inner
senses, all clairvoyants exercise their strange faculty. Yet it
is a faculty common to all men, though in the majority but
slightly developed; but occultism asserts that were it not for
the germ of this power slightly active in every one no man could
convey to another any idea whatsoever.

CLAIRVOYANCE 

the pictures in the Astral Light pass before the
inner vision and are reflected into the physical eye from within.
They then appear objectively to the seer. If they are of past
events or those to come, the picture only is seen; if of events
actually then occurring, the scene is perceived through the
Astral Light by the inner sense. The distinguishing difference
between ordinary and clairvoyant vision is, then, that in
clairvoyance with waking sight the vibration is communicated to
the brain first, from which it is transmitted to the physical
eye, where it sets up an image upon the retina, just as the
revolving cylinder of the phonograph causes the mouthpiece to
vibrate exactly as the voice had vibrated when thrown into the
receiver.

In ordinary eye vision the vibrations are given to the eye first
and then transmitted to the brain. Images and sounds are both
caused by vibrations, and hence any sound once made is preserved
in the Astral Light from whence the inner sense can take it and
from within transmit it to the brain, from which it reaches the
physical ear. So in clairaudience at a distance the hearer does
not hear with the ear, but with the center of hearing in the
Astral body. Second-sight is a combination of clairaudience and
clairvoyance or not, just as the particular case is, and the
frequency with which future events are seen by the second-sight
seer adds an element of prophecy.

The highest order of clairvoyance -- that of SPIRITUAL VISION --
is very rare. The usual clairvoyant deals only with the ordinary
aspects and strata of the Astral matter. Spiritual sight comes
only to those who are pure, devoted, and firm. It may be attained
by special development of the particular organ in the body
through which alone such sight is possible, and only after
discipline, long training, and the highest altruism.

All other clairvoyance is transitory, inadequate, and
fragmentary, dealing, as it does, only with matter and illusion.
Its fragmentary and inadequate character results from the fact
that hardly any clairvoyant has the power to see into more than
one of the lower grades of Astral substance at any one time.

The pure-minded and the brave can deal with the future and the
present far better than any clairvoyant. But as the existence of
these two powers proves the presence in us of the inner senses
and of the necessary medium -- the Astral Light, they have, as
such human faculties, an important bearing upon the claims made
by the so-called "spirits" of the seance room.

DREAMS 

are sometimes the result of brain action automatically
proceeding, and are also produced by the transmission into the
brain by the real inner person of those scenes or ideas high or
low which that real person has seen while the body slept. They
are then strained into the brain as if floating on the soul as it
sinks into the body. These dreams may be of use, but generally
the resumption of bodily activity destroys the meaning, perverts
the image, and reduces all to confusion.

But the great fact of all dreaming is that some one perceives and
feels therein, and this is one of the arguments for the inner
person's existence.

In sleep the inner man communes with higher intelligences, and
sometimes succeeds in impressing the brain with what is gained,
either a high idea or a prophetic vision, or else fails in
consequence of the resistance of brain fiber. The karma of the
person also determines the meaning of a dream, for a king may
dream that which relates to his kingdom, while the same thing
dreamed by a citizen relates to nothing of temporal consequence.
But, as said by Job: "In dreams and visions of the night man is
instructed."


APPARITIONS AND DOUBLES 

are of two general classes. The one,
astral shells or images from the astral world, either actually
visible to the eye or the result of vibration within thrown out
to the eye and thus making the person think he sees an objective
form without. The other, the astral body of living persons and
carrying full consciousness or only partially so endowed.


APPARITIONS OF THOSE JUST DEAD 

may be either pictures made objective as described, or the Astral 
Body -- called Kama Rupa at this stage -- of the deceased. 
And as the dying thoughts and forces released from the body are 
very strong, we have more accounts of such apparitions than of 
any other class.

The Adept may send out his apparition, which, however, is called
by another name [Mayavi-rupa], as it consists of his conscious
and trained astral body endowed with all his intelligence and not
wholly detached from his physical frame.

Theosophy does not deny nor ignore the physical laws discovered
by science. It admits all such as are proven, but it asserts the
existence of others which modify the action of those we
ordinarily know.

BEHIND ALL THE VISIBLE PHENOMENA IS THE OCCULT 
COSMOS WITH ITS IDEAL MACHINERY; that occult cosmos 
can only be fully understood by means of the inner senses which 
pertain to it; those senses will not be easily developed if their 
existence is denied. 

Brain and mind acting together have the power to evolve forms, first as
astral ones in astral substance, and later as visible ones by
accretions of the matter on this plane.

OBJECTIVITY DEPENDS LARGELY ON PERCEPTION, and 
perception may be affected by inner stimuli. Hence a witness may 
either see an object which actually exists as such without, or may be 
made to see one by internal stimulus. This gives us three modes of sight:

(a) with the eye by means of light from an object,

(b) with the inner senses by means of the Astral Light, and

(c) by stimulus from within which causes the eye to report to the
brain, thus throwing the inner image without. The phenomena of
the other senses may be tabulated in the same manner.

The ASTRAL SUBSTANCE BEING THE REGISTER OF ALL 
THOUGHTS, SOUNDS, PICTURES, AND OTHER VIBRATIONS, 
And the inner man being a complete person able to act with or without 
co-ordination with the physical, all the phenomena of hypnotism, 
clairvoyance, clairaudience, mediumship, and the rest of those which 
are not consciously performed may be explained. 


PSYCHIC PHENOMENA AND SPIRITUALISM

As it is plain that clairvoyance, clairaudience, thought-transference, 
prophecy, dream and vision, levitation, apparitional appearance, 
are all powers that have been known for ages.

Perhaps also the question of materialization of forms at
seances deserves some attention. Communication includes
trance-speaking, slate and other writing, independent voices in
the air, speaking through the physical vocal organs of the
medium, and precipitation of written messages out of the air. 

Our departed do not see us here. They are relieved from the terrible pang
such a
sight would inflict. Once in a while a pure-minded, unpaid medium
may ascend in trance to the state in which a deceased soul is,
and may remember some bits of what was there heard; but this is
rare.

Now and then in the course of decades some high human spirit may
for a moment return and by unmistakable means communicate with
mortals.

At the moment of death the soul may speak to some friend on earth
before the door is finally shut. But the mass of communications
alleged as made day after day through mediums are from the astral
unintelligent remains of men, or in many cases entirely the
production of, invention, compilation, discovery, and collocation
by the loosely attached Astral body of the living medium.


MATERIALIZATION OF A FORM OUT OF THE AIR, independent of the
medium's physical body, is a fact. But it is not a spirit. As was
very well said by one of the "spirits" not favored by
spiritualism, one way to produce this phenomenon is by the
accretion of electrical and magnetic particles into one mass upon
which matter is aggregated and an image reflected out of the
Astral sphere. This is the whole of it; as much a fraud as a
collection of muslin and masks. How this is accomplished is
another matter. 

The second method is by the use of the Astral body of the living
medium. In this case the Astral form exudes from the side of the
medium, gradually collects upon itself particles extracted from
the air and the bodies of the sitters present, until at last it
becomes visible. Sometimes it will resemble the medium; at others
it bears a different appearance. In almost every instance dimness
of light is requisite because a high light would disturb the
Astral substance in a violent manner and render the projection
difficult. Some so-called materializations are hollow mockeries,
as they are but flat plates of electrical and magnetic substance
on which pictures from the Astral Light are reflected. These seem
to be the faces of the dead, but they are simply pictured
illusions.

If one is to understand the psychic phenomena found in the
history of "spiritualism" it is necessary to know and admit the
following:

I. The complete heredity of man astrally, spiritually, and
psychically, as a being who knows, reasons, feels, and acts
through the body, the Astral body, and the soul.

II. The nature of the mind, its operation, its powers; the nature
and power of imagination; the duration and effect of impressions.
Most important in this is the persistence of the slightest
impression as well as the deepest; that every impression produces
a picture in the individual aura; and that by means of this a
connection is established between the auras of friends and
relatives old, new, near, distant, and remote in degree: this
would give a wide range of possible sight to a clairvoyant.

III. The nature, extent, function, and power of man's inner
Astral organs and faculties included in the terms Astral body and
Kama. That these are not hindered from action by trance or sleep,
but are increased in the medium when entranced; at the same time
their action is not free, but governed by the mass chord of
thought among the sitters, or by a predominating will, or by the
presiding devil behind the scenes; if a sceptical scientific
investigator be present, his mental attitude may totally inhibit
the action of the medium's powers by what we might call a
freezing process which no English terms will adequately describe.

IV. The fate of the real man after death, his state, power,
activity there, and his relation, if any, to those left behind
him here.

V. That the intermediary between mind and body -- the Astral
body -- is thrown off at death and left in the Astral light to
fade away; and that the real man goes to Devachan.

VI. The existence, nature, power, and function of the Astral
light and its place as a register in Nature. That it contains,
retains, and reflects pictures of each and every thing that
happened to anyone, and also every thought; that it permeates the
globe and the atmosphere around it; that the transmission of
vibration through it is practically instantaneous, since the rate
is much quicker than that of electricity as now known.

VII. The existence in the Astral light of beings not using bodies
like ours, but not human in their nature, having powers,
faculties, and a sort of consciousness of their own; these
include the elemental forces or nature sprites divided into many
degrees, and which have to do with every operation of Nature and
every motion of the mind of man. That these elementals act at
seances automatically in their various departments, one class
presenting pictures, another producing sounds, and others
depolarizing objects for the purposes of apportation. 

Acting with them in this Astral sphere are the soulless men who live in it.
To these are to be ascribed the phenomenon, among others, of the
"independent voice," always sounding like a voice in a barrel
just because it is made in a vacuum which is absolutely necessary
for an entity so far removed from spirit. The peculiar timbre of
this sort of voice has not been noticed by the spiritualists as
important, but it is extremely significant in the view of
occultism.

VIII. The existence and operation of occult laws and forces in
nature which may be used to produce phenomenal results on this
plane; that these laws and forces may be put into operation by
the subconscious man and by the elementals either consciously or
unconsciously, and that many of these occult operations are
automatic in the same way as is the freezing of water under
intense cold or the melting of ice under heat.

IX. That the Astral body of the medium, partaking of the nature
of the Astral substance, may be extended from the physical body,
may act outside of the latter, and may also extrude at times any
portion of itself such as hand, arm, or leg and thereby move
objects, indite letters, produce touches on the body, and so on
ad infinitum. And that the Astral body of any person may be made
to feel sensation, which, being transmitted to the brain, causes
the person to think he is touched on the outside or has heard a
sound.

MEDIUMSHIP IS FULL OF DANGERS 

because the Astral part of the man
is now only normal in action when joined to the body; in distant
years it will normally act without a body as it has in the far
past. To become a medium means that you have to become
disorganized physiologically and in the nervous system, because
through the latter is the connection between the two worlds.

The moment the door is opened all the unknown forces rush in, and as the
grosser part of nature is nearest to us it is that part which affects us
most; the lower nature is also first affected and inflamed because the
forces used are from that part of us. 


We are then at the mercy of the vile thoughts of all men, and
subject to the influence of the shells in Kama Loka. If to this
be added the taking of money for the practice of mediumship, an
additional danger is at hand, for the things of the spirit and
those relating to the Astral world must not be sold. This is the
great disease of American spiritualism which has debased and
degraded its whole history; until it is eliminated no good will
come from the practice; those who wish to hear truth from the
other world must devote themselves to truth and leave all
considerations of money out of sight.

To attempt TO ACQUIRE THE USE OF THE PSYCHIC 
POWERS FOR MERE
CURIOSITY OR FOR SELFISH ENDS is also dangerous for the same
reasons as in the case of mediumship. As the civilization of the
present day is selfish to the last degree and built on the
personal element, the rules for the development of these powers
in the right way have not been given out. 

the Masters of Wisdom have said that PHILOSOPHY AND 
ETHICS MUST FIRST BE LEARNED AND PRACTICED 
before any development of the other department is to be indulged in.

Equally improper is the manner of the scientific schools which 
without a thought for the true nature of man indulge in
experiments in HYPNOTISM in which the subjects are injured for
life, put into disgraceful attitudes, and made to do things for
the satisfaction of the investigators which would never be done
by men and women in their normal state.

The Lodge of the Masters does not care for Science unless it aims
to better man's state morally as well as physically, and no aid
will be given to Science until she looks at man and life from the
moral and spiritual side.  

The Lodge hopes by the time the next tide begins to rise that the 
West will have gained some right knowledge of the true philosophy 
of Man and Nature, and be then ready to bear the lifting of the veil 
a little more. To help on the progress of the race in this direction is 
the object of this book, and with that it is submitted to its readers in 
every part of the world.

-----------------------------------------------

Best wishes, 

Dallas

=============================================
 
-----Original Message-----
>From Mark Hamilton Jr.
Sent: Friday, May 06, 2005 7:21 AM
To: Subject: 
Re: Question for Occultists -- What is sorcery ?

if demonstrable, then what future use would it be for ? to pry
into others' minds ?

Well I wouldn't go that far. I meant to possibly provide a method of
remote communication between 2 people.

I'm just going off what I experienced, but the absolute first time I
tried this, the objection was to my actual intent of self-validation,
"if you live by self-validation, you will just need to see more
miraculous evidence in the future," or something to that effect;
basically stating that I was being driven by the need to see if it was
real, rather than some other more pure motive. What other more pure
motive than to always analyze what you're doing from a grounded
perspective? I like to look both ways before I cross the road.

Perhaps it was because I was asking him to be the intermediary because
I can't establish a reliable "connection" with anyone else yet. 

-Mark H.