Adyar Pamphlets No. 100
Difficulties in Clairvoyance
by
C. W. Leadbeater
Reprinted from The Theosophist, Vol XXXV
Theosophical Publishing House. Adyar. Madras India
April 1919
1.
In the early days of the Theosophical Society there was
an impression current among us that psychic powers could not be developed
except by one who from birth had possessed a physical vehicle of suitable type
- that some people were psychic by nature, in consequence of efforts made in
previous lives, and that others, who were not so favoured, had no resource but
to devote themselves earnestly to what-ever, physical-plane work they could do,
in the hope that they might thereby earn the privilege of being born with a
psychic vehicle next time. The fuller knowledge of later years has to some
extent modified this idea; we see now that under certain stimuli any ordinarily
refined vehicle will unfold some portion of psychic capacity, and we have come
to be by no means so sure as we used to be, that the possession of psychic
faculties from birth is really an advantage. It is quite clear that it is an
advantage in some ways, and that it ought to be an advantage in all; but as a
matter of experience it often brings with it serious practical difficulties.
2.
The boy who has it, knows a
world from which his less fortunate fellows are excluded - a world of gnomes
and fairies, of actual comradeship with animals and birds, with trees and
flowers, of living sympathy with all the moods of nature - a world freer, less
sordid and far more real than the dull round of everyday life. If he has the
good fortune - the very rare good fortune - to have sensible parents, they
sympathise with him in all this, and explain to him that this fairy world of
his is not a separate one, but only the higher and more romantic part of the
life of the gracious and marvellous old earth to which we belong, and that
therefore everyday life, when properly understood, is not dull and grey, but
instinct with vivid wonder and joy and beauty.
3.
There can be no question of the advantage here; but,
unfortunately, as I have just said, the sensible parent is rare, and the
budding poet, artist or mystic is quite likely to find himself in the hands of
an unsympathetic bourgeoisie, wholly incapable of comprehending him, and
thoroughly permeated with fear and hatred of anything which is sufficiently
unusual to rise a little above the level of the deadly dullness of their smug
respectability. Then is his lot indeed unhappy; he soon learns that he must
live a double life, carefully hiding the romantic realities from the rude jeers
of the ignorant Philistine, and but too often the crass brutality of this most
reprehensible repression stifles altogether the dawning perception of the
spirit and drives him back into his shell for this incarnation. Hundreds of
valuable clairvoyants are thus lost to the world, merely through the unconscious
cruelty of well-meaning stupidity.
4.
Some boys, however, and perhaps still more often some
girls, do not entirely lose their powers, but bring through some fragments of
them into adult life; and not improbably the very fact that they have thus
direct knowledge of the existence of the unseen world, draws them to the study
of Theosophy. When that happens, is their psychism an advantage to them?
5.
There is no doubt that it ought to be. Not only do they
know as a fact of experience many things which other students accept merely as
a necessary hypothesis, but they can also understand far better than others all
descriptions of higher conditions of consciousness - descriptions which,
because they are couched in physical language, must necessarily be woefully imperfect.
The clairvoyant cannot doubt the life after death, because the dead are often
present to him; he cannot question the existence of good and evil influences,
for he daily sees and feels them.
6.
Thus there are many ways in which clairvoyance is an
incalculable benefit. On the whole, I think that it makes happier the life of
its possessor; it enables him to be more useful to his fellows than he could
otherwise be. If balanced always by common sense and humility, it is indeed a
most excellent gift; if not so balanced, it may lead to a good deal of harm,
for it may deceive both the clairvoyant himself and those who trust in him. Not
if proper care is exercised; but many people do not exercise proper care, and
so inaccuracy arises.
7.
Especially is this the case when the operator
endeavours to use the powers of the higher vehicles, because in the first
place, long and careful training is needed before these can be rightly used,
and secondly the results must be brought down through several intermediate
vehicles, which offer many opportunities for distortion. A good example of the
kind of work in question is the investigation of past history or of the
previous lives of an individual - what is commonly called examining the
records. In order to obtain reliable results, this must be done through the
causal body; and to chronicle the observations correctly on this lower plane we
must have four vehicles thoroughly under control - which is a good deal to
expect.
8.
The physical body must be in perfect health, for if it
is not, it may produce the most extraordinary illusion and distortions. A
trifling indigestion, the slightest alteration in the normal circulation of the
blood through the brain, either as to quantity, quality or speed, may so alter
the functioning of that brain as to make it an entirely unreliable transmitter
of the impressions conveyed to it. A similar effect may be produced by any
change in the normal volume or velocity of the currents of vitality which are
set flowing through the human body by the spleen. The brain mechanism is a
complicated one, and unless both the etheric part of it through which the
vitality flows and the denser matter which receives the circulation of the
blood, are working quite normally, there can be no certainty of a correct report;
any irregularity in either part may readily so dull or disturb its receptivity
as to produce blurred or distorted images of whatever is presented to it.
9.
The astral body, too, must be perfectly under control,
and that means much more than one would at first suppose, for that vehicle is
the natural home of desires and emotions, and in most people it is habitually
in a condition of wild excitement. What is wanted is not at all what we
ordinarily call calmness; it is a far higher degree of tranquillity which is
only to be obtained by long training. When a man describes himself as calm, he
means only that he has not at the moment any strong feeling in his astral body;
but he has always a quantity of smaller feelings which are still keeping up a
motion in the vehicle - the swell which still remains, perhaps, after some gale
of emotion which swept over him yesterday. But if he wishes to read records or
to perform magical ceremonies, be must learn to still even that.
10.
The old simile of the reflection of a tree in a lake
can hardly be bettered. When the surface of the water is really still, we have
a perfect image of the tree; we can see every leaf of it; we can observe
correctly its species and its condition; but the slightest puff of wind
shatters that image at once, and creates ripples which so seriously interfere
with the image that not only can we no longer count the visible leaves but we
can hardly tell even what kind of tree it is, an oak or an elm, an ash or a
hornbeam, whether its foliage is thick or thin, whether it is or is not in
flower. In fact, our interpretation of the image would, under such conditions,
be largely guesswork. And that, be it remembered, is the effect of a mere
zephyr; a stronger wind would make everything utterly unintelligible.
11.
The normal condition of our astral bodies might be
represented by the effects of a brisk breeze, and our ordinary calmness by the
ripplings of a light but persistent air; the mirror-like surface can be
attained only after long practice and much strenuous effort. When we realise
that for a reliable reading of the records we must reach that condition of
perfect placidity not in one vehicle only, but in four, no one of which is ever
normally quiet even for a moment, we begin to see that we have a difficult task
before us, even if this were all.
12.
Not only must the astral body be tranquil before the
investigation is begun, but it must remain unruffled all through the work -
which means that, if he wants to get more than a general impression, the seer
must not allow himself to be excited by anything which may appear in the
picture. Be it observed that the nature of the excitement makes no difference;
if a spasm of anger, of fear, is fatal to accuracy, so also is a rush of
affection or devotion. If he is to be rigorously truthful, the watcher must
record what he sees and hears as impartially as does a camera or a phonograph;
he may allow himself the luxury of emotions afterwards when recalling what he
has seen, but at the time he must be absolutely impassive, if he is to be
reliable. This makes it practically impossible for the emotional or hysterical
person to be a trustworthy observer on these higher planes; he surrounds
himself with a world of forms built by his own thoughts and feelings, and then
proceeds to see and to describe those as though they were external realities.
13.
Often such forms are beautiful, and their contemplation
is uplifting, so that, even though they are in-accurate they may be of great
help to the seer. Indeed, his experiences may be useful to others also, if he
has the discrimination to relate them without labelling his actors as deities,
archangels or adepts. But it is usually precisely such figures as those that
his imagination evokes, and it is merely human nature to feel that the person
who comes to him must surely be some Great One. The only way to secure oneself
against self-deception is the old and irksome way of a long, hard course of
careful training; except by some vague intuition a man cannot know a
thought-form from a reality until he has been taught their respective
characteristics, and can rise sufficiently above them to be able to apply his
tests.
14.
Calmness is necessary in the mental body as well as the
astral. A man who worries can never see accurately, because his mental body is
in a condition of chronic disease, a perpetual inflammation of agitated
fluttering. One who suffers from pride or ambition has a similar difficulty.
Some have supposed that it matters little what they think habitually, so long
as during the actual investigation they try to hold their minds still; but that
idea is fallacious. In this vehicle, also, the storm of yesterday leaves a
swell behind it; an attitude of mind which is constantly or frequently held,
makes an indelible mark upon the body, and keeps up a steady pulsation of which
the owner is as unconscious as he is of the beating of his heart. But its
presence becomes obvious when clairvoyance is attempted, and makes anything
like clear vision impossible - all the more since the man, being ignorant of
its existence, makes no effort to counteract its effects.
15.
Prejudice, again, is an absolute bar to accuracy; and
we know how few people are entirely without prejudices. In many cases these
mental attitudes are matters of birth and long custom - the attitude, for example,
of the average Brahmana to a pariah, or the average American to a negro. Neither of those could report accurately a scene in
which appeared any members of the classes they instinctively despise. I may
give an example which came under my notice some time ago. I knew a good
clairvoyant with strong Christian proclivities. So long as we were dealing with
indifferent subjects, her vision was clear; but the moment that anything arose
which touched, however remotely, upon her religious beliefs she was instantly
up in arms, and became absolutely unreliable. Being a highly intelligent person
in many directions, she would have checked this prejudice
if she had been conscious of it; but she was not, and so its evil influence was
unrestrained. If, for example, a scene rose before us in which a Christian and
a man of some other religion came in any way into conflict or even appeared
side by side, her description of it was a mere travesty of the reality, for she
could see only the good points in the Christian and only the evil in the other
man. If any fact appeared which did not fit in with the alleged history
contained in the Christian Scriptures, that fact was ignored or distorted to
suit her preconceptions; and all this with entire unconsciousness, and with the
best possible intentions. That is only one small sample of the unreliability of
spontaneous, untrained clairvoyance.
16.
No wonder that it takes many years of patient and
careful training before the pupil of the Master can be accepted as really
reliable. He must discover all these unrecognised prejudices, and must
eliminate them; he must evict from the recesses of his own consciousness other
tenants even more firmly attached to the soil - pride, self-consciousness,
self-centredness.
17.
This last is a condition from which many people suffer.
I do not mean that they are selfish in the ordinary gross meaning of the word;
they are often far from that, and they may be kind-hearted, self-sacrificing, anxious to help. Nor do I mean that they are offensively
proud or conceited; but just that they like to be under the limelight, to be
always well on view in the centre of the stage. Suppose such a person to be
psychic from birth; in every case where there is a personal experience to be
related, that psychic will necessarily and inevitably magnify his or her
personal part in the affair, and that without the slightest intention of doing
so.
18.
We know that it sometimes happens that a beginner in
astral work identifies himself, in his recollection of some event, with the
person whom he has helped. If he had during the night been assisting a man who
was killed in a railway accident, he might wake in the morning remembering a
dream in which he had been killed in a railway accident, and so on. In
something the same way, when the self-centred psychic comes across in his
investigations some one with a fine aura, he immediately remembers himself with
such an aura; if he sees some one conversing with a Great One, he promptly
imagines himself to have had such a conversation, and (without the slightest
intention of deceit) invents all sorts of flattering remarks as having been
addressed to him by that august Being. All this makes him distinctly dangerous,
unless he has quite a phenomenal power of self-effacement and self-control.
19.
Members of the Society who have flattering experiences
of this sort have been encouraged to send an account of them to the President
or to some other trained seer, in order that the facts (if any) may be
disentangled from the embroidery, in the hope that such correction may enable
them by slow degrees to learn how to winnow the chaff from the wheat. They come
with stories of the marvellous initiations through
which they have passed, of the great angels and archangels with whom they have
familiarly conversed, and the tales are often so wild and so presumptuous that
it requires a great fund of patience to deal adequately with them. No doubt it
requires a good deal of patience on their part also, for again and again we
have to tell them that they have been watching some one else, and have
appropriated his deeds to themselves, or that they have magnified a friendly
word into an extravagant laudation.
20.
We may easily see that if the self were just a little
more prominent, they would not come and ask for explanations, but would hug to
their bosoms the certainty that they really had become high Adepts, or had been
affably received by the Chieftain of some distant solar system. So we come by
easy gradations to those who have angel-guides, who hear divine voices
directing them, and are the constant recipients of the most astounding
communications. It is no doubt true that in some cases such people have been
charlatans, and that in others they have been insane; but I think it should be
understood that the majority of them are neither mendacious nor megalomaniac,
but that they do really receive these bombastic proclamations from entities of
the astral world - usually from quite undistinguished members of the countless
hosts of the dead.
21.
It sometimes happens that a preacher, especially if of
some obscure sect, becomes a spirit-guide. In the astral world after death, he
discovers some of the inner meanings of his religion which he had never seen
before, and he feels that if others could see these matters as he now sees them
their whole lives would be changed - as indeed they quite probably would. So if
he can manage to influence some psychic lady in his flock, he tells her that he
has chosen her to be the instrument for the regeneration of the world, and in
order to impress her more profoundly, he often thinks it well to represent his
revelation as coming from some high source - indeed he usually supposes that it
does so come. Generally the teaching and advice which he gives is good as far
as it goes, though rather of the copybook heading style of morality.
22.
But to that dead preacher come presently people who
will have none of his sage, moral maxims, but want to know how their love
affairs will progress, what horse will win a certain race, and whether certain
stocks will go up or down. About all such matters our preacher is sublimely
ignorant, but he does not like to confess it, reasoning that as these men
believe him to be omniscient because he happens to be dead, they will lose
faith in his religious teaching if he declines to answer even the most
unsuitable questions. So he gravely advises them on these incongruous subjects,
and thereby brings much discredit upon communications from the other world in
general, and upon his own reputation in particular.
23.
The untrained psychic among ourselves
is often put in precisely the same position, and he or she rarely has the
courage to say plainly: "I do not know." One of the very first
lessons given to us by the Great Teachers is to distinguish clearly between the
few facts that we really know and the vast mass of information which we accept
on faith or inference. We are taught that to say "I know " is to make
a high claim - a claim which none should ever make without personal certainty;
men are wiser to adopt the humbler formula with which begin all the Buddhist
Scriptures: "Thus have I heard."
24.
The advantage of the pupil who, not having been psychic
in the beginning, is afterwards instructed in these matters, lies, I think, in
this: that before the attempt is made to develop any such powers, he is trained
in selflessness, his prejudices are eradicated, and his astral and mental
bodies are brought under control; and so, when the powers come, he has to deal
only with the difficulties inherent in their unfolding and their use, and not
with a host of others imposed by his own weaknesses. He has learnt to bring his
vehicles into order, to know exactly what he can do with them, and to make
allowance for any defects which still exist in them; he understands and allows
for the action of that part of the personality which is not normally in
manifestation - that which has been called by the Psychical Research Society
the subliminal self.
25.
When the powers are opened he does not proceed
immediately to riot in their unrestrained use; laboriously and patiently he
goes through a series of lessons in the method of their employ - a series which
may last for years before he is pronounced entirely reliable. An older pupil
takes him in hand, shows him various astral objects, and asks him: "What
do you see?" He corrects him when in error, and teaches him how to
distinguish those things which all beginners confuse; he explains to him the
difference between the two thousand four hundred varieties of the elemental
essence, and what combinations of them can best be used for various sorts of
work; he shows him how to deal with all sorts of emergencies, how to project
thought-currents, how to make artificial elementals - all the manifold minutiae
of astral work. At the end of all this preparation the aspirant comes out a
really capable workman - an apprentice who can understand the Master's
instructions, and has some idea of how to set to work to execute the task
confided to him.
26.
The person who is born psychic escapes the trouble of
developing the powers; but this great gain brings with it its own peculiar
temptations. The man knows and sees, from the first, things which others about
him do not know and see; and so he often begins to feel himself superior to
others, and he has a confidence in the accuracy of his power of sight which may
or may not be justified. Naturally he has feelings and emotions which are
brought over from past lives, and these grow along with his psychic faculties;
so that he has certain preconceptions and prejudices which are to him like
coloured glasses through which he has always looked, so that he has never known
any other aspect of nature than that which they show him. The bias which these
give him seems to him absolutely part of himself, and it is exceedingly hard
for him to overcome it and see things at another angle. Ordinarily he is quite
unaware that he is all askew, and acts on the hypothesis that he is seeing
straight, and that those who do not agree with him are hopelessly inaccurate.
27.
From all this it emerges that those who possess the
psychic faculties by nature should exercise them with the greatest care and
circumspection. If they wish that their gift shall be helpful and not harmful,
they must above all things become utterly selfless: must uproot their
prejudices and preconceptions, so as to be open to the truth as it really is;
they must flood themselves with the peace that passeth understanding, the peace
that abideth only in the hearts of those who live in the Eternal. For these be
the prerequisites to accuracy of vision; and even when that is acquired, they
have still to learn to understand that which they see. No man is compelled to
publish abroad what he sees; no man need try to look up people's past lives or
to read the history of aeons long gone by; but if he wishes to do so he must
take the precautions which the experience of the ages has recommended to us, or
run the terrible risk of misleading, instead of feeding, the sheep which follow
him. Even the uninstructed clairvoyant may do much good if he is humble and careful.
If he takes for a Master some one who is not a Master (a thing which is
constantly happening), the love and devotion awakened in him are good for him;
and if in his enthusiasm he can awaken the same feelings in others, they are
good for those others also. A high and noble emotion is always good for him who
feels it, even though the object of it may not be so
great as he is supposed to be. But the evil comes when the erring seer begins
to deliver messages from his pseudo-Master, commands which may not be wise, yet
may be blindly obeyed because of their alleged source.
28.
How then is the non-clairvoyant student, who as yet
sees nothing for himself, to distinguish between the
true and the false? The safest criterion of truth is the utter absence of self.
When the visions of any seer tend always to the subtle glorification of that
seer, they lie open to the gravest suspicion. When the messages which come
through a person are always such as to magnify the occult position, importance
or title of that person, distrust becomes inevitable, for we know that in all
true Occultism the pupil lives but to forget himself in remembering the good of
others, and the power which he covets is that which shall make him appear as
nothing in the eyes of men.
29.
Psychic powers are widely desired, and many men ask how
they can unfold them. Yet is their possession no unmitigated blessing, for at
the stage which the world has reached to-day there is more of evil than of good
to be seen by the man who looks with unclouded vision over the great mass of
his fellow-creatures. So much of sordid struggle, so much of callous
carelessness, so much of man's inhumanity to man, which indeed makes countless
thousands mourn, and might well make angels weep; so much of the wicked
calculated cruelty of the brutal schoolmaster to his shrinking pupil, of the
ferocious driver to his far less brutish ox; so much senseless stupidity, so
much of selfishness and sin. Well might the great poet Schiller cry:
30.
"Why hast Thou cast me thus into the town of the
ever-blind, to proclaim Thine Oracle with the opened sense ?
Take back this sad clear-sightedness; take from mine eyes this cruel light!
Give me back my blindness - the happy darkness of my senses; take back Thy
dreadful gift!"
31.
Truly there is another side to the shield, for so soon
as one looks away from humanity to the graceful gambols of the jocund
nature-spirit or the gleaming splendour of the glorious Angels one realises
why, in spite of all, God looked upon the world which He had made, and saw that
it was good. And even among men we see an ever-rising tide of love and
pitifulness, of earnest effort and noble sacrifice, a reaching upward towards
the God from whom we came, an endeavour to transcend the ape and the tiger, and
to fan into a flame the faint spark of Divinity within us. For the greatest of
all the gifts that clairvoyance brings is the direct knowledge of the existence
of the great White Brotherhood, the certainty that mankind is not without
Guides and Leaders, but that there live and move on earth Those who, while They
are men even as we are, have yet become as Gods in knowledge and power and
love, and so encourage us by Their example and Their help to tread the Path
which They have trodden, with the sure and certain hope that one day even we also
shall be as They. Thus we have certainty instead of doubt; thus we have
happiness instead of sorrow; because we know that, not for alone but for the
whole humanity of which we are a part, there will some day come a time when we
shall wake up after Their likeness, and shall be
satisfied with it.
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