The word "clairvoyance" means "clear-sighted," or the ability to see in
the invisible (to physical vision) worlds. It is a faculty latent in all and
will eventually be possessed by every human being in the course of his or her
spiritual unfoldment. Having acquired this spiritual sight, one may then
investigate for himself or herself such matters as the state of the human
Spirit before birth and after death, and life in the invisible worlds.
Although each of us inherently has this faculty, a persistent effort is
required to unfold it in a positive manner, and this seems to be a powerful
deterrent. If it could be bought, many people would pay a high price for it.
Few people, however, seem willing to live the life that is required to awaken
it. That awakening comes only by patient, persistent effort. It cannot be
purchased: there is no royal road to its acquisition.
There are two types of clairvoyance. Positive, voluntary clairvoyance is
that in which the individual is able, at will, to see in and investigate the
inner worlds, and is the master of himself and what he is doing. This type of
clairvoyance is developed through pure, helpful living, and the individual
must be carefully trained in its use, in order that it may be completely
effective and useful. Negative, involuntary clairvoyance exists when the
sights of the inner worlds are presented to an individual quite independently
of his will; he sees what is given him to see and can in no way control this
sight. This type of clairvoyance is dangerous, laying the individual open to
possession by discarnate entities and, if permitted to go far enough,
presenting the possibility that his or her life, in this world and the next,
will quite literally not be his or her own.
In the brain are two small organs called the pituitary body and the pineal
gland. Medical science knows but little about them, and calls the pineal gland
"the atrophied third eye," yet neither it nor the pituitary body is
atrophying. This is very perplexing to scientists for Nature retains nothing
useless. All over the body we find organs which are either atrophying or
developing.
The pituitary body and the pineal gland belong to still another class of
organs, however, which at the present time are neither evolving nor
degenerating, but are dormant. In the far past, when man was in touch with the
inner worlds, these organs were his means of ingress thereto, and they will
again serve that purpose at a later stage. They were connected with the
involuntary or sympathetic nervous system. In earlier times (during the Moon
Period and the latter part of the Lemurian and early Atlantean Epochs) man saw
the inner worlds; pictures presented themselves quite independently of his
will. The sense centers of his desire body were spinning around
counterclockwise (following negatively the motion of the Earth, which revolves
on its axis in that direction) as the sense centers of "mediums" do to this
day. In most people these sense centers are inactive, but true development
will set them spinning clockwise. That is the difficult feature in the
development of positive clairvoyance.
The development of negative clairvoyance, or mediumship, is much easier,
because it is merely a revival of the mirror-like function possessed by man in
the far past, by which the outside world was involuntarily reflected in him.
This function was afterward retained by inbreeding. With present-day mediums
this power is intermittent, which explains why they can sometimes "see" and at
other times, for no apparent reason, fail utterly to do so.
In the desire body of the properly trained voluntary clairvoyant, the
desire currents turn clockwise, glowing with exceeding splendor, far
surpassing the brilliant luminosity of the ordinary desire body. The centers
of perception in the desire body around which these currents swirl furnish the
voluntary clairvoyant with the means of perception of things in the Desire
World, and he or she sees and investigates at will. The person whose centers
turn counter-clockwise is like a mirror, reflecting only what passes before
it. Such a person is incapable of reaching out for information.
This one of the fundamental differences between a medium and a properly
trained clairvoyant. It is impossible for most people to distinguish between
the two; yet there is one infallible rule that can be followed by anyone: No
genuine developed seer will ever exercise this faculty for money or its
equivalent; nor will he or she use it to gratify curiosity, but only to help humanity.
The great danger to society which would result from the indiscriminate use
by an unworthy individual of the voluntary clairvoyant's power to investigate
and "see" at will can easily be understood. He or she would be able to read
the most secret thought. Therefore, the aspirant to the true spiritual sight
and insight must first of all give proof of unselfishness. The initiate is
bound by the most solemn vows never to use this power to serve his or her
individual interest in the slightest degree.
Trained clairvoyance is the kind used for investigating occult facts, and
it is the only kind that is of any use for that purpose. Therefore the
aspirant must feel, not a wish to gratify an idle curiosity, but a holy and
unselfish desire to help humanity. Until such a desire exists, no progress can
be made in the attainment of positive clairvoyance.
To regain contact with the inner worlds, it is necessary to establish the
connection of the pineal gland and the pituitary body with the cerebrospinal
nervous system, and to reawaken the pituitary body and the pineal gland. When
that is accomplished, man will again possess the faculty of perception in the
higher worlds, but on a grander scale than it was in the distant past, because
it will be in connection with the voluntary nervous system and therefore under
the control of his will. Through this inner perceptive faculty all avenues of
knowledge will be opened to him and he or she will have at his or her service
a means of acquiring information compared with which all other methods of
investigation are but child's play.
The awakening of these organs is accomplished by esoteric training, as
follows: In the majority of people, the greater part of the sex force which
may legitimately be used through the creative organs is expended for sense-
gratification. When the aspirant to the higher life begins to curb these
excesses and to devote his or her attention to spiritual thoughts and efforts,
the unused sex force commences to ascend. It surges upward in stronger and
stronger volume, traversing the heart and larynx, or the spinal cord and the
larynx, or both, and then passing directly between the pituitary body and the
pineal gland toward the point at the root of the nose where the Spirit has its
seat.
This current, however, no matter how great, must be cultivated to some
extent before the real esoteric training can begin. It is not only a necessary
accompaniment, but also a pre-requisite, to self-conscious work in the inner
worlds. Thus, a moral life devoted to spiritual thought must be lived by the
aspirant for a certain length of time before it is possible to commence the
work that will give him first hand knowledge of the super-physical realms and
enable him or her to become, in the truest sense, a helper of humanity.
When the candidate has lived such a life for a time sufficient to
establish the current of spiritual force,and is found worthy and qualified to
receive esoteric instruction, he is taught certain exercises to set the
pituitary body in vibration. This vibration causes the pituitary body to
impinge upon and slightly deflect the nearest line of force which, in turn,
impinges upon the next line to it, and so the process continues until the
force of the vibration has been spent.
When these lines of force have been deflected sufficiently to reach the
pineal gland, the object has been accomplished: the gap between the two organs
has been bridged. This is the bridge between the World of Sense and the World
of Desire. From the time it is built, man becomes clairvoyant and able to
direct his or her gaze where he or she will. Solid objects are seen both
inside and out. Space and solidity, as hindrances to observation, have ceased
to exist.
He is not yet a trained clairvoyant, but he is a clairvoyant at will,a
voluntary clairvoyant. His is a very different faculty from that possessed by
the medium.
The person in whom this bridge is once built is always in sure touch with
the inner worlds, the connection being made and broken at his will. By
degrees, the observer learns to control the vibration of the pituitary body in
a manner enabling him or her to get in touch with any of the regions of the
inner worlds which he or she desires to visit. The faculty is completely under
the control of his or her will. It is not necessary for him or her to go into
a trance or do anything abnormal to raise his consciousness to the Desire
World. He or she simply wills to see, and he or she sees.
Having attained this faculty, however, the neophyte must now learn to
understand what he or she sees in the Desire World. Many people seem to think
that once a person is clairvoyant, all truth is at once open to him or her,
and that when he or she can "see," he or she at once "knows all about" the
higher worlds. This is a great mistake. We know that those of us who have been
able to see things about us in the Physical World all our lives are far from
having a universal knowledge of them. It requires much study and application
to know about even that infinitesimal part of physical things which we handle
in our daily lives.
In the Physical World, objects at least are dense, solid, and do not
change in the twinkling of an eye. In the Desire World they change in the most
erratic manner. This is a source of endless confusion to the negative,
involuntary clairvoyant, and even to the neophyte who enters under the
guidance of a teacher. The teaching the neophyte receives, however, soon
brings him or her to a point where he or she can perceive the Life that causes
the change in Form. and knows it for what it is, despite all possible and
puzzling changes.
Thus clairvoyants must first be trained before their observations are of
any real value, and the more proficient they become, the more modest they are
about telling of what they see; the more do they defer to the versions of
others, knowing how much there is to learn and realizing how little the single
investigator can grasp of all the detail incident to his or her
investigations.
This also accounts for the varied versions of the higher worlds, which
are, for superficial people, an argument against the existence of these
worlds. They contend that it these worlds exist, investigators must
necessarily bring back identical descriptions. But just as, in the Physical
World, if twenty people set out to describe a city, there would be twenty
different versions, so too is it true of accounts made by investigators of the
higher worlds. Each has his or her own peculiar way of looking at things and
can describe what he or she sees only from his or her particular point of
view. The account he or she gives may differ from those of others, yet all may
be equally truthful from each individual observer's viewpoint.
There is also another and most important distinction to be made. The power
which enables one to perceive the objects in a world is not identical with the
power of entering that world and functioning there. The voluntary clairvoyant,
though he or she may have received some training and is able to distinguish
the true from the false in the Desire World, is in practically the same
relation to it as is a prisoner behind a barred window to the outside world —
he or she can see it, but cannot function therein. Therefore, at the proper
time, further exercises are given the aspirant to furnish him or her with a
vehicle in which he or she can function in the inner worlds in a perfectly
self-conscious manner.
The faculty of clairvoyance indicates a loose connection between the vital
body and dense body. During the epochs of our Earth's history in which all men
were involuntarily clairvoyant, it was looseness of this connection that made
them so. Since those times, the vital body has become much more firmly inter-
woven with the dense body in the majority of people, but in all sensitives it
is loose. That looseness constitutes the difference between the psychic and
the ordinary person who is unconscious of all but the vibrations contacted by
means of the five senses. All human beings have to pass through this period of
close connection of the vehicles and experience the consequent limitation of
consciousness.
There are, therefore, two classes of sensitives: those who have not become
firmly enmeshed in matter and those who are in the vanguard of evolution. The
latter are emerging from the acme of materiality and are again divisible into
two kinds: voluntary and involuntary.
When the connection between the vital body and the dense body of a man or
woman is somewhat lax, the individual will be sensitive to spiritual
vibrations, and if positive he or she will by his or her own will develop his
or her spiritual faculties, live a spiritual life, and in time receive the
teaching necessary to become a trained clairvoyant and a master of his or her
faculty at any and all times, free to exercise it or not, as he or she
pleases.
If a person has this slight laxity between the vital and dense bodies, and
is of a negative temperament, he or she is likely to become the prey of
discarnate Spirits, as a medium.
When the connection between the vital and dense bodies is very lax, so
that it may be withdrawn, and the man or woman is positive, he or she may
become an Invisible Helper, capable of taking the two higher ethers away from
his or her dense body at will and using them as a vehicle for sense perception
and memory. He or she can then function consciously in the Spiritual World and
bring back a recollection of everything he or she has done there, so that, for
instance, when he or she leaves his or her body at night he or she takes up
the life in the Invisible Worlds in a fully conscious manner, as we do here
when we wake up in the morning after sleep and perform our worldly duties.
When a person has this lax connection between the vital and the dense body
and is of a negative temperament, entities which are earthbound seek to
manifest here may withdraw his or her vital body by way of the spleen and
temporarily use the ether of which it is composed to materialize spirit forms,
returning the ether to the medium after the séance is over.
Since the vital body is the vehicle whereby the solar currents which give
us vitality are specialized, the body of the medium at the time of
materialization sometimes shrinks to almost one-half its usual size because it
has been deprived of the vitalizing principle. His or her flesh become flabby
and the spark of life burns very low. When the séance is over, the medium is
awakened to normal consciousness and experiences a feeling of the most
terrible exhaustion.
It is extremely harmful to any individual to permit himself to become so
negative that his or her vehicles and faculties can be taken over by a
discarnate entity, which is what occurs when a medium is "working." The entity
can exert his or her control over the individual to the point where the
individual can no longer exercise choice in any manner, but must live only as
the entity wishes him or her to live. This control can continue in the
individual's life after death, when his or her desire body can be appropriated
by the entity. It is extremely difficult to break away from the entity once
this has happened.
In addition to these various types of clairvoyants, all children are
clairvoyant, at least during the first year of life. How long the child will
keep its faculty depends upon its spirituality and also upon its environment,
because most children communicate all they see to their elders and the faculty
of clairvoyance is affected by their attitude. Often children are ridiculed
for telling of things that, their elders believe, can only be the result of
"imagination," and they soon learn to shut out scenes with engender such
ridicule, or at least to keep these things to themselves.
Thus we see that, although both positive and negative clairvoyance exist,
it is only with positive clairvoyance that an individual can accurately see
and investigate the inner worlds and advance himself along the evolutionary
path. Negative clairvoyance cannot be counted upon as a reliable tool of
investigation, often brings about the highly undesirable situation of personal
control from an outside source, and can, at least among peoples of the Western
World, cause evolutionary regression of the individual concerned.
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