We know for
sure that we have a lower consciousness that does remarkable things like send
us up a tree upon encountering a grizzly without the conscious fore mind
allowed to interfere at all.
Thus the whole
topic of clairvoyance already has a proven physical basis that handily covers
much of the field quite well. It also
tells us that our automatic systems do exploit connectivity we still cannot
properly describe and locate in the brain.
After we put
that aside, we then return to the problem of consciousness and yes we must
learn to listen. The information comes
in undigested and easily misunderstood but I am seeing more and more admitted
evidence of this phenomenon. The hard
part is setting aside traditional explanations nicely rooted in a spiritual paradigm
that works well enough but also distracts.
March 31, 2014
Julian Websdale, Contributor
Clairvoyance is the art
and science of being aware of facts, objects or situations by psychic means
when they are not available to ‘ordinary’ awareness. The word is generally used
to cover all such psychic awareness; but strictly speaking, clairvoyance means experiencing
such awareness in the form of visual images, clairsentience means experiencing it in the form of bodily
sensations, and clairaudience means
experiencing it in the form of heard sounds.
Take the example of what
is known as ‘crisis apparition’ – when a person undergoing a sudden emotional
trauma (such as death or a violent accident) manifests in another place to
someone who is emotionally in tune with him or her. (There have been many
confirmed cases of this in wartime, when a woman has ‘seen’ a husband or son at
the moment when he is killed in action.) In the strict sense, a clairvoyant
might see the person standing in the room; a clairsentient might feel a
familiar hand on the shoulder; and a clairaudient might hear the familiar
voice. For simplicity, I will use the word clairvoyance to cover all these forms.
Precognition is also a form of clairvoyance, when the event perceived
lies in the future. Divination is
‘clairvoyance using tools’ – that is, with the aid of Tarot cards, a pendulum,
the yarrow sticks or coins of the I Ching, rune stones, molten
lead poured into water, tea-leaves or any other physical accessory. Scrying is the use of a crystal
ball, a pool of ink, a concave black mirror or any other device for defocusing
normal vision, to aid clairvoyance in the strict sense.
To a certain extent, the
physical aids used in divination work as triggers to the intuition. The person
using them makes contact with intuitive awareness which is hidden in the
Unconscious by offering it something onto which it can project that awareness
in the form of images or symbols, which an experienced diviner can then
interpret. Such triggers are useful devices for bypassing the censor which
stands on the threshold between Unconscious and the Ego. This censor is a
necessary element in the psyche, because without it the Ego-consciousness would
be overwhelmed by a flood of incoming data; it enables the Ego to focus
attention selectively, which is the essence of consciousness. But in the
unintegrated psyche, the censor is rather a rough-and-ready mechanism. With
expanded awareness, and improved communication between Unconscious and Ego, the
censor becomes more helpfully selective; and what the experienced diviner is
doing (whether consciously or not) is instructing the censor to let through
intuitive data relevant to the problem in hand.
This triggering process
is the main feature of such divinatory methods as gazing at tea-leaves or at
molten lead which has solidified in water, or the ancient Roman method of
examining the entrails of a sacrificed bird or animal. Scrying, too, is a
triggering process; the scryer’s defocused eyes and light-trance mind are in a
suitable state for visualizing what the censor is letting through. The physical
action or ritual involved – whether it is the swirling and draining of a teacup
or the arranging of a crystal ball in suitable light – also becomes, with use,
a triggering-signal, inducing the right state of mind and inviting the
Unconscious to communicate.
The unconscious resources
which the diviner or clairvoyant is tapping are far wider, in the occult view,
than those of the individual Unconscious as envisaged by Freudian psychology. Jung came much closer to the occult concept with his teachings
on the Collective Unconscious, though he carefully limited those teachings to
deductions from his experience as a clinical psychologist. But unlike
Freud, Jung was a man with a very open mind, and one senses that he
knew perfectly well that there were vast fields yet to be explored. His
writings on synchronicity reveal this.
Occultists see the
Unconscious itself as clairvoyant and telepathic. The Personal Unconscious, for
a start, contains the buried memories of all the individual’s past
incarnations. And as a unique outcrop of the Collective Unconscious, it has potential
or actual communication with other outcrops, with the Personal Unconscious of
other human beings – and also potential access to the Akashic Records, the
astral ‘recordings’ of everything that has ever happened. ‘Reading the Akashic
Records’ is an advanced technique, of which only adepts have real mastery; but
every clairvoyant does it in flashes (as we probably all do without realizing
it, from time to time).
So the clairvoyant or
diviner is not just asking his or her Unconscious: ‘Tell me the things which I
have forgotten or only subliminally noticed.’ He or she is asking: ‘Lift the
veil on the things I need to know – whether they are buried in my own
subliminal awareness, in my or other people’s incarnation memories, in or via
the Collective Unconscious or in the
Akashic Records.’ The more
skilled and confident one becomes, the more clearly the Unconscious answers.
The Ego and the
Unconscious can be likened to a farmer and his dog. The dog, like the Ego, is
far more acutely aware of his immediate surroundings than the farmer. His
physical senses are much sharper, and he is primarily absorbed in what those
senses have to tell him. The farmer, on the other hand, has sources of
information which are incomprehensible to the dog. He knows that more sheep
will be arriving tomorrow because he has arranged it by telephone. He knows
that his neighbour has put up an electric fence, which the dog has to learn
about by painful experience. He knows that the dog must have an injection
because the vet has warned him that there is parvovirus in the area. He knows
that his sheep must be moved off a particular piece of rough grazing because
work is due to start there on a new bypass. All these things affect the orders
he must give to his dog, and some of those orders may puzzle the dog, because
the data on which they are based are outside his awareness-capacity. The farmer
knows friends from enemies; but all the dog can do is bark at strangers till
the farmer has categorized them for him.
If the dog fears and
resents the farmer, their co-operation will be forced and minimal. But if there
is love and trust between them, so that each can contribute his own special
kind of awareness, their co-operation can be extremely harmonious and
efficient. Similarly, the Unconscious has sources of information of which the
Ego knows nothing. And the sooner the Ego realizes this, and co-operates with
that which it cannot directly apprehend, the better the team (which is the
total psyche) will work.
This communication of the
Ego with the Unconsciousness is what alchemists and occultists have called the
Great Work. Aleister Crowley at first called its aim ‘the knowledge and
conversation of one’s holy guardian angel’, and later ‘the knowledge of the
nature and powers of one’s own being’. Geoffrey Ashe, in his novel The Finger and the Moon, speaks of ‘the idea that a guardian angel, a spirit-watcher, a
higher self as it were, does hover near each one of us’ and ‘is linked with the
conscious mind through the Unconscious’. But he suggests a simpler hypothesis:
‘The Unconscious,
so-called, and that other self are the same. Or rather: what Freud and
Jung found in each person’s psyche, beyond the reach of waking awareness – what
they therefore called “subconscious” or “unconscious” – is really an aspect of
the life of another being within him, another self from which the ego has split
off, but which is still there, still active, still thinking, still in its own
way conscious. Viewed under a different aspect, that inner being is also the
guardian angel. Scientists may be right when they contend that you and I
(meaning what those words commonly mean) have no preternormal powers. But we
each carry within us an allied being who has. That is why occult phenomena
continue to happen … The first step is to think of your mighty invisible
companion as present, inside you. And the first commandment which follows is:
LISTEN, LISTEN TO THAT COMPANION.’
This commandment is the
secret of clairvoyance and divination. For most people, the best way of
learning the art is to start with divination of some kind. The presence of the
‘tools’ (Tarot layout or whatever) helps to give one confidence; it offers one
something concrete to interpret, and thus primes the pump of the intuition. One
tries an interpretation, and with increasing practice one begins to realize that
genuine information is coming
through, and confidence is further reinforced.
About the Author
Julian Websdale is an
independent researcher in the fields of esoteric science and metaphysics, and a
self-initiate of the Western Esoteric Tradition. His interest in these subjects
began in 1988. Julian was born in England, received his education as an
electronic and computer engineer from the University of Bolton, served in a
Vaishnava monastery during 2010, and has travelled to over 21 countries. Julian
is also a member of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign.
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