This Classic Spiritual work is now copyright expired and therefore in the public domain.

Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers by Swami Bhakta Vishita

IV CLAIRVOYANCE AND KINDRED PHENOMENA

page 9 of 9 | page 1 | Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers - home

Trance Conditions.

Many clairvoyants, manifesting their powers by means of the methods of Direct Clairvoyance, produce in themselves the condition of trance, or semi-trance condition. Many students believe that these conditions are absolutely necessary for the production of this kind of phenomena, but they neglect, or are actually unaware of, the fact that many of the highest forms of this class of clairvoyant phenomena are manifested by clairvoyants who are no more in a trance condition, or that of semi-trance, than those following the methods of Psychometry or Crystal Gazing, respectively. All that is required is that the clairvoyant maintain a quiescent mental attitude, shutting out the sounds, sights, and thoughts of the outside world, and concentrating the full attention upon the clairvoyant work before him or her. Some, it is true, pass easily into the semi-trance, or even the full trance condition, but the latter are not absolutely necessary states.

Clairvoyant Reverie.

A writer on the subject of Clairvoyance says: "The best authorities instruct their pupils that the state of clairvoyant reverie may be safely and effectively induced by the practice of mental concentration alone. They advise positively against artificial methods. All that is needed is that the consciousness be focused to a single point--become 'one pointed' as the Hindu teachers call it. The intelligent practice of concentration accomplishes this without the necessity of any artificial methods of development, or the production of abnormal psychic states. You easily concentrate your full attention when you witness an interesting play, or listen to a beautiful rendition of some great masterpiece of musical composition, or gaze at some miracle of pictured or sculptured art. In these cases your attention is completely occupied with the interesting thing before you, so that you have almost completely shut out the outer world of sound, sight, and thought--but you are, nevertheless, perfectly wide awake and conscious. The same thing is true when you read a very interesting book--the world is shut out from your consciousness, and you are oblivious to the sights and sounds around you. We frequently witness the sight of two lovers to whom the outside world is non-existent for the time being, and to whom there is nothing in the world except themselves. Again, persons often fall into a 'brown study,' or 'day dream,' in which all consciousness of the outside world seems to be shut out, yet the person is fully conscious and wide awake. These mental states are very much akin to that of the trained clairvoyant, and is the state which should be sought after by all clairvoyants, whether they are following the methods of Psychometry, Crystal Gazing, or that of Direct Clairvoyance--for the principle is one and the same in all of such methods."

The Dawn of Clairvoyance.

A well-known authority on the subject of Psychic Development says: "Occasional flashes of clairvoyance sometimes comes to the highly cultured and spiritual-minded man, even though he may never have heard of the possibility of training such a faculty. In his case such glimpses usually signify that he is approaching that stage in his evolution when these powers will naturally begin to manifest themselves. Their appearance should serve as an additional stimulus to him to strive to maintain that high standard of moral purity and mental balance without which clairvoyance is a curse and not a blessing to its possessor. Between those who are entirely unimpressionable and those who are in full possession of clairvoyant power, there are many intermediate stages. Students often ask how this clairvoyant faculty will first be manifested in themselves--how they may know when they have reached the stage at which its first faint foreshadowings are beginning to be visible. Cases differ so widely that it is impossible to give to this question any answer that will be universally applicable. Some people begin by a plunge, as it were, and under some unusual stimulus become able just for once to see some striking vision; and very often in such a case, because the experience does not repeat itself, the seer comes in time to believe that on that occasion he must have been the victim of hallucination. Others begin by becoming intermittently conscious of the brilliant colors and vibrations of the human aura; yet others find themselves with increasing frequency seeing and hearing something to which those around them are blind and deaf; others, again, see faces, landscapes, or colored clouds floating before their eyes in the dark, before they sink to rest; while perhaps the commonest experience of all is that of those who begin to recollect with greater and greater clearness what they have seen and heard on other planes during sleep."

Methods of Development.

The same authority, after warning students against attempting to develop their psychic powers by unnatural and harmful practices, such as self-hypnotism, self-stupefication, etc., gives the following excellent advice concerning the normal development of clairvoyant and other high psychic powers and faculties: "There is one practice which if adopted carefully and reverently can do no harm to any human being, yet from which a very pure type of clairvoyance has sometimes been developed--and that is the practice of Meditation. Let a man choose a certain time every day--a time when he can rely upon being quiet and undisturbed, though preferably in the daytime rather than at night--and set himself at that time to keep his mind for a few minutes entirely free from all earthly thoughts of any kind whatsoever; and, when that is achieved, to direct the whole force of his being towards the highest ideal he happens to know. He will find that to gain perfect control of thought is enormously more difficult than he supposes, but when he attains it this cannot but be in every way more beneficial to him, and as he grows more and more able to elevate and concentrate his thoughts, he may gradually find that new worlds are opening before his sight. As a preliminary training towards the satisfactory achievement of such meditation, he will find it desirable to make a practice of concentration in the affairs of daily life--even in the smallest of them. If he writes a letter, let him think of nothing else but that letter until it is finished; if he reads a book, let him see to it that his thought is never allowed to wander away from his author's meaning. He must learn to hold his mind in check, and to be master of that also, as well as of his lower passions; he must patiently labor to acquire absolute control of his thoughts, so that he will always know exactly what he is thinking about, and why--so that he can use his mind, and turn it or hold it still, as a practiced swordsman turns his weapon where he will."