Clairvoyance

by C. W. Leadbeater

But where, it will be said, is the qualified teacher to be found? Not, most assuredly, among any who advertise themselves as teachers, who offer to impart for so many guineas or dollars the sacred mysteries of the ages, or hold "developing circles" to which casual applicants are admitted at so much per head.

Much has been said in this treatise of the necessity for careful training—of the immense advantages of the trained over the untrained clairvoyant; but that again brings us back to the same question—where is this definite training to be had?

The answer is, that the training may be had precisely where it has always been to be found since the world's history began—at the hands of the Great White Brotherhood of Adepts, which stands now, as it has always stood, at the back of human evolution, guiding and helping it under the sway of the great cosmic laws which represent to us the Will of the Eternal.

But how, it may be asked, is access to be gained to them? How is the aspirant thirsting for knowledge to signify to them his wish for instruction?

Once more, by the time-honoured methods only. There is no new patent whereby a man can qualify himself without trouble to become a pupil in that School—no royal road to the learning which has to be acquired in it. At the present day, just as in the mists of antiquity, the man who wishes to attract their notice must enter upon the slow and toilsome path of self-development—must learn first of all to take himself in hand and make himself all that he ought to be. The steps of that path are no secret; I have given them in full detail in Invisible Helpers, so I need not repeat them here. But it is no easy road to follow, and yet sooner or later all must follow it, for the great law of evolution sweeps mankind slowly but resistlessly towards its goal.

From those who are pressing into this path the great Masters select their pupils, and it is only by qualifying himself to be taught that a man can put himself in the way of getting the teaching. Without that qualification, membership in any Lodge or Society, whether secret or otherwise, will not advance his object in the slightest degree. It is true, as we all know, that it was at the instance of some of these Masters that our Theosophical Society was founded, and that from its ranks some have been chosen to pass into closer relations with them. But that choice depends upon the earnestness of the candidate, not upon his mere membership of the Society or of any body within it.

That, then, is the only absolutely safe way of developing clairvoyance—to enter with all one's energy upon the path of moral and mental evolution, at one stage of which this and other of the higher faculties will spontaneously begin to show themselves. Yet there is one practice which is advised by all the religions alike—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 whatever and, when that is achieved, to direct the whole force of his being towards the highest spiritual ideal that he happens to know. He will find that to gain such perfect control of thought is enormously more difficult than he supposes, but when he attains it it cannot but be in every way most beneficial to him, and as he grows more and more able to elevate and concentrate his thought, 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 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 labour 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 practised swordsman turns his weapon where he will.

Yet after all, if those who so earnestly desire clairvoyance could possess it temporarily for a day or even an hour, it is far from certain that they would choose to retain the gift. True, it opens before them new worlds of study, new powers of usefulness, and for this latter reason most of us feel it worth while; but it should be remembered that for one whose duty still calls him to live in the world it is by no means an unmixed blessing. Upon one in whom that vision is opened the sorrow and the misery, the evil and the greed of the world press as an ever-present burden, until in the earlier days of his knowledge he often feels inclined to echo the passionate adjuration contained in those rolling lines of Schiller's: