Exploring the Powers Latent in Human Beings with Pablo Sender | Theosophical Classic 2014

thank you john and welcome everyone and as john said we are going to explore tonight a subject that i think is interesting for many people who are in the spiritual path or that are looking for a spiritual life and that is not necessarily well understood as we are going to see because it's quite complex let us start with a little of history when the theosophical society was founded in 1875 the view of human beings was mainly based on the judeo-christian tradition or the scientific view that was beginning to be very influential at the time so in the judeo-christian tradition the idea of a human being for the most part was that we are limited beings we were created by god we have intrinsic flaws you know the original sin and in several branches of christianity the view was that we cannot even attain salvation by our own efforts by our own exertion we depend on god whether god decides to give us the grace so that we can be saved and our efforts matter very little if anything so that view of human beings was quite limited in the to in the sense of what we could do of course there is the mystical tradition that people some people knew about and then some mystics had this this gifts from god that were extraordinary powers but they were not regarded as part of the human being they were regarded as i said as gifts that god bestowed on some chosen ones or on the other hand they could be gifts given by satan through witchcraft so whatever was uh abnormal it was not natural it was something that came from another source and so that was more or less a view and then of course the scientific view in the 19th century was very very materialistic and the idea was that we were only fleshy machines and this is all we were and there was nothing hidden nothing potential more than our intelligence and our physical senses so that was more or less a view especially in the west we didn't know anything about yoga or meditation or enlightenment at the time then there was a third group of people that were part of the spiritualistic movement the spiritualistic movement was very or quite successful among the people who were not that didn't feel in tune with either religion or science completely and the idea there is that in because in the sciences there was um thought to be some spirit that would produce certain phenomena certain psychic phenomena things that could not be explained either by science or religion well probably religion would say that is something that came from satan now the idea is that uh the the theory was that when we die we become spirits and as spirits we are endowed with a lot of powers that were not there while we were alive so there were all these psychic phenomena related associated with this with some of the senses and and they were they came from the spirits now when madame blavaski who was one of the founders of the theosophical society came to the west she had been trained in the east and one of her aims was to bring that knowledge to the west so when she came to the united states she started to go to the sciences and try to show that all these powers that were associated to the spirits were actually also a possibility in human beings in living people she would say there is no transformation sudden transformation after we die we all have that those powers but they are impeded in most of us by by our physical senses by our physical body however we could develop them we we know how to develop them and she would go to the sciences and reproduce many of the psychic phenomena that were supposed to be able to be performed only by spirits her her first book isis unveiled is an attempt to show how all these things existed in history but were not very well known in the west and she draws a lot from india where she lived and she knew many people there and and showed what the hindu yogis could do that here in the west except for a few scholars as i said we we didn't know anything about so when the theosophical society was founded since the very beginning one of its aims was to research into this to investigate this latent powers that are in human beings one of the reasons is that the population the spiritual population was with this idea of you know this lack of self-confidence this idea that we are inherently limited and unless we we begin to recognize that there are potentialities in ourselves there is no incentive to try to develop our potentialities of course early in in in the history of the western tradition devotion and faith and love were enough to draw a person to the spiritual path but as science began to be more and more influential religion began to lose all this power over over people so now they were in this kind of um frame of mind that said we are very limited from you know traditionally they thought that and now science was demonstrating it and uh blavatsky wanted to to show that the case was different so since the very beginning the theosophical society was interested in investigating into this so for example in 1878 when the the aims of the organization were being framed there was a a phrase in a in a text that that was written to say what the philosophical society was about that said human beings having inherited the nature of the cause of his own creation must possess in his inner psychical self this creative power in lesser degree he should therefore study to develop his latent powers the the aims of the theosophical society were reframed during a number of years at the beginning of the the organization and this particular aim uh took its final form the same that we have now with this the following phrasing uh this is the third aim of the theosophical society that says to investigate investigate and explain loss of nature and the powers latent in man so this was the beginning of a more or less systematic study about these powers but not in a scientific way theosophy has a an interesting relationship with science on one hand we got science as an ally because as science evolves it will prove certain aspects or that is what is normally thought in the philosophical tradition it will prove some aspects of the the ancient wisdom that the theosophical society is is trying to spread but at the same time it always recognized also the limitations the intrinsic limitations in the in the scientific method especially when we are dealing with spirituality something that cannot be measured by physical machines and as you may know in science anything that can be measured falls with within the realm of science if it cannot be measured then by by definition is outside the realm of science so the philosophical society began to stimulate this study but not in a scientific way properly speaking a few years later another society was formed the society for psychical research members of the theosophical society were among the founding members and the early members of this society and they wanted to try to research into these powers in a more scientific way so they went to the sciences and tried to to research it you know edison and many other important people were part of of this and um and this society still exists and has never been really successful in trying to prove these things from a scientific point of view it's an intrinsically difficult task as i said but now this idea kept on rolling and in the 30s jb ryan this person that developed the concept of parapsychology he was a professor in the duke university in north carolina he he framed the whole thing of of the psychic powers called call them extra sensory perception developed or or begun to use these cards that to try to measure you know different esp and and he tried to do it in a very scientific way some things have come from this but still the scientific community regards parapsychology as a pseudoscience one of the reasons that they they give is that there is no scientific theory to support or to explain this extra sensory perception and that there are no experiments that can give reliable results now saying that there is no scientific theory does not mean that there is no theory that can explain this science is unable to explain these things based on the limitations that are self-imposed in the scientific method but there is a whole and very complex theory that explains how this can happen how this takes place in human beings this is what lavaski and early theosophists used to call the occult science occult in the sense of the science that this with that that is hidden that is not seen the philosophical society used the word occultism at the time in a quite different way that it is being used right now and it was the organization that popularized the term in in the among western people so there is a a very uh complete and complex theory behind all this part of the the work of the theosophical society was to provide the foundations for this science we as i said this science is very complex and and we don't know the whole science the idea that blaboski and others had was to provide the foundations of it so that we can have a general understanding of these matters and this is important because ignorance always leads us to draw wrong conclusions that may lead us astray for example you know the primitive human beings thought that the thunder was maybe a fight among the gods they assumed they tried to explain a phenomena with the few elements that they had in the same way when there are some psychic or spiritual phenomena that happens to a person often there is an assumption that is based on lack of information and this assumption may be completely uh inaccurate and may lead a person in a in a wrong direction so it is important to have a certain knowledge of the foundation of this so that we can make a rational assessment of what is going on and what i'm going to try to do tonight is to share some of these foundations so let us see what what's the main the the main theory behind this extra sensory perception in the philosophical developments in the west there is usually this dualistic view of human beings and by dualistic i don't mean the opposite of the non-dual traditions that we know today dualistic in the sense of there are two main elements that compose the human being the card or earlier plato would talk about the soul and the body the world of ideas archetypes and the world of things there were two dimensions the material and the the spiritual the cards would talk about the mind and body or mind and matter and these two are different principles with different qualities and that's more or less what what is at the background of christianity and our normal view of human beings from its philosophical point of view so the idea is that let's say we have the soul and then we have the body that we all perceive this is the main idea now how can the soul which is in material communicate with the body this is a problem in philosophy they call it the ghost in the machine how can a ghost that is in material drive a machine or direct the motions of a machine that is material so the greeks the some of the greeks the neoplatonists developed the idea of intermediate principles that are a bridge these principles are not completely material and not completely material so therefore they can be affected by the material and can affect the material so this bridge is what in normal in in modern psychology we we call the psyche our psychological nature our emotions and our thoughts so the soul communicates to the body through our psychological nature now the idea is that just as the body has senses you know there are physical senses and and physical powers we are transforming the world around the the animal kingdom cannot transform the world to a to a large extent we human beings have the power to transform the world for good or for ill so there are physical senses and there are physical powers that are the result of consciousness acting through the body in the philosophical view the psyche also has what we could call is a saddle body in in the in the philosophical view consciousness and matter they are always together so when we have a physical body the soul expressing through the physical body we have what we call the physical consciousness the conscious the waking consciousness that we have right now when the soul expresses through the psyche the idea is that there are subtle bodies that are the vehicle of expression for the soul on on this level and uh the expression of the the soul through this these psychic bodies are thoughts emotions and uh what we call our psychology and these bodies also have their own senses and also have their own powers so these bodies i don't want to go into detail but uh they they are the what is known today as the astral body for example or emotional body and the mental body they are fields that are around us through which we can actually perceive the problem is that our attention is so focused on the physical body that we miss this subtler kind of perception but as a person goes on in the spiritual path it becomes to be more sensitive and people who are as i said interested in spirituality and practicing when they become more sensitive they begin to perceive for example entering in a room or dealing with a person many times there is this intuitive perception of the atmosphere of the room or the atmosphere of the person so to say oh that is obviously not perceived through the senses it's perceived through the subtle senses if we want to call them so what we call extrasensory perception is a perception that belongs to this to the subtle bodies especially for the most part to the astral body so i will refer only to that one in particular now the list of extra sensory perception that that is given today it's more or less systematic or this knowledge is systematized to some extent so we have for example telepathy clerodians clairvoyance remote remote viewing precognition or retrocognition astral projection psychokinesis etc so all these belong to the subtle bodies that that are part of ourselves now they are extensions of the physical senses for example we we have the sense of of seeing and we see on the physical plane with physical eyes we see physical objects now there is a sense on the astral body that corresponds to the sense of seeing on the fist in the physical body so when you awaken that that sense in yourself you start seeing the astral dimension this dimension is what is called the aura for example in human beings so you start seeing the aura so you become a clairvoyant this clairvoyance is the operation of the the astral site of the astral sense of sight and just an extension of the physical as i said same with the clear audience people they can listen to these astral sounds and then if you have astral uh projection for example we can move physically from here to there but we can also leave the body and move around on the subtle body these are the out of body experiences well they they are these people are becoming aware on the saddle body and uh and that's why they can see the physical body down there and um then we have the precognition to see what is coming or or the retro cognition the memory or the remote view in seeing what happens in other places and that has to do again with sight or with a kind of memory that that sometimes is called the akashic records the ability to see the record of events that happened in nature i person everything that happens is impressed on what blavatsky called the astral light and then you can see it as a kind of movie if you know how to develop that so i don't want to go into details but the idea is that all these psychic powers are the functioning of the senses of these subtle bodies especially the astral body and that they are coming through the brain to the physical consciousness of the person because when we go to sleep we are all aware on the subtle bodies and many many people may maybe perceiving a lot of things but then there is not necessarily necessarily a connection between the memory at the level of the psyche and the memory at the level of the body there are some let's say channels that connect consciousness if we want to bring the memory of these powers a link has to be created uh if we have time i'll talk about that so that's more or less a general idea of where this extra sensory perception comes from now let us explore taking this into account let us explore some of the methods of psychic development now of course as i said all these methods are well known in india and here in the west we are learning about some of them when i say in india not only in india now in the eastern tradition now for example there is a sage an indian sage that is called patanjali and he he organized the system of yoga into a system that is usually known as raja yoga raja means royal kingly and he designed a series of aphorisms that are called sutras in sanskrit where he explained the theory and practice of yoga so in one of the the aphorisms these yoga sutras have four books or four chapters and in the fourth one at the beginning of the fourth one patanjali talks about the development of these powers which in sanskrit are called cds means power or attainment so he says these psychic powers the cities may be attained through birth through the use of her herbs through mantras self-discipline or samadhi so birth herbs mantra self-discipline or samadhi samadhi let's say meditation he explains a whole in the third book the whole science of samadhi but let's say meditation now so let us explore a little about this now probably to understand how these things work one of the basic principles is that for the psyche or this the psychic powers or this extra sensory perception to express through the physical body the physical body has to be or the activity of the physical body has to be lessened has to be stopped as much as possible it's like if you are you know the typical example if you are trying to hear something that is subtle you have to keep quiet if you are talking your talking will not allow you to to perceive this more faint uh sound so if the attention is is completely immersed in the physical senses and sensations it's very difficult to perceive this other subtler kind of perception so by whatever means you can produce a listening in the activity of the physical senses you can induce the or or health the perception of the psychic senses so for example the first thing that he says is through birth that means this is based on the theory of reincarnation and there is a continuity from life to life if we try to develop something in one particular life when we take a new body that new body will have a tendency to reproduce the same that we were working on so after several incarnations in which a person is trying to develop in this direction he or she may be born with a body that is more naturally sensitive to all this the problem is that many times this body is unhealthy and out of balance or very irritable at the level of the nervous system and we are going to see why there is a reason why this happens now that that's one of the the ways uh the the other way he says is through the use of herbs you know through the use of drugs of now in the in the west we have developed a whole science of that now viasa who was another another uh sage indian sage who is thought to have written the vedas which are a very important uh spiritual literature in hinduism vias are commenting on patanjali's yoga sutras he says that they use this means the use of drugs to produce psychic powers is only used by the asuras the word suras in sanskrit means gods so asuras means the opposite to gods normally it refers to demons of all kinds or it can refer to people who are treading that path we could translate it to in christian terms to people who are sinful who are using methods that are not the right methods so viasa strongly disregards the use of herbs to produce psychic powers why there are some reasons in the one of the the ways in which the use of drugs pro stimulate the perception of of um this extra sensory perception is because in the brain there are two glands one is a pineal gland and the other is a pituitary ground gland so these two glands when they they are the bridge in the brain to receive the extra sensory perception what the drugs do is to stimulate these two glands um and then stimulating them it forces the glands to be open to this perception now the problem is that when we push this this glands to the to this kind of activity for which they are not naturally developed we begin to damage those glands and when when their activity is disrupted then we close the door to any influence from our spiritual nature because they don't work anymore and they cannot pass to the physical consciousness the the the influence from the spiritual nature also the the drugs can only produce an astral perception of the lower aspects of the astral plane the actual plane is a whole universe just as the physical is and the lower aspects are related to the lower emotions of in human beings in animals and the higher aspects are related to things that are closer to love and harmony and compassion so for example any besan who was a second international president of the ts and was a clairvoyant she says that the drugs bring again into physical consciousness indiscriminate impressions from the astral world these come generally from the lower parts of the plane in which are aggregated all the astral matter concern with excited the law exciting the lower passions and impulses sometimes they come from slight slightly higher regions of sensuals delight but these are scarcely better than the others so you know typically the experience of of the the use of drug if it is not terrifying is an experience of delight since sensual delight you know and pleasure and all these lights and this and that in the west we are very tied to the senses and we tend to regard that something that is that produces a pleasant sensation or an exciting vision is therefore good it's therefore spiritual it's completely different in the east or even in the west in the religious tradition the senses were always suspected so uh what animation says is that even if if they they don't actually stimulate the lower aspects of ourselves they lead us to a part of the astral plane that is merely sensual and it's not not spiritual per se so there are a few other reasons but i'm not going to go into into them but this is why in vyasa said that these are methods that the asuras practice people who don't care about their communication with the spiritual nature and people who care about stimulating the lower nature and the sensual aspects so the next method that potentially describes is by mantras the use of mantras now this belongs to a whole group of methods that are based in producing a kind of self-hypnosis you know if you repeat the stimulus constantly in a regular way you produce a kind of a state that is where our mind and our senses are dormant uh dulled so when you repeat mantras constantly and rhythmically and sometimes even the body you know is brought into the rhythm that of course produces a pleasant sensation and it could be okay if it is a preliminary practice to calm down the mind and and go beyond that but if it is used as a main process it produces a state of um hypnosis and we are going to see what that leads to but it it produces as i said you know by those means you you stop the the functioning of the brain so that subtler perceptions can come to the brain remember that we say the basic attempt that you that you are making is that silencing the the physical body and the physical senses so this can produce that and there are other methods to to watch intently uh a flame for example or a dark spot in a white background when you watch without you know blinking very intently again the constant stimulation and changing stimulation begins to produce this dormancy in the in in the nerves in the in the eye and they little by little go to the brain and then the the brain falls into a kind of hypnosis so again the brain is is quiet and there may be some perceptions or even the whirling that some sufis do not so much sufis i would say the beaches that also produce a kind of self-hypnosis now of course the use of mantras and the use of all these methods has a correct application too for example patanjali when talking about mantras he says that the repetition should be made with meditation on the meaning of the mantra so he didn't recommend this mechanical and constant repetition but he said repeat the mantra and meditate on the meaning try to keep the clarity of your mind and try to stimulate the the understanding and that is always a safe card in meditation as long as you keep your clarity your understanding your clear consciousness then you you won't fall into some alternative routes that we are going to see the effect of that so then the the last oh then austerities the sanskrit word that potentially uses is tapas this means something like burning and tapas is sometimes is translated as self-mortification one another principle by which you can develop or you can perceive these extra sensory things is by putting pressure on the on the physical on the on the nerves pressure tension straining on the nerves make them vibrate in an in a higher way that they may be able to perceive higher things so sometimes people in the agony of suffering they see god or they hear the voice of something and uh many times the agony of the suffering made them open to something else or but that may also produce hysteria so the the problem with this the methods that induce a lot of tension is that if the person is not strong enough healthy enough they can produce a breakdown at the at the nervous level so anything that induces attention will tend to make the nerves more susceptible to to psychic aspects so this is why some lines of spirituality they they do a lot of penances or or they they fast in an extreme way or they deprive themselves from sleeping or they do physical things that produce a lot of exertion and tension and they do develop some some psychic powers now the problem is that with all these methods you are producing two one of two things or maybe both the ones that tend to produce this hypnosis make the the person fall into a trance the trans liberates consciousness to be aware on the psychic planes now the since you are doing it in a in an artificial way the problem is that when the person comes back to the trance that person doesn't remember anything or didn't learn anything only this vague sense of that blissful feeling which is not too different to the one that we get when we go to sleep we are very tired go to sleep have a sound sleep and wake up and we have this feeling of well-being just because our consciousness was on the astral plane and the and the physical body rested so in a trance something similar happens and from a spiritual point of view it doesn't bring any particular wisdom if you can enter in this state of which is called samadhi by patanjali this state and we are going to see that later where the mind is quiet but not artificially quiet is quiet but responsive then the experiences on the inner planes can be impressed on the brain but when you just put it to sleep that doesn't bring anything in particular from a spiritual point of view so that's one of the effects and the other effect is that on the astral body let's say you know let's suppose this is the aura on the astral body you have the physical body within the aura and each sense let's suppose the sense of sight we have the physical body and around the physical body there is like this astral counterpart you know every part of our body has also its astral aspect so when you do things like watching intently a flame or a dot you begin to stimulate the astral aspect around the physical eye now the purpose so let's say those are like astral sense centers so what's the natural the natural function of these astral sensing centers we have the soul the origin or the source of consciousness and in order to communicate with the eye and and from the eye to the soul the the vibrations have to be transformed and into a a kind that the soul can perceive the immaterial soul can perceive so when the eye perceives something physically those vibrations affect the astral aspect of the eye and those vibrations another level the mental but it's all part of the saddle bodies and then the saddle bodies affect the soul so the natural function of the centers these astral sense centers is to be a bridge not to be an organ of perception on the astral plane now if you develop them you can use them to see on the astral plane but since they were not intended for that the the clairvoyance that you can get is very limited quite confused it's not you are using something that it was not meant for that the real organs of scene on the astral plane if we want to call it in that way are the chakras what we know as the as the chakras these are the true astral senses now of course again there are physical chakras or plexuses that science knows about then there are a little subtler chakras that in theosophy are called the aesthetic chakras and then there are the astral chakras if you want to develop as i said the uh some psychic perception you have to develop the astral chakras and the aesthetic chakras what we know in the literature in general are the aesthetic chakras so by the methods that we said that that we explore you don't develop the the chakras you you are developing this counterpart and therefore the results are very are not not satisfactory and of course you if you practice this too much you you can damage your sight and and everything so let me see potentially yeah we cover most of it with pranayama also you can use pranayama is you know manipulating your breathing it's another way of putting tension in the senses there are some techniques of yoga where through pranayama a lot of pressure is put at the level of the ears and again the person's at least hears spiritually uh sounds but it's just a result of the the tension on on the ears so the only method that potentially recommends is the one on meditation through meditation so he said through birth and that that's beyond what you can do i mean whatever you do now will be reflected in the future but through birth the use of herbs mantras this tapas or samadhi meditation so that's the only way that that i don't even know that he recommends as we are going to see but he says don't touch the other methods you know this method is healthier it's a method that that won't produce all these side effects now through meditation then we can meditate on the chakras we can meditate on different centers and again if you see in patanjali another text of yoga all these methods also have they are they are dangerous um in india these methods come from india or everything that we studied today come from india or the east and uh in india traditionally you would do all these meditations only when you had a guru to guide you now this guru there is a whole description of what a real guru is a real uh teacher is this girl has to be morally spiritual a moral person has to be able has to be clairvoyant because when we start manipulating all these centers you don't see what is going on and you need somebody to see and to see this is a whole science and you need somebody that will help you and correct this correct that put your attention here or there stop doing this to do that it's it's a whole science so they needed a guru that was clairvoyant those who wanted to develop this and that went through this process and knew what he was talking about now in the west we're learning from books we learn it from people who learn them from books and who make money out of it and in most cases they they don't know what they are talking about and you know and the books that were written they are full of what what are called veils full of misleading aspects because they knew the gurus knew that the intrinsic dangers in this and they didn't want people regular people to to mess with with this you know in the east also the guru would put the disciple to test to see if the disciple was really ready for that and they would would prescribe a life of purification and discipline so that the disciple could do this without any risk here in the west the more people the better more money and you know nothing about the the ability that the person may have or or the kind of life if we are in the middle of a an active life opening up to more vibrations is usually a problem and here in the ts unfortunately we see it a lot we see it a lot people coming and trying asking us for help because they they are you know obsessed by entities or they awaken kundalini and is ruining their lives or we have a lot of stories and michelle i used to work here my wife used to work here in the information department and we had almost every month a person with some problem because of doing all this there are some other negative effects even if you know and this is like anything else there are people who smoke their whole lives and they don't die of cancer the smoking didn't do anything to them so some people may practice all this and nothing happened fortunately in the west we we tend to be not very serious so the meditations that we do on this are feeble and they are not going to produce anything neither good nor bad that's a protection but these few are really intent on this it can produce some problems but besides that let me see oh i was talking about that in this box many times there are veils so when potentially says for example to develop this power concentrate on in the root of the tongue it's not that you have to concentrate in the root of the tongue what what that point meant is the pituitary gland and the the gurus would tell this to the disciple but they didn't want people if you meditate on the tongue nothing will happen and it was a protection that they put so many of the things that you read from the books are misleading they they are not the real science that they were very protective about all that it's just you don't want a kid to to use you know gun powder so you try not to put it in the hands of those who are inexperienced but anonymous who was as i said a clairvoyant she talking about this she says that there are some instructions to meditate on the navel and she says this really means the solar plexus one of the chakras for there is a close connection between the two but to meditate on that is to incur in the dangerous danger of a serious nervous disorder almost impossible to cure and this is what happens if when we mess up things on on the side of bodies they can be drugged for several lives until they can come back in to a to a healthy state but even leaving that outside i remember in the ts i had a friend and she was going to acupuncture and accidentally so they touched something and she developed clairvoyance and at the beginning it was fun you know she started seeing things but then it began to be a really really pressure on her and she really was really disturbed by by this and us eventually faded away and she loves the clairvoyance and she was really happy and there is a phrase talking about this by ledbetter that bitter again was a member of the ts probably one of the greatest clairvoyants in the 20th century most of the new age studied using his researches about all these and he says yet after all if those who are endlessly desire clairvoyance 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 worthwhile he was a clairvoyant 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 one no upon one in whom that vision is opened the sorrow and misery the evil and the greed of the world press as an ever-present burden until in the earlier days of this knowledge he often feels inclined to echo the passionate adjuration contained in the lines of schiller schiller was a poet that says why has thou cast made us into the town of the ever blind to proclaim thine oracle with the open sense what profits it to leave the veil where the near darkness threatens only ignorance is life this knowledge is death take back this sad clear sightness take from my eyes this cruel light it is horrible to be the mortal channel of your truth so the idea is that you know you start being very sensitive to everything that is in the world the good things and the bad things and unfortunately at this period of evolution as we know there is a lot of bad things but feelings in people and you start feeling it as if they were yours when you become you know you don't know why this hate is is in you for all you know it's yours but it may be of the person that is next to you but you reproduce it you feel it you you perceive it so for this reason before a person traditionally before a person develops this has to attain equanimity has to attain detachment and all this now when we see we see all this we say what's the purpose then because it it's not a very you know encouraging picture um to develop psychic power seems to to be something that is is negative now there are several things to be explored here first that what most people are looking for in developing psychic powers is to obtain things that cannot be given by psychic powers now psychic powers are not the only powers or extra sensory powers we have as we said there is a physical dimension of the universe which we all are aware of this there is a psychic dimension that we have been talking about and there is also a spiritual dimension the dimension where the soul resides and there are the the same way that there are physical powers and senses there are psychic powers and senses the soul also has its own powers now what are the powers of the soul the powers of of the soul are the spiritual powers which is what really we are really looking for or most of us spiritual powers are wisdom compassion love peace joy all these are things that come from the soul these things will change our life not having a psychic power not being able to see auras or to hear astral bells or to to travel somewhere all those things may be fun but they are not going to change your life the ones that change her life are the spiritual powers and in the in the theosophical tradition and also in the tradition of raja yoga the the idea is that the natural development in evolution is to develop first the the spiritual powers and then the spiritual powers will naturally develop the psychic powers now why would you want to develop psychic powers the idea is in especially in the in the philosophical tradition there is a strong emphasis on trying to help humanity to be of service to humanity with whatever powers we have you know we may have a lot of money and and spend it for our enjoyment or we may spend part of that money to help others we may have a lot of intelligence and use it to make a career and again a lot of money or fame or we can use that intelligence to help others or time or whatever skill we have we can use it to help others or we can use it in a selfish way so for a spiritual person people who have a psychic ability and they are spiritual they usually can have more power to help people around than with only having the physical powers so the the the point of view is that we first develop the spiritual powers and then the spiritual powers will develop the psychic powers and that person will be mature to handle them without any of these dangers and will be able to use them in an altruistic way and not in a selfish way and and that is actually the as i said at least from the philosophical point of view the natural development so patanjali after he describes all the cities all the psychic powers then he says that these psychic powers let me get the the quote here uh patanjali says in the third book in the the sutra 38 these cities resulting from meditation are obstacles to samadhi to this spiritual state but appear to be attainments or powers to the outgoing or worldly mind so for those who are who are tied to the senses they are you know they naturally want to develop psychic powers because they are an extension of the senses that is a what he calls a worldly mind and most of us don't know better because all these things are advertised as being spiritual but what he says is that they they become obstacles for spiritual vision spiritual wisdom spiritual intuition and that's something recognized even with many of the mystics many of the mystics would say that these powers that would awaken in them were put there by satan to lead them astray because the idea is to try to go beyond any senses whether physical or psychic and to unite with the spirit to unite with god to unite with the divine if you begin to develop all these psychic powers and you became become entertained and and start you know you you get stuck in this realm when the real aim of any mystic or spiritual person is to go beyond and to get in touch with with the divine and to develop all these things so the development of the psychic powers becomes an obstacle for that just as if you know we go to meditate and what we try to do is to shut off all the the stimulus you know we don't want to listen to the the car or to this or that but then when we start listening to astral belts then we think that's spiritual that's the same it's a distraction just as a physical one so in the philosophical society the emphasis is on uh on the spiritual development and this spiritual development as it progresses it will naturally make the body and the psyche more sensitive and more united and will naturally develop develop the psychic powers and and with this i'm finishing the the methods for spiritual development are the methods that we normally talk about you know meditation and study and service we give many lectures about them so i don't have time to go through them now but the the ideas are the the spiritual path as it is laid down by by traditional religious and spiritual movements has the aim of developing the spiritual powers which are the ones that are going to really change our life then once we develop that as i said i don't want to say that the psychic powers are wrong they as anything in nature may produce difficulties when they are trying to develop artificially or out of sequence before the time is right so that's what i wanted to share tonight with you now as usual if there are any questions or comments we can discuss anything i often meditate and when i want to do something helpful for people i try to visualize them surrounded by a white light of spiritual protection but it seems to take a lot of emotional and spiritual energy and i can't really hold that for very long is there anything in writing from ponton jolly or someone similar that can help guide you through developing some of this spiritual power to make it more effective yes there is the idea in yoga the idea of brahmacharya which usually is translated as um celibacy but it means much more than that the idea of brahmacharya is to try to live in a way where we don't waste energy so anything you do you do it in a healthy and unbalanced way even sexual relationships that that's fine but uh if they become you know promiscuous or or saw a near source of pleasure then you are wasting your energy but not only with that we with in in our whole life so we have very little energy left for the spiritual work so part of the preliminary training before the the person's the person begins to work on these levels is to reduce the the outgoing energy and the spending of energy so when you try to concentrate your mind you are spending or you are using a lot of energy and you will see that if you really try hard you will be tired uh when you are trying to send good thoughts also you are always using energy it's a good way to of using energy you are trying to use energy to help other people but at the same time you you have to work on your your spiritual life following you know these different traditions that that have stood the the test of time and little by little as your emotions become quieter your mind becomes quieter there is a whole lot more energy that you have for all this work um you said about developing the uh spiritual powers of the soul one of the ways to do it you said it was through meditation obviously and then um birth correct birth um do you see any relation like to develop birth but if you do want to achieve meditation like in this correlation of birth and death um i know they're opposing things but they're very similar and do you find any correlation like when a child is inside the mother that their physical eyes are closed but the the senses that they can sense are only light and sound and you see any correlation with that with the eyes and you know upon birth your physical eyes open but your third eye closes but like you said experiencing birth in reverse kind of like the death experience which is the goal of meditation i think is that my correct or my wrong kind of like you know dulling the senses telling the impulses and reaching that kind of almost a flatline state do you find any relations like now the the idea of experience in reverse yeah the idea of birth was uh in potentially was related to the psychic powers but can also be related to the spiritual powers in the sense that whatever we do in one life tends to be repeated in the next so people who work on on trying to develop the psychic aspects especially through these techniques that tend to to put a lot of pressure on the body in the next life they may have a body that is more sensitive to all these things but as i said the it's they are usually unhealthy because they are sensitive because you they they are very they have a lot of pressure or tension it's like when you tend to you know a chord to to play an instrument you can do it too much so the you can inherit a body that has psychic tendencies but also if they were not developed from the spiritual in the natural way from the spiritual to the psychic they will tend to be unbalanced or you can inherit a tendency towards spirituality and a body that is more receptive to all these powers of the soul now yes meditation in in the sense is trying to do the opposite to to what we do in birth because during birth the soul after that after death there are a series of processes and then the soul uh comes back home let's say and then stays there there are some processes and then when the soul incarnates again it engages in a process of materialization where all these powers are obscured by the senses so meditation is like a coming back a reversing that but while in with the methods that i talked at the beginning this is done in by force and in an artificial way you know trying to dull the brain in the in the spiritual meditation you train yourself you train your mind to be quiet but with the full consciousness with all your volition you know it's a completely different thing you get to the same the brain is quiet but one is without consciousness the other is with the full awareness so yes by spiritual meditation you do this regularly gradually and without your full consciousness is that the idea behind going into a meditative state with a seed thought that you want to focus on and then you try to remember that as you get yourself aligned yes there are you know there are different states of consciousness let's say all of us has our consciousness has a particular seat or a seat on one of these states suppose you are on the second state of consciousness this is just a symbolic now when you try to become aware on the third stage of consciousness you can do it by two means as i said you can [Music] make stop artificially the seat of consciousness that allows you to be aware on the second stage then your consciousness will naturally jump to the next one or you can try to extend your consciousness to the next one without losing your awareness now this method of extending your consciousness is more more difficult is slower but once you establish yourself on on the next level that level stays with you in your daily life that's part of you this other state you can only go into that state you know when you are meditating or applying this technique it doesn't serve any purpose on daily in daily life and as i said you don't bring much from there so the idea is always to retain consciousness try to reach the highest level without losing consciousness if you lose consciousness and fall into a trance that that is not not good i mean and sometimes that happens because people who have practiced some of these these uh methods in the past because we don't know you know we know these things by trying them many times people who have practiced that may have a tendency to fall into unconscious trances so that person has to be very careful not to cling to awareness is a spiritual awareness as as spiritual as possible as abstract as possible but still awareness not to let it go um when you said like our body remembers uh like try to maintain a level of consciousness as opposed to going into a trance state then you're not aware of what's going on um now you say when you reach a higher level of consciousness that we tend to stay at that level during our everyday you know life and actions you know be going to work or doing a job is it because our physiology got a taste of that level of consciousness while being conscious and our our body likes it and that's why it likes to stay at that yeah there is a whole process at the beginning we can reach it only in special moments like when meditating then we come out of that even if we retain our awareness then it is very difficult to extend it into our daily life because the matter of our body and subtle bodies are used to working in a different way so like with anything else the the body works by habits so by making the effort of reaching that state of consciousness more frequently and making the effort to retain it the body little by little gets used to um be a vehicle of that kind of consciousness but it is something gradual and requires effort like with anything else you know any other skill that we want to acquire it has been the curiosity since i lived in new york about the third object because people misinterpreted the third object is it being not the psychic but the intuitive uh aspect because the intuition includes the psychic too but uh they that work one works together with both yeah yeah the idea i mean as i said like uh the psychic powers are the echo of the spiritual powers if you go through the path of the raja yoga which you know the theosophical approaches in tune with that there are generally speaking two paths that sometimes have been characterized as the raja yoga and the hata yoga by hatta i don't mean just the the asanas the hata yogis in india they did all these techniques that i talked about before the the hata yogis in india they practiced that so the idea is to force from below to open up something above that's the hata yoga in india or to go from the from above and and stimulate it from above so uh the in the path of raja yoga the psychic power are the echo or or the you know the shadow of the spiritual power so they come naturally together so we don't need to differentiate them in the in the object i have one question from someone who sent it online it seems as though psychic powers are more of a side effect and not an objective of both physical and spiritual practices yes i don't know if i would call it a side effect i mean from a certain point of view yes now they are necessary too in the course of evolution they are part of what uh the the full blown of a human being now the thing is the order in which they are awakened and by what method so they seem as a side effect because of the sequence because the spiritual powers are first and then the psychic powers uh but they have a purpose in themselves now that purpose cannot be fulfilled when when we go when we try to force them beforehand or ahead of time now some people are successful in developing these psychic powers and even if they are not necessarily very mature spiritually they may do some good about this you know it's just like anything in life what i'm saying here is like the general rule if you will but then each case is different in particular so i would say the psychic powers have a role but it comes late after the the spiritual powers one experience i've had and other people i know is sort of in terms of meditation and self-awareness is a is a sense of peeling off the layers of an onion you know it's like as we get to know ourselves better we peel off more layers that have been put upon us and seem to come to greater apprehension of ourselves where does that type of activity fit into what you've described you said yeah well i as i said i i didn't go into the methods of spiritual development and i have given several lectures in the past on this and they are available on the internet on our website and the the spiritual methods are are basically that you know so the idea our consciousness is normally focused on our physical body and then our emotions and our mind and then we have to let go of the identification and begin to see like from above if you want to put it this way and let go the identification with the body then with the emotion staying with the mind and then as you become aware on the spiritual levels you you can relate to body emotions mind in a far wiser way and more healthily and you know so yeah all that is part of the spiritual development that that wasn't the focus of this now something that i wanted to say if you happen to have some psychic you were born or you developed some psychic powers that that's fine i mean the the from this point of view the advice would be start working on the spiritual life start working on developing all this and as you develop that that will give you the poise the power the confidence to relate to the your psychic sensitivity in a better way so you know for many different reasons we may have naturally some some of these sensitivities and it's fine in some people it's quite disturbing but in those in many others it's not but i would say that the safe way to go is stimulate this other part and you will see how even the psychic sensitivity develops more in in a more integrated way you

Channel: Theosophical Society

Views: 15,369

Keywords: theosophical society, theosophy, Latent Powers, ESP, Spiritual, Psychic, Theosophy, Theosophical Society in America, Pablo Sender (Author), extra sensory perception

Id: DjL0vVGS4N0

Length: 71min 51sec (4311 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 09 2023