CLAIRVOYANCE AND OCCULT POWERS/PART 11
LESSON XI.
CLAIRVOYANCE OF THE PAST
The
third great class of clairvoyant phenomena, known as Time Clairvoyance, is
divided into two sub-classes, as follows: (1) Past-Time Clairvoyance; and (2)
Future-Time Clairvoyance. The characteristics of each of these sub-classes is
indicated by its name.
Past-Time
Clairvoyance, as indicated by the name, is that class of clairvoyant phenomena
which is concerned with the perception of facts, events and happenings of past
time. Whether the happening is that of five minutes ago, or of five thousand
years ago, the principles involved are precisely the same. One is no more or
less wonderful than is the other.
Many
students confess themselves perplexed when they are first confronted with this
class of phenomena. While they find it comparatively easy to see how by astral
vision the clairvoyant is able to sense events happening at that moment, though
thousands of miles away from the observer, they cannot at first understand how
one can "see" a thing no longer in existence, but which disappeared
from sight thousands of years ago. Naturally, they ask to be informed how this
is possible, before proceeding to develop the faculty itself. Believing that
this question is now being asked by you, the student of these lessons, I shall
pause for a few moments and show you "just how" this wonderful thing
becomes possible to the clairvoyant.
In
the first place, it would undoubtedly be impossible to perceive a thing, even
by astral vision, if it had entirely disappeared at some time in the past—this
would be beyond all natural powers, astral as well as physical. But, as a
matter of fact, the things of the past have not entirely disappeared, but, on
the contrary, while having disappeared on the physical plane they still exist
on the astral plane. I shall endeavor to explain this wonderful fact of nature
to you in plain terms, although it belongs to one of the most mysterious
classes of the occult facts of the universe.
In
the occult teachings we find many references to "the Akashic
Records," or what is sometimes called "the records of the Astral Light."
Without going into technical occult definitions and explanations, I will say to
you that the gist of this occult teaching is that in that high form of the
universal substance which is called the Universal Ether there is found to be
recorded all the happenings of the entire World Cycle of which the present time
is a part. All that has happened from the very beginning of this World Cycle,
millions of years ago, is preserved on these astral records, and may be read by
the advanced clairvoyant or other person possessing occult powers of this kind.
These records perish only with the termination of a World Cycle, which will not
happen for millions of years yet to come.
To
those who cannot accept the reasonableness of this occult fact, I would say
that there are analogies to be found on other planes of natural manifestation.
For instance, as astronomy teaches us, a star may be blotted out of existence,
and yet its light will persist long after (perhaps until the end of world-time)
traveling along at the rate of 186,000 miles each second. The light that we now
see coming from the distant stars has left those stars many years ago—in some
cases thousands of years ago. We see them not as they are now, but as they were
at the time the ray of light left them, many years ago; The astronomers inform
us that if one of these stars had been [*Transcribers Note: Text missing from
original] sands) of years ago, we would still see it as in actual existence. In
fact, it is believed that some of these stars which we see twinkling at night
have actually been blotted out hundreds of years ago. We will not be aware of
this fact until the light rays suddenly cease reaching us, after their journey
of billions of miles and hundreds of years. A star blotted out of existence
today would be seen by our children, and children's children.
The
heat from a stove will be felt in a room long after the stove has been removed
from it. A room will long contain the odor of something that has been removed
from it. It is said that in one of the old mosques of Persia there may be
perceived the faint odor of the musk that was exposed there hundreds of years
ago—the very walls are saturated with the pungent odor. Again, is it not
wonderful that our memories preserve the images of the sounds and forms which
were placed there perhaps fifty years and more ago? How do these memory images
survive and exist? Though we may have thought of the past thing for half a
lifetime, yet, suddenly its image flashes into our consciousness. Surely this
is as wonderful as the Akashic Records, though its "commonness" makes
it lose its wonderful appearance to us.
Camille
Flammarion, the eminent French astronomer, in a book written over twenty-five
years ago, and which is now out of print, I believe, pictured a possible
condition of affairs in which a disembodied soul would be able to perceive
events that happened in the past, by simply taking a position in space in which
he would be able to catch the light-waves that emanated from a distant planet
at that particular time in the past the happenings of which he wanted to
perceive. The little book was called "Lumen"—I advise you to read it,
if you can find it in your public libraries.
Another
writer has written somewhat along the same lines. I herewith give you a
quotation from him, that you may get the idea he wishes to express—it will help
you in your conception of the Akashic Records. He says: "When we see
anything, whether it be the book we hold in our hands, or a star millions of
miles away, we do so by means of a vibration in the ether, commonly called a
ray of light, which passes from the object seen to our eyes. Now the speed with
which this vibration passes is so great—about 186,000 miles in a second—that
when we are considering any object in our own world we may regard it as practically
instantaneous. When, however, we come to deal with interplanetary distances we
have to take the speed of light into consideration, for an appreciable period
is occupied in traversing these vast spaces. For example, it takes eight
minutes and a quarter for light to travel to us from the sun, so that when we
look at the solar orb we see it by means of a ray of light which left it more
than eight minutes ago. From this follows a very curious result. The ray of
light by which we see the sun can obviously report to us only the state of
affairs' which existed in that luminary when it started on its journey, and
would not be in the least affected by anything that happened after it left; so
that we really see the sun not as it is, but as it was eight minutes ago. That
is to say that if anything important took place in the sun—the formation of a
new sun-spot, for instance—an astronomer who was watching the orb through his
telescope at the time would be unaware of the incident while it was happening,
since the ray of light bearing the news would not reach him until more than
eight minutes later.
"The
difference is more striking when we consider the fixed stars, because in their
case the distances are so enormously greater. The pole star, for example, is so
far off that light, traveling at the inconceivable speed above mentioned, takes
a little more than fifty years to reach our eyes; and from that follows the
strange but inevitable inference that we see the pole star not as or where it
is at this moment, but as and where it was fifty years ago. Nay, if tomorrow
some cosmic catastrophe were to shatter the pole star into fragments, we should
still see it peacefully shining in the sky all the rest of our lives; our
children would grow up to middle-age and gather their children about them in
turn before the news of that tremendous accident reached any terrestial eye. In
the same way there are other stars so far distant that light takes thousands of
years to travel from them to us, and with reference to their condition our
information is therefore thousands of years behind time. Now carry the argument
a step farther. Suppose that we were able to place a man at the distance of
186,000 miles from the earth, and yet to endow him with the wonderful faculty
of being able from that distance to see what was happening here as clearly as
though he were still close beside us. It is evident that a man so placed would
see everything a second after the time it really happened, and so at the
present moment he would be seeing what happened a second ago. Double that
distance, and he would be two seconds behind time, and so on; remove him to the
distance of the sun (still allowing him to preserve the same mysterious power
of sight) and he would look down and watch you doing not what you are doing
now, but what you were doing eight minutes and a quarter ago. Carry him to the
pole star, and he would see passing before his eyes the events of fifty years
ago; he would be watching the childish gambols of those who at the same moment
were really middle-aged men. Marvellous as this may sound, it is literally and
scientifically true, and cannot be denied."
Flammarion,
in his story, called "Lumen," makes his spirit hero pass at will
along the ray of light from the earth, seeing the things of different eras of
earth-time. He even made him travel backward along that ray, thus seeing the
happenings in reverse order, as in a moving picture running backward. This
story is of the greatest interest to the occultist, for while the Akashic
Records are not the same as the light records, yet the analogy is so marked in
many ways that the occultist sees here another exemplification of the old
occult axiom that "as above, so below; as below, so above."
I
take the liberty of quoting here from my little book, "The Astral
World," in order to give you some further idea of the nature of these
records in the Astral Light. The reader is supposed to be travelling in his
astral body, having the phenomena of the astral pointed out to him by a
competent occultist acting as his guide. The occultist-guide says to the
student: "Changing our vibrations, we find ourselves entering a strange
region, the nature of which you at first fail to discern. Pausing a moment
until your astral vision becomes attuned to the peculiar vibrations of this
region, you will find that you are becoming gradually aware of what may be
called an immense picture gallery, spreading out in all directions, and
apparently bearing a direct relation to every point of space on the surface of
the earth. At first, you find it difficult to decipher the meaning of this
great array of pictures. The trouble arises from the fact that they are
arranged not one after the other in sequence on a flat plane; but rather in
sequence, one after another, in a peculiar order which may be called the order
of 'X-ness in space,' because it is neither the dimension of length, breadth,
or depth—it is practically the order of the fourth dimension in space, which
cannot be described in terms of ordinary spatial dimension. Again, you find
upon closely examining the pictures that they are very minute—practically
microscopic in size—and require the use of the peculiar magnifying power of
astral vision to bring them up to a size capable of being recognized by your
faculty of visual recognition.
"The
astral vision, when developed, is capable of magnifying any object, material or
astral, to an enormous degree—for instance, the trained occultist is able to
perceive the whirling atoms and corpuscles of matter, by means of this
peculiarity of astral vision. Likewise, he is able to plainly perceive many
fine vibrations of light which are invisible to the ordinary sight. In fact,
the peculiar Astral Light which pervades this region is due to the power of the
astral vision to perceive and register these fine vibrations of light. Bring
this power of magnifying into operation, and you will see that each of the
little points and details of the great world picture so spread before you in
the Astral Light is really a complete scene of a certain place on earth, at a
certain period in the history of the earth. It resembles one of the small views
in a series of moving pictures—a single view of a roll-film. It is fixed, and
not in motion, and yet we can move forward along the fourth dimension, and thus
obtain a moving picture of the history of any point on the surface of the
earth, or even combine the various points into a large moving picture, in the
same way. Let us prove this by actual experiment. Close your eyes for a moment,
while we travel back in time (so to speak) along the series of these astral
records—for, indeed, they travel back to the beginning of the history of the
earth. Now open your eyes! Looking around you, you perceive the pictured
representation of strange scenes filled with persons wearing a peculiar
garb—but all is still, no life, no motion.
"Now,
let us move forward in time, at much higher rate than that in which the astral
views were registered. You now see flying before you the great movement of life
on a certain point of space, in a far distant age. From birth to death you see
the life of these strange people, all in the space of a few moments. Great
battles are fought, and cities rise before your eyes, all in a great moving
picture flying at a tremendous speed. Now stop, and then let us move backward
in time, still gazing at the moving pictures. You see a strange sight, like
that of 'reversing the film' in a moving picture. You see everything moving
backward—cities crumbling into nothingness, men arising from their graves, and
growing younger each second until they are finally born as babes—everything
moving backward in time, instead of forward. You can thus witness any great
historical event, or follow the career of any great personage from birth to
death—or backward. You will notice, moreover, that everything is
semi-transparent, and that accordingly you can see the picture of what is going
on inside of buildings as well as outside of them. Nothing escapes the Astral
Light Records. Nothing can be concealed from it. By traveling to any point in
time, on the fourth dimension, you may begin at that point, and see a moving
picture of the history of any part of the earth from that time to the
present—or you may reverse the sequence by travelling backward, as we have
seen. You may also travel in the Astral, on ordinary space dimensions, and thus
see what happened simultaneously all over the earth, at any special moment of
past-time, if you wish."
Now,
I do not for a moment wish you to understand that the above experience is
possible to every clairvoyant who is able to sense past-time events and
happenings. On the contrary, the above experience is possible only to the
advanced occultist, or to the student whom he may take with him on an astral
trip, in the astral body. The clairvoyant merely catches glimpses of certain
phases and fields of the great astral record region or state. For that matter,
the ordinary clairvoyant merely sees a reflection of the true Astral-Light
pictures—a reflection similar to that of a landscape reflected in a pond.
Moreover, this reflection may be (and frequently is) disturbed as if by the
ripples and waves of the pond in which the landscape is reflected. But, still,
even the ordinary clairvoyant is able to secure results which are wonderful
enough in all truth, and which far transcend the power of the person
functioning on the physical plane alone.
Past-time
clairvoyance is frequently induced by means of psychometry, in which the
clairvoyant is able to have "the loose end" to unwind the ball of
time. But, still, in some cases the clairvoyant is able to get en rapport with
the astral records of past-time by the ordinary methods of meditation, etc. The
main obstacle in the last mentioned case is the difficulty of coming in contact
with the exact period of past-time sought for—in psychometry, the vibrations of
the "associated object" supplies the missing-link.
Lacking
the "associated object," the clairvoyant may obtain the link by
bringing into the imagination some associated scene of that time—something else
that happened about the same time. All that is needed is to get hold of
something associated in space or in time with the sought for scene. All that is
needed is the "loose end" of association. Sometimes the clairvoyant
senses some past-time experience, the place and time of which is unknown to
him. In such cases, it is necessary for him to get hold of some "loose
end" by which he may work out the solution. For instance, the picture of a
certain building or personage, or historical happening, may give the key to the
mystery.
In very
high forms of past-time clairvoyance, the clairvoyant is able not only to
perceive the actual happenings of the past, but also to actually sense the
thought and feelings of the actors therein—for these, too, are recorded on the
astral plane. In other cases, the clairvoyant person is able to picture scenes
and happenings relating to his past incarnations, even though he is not able to
sense other past-time events and scenes. But, here again, many good past-time
clairvoyants are not able to catch these glimpses of their own past lives,
though able to perceive those of other persons. All these variations are due to
certain technical differences into which I cannot go into detail at this place.
Again some persons are able to perceive events that have happened to persons
present before them, but are not able to contact past-time events in the
ordinary way. There are a thousand-and-one variations in clairvoyant work. Only
the highly advanced occultist is master of all of them. But, still every one
may develop himself or herself, from humble beginnings.
In
concluding this lesson, I wish to call your attention to the following advice
from a man well advanced in the knowledge of the astral plane. He says:
"It would be well for all students to bear in mind that occultism is the
apotheosis of common-sense, and that every vision that comes to them is not
necessarily a picture from the Akashic Records, nor every experience a
revelation from on high. It is far better to err on the side of healthy
skepticism, than of over-credulity, and it is an admirable rule never to hunt
about for an occult explanation of anything when a plain and obvious physical
one is available. Our duty is to endeaveor to keep our balance always, and
never to lose our self-control, but to take a reasonable, common-sense view of
whatever may happen to us, so that we may be wiser occultists, and more useful
helpers than we have ever been before.
"We
find examples of all degrees of the power to see into this 'memory of nature,'
from the trained man who can consult the records for himself at will, down to
the person who gets nothing but occasional vague glimpses, or has perhaps had
only once such glimpse. But even the man who possesses this faculty only
partially and occasionally still finds it of the deepest interest. The
psychometer, who needs an object physically connected with the past in order to
bring it all into life again around him; and the crystal-gazer who can
sometimes direct his less certain astral telescope to some historic scene of
long ago, may both derive the greatest enjoyment from the exercise of their
respective gifts, even though they may not always understand exactly how their
results are obtained, and may not have them fully under control under all
circumstances.
"In
many cases of the lower manifestations of these powers we find that they are
exercised unconsciously. Many a crystal-gazer watches scenes from the past
without being able to distinguish them from visions of the present. And many a
vaguely-psychic person finds pictures constantly arising before his eyes,
without ever realizing that he is in effect psychometrizing the various objects
around him, as he happens to touch them or stand near them. An interesting
variant of this class of psychics is the man who is able to psychometrize
persons only, and not inanimate objects as is more usual. In most cases this
faculty shows itself erratically, so that such a psychic will, when introduced
to a stranger, often see in a flash some prominent event in that stranger's
earlier life, but on similar occasions will receive no special impression. More
rarely we meet with someone who gets detailed visions of the past life of
nearly everyone whom he encounters. It may easily happen, moreover, that a
person may see a picture of the past without recognizing it as such, unless
there happens to be in it something which attracts special attention, such as a
figure in armor, or in antique costume. Its probable, therefore, that
occasional glimpses of these astral reflections of the akashic records are commoner
than the published accounts would lead us to believe."
I
would say to my students, make haste slowly. Do not try to rush development too
rapidly. Perfect and develop yourself in one line of psychic power, before
seeking another. Take things cooly, and do not lose your head because you
happen to achieve some wonderful phenomena. Do not become conceited and
vain-glorious. And, finally, do not prostitute your powers to ignoble ends, and
make a cheap show of them. By cheapening and prostituting the higher psychic
powers, the student frequently ends by losing them altogether. Moderation in
all things is the safe policy. And it always is well for the occultist to
resist temptation to use his powers for unworthy, sensational, or purely
selfish purposes.
Comments
Post a Comment