Theos-Talk Archives (September 1995 Message tl00081)

David:

>Many people, particularly those interested in 'spiritualism' spend a
>considerable period of time in attempting to develop or improve their
>psychic powers. This is especially true in the discipline of 'sitting for
>development'. While this may be successful to some extent, it is surely a
>powerful distraction away from more productive lines of investigation and
>study. However in one lifetime or another we may all experience this
>interest. This increase in pyschic powers does not appear to lead to any
>great teaching or experience although the books of White Eagle are, I think,
>worth looking at.

The biggest ill effect of psychic development is the state of passivity
that it often requires. If one has paranormal senses that arise naturally
in life, without any artificial cultivation, they are there for a purpose
and may be helpful. But to practice passivity is to train the mind to stay
in a stupor and is training in lower astral consciousness, rather than in
the higher faculties. The opposite training is taught in Theosophy:
self-assertion,
self-devised efforts to take charge of our lives, self-originated thought.
We become *sources of thought in the world,* rather than passive receptors
of paranormal visions and impressions. Paradoxically, though, we are taught
selflessness, unselfishness, and the transcendence of the personality. It's
a difficult subject to explore.

>A rather crude quote from Stuart Wilde is:"If you are as thick as a brick
>when you are alive, you are as thick as a brick when you are 'dead'." So
>what is the point of trying to contact beings who are not very far removed
>from ourselves, or even not as knowledgable as ourselves. Death does not
>impart great knowledge.

I'd agree that just because someone is now physically dead, that does not impart
any special knowledge. In our theosophical literature, we learn that the person
becomes unconscious, in a dream-like state. The person is first in a kamaloka,
a form of purgatory where desires are burned off, then in devachan, where the
spiritual energies of life (those that were not put into practical action) are
lived through. The whole experience is solitary, in the womb of the Monad, apart
from spheres of Action where we can self-consciously interact with others and
make new karma. We are basically "letting go" of the life energies in our
various
higher principles, in preparation for a subsequent rebirth as a human here on
Globe D earth.

A dead person, then, is not generally awake and aware enough to communicate
with the living. We're told in "The Mahatma Letters" to leave the dead alone,
to leave them in peace, so that they can go on their way. It is hurtful to
them to try to establish contact, after the first few days of their death,
to reawaken their rememberances of the life that has ended. It makes it more
difficult for them to forget, to let go, and to go on. We should, I'd say,
let them rest in peace.

-- Eldon