Theos-Talk Archives (April 2005 Message tt01319)

Madame Blavatsky in ISIS UNVEILED gives
an important key to understanding "seership":

"There are two kinds of seership -- that of
the soul and that of the spirit. The seership
of the ancient Pythoness, or of the modern
mesmerized subject, vary but in the
artificial modes adopted to induce the
state of clairvoyance. But, as the visions
of both depend upon the greater or less
acuteness of the senses of the astral body,
they differ very widely from the perfect,
omniscient spiritual state; for, at best,
the subject can get but glimpses of truth,
through the veil which physical nature
interposes. The astral principle, or mind
. . . is the sentient soul, inseparable
from our physical brain, which it holds in
subjection, and is in its turn equally
trammelled by it. This is the ego, the
intellectual life-principle of man, his
conscious entity. While it is yet within the material body, the
clearness and correctness of its spiritual visions depend on its more
or less intimate relation with its higher Principle. When this
relation is such as to allow the most ethereal portions of the soul-
essence to act independently of its grosser particles and of the
brain, it can unerringly comprehend what it sees; then only is it the
pure, rational, supersentient soul. That state is known in India as
the Samaddi. . . .When the body is in the state of dharana -- a total
catalepsy of the physical frame -- the soul of the clairvoyant may
liberate itself, and perceive things subjectively. And yet, as the
sentient principle of the brain is alive and active, these pictures
of the past, present, and future will be tinctured with the
terrestrial perceptions of the objective world; the physical memory
and fancy will be in the way of clear vision. But the seer-adept
knows how to suspend the mechanical action of the brain. His visions
will be as clear as truth itself, uncolored and undistorted, whereas,
the clairvoyant, unable to control the vibrations of the astral
waves, will perceive but more or less broken images through the
medium of the brain. The seer can never take flickering shadows for
realities, for his memory being as completely subjected to his will
as the rest of the body, he receives impressions directly from his
spirit. Between his subjective and objective selves there are no
obstructive mediums. This is the real spiritual seership, in which,
according to an expression of Plato, soul is raised above all
inferior good. When we reach "that which is supreme, which is simple,
pure, and unchangeable, without form, color, or human qualities: the
God -- our Nous."

This is the state which such seers as Plotinus and Apollonius termed
the "Union to the Deity". . . but this state is as far above modern
clairvoyance as the stars above glow-worms. Plotinus, as is well
known, was a clairvoyant-seer during his whole and daily life; and
yet, he had been united to his God but six times during the sixty-six
years of his existence, as he himself confessed to Porphyry."

Quoted from: ISIS UNVEILED, Volume 2, pp. 590-591

Daniel
http://hpb.cc