Psychism is a term deriving from the greek word “psyche”. Τhe term covers all aspects and manifestations of the powers of human and divine soul. It denotes a state of intense inner sensitiveness and its resulting phenomena due to
a sort of perceiving things without the aid of the senses. To psychism are attributed phenomena of mediumship, astral light clairvoyance, prophecy, intuition and insight..
In her letter to the 5th Annual Convention, HPB says this:“Your position as forerunners of the sixth sub-race of the fifth root-race includes both risks resulting from it but also benefits. Psychism with its baits and dangers is growing among you and you must be watchful of its rapid mental and spiritual development. Psychic abilities are best when under control and when guided by the Mental principle; then their aid is remarkable. But, when such abilities are uncontrollable and rule instead of being ruled, use instead of being used, they lead the adherent to most dangerous self-deception and to moral detriment. So, carefully watch this growth which is inevitable with your race and this particular evolutionary period so that it can be ultimately for good and not evil….”
(Letter to the Fifth Annual Conference, p. 173, C.W. 13)
The Worlds of the reversed reflections
The models or Ideas of things exist first on the plane of Divine eternal Consciousness wherefrom they are reflected reversely onto the Astral Light which in turn is reflected onto the lower plane of earthly life, just like a cassette reproduces information. As a result there exists a continuous reflection , this being one of the universal laws. The higher reflected differentiates from the lower and this is exactly what happens between the astral light and the earthly plane where we live.
Additionally, everything formed by our perception is reflected on to the astral light, which is the matter of the astral plane surrounding our globe and to which our psychic nature belongs. Man himself is a microcosm linked with the seven principles and laws that govern the universe and him. With his two aspects, of individuality and personality, he exists in astral light and mainly functions with his astral soul. His individuality belongs to akasa.
There is a great difference between the Astral Light and Akasa. “….the Primary Essence is Akasa, bearer of Divine Thought” (S.D. I, 2, III) and from It the future Cosmos will manifest with its waning material differentiations… “…our higher Ego is of the same essence with It (Akasa) … (Glossary, 22-23), while in its lower sub-divisions where the higher is completely differentiated from the lower, is the abode of human personality.
"The Astral Light is versus Akasa and Anima Mundi –- what Satan is versus Deity." (I, 198, fn.3)
In the Secret Doctrine the following quotation is included:
“While on earth man is a free agent. He cannot get away from the destiny that governs him…from birth to death, the destiny each human being is weaving thread by thread around himself. That destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible prototype outside of us or by the evil voice of our inner astral or inner man” (S.D. I, 639)
Human consciousness is restricted in the physical-astral matter and its spiritual principles are still latent. Our astral consciousness, i.e kamarupa and our lower mental Ego, do not function independently of our physical body. With the exception of people born with certain developed astral senses such as clairvoyance, mediumship, etc; all the rest organize and develop their astral consciousness at a slow pace. Our astral nature will be completed in the future following the steps of evolution.
To be able to understand the function of psychism and its phenomena we must first understand the law of polarity. It is due to this law that whole hosts of impressions – images are being imprinted in astral matter cassette-like or hologram-like. All of our thoughts and impressions leave their mark on the astral light and our individual astral body. Impressions last and produce effects and what matters most is the “persistence”, so to say, of the milder and deeper impression. As soon as an impression becomes part of one’s aura then his aura interacts with other people’s auras. All this provides the clairvoyant with a wide spectrum. This whole sum of individual impressions makes up the network of our own illusion..
Astral Light has its governing role in Nature. We must know that it includes, keeps and reflects images of anything happening to us and every single thought we make; that it permeates the globe and the atmosphere surrounding it; that through the atmosphere the vibration is in fact instantaneous as it proceeds a lot faster that electricity. (Ocean)
Under such conditions our personal desire is projected immediately and the only thing the medium does is to mix his thought-form with other thought-forms, similar or different, circulating in the astral.
Medium’s knowledge on all relevant information that Ancient Wisdom provides for us, can make him understanding the processes so to handle them instead of being handled...
"Unless a clairvoyant or prophet transcends the plane of illusion, he can never see truth, but he will drown himself in an ocean of self-deception and illusion…» (CW X 361)
Should someone like to get in touch with the Archetypes in Akasa, he would have to develop and activate the principles through which he could communicate with that plane.
“The highest order of clairvoyance—that of spiritual vision—is very rare,” explains William Q. Judge, “The usual clairvoyant deals only with the ordinary aspects and strata of the Astral matter and spiritual sight comes only to those who are pure, devoted, and firm…It may be attained by special development of the particular organ in the body through which alone such sight is possible, and only after discipline, long training, and the highest altruism. All other clairvoyance is transitory, inadequate, and fragmentary, dealing, as it does, only with matter and illusion.”
Let us see what HPB says on this:
“If the Higher Mind – immutable and immortal – is of the divine homogeneous essence of Alaya –Akasa (Blavatsky Collected Writings X 324, “Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge”) or Mahat – its reflection, the Personal Mind, is a transient “Principle” of the essence of the Astral Light. As a pure ray of the “Son of Universal Mind” it cannot function in the body but remains weak over the turbulent instruments of Matter. So, while its inner constitution is manasic, its “body” or, better still, its functioning essence is heterogeneous and pervaded by Astral Light, the lowest element of Ether. It is part of the mission of the manasic ray to gradually get rid of the blind, deceptive element which although rendering it an active spiritual entity on this plane, brings it at the same time so close to Matter as to overshadow its divine nature and destroy its foresight”. (CW XII 371, “Psychic and Noetic Action”)
Astral fascination
The first risk lurking in psychism has to do with the medium and sitters taking the astral light illusions for realities, whether concerning the physical’s next plane also called astral earthly light, or other higher sub-divisions of the astral light. For as long as the medium is a slave to his astral soul, i.e. his personality, he is unable to attune himself with the source of divine wisdom. This can only be achieved by those called prophets and spiritual men. All the others fish out of the form - creating plane or the holograms of the earthly astral they are attuned and which is shaped by the thought-forms of our humanity. Images – thought-forms of the Astral Light are classified from higher to lower as follows:
A) Thoughtforms of those who studied and worked on spiritual knowledge we inherited from Ancient Wisdom or Theosophy. In this case it is the mediator’s insight that has to be developed; not his clairvoyance. Insight is individuality’s property. (atma, buddhi, upper manas)
B) Thoughtforms of those who pronounced mostly personal theories and
C) Of those images formed due to attachment with sensual habits.
What influences Psychic Phenomena
Let see some of William Judge’s references in the Ocean of Theosophy, ch. XVII, regarding the conditions to be for psychic phenomena’s projection. It is necessary for us to know and accept the following.
1. There is an astral, spiritual and psychic heredity in man as a being that knows, thinks, feels and acts through the body, the astral body and the soul. (Man is an immortal Monad)
2. The nature, extent, function and powerfulness of man’s inner astral organs and properties included in the terms Astral body and Kama (Desire and Passion); that they are not invalidated by transcendence or sleep, but with regard to the medium they are increased, when in trance, i.e hypnotized or half- hypnotized. At the same time, their action is not independent but governed by the collective thread of the sitters’ thoughts. It may also be governed by the sovereign will of one among the sitters or by the sovereign “evil Kamarupa” from behind the scenes. If a skeptic scientist is present, his mental predisposition can annihilate the effectiveness of the medium’s powers with a sort of crystallization, so to say. (Kama-rupa is the body of desire; it belongs to our lower nature and dominates our personality. Its purification is one of the main targets of individual evolution)
3. Man’s fate and after death attachment to those surviving him on earth.
4. The astral body, in-between mind and body, is cast-off after death to remain in the Astral Light until dissolved, while the real man goes to Devachan. (Devachan is the after death state where human consciousness rests living in a beautiful dream projected by itself and which is already formed by man's views, attachments and action during earthly life)
5. In the Astral Light there are beings not using bodies like ours, not human as to their nature but with powers, faculties and consciousness of their own. They include elementary powers or nature’s spooks of various degrees that are related to all of Nature’s functions and every movement of the human mind; that these elementaries act automatically in spiritualistic séances, each in its domain, while one class presents images, another one produces sounds and others depolarize objects for future apportation. With them act in this Astral sphere “soul-less human beings” (elementals, “shells”) that live there.
6. In Nature there exist active occult laws and powers that can be used to produce miraculous effects on this plane; that these laws and powers may be incited to function by subconscious man and elementaries, consciously or unconsciously, and that many of such occult functions occur automatically just like the water turns to ice when it is too cold or ice melts when too hot.
7. The Astral body of the medium, partaking of the nature of Astral matter, can reach out beyond the physical body, can act outside of its limits and can also cause any part of its body e.g. a hand, an arm or a leg to extend at times and so move objects, write letters, bring about unending bodily malaise;and that such a feeling, when transmitted to the brain, makes one think he has been touched or he has heard a sound of some sort.
Medium’s Risks
To become a medium one has to be disorganized of his normal constitution and his nerve system, because it is via the nerve system that the two worlds are connected. The door once open, all the unknown forces rush in and as the grossest part of nature is closest to us, that part affects us the most. Besides, lower nature is directly affected and enticed as the forces applied outpour from this part of ours. Then we are at the mercy of people’s ill thoughts and subject to the influence of the shells in Kama Loka. (The place of desire; loka meaning place and kama, desire)
The Astral teems with earthbound spirits massively attracted during séances their purpose being either to cheat mediums and sitters or to quench their thirst by literally sucking their vitality. The shells enlivened through this vitality are used by elementals aiming at mocking at the living; also, the elementaries of those dead attached to earth and the simulacra of suicides or killed in violent accidents and crimes form a wicked world shared first by the medium and then by all the rest. In a case like this, called necromancy, which is the worst of all, the risks are the following:
a) The simulacra of the dead, so-called elementaries, learn how to preserve their shells by sucking the vitality of the medium.
b) They turn into vampires.
c) They become pirates of the astral trying to possess earthly bodies through which they may repeatedly satisfy their abominable passions and sensual attachments. This séance worship is what was called in India the worship of Pretas and Bhuts and Pisachas and Ghandarvas.
In the Theosophist we also read that the purpose of a Bhut possessing a medium’s body is to act and speak through his organism. In India such a possession is considered as horrible as 5000 years ago. The Jews of old thought likewise when saying that the victim “had the devil inside him”. No Hindu, Tibetan or Sinhalese, unless of the lowest mental capacity, would feel terrified when detecting signs of “mediumship” manifesting in a member of his family. What in Europe and America is thought of as a “gift”, a “blessing” and “holy mission”, is considered by older peoples whose longer experience than ours taught them more wisdom, as a terrible misfortune while Western people call it natural and inspired mediumship… (The Theosophist, Vol. III, No 9, June 1882, Trance - Speakers, pp.227-8)
In April 1880, a British physician wrote to the Theosophist (Vol. I, no 8, May 1990, pp. 207-8) asking for advice in favor of a patient who had unwillingly become a medium while attending séances wishing to find out if “materializations” were actually true but who eventually lost control, himself.
Blavatsky’s advice was expressed in a description she made of what happens in the case of “…. A negatively polarized man…. being suddenly brought into a current of foul emanations from some vicious person, perhaps still living or perhaps dead, who absorbs the insidious poison as rapidly as quicklime does moisture, until he is saturated with it.” ("A case of Obsession", CW II pp 395-400)
On possession and induction
When a medium is magnetized into sleep or hypnotized, it means that the magnetic fluid of the magnetizer or hypnotizer changes the medium’s astral body polarity. Then his physical body becomes paralyzed and his senses fade out, while the astral body takes command. So, the situation is beyond the hypnotized medium’s control; instead, the hypnotizer is in charge since it is his magnetic fluid that produces this reverse polarization. The medium is now in the hands of the hypnotizer with no resistance and consciousness of his own.
A similar change of polarity between the two bodies and the higher, the spiritual, comes to the medium during séances. His astral body may be used by an elemental and be temporarily or permanently besieged, in which case foul ideas and desires may be imposed on him, against all sense of human dignity.
The great risk lurking during séances is the medium’s passivity which allows all evil beings encaged in the astral to dictate their sensual desires to the medium and lay in ambush for their bearer through whom they will satisfy their physical senses, too.
Thoughts of Great Men on Human Soul
According to Apuleius, “the human soul is an immortal God (Buddhi)…When death frees man from his earthly bodily organism, it is called lemura. Some are favorable and become family gods or demons, i.e. family guardian gods. Then they are called lares. But they are called larvae, when destined by fate to wander about, they diffuse evil and plagues around; or when their nature is somewhat in-between then they are called manes. Iamblichus, Proclus, Porphyry, Psellos and many more occultists refer to such astral beings. (CW 7, p.19)
Chaldea Magi believed and taught that celestial or divine soul partakes in the blessing of eternal light while the animal or sensual soul, if good, dissolves early enough and, if evil, wanders about the earthly sphere. In the latter case “the soul sometimes assumes the shape of various human or animal ghosts. The same thing was said about the Eidolon of the Greeks and Nephesh of the Rabbis”. (Vol. II, p.598)
Middle Ages Illuminati refer to the astral soul as the reflection of water or its spectrum. Upon birth pure spirit remains within the intermediate bright body but as soon as the lower form, i.e. the physical body dies, the spirit joins the heavens while the physical body the under world or Kama loka.
Homer describes to us the body of Patroclus – the real image shows the earthly body lying dead, killed by Hector – ascending to its spiritual form. Lucretius points to old Aeneias who represents Homer himself, bitterly weeping among the shadows and the human simulacra on the banks of Aherousia, where “neither our bodies nor our souls live, but merely our images”. (CW 9, Conversation on Occultism, p. 109)
Α presentation from the two-day conference on Psychic Phenomena held in Athens, in May 2009
