Chapter 7. Occult Means Of Perception

The major claims of occultism can be summarized thus:

1. There are nonphysical worlds.

2. Human consciousness can and does operate in these nonphysical worlds to various degrees and extents.

I have already stated that the validity of the incredible and marvelous claims of occultism rest upon the reality of the siddhis. Through our previous discussions we have already developed a decent understanding of the nature of the siddhis. We have seen that the siddhis involve the perception of the nonphysical worlds, and that these enhanced modes of perception are brought about by the awakening of the chakras. And we have already seen examples of the use of these siddhis in the work of Besant and Leadbeater, Dora van Gelder Kunz, and Robert Monroe.

I would like to spend this chapter commenting on the nature of the siddhis from a less occult perspective and attempt to pin down in a more precise and accessible fashion just what is really going on here: what psychic abilities or siddhis are really like in terms of the subjective experience, and how our normal consciousness is related to these abilities. Perhaps by showing how many of the facets of normal circumstances in our everyday experience are related to these so-called psychic abilities, it will become more apparent that occult views are self-validating and essentially correct descriptions of human experience and constitution with respect to the major claims of occultism.

Let us begin by discussing the notion that psychic abilities are extensions of normal human faculties. What this basically means is that normal humans already possess psychic abilities1. What are the psychic abilities of normal humans? Basically, all of the nonphysical attributes of human behavior are psychic abilities. We think and imagine, feel emotions and physical sensations, we perceive our environment, and we dream. These are indeed psychic abilities. Yet these behaviors are so common we do not think of them as such. And on the other hand, we mystify the possibility of out-of-body travel or telepathy.

What we are really dealing with here are attitudes and misconceptions. The common belief and attitude is that, on one hand, there are "normal" behaviors like thinking, feeling and dreaming. On the other hand, it is commonly believed that psychic abilities such as mind-reading, fortune telling and OOBEs are not normal and are somehow magical and mystical. We associate a mystique with these latter behaviors that we do not with the more common behaviors. Yet it must be realized that, even within the occult context, this distinction is arbitrary, mostly meaningless and grounded in baseless misconceptions. Given this dichotomous attitude we have essentially two choices: we can either see our normal psychological behaviors of thinking, feeling and dreaming to be just as mysterious and magical as out-of-body experiences and clairvoyance, or we can accept the seemingly unusual abilities to be just as normal and commonplace as our everyday behavior.

I think it is instructive to dwell on this dichotomous attitude. Just how and why has this distinction come about? Why are thinking, feeling and dreaming considered normal and nobody blinks an eye over them, but OOBEs, for example, elicit suspicion, incredulity and disbelief? If I were to say to you, "I'm thinking a thought right now", nobody would even care. But if I said that I traveled to the astral plane last night, or that I can see your aura, then depending on who I'm talking to, I might be deemed insane or turned into a celebrity.

It's interesting to observe how different classes of people react to the notion of, say, having an OOBE. I've personally noticed that uneducated (university uneducated that is) people tend to be mystified, but accepting, when confronted with these types of claims. The more educated people are however, the less likely they are to accept the possibility that these types of events are real. Apparently the educated people know better and the uneducated ones are just credulous. But I think the "educated" people have been so thoroughly conditioned by the legitimate educational system, into its definitions of what is and is not real, that they are incapable of seeing something that is right in front of their face unless it fits into standard definitions. This is quite an ironic situation. The myths of the peasants turn out to be real; what could be a worse nightmare to the university professor?

Still, there are very good reasons for this dichotomy of attitudes. First off, generally speaking, the uneducated are credulous with regard to these types of matters. This is one of the main reasons occultism has the bad reputation it does in our society. Secondly, and most importantly, this dichotomy exists because, in spite of the relatively frequent occurrence of so-called inexplicable psychic events, the legitimate and educated sector of our society is not only uninformed about the widespread occurrence of these types of events, but as well has no clear means of conceptualizing them. I will discuss this latter point from other perspectives elsewhere.

Having pinpointed the attitudes surrounding normal and unusual psychic abilities, I will now attempt to show the actual gradation between normal and unusual psychic abilities. We will now look at some examples in which the above dichotomy applies and attempt to dispel this dichotomy and replace it with a more equitable understanding.

Let us begin by considering an example: a typical parapsychology experiment designed to show precognitive abilities, in which a subject is asked to guess the order of cards in a deck. The parapsychologist will record the number of right guesses and then calculate the probability that these guesses were due solely to chance. Then perhaps the results were such that the odds were one in one thousand that the subject's guesses were due to chance. The parapsychologist would then take this as evidence for precognitive abilities. Unfortunately, psychic abilities do not work this way. All the experimenter proved is that one can measure a statistical fluke. The fact that there was an intention present in the subject's mind--the intention to guess the order of cards in a deck--prevented the subject from even being open to the possibility of any real type of precognitive event. True precognition is a holistic event requiring both mind and emotions, and is always context dependent.

Here is a better illustration of a precognitive event: Let us say that during our above experiment the subject noticed that the experimenter was a bit pale, and seemed unusually tired. The thought passed briefly through the subject's mind that perhaps the experimenter is coming down with a cold or something. Then, two days later, completely unknown to the subject, the experimenter is in bed with the flu. Indeed, the subject saw the future! Thus, by all rights this was a precognitive event. "But it is only common sense" you say. There was nothing particularly unique or special about the subject's surmising that the experimenter was unhealthy. But the point here is that this is the essence of precognition. The subject, in the context of the situation, saw the situation for what it was, and intuitively saw where the situation was going. Furthermore, it took no effort or intention on the subject's part. Had the subject not been so preoccupied by the experiment he or she might have recommended that the experimenter go see a doctor.

This first example illustrates many of the factors involved not only in the actuality of psychic abilities, but also how our dichotomous attitude about them and lack of clear comprehension of them muddles up our understanding of such events. The first important factor to recognize is that the exercising of psychic abilities is context dependent. In our example, the context was two people sitting in a room performing a parapsychology experiment. The actual experiment was incidental, the important fact was that it was two people involved in some type of activity. And from one person to another, the subject saw that the experimenter was not feeling well. Often however, the person experiencing true psychic events may not even realize the context in which these events are meaningful.

Secondly, psychic abilities occur spontaneously (at least at the level that normal people experience them), they cannot be forced. Our subject quite automatically and intuitively recognized the experimenter's condition in spite of other pretenses that may have been operating.

Thirdly, psychic abilities manifest within and through the totality of the subject's awareness, they can not be turned on or off like a machine (again at the level normal people experience them). As a corollary to this third point, the development of any type of psychic ability is gradual, like learning to play a musical instrument for example (an apt example in that developing psychic abilities is like learning to play the body/mind as if it were a musical instrument!).

Such occurrences as illustrated in the above example are so common place, and happen to us so frequently that it seems silly to think of them as psychic abilities at all. The normal social concept of precognition is one in which astrologers predict impending disasters for Hollywood celebrities in the tabloids. This latter attitude is simply a media induced misconception. But even in spite of such silly mass popular notions as this, the misconceptions even continue to more refined levels.

The above example illustrates the essential absurdity of the present attitudes and misconceptions about psychic abilities possessed by those who claim to seriously study such things. The parapsychologist in our example has decontextualized the situation by creating an artificial environment that does nothing other than reveal the parapsychologist's metaphysical assumptions about life. In this environment he assumes that man can be studied in a test tube and treated like a rat in a cage. Such an approach may have a type of validity for chemistry and physics, but systems as complex as human beings cannot be so dissected without destroying that which one desires to study. Parapsychologists are artificial. They do not realize (as occultists do very clearly, as we saw with Leadbeater, for example) that the entire world of human behavior is their laboratory. Furthermore, such a front only dampens out the real subtleties involved in the study of psychic occurrences. The reality of the situation is that one cannot attempt to objectively study psychic abilities without developing one's own psychic abilities. It is inherently a participatory exercise. One simply cannot abstractly decontextualize the reality of psychic abilities from one's everyday life and experience.

From the occult point of view, even the issue of the siddhis as an extension of our "normal" nonphysical behaviors is a sticky one. On the one hand, occultists often downplay the use of psychic abilities and consider them a hindrance to the greater goal of achieving "enlightenment". In this context, siddhis are seen to be by-products of meditative practices, and it is taught in the occult that these can often serve to mislead and confuse the student.

On the other hand, in Theosophical occultism, one encounters the attitude that it is impossible to prove the existence of the siddhis to those who do not believe in the existence of such things. I do not believe this is a valid attitude. This attitude is basically a defense mechanism on the part of occultists in the face of a culture that grants no legitimacy to the occult in the first place. The issue is not proving the existence of psychic abilities; the fundamental issue is one of paradigms or world-views. Modern paradigms, especially those of science, simply do not include psychic abilities as a component of their world-view. What we are dealing with in the occult attitude that claims that one cannot "prove" the existence of psychic abilities is the equivalent of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. If a paradigm or world-view does not accept occult realities, then no amount of proof or disproof is going to change this fact. Attempting to "prove" that psychic abilities exist within this context is sheer folly. This is a situation that Thomas Kuhn describes in great detail; the inability of different paradigms to communicate. This process Kuhn called "communication breakdown" and it refers to the fact that people with different paradigms do not communicate, but actually speak right through each other. This is because each camp gives different meanings to the same words so each interprets one another, not accurately, but hearing only what one wants to hear. Thus, I suggest occultists do away with this attitude that one cannot "prove" the existence of psychic abilities and instead recognize that occultists see and describe a world that includes psychic abilities whereas scientists do not, and recognize that what is really at issue here is the difference between occult and scientific paradigms. Not only will this remove the embarrassment to occultists for always having to "apologize" to scientists for not having cold, hard "proof" of occult phenomena, but it will show a degree of intellectual sophistication on the part of occultists that detractors of occult claims cannot easily dismiss.

Another highly noteworthy point in the example above is that the subject did not later on realize that the experimenter did indeed get sick. The idea here is significance. Since we have mystified and decontextualized our inherent abilities of foresight to such an extent, we usually do not recognize when we have actually experienced or had a significant and useful insight. Another example in this regard is when we experience a first impression upon meeting a person. We can mystify the occult fact of reading auras. But the simple reality is that we all possess this ability to "read a person's aura". However, our minds are usually so filled with superficial and irrelevant images and we are so little in touch with our own emotions that whatever impressions we do receive from people are ignored or misinterpreted.

All of this consideration leads us to a very important point concerning occult doctrines and the development of psychic abilities. Highly developed psychic abilities, abilities that aptly deserve the label of siddhis, such as the ability to read (or actually, to sense and "feel") auras, see and travel to other worlds, sense the future outcome of events, these are all extremely subtle sensations and alterations of consciousness. In our culture of Hollywood hype and mystique, our stressful and competitive lifestyles, our cold and bland need to one-up our neighbors, the development of true psychic gifts in this type of moral climate is unthinkable. Most of the occult practices leading to the development of psychic abilities are practices that relate to calming the mind and learning how to control thoughts that are like wild bulls (or "chattering monkeys" as is said in Patañjali's Yoga aphorisms), practices related to calming the emotions, practices related to eliminating unnecessary desires that serve no purpose other than to feed themselves, practices of learning to be very open and honest with oneself and one's intentions, and studies that teach and show the intimate relationship between Humankind and Nature.

Without the development of these qualities one simply cannot "tune into" the very subtle sensations that result. Our minds are simply too noisy. Yet we have parapsychologists and New-Agers, both very much a part and product of a culture that espouses values antithetical to the development of true occult gifts, running around dazzling themselves with relatively trivial (from an occult view) psychological events that they have misconstrued out of all reasonable proportion.

And this leads us to an important point that is always stressed in occult teachings and that is, without the qualities described above, any development of psychic abilities is potentially detrimental. We glamorize the possibility of reading minds or seeing auras, or going to the astral plane. But in reality these are not glamorous abilities. If anything, the development of these abilities is a very sobering and disappointing, if not a downright dangerous experience. For we open ourselves up to subjective experiences that are very powerful if we are not prepared to cope with them.

Turning on (or consciously tuning into) our psychic abilities, even to the most minute of degrees begins to reveal to us the hidden undersides of our subjective (and objective or physical) existence. The veneers and facades of our outer existence begin to become transparent, and we begin to see the underlying intents and motivations behind actions and appearances. This is a very scary experience because what one finds is mostly fear and deceit, insecurity and haughtiness. One senses a strange and confused groping towards a goal that is not too clear. And if we probe far enough beyond these underlying motifs, there is simply nothing there at all.

The teachings of the occult prepare the student to cope with these realities both emotionally and intellectually, but even such preparation pales when confronted with the actual realities behind our lives. Thus, if we were to take a normal person and somehow magically turn on all of their siddhis, this person would probably go stark raving mad. To hear all the voices in other people's minds, and to feel the feelings that other people experience, let alone to confront the feeling-scapes and mind-scapes of the nonphysical worlds is an overwhelming, draining and utterly engulfing experience. Luckily, our perceptions are as narrow as they are given our present views of ourselves and of Nature.

Let us consider another example of psychic abilities now, that of mind-reading or telepathy. Consider the following standard conception of telepathy: A parapsychologist may have one subject sit at one location and view paintings while a second subject at another location tries to read the first subject's mind and describe the content of the paintings2. This type of an approach to "mind-reading" is so far removed from anything that is real that it simply is not worth addressing.

Here is a hypothetical example of real mind-reading: A mother has been having problems with her delinquent son. She comes home from work one day and finds the money in her drawer missing. She questions her son about the money but he denies taking it. The mother knows he is lying. A second example: A couple sits at home watching TV. For the fifth time that evening, the commercial for the Time-Life books on Supernatural and Unexplained Phenomena comes on, and simultaneously they both say, "Not this again!". A third example: Johnny is a fourth grader, and his teacher is at the board explaining long division and Johnny understands. A fourth example: The husband walks into the house and he is unusually cheery. The wife thinks that something is up, and he gives her a box of candy and flowers because he happened to be in an unusually good mood today and thought it would be nice. A fifth example: Two children at the beach build a sand castle together. A sixth example: Two people are arguing on a street corner. A third person walks by unnoticed and unaware of the two arguers, but begins to think negative thoughts. A seventh example: The disciple goes before the Zen Master and asks, "Master am I enlightened yet?", and the Master says, "No". Now these are examples of mind-reading.

From the mystique and bedazzled point of view, "mind-reading" is some mystical process that, in some nebulous sense, is accomplished when the mind reader goes into another's head and somehow magically "reads" their thoughts. Once again; it simply does not work like this. In the chapter "The Psychological Value Of Quantum Theory" I explain how clairvoyants literally "see" (with their third eye chakra) the thoughts emanating from a person's mental body, and if they are clairaudient then they will literally "hear" (via the throat chakra) the voices in other people's heads. But even these occult descriptions of mind-reading are so incomplete that they are misleading.

The essence of "mind-reading" in the above examples is this: In some sense or another, our minds can be likened to radio receivers and ideas can be likened to radio transmissions. When we think a thought we are literally broadcasting our thought into our mental environment. And there it floats ready for another mind to receive it. Mental events are experienced in all cases and with no exceptions by some type of mental resonance.

Let me make this perfectly clear: normal verbal and nonverbal communication (such as the shrug of the shoulders or a smile) could not occur without this resonance process. Therefore, when we say "Good morning" to our neighbors, they are literally reading our mind to understand our intention. When I wave good-bye to someone they are literally reading, or resonating with, or locking onto the broadcast of my mind.

The phrase "good morning" or the wave of my hand are simply outer physical expressions of my thought, of my intent. I think it is very important to realize that words and physical gestures are in some respects simply crutches, or better yet, scaffolds on which to carry meaning and intent. Words and physical gestures are the end product, the effect. It is the mental broadcast, the meaning, the intention, that is the cause. It is this cause, this intent, that is the essence of communication. It is the intent that is broadcast and conveyed, whether or not it is received and interpreted as such. Thus, all communication is "mind-reading" in the sense that all communication is sympathetic mental resonance, or to use a more technical term, mental phase-locking.

Now we return back to our dichotomous attitude and ask: why don't we realize that mind-reading and normal human communication are the same thing? There are two levels on which this can be answered, the academic level and the experiential level.

First the academic level; Stated as simply as possible, there is no clear conception of processes of human communication in modern science. No one has it, not the psychologists, not the sociologists, not the biologists. The only ones who have the right (i.e.. applicable) ideas are the physicists but they think in terms of atoms, not humans. These ideas about mental resonance are expressed very clearly in occult teachings, but as such, they are obscured by occult jargon and fail to convey as clearly as they could how prevalent such processes are in our day to day and moment by moment behavior. A synthesis of modern physical ideas about wave behavior with occult ideas of emotional and mental resonance could potentially produce a very clear and useful conception about processes of human communication. This synthesis is discussed in detail in the chapters "The Psychological Value of Quantum Physics" and "A New Concept Of Motion". Thus, the legitimate academia of science doesn't know what human communication is to begin with, let alone to be able to understand this process in the context of "mind-reading", and the illegitimate academia of occultism has not yet expressed clearly enough the equivalence of normal human communication and mind-reading/aura reading.

But there are deeper and more relevant reasons in terms of our day to day experience as to why we do not recognize the nature of how we communicate with others, and what this may or may not have to do with reading other's minds. The basic issue here is being quiet and paying attention. I mean, for God's sake, we are human beings. Why do we need some kind of expert, be it a scientist or an occultist, to tell us what we are? If we would only pay close attention to what is going on in our minds and emotions when we communicate with others, then we could understand for ourselves what is going on here.

But unfortunately we don't pay attention. And the main reason for this comes from the very processes that underlie our ability to think and communicate. This resonance process that underlies our psychological behavior is so subtle, all-pervading and effective that we are blinded from it. We are too caught up in the resonances to see ourselves resonate. We are spun round and around in a dizzying cascade of never-ending sensations, thoughts and emotions; pulsating us, scintillating us, gyrating us in our subjective experience. These psychological resonances that I am speaking of are not some dry and bland academic phraseology. These psychological resonances are real, eminently real; they are your feelings and your thoughts, your expectations and desires, motivations, wishes, hopes and dreams, your anxieties and pleasures, your fantasies, the images in your mind, the voice in your head, your attitudes, all the things you know, all your memories, and all the things you think yourself to be. These resonances are your conceptions of right and wrong, and the things you hear on TV, and the things you are taught in school, and all the things you read in books and newspapers, and see in movies. It is your image of mother and father, priest and policeman, our society and all of its definitions, conceptions and creations, all the needs, it is Crest toothpaste and the need to be seen with a pretty woman, it is dry underarms and fresh feminine protection. It is all the images, images, images, feelings, feelings, feelings that echo day in and day out through all of our minds.

All the content of all our perceptions and subjectivity is the space of these psychological resonances. But it is not a space, for spaces are thought of as empty. No, it is a jungle, a damp, dark, threatening psychological jungle full of strange and exotic thought and feeling creatures. And we are like blind men running about in the darkness of the jungle of our awareness, fumbling from one resonance to another. Luckily at times we sleep, then more luckily we eventually die. And that is why we say "God rest his soul", because after a psychological roller coaster ride like this one, our souls are ready for a rest.

All these things are the essence of our subjective awareness and these things are the psychological resonances of which I speak. And we are so blinded by them, so preoccupied with them, and so hypnotized by them that we do not see them for what they are. Instead, we do the exact opposite, we believe in these things, and we identify ourselves with them and define ourselves by them. We do not identify with the bacteria that live in our skin, yet we identify with the thought-germs that live in minds and emotions. And because we do so, we never understand truly the processes that underlie our subjective behavior. And most importantly, we never come to realize just what we really are underneath these dizzying psychological resonances.

It is not really accurate to say that we identify with the mental resonances themselves or that we are even really aware of them. Instead we are caught up in the effects of these resonances; the images, thoughts and words that result from our intentions. This is form at the expense of substance and it is the image that sells us. We buy the prettier box on the shelf, and if we don't have enough money then there's always a reasonable facsimile at a cheaper price. The result of this preoccupation with form is that we will sit and argue about useless semantics instead of penetrating through to straight answers. It's more important to memorize the equation than to understand what it means. It's more important to get good grades than to really learn what you are being taught. It's word length and not content that is important to us.

These types of attitudes serve to illustrate how little we are really aware of the mind as an organ of intent. We think of the mind only in terms of the images and thoughts that are produced from our intent. Thus we think of mind-reading as the reading of these images and thoughts. But in actual practice, mind-reading is the reading of intent. True mind reading has little to do with the actual images in a person's mind, unless it is approached from a clairvoyant perspective, and even in this case, the mental images are still but the by-product of intent. In terms of our every-day ability to "read minds", the images are only the effect of the intent. And often in our culture these images serve only to cover up or mask our real intents. Thus we normally do not see our minds for what they are. So how could we ever hope to be able to "read" another's mind?

Up to this point, I hope I have to some extent been successful in illustrating that our normal subjective abilities are indeed psychic abilities. The two main reasons we don't realize this are; 1. Because we are blinded by the very processes underlying our subjectivity, and 2. Because we have created an artificial dichotomy between psychic abilities and our normal subjective behaviors.

At this point, I would like to extend my discussion of occult means of perception and address the issue of altered states of consciousness. Here I am referring to states of subjective awareness that are somehow different from our normal state of waking consciousness. In the context of "psychic abilities", such states would include the advanced siddhis (i.e. astral or mental "sight"), trance, hypnosis, yogic meditation states, out-of-body experiences, and drug induced alterations in consciousness, and finally, the one altered state of consciousness with which we are all intimately familiar, that of our dreams. Also in this category of altered states of consciousness, some psychologists would include schizophrenia and creative behavior3.

When we look at the claims of Seth or of Leadbeater regarding their abilities to perceive nonphysical worlds to the extent they do, we again are faced with a situation that seems very abnormal. It is one thing to show that the parapsychologist's approach to psychic abilities is based on an artificial dichotomy that has stemmed from the fact that we are mostly blinded by the subjective processes we wish to study, but when we deal with the claims of occultists it does indeed seem that here is an altogether different mode of perception from anything we "normal" people encounter. Most of us do not talk to nature spirits and trees (as Leadbeater did often), nor do we visit and communicate with discarnate entities, nor do we travel to other planes of existence on any regular basis. Or do we?

Again the fundamental issue here is one of attitudes and misconceptions. It is easy to glamorize the claims of a Seth or a Leadbeater at the expense of seeing how what they are talking about is relevant to our normal everyday lives. So we see Leadbeater as something greater than human because he traveled regularly to the nonphysical planes. But we also travel regularly to the nonphysical planes, except in this case we call it "dreaming". Perhaps we have had a dream about a deceased relative, or a dream in which we talked to an animal. Well, if this was the case, then it would be quite fair to say that you have traveled to the astral plane and communicated with discarnate entities and nature spirits. It all lies in how we interpret the event.

It seems to me that the real reason we make the distinctions we do between ourselves on one hand, and someone like Leadbeater on the other hand, is because we fundamentally misinterpret what someone like Leadbeater is saying. We misinterpret what he means. When we dream, we are in the astral plane. You have a crown chakra too, and it opens at night when you are asleep and you leave your body and go to the astral plane. But we don't interpret Leadbeater like this. Instead we glamorize Leadbeater and his abilities. We make Leadbeater a celebrity and fail to see in ourselves what he is describing. Or we see a Leadbeater as a complete charlatan and dismiss his claims as nonsense.

I honestly do not understand why people have the need to create celebrities and charlatans. Perhaps it has to do with insecurity. Are we so insecure that we need to project our fantasies of what we want to be, or our fears of what we might actually be onto others? It seems to me that this might have something to do with why our culture does not in general understand altered states of consciousness, and then makes a big deal (be it positive or negative) out of those who do.

If there is a reason to respect individuals like Leadbeater, it is because they are trail blazers opening up for us new and wider vistas of experience. Such people serve as models displaying to us new attitudes that will allow us to cope with the actuality of the depths of our unconscious and consciously repressed experience.

Again, the bottom line to developing a clear understanding of the more extreme occult means of perception is to first expose our attitude and misconceptions about these abilities. Then, when we have put the issue in a more reasonable perspective, we can discuss the subtleties involved. Now that I have exposed the general attitudes that seem to surround our conceptions of altered states of consciousness, let's turn to a more reasonable discussion of this subject.

Indeed, we all experience altered states of consciousness, at the very least within our dreams. And what I began to discuss above is that, when we deal with the claims of occultists and their abilities to perceive and interact with nonphysical worlds, what we are dealing with is an issue of degree. A true occultist is someone who has taken the time and learned how to dream and to perceive in a more effective manner. Now what does this mean?

From an occult point of view, altered states of consciousness are explained in terms of human nonphysical anatomy. The altered states of consciousness that one can be taught to achieve through occult practices (i.e. yoga or ritual magic) are explained as occurring because consciousness leaves the physical body and enters into the nonphysical worlds via the nonphysical bodies. Examples of this process include trance, meditative states and out-of-body states. All of these states are grounded in very similar processes, at least in subjective terms, though there are subtle physiological differences involved4. Subjectively, these processes are identical to dreaming, the main exception being that the occultist is paying attention to the properties of the dream world and his subjective states in the dream world. Normally when we dream we do not pay attention to ourselves while in the dream, nor do we attempt to correlate dream events with the events of our waking life, at least not to any serious extent. Mainly this is due to our cultural conditioning. In our society we are never taught to do this. Yet an occultist does do these things. The occultist will pay attention to how his or her behavior is different in the dream world and how this relates to waking life. This is the essence of occult means of perception. These are people who take their dreams seriously and attempt to compare experience in the dream world with experience in normal life.

And as we all know, things are different in the dream world. There we can fly, scenes change rapidly and unpredictably, emotions seem to take on a life of their own (as we all know from our nightmares), at times we seem to be able to control things and situations with our mind in ways that we cannot in normal life. These types of observations form the basis for the whole concept of the planes in occult teachings. In the occult paradigm, it is taken as an axiom that the world of dreams is as real as the world of our waking experience, and occultists bring back and record experiences and information they have gathered there.

The bottom line to all of this is that we commonly experience occult states of perception in the act of dreaming. Again we are left with the choice of either mystifying our dream experiences, or realizing that most occult claims are grounded in events as ordinary as our dreams.

Now there is one type of altered state of consciousness left to discuss. I would like to turn to the case of the highly developed siddhis of the advanced yogi. This is a situation in which a person is wide awake (that is, not in any type of trance condition) in the physical world yet is fully capable of perceiving the nonphysical world in a fashion totally removed from anything in normal life. This is a Leadbeater.

To set a contrast, we must realize that in normal life our emotions are our perception of the astral plane and our minds are our perceptions of the mental plane. Yet, there are states of consciousness in which one can literally perceive the astral and/or mental worlds in their full extent as worlds quite distinct though interrelated with the physical world. These are states of awareness in which the astral and/or mental planes are seen superimposed over perceptions of the physical world. This is what the highly developed clairvoyant sees. To understand how this type of clairvoyance compares to our ordinary perception of these planes via our emotions and minds, imagine that you are blind-folded, have ear-plugs in so you cannot hear, and you are tied up and cannot move. Needless to say, such a condition would create a very limited perception of the physical world. Now, this is what our emotions and mind are compared to the clairvoyant perception of the astral and mental worlds. Compared to the advanced clairvoyant, we are literally blind, deaf and dumb on the astral and mental planes.

It seems that there is absolutely no precedence in our physical experience which would allow us to understand the nature of highly developed clairvoyance, except the writings and claims of those who have developed such skills. At this point I will simply state that there are certain drugs available which mimic features of this degree of clairvoyance. This is such an important topic with regard to the relation between science and occultism that I have devoted two entire discussions to it in the chapters "Biological Perceptions" and "A Synthesis Of Science And Occultism In Light Of Modern Neurosciences". Here the reader will find this topic thoroughly discussed. I mention it at this point simply to give a complete overview of occult means of perception.

To conclude this discussion of occult means of perception, I think the essential factor we must realize is that it is our misconceptions of these phenomena, and the fact that these phenomena are so prevalent that they blind us, that makes us see them in the light we presently do. These abilities that occultists speak of, so-called psychic abilities, are in actuality primarily extensions of things we do very naturally in our day to day subjective behavior. There is one exception to this, the case of highly developed clairvoyance, and this is discussed ahead.

So, as I said above, with regard to this issue of psychic abilities and occult means of perception, we have essentially two choices of attitudes we can take on the topic. We can either come to see these phenomena as being "normal" in the same way that we see our day to day subjective behaviors as normal. Or we can come to view our inherent subjective abilities of thinking and sensing and feeling as being just as magical and mystical as the ability to read minds or sense the future. I honestly think both attitudes can be held at the same time.

Notes: Chapter 7

1For a technique book on developing clairvoyance that is grounded in the supposition that psychic abilities are extensions of our normal psychology see Opheil, (1982).

2This is an actual parapsychology experiment from the literature. I can't remember where I read it though, which is probably better off for all of us.

3Mavromatis, (1987).

4The physiology of altered states of consciousness is very involved and technical, thus I have not dwelled on it to any great extent here. Some discussions that are pertinent can be found in Wallace, (1973) or Motoyama, (1984) (physiology of yogic meditative states); Mavromatis (1987) (physiology of hypnogogic, dream and meditative states); Aaronson and Osmond, (1970) (physiology of hallucinogenic drug induced states); Freeman, (1991) (physiology of normal perception in terms of chaos theory); Van Woerkom, (1990) (speculative hypothesis on the biochemistry of hallucinogenic drug states and schizophrenia).

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