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Why Does It Take So Long to Achieve Clairvoyance?
Q. Could you explain what it is in this
culture that results in so few people achieving clairvoyance, or at least not
until much later in life?
A.
I guess it comes down to neurosis. That’s the
quickest explanation of that problem. Neurosis usually is an inappropriate
way of responding to things that are going on in your environment, either directly through people or neutral circumstances
impinging on your life. When you are truly in control of what goes on in your
environment, life is incredibly simple. That does not mean that people are not
testing you with different things all the time, but rather that you have the
answers. It is when we do not have the answers that we get upset—we retreat,
we become afraid. When we are afraid of a situation we cannot control, then
we become angry at it, too. Anger is not very productive towards anything
useful, but it is a natural response to frustration or not being able to
control what is going on. I do not mean to imply that you are lording it over people when I say that you are in control.
I mean that whatever is thrown at you, you are able
to cope with. You have learned how to deal with it; so you deal with it
effectively. Most young people, of course, do not as yet
have the skills of living in order to know how to handle all those
challenges.
One of the techniques of
developing clairvoyance is shutting down that internal dialogue or brain
chatter that goes on all the time. People who are pressed
by external circumstances do not seem to be able to turn off that internal
chatter. They are always responding to things which are
happening to them rather than being at peace, being quiet, in control,
and able to just be. And, clairvoyance very
much requires being able to still all that brain activity that is going on,
which usually is very unproductive anyway. Neurotic thinking tends to be
repetitive, constantly, of the same lack of solutions, and it becomes
circular thinking—a continuous loop, repeating over and over again unless we
are able to solve that problem and break out and think straight. Repetitious
thinking is not productive and it continues because it hasn’t
answered the question. Once you answer the question, you do not have to think
about it any longer. Young people find scores and scores of areas of their
life where they have not arrived at the answers, so the circular thinking is
predominant and goes on continually.
Q.
So if they solve enough
problems, there isn’t so much chatter going on in their head?
A.
Literally! If you’re
going to have peace, you have got to have some kind of serenity that is based
on your life going the way you want it to go. That does not mean there aren’t challenges. Challenges are things to be met. But, the challenges can
be met with effective and appropriate responses.
Q.
So doesn’t that require some
kind of internal dialogue to work through those challenges?
A. Yes, it
does. And, once you’ve made the breakthrough,
you are free from having to think about it any longer. The best way, always,
to avoid neurosis is to be trained from infancy how
to deal effectively with life: how to recognize situations and then respond
appropriately to them. Most of us have not had the luxury of having been reared in such a way. We were kind of thrown off the edge of the pier to either sink or
swim, and we do a lot of flailing about in the process of keeping from
sinking. That seems to be what life is like for many people —just flailing
around.
Q. So you are
playing catch-up all your life and never get there until about fifty or sixty
years old?
A. Finally,
at about forty-five or fifty years old, you can maybe say, “Now I know what’s
going on.” And, a lot of the things you worried about
in your teens, twenties, and thirties were never things that you had to worry
about in the first place. You did not know that, and probably other people
said you should worry about certain things, but you finally perceive that was
just a myth. Religion, for instance, puts all kinds of limitations on you for
reasons that simply are not valid. There are many things
that are very valid in religion, but most of the things that goof up
your life are the parts that are not valid; and you have to figure out which
is real and which is not real in religious philosophies, and that is a task
for a lifetime.
So, when a person is able
to blank his mind for a while, like in using the Violet Screen, which you
know about as a meditation device, that is a device which allows you to hear
your Ego. Your Ego is functioning all the time on the Fourth Plane of
Existence. That is the Ego’s natural place to he, and your Ego is making your
body do the things that you want it to do so that you can accomplish your
desires on the physical plane. Many teachers have said that this physical plane
is just an illusion since that is not where things are really happening. The
important things that are happening concern human motivation and response on
the Egoic level on the Fourth Plane of Existence. But,
you first have to learn how to control this plane of existence before you can
move out of this kindergarten up to the next grade, which may be real or may
not be according to your philosophy at the moment. But,
that is what the great mystics of the world over the past several millennia
have pointed out to us. A lot of people say, “Well, if this is all an
illusion, why bother with it at all? I will just kill myself and save a lot
of time.” Bu,t that
doesn’t get you graduated from kindergarten on this physical plane. We are
all forced into having to solve the same kinds of problems, and there are
great rewards in having accomplished this, but most of us are pretty confused in the process of getting there. (02-1990)
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