Doug Fisichella...
Douglas Fisichella is a Student of the Arcane School founded by Alice A. Bailey and a life long student of the worlds religions
Esoteric Training and Psychic Development
In considering any subject from Philosophy or Science to Literature, it seems the first step is to define the field of enquiry. Just what is it we are to consider and will there be any boundaries? Esoteric training is in the broadest sense so all encompassing as to make the term almost meaningless. The moment we look at a happening, a thought, a feeling, or perhaps an inspiration, in considering its meaning we have crossed a line into a new realm. Every pursuit of something as yet unknown fits into this category and is, in that broad sense Esoteric Training because in such pursuits the student is essentially self taught. The moment he asks the question "why?" with regard to what he observes in his world, his quest has begun and only he is qualified to say when he has found the answer. There is an implication of detachment in the question "why?" even if it is voiced as a complaint about some outside circumstance to which he feels he has fallen victim. And then, even this could be seen as the beginnings of the journey toward the conscious direction of one’s life when looked at retrospectively at some future time, whether it is recognized at this moment or not.
There are stages and classifications that can be made within the realm of this inner training and we will certainly take this discussion to a greater depth in a number of them. We are all on our own path and yet we all simultaneously share the path of the evolution of consciousness and will tend to encounter similar problems at similar stages of our development. Those who have gone before us can serve as guides, if we let them. It is in the last analysis only the individual student who can determine the approach he will take to life and learning. The guides of the race are there to lend a hint when the student is open to their aide, but the responsibility lies with the student alone.
Formal training can hasten the process of development because the student is guided by those who know the path from their own experience and have gained insight and wisdom. They have developed the ability to see firsthand what the student is only able to perceive in fleeting moments, and to imagine. They apprehend the meanings behind events because they perceive the world of energy and force, and have learned to work on these planes with facility. They can forewarn of pitfalls along the way and suggest practices and visualizations based on their knowledge of these things rather than having the student feel his way along the path blindly until he has gained the ability through trial and error, to see for himself.
This is always the way the early parts of the path are traversed. The eager neophyte opens many doors looking for a system or method that will suit his personality equipment, although he may not be conscious of the fact that this is what he s doing. He just thinks he is “dabbling” in something. In the early stages of character building the student is not aware that he is a student. He is awakening to the need for integrity in his life but he does not know what he is integrating. He is trying to do the right thing in each circumstance because that is “what you do”. He is already practicing right aspiration, he is likely to be looking at his occupation and other aspects of his orientation outside of the context of what he might consider “religious” matters. Harmlessness, right speech and other aspects of the philosophies are creeping into his consciousness because he is realizing that he has a responsibility to “act” a certain way.
This can cause conflict in his life as he establishes this new rhythm. Old ways will resurface at week moments and he will fail to live up to what he is learning over and over as he develops this feeling of responsibility. In my experience it was prompted by the birth of my daughter. It made me want to be a better man. When I later took conscious control of my life and started traveling this road with intent I did look back to this period of my life and realize that it had been a turning point. One of many, and I had been on the path long before I knew it consciously. I had begun a process of “cleaning up my act” which was purifying my body and bringing my emotions under control. I stopped drinking alcohol along the way and became physically active and healthy again.
Without the alcohol causing friction in our lives my wife and I reached new levels of intimacy and communication. We talked openly about the things we could do to make our relationship better and then did them because we were aspiring to a better life and decided these things would get us there.
This leads to a kind of vigilance about one’s behavior. The student is detaching from the situations and seeing from a different kind of vantage point what impact a particular kind of stimulus is having and metering the response instead of just reacting. He is living the examined life.
Perhaps the student at this stage has already been consulting books and other media for help in dealing with these situations but he is really still on his own in the sense that he is finding his way based on the experimentation of living in the world. All of the development in the life of the disciple is born of this livingness and the active observation of the reactions of the personal self by the shifting of the identity to a higher level within the myriad aspects of the individual human consciousness. He is looking at everything in a new way and soon he becomes aware of this too.
A moment must be reached when a commitment is made and this good hearted wanderer becomes a disciple of the truth and knows he can never go back to the way he lived before. He must live up to what he knows, and he must know. There comes a need to understand, and then the universe becomes the university. He is a conscious traveler on the path and I believe this is where true esoteric training can begin.
He has been inspired to study and the mind and awareness are being honed, but the next step is to turn consciousness upon itself through the use of Meditation. Meditation applied within a disciplined program rather than an occasionally practiced form of relaxation. There are many forms of meditation and the student must find his own way in to an effective form. I found my way to the Arcane School and find an amazing affinity to the work of the Master Djwahl Kuhl. In that way he is my teacher and I believe that through his work I have gained a better understanding of the world. He once said a true esoteric school would never be large and I can see very few people who are really working on themselves in a serious way, but many are fertile ground for the seeds of future development if encouraged just a little.
The true nature of the path we trod is that the student cannot be denied what he has earned any more than he can be given what he has not. That is because he travels the path of wisdom. This is knowledge lovingly applied. If you do not live this lesson you don’t get to see the next. To an extent we can move on but there is an undeveloped part of us that we now must drag along until we deal with it. These things eat away at people and cause irritation. We see adults that simply turn back into their child self under circumstances they have not learned to deal with. For me it came out as anger. Some get depressed or feel hurt, some act out, I got angry and yelled. There are also those who become observers in their own lives and recognize those things in themselves that the average person can only see in other people. The immediate goal is to become one of them. All we need to do is to begin paying attention and Meditation facilitates conscious awareness. That seems redundant on its surface, but we truly become aware of being aware.
Coupling the meditative practice with the topical study of the spiritual principals brings the student concurrently into the intellectual grasp and personal experience of the process being undertaken. Rather than blindly following meditation instructions, the student is taught why he is visualizing in a certain way and what it symbolizes. I have found that this process has brought the teaching out in my life. I am living the teaching and the teaching is living me.
The introduction of service as a living ideal amplifies every part of the process. This is the “living the teaching”, and “living up to what you know” part. We can serve as examples to those around us; examples of harmless living and open loving and tolerant attitudes. I try to help anyone any way that I can. I have many gifts and talents and I give them freely. This type of behavior is contagious, like all else. It brings a different kind of awareness into the equation. The awareness of interdependence, unity, community, family, and an attitude of gratitude.
Part II
We have covered the basic ideas of study, meditation, and service and I have not yet mentioned psychic development. This is to a certain extent, by design. Psychic development may be running parallel to the entire process described above, but this is a natural process and somewhat misunderstood. We have been told that telepathic as well as other sensitivities are not developed but rather, recognized over time as having always been present. We don’t become sensitive but become aware of our sensitivities. This is done in part by quieting the mind in meditation and is a natural part of the unfoldment of consciousness through esoteric training. There is no need to work on the development of psychic sensitivity. If it is present it can become over emphasized in consciousness and control must be maintained as well as a sharp eye for the glamour that can accompany it.
This kind of sensitivity can be a blessing or a burden which holds the student within a crystallized thought form. If the mind and the awareness are trained first it seems the student can handle those sensitivities more ably when they do arise. I believe my intuition is strong and I do not have the need to assign the things that occur in my thinking and feeling natures to some outside source. We are taught to contact and identify ourselves with the soul aspect of our nature because it is in tune with all else we can know. Contact with this aspect of our being opens the door to what is limitless in potential in all of us.
This contact is Psychic Development on a deeper level. It is not the glamorized notions of the neophyte but the heightened awareness of the trained Disciple. I believe that there is a need to observe the process in such a way that we become aware of what we are channeling and whether it is of use. The training of the mind and its discriminating ability will aid us in this as we become more and more responsive to the varied levels and colors of energy in our environment. The sane and progressive development of this responsiveness is desirable when unfolded naturally in the disciplined life and service of the mentally polarized student of the esoteric sciences.
The word Psyche means Soul so anything truly Psychic in nature relates to Soul awareness. This is the central objective of Esoteric Training as I understand it. Of course my understanding is based on limited exposure to the training and will expand as I grow in both my intellectual grasp and direct apprehension over time. Emphasis is bound to change as progress is made but the general direction can be assumed to remain, upward and inward.
In “The Teachings of Don Juan – A Yaqui Way of Knowledge” there is a quote inserted as a precursor to the journey Carlos Castaneda is about to embark upon by a philosopher named George Simmel. “…nothing more can be attempted than to establish the beginning and the direction of an infinitely long road. The pretension of any systematic and definitive completeness would be at least a self illusion. Perfection here is to be obtained by the individual student only in the objective sense that he communicates everything he has been able to see.” It should be noted that he is not talking about Mr. Castaneda because Simmel had long since passed when Castaneda began his training.
The idea is that any attempt to map out the individual steps of an infinitely long journey is at best a waste of time and at its worst, delusional. In either case the effort is futile but in my eyes the failure to recognize that futility and thinking that you can map it out is worse. I found this illustrated in my experience in the labyrinth. If you look at the whole thing it is dizzying, but the next few steps are always obvious and the ultimate goal is always in view. The best one can hope to do is keep the big picture in mind so you don’t lose your general direction, pay attention to the next few steps right in front of you; the business at hand… and then share the experience as Mr. Castaneda did in bringing us with him.
Another interesting phrase I have heard in this regard is that “no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.” The world seemingly has its own ideas about what is going to happen and if you want to influence the outcome you are going to have to adjust. That is what consciousness does; sense the environment and alter behavior in response. Observe the results and adjust again. Were we to map out the entire process we would have to change the entire process and any adjustment would mean recalculating the entire route like a GPS does when you make a wrong turn.
That is why living the teaching is a must. If we don’t apply what we learn, we really haven’t learned it yet. This is especially true in the field of conscious exploration. Consciousness serves as both the instrument and field of enquiry. There is nothing else that will do the job and so we must use what we know and sense as the bootstraps we incorporate in lifting ourselves to the next level. Mathematics is built in this way for the same reason. The only thing we can use to explore math is math. We prove a theory through repetition and then correlation to earlier established laws, which it now joins as a part of a larger foundation for further theoretical experimentation. Without this new discovery as a tool, the next theory may not even be postulated and the journey is misdirected slowed or halted completely. In the case of the exploration of consciousness through esoteric training the opened mind and heart will continue opening as long as there is a question to pursue.
If the student is willing and can be directed into certain types of activities, there is a layered effect. One can develop the will, for instance, through any act done with discipline. The act of standing on a chair for 15 minutes every morning will exercise the will. You must do it every day whether you feel like it or not, and anything done this way will strengthen the will. The problem with this approach is that standing on a chair does little else, and it’s not even good for the chair. If we decide to Meditate for 15 minutes each day we develop the will and also get the benefits of Meditation. If we follow a plan developed specifically to an end, like soul contact or the development of specific attitudes of harmlessness and right speech, we add another layer to the same practice.
If we now study harmlessness as we meditate on it, over a period of time we will find a depth to the idea that we could not come to by any other means. We now add another layer, and benefit more from the study through meditation, and more from the meditation through further study and the increased ability to understand what is being studied. We are exploring the world of meaning and Meditation is central to our journey because it is the application of acquired knowledge in the furtherance of this conscious research, but the deeper application of this knowledge is service. To live the teachings is to serve. As Meditation creates a better Meditator, service creates a better server.
I am a servant of humanity and I feel for my fellowmen. I see them sleeping and know that even though I am barely awakening, the world looks very different to me and I want them to experience it. I have an urge to shake them awake but I know it is only possible to plant an occasional seed that will take hold when the person is ready. Many strive to further their spiritual development by serving the Masters. Djwahl Kuhl reminds us that the Masters serve humanity. If you want to serve the masters help them in their work, don’t worship them.
Nothing can bring a man closer to his fellowman than to help when he is in need. It is mutually beneficial and both parties grow in the process. Nietzsche told us to serve an unfair master better, to “put God in your debt”, knowing that we are in a sense paying into a system that reflects back into our lives the results of our actions. We create beauty or horror, and then live in it. Esoteric Training gives us the ability to recognize the choices and then choose consciously. Given the knowledge that our world is of our making who would not choose to create beauty?
As a group and a social aggregation we have the ability to raise our collective consciousness as well. Bruce Lipton in his book Spontaneous Healing said that a cell only has two states of being, and they are protection and growth. Interestingly the cell cannot grow while it is protecting itself. Human beings and groups are higher reflections of the same spiritual laws and thus we cannot grow while our attention is consumed with survival. Our job as parents is to create a safe and yet challenging environment where our children can thrive. This has gotten us where we are today, but we need to recognize a larger family and widen the circle of influence and cooperation to eventually include all of humanity.
If we all feel safe enough we can all begin to explore the world of meaning. The search for the inner meaning in the events and circumstances of our lives is the road to the discovery of the inner self as well. I feel my role as a teacher is to bring as many people as I can to the point where they are becoming observant. Observation leads to understanding. Many of us spend so much time in a state of near unconsciousness. Esoteric Training is the exploration of and therefore the expansion of conscious awareness. It is the realization of our creative role in our lives. We make that role real through the act of understanding and begin to create consciously instead of the haphazard way the average man creates his life.
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