Chapter 1 – Principles and Method of the Work

1.1 Do not force, do not concentrate, just be aware
Any authentic spiritual work has finding the Self as a primary
aim, and the Clairvision techniques are no exception. The essential
purpose of the process is to ‘be more’. It is common to hear that
human beings are only using a small fraction of their potential.
Their lives are confined within a limited range of thoughts,
emotions, sensations and other modalities of conscious existence,
and yet in most cases they remain completely unaware of these
limitations. Plato's myth of the cave, even though formulated 24
centuries ago, remains perfectly relevant: if you have always lived
inside a dark cellar, to you this cellar is not a cellar, it is the
whole universe. You can't even conceive of the wonder waiting for
you if you were to step out and walk in the real world. The work
suggested in this book is all about stepping out of the cellar and
starting to behold the magnificence of the world as seen from the
third eye.
In India, the coconut is considered to be of deep symbolic
significance and is used in fire rituals (yajñās) because it has ‘three
eyes’. Two of these are ‘blind’, meaning they can't be pierced to
reach the milk, while the third one, in the middle, opens to the
inside of the fruit. Similarly, the third eye is fundamentally the
gate that leads to the inner worlds. Therefore this eye allows you
to know yourself to a depth that surpasses all conventional
methods of psychotherapy or any method based on analysing with
the discursive mind.
Developing the third eye is a direct way of expanding your
conscious universe and discovering your essential values, so that
you may fathom your own mystery. Moreover, it is simple. Simple
does not necessarily mean easy, but this work does not require
complicated theories or lengthy discussions. Its direction is
essentially experiential, for the purpose is clearly to be more. And
being is the most simple thing in the world. A constant
preoccupation while writing this manual was to relate theory to
experience and to give techniques and keys to enable you to
perceive for yourself.
13
The first three chapters are devoted to getting into the main
aspects of the practice. The remaining chapters are more or less
independent of each other, so that it is quite possible to read them
in the order that feels most natural to you.
Before starting the first technique let us give some basic advice
regarding the principles and method of the work.
You should not be confused by the fact that our purpose is a new
clairvoyance, or vision of the Self. Truly, the Self is already there,
waiting for you in the background of yourself. You are not going
to ‘build’ the Self and its vision, you are going to reveal them or
rather allow them to reveal themselves. Spiritual development is
certainly a fight, but the main weapon in this fight is letting go.
In this perspective of opening it is not appropriate to concentrate,
to try hard or to force. If you were to do so, what would happen?
You would operate from your ordinary mind, meaning that
fraction of yourself with which you presently think – the
discursive mind that goes on talking in your head all the time. You
have been conditioned from an early age to do everything from
the mind. Therefore if you try to ‘do’ the perception business, you
are likely to remain caught in your talking mind – a layer which
is notoriously unfit for any form of spiritual perception.
Stop doing. Be fully aware, but just aware. Allow what is hidden in
the depths to come through and be revealed to your consciousness.
Don't do anything, let things happen. Flow with what comes.
In the physical world when you want something you have to strive
for it. But in the spiritual worlds everything is reversed, as on the
other side of a mirror. If you want something you have to let it
come to you. It is a new skill which has to be developed. It could be
called ‘active letting go’ or ‘creative letting go’. It is the capacity to
be transparent and to let states of consciousness be revealed
through you.
Just be aware, and everything will happen.
1.2 No creative visualisation, no imagination, just
awareness
In the context of the Clairvision techniques it is advised that you
never try to visualise or imagine anything. If images, lights,
spiritual beings or anything else comes to your vision, that is fine.
But don't make them up, don't try to induce them. Do not actively
visualise any pattern into your field of consciousness.
Chapter 1 – Principles and Method of the Work
14
One of the reasons is: suppose an angel comes to you, truly. If you
have been trying to visualise angels every morning for a few
months how will you know whether it is a true angel or one that
you have made up.
The problem is not to get into the perception of images or lights.
If you put the techniques into practice, visions will come. The real
problem is, once these visions come to you, how to discern what is
real from what is a fancy of the mind. So the advice is: be
spontaneous! Never plan or try to attract a vision. Just practise
the techniques and then see what comes. This will make it much
easier to reach the stage where you can rely on your vision.
This approach should not be understood as a criticism of the paths
that use creative visualisation or imagination. There are many
ways. What is true in the context of one particular system of
development does not necessarily apply to others. In the Clairvision
style of work the motto is “just awareness”.
1.3 Trust your experience
Something good to remember is that when there is nothing to
believe, there is nothing to doubt either! Since you are not trying
to make anything up, don't waste your time worrying about
whether you are really seeing what you are seeing. Trust your
experience.
Keep on practising according to our sober principles and your
clairvoyance will flourish, growing in precision and reliability. As
perceptions start repeating themselves it will become easier and
easier to trust them.
1.4 Don't analyse during an experience
Do not try to analyse as soon as something happens. Otherwise you
will lose your perception immediately, because you will be caught
straight back into the discursive mind. One of the keys to
perception lies in the cultivation of a superior form of stillness,
the capacity not to react when something takes place inside.
Once the experience is over you will have plenty of time to analyse
it. Anyway, it is not necessarily by analysing or discussing an
experience that you will derive the most benefit from it.
Experiences of consciousness are like seeds. It is when you ponder
on them silently, and digest them, that they will mature into
greater realisations.
Chapter 1 – Principles and Method of the Work
15
1.5 Psychic protection
Ordinarily, most people are psychically unprotected, for two main
reasons. Firstly they are not able to see when a negative energy is
around them and when caution is required. Secondly they have not
been trained to seal their aura to make it impermeable to external
influences if needed.
Being the organ of subtle perception and intuition and the main
switch of the body of energy, the third eye offers true answers
to these two problems.
Firstly it allows you to detect when your energetic environment is
such that prudence is needed.
Secondly it should be clear that our method does not only teach
you how to open your eye but also how to close your aura. From
the very first techniques the vibration in the third eye will begin
to awaken a higher density of protective energy in your aura. This
is not based on positive imagination or autosuggestion but on the
tangible perception of a vibrating energy all around you. Not only
during meditation will you be able to awaken this protective
energy but also in the most varied situations of your daily life,
such as taking a bus, walking in a busy street or dealing with your
boss or employees.
More systematic methods of sealing the aura will be developed at
length in Chapters 17, 18, 20 and 21 on protection. The capacity to
detect ley lines (Chapter 12) will also be of great help in
establishing a sound protective environment.
1.6 Practise, practise, practise...
I don't think much will be gained just by reading the 22 chapters
of this book. Whether you are young or old, healthy or sick, the
key to success in your spiritual quest lies in three words: practise,
practise, practise... It is certainly not necessary to withdraw from
activity and meditate all the time in order to reach a high level of
spiritual practice. You can follow this book without devoting more
than ten to twenty minutes daily to meditation exercises. But a
number of practices will be suggested that are designed to be
implemented during your daily activities. Try to make them
habits, and to incorporate this work as much as possible in your
natural way of life.
After exploring many different ways of self-transformation one
often comes to the conclusion that it is not so much the method
or the style of work that matters, as far as realisation is
Chapter 1 – Principles and Method of the Work
16
concerned. What makes all the difference is your capacity to
persist along a path. Looking at the lives of a number of great
masters, one discovers that they did not necessarily start at a high
level. Sometimes they had to face far greater obstacles than those
you may find on your way. But they persisted, persisted,
persisted... to the point where no obstacle could resist and huge
enlightenments opened to them. ‘Supernatural persistence’ is one
of the most essential qualities a seeker can develop. The people who
seem to get into high states of consciousness without having to go
through any spiritual discipline are usually people who have gone
through long and intense processes in their former lives.
Whatever level you may be at, it is by constant attention to all the
aspects of the practice that success will come to you.
“Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error. If
they do not first receive the resurrection while they live, when
they die they will receive nothing.” (The Gospel of Philip,
Tranlated by Wesley W. Isenberg, in The Other Bible, Harper and
Row, 1984, p.96)
1.7 Why delay?
Start the practices as you read the book.
In terms of self-transformation, tomorrow means never.
Whatever can be done, do it right now.
Wasted time is known by God.
1.8 Play with the techniques
If so many sages have striven towards spiritual enlightenment, it
is because it is the greatest fun one can have on Earth. If your
views on spirituality are grim and austere, then you are
completely missing the point. The most enlightened masters I have
met were men and women who laughed a lot. So please, be really
serious with the Clairvision techniques: play with them. If you can
get as involved and serious as a child who is playing (and if you
persist) then your chances of success are great.
1.9 Remain relative
One of the fascinating discoveries that results from understanding
the writings of highly enlightened people is that they have seen
the world in completely different ways.
In the Indian tradition for instance, take the Jnanis and Sri
Aurobindo. In the works of Sri Aurobindo, the world is presented
Chapter 1 – Principles and Method of the Work
17
as the progressive incarnation of a divine perfection. Death is a
mockery, and the Work aims at physical immortality through an
enlightenment of physical matter. To the Jnanis, on the other
hand, incarnated life is a fatal mistake. Actually to the Jnanis the
whole universe is a mistake, a sort of transient, foul and
nauseating emanation. And the only purpose of life is to take a
one-way ticket out of it as quickly as possible.
Sri Aurobindo was universally acclaimed in India as one of the most
enlightened yogis of all time. But do not think that the Jnanis are
shallow. A jnana-yogi such as Nisargadatta Maharaj, to take a recent
example, has deeply impressed his generation, East and West, by
the immensity of his states of consciousness.
There is no easy way around this fact: depending on where you are
looking from, you see the universe and its finality completely
differently. Please ponder upon this, for it seems to me one of the
best antidotes for dogma. Whatever your views are, don't make
them a prison. Always leave space to change your mind and your
system of the world.
To the people who wish to engage in the Clairvision style of work,
I particularly recommend two main bodies of writings: those of
the Gnostics, and those of Rudolf Steiner. The reasons for this
choice are that they both arose from vast enlightenments, they
are full of wisdom and practical information regarding the path of
inner alchemy and the western esoteric tradition, and last but not
least... they are totally irreconcilable on a number of key points! If
you want to operate with the two systems, you have no choice but
to remain relative as to the value of mental conceptions.
Once more, it is not what you believe or what you have read that
will change your spiritual life, it is what you can experience
directly. Hence the work suggested in this book, which aims at
giving you the capacity to tune in and reach your own perception
of spiritual worlds.