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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Clairvoyance," Charles Webster Leadbeater presents a comprehensive exploration of the theme of spiritual perception through the lens of Theosophy, weaving together philosophical insights, firsthand experiences, and practical guidance. Leadbeater employs a lucid and evocative style that engages readers while introducing complex concepts of astral travel, psychic abilities, and the role of intuition in human experience. This work not only sits firmly within the context of early 20th-century esotericism but also interacts with various contemporaneous spiritual movements, making it a noteworthy contribution to the literature on metaphysics and spiritual awakening. Leadbeater, a prominent Theosophist and clairvoyant, drew upon his extensive studies in mysticism, coupled with his own spiritual revelations, to craft this seminal text. His background as a leading figure in the Theosophical Society, as well as his interactions with notable contemporaries such as Annie Besant, undoubtedly influenced his thoughts and convictions regarding the potential of human consciousness and the pursuit of spiritual understanding. This foundation informs his commitment to demystifying the faculties of clairvoyance and expanding awareness of higher states of consciousness. Recommended for both novice and seasoned practitioners, "Clairvoyance" offers profound insights into the subtleties of spiritual perception. Leadbeater's compelling narrative and thoughtful guidance challenge readers to embark on their own journeys of discovery. Whether seeking wisdom or understanding their place in a broader spiritual context, readers will find in Leadbeater's work an invaluable resource. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Clairvoyance
Table of Contents
Introduction
Clairvoyance proposes that human perception can extend beyond the senses into subtler dimensions of reality. Charles Webster Leadbeater’s Clairvoyance offers a systematic exposition of this claim within the Theosophical tradition, written in the climate of occult inquiry that surrounded the turn of the twentieth century. As a noted Theosophist, Leadbeater aims to describe, categorize, and contextualize clairvoyant faculties rather than dramatize them. The book presents itself as a guide for readers curious about the scope and limits of extrasensory perception as conceived by esoteric philosophy. It is not a novel or a memoir, but a didactic work grounded in a particular metaphysical framework.
Situated amid a late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century resurgence of interest in spiritualism, occultism, and comparative religion, the book reflects an era that sought to reconcile ancient wisdom with modern inquiry. Theosophy provided a cosmology and vocabulary for discussing non-ordinary perception, and Leadbeater writes from within that environment. Without claiming laboratory proof, he positions clairvoyance as a subject suitable for careful observation, classification, and ethical reflection. Readers encounter a text that draws on the period’s fascination with psychical research while maintaining Theosophy’s distinctive emphasis on inner development and disciplined study. The setting, in this sense, is an intellectual one: a meeting point of esoteric theory and experiential reports.
The premise is straightforward: clairvoyance, as described here, encompasses a range of purported capacities, and the author endeavors to clarify their characteristics, conditions, and potential uses. The voice is authoritative and instructional, presenting definitions, distinctions, and illustrative cases in a measured, orderly fashion. The style is expository rather than literary, favoring classification and explanation over narrative flourish. The mood is earnest, at times technical, yet generally accessible to a patient general reader. This approach results in a handbook-like experience, encouraging contemplation and cautious application rather than spectacle. The book invites readers to assess claims alongside principles of training, self-knowledge, and responsibility.
Underlying the taxonomy is an inquiry into the boundaries of knowledge: What counts as evidence? How might inner experience be tested, organized, and communicated? Leadbeater emphasizes clarity of observation, restraint in judgment, and ethical intent, presenting clairvoyance as something to be handled with care. The discussion foregrounds discipline, motive, and the dangers of credulity, placing conduct alongside capacity. For readers, this frames clairvoyance not merely as an ability but as a moral and intellectual challenge. The text thus speaks to perennial concerns: the reliability of perception, the cultivation of attention, and the character required to approach contested domains of experience.
Within the Theosophical framework, the book situates clairvoyance in relation to a layered view of human consciousness and the universe, commonly articulated in terms of planes or levels of being. Rather than pursuing sensational claims, the argument attempts to map varieties of clairvoyant perception, their range, and their limitations. It treats methods and conditions with an emphasis on steadiness and discrimination, acknowledging the complexity of interpreting impressions that do not arise through the ordinary senses. Readers will notice a recurring effort to align practice with a wider spiritual philosophy, linking personal development with the capacity to perceive reliably and to interpret responsibly.
Contemporary readers may find the work valuable as a historical document of esoteric thought and as a prompt for reflecting on attention, belief, and the psychology of extraordinary claims. While scientific frameworks have evolved, many of the questions the book raises—about verification, bias, suggestion, and the training of perception—remain relevant. It can also serve scholars and curious generalists as a window into how a major Theosophical writer systematized reports of unusual experience. Approached with both openness and critical care, Clairvoyance offers material for dialogue between history of ideas, religious studies, and present-day conversations on consciousness.
To read Clairvoyance well is to enter a disciplined conversation: patient in method, careful in inference, and attentive to the ethical stakes of inquiry. Leadbeater’s pedagogical tone encourages readers to weigh testimony, refine inner attention, and consider the responsibilities that accompany any claimed expansion of perception. The book’s value lies less in dramatic revelation than in its effort to organize a difficult subject and situate it within a coherent spiritual philosophy. For those exploring esoteric literature, it provides a structured starting point; for skeptics and sympathizers alike, it offers a thoughtful articulation of aims, cautions, and aspirations surrounding clairvoyant practice.
Synopsis
Clairvoyance by Charles Webster Leadbeater presents a systematic overview of clairvoyant perception as understood within the Theosophical tradition. The book defines the term broadly as the capacity to perceive beyond ordinary senses, then narrows it through careful classification and examples. It outlines aims, limits, and appropriate applications, treating clairvoyance as a natural, law-governed faculty rather than an inexplicable marvel. Leadbeater arranges the subject to provide clarity for students and interested readers, emphasizing terminology, scope, and method. The opening establishes that claims should be approached with disciplined observation, that phenomena occur on various planes of consciousness, and that accuracy depends on training and ethical intent.
The author first differentiates principal types of clairvoyance. He distinguishes spontaneous from cultivated perception, waking impressions from those occurring in trance or sleep, and continuous faculties from occasional glimpses. He subdivides by object: clairvoyance in space (near or distant), in time (past or future), and of inner constitution (auras and subtle bodies). A further division addresses the mode: direct sight, symbolic or pictorial impressions, and impressions interpreted through the brain’s habitual imagery. Leadbeater also contrasts simple sensitivity, such as awareness of etheric currents, with more developed traveling clairvoyance, in which consciousness appears to operate independently of the physical body.
Proceeding to mechanism, the book sketches a model of subtle anatomy: physical body, etheric double, astral, and mental vehicles, each with its corresponding senses. Clairvoyant seeing is described as the functioning of nonphysical sense-organs or force-centres, translated into brain-consciousness. Leadbeater notes that impressions may reach the mind clearly or be shaped by personal associations, leading to literal or symbolic visions. He emphasizes that such perception follows definite vibrational laws, and that distance is largely irrelevant compared to affinity and focus. The account includes tentative correlations with physical organs, but treats the operative causes as primarily belonging to subtler planes and their specialized faculties.
The text then surveys means by which clairvoyance appears or is cultivated. It describes passive and active methods, including crystal-gazing, mirror or water scrying, psychometry, mesmeric influence, and disciplined meditation. These are presented as aids that steady attention, heighten sensitivity, or provide a screen for interior impressions. Leadbeater distinguishes mediumistic passivity, which may entail loss of control, from trained observation that maintains wakeful judgment. He outlines conditions believed to favor accuracy—calmness, purity of motive, and methodical record-keeping—while noting that lighting, magnetism, and the presence of sympathetic persons can influence results. Throughout, stress is placed on gradual development and careful verification.
Clairvoyance in space receives detailed treatment. Leadbeater describes observations at a distance, ranging from perception of nearby concealed objects to viewing remote scenes, sometimes with the sense of movement through space. The text differentiates seeing through matter from merely following existing lines of sight, and it cautions that thought-images surrounding objects can be mistaken for the objects themselves. Accounts emphasize that physical distance imposes little hindrance compared to clarity of focus and the observer’s training. Tests and cross-checks are recommended, including contemporaneous notes and independent corroboration, to separate stable perceptions from transient or subjective impressions that arise during the process.
Turning to time, the book treats retrocognition and prevision as distinct operations. For the past, Leadbeater introduces the concept of a persistent record, often termed the memory of nature, through which events can be read if the observer reaches the appropriate plane. For the future, he stresses conditionality: prevision tends to reveal tendencies and probabilities rather than fixed outcomes, since human choice and intersecting causes can alter results. Descriptions note that temporal scenes may appear symbolic or compressed, requiring trained interpretation to avoid error. The text counsels caution in making predictions and emphasizes the greater reliability of historical review over forward-looking impressions.
A substantial portion addresses clairvoyant study of subtle phenomena associated with living beings. Leadbeater discusses the etheric and astral auras, describing fields of color and form correlated with health, temperament, and emotion. He outlines thought-forms—temporary shapes produced by mental and emotional activity—and suggests ways these are observed and interpreted. Additional sections mention nonphysical entities associated with natural processes, and the condition of persons after death as seen on subtler planes. The presentation aims to catalogue recurring features, note typical color-meanings and structures, and advise restraint in drawing conclusions, since personal bias and symbolic coloration can complicate the reading of such appearances.
Practical and ethical considerations receive continuous attention. The book warns against indiscriminate mediumship, emphasizing risks of obsession, fatigue, and deception. It advises that motives centered on curiosity or gain degrade reliability, whereas service and self-control improve it. Leadbeater urges corroboration, disciplined habits, and preference for sober investigation over display. Guidance is offered on distinguishing genuine perceptions from imagination, wishful thinking, and suggestion, with recommendations for experimental controls and critical review. Potential applications are mentioned—such as assistance in healing, character study, and research—accompanied by cautions about privacy, consent, and the limits of inference when interpreting images that are partly symbolic or conditionally true.
The work concludes by reiterating its central position: clairvoyance is presented as an extension of human perception governed by ascertainable laws, susceptible to training, and constrained by ethical considerations. Leadbeater emphasizes classification, careful method, and the need to separate observation from interpretation. He frames the subject as a field for systematic study within a broader metaphysical worldview, relying on repeated observation rather than isolated marvels. The final impression is pragmatic: claims should be tested, use should be purposeful, and development should proceed gradually. In this view, clairvoyance is neither an exception to nature nor a spectacle, but a faculty to be understood and responsibly applied.
Historical Context
Clairvoyance (1899) by Charles Webster Leadbeater emerged in late-Victorian Britain, a period marked by imperial reach, rapid scientific discovery, and intense debate about religion and empiricism. Published in London and shaped at the Theosophical Society’s headquarters in Adyar, Madras (established 1882), the book addresses claims of extrasensory perception amid a culture negotiating between church authority and laboratory method. The British Empire’s networks linked London, India, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), enabling cross-cultural exchanges that informed Leadbeater’s synthesis of Western psychical research and Asian philosophies. The work thus reflects a cosmopolitan setting in which occult inquiry sought legitimacy alongside physics, psychology, and comparative religion.
The transatlantic Spiritualist movement, beginning with the Fox sisters’ 1848 rappings in Hydesville, New York, catalyzed mass interest in séances, mediumship, and communication with the dead. By the 1850s–1860s, figures like Daniel Dunglas Home became famous in Britain and Europe; later, mediums such as Eusapia Palladino drew scientific observers and skeptics. This popular milieu normalized discourse about clairvoyance. Leadbeater’s book systematizes such phenomena, distinguishing spontaneous, dreamlike episodes from trained, controlled perception. While avoiding the parlor theatrics of table-turning, Clairvoyance adopts the Spiritualist era’s empirical posture—collecting cases, classifying types, and proposing mechanisms—yet recasts them within a disciplined esoteric psychology rather than entertainment or grief-counseling séance culture.
The Theosophical Society, founded in New York in 1875 by H. P. Blavatsky, Henry S. Olcott, and William Q. Judge, moved its headquarters to Adyar, Madras, in 1882 after tours in India (from 1879). Publications such as A. P. Sinnett’s The Occult World (1881) and Esoteric Buddhism (1883), and Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine (1888), outlined planes of consciousness and subtle bodies. Leadbeater joined the Society in the 1880s and worked in Adyar. Clairvoyance reflects this framework, deploying terms like “astral” and “etheric” and proposing observable stages of supersensory cognition. Issued by the Theosophical Publishing Society in 1899 (London), it codified experiential reports into a Theosophical map intended to rival contemporary scientific taxonomies.
The Society for Psychical Research (SPR), founded in London in 1882 by scholars including Henry Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney, and F. W. H. Myers, pursued rigorous inquiry into telepathy, apparitions, and trance. Landmark works, notably Phantasms of the Living (1886), gathered thousands of testimonies. The SPR’s 1885 Hodgson Report, however, condemned Blavatsky as fraudulent, intensifying scrutiny of occult claims. Clairvoyance implicitly answers this climate by emphasizing classifications, conditions, and limits of second sight and by proposing quasi-experimental corroboration through multiple observers. By adopting a technical vocabulary and careful case-differentiation, Leadbeater sought to reposition clairvoyance from anecdote to disciplined observation, engaging directly with the SPR’s demand for methodological clarity.
Colonial Ceylon’s Buddhist revival decisively shaped Leadbeater’s outlook. Following the Panadura Debate (1873), which galvanized resistance to Christian missionary dominance, Henry Olcott’s 1880 arrival helped found the Buddhist Theosophical Society and a network of native schools. In 1886, the English Buddhist School in Colombo—later Ananda College (renamed 1896)—opened; Leadbeater served as its first principal, working with revivalists such as Anagarika Dharmapala (who later founded the Maha Bodhi Society in 1891). Exposure to Pali scholarship and meditative disciplines acquainted him with notions of siddhi (psychic powers) in texts like Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. Clairvoyance integrates these Eastern conceptions, presenting second sight as a trainable faculty rather than a caprice.
The 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago highlighted a new, global exchange among traditions, featuring figures such as Swami Vivekananda and Anagarika Dharmapala. The event publicized Asian metaphysics to Western audiences and encouraged comparative study of mystical states. Theosophists were central participants in this broader climate of interreligious dialogue and lecturing circuits. Clairvoyance appeared several years later within this surge of comparative enthusiasm, framing clairvoyant perception as a universal human capacity documented across civilizations. The book’s examples and terminology—drawing from Indian, Buddhist, and Western esoteric sources—mirror the Parliament’s ethos of synthesis and helped position Theosophical claims within a newly respectable, international conversation.
Contemporary science’s discovery of unseen forces provided analogies that legitimized occult hypotheses. Wilhelm Röntgen’s X-rays (1895), Henri Becquerel’s radioactivity (1896), the Curies’ isolation of radium (1898), J. J. Thomson’s electron (1897), and Heinrich Hertz’s electromagnetic waves (1886–1889) made the invisible empirically consequential. In psychology and medicine, hypnosis advanced under Charcot and the Nancy School, with the British Medical Association recognizing its therapeutic value in 1892. Clairvoyance borrows this vocabulary—vibrations, spectra, and subtler media (then often imagined via the luminiferous ether)—to argue that supersensory perception operates by lawful gradations beyond ordinary sense-thresholds. The book thus aligns occult observation with fin-de-siècle scientific models of hidden yet measurable realities.
Clairvoyance critiques the period’s narrow materialism, ecclesiastical dogmatism, and colonial hierarchies of knowledge by asserting that cognition extends beyond five senses and that Asian disciplines possess rigor equal to Western science. It challenges class-bound clerical and academic gatekeeping by presenting clairvoyant method as a learnable, ethically guided practice rather than a mysterious gift. In reframing Buddhist and Hindu concepts as systematic psychology, the book contests missionary disparagement and calls for parity among traditions. Its taxonomy exposes limits in contemporary psychiatry’s pathologizing of unusual experience and in positivist refusal to investigate border phenomena, urging a broader, more pluralistic epistemology for an empire-era public hungry for meaning.
Clairvoyance
Chapter I
Clairvoyance[1] means literally nothing more than "clear seein[1q]g", and it is a word which has been sorely misused, and even degraded so far as to be employed to describe the trickery of a mountebank in a variety show. Even in its more restricted sense it covers a wide range of phenomena, differing so greatly in character that it is not easy to give a definition of the word which shall be at once succinct and accurate. It has been called "spiritual vision", but no rendering could well be more misleading than that, for in the vast majority of cases there is no faculty connected with it which has the slightest claim to be honoured by so lofty a name.
For the purpose of this treatise we may, perhaps, define it as the power to see what is hidden from ordinary physical sight. It will be as well to premise that it is very frequently ( though by no means always ) accompanied by what is called clairaudience, or the power to hear what would be inaudible to the ordinary physical ear; and we will for the nonce take our title as covering this faculty also, in order to avoid the clumsiness of perpetually using two long words where one will suffice.
