Cultivation of sensitiveness
“Sensitiveness” means the ability to sense or perceive in some subtle manner, auras, impressions and influences, either issuing from another living person, or from some thing, or emanating from “spirits.” In so far as a sensitive or medium can sense or feel these influences, he is a psychic; and the cultivation of this power is, in a sense, the essence of all true progress in mediumship. This is, therefore, one of the most important Lea- sons which can be learned, for as you progress in psychic sensitiveness, you also progress in mediumship, other things being equal.
chapter, since the subject is too vast and too delicate.
One of the greatest difficuIties, doubtless, in the cultivation of sensitiveness, is how to distinguish true from false hallucination from reality. At first, this will doubtless be next to impossible, and many false steps will have to be taken before you find, from actual bitter experience, what is true and what is not. But as the inner sense becomes developed, you will find that it not only gives you the knowledge in question, but that it also enables you to distinguish one from the other true from false, and illuminates the whole subject so that mistake is almost impossible. This certainty, which you will then have, cannot be communicated to another; it is often impossible to prove to one who does not experience this inner vision of reality that what you receive is true, none the less!
This is the function of the Mystic Sense to do, aided by the full complement of inner faculties. In a measure the Mystic Sense, like the bodily senses, acts automatically, but like them it needs special training in order to separate phantasm from reality, to determine values, and to grade and classify ideals until they reveal themselves to be ordered unity, not less but more mysterious because more intelligible … to the whole man.” It is because of all this that long training in psychic development is necessary and sudden jumps or leaps into full possession of this knowledge is impossible.
