The Sensitives is a timely, informed evaluation of mysticism, paranormal experience, sects and cults. It is grounded in a clear distinction between productive spiritual practice and dangerous fascination with the occult. This distinction will be extraordinarily useful to a variety of readers: to individuals involved in or about to undertake any sort of spiritual practice, to psychologists and psychiatrists, and to people unable to understand or assess the interests and practices of friends or relatives associated with a sect or cult.
The Sensitives is a necessarily complex volume, covering one of the three largest sections in the notebooks series; the others are Human Experience (category thirteen) and What Is Philosophy? (category twenty). During our visits with P.B., he often stressed the urgent need to differentiate spiritual and psychic practices--in oneself, in others, and in various groups and teachings. This concern carries over into his writings, from the early works on India and Egypt, through the several notebooks of interviews with mystics around the world, and into the 4000 paras selected here.
There comes a time when a little success in meditation, study, or self-discipline begins to show itself: a time when some parts of the ego thin out sufficiently to let a little light in. This light shines through the cracks in the ego, but also powerfully lights up the ego itself. These refracted colors are so bold and beautiful, the pure light is so hard to look into, that most questers begin to wander from their intended goal. This category addresses the nature and end result of following these lesser lights--the revelatory, intuitive, visionary, psychic, mediumistic, and magical. It examines the groups of eager followers which spring up around leaders who have sought and gained some mastery of these lights, but who themselves are, in one form or another, powerfully misled. As the light of the soul shines into the recesses of the ego, it activates the latent desires for fame, power, wealth, physical immortality, seership, and wisdom. It is only this last desire, the desire for wisdom, that leads on through what P.B. has termed "the intermediate zone," and on into the region of true spiritual practices, which he calls philosophy.
Why does this category fall between arts and religion? It follows the arts because all visions, voices, messages, and psychic phenomena are processes of the imagination, which is also the primary tool of artists. The difference is that many artists intentionally use the imagination as a lens through which to peer at the spiritual world, a practice which is at once their limitation and their protection. Mystics and occultists, on the other hand, often believe that there is no significant difference between their images and the reality behind it, and this contributes to the contradictory nature of their doctrines. This category precedes the one on religion because, after all, all religions are based on someone's revelation; all formal and informal religion works with some image--visual, verbal, or mental--of Divinity. Before we dare yield up our faith to such icons, it behooves us to know what is authentic in them and what is man-made, what is original and what is a potpourri of our background, past lives, presuppositions, biology, and education.
So who should read this book? Every quester, for it is written to all of us. The beginner will find guidance for understanding the weaknesses, innocence, and naivete that influence the choice of who and what to follow. The practicing quester when encountering these dream-world phenomena is often lured strongly into the maze through blind beliefs and unbalanced strengths. For such a person, this volume provides explanations for what is happening, suggestions for evaluating the outcome, and directions for further progress. For the advanced mystic faced with the prospect of leadership, P.B. points out exactly how obstacles to truth, rationality, and involvement in the world will be raised by their enthusiastic followers or their own short-sighted follies.
This category lies at a crossroads between the earlier topics, dealing with the preparatory phases of the quest, and the later ones written for those old souls ready to enter into the life of higher philosophy. Many topics are covered in each part of the series--searching out relationships to groups and teachers, the practices of meditation, emotional and moral development, intellectual work, and the mysterious forces of light and darkness present in nature. Here, P.B. presents these subjects as they are seen through the vitalized powers of the inward-directed mind, while in the earlier categories they were treated in the light of our ordinary consciousness. In the categories that follow, P.B. writes from the unique perspective of philosophic insight--on reverential and devotional life, the balanced character of the philosopher, the inquiry of mentalism, intuition from the Overself, advanced meditations, and the encounter with those authentic teachers who have attained enlightenment. To read this category alone without reference to these other works is to read a dream, with no knowledge of the waking personality, and no conclusive insight into the reality it seeks to symbolize. So we earnestly hope that readers will reference these other works when reflecting on the issues presented here.
In his own terse outline of this category, P.B. made no indication as to the order, or hierarchy, of the development of feeling, will, and intellect. Since he does treat them separately, we had to put them in some order, based on the continuity we perceived among the paras. Their sequence (in chapter 2) is our own, not his, and should be taken only as a working model. Similarly, there are many paras of blunt criticism of practices, beliefs, and activities intrinsic to this region of imagination; some readers who have traveled far in this realm and have gained something for their efforts may object to the potency of these lines. P.B. traveled here extensively as well, and in his decades of inner and outer travel around the globe he observed the long-range consequences of following the colored lights, rather than the pure. He has approached these wanderings with philosophic insight, and so helps us to adjust our compasses, that we too may end our days in the light of the Overself, not in the shadows of the mind.
Editorial conventions here are the same as stated in the introductions to Perspectives and The Quest. Likewise, (P) at the end of a para indicates that it also appears in Perspectives, the introductory volume to this series.