Vol. 48 No. 15 - Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet - April 11, 2005
Psychic Thralldom
Part 2
Ectoplasm (from the Greek ektos, “exteriorized,” and plasma, “substance”) is described as “matter which is invisible and impalpable in its primary state, but assuming the state of a vapor, liquid or solid, according to its stage of condensation.... Ectoplasm is considered by spiritualists to be the materialization of the astral body.”1
To this “psychic force” or “exteriorized protoplasm” is attributed the power to produce direct voice, to effect the locomotion of objects (telekinesis), to mold or rearrange matter to produce the imitation of known objects (simulacra2 of hands and faces and other parts of the human organism), and even to rearrange particles in a photographic plate to produce a supernormal image—whether human, animal or handwriting. Authentic photographs of spiritualistic materializations showing the emanations of ectoplasm may be studied in Rev. G. Henslow’s Proof of the Truth of Spiritualism.3
It is said that the force exerted by ectoplasm is great enough to raise a table with a man’s weight on it completely off the ground. Interestingly, attempts have been made to measure this force by weighing the medium from whom the ectoplasm had hypothetically been removed. The weight of substance externalized is said to be the exact amount of the weight loss of the medium during the séance.
The theory of ectoplasy holds that the vital energies taken by the spirits from those who participate in spiritualistic activities return to the medium after the manifestation has occurred. In fact, the energy used to produce psychic phenomena, taken from those in embodiment by the discarnate, can never be returned to the donor, for this energy is immediately used to produce psychic phenomena and to sustain the existence of the discarnate ( just as we cannot return the food we have eaten and digested to its original state).
Furthermore, the life force is taken from the vital solar body (soul body). Prolonged involvement in trance work, psychic phenomena and spiritualistic activities can result in a critical drain upon the allotment of solar energies given to each lifestream at the commencement of each embodiment.
The abortion of the solar fires in man through this type of misqualification can cause him to forfeit his ascension in the embodiment during which such activities have been engaged in. The ascended masters have told us that it may require as many as three or four succeeding embodiments to balance this misuse of the creative force. It is for this reason that the masters have cautioned their students about the extreme dangers of taking dictations or “channeling” from astral entities purporting to be ascended masters. For in all cases, unless the being is in fact ascended, he is draining the channel of his portion of light for his present embodiment.
The Gathering of Psychic Energies
Discarnates are not able to draw energy from the Presence of God in the same manner as embodied mankind, who have a direct tie to the Presence through the threefold flame anchored in the physical heart. Therefore, entities must derive their motor power in one of two ways:
- Through the conscious, willing cooperation of people on earth, specifically when individuals gather in a séance and invite the spirits to commune with them. In this case, the vital energies flow to the disembodied one over the thread of contact established by the attention of those in the circle. It is cosmic law that wherever man places his attention, there his energy goes. (Thus, the medium is the focal point for transmitting and receiving between the two planes.)
- Through the unconscious cooperation of people on earth. This occurs whenever they are inharmonious or “out of tune” with their Higher Self. Vibrations of irritation, grief, fear, anger, disdain, fatigue or other negative thoughts and feelings—even the dissonance of rock rhythms—puncture the natural protective envelope that surrounds and interpenetrates the four lower bodies of man, as does the use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana or other drugs. (It is this envelope that holds the spiritual energies that are released to man from his own God Presence as the harmonies of higher spheres.)
The manifestation of discord of any kind in one’s world—whether or not this discord seems justifiable by the behavior of another—automatically rends the spiritual garment. Without the wholeness of spiritual protection, which the spiritual garment is intended to afford every man, his energies become subject to the vampire activities of astral entities.
Thus, many types of human conduct—seemingly innocuous and sanctioned by custom—are designed by the negative forces to drain the very lifeblood of mankind until they are no longer able to resist the pull of the world and they become wholly responsive to the mass consciousness. If these forces create in your life circumstances that disturb you and you lose your balance and become discordant, they can then steal your light. If, however, you determine to hold your ground and remain unmoved, they can never cause you to lose the abundance of energy that is the daily allotment released to you from the heart of God.
Uncontrolled emotions are the principal cause of sickness, old age and poverty. The man who cannot govern the use of his energies cannot govern his world, and he is therefore unfit to govern others or to be of dependable service to God or man. Such a person cannot be trusted to guard the bank of reserves that is given to his care for safekeeping. He will allow the astral plunderers to break in and steal that substance that otherwise might be invested for the good of all. People are more often the victims of the machinations of the unseen world than they realize. They are like puppets on a string until they become tied to their own God Source. Only then do they respond without fail to the impulse of their Creator.
God’s pure energy is first misqualified by man’s imperfect thoughts and feelings. Then it is seized by discarnate forces, which in turn use this misqualified energy against the very ones who have unwittingly released it into their hands. This creates more havoc and multiplies the accumulation of islands of mass misqualified energy, which gather like black storm clouds in the astral belt.
Just as a stream can rise no higher than its source, so the muddied stream of consciousness that flows from the astral realm cannot be expected to bring forth the pure, sparkling, revivifying elixir of cosmic illumination that comes forth from the higher octaves of God’s consciousness. Conversely, just as water cannot flow upstream, so the river of astral filth cannot contaminate the Source, the River of Life, whose pure waters are freely given to all who seek eternal life.
Nothing Good Can Come from the Psychic
The word psychic is derived from the Greek psyche —meaning “soul.” We all have a soul and a Spirit. There is a difference. The Spirit is of God and can never die; the soul can be lost. The soul is that plastic substance upon which man’s works are written.
A psychic is one who has developed his soul, or solar, faculties for heightened awareness of the physical, astral, mental and sometimes the etheric belts of earth and her evolutions. A psychic, or one who is psychic, has, in this or previous embodiments, developed faculties of sensitivity or extrasensory perception not generally accessed by mankind. This may include altered states above or below the normal threshold of awareness and the tapping of the computer of the subconscious or the superconscious mind.
The soul is anchored in the body at the seat-of-the-soul chakra, which is below the heart and also in the center of the electronic belt.4 Most extrasensory perception and gleanings gained from that level are unreliable, because one has to get through the astral plane, through one’s electronic belt, through one’s karmic momentums, and rise to the level of the Christ to really perceive what is Real. And most people who operate only from the level of the soul just do not have a momentum of light great enough to do so. If they did have that light, they would not be at that level in the first place; they would be in their higher chakras. Therefore, although some use these faculties constructively and with a respectable degree of accuracy, in many cases the information as well as the discrimination thereof is unreliable.
The term psychic has therefore come to be used synonymously with the term astral in its negative context, and its use in this way pertains to the penetration and manipulation of energy at the level of the astral plane. According to the terminology of the ascended masters, one who has involved his energies in the psychic, psychicism or psychic phenomena is functioning on the lower astral plane. Thus, by the strong ties established with entities of the lower octaves, he postpones the day of his true spiritual development and oneness with the penetrability of the Godhead.
Conversely, through oneness with God and direct apprehension of the higher octaves, he may derive spiritual benefit for his soul in the etheric plane (heaven-world), journeying in his etheric sheath to the retreats of the ascended masters of the Great White Brotherhood and the cities and temples of light located in that plane. True spiritual God-mastery is not measured by clairvoyance or psychic phenomena but by the God-control of the sacred fires of the heart and adeptship on the path of love.
The things that fall into the category of the psychic include dealing with spirits and spiritualism; automatic writing;5 involvement with UFOs; and methods of divination such as “worldly” astrology6, tarot, the pendulum and Ouija boards. The psychic and psychic people have a peculiar vibration. It is a vibration of entities and of a lower energy rate, and by and by you learn to recognize these people.
There is a psychic net that the dark powers of the world use. They weave a grid of dark energy in the same way that the angels weave a grid of light. However, the dark powers try to tie people together and have them pick up the vibrations of one another that are destructive. This is mob psychology; this is how it is used and how it spreads.
But there is a way to foil the plots of the sinister force and that is by the power of the spoken Word. We read, “Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be established unto thee; by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”7 This means that the spoken Word, when that spoken Word is given with a certain speed and a certain rhythm and accompanied by mental visualization, will cut through the psychic net.
The psychic realm is but a continuation of the physical plane and its many levels of consciousness. Knowing this, Saint Germain once said that nothing good could come forth from the psychic. Some could not believe that the great master would make such a statement, and they challenged it. Nevertheless, he did; and when rightly understood, the truth of his statement will be seen.
The simplest and most obvious fact to be remembered is that God is the only source of Good: it can come forth from no other. Jesus’ statement in reply to the one who addressed him as “Good Master” attested to this fact. Jesus said, “Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.”8 Only when one becomes wholly identified with God, wholly subject to his will (and this is accomplished through the ritual of the ascension), only then is his total manifestation “Good.”
Since mankind who dwell in the physical and astral realms are not yet perfected, that which they express cannot be wholly perfect. They live in the consciousness of God, who is indeed everywhere, but they have polluted that consciousness with their own mortal thoughts and feelings. They have used God’s energies to fabricate a world of illusion.
Just as a drop of ink in a glass of water soon colors the entire contents, so the impurities that mankind are daily feeding into the astral realm spread throughout this compartment or plane of God’s consciousness. Once the energies of this plane have been colored, we can no longer say that they are a pure reflection of the will of God; for the will of man has been superimposed upon the patterns of God’s perfection.
Just as mankind exercise care in maintaining reservoirs of pure water for the needs of their communities, so there are reservoirs of light—of pure and uncontaminated power, wisdom and love—from which all may drink freely and draw their daily supply of heavenly grace and virtue. Mankind would not think of tapping polluted streams for their water supply; therefore, they should not go to the sewer of human creation to nourish their souls.
Thus, in his assertion, Saint Germain was referring to the totality of the sea of psychic manifestation. His meaning is clear: The good that is God in manifestation cannot be directly assimilated from the psychic realm by the spirit of man. Psychic energies must first be purified by the violet transmuting flame before they can be of any creative use to man. And once transmuted, they are no longer psychic.
Lord Maitreya explains that involvement in the psychic is always a detour from the path of spiritual attainment: “The veil within the human temple must be rent in twain.9 The veil of illusion must part, and by initiation Reality will shine forth.
“Beware, however, of the penalty for engaging in automatic writing, in psychic activity and in all of those things that are contrary to ascended master law. Take heed that you understand that there is no need for man to do these things that tie in to the psychic world. The Ouija board and many of these other activities bring mankind downward. I tell you, there are few upon the planet who understand how to operate the cards of the tarot.
“You ought to understand, then, that the safest and best journey [course] for the elect is under the direction of the ascended masters. It teaches you how you ought to study their words and to pray unto them, to call unto them, to seek initiation, to be a real person, to be a divine person, to activate the flow of cosmic energy within your forcefields by sounding the Word, by humming the majestic concept of the living Christ, by feeling the surge of the resurrection current, by entering in to the power within the Holy of holies of your own being.
“Men do not have to go outside themselves to find salvation, for the kingdom of heaven is within you.10 And that kingdom that is within you is our kingdom.”11
Dangers of the Psychic
Astrea, the divine complement of the Elohim Purity, wants to cut souls free from the astral plane and psychic influences. She teaches: “The desire for communion with loved ones has often brought individuals into spiritualistic séances and the pursuit of the phenomenal. We do not deny that there are many seemingly marvelous expositions that occur, many of which are outwardly inexplicable to mankind. But we wish to draw the line of cosmic demarcation in order to show that men who can produce phenomena or manifestation at will, who can invoke the spirits of the departed or enter the astral realm, who can transfer thought or receive extrasensory perceptions even of prophecy, are not necessarily holy or pure, nor are they necessarily vested with any specific level of divine attainment. Inasmuch as the exponents of these arts are not necessarily adepts themselves, it follows conclusively that they are not able, then, to guarantee adeptship to others.
“Unfortunately, many individuals who are involved in these pursuits are sooner or later overpowered by forces completely outside the reckoning of their minds until the stability of their lives is interfered with and they are no longer free, if they ever were, but bound into a greater and greater bondage of confusion of ideas, concepts and a form of egomania that often takes possession of them at the precise time when they feel they are losing all control of their worlds. When they feel that they are losing hold on Reality, they sometimes yield to a mass entity that promises to exalt their person while bringing them strange commanding powers over the universe. Even if they succeed in demonstrating such control in various states of limitation, the Mephistophelian12 bargain is never kept and, as in the opera Faust, the soul is stripped of her opportunities for true Reality.
“The apostles have said that ‘the devil as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.’13 There is no more deadly substitute for the true expansion of the soul than psychic indulgence and psychic power. It does not matter, precious ones, whether or not people so connected are able to perform healings or even miracles. It is the state of the consciousness of the soul that counts. It is the expansion of what El Morya has called ‘cosmic morality.’ It is the absorption of the nature of God into one’s world that actually shows the stature of each individual to himself as well as to others.
“The Presence of God reveals morality. The Presence of God reveals Selfhood. Saint Germain long ago said that there is nothing good that comes from the psychic. Yet, we certainly will admit that many things coming through the psychic or from the psychic seem to be good and, when taken at face value, may present the appearance of a veritable angel of light.14 I would like to clarify for you why this is so, for this instruction is not a diatribe of condemnation of those sincere people who have received great comfort from spiritualistic phenomena. After all, your own beloved El Morya and Kuthumi sponsored the original spiritualist movement in the West as a means of engendering in people faith in the hereafter.
“The psychic world is the world of images. It is a hall of mirrored forms, but these are not necessarily arranged in any form of order. The modes of the inhabitants of the psychic world resemble almost the sea itself in depth. A seemingly weightless condition persists there and forms may be tipped at any angle and piled up haphazardly as the substance of which dreams are made. A sense of timelessness is also apparent, with the past, present and future all blending into a montage of incongruent ideas.”15
Continued in Part 3, published in Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 48 no. 16.
“The Summit Lighthouse Sheds Its Radiance o’er All the World to Manifest as Pearls of Wisdom.”
“Psychic Thralldom” is chapter 2 of Paths of Light and Darkness, Book 6 of Climb the Highest Mountain series by Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet. Parts 1-9 of “Psychic Thralldom” are published in 2005 Pearls of Wisdom Nos. 14-22. The publications listed in these notes are Summit University Press publications unless otherwise noted. For ordering information, go to The Summit Lighthouse online store.
1. Frank Gaynor, ed., Dictionary of Mysticism (New York: Philosophical Library, 1953), s.v. “ectoplasm.”
2. Simulacra are representations or images of something.
3. G. Henslow, Proof of the Truth of Spiritualism (New York: Dodd, 1928).
4. The electronic belt contains the karmic records of all energies an individual has ever misqualified—his negative human thoughts and feelings. It is positioned in one’s aura extending from the waist to beneath the feet, somewhat in the shape of a large kettledrum. The violet flame can be used to penetrate, dissolve and transmute layers of this negative spiral of energy. For additional ascended master teaching on the electronic belt and transmuting its energies, see Predict Your Future: Understand the Cycles of the Cosmic Clock, pp. 136-140.
5. From the ascended masters’ perspective, automatic writing is one of the most dangerous types of mediumistic activity. In this process, an individual allows the physical body to be controlled by a spirit that writes or types messages. Most people who engage in this are caught up in their ego; the spirits engage them with personal messages and flattery. (In fact, this is the point of vulnerability of many people who engage in psychic activities.) An individual, by repeatedly ceding control of the mind and body to astral entities in this way, may eventually lose the ability to control their own consciousness, and thus become subject to all manner of “voices” and projections from the astral plane that they can no longer control or distinguish from the real world.
6. See Predict Your Future: Understand the Cycles of the Cosmic Clock by Elizabeth Clare Prophet for ascended master teaching on astrology.
7. Job 22:28; Matt. 12:37.
8. Mark 10:17, 18; Matt. 19:16, 17; Luke 18:18, 19.
9. Matt. 27:51; Mark 15:38; Luke 23:45.
10. Luke 17:21.
11. Lord Maitreya, March 25, 1967, “AUM,” in Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 27, no. 15, April 8, 1984.
12. In medieval mythology, Mephistopheles was a subordinate to the Devil, one of the seven archangels cast out of heaven, to whom Faust sold his soul.
13. I Peter 5:8.
14. II Cor. 11:13-14.
15. Astrea, “Freedom from the Psychic World,” in Keepers of the Flame Lesson 24, pp. 23-24.
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