In undertaking the spiritual path you need the common sense more than ever. Ultimately we have to rely upon our own best judgment and our own internal lamp.
Robert: Welcome to Inner Sight. Inner sight is simply seeing that which is always present but not yet fully recognized. You have within you the ability to see yourself and the world around you in a new way, with new eyes, so stay with us, and together we’ll look at the world and ourselves with inner sight. Our topic for today is common sense and the spiritual path. To me it’s common sense to be on the spiritual path. We should mention Alice Bailey, the founder of the Lucis Trust organization. Lucis Trust sponsors this show and Alice Bailey wrote twenty-four volumes of books and all of the dialogue that you’ll hear on this show emanates from the literature of Alice Bailey, as do most of our thoughts, most of our philosophy and most of what we say. However, this one is by Voltaire, the very famous philosopher who said, that “Common sense is not so common.” I guess I can agree with that, even as far as my own behavior sometimes. We all think we know what common sense is, but does esoteric philosophy define in a specific way what common sense is?
Sarah: Yes, it gives a very interesting insight into common sense and so does the dictionary. I love the dictionary because when you go to it and look up a word, sometimes you get a whole different slant on it. Although it’s not the words “common sense”, a synonym, “sensible”, which I looked up — sensible, as in our mother saying to us, “If you would just be sensible”— means: capable of being perceived by the senses, or by reason or understanding. That is the common sense which is perceived by the five senses, hearing, touch, sight, taste and smell, plus the mind which integrates the information that comes to us through those five senses and creates the common sense: common in the sense of joining all these forces and all these senses together. The use of the mind is what gives us our common sense. In other words, when we remember to think and not just react or emote, we’re drawing on our common sense. The mind is that God-given body we’re endowed with that uses our senses and hopefully creates our thoughts and our decisions and our responses based on the information we received, and not just impulse.
Dale: Well, the dictionary that I looked in did have a definition of common sense and it said it was “sound prudent judgment”. So, there you have it; very similar to yours. I like to think of common sense in the terms of a Commons and liken it to the Village Commons, which used to be the central design of many villages centuries ago.
Sarah: And still is in Britain.
Dale: It’s the common ground: the common piece of land that’s in the centre of town where all the commoners come to congregate and discuss things and have their fairs and so forth. It’s out of the kind of values which the village people have developed, that we get the term common sense. Like you said: it’s from the information which comes through all of our senses, that we have developed over the years, of what is now determined to be the accepted and prudent way of behaving in life.
Sarah: There’s another interesting spiritual connotation to the common sense, and it has to do with the right and left brain—at least I think it’s related to that—which became a very popular way of categorizing people a few years ago. You were either left brained or right brained, meaning you were either a linear, factual, empirical thinker or you were more of the creative, dreamy, visionary sort. Well, that, I think, is a very inadequate way of viewing people because we should use both sides of our brain. We need them both. We need to think practically and empirically, and we also need to be visionary, and I think this viewpoint is reconciled in the spiritual teaching about the right and the left eye. It’s called the “doctrine of the eye.” The right eye, according to spiritual teaching, is the eye of vision, of wisdom, of foresight, the intuition, whereas the left eye is the eye of the mind, of sight and of common sense. You can see that both are needed to make one’s way through life, and they are superseded by what is called the “third eye.” Probably people have noticed drawings that show the third eye in the middle of the forehead in some of the ancient Egyptian drawings, and even on our dollar bill; if you turn it over, above the pyramid you’ll see this eye looking at you. That’s the third eye, called in Hinduism the “Eye of Shiva.” It’s the all-seeing eye, the eye that directs the will, that reconciles or synthesizes the functions of the left eye and the right eye. All of that is related to the common sense, using the mind in all of its aspects, all of its faculties.
Dale: The mind is the great synthesizing faculty that we have, and it synthesizes and brings together all of the information that comes through the five senses, and the mind of course is the sixth sense. It’s interesting in the Bailey books that all of our five senses have higher corresponding extensions to them. Our sense of sight eventually gives us the ability for clairvoyance: the ability to see more subtle vibratory rays where the eye is sensitive to the etheric levels. This is not a psychic thing so much as it is just a faculty of the eye to be much keener and more attuned to the finer grade of matter and material substance called the “etheric” or the “energy body,” where it can see the aura, or it can see the condition of the chakras, which we’ve talked about before. The same extensions are on all the other senses too. Hearing becomes extended through clairaudience: hearing on the inner planes. The sense of touch will give us the sense of psychometry. So, all of these extensions lie ahead of us and they’re part of the potential that is within the human being. All of this comes through the five senses.
Robert: What exactly is the common sense in relation to spiritual living?
Sarah: Indispensable. Without common sense you can get yourself into quite a pickle in the spiritual life because you are dealing with powerful energies. You are trying to accelerate your development in a way that just leaving things to evolution would take care of in a much gentler, slower way. So, in undertaking the spiritual path you need more than ever the common sense. It’s the remembrance that each human being is a soul, and that soul is our God-given power of self determination and of free will, and the common sense is the reliance upon our own soul, our own judgment, our own best sense rather than turning one’s fate and one’s will over to anyone or anything else. That’s why I say it’s indispensable.
Dale: Yes, and as one’s consciousness expands, one’s sense of values expands along with that and this may in turn modify what one understands as common sense, because now you have to begin to include all of what you are experiencing given this expansion of consciousness. As more and more is included, your consciousness becomes more inclusive and then this changes or modifies what you understand as common sense, and it now includes spiritual principles and the laws and principles of the soul. So, for a person on the path or, let’s say, a spiritual person, whatever that means, the common sense has to take in a lot more and you have to include a lot more. The rules of the road become much more subtle, so it does include much more than the old rules of common sense.
Sarah: Right, it includes them; it doesn’t supersede them. In other words, you always need to evaluate whatever you are perceiving or experiencing. For example, in meditation or in your spiritual study, you always need to put it through the strainer, so to speak, of your common sense, using all of these senses that you have just described and making sure that it fits with the information that those senses give you, because that’s all ultimately that we can rely upon: our own best judgment and our own internal lamp that is lit even when we think it isn’t. The soul is light and there is that internal light that illumines our way. When we go against our common sense, we’re denying that light, we’re choosing to walk in the dark rather than staying within the light of our own judgment and intelligence. I think we have a lot more of that available to us than we might give ourselves credit for.
Robert: What most interferes with the common sense?
Sarah: I think probably more than anything else it’s desire. Desire—when we are powerfully driven by something that we desperately, urgently want—makes us set aside our common sense, our past experience, and our best judgment because we just have to have it. What do you think?
Dale: Yes, desire is the driving force too often, and we get this over-exuberant behavior and we tend to waste a lot of energy without first understanding the cause-and-effect relationships of actions. Often we make wrong choices, let’s say in meditation practices. You’ve mentioned that as a danger to look out for that tends to interfere with common sense. Sometimes we just go into these meditation practices without really thinking what we’re doing, all based on some desire for—who knows what—development, some psychic contact, to channel some entity or whatever. But we end up getting into trouble, perhaps, and wasting a lot of time.
Sarah: We are given some guidelines for how do avoid the kinds of things you mention. One is—and I think it’s the most important—know yourself. Have a good self-awareness of what you’re capable of and what your goals are. Another is proceed slowly and with a certain amount of caution. Study the effects that are being created by your choices. Are they what you want, or are they telling you that you’re going in the wrong direction? Remember that eternity is a long time and you don’t have to achieve everything right now. Aim at regularity in your practice because consistency and persistence are such safeguards, that rhythmic endeavor can be so protective. Remember that everything that you seek to achieve spiritually has to be expressed in service to others. It can never be done for your own personal self-development because that violates spiritual law. Your spiritual growth has to be done for the good of the world. And remember not to be too impressed by the weird and wonderful, which is what my term is for the strange psychic phenomena that so often engross people who are very new to the Path. They love that sort of thing, channeling discarnate spirits and being able to do all kinds of things that are really not much more than magic tricks and do not make the world a better place to live in.
Dale: Yes, and it goes right back to what you said earlier about desire and what one desires. If they desire and are englamoured by all of these phenomenal effects, then that’s what they’re going to chase after, and perhaps they don’t really learn that until they’ve gone through a lot of painful experiences.
Sarah: Clearly, there are some wonderful expressions in the writings of Alice Bailey that pertain to the common sense. One is to “sit lightly in the saddle.”
Dale: That takes me back! (laughter)
Sarah: That pertains, I think, to all aspects of life, and some of us have a hard time with that one because we are given to too much intensity; but to sit lightly in the saddle. Another, above all else, keep your sense of humor no matter what. Remember to laugh, and especially at yourself. Remember that you should try to “make haste slowly” in any change that you’re trying to create within yourself. In other words, be patient. Be patient with yourself; God is, why shouldn’t you be? We’re so hard on ourselves and so eager to transform ourselves once we decide we want to make a change. It has to come slowly, because that’s how nature progresses; it doesn’t shoot up like a plant overnight—unless it’s Kudzu. (laughter)
Robert: I guess along the path, if we’re going to be of service to humanity and to God, we don’t necessarily have to be perfect at this particular point.
Sarah: No, we’re needed as we are. It’s come as you are and with whatever you have in terms of resources, and everyone has certain resources, and everyone has a certain level of life on which they can serve. Because we can always serve and meet the need of those whom we understand best, you see, so we are all needed at whatever level of consciousness we might be at.
Robert: I would think also that it’s common sense for one to want to reach the highest potential of his own existence, and concomitant with that would be being on a spiritual path, acknowledging that spirituality is certainly a very intricate part of our human lives. Why do otherwise sensible, intelligent people demonstrate such a lack of common sense sometimes in regard to spiritual living?
Sarah: One reason might be that they are basically selfish in their orientation to their spiritual life. They’re trying to achieve something for themselves. They’re trying to accelerate their development rather than wanting to move into a deeper understanding of God’s law. They’re simply wanting liberation for their own personal satisfaction. Another might be that they’re impatient, that they are too eager, that they’re motivated by a kind of greed or avarice, which is one of the pitfalls of the spiritual path. It doesn’t pertain just to stealing things, but to wanting to possess that which isn’t really yours to claim yet, and that includes spiritual powers and spiritual understanding. If you haven’t earned it, it’s avarice to want to go after it.
Dale: Yes, I think some people may have common sense in their everyday life and knowing how to behave in circumstances, yet they perhaps lack much experience when dealing with the spiritual realm.
Sarah: They turn their judgment over to someone else.
Dale: Yes, I mean, common sense will tell you not to walk on the thruway because that’s a good place to get killed, but one may not have that much experience when it comes to the dangers of walking on the spiritual highway. Especially when dealing with things like we’ve mentioned, like psychism and the phenomena of the astral plane or somebody holding out or enticing you to practice this method of meditation and you’ll get lots of money or you’ll get instant enlightenment or go through this vast initiation. You really get yourself in trouble by following those paths. I think it’s because so many sensible people, so to speak, lack the experience of the realm they’re moving into.
Sarah: But don’t you think that spiritual law protects us from realms of consciousness that we are not ready for? I think we are blinded in the way the baby kitten is blinded from seeing too much too soon. If that’s true, then whatever stage of spiritual development is before us, we do have the experience that we need to move into that realm, and we do have this inner lamp that I mentioned. Even if we feel that we’re a complete novice on the spiritual path, we have a long history behind us if we believe in the doctrine of rebirth. That’s why we always have to put whatever is being presented to us as spiritual truth to the test of our own logic and best sense of truth and fairness. Some standards would be: is it good for everyone? Is it selfish? Is it going to harm anyone? Any spiritual practice that would harm you or anyone—that should tell you right there. That should send off a warning signal to stay away from it, and yet people will sometimes violate their best judgment because some spiritual teacher that they are impressed with says they should try this. Don’t ever violate your own inner judge. In fact, there’s this wonderful statement in the Secret Doctrine which says this: “The Lord Buddha said we must not believe a thing merely because it’s said, or because traditions have handed it down from antiquity, or because it’s supposedly something in the writings of inspired philosophers. We should believe it when this doctrine or teaching or writing is corroborated by our own reason and consciousness,” and He said, “When we believe in that way, then we should act accordingly and abundantly.”
Robert: That’s about all the time we have for our discussion today. You’ve been listening to Inner Sight. Now we would like to close with a world prayer called the Great Invocation. It’s a call for light and love and goodwill to flow into the world and into our hearts. Let’s listen for a moment to these powerful words.
Sarah: Closes the program by reciting the adapted version of the Great Invocation.
(This is an edited transcript of a recorded radio program called “Inner Sight.” This conversation was recorded between the host, Robert Anderson, and the then President and Vice-President of Lucis Trust, Sarah and Dale McKechnie.)
(Transcribed and edited by Carla McLeod)
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