“Plotinus, as is well known, was a clairvoyant-seer during his whole and daily life; and yet, he had been united to his God but six times during the sixty-six years of his existence, as he himself confessed to Porphyry.” “Ammonius Sakkas, the “God-taught”, asserts that the only power which is directly opposed to soothsaying and looking into futurity is memory; and Olympiodorus calls it phantasy. “The phantasy”, he says (in Platonis Phaed.), “is an impediment to our intellectual conceptions; and hence, when we are agitated by the inspiring influence of the Divinity, if the phantasy intervenes, the enthusiastic energy ceases; for enthusiasm and the ecstasy are contrary to each other.
Should it be asked whether the soul is able to energize without the phantasy, we reply that its perception of universals proves that it is able. It has perceptions, therefore, independent of the phantasy; at the same time, however, the phantasy attends it in its energies, just as a storm pursues him who sails on the sea.” A medium, moreover, needs either a foreign intelligence – whether it be spirit or living mesmerizer – to overpower his physical and mental parts, or some factitious means to induce trance. An adept, and even a simple fakir requires but a few minutes of “self-contemplation.”
The brazen columns of Solomon’s temple; the golden bells and pomegranates of Aaron; the Jupiter Capitolinus of Augustus, hung around with harmonious bells; and the brazen bowls of the Mysteries when the Kora was called, were all intended for such artificial helps. So were the brazen bowls of Solomon hung round with a double row of 200 pomegranates, which served as clappers within the hollow columns. The priestesses of Northern Germany, under the guidance of hierophants, could never prophesy but amidst the roar of the tumultuous waters. Regarding fixedly the eddies formed on the rapid course of the river they hypnotized themselves.
So we read of Joseph, Jacob’s son , who sought for divine inspiration with his silver divining-cup, which must have had a very bright bottom to it. The priestesses of Dodona placed themselves under the ancient oak of Zeus (the Pelasgian, not the Olympian god), and listened intently to the rustling of the sacred leaves, while others concentrated their attention on the soft murmur of the cold spring gushing from underneath its roots. But the adept has no need of any such extraneous aids – the simple exertion of his willpower is all sufficient. The Atharva-Veda teaches that the exercise of such willpower is the highest form of prayer and its instantaneous response. To desire is to realize in proportion to the intensity of the aspiration; and that, in its turn, is measured by inward purity.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 