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Physical Enlightenment

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‘To be conscious in this world is a prerequisite to be conscious in others.’

In recent years many people have ‘awoken’ to spirituality. Perhaps this from a rejection of religious dogma and the availability of spiritual ideas via the internet.

But what it appears to me is often missing in this spiritual revival is an emphasis on materiality. This may sound contradictory but read on.

In many spiritual traditions, one of the first realisations for the aspirant is how important the physical world is. The physical does not cancel out the spiritual and visa versa. From a non-dualistic perspective, the two are complementary, not mutually exclusive.

So before heading down the yellow brick road on one spiritual path or another my personal advice would be to take time to embrace everything practical and become healthy, wealthy and wise in the process. Controversially, I will say that to aspire to physical poverty as do many monastic traditions, is to aspire to spiritual poverty, as in the Hermetic law of ‘as above, so below.’

For me, aestheticism is a poor role model for those seeking enlightenment. Nevertheless, monasteries and nunneries in many countries are occupied by people who avoid being ‘in the world’ presumably in the belief that this puts them ‘on a path to enlightenment’. In practical terms, it is substituting difficulty with institutional routines. The intention to ‘be spiritual’ is sometime the root cause of never finding spiritual meaning in life.

In the Zen Buddhist stories from the East, a young person enters a monastery with an expectation to become spiritually enlightened, perhaps in the first few months or a year or two! Spotting this, the Zen teacher sets them to work in the monastery kitchen. When the meals are over and before the preparation of the next, the novice is given a broom and told to start sweeping. This carries on for years. If the aspirant’s ego gives in after years of being excluded from the spiritual rituals and routines of the monastery, they are appointed Abbot. The teaching was and is, learnt in the kitchen and dusty hallways, not the temple.

The Zen Master Dogen, wrote a practical manual entitled ‘How to Cook Your Life’. It drew parallel lessons between cooking in the monastery and spiritual training. It is available from Shambhala Publications.

It is easy to take physicality for granted, but this three dimensional ‘reality’ is a place where spiritual beings are sent to learn faster and more profoundly than it is possible in other dimensions. This process is known by Christian gnostics as ‘the Creator self knowing’. Certainly, physicality is not a life of ease. Whilst there is beauty and happiness, there is also ugliness and despair.

We would do well not envy the lifestyles of the wealthy and powerful in society who appear to have an easier life than those who have little money or power.

The love of money, as is said, does not bring happiness. Often we see that the poor have a much better chance of growing spiritually than the rich. Possessions are supposed to be bad for spirituality but the benefit is more in your attitude towards possessions and how this is reflected in yourself. Dressing up as a spiritual person, does not make you one. The best philosophy is to be in, but not of, this hologram of physical illusions.

For a person living in our time in a ‘developed’ country, what could be a rewarding spiritual path? As a perhaps unexpected metaphor, consider the ‘boot camp’ style of military training. This starts with the aim of breaking down the ego of the recruits with repeated humiliation. Only after weeks of physical and mental ‘beasting’ is the pressure reduced and replaced with constructive learning. This focuses on polishing boots, pressing uniforms, and keeping personal space clean and orderly, to a level of almost impossible perfection. The point is clearly not the physical tasks but mental resilience in order to excel in an endless cycle physical challenges. What is life if it is not a similar tumble drier of trials?

Members of Royal families face similar challenges, but in contrast to most of us, in an environment of opulence and wealth. Royal children are brought up to serve their nation within the parameters of strict protocols, not personal desire. In return, their every physical need is gratified by servants. Running the bath and cleaning up after the Corgis, royals do not learn. Here, ironically, having few or no physical challenges can be as spiritually disruptive as having too many.

A similar regime of service combined with wealth, governs the lives of high ranking officials in industry, government, and even religious orders. Wealth and power, can become an enormous distraction and many fall from office and spiritual grace through selfish greed.

So what of the ordinary human being who is not wealthy or powerful?

We might start with two aspects of our lives. Consider the physical body and the environment in which the body lives.

The human body is a miraculous and superb creation. You are only given one per lifetime so in my view it is important to treat it with the deepest respect. Jumping from aeroplanes and bridges for excitement is in my view disrespectful to your most sacred gift. Surely, we should be treating our body as if it were a prize race horse?

‘Horse Race’ picture credit: Museo Nacional

For the same reason, every aspect of the physical world is important to the spiritual aspirant. Simply put, every life lesson learnt in a human body, is a lesson that can be applied to the astral or spiritual body.

At the present time there are many ‘spiritual advisors’ advocating moving from this present three dimensional ‘reality’ into a fourth dimension or ‘new Earth’. Dolores Cannon had many insights on this process when she was alive. It is held that those not ready for this transition will not notice any change, and those who are prepared will move quietly ‘on’.

If this is possible and if this is what they want I wish them well. However, personally I regard the greatest challenges and rewards to be firmly here on Earth. Changing the scenery in a theatre does not change the characters or the plot.

In my view, having a deep respect for nature is probably the most important spiritual quality for individuals and human collectives at this time. To watch forests and animals and precious ecosystems be destroyed to support human ignorance and greed is heartbreaking. Similarly, war against one’s brothers and sisters on earth is anathema to spirituality.

We occupy the human learning fields in the present time. To leave this full-on learning environment at the time of it’s greatest need, is to leave an unpaid debt to future generations. I suggest that if we cannot master the fine balancing act between physicality and spirituality, we should at least give our children a chance to do so. Nature rebuilds eco-systems without help from humans, it is all a matter of how much damage has been caused and will an ethical case be made for protecting nature whilst it recovers?

To stroke an elephant or watch a lion sleeping in a tree are both physical and spiritual blessings; one gives life to the other.

picture credit: Pinterest

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The Ki Key

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The Hidden Energy of Life

Western science has many new discoveries to make. The key to unlock the unknown is the simple question; ‘what do we not understand?’

For example; ‘we do not understand energy that is not electromagnetic.’

Such energies must exist as biological energetic processes called ‘life’, have no explanation. We do not have to look far into history and the present day to find indicators of knowledge of another type of energy. In ancient India it was called Prana, in Ancient China – Chi and in Ancient Japan -Ki. In the West it was named ‘Orgone’ by Wilhelm Reich.

This biological energy is commonly linked to healing such as Acupuncture and Reiki but it’s uses are more varied than that.

If we start with the human body, we have evidence that the Ancient Egyptians regarded the body as a receiver of energy from the sun as shown in this image.

The Ankh is a symbol of life and is being held up to absorb the solar rays. Today we are familiar with aerials receiving radio and television in a similar manner.

This biological energy is mapped as pervading the entire human body by Acupuncture practionitioners. The cause of the healing was not understood beyond the concept of ‘Chi’ energy, but the effects were, and it is so effective, it is still in use today.

If we follow the idea of the solar energy as associated with a biological energy from the Cosmos, then the seven planets of ancient times, also affect life on earth through their energetic characteristics. In ancient Greece they were deified as minor gods or archetypes, whose influence as precise ‘qualities’, pervaded every aspect of individual and collective behaviour on Earth. Today we call this astrology.

The energy from the planets affects each of the seven life energy nexuses in the human body known in ancient India as Chakras. Our consciousness as human beings is firmly linked with the ‘heavens’ in this way; obeying the Hermetic principle of ‘as above so below, as below so above.’

The Ancient Chinese combined heaven and humans with the planet earth, represented by the pictogram similar to the capital letter E. The evidence for ‘Ki’ is greatest in the form of the ancient structures built all around the globe.

There is increasing interest in the ‘energetic’ characteristics of megastructures such as pyramids, temples, churches and cathedrals, earthworks, roads, earthworks, hill figures, artificial cave networks and megaliths. All across the ancient world these structures were intricately aligned with and connected to this subtle energy associated with the movements of the sun, moon and the planets, earth and water. Modern water diviners are sensitive to the energy associated with underground water and can tell the water’s volume, depth and speed accurately.

Pyramids are found on every continent of the world (including Antarctica) and it is likely they were connected as a global network to balance and share this subtle energy globally; including sharing information. The present ‘world wide web’ is an analogous modern version of the same form and function.

Examination of the physiology and anatomy of the earth shows that this subtle ‘earth energy’ is associated locally with faults and fissures, springs and wells, water falls which were recognised by local indigenous tribes and cultures as ‘sacred’ with supernatural powers.

They were places where the physical third dimension met other dimensions and acted as ‘portals’ for other entities to interact with humans. In ancient times this was more common as humans were conscious of these subtleties and gods such as Athena would appear in human form to give advice, as recorded in ancient Greek legends. These entities overlap with the experience of so called ‘extra terrestrials’ today; more likely inter-dimensional intelligences who have never left planet Earth.

There was and is a mechanical reality to the generation, manipulation and storage of this subtle energetic system. Pyramids, barrows, dolmens and stone circles are a few of the centres of power used to interconnect and store energy for many purposes such as healing and initiation. The burials that took place at the end of civilisations have been incorrectly focused upon by modern archaeologists. If evidence is needed consider relatively modern Gothic cathedrals which were built for the living, not the dead.

This subtle energy was recorded by the psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich and he named it ‘orgone’. He saw that it accumulated in the human body and was discharged in the orgasm. Orgone is attracted to orgone and does not dissipate like heat energy. Nature can be seen to operate in the same cycle of build-up and discharge. The most familiar would be the accumulation of negative and positive ions in the earth and atmosphere, and the electrostatic discharge of lightning.

The ancient megastructures worked in harmony with nature in this way to regulate the natural flow of energy through the landscape in the same way as a capacitor and resistor in an electric circuit.

Weight and the pressure it creates was known by ancient builders to amplify this subtle energy. In a similar manner, quartz and other crystals build up and discharge piezo-electricity when compressed. The lintels over the uprights at Stone Henge and the T-shape upright stones at Gobleki Tepe in Turkey, performed this function as do the pyramids. It is clear that temples in Ancient Egypt, Greece and Italy have too many columns just to support the roof. Their precise orientation to the magnetic flux of the planet, matching proportions with the golden mean and phi geometry of human body, indicate a primary function of sacred edifices as centres for healing, heightened awareness and initiation.

Finally, to experience this energy within one’s own body, there is a Yogic principle known as ‘kundalini’. This is depicted as a snake (or modern static wave form energy ) and is associated with the spinal column; also in wave form. In my view, the subtle energy which the Yogis call ‘prana’ is in a constant state of build up and discharge, before, throughout and after one’s life. There is no single ‘awakening’ moment when the Kundalini rises up the spine as is sometimes described. Rather the motion of the snake is as seen in nature as a perpetual ascension through the energetic nexuses (chakras). The accumulation purges and cleanses each chakra in turn until discharged naturally in sexual union or used for the process of ‘enlightenment’. For this reason and purpose, many mystics were and are, celibate.

The importance of subtlety of this primal ‘life energy’ awaits formal ‘discovery’ and scientific experimentation and explanation. We can be sure at this moment in history that human beings have forgotten what was once known and drove much of human spiritual evolution for thousands of years.

In my view, now is a good time to re-discover what we have lost, particularly as modern archaeology unearths new evidence almost daily. All that is necessary for archaeologists to advance their theories to another level, and replace ‘grave robbery’ with an understanding of esoteric energy; known once as key to the general advancement of human spirituality, but long ago forgotten.

picture credit: Life Sloka
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Whirled Without End

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The beginning of now…

When we look at the art of ancient times it is striking how the world is represented in two dimensions. From the beautiful court scenes from Mogul India, Japanese and Chinese evocations of nature, the wall paintings of Egypt and Mayan and Aztec relief sculptures of Central America.

At the same time and for too long, the world was conceived as a flat plain. If you travelled too far you would fall off. It’s an understandable world view, yet the believers in this theory never questioned how deeply a well could be dug before a hole appeared.

This perceptual paradigm was founded in a vague adherence to the dominion of the Divine Male. The Old Testament God was a man – naturally. Animals marched into Noah’s perfectly measured Ark, 2×2 and cells have been splitting that way ever since.

Roman armies marched in two step time and in battles formed orderly squares allowing all round defence.

Sacred buildings were rigidly formal and measured, such as the Parthenon in Ancient Athens. The Ancient Egyptians were equally inspired by formal and exact right angled geometry.

This male principal permeated the theory of design and practice and in doing so formed a reliable and solid ground work for our modern era.

When I became a student of architecture the tutors ask us on our first day what we would bring to architecture. Somewhat naively and immodestly I said I would bring the curve back to architecture. Even headlights on cars in the 1970’s, headlamps on cars were changing from being round to square.

I had a feeling of a ‘brave new world’ which indeed has happened even if I had to let the brilliant Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, steal my thunderbolts.

picture credit: Arch Daily

As a boy I used to cycle down to the south coast of England where the land meets the sea in tall chalk cliffs. Creeping along the grass to perch on the precipice to look down at the black pebble beaches far below, I was like a seer peeping over the edge of a flat world, into a third dimension.

Whether we see it or not, we are also now creeping warily into a fourth dimension represented by the principal of the ‘sacred feminine’.

This has nothing to with ‘Votes for Women’, a movement that swelled at the beginning of the nineteenth century perhaps as a natural protest against the male principled dominance of society since for ever. The First world war was perhaps, the last breath of that male principal. It briefly stopped the feminine protests and sent women to factories to build the instruments of war, but the corner had been turned. Women drove buses and ambulances and had tasted freedom from domesticity.

Mothers watched their sons march into the sunset, over the horizon and would never forgive the folly of the male Generals and politicians.

If you hold a ball in front of a child and ask, ‘where does this ball begin?’ the child will look at you as if you only have half a brain and explain that a ball has no beginning.

The question is a Koan and like all koans, challenges the rational, logical and formal pathways of thought.

Many dogmatic religious thinkers hold to the notion that the world could possibly end and proponents of this will present you with a date. Presently it is 13th August 2025 ‘according to Nostradamus’ and this date will, no doubt, pass without incident just as did the Christian Calendar’s year 2000 BCE.

Learning about the sacred feminine is a ‘learning curve’ upon which we still struggle, like young penguins sliding ungracefully up the steep slopes of an iceberg.

Ask an Astrophysicist when the Universe began and they will generally reply based on the so called ‘Big Bang’ theory. Yet the question is as absurd as guessing when and how the Universe will end. Anticipating the common sense of children observing the universe, I would expect they will say it never began and will never end.

That is the beauty of the child’s mind. It still retains the influence of the Divine Mother, before it is sent to the (male) military styled regime of education.

Yet I feel the influence of the Divine Feminine is more influential in modern Western societies than ever before. Parliaments and Judge’s benches are becoming equally filled with women as men.

From Ancient India we are given the map of the idea of the cyclic Yugas; eras circling around 25,000 years in which the world is alternately destructive and creative.

picture credit: Ancient Inquiries

In the view of many, the Age if Aquarius is happening now and introducing the Feminine Principal into all areas of life and knowledge. Exceptions abound of course, as the process is gradual and takes two steps back for each three forward.

The benefit for humankind will be to realise when the pendulum is suspended equally between the two Divine Genders. Modern Feminism becomes flawed when and if it tips the balance too far and unnaturally dominates the male principal.

In Ancient times there are a limited number of symbols that appear in wall paintings and petroglyphs literally, around the world. One of them is the spiral. This remains one of the most easy to comprehend illustrations of an idea that defies logic; infinity. A spiral apparently starts from nowhere and disappears into nowhere.

If something were an mass moving through a void, it would need a circular motion combined with a constant, weak tangental vector, nudging it ever off a circular orbit out of sight.

For a time in history, philosophers were perplexed with the puzzle in geometry of ‘squaring the circle’; famously illustrated by Leonardo de Vinci in his depiction of the ‘Vitruvian Man‘.

picture credit: Britannica

Yet in my view the spiral is a better symbolic representation of that state in matter and spirit, where the feminine is truly in harmony with the male.

In every aspect of nature, from the principals of the growth of the fractal tree and sea shores, to the spiralling movements of the moons, planets, stars, galaxies and universes, we can measure in observation the wonder of creation by two complementary Divine potter’s hands; one male, one female.

Humans were made from clay on the spinning potter’s wheel and the principal known as the anima mundi, is the final result of Divine genius – the Soul of the Whirled.

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The Faraday Way

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Listening to a science programme on the Radio just now, I heard a amazing fact about Michael Faraday, the great early 19th century scientist. Apparently he was an ardent believer in God as well as a scientist. Unlike his contemporarys, he did not believe in molecular theory and the concept of the ‘atom’, which came from the ancient Greeks. He instead said that matter is where ‘lines of force meet’.

The other great scientist from whom much understanding of electricity today came, was Nicola Tesla in the late 19th century. One of his most famous sayings is; “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”

These are not lightweight scientists. Most of our modern technology we owe to these two men.

The idea of ‘lines of force meeting’ immediately suggests the concept the ‘hologram’ although they were not known in Faraday’s time. Several beams or ‘layers’ of energetic force containing information that the human brain interprets as ‘an object’ is precisely what a hologram is. It is a huge leap but one made succinctly by Michael Talbot in his book, ‘The Holographic Universe’, to suggest that everything that we perceive as matter is a hologram.

Mystics have been saying for centuries that matter consists mainly of ‘nothing’ and modern physics now also states this as true. Some scientists are even questioning whether the electron, proton and neutron are just energy. This combined with the observations by astrophysicists that the Universe consists of 94% so called ‘dark matter’ suggests that we know little about what we sense to be most real, matter.

If one thinks of the ‘table of elements’ as a good proof of matter, then Faraday’s theory of there only being ‘lines of force’ does not contradict the possibility of chemical ‘elements’. Elements might simply be unique combinations of ‘lines of force’ which harmonise to produce the illusion of a ‘solid’.

Sound provides a more tangible analogy as it too is energy with fixed frequency and vibration coming together as single notes, or harmonic layers that produce unique chords when in combination.

But our brains are taught only to interpret the electrical signals from our five senses. From childhood we learn to see these patterns as a solid ‘reality’ but like all illusions, sometimes we miss notice the illusionists slight of hand and mastery of distraction.

For example, we might all have seen something in a flash which a few micro seconds later turns out to be not what we thought. It might be a leaf being blown across the road which a driver sees as a mouse or bird for a brief moment. Or a child’s kite flying high above that a walker mistake for a hovering bird of prey; even for a split second.

Such moments are ‘discontinuities’. The Ancient Celts understood this and certain places, such as the hills of Southern England known as the Downs, were described as ‘thin’, meaning localities where the boundary between ‘solid reality’ and ‘parallel dimensions’ create experiences of the metaphysical (beyond matter) realm. A church going shepherd, in the 19th century is said to have seen a vision of Jesus above these hills in the sky, which would probably have been forgotten by now had not many in the local village seen the same vision and the newspaper article from the time still framed on a wall in Firle Church.

My point is simply that, if we can accept the suggestion that the Universe is simply ‘energy, frequency and vibration’ many of the ‘anomalies’ that modern science cannot explain, suddenly become easier to understand and even, accept as true.

We do not all have to become mystics to believe and practise this. What a shepherd can see we can all see. So can we all see what children saw in the village of Fatima in Portugal in 1917 – a vision of ‘Our Lady of Fatima’ – as did hundreds of the inhabitants of Fatima on several occasions.

Santa Hosemaria in Fatima, Portugal picture credit: Opus Dei

I was sitting in the waiting room this afternoon whilst my car was being serviced. I had been meditating, and it was with a single point of attention that I was eating an apple when the garage mechanic burst into the room. The conversation went like this;

‘You are eating sweets.’

‘No I am not.’

‘You are eating a sweet apple.’

‘Yes.’

We probably exchange brief moments of an imagined reality with others, more often than we think. The phenomena of what is called as ‘telepathy’ which I would suggest is more subtle that ‘reading the thoughts in others’.

In my view, two people can experience the same ‘energetic patterns’ at the same time. In the above example this was the feeling experience of ‘sweetness’ observed in a split second by two non-connected but open minds. The mechanic had not seen the apple, only received the feeling of ‘sweetness’.

Mothers will probably have had many examples of understanding a child’s needs without conversation; even and especially when the infant has not yet learnt to speak.

A mother and child are indeed a wonderful metaphor for the scientific understanding that Faraday believed, that everything is merely ‘lines of force’ meeting; something natural philosophers term ‘love’. Following this reasoning I would argue that this is why when humans follow (without expectation of reward), their highest excitement, then they will create the energetic Universe that will provide them with their highest reward. Most people’s highest excitement is simply known as love and with this vibration was and is created, the Universe – and is why it is said that; ‘God is love’.

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Earth and Ether

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Part Two

‘There is little that cannot be explained in a few sentences;

sentences that may take a life time to understand.’

What is consciousness? Where is consiousness? Who is conscious of what?

The conscious ‘me’ is clearly gifted a material body but is my body me? Clearly not, but there is evidence that the opposite is true. People have clinically died and remained fully conscious outside of the body. To explain this phenomena, consciousness must exist in another medium and that we call ‘spirit’ or loosely in scientific terms, ‘energy’. What type of energy we will come to.

The concept of spirit outside of matter, is central to many world religions. The Christian priest will attend a person dying or conduct an exorcism and a Tibetan Buddhist will say prayers over a cadaver for several days. Curiously, religious representatives do not attend births. Perhaps this is because there is no agreed moment in gestation when spirit enters the foetus but certainly it does.

In this Ven diagram, is a simple representation of how matter and spirit lock together and what they share in common. Where matter and spirit overlap is a particular energy which modern science has not yet been able to detect and measure, but which has been described extensively across time and cultures as, ether Chi, Qi, Prana, Orgone, Vril, or when in the earth, the tellurgic current.

This invisible energy creates a portal, a zone where there is connection between both matter and spirit, which I shall term ‘ether’. The stronger the ether, the easier it is for consciousness to move between matter and spirit. There is no scientific proof for this other than that humanity throughout history has devoted vast amounts of time and resources to achieve just this effect in it’s magnificent structures and modes of worship.

Depiction of Spirit Entity at Altimira, Spain

Forty thousand years ago homo sapiens sapiens conducted Shamanic rituals in cave dwellings. They created their connection with the spirit world by painting on rock walls. Through these superbly representative paintings, spirit was able to enter the cave and infuse each sentient being with it’s presence. There is also a theory that important star constellations were also represented in these paintings. Cave dwellers would have developed a close relationship with star patterns and apparent movement of the night sky when viewing from the mouth of the cave; itself a domed observatory.

Chi is present in all nature and certain places and times amplify it’s power. This can stimulate ‘extra sensory perception’ in humans and a gateway into our material realm for non-corporeal beings. To this end, throughout history, most civilisations have used and enhanced Chi by building sacred buildings and using their unique qualities as ‘places of power’, to use a phrase from the Toltec Shaman, Don Juan in Carlos Castenada‘s books.

In Ancient Greece, elegant statues of gods were placed in Temples to invite the god to be present in the statue. When the monotheistic religions arrived such ‘idol worship’ was forbidden. This fear is a sure sign of how powerful early churches realised living gods occupying statues to be.

Ancient people’s, who today we would call a, seer, prophet, priest, magician, mason, water-diviner or Oracle, helped in the construction of sacred edifices of all kinds. Temples, obelisks, pyramids, causeways, megaliths, dolmens, wells or hill figures and many others can be found today all over the globe, often unseen or unrealised. Many modern authors have studied global alignments of such sacred monuments based on sacred geometry, alignments, distance and time.

Chi is accumulated and or channelled through these structures. Whilst later burials often occurred in or near them, their main function was generally ceremonial and as places of initiation. To amplify the Chi very similar techniques were used based on geometry, astral alignments and tellurgic currents; all of which have the combined effect of accumulating and focusing Chi on the human heart, right brain and pineal and pituitary glands.

Many historical and current researchers have documented and explain aspects of this sacred knowledge. Unfortunately, left brain biased archaeologists usually support only those theories based on matter, historical records and anthropology, without reference to the living spirit that was once sacred to ancient cultures.

My point in this essay is that by introducing the concept of an invisible but omni-present spirit into our understanding of the past, the relationship between our sensory experiences and our right brained, feeling based consciousness, becomes clear.

The more Chi is present both within and without of a human being, the more easily such a person can slip through the mirror into a world beyond. Consider Alice’s famous journey into the mirror and the inverted playing card world of dreams; where right is wrong and wrong is right. Never trust a flamingo.

Less flippantly we might examine how personal direction of thought is directed outward using personal power or Chi. It is the means through which prayer is sent; through the ethereal veil to ‘God’ or Universal ‘Mind’. Alice created her Wonderland by going within or ‘down the rabbit hole’.

Finally, we should appreciate spirit is able to pass through the veil towards humanity, boosted by Chi. A highly experienced ‘Dowser’ or ‘Water Diviner’ in Scotland for instance, describes grave yards as being places of concentrations of earth energy or Chi. This connects the earthly grave with the spirit world to which our consciousness is always connected. The common story of ‘ghosts’ inhabiting graveyards is a good example of the ‘twilight zone’ occupied by all sorts including the disembodied. The particularly time of year for this veil to thin is of course, ‘The Day of the Dead’ in Mexico and ‘All Hallows Eve’ in Christianity. The displays in shop windows of evil ecrutements for children is not something properly understood in my view.

Examples of portals for the spirit, exist in very old houses, natural features such as caverns, springs, geological features such as magmatic intrusions and dikes, towns and cities like Jerusalem.

What happens in such sacred sites and countries connects through grids and alignments to other countries and even around the world. For much of recorded history, the Holy Land played out a spiritual discourse, such as those narrated in the Old Testament and New. This global effect was so strong that the Crusades set out to ‘take’ Jerusalem for Christianity and suppress to the ‘infidel’. The history of these brutal Medieval wars is well known and yet continues to play out, often with the same disregard for the sanctity of life.

One might wonder what it is about this particular part of the globe that makes it a spiritually significant region for the monotheistic religions.

When the prophet Jesus the Christ is described in the Bible as ‘walking on water’, like many biblical narratives it has multiple meanings; some for the initiated and some not. Between the earthly and spiritual planes is what I have described as an ‘etheric’ plane. Ether similar or identical to Chi; it’s exact nature still defined by effect rather than cause.

It is said that Jesus ‘walked on water’ is a metaphor for the transition from the material into the etheric plane. The water represents ether and the body of Christ is his astral, not his physical body. Like much of spirituality, such things can be experienced and mastered during life; so as to ‘store treasure in Heaven’.

One of the functions of this ability to transcend our material bodies is to enable communication of the highest kind between spirit and mortals. Earth has been visited and given benign advice by angels and prophets many times in it’s history and these form the basis of mystery schools and mysticism but unfortunately much of the glory of such knowledge has historically and to this day, fallen victim of the self interest of religious leaders.

A left brain thought bias in the West leads many to consider only logically constructed thoughts, and yet some of the most important decisions we make in our lives originate in the right side of our brains. How we think is as important as what we think.

Finally, one must acknowledge that in the material world and it’s spiritual equivalent, there are tendencies to descend into chaos as well as to rise to perfection. The spirits that facilitate this amongst mankind are the angels and demons respectively. Through their benign and harmful machinations, human life has evolved into it’s present state of scientific materialism and atheism.

What is happening in this present time of uncertainty and human suffering is in my view, a product of ignoring the possibility and presence of non-material realms and those places and times that invite personal and collective ascension.

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The Silence of Words

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Words have both sound and meaning and it is these aspects of words that I shall explore in this essay. My case shall be that there is a subtle and hidden level of meaning contained in the abscence of words as well within words; a fact we tend to ignore in our conventional Western tradition.

A child, when it is born, has no words in it’s head. It has not heard human language and it’s world is without word. It is an obvious yet obscure fact that every human infant is capable of learning any spoken language. It listens, and then one miraculous day – ‘da da’ – it speaks.

From that moment on this organic computer learns what we call an ‘operating system’ based on a language; amazingly, any language. This is all very marvellous and yet in the future our language inhibits meaning, rather than expands it.

At a certain stage in life, we might reflect and realise how words dominate our perception. We have become slaves to both the external and internal chatter of ‘things’. Words run away with themselves in our heads and much of the time we might wonder who we are and who is in charge.

Slavery of the body by another is a very old problem but slavery of the mind is even older. Early philosophers like Socrates, were sent to prison and even forced to commit suicide on account of their desire to cut through the prison bars of language and thought.

Religious and philosophical minds have, at various moments in history, produced a key to unlock the chains that hold us enslaved. In the West, this was done by encoding ritual using a language people did not understand.

In Catholicism this was the Latin language spoken by bilingual priests. Sadly, in recent times church elders have allowed religious incantations to be delivered in the vernacular. The congregation, who previously had been held rather in awe and suspense by the mystery of Mass, suddenly had this balloon popped and replaced by the humdrumness of ‘understanding’. Mystery was unwrapped like presents on Christmas day.

The ghost of Christmas Present

Only those with a deeper calling, such as Christian monks and nuns, are told to move their consciousness away from the meaning of the incantations and ‘just say the words with your mouth’ and ‘keep your consciousness on the presence of God.’ The mystical revelation was that words deceive by reducing mystery to common ‘understanding’. No one explained this to the uninitiated.

In contrast, Islam has not fallen into this trap and in most countries the original words of Divine Revelation are spoken in the original Arabic. Vast swathes of the Qur’an are learnt and recited, without necessarily knowing their meaning, by non-Arabic speakers. When spoken aloud the sound is as important as the meaning as the sounds of the holy words and phrases, even single letters, transmit a power from the Divine.

Exceptionally Mustafa Kemal Ata turk, President of Turkey in the 1920’s and 1930’s, ordered the Quran to be translated into Turkish as part of his ‘modernisation’ political philosophy. Nothing, as they say, is sacred.

Let us pause for a moment and consider the leap of faith that is being suggested here. Behind stories, myths and legends there was always a sacred understanding transmitted from generation to generation. For instance, the mystery of the ‘white stag’ that skips over the horizon or pales into the mist, so evading the hunter, is a mystery that captures and teases with a sense of rapture and bafflement.

This is ‘not knowing’ and has a value that has been largely ignored by ‘rational’ thinkers in the West.

The modern film ‘The Deer Hunter’ 1978 picks up on this theme of and man’s insignificance when compared to the mysteries of Nature. Amidst the heavy hammers of industrialisation, depicted poetically in the opening sequences of a steel works in Western Pennsylvania the central character ‘Mike’ proposes a hunting trip to his friends.

“You know what those are? Those are sun dogs… It means a blessing on the hunter sent by the Great Wolf to his children… It’s an old Indian thing.”

It is hard normally, to sustain this sense of mystery in life, as we reduce it to ‘catch phrases’ and cliché in conversation. We talk to much and our words rattle around other people’s heads like toy trains on a table top track.

Personally, I have always enjoyed travelling in non-English speaking countries and not understanding a word anyone is saying. Instead of grabbing a phrase book to attempt to understand the hubble and bubble of random conversations, I smell the unusual air and absorb the colour of exotic flowers. In essence, the mind can and should be permitted to stand still and pause. There is benefit, if not buying vegetables in a market, from concentrating on the profound reality of consciousness without words; what we might call ‘being aliveness’.

Lewis Carroll, is one of the great nonsense poets in the English language and has guided children and adults into the land of ‘not thinking’ for over a hundred years. ‘Beware the Jabberwocky’ is neither useful nor profound information, without mask or disguise. This sense of the absurd is like a door into the ‘not normal’, a place children love and adults avoid.

It would be wrong to be completely dismissive about words. In poetry and other sublimely expressive forms of language, they can explore and reveal areas of ourselves that are beyond thought, emotions and intuition. Initiation ceremonies into mystery schools are designed to bring about a consciousness that is completely without explanation by language; otherwise books would have replaced all knowledge and experience.

Unfortunately, in the roundabout of real and virtual worlds that we experience today, words come to us in a repetitive form. Anyone who has started to learn a language other than their mother tongue, will understand what it feels like to talk like a child to another adult. We converse like fools and (not wanting to insult the intelligence of animals), like ‘talking animals’.

If we are to search beyond the meaning of words, as far as our human soul will allow, then words perform a function most purely as sound; with or without a perceived meaning. This sound is the most fundamental form of creativity and inevitably appears in multiple opening verses of Genesis in the Bible that begin with, ‘And God said…’. In English these words have meaning but in the original Aramaic their would also be a magical power to the expression, just as magicians incant ‘spells’…Abracadabra! Words have the quality of spells and are learnt by a process dependent on ‘spelling’.

Pure sounds have an effect upon the human energetic system, in a most fundamental way, which is why the music we listen to is so important; as creative energy devoid of meaning. Destructive music such as Heavy Metal, attacks our ethereal essence and can lead to mental and physical illness, should we allow it. The Ancient Chinese respected ‘harmonious’ music for this very reason and viewed the opposite as a signature of decadence in decline in the State.

At the other extreme, music of a spiritual nature elevates our mood and perception in an experiential way. Various mystical traditions around the world, such as Sufism within Islam, embrace these ethereal qualities of music with ecstatic chanting.

There is a tradition in Yoga called Mantra Yoga which uses the repetition of sounds either silently or aloud to stimulate the human subtle energy system known as the ‘chakra’ and at the same time, stop the internal babble of the ordinary mind.

The Universe (of which we are a microcosm) is a cloud of sound as well as electromagnetic energy. Even the planets of our solar system vibrate at a different frequencies to one another and this mysterious concert has been recorded by modern astrophysicists. It is akin to the ‘music’ heard by mystics in trance as a constant hum or combination of harmonious overtones. Pythagoras proposed that the Sun, Moon and planets all emit their own unique hum based on their orbital revolution, and that the quality of life on Earth reflects the tenor of celestial sounds which are imperceptible to the human ear. This truth has often been represented allegorically in Western art as ‘choirs of angels’ playing musical instruments such as the harp and trumpet.

Perhaps the greatest example of the decadence that words can bring is contained in the Biblical story of the building of the Tower of Babel in Genesis. Here the Divine restraint from advancement of civilisation was used to confuse mankind with multiple languages instead of just one. The English language translates the word ‘babble’ as to ‘talk rapidly and continuously in a foolish, excited, or incomprehensible way’. Turn on your television sets today and discover that nothing has changed since this Biblical event! The world spins and makes us giddy, words fail us, we argue and fight, and all fall down.

In the Eastern philosophies, you will find a great emphasis on non-verbal communication. Much of the Japanese tea ceremonies are conducted in silence and participants are taught to ‘know’ how to conduct the ceremony without the interruption of words. A Japanese friend of mine was late for her tea ceremony class and found herself standing outside the room in which the class was taking place. She knew she would be judged on knowing exactly when to open the door and enter the room.

‘Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.’ Lao Tsu