Strange Powers Read online

  The astral body has awareness of the 'subconscious' mind. As human beings achieve extension of consciousness, they also achieve a closer relation to the subconscious mind. At a higher level still, the astral body is in contact with the whole race memory, which can become available to it. Interestingly enough, Mrs Beattie says that she disbelieves in reincarnation. People who think they have glimpsed themselves in previous existences are actually contacting fragments of the race memory. This is a point on which she is in flat disagreement with Arthur Guirdham, the subject of my next chapter. But it is only fair to say that spiritualists in general disagree about this subject. I asked Professor Wilson Knight if, next time he attended a seance, he would ask about reincarnation. He obliged me, and told me later that there seemed to be no general agreement. Reincarnation probably did occur, but it was the exception rather than the rule.

  When Mrs Beattie was in our house, she picked up a book called A World Beyond by Ruth Montgomery, purporting to be a description of the after-life, transmitted to Ruth Montgomery from the medium Arthur Ford, after his death. Mrs Beattie opened it at a page dealing with race memory, and showed it to me, saying 'Look, that's exactly what I was saying earlier.' It was; but on other points, there is considerable disagreement between Mrs Beattie's 'world beyond' and Ruth Montgomery's. Ruth Montgomery states that reincarnation is definitely the rule, and that it is the means by which men work out 'evil karma' (although she doesn't use this phrase). For example, a philanthropist who had an appalling disfigurement on one side of his face had killed a child in a previous existence by striking it with great violence in the same place...

  After death, the soul feels as if it is travelling down a long tunnel, and then emerges into a region that is very much like this physical world. In a sense, they are still exactly the same person they were when alive; 'they don't become spiritual just because they've died'. Evil souls may fall into a kind of limbo, an outer darkness. (Ruth Montgomery explains that Hitler has fallen into this state, but that he propelled himself into it. The paranoid self-assertion continued in the 'world beyond', but produced no effect, except increasing frustration and fury in Hitler—producing a fragmented mental state like insanity... )

  From the 'ordinary' (or 'earthly') level, souls may evolve to a level in which they become involved in useful work (the 'guardians'?). Beyond this, there are two higher levels. All children—souls of those who have died young—congregate at the third level. The fourth level is 'purely creative'. I found this slightly baffling—after all, creativity can exist on any level—but Mrs Beattie explained that these four levels also exist in the minds of living people, i.e. we can evolve through these levels while still alive, and the level we have reached determines our place in the 'world beyond'.

  At this point, Mrs Beattie made some comments that I did not fully understand. 'We've got to grow, to balance the negative, unconscious forces. We've got to have three extensions of consciousness in our conscious minds to balance the three levels of unconscious forces.' She conceives the subconscious as negative. (Elsewhere in the manuscripts, there is an interesting table labeled 'Human polarization', which declares that in man, the physical body is positive, and in woman, negative. The energy body in man is negative, and in woman, positive. The soul or astral body in man is positive, in woman, negative; and male consciousness is negative, while in woman, consciousness is positive. This, she says, is why man and woman harmonize, complementing each other.) When I asked her to explain the three negative forces of the unconscious more fully, she referred me to the manuscripts; but I have not been able to find anything.

  But it seems to me that the essence of Mrs Beattie's ideas is contained in a phrase she used when I asked her why some 'spiritual' people are completely non-psychic. 'We make an inward journey, to find the truth of our own being. You go through the emotional soul level, and in so doing, you become aware of the psychic level.'

  A lot of what she says puzzles me, or simply rings no bells at all. But this phrase seemed to me to be of central importance: the inward journey. She says several times in the manuscript that most people live on a purely physical level, unaware that this is only an imitation of real life. In her teens—perhaps earlier—she learned the trick of 'cavoseniargising', making the inward journey, focusing the inner-mind.

  Anybody can do this. Ed Morrell did it by focusing on pain. I have heard of cases in which a similar act of focusing could bring a certain release. In America, I met a young college teacher who said he could induce sudden intense experiences of joy, and that he had learned this trick as a boy, when he had to sit still in church. One day, when he had been fidgeting, his mother told him he would be punished if he didn't stop it. Then he began to itch—I think he said it was in the small of his back—and experienced an overwhelming desire to scratch it, which he had to resist. The itch became unbearable—then, as he concentrated on it, was suddenly replaced by an intense 'peak experience'.

  It is not necessary to focus on pain. If I settle down to read a book that I have been trying to obtain for a long time, or to listen to some music that I really want to hear, I relax completely, and prepare to devote my fullest attention to the act of focusing; and it is this that leads to states of absorption that resemble the mystic's contemplation. Such an act of concentration on one thing also refreshes us; no matter how weary I feel, if I become deeply interested in something, my energies slowly return. I recall, at the age of fifteen or so, cycling nearly fifty miles to Matlock Bath, in Derbyshire, and arriving there worn out. I felt that all I wanted to do was to lie down and sleep; instead, we paid our shillings and went on a guided tour of the deep caves that run below the limestone hills. It involved a great deal of walking and scrambling; yet we came out as relaxed and refreshed as if we'd had a good night's sleep. The proper use of our energies depends on this power to direct them—or rather, direct the attention—to new regions of the mind. This is the way 'mental voyages' are made; this is the way in which we explore our hidden powers. This is the reason people seek pleasure—because pleasure has the power to direct the mind in a single direction. And such a 'focusing' is, literally, a voyage. After a short time, we find ourselves in new mental realms, just as if we were exploring a road, and when we look back, we have an odd sense of being far from home—or at least, from the starting point.

  For me, what is important about Mrs Beattie is not her claim to be able to project the astral body, or her descriptions of the after-life. I am unable to judge these, not having any basis of personal experience to go on. But it seems dear to me that the rather odd, introspective girl who was brought up on a Welsh farm, developed the same power that all artists and poets possess: the power to make 'inward journeys'... and perhaps developed it to a greater extent than most. An artist might regard her as an artist manque, but it seems to me that she would have as much right to regard the artist as a 'psychic manque". Both belong to the group of 'inward voyagers'. Mrs Beattie is not a philosopher; but the central idea that emerges from her work is the basis of modern existentialist philosophy: Kirkegaard's recognition that 'truth is subjectivity'. But, expressed in this way, we fail to grasp its significance. What we are talking about is a real power that is possessed by human beings: the power to evolve by a process of 'inner voyage'.

  She herself has a rather skeptical attitude towards a great deal of what she has written, and is obviously not sure how much of it comes from her own mind, and how much from 'outside'. She writes in her notes: 'The things I have written from time to time, when the mood was on me, seem to me not typical of me. Some is too donnish, other pieces are too sentimental. (It all has a religious background, which is, of course, me.) But I rather suspect the other material, which is why I don't know what to do with it. It's all broken up...'

  This may be true, but it does not matter. What is significant about her is that she has learned the trick of making 'inner voyages' without the aid of a water-tank or psychedelic drugs, and she demonstrates that it can be done. I think that she is r
ight to believe that she has taken a step along the road that leads to the next phase of human evolution.

  Three

  Dr Arthur Guirdham

  I had just completed The Occult—some time around August 1970—when I saw a review of a book called The Cathars and Reincarnation by Arthur Guirdham. It was a short review, but it said that it was probably the best authenticated case of reincarnation on record. So I hastened to buy the book, which was published by Spearman—a firm that seemed to have succeeded Rider as England's chief 'occult' publishers.

  The book arrived in mid-September. It had a sub-title: 'The record of a past life in 13th century France'. I settled down to read it; from the blurb, it sounded fascinating.

  My first impression was of disappointment. It began by stating that one of the writer's patients—he was a doctor—had written down all kinds of details about the Cathars, a heretical sect of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and that at the time she wrote, most of these details were unknown to scholars. Since that time—twenty-six years ago—many of these details have been verified, said Dr Guirdham.

  He certainly had my attention. In fact, it seemed fairly clear to me that he had the material of a best-seller. All he had to do was to tell his story simply, in chronological sequence.

  Unfortunately, this was precisely what he didn't do. His style was clear enough, but he got involved in all kinds of minor details about the Cathars and thirteenth-century France until I was completely bogged down. What it needed was to tell the reader, in words of one syllable, exactly who the Cathars were, and their history up to the time of their destruction by the Inquisition. And then, step by step, to tell the story of his patient, whom he calls Mrs Smith, and show how it corresponded in detail with what is known of the Cathars in Languedoc in the middle of the thirteenth century—particularly of the murder of the two Inquisitors at Avignonet in 1242, which led to the great persecution of Cathars, culminating in the massacre of Montsegur.

  On the other hand, the very fact that he hadn't tried to turn the book into another Search for Bridey Murphy was evidence for the genuineness of the book. I got the impression that, as a doctor, he was slightly embarrassed by the sensational nature of the material he was presenting, and was anxious to present it as soberly as possible.

  The story presented in The Cathars and Reincarnation is, briefly, as follows:

  Throughout his adult life, Arthur Guirdham has felt a strong attraction to the heretical sect known as the Cathars, or 'pure ones'. Their basic doctrine was similar to that of the Manichees and the Gnostics: that this world is the domain of Satan, and that human beings are the spirits of angels who revolted against God, and who have been condemned to spend a lifetime imprisoned in the body. This world is hell, created by the devil. A man's only chance of redemption is to become united with Christ in this life, to become completely pure.

  The Catholic Church has always been inclined to condemn this type of doctrine; to begin with, the Bible says that God looked at the world and saw that it was good. Second, the majority of clerics, from priests to popes, have been ordinary human beings, lacking in fanaticism; the Savonarolas and Cornelius Jansens strike them as slightly nutty. On the other hand, intense natures long to evolve at a faster rate than the Church makes provision for, and this has been the source of all the Church's troubles, from Chrysostom to Luther. The 'purists', the fanatics, are a nuisance and a menace. Purist doctrines always made their strongest appeal in times of universal hardship and suffering; and at the time of the second Crusade, there was plenty of hardship and suffering in Europe.

  Trouble began after 1174, when St Bernard preached against the Cathars in Toulouse, which was virtually their capital city; Count Raymond of Toulouse was a Cathar. In 1205, a monk called Dominic Guzman—later Saint Dominic—began his own personal crusade against the Cathars, wandering around barefoot and preaching against them. His followers—the Dominicans—were later given the job of rooting out Catharism, and became known as the Inquisition. In 1204, the pope asked the king of France to depose Count Raymond and place a good Catholic in his position. In 1208, one of Raymond's squires retaliated by assassinating the papal legate; the pope was so furious that he couldn't speak for two days. And the first 'crusade' against the Cathars began in 1209. Twenty thousand people were massacred at Beziers. Simon de Montfort (senior—father of the founder of English democracy) was a particularly violent persecutor. He plundered Toulouse in 1215. The slaughter and persecution went on, with Toulouse changing hands, for the next thirty years. But the beginning of the end happened in 1242, when the two Inquisitors were betrayed by their host, and murdered. In 1243, the Cathars were besieged at Montsegur; they held out for ten months; when they finally surrendered, two hundred who refused to renounce their faith were burnt alive in one huge pyre.

  All this is necessary to understand Arthur Guirdham's book—and Arthur Guirdham. For he reached the conclusion that his obsessive interest in Catharism, and in the Montsegur area, was due to the fact that he had been a Cathar 'priest' named Roger de Grisolles during this final period of persecution.

  He reached this conclusion in a rather odd way. Throughout his life, he had had nightmares in which he was asleep in a room when a tall man approached him; sometimes he would wake up screaming. In March 1962, he saw a patient who had been suffering from a very similar nightmare: Mrs Smith. Her shrieks were so loud that her husband was afraid she would wake up the street. The doctor who had referred her to Arthur Guirdham had at one time wondered if she was epileptic. In fact, Mrs Smith's nightmares ceased when she met Guirdham. (His nightmares ceased at roughly the same time.) She didn't tell him this, for she wanted to continue as his patent—for a rather odd reason. She had recognized him as a man she knew well from her dreams.

  Mrs Smith hesitated for some time before she finally told Guirdham her full story. What emerged, finally, was this. As a child she had possessed a remarkable memory; during an exam she was able to write out page after page of Wordsworth, so that she was accused of cheating. At the age of eleven she became unconscious with a severe headache; when she woke up, she had a degree of second sight; she knew when her father would die; she knew that a friend's marriage would not take place; she knew what was in letters before opening them. During her teens, she had three more attacks of unconsciousness—which were diagnosed as epileptic fits; then she began to have the curious, detailed dreams of her previous life in the thirteenth century. She was a girl of humble background who lived with her family in a single-room house near Toulouse.

  One night, a man had arrived at the house, and asked for shelter. This was the Cathar 'priest', Roger de Grisolles (or Roger-Isarn). The young girl—Mrs Smith—fell in love with him. (Oddly enough, the dreams did not include her real name—Guirdham calls her Puerilia) She crept over to him in the night and kissed his hand. The two became friendly. One day, her father beat her, and she left home and went to Roger's house, where she became his mistress. (Roger was not a fully fledged priest, or a 'parfait'—Cathars who had foresworn sex.)

  Then, in Mrs Smith's dreams, there was a murder. A man came back from the murder, boasting about it; his name was Pierre de Mazerolles. Later, Roger was arrested, and died in prison. Mrs Smith—or rather Puerilia—was burned at the stake. She also dreamed of this burning—in gruesome detail, with her blood dripping into the flames, and her eyelids burnt off.

  All kinds of names occurred in Mrs Smith's dreams. Now there are still records extant of the period—of the trials of Cathars, and so on. So Arthur Guirdham's task was to study the records, and see if Mrs Smith's dreams made sense. He quickly discovered that Pierre de Mazerolles was one of the men involved in the murder of the two Inquisitors. He was able to identify Roger, and his parents and other members of the family. Mrs Smith's story definitely held together. Not only that, but her notes, written so many years earlier, contained material about the Cathars that was not known to scholars at the time, and has only since then been confirmed.

  Altogether, I f
ound The Cathars and Reincarnation a puzzling, difficult book. Not long after buying it, I realized that I had a couple more books by Arthur Guirdham on my shelves: A Theory of Disease and The Nature of Healing. I had bought them at the time I had been writing my study of Rasputin and the fall of the Romanovs—I had asked Professor Wilson Knight's advice on books about thaumaturgic healing, and he had recommended these and a couple by Harry Edwards. At the time, they had failed to strike a chord, and I had forgotten I had them. Now I opened A Theory of Disease (1957) again, I recalled what had dissatisfied me at the time I read it. It holds the rather unusual thesis that disease is often due to the degree to which a person is preoccupied with his own personality. Shaw's Saint Joan remarks, 'Thinking about yourself is like thinking about your stomach—it's the quickest way to make yourself sick.' So I could understand his basic thesis—the relation of disease to self-awareness. At the same time, according to this thesis, 'outsiders' ought to be far more subject to disease than most people. And while it is true that a large number of artists and poets of the nineteenth century died of tuberculosis, I couldn't see otherwise that outsiders are more disease prone than the average; on the contrary, they're often less so. I thought of the occasion when Strindberg determined to commit suicide by getting pneumonia, so he flung himself into icy water, then climbed a tall tree, and crouched in the cold wind all night. In the morning, he staggered off and found a bed, expecting to wake up dying; instead he woke up feeling in the best of health.

  But now I re-read the book, I realized that this argument doesn't affect its thesis. The whole point about 'outsiders' is that, in spite of feeling isolated from society, and perhaps from life itself, they often possess remarkable depths of toughness. Having got over that misunderstanding, I found A Theory of Disease a remarkable book. (I still think it is in many ways his best.) When it came out in 1957, it must have been regarded as extremely unorthodox, even though many psychologists recognized the mental origin of many physical diseases. But there was a tendency to blame disease on sexual repressions. Now Guirdham makes the controversial statement that apart from the 'personality', with itsself-obsession, there is a layer of our being that could be called 'the You that is Not You'. (I had once expressed this by saying that man possesses a personality, which is oriented towards self-satisfaction, and an impersonality, which can get a pure and impersonal delight out of mathematics or a sunset.) Health may depend on contact with this layer. The mentally ill patient often says: 'I cannot get away from myself. I think only of myself 'It would be better... if the doctor were able to instruct the patient in some meditative and spiritual technique whereby he could limit the operations of his personality by merging himself with the absolute... Modern medicine had its beginnings in the Greek temples. It may have to return to the temple for its salvation... ' But what makes the book so fascinating is the author's analysis of 'various types of diseases', and of the way these relate to various levels of the personality. Most books that relate healing to the 'spiritual' are rather airy-fairy and unrealistic; Guirdham's book has a strong flavor of reality.