Strange Powers Read online

  This ability to make things happen, was, in effect, an extension of his trick of making the schoolmaster ask him to repeat the only lines he'd learned, and I found one story particularly interesting. Robert said he'd been talking with a friend about the power of the mind. They were walking through central London, and Robert said: 'For example, we could walk into any shop and take anything without paying for it.' When his friend showed skepticism, he offered to demonstrate. They walked into a shop that had two assistants. As they did so, one assistant said 'I'm going to the store room' and went out. At that moment, the telephone rang, and the other assistant said: 'Excuse me,' and also went out, leaving them alone: Robert said: 'You see.' 'But that's just coincidence,' said his friend. 'All right, I'll do it again.' They went into another shop. Within a few minutes, a woman fainted and all the staff went to her aid, leaving them free... By this time the friend was looking worried. 'It's still coincidence...' 'All right, we'll do it again.' And they did. On the third occasion, they went into a shop and he warned that they were playing with very dangerous forces. They had hardly been in there for two minutes, when there was an accident in the road outside causing all the staff and customers to leave.

  If this story sounded astonishing, his next statement was even more so. In order to establish beyond all doubt that this was a 'power' of the mind he was using, he decided to do it a thousand times. And he claims he did. He didn't say how long this took him, but he did mention that he devoted his 'proceeds', such as they were, to charity.

  No doubt this anecdote will arouse more skepticism than any so far. I find it consistent with Leftwich's other premises. There can be no doubt that the chief fault we have developed, through the long course of human evolution, is a certain basic passivity. When provoked by challenges, human beings are magnificent. When life is quiet and even, we take the path of least resistance, and then wonder why we feel bored. A man who is determined and active doesn't pay much attention to 'luck'. If things go badly, he takes a deep breath and redoubles his effort. And he quickly discovers that his moments of deepest happiness often come after such efforts. The man who has become accustomed to a passive existence becomes preoccupied with 'luck'; it may become an obsession. When things go well, he is delighted and good humored; when they go badly, he becomes gloomy and petulant. He is unhappy—or dissatisfied—most of the time, for even when he has no cause for complaint, he feels that gratitude would be premature; things might go wrong at any moment; you can't really trust the world... Gambling is one basic response to this passivity, revealing the obsession with luck, the desire to make things happen.

  The absurdity about this attitude is that we fail to recognize the active part we play in making life a pleasure. When my will is active, my whole mental and physical being works better, just as my digestion works better if I take exercise between meals. I gain an increasing feeling of control over my life, instead of the feeling of helplessness (what Sartre calls 'contingency') that comes from long periods of passivity. Yet even people who are intelligent enough to recognize this find the habit of passivity so deeply ingrained that they find themselves holding their breath when things go well, hoping fate will continue to be kind.

  To actually believe, as Leftwich does, that you control your luck, could be a vital step in human evolution, a real turning point. And what is especially important is that he rejects the idea that you can 'push your luck' too far. He believes that this power to make things go well is as straightforward as any other physical activity. When a man sets out to drive to his office, he doesn't take a deep breath and say: 'Well, here goes. Let's hope I make it today...' There is a chance that he may not make it, especially in modern city traffic; but he also knows that if he drives carefully enough, he'll make it. He doesn't even think: 'There's a ten thousand to one chance I might meet with an accident.' He simply takes it for granted that he'll reach his office. A little late, perhaps, if the traffic is bad; but he'll get there. So Leftwich's assertion that he decided to repeat his performance a thousand times, to prove that the mind can control 'luck', is of some importance. He has laid down a basic principle of the next step in human evolution.

  In The Occult, I quote a remark Robert Graves made to me: that many young men use a form of witchcraft to seduce young women. I had been instantly struck by the truth of this. My own experience has not been wide or varied, but I knew exactly what he meant. A man wants a girl, and he begins to think about her in a particular way; not just daydreaming, but with a kind of calculating determination, like a hunter who is determined to get a certain animal if he has to track it for weeks. Some kind of psychic force seems to come into operation—connected with imagination, just like the trick of turning the paper roundabout—and he may feel certain that he'll achieve his object long before he has any concrete reasons for thinking so.

  Leftwich's power to 'make things happen' is an extension of this. I am inclined to believe that it involves no 'occult' faculty (such as second sight): that it is a power that depends simply on calling upon our 'vital reserves' and abandoning the customary attitude of passivity.

  Leftwich has visited me twice in Cornwall—the second time early in!973. He had finally resigned from his job, bought himself a Commer 'Highwayman' and was prepared to take up his 'life of freedom' at last. He showed us the 'Highwayman', and all its gadgets; these included a generator that, at the touch of a switch, would cause six hundred volts to surge through the bodywork of the vehicle. A sensible precaution, perhaps: no doubt a man who has slept in a house most of his life feels insecure if he parks at the side of the road in some remote part of France—perhaps remembering the fate of the Drummond family... But also typical of Robert Leftwich, with that schoolboy delight in gadgets.

  From my own experience of him, I can vouch that he never seems to get tired—at least, not noticeably. At seven in the morning, as Joy was sleepily switching on the kettle and preparing to get the children's breakfast, Robert would appear outside the kitchen window, as chirpy as if he'd been for a ten-mile walk, looking for shredded wheat and eager to elaborate on some point that he'd overlooked the night before... He also seems to possess the ability to prevent himself from getting cold. I find I need a fairly even temperature; if the room gets cool, I begin to feel chilly around the neck, and need a scarf; if my workroom gets too warm, I have to change my woollen sweater for a cotton one. Robert always seemed to be dressed in the same clothes—a sports jacket, shirt and tie, flannel trousers—and to be unaffected by temperature. He explained that it had struck him one day that when you are embarrassed, you go 'hot all over', and that this power to increase one's body temperature must be natural to man. Ever since that time, he says, he has been able to increase his bodily temperature at will.

  It was during the first visit to Cornwall that I set the tape recorder going, and started asking him questions. What I wanted chiefly was a straightforward biographical outline. The following is a brief summary of what he told me.

  The Leftwich family is basically French, originating in Saint-Sauveur in northern France; the family name was originally De Leftwyche. Since his mother was also French, Robert Leftwich may be regarded as more than 50 per cent Gallic. The family moved to Northwich, where there was, at one time, a Leftwich Hall. On the whole, then, the family 'came down in the world'. Even so, his father, a mathematician and member of the Royal Society, had some distinguished friends, including Sir James Jeans, Sir Arthur Eddington and Sir Charles Boys, the man who 'weighed the earth'. Robert's rather casual relationship with the latter ended when he was eleven or twelve; Sir Charles invited the Leftwich family to his home near Andover. Wandering around the garden, Robert found a pump. Even at this time, he was fascinated by hydraulic devices. He primed the pump with a bucket of water, and worked the handle. A sludgy substance came out. He assumed the pump needed a lot more working before clear water came through, so he went on pumping... In fact, he emptied the liquid manure tanks, and flooded the lawn. Sir Charles wrote Leftwich senior a letter, asking hi
m not to bring his son to the house in future...

  Fortunately, his father was a patient man—he needed to be with a son who was a born rebel and always into mischief. (At this point, Robert made an interesting digression. He himself, he says, is not a particularly good or patient father. 'I love my children, but I don't really like them. Because, I suppose, they're too much like me—rebellious. Particularly Bobby. Which is largely my own fault. I decided I wanted to have a child with the same birthday as myself. So my wife and I did calculations. In fact, Bobby arrived a few hours after my birthday—6 May—was over. But if there's anything in astrology—our characters are almost identical.' *) [* I must admit that I never cease to be amazed at the weird accuracy of astrological character assessments. According to Derek Parker's The Compleat Astrologer, the character of the Taurean—21st April to 21 May is 'Practical, reliable, adept at business, having strong powers of endurance, a firm sense of values'. Negative traits may include possessiveness and an obsession with routines. 'He will be likely to be successful in a career to do with finance, and he will look forward to security (with pension) in retirement.. .At the same time, he has a distinct artistic leaning.' As to the relation with his children: 'It is very difficult for the Taurean, with his very conservative instincts, to bridge the generation gap with the young; and all too easy for him, with his liking for discipline, to ignore the fact that his children may not be in sympathy with his ideas...'

  Robert may have inherited some of his 'psychic' faculties from his mother; she was the sort of person who could say at breakfast 'I've got a feeling I'm going to hear from so and so today'—and the postman would then arrive with the letter. But on the whole, there was nothing psychic about his family; it was a matter that simply did not interest them. So when, at the age of four or five, Robert found himself one evening looking down on his own body in the bed, there was no one in the family who could explain to him that he was simply experiencing 'astral projection'. Children take these things much more for granted than adults, so this odd ability never worried him. He was certainly not one of Reichenbach's 'sick sensitives'. In fact, his account of himself as a child makes him sound more like Richmal Crompton's Just William, with a touch of Jefferies' Beyis. He played elaborate imaginative games with a close friend, and they encouraged one another in such dangerous feats as dropping off a railway bridge on to the moving carriages below. This adventurous 'Just William' element continued to be a strong part of his character; later on, he traveled thousands of miles around Europe and North Africa on the tops of trains, or, occasionally, clinging underneath the carriages.

  In spite of his self-discipline, his attention to detail, Leftwich is basically an anarchist. 'I can't bear any form of regimentation.' Listening to his anecdotes, I was suddenly reminded of Gurdjieff. In his autobiographical book Meetings with Remarkable Men, Gurdjieff emerges as an amiable rogue. He spent the first half of his life wandering from place to place—'bumming around', as we would say now making a living as best he could; his methods were usually ingenious, sometimes downright crooked. And yet, beyond all shadow of doubt, he was no charlatan; he possessed knowledge and he possessed power. In many ways, Robert's personality make-up resembles Gurdjieff s. It suddenly struck me that these anecdotes about his anti-authoritarianism, his obsession with travel, are not as irrelevant as I at first thought. He was telling me a story about an RAF driving instructor who was supposed to teach him to drive a truck. Robert could already drive, so when the man began to explain: 'This is the ignition key, this is the clutch' he became impatient. When he started the truck, he went from first, into second, then into third gear. At which the instructor stopped him with a roar of rage. 'If you don't do as you're told we'll never get anywhere.' 'But I can drive.' 'As far as I'm concerned, you can't. Now, let's start again. This is the ignition key... ' One can understand his reaction in the face of this kind of unbelievable stupidity. On the other hand, it reinforced the individualism, the determination to go his own way and to stand alone. And this, in turn, encouraged the development of this odd power 'to make things happen'. 'Witchcraft', of the kind we have been discussing, depends on clearly wanting something, and directing all your psychic energies towards getting it. Robert's dashes with authority in its most obtuse and bigoted form led him to form a very dear idea that he wanted freedom: the first necessity for obtaining it.

  His RAF career offers some excellent examples of the working of 'Leftwitchcraft'. The war was over—fortunately—when he was posted abroad. On the boat to Dieppe, the sea was rough, and the washrooms were full of vomiting men. Robert wanted to use the toilet; so he marched around the deck until he came to a sign 'Out of bounds to all ranks', and unhesitatingly went past it. The crew allowed him to use their toilet, and then invited him to join them in a game of cards; he had actually won 7/6d when the boat arrived in France. Then there was a long rail journey south. It suddenly struck Robert that he was approaching the country of his ancestors, and that he had relatives in Cannes. In the transit camp, all was confusion. So he buried his kitbag, and walked out. In Cannes, fortunately, there were no military police. He found his relatives, lived there for a couple of months, then finally made his way back to the camp. He dug up his kitbag and found himself a bed. The next day on parade, names were called from a list. Robert reasoned that no one was checking on each individual, so he picked up his kitbag and joined the group who were due to leave. At the docks, they were counted and found to be one too many. The last man on the list was sent back. Robert went on to North Africa, and found himself in the camp that contained the remaining men of his old unit—the rest had already been posted all over the Middle East. A couple of days after that, his own name was called out on parade, and he was posted. No one had even noticed his absence. Instead of thanking his stars that he'd avoided a court martial, Robert continued to 'push his luck'. He was assigned to the job of driving the 'shit wagon'; he didn't like it. So on the second day, he refused. It should have resulted in being put on a charge; instead, after being interviewed by everyone from the MT officer to the Wing Commander in charge of the station, he was temporarily taken off duty. Then he was offered the job of helping to reclaim and recondition vehicles that had broken down in the desert during the war, and a team of engineers to help him do it. Once again, he had the freedom he wanted. One day, he was told to take a Daimler to Cairo, and to instruct the chauffeur of Sir Charles Medhurst, Commander in Chief in the Middle East, in how to drive it. It struck Robert that this was the kind of job he would enjoy. In this case, his 'Leftwitchcraft' was facilitated by the fact that Sir Charles had known his Aunt Vera Leftwich. He became Medhurst's chauffeur; and eventually with a certain amount of string pulling (involving Aunt Vera), he obtained his discharge from the forces. By this time, his direction was fixed, although he still had a long way to go before understanding what it was he wanted out of life. He knew he wanted to travel; he also experienced an obscurer need, a desire to understand his own inner-being, which took the form of intense curiosity about worldreligions. He went back to the Middle East, to study Mahommedanism at first hand; he also used his childhood knowledge of trains to travel long distances without paying. (On one occasion, travelling from Cairo to Haifa on the roof of a train, he came close to being decapitated. He was standing up on the roof, stretching and yawning, when the friend with whom he was travelling dragged him down; the telegraph wires crossed from one side of the track to the other, about five feet above the roof of the train...)

  Like Sir Richard Burton, he disguised himself as an Arab and went into mosques. He saw nothing that convinced him that his answer lay in Islam. The interest in religion disposed his mind more favorably to Christianity (to which his attitude had always been lukewarm), although he found the 'middle of the road' doctrines of the Church of England uninteresting. The millennialism of the Seventh Day Adventists appealed altogether more strongly: their conviction of the imminence of the Second Coming, their absorption in the prophecies of the Old Testament; even their Sabbataria
n Fundamentalism appealed to the ascetic side of him. But after a while, he found himself unable to stomach the dogmatism, and turned to the study of religions of the east—Hinduism and Buddhism. He was also unable to accept the idea of Jesus as the God-Man and Savior, and declined to accept that the miracles proved his divinity. He already had a suspicion that anyone can perform miracles if he can tap his hidden resources. Nevertheless, the Seventh Day Adventists were an important influence, with their emphasis on the importance of physical health, their sparing use of meat and intense dislike of tobacco and alcohol. (I asked Robert if he had always been a non-smoker. He said No; he had smoked as a young man. One day in a cinema, he realized he was out of cigarettes, and felt such a strong desire for a smoke that he went out to the foyer to buy some. Back in the cinema, he began to brood on his dependence on cigarettes—even then he believed that the mind should be able to completely control the body. He got up, left the cinema, presented the cigarettes to the first man he met in the street, and gave up smoking.)

  On the whole, Buddhism struck him as the religion that made the strongest appeal to his inner needs; he still regards himself as fundamentally a Buddhist (although, in Philosophy of an Escapist, he states his belief in a Creator of the universe, and seems altogether closer to a mystical pantheism). During this stage—when he was investigating comparative religions—he had no particular interest in 'occultism'. I asked him if he could say roughly when it began to interest him. He placed the date at about 1957, when he was looking around an antique shop near Reigate. He got into conversation with the proprietor, a woman, and when he left, shook her hand. She looked at him in an odd way, and said 'You're a healer, aren't you?' Robert said not as far as he knew. She looked at his hand, and what she saw in his palm apparently confirmed her intuition; she told him that he had a line on his palm that only one person in ten thousand possesses.