“From ghoulies and ghosties
And things that go bump in the
night,
Good Lord, deliver us!”
I should admit upfront I’ve never seen a
ghost, though I believe others who say they have. Like the London tour guide to
the old War Cabinet rooms underneath Whitehall I interviewed years ago for a
BBC TV paranormal series, who had ‘seen’, not Churchill, but ordinary service
men and women who had worked down there. And had also once glimpsed a man in monk’s robe, but only from
the knees up. His explanation was that the ground level had risen over the
centuries, so what he was seeing was a snapshot preserved from hundreds of
years back overlaid on a 20th Century background. Which fits archaeology
scientist Don Robbins’ notion of memory being trapped, given certain
atmospheric conditions, like a natural video-recording.
What sceptics dismiss wholesale as neurotic fantasies should be more
discriminatingly filed under Phenomena awaiting an explanation. And that holds
across the paranormal spectrum with a hard core of about 10 per cent which
can’t be dumped in the loony bin. Like
Bruce McManaway, a soldier in World War 11 who discovered by chance that
holding his hands over wounds slowed the rate of bleeding. He went on to have a
productive career as a hands-on healer and worked on bio-feedback tests which
indicated that he had an ability to calm patients’ brain wave patterns,
allowing them in effect to help themselves in the healing process.
And as I discovered it wasn’t just a feel-good factor at work but
something stranger and more powerful. Before filming, a Zen master he worked
with suggested we sit round a table in silent meditation. In my usual fashion I
was slouched with rounded shoulders. And I found myself being sat
straight up. It wasn’t a telepathic voice whispering military orders in my ear.
My spine seemed to uncurl of its own volition and was the oddest physical
sensation I’ve ever experienced.
The interaction between mind and body, inner psychological states and
outer events fascinated Carl Jung and goes beyond anything that can be written
off as cause and effect. A psychiatrist once told me the odd tale of a family,
all of whom had serious mental conditions, requiring them to be sectioned from
time to time, who were also accident-prone. While they were meeting in a family
member’s home to try to get to the bottom of their problem the gas main outside
blew up. Blackly funny, might be a tragic coincidence – or not.
Any psychoanalyst will tell you similar
stories of extraordinary physical happenings in the lives of patients who are
at crisis point of break down or break through. Even a small example gives a
hint. A patient reaches a block, a subject they can’t or won’t discuss. After
months of arriving punctually they hit traffic jams or train breakdowns, which
through no fault of their own means they are late or have to cancel. Not an
excuse, a genuine manifestation of the outside world mirroring their inner
state of mind.
Some would argue that poltergeists are an extreme example of inside
disturbance (from teenage hormones) interacting with the environment. I would
have to confess I find levitation and flying furniture hard to assimilate,
though it fits the concept. Maybe it’s that old cause-and-effect mindset which
is so addictive. What’s the difference between a chair taking to the air and a
traffic jam coinciding with an internal mental block?
‘As above so below’ astrology, is another version of outer and inner in
lock-step. No one seriously thinks Pluto pulls strings to make anything happen,
but if it hits a degree that coincides with your chart, you surely won’t miss
the effect. The planets dance to the same rhythm as life on earth. Weird or
what? Even after nearly forty years
immersed in it, I still shiver when planetary movements foreshadow events. It
works in its own peculiar way and won’t tell you everything. The fact that it
works at all is the astonishment and one that the intellectual elite has failed
to grapple with – despite nearly 100% of people knowing their sun sign
characteristics and billions following astrology.
“There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your
philosophy. “ Thank you, Hamlet.
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me on:
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LIE at: www.marjorieorr.com
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