Welcome again to my teachings, if this is your first encounter with my work,you should start at the first post and then proceed at your own pace chronologically through the subsequent. Should you reach this point, you will be the first; accepting of course my acolyte who dutifully commits my thoughts to computer.
I am communicating the decades of wisdom I have acquired, through a recount of an investigation of a haunted house in the North of England, during the summer of 2010.
There is a tendency amongst those who enunciate upon spiritual matters, toward seemingly vacuous declarations; ‘all you need is love’ and that sort of thing. That statement may well be true enough on many different and apparently contradictory levels. Also, there is a tendency toward monism – the idea that one figure is the Absolute, or ushers the initiate toward it. As a consequence of such apparent simplifications, acolytes of such schools may be left with the impression that there are certain, exclusive persons, places and experiences which are sacred whilst all else is profane, heretical or unworthy of meditation.
What you, my dear followers, should now be apprehending, is that one should never exclude any experience, situation or person from the apprehension of the divine. Even if one is following a monotheistic religion, it is possible to accept the multi-faceted way in which one will approach one’s deity.
Existence, you see, is an initiation. If we approach our lives as a ongoing initiation, we shall encounter many expressions of the divine in the physical, intellectual and spiritual worlds. We will understand that there is never any period when our initiation has ceased, even in Samadhi perpetual; whilst my true self remains in Samadhi, from where my intellect and senses are yoked even as they persist with the world, revelations of the divine nature of the universe constantly unfold around me.
Such realisations were uncovered within my consciousness as I battled with the residual, egotistical feelings of fear, during the investigation in the haunted house on the sandstone ridge.
Any who doubts the practical benefits of yoga, should try navigating sunken tunnels beneath a cemetery; whilst treading the trail of the ghoul, I gave thanks for my practice over the years. There was a tense moment when my hips were pinched between two of the stones, heaped across the tunnel but a slight wiggle allowed me to heave myself up and out onto a rough sandstone floor.
I detected an abysmal atmosphere about this space even before I flashed the torch around. It was not the choking quality of the air which turned my limbs to lead and which drew bile into my mouth, nor was it what the light revealed in the room. It was an anxiety that gnawed into me from some as of yet, unseen source.
Again and again I called inwardly to the Goddess and with great effort I visualised her wasted skin, the scabbed blood washed anew from her tusked mouth and with Her aid, I opened myself to the dread atmosphere, welcoming it into my life; no reassuring detachment arose, instead I was cornered within myself, conscious of my body and infected with feelings of dread originating beyond my own consciousness.
It was with trembling hands that I scanned the torch from side-to-side, revealing a space carved some twenty by thirty feet into the stone. Assorted objects were revealed, the torch passing over before hastily focusing on a person sat upright in a chair. It was positioned to my right and as the beam picked out a gaping skeleton, clad in mildewing fragments of finery I felt an initial relief. As I examined the ornate chair, I began to sense that its occupant was somehow still alive and regarding this intruder from the realm of the sun. An ornate, gilt frame stood on a table beside the chair and strangely, there the withered remains of a sapling in a large pot was positioned just behind.
As I could not stand, I dragged the torch onto a table in the centre of the room. Here a smaller, incomplete skeleton, possibly that of a child, was surrounded by what appeared to be tools of dissection. As I looked upon this spectacle with burgeoning horror, I apprehended a spotted, distorted quality to the back wall of the space. It was when I directed the light specifically upon it that I realised it was composed of bones, all meshed together into a makeshift screen.
‘What can you see?’ Aquinas hissed from behind the stones.
I did not reply. Somewhere beyond that wall of dead, there was a slow dripping. It had been constant but I had only just attended to it. Despite the horrors displayed before, I was drawn to the bone screen. Since first setting foot on the hill, had I not imagined a space opening up beneath me? Did not the draughts pass, forward and back through the house, along the tunnel? (Was this effect really due to the natural play of air through multiple shafts peppering the hillside as Noz suggested?)
Although mounting dread threatened to overwhelm my physical form, my true self, prostrate before the image of the Terrible Goddess, offering myself to the service of nature, sensed that there was a presence behind that bone heap; a presence which drew the winds and the rains down the tunnel, which willed the corpses down from their rest...
A grating sound behind me caused my corporeal form to jump and whip around in time to see Aquinas forcing his way through the boulders. Thankfully the pile held as his broad frame twisted through and he kneeled alongside me, his face washed with sweat and wrinkled with disgust at the smell. He must have forced a larger gap through the stones for stronger wisps of air trailed passed us, setting a minute rattle ringing from the bones beyond us. We sat and the motion ceased and for a minute all was still and then the air returned in the opposite direction, bearing an odour of damp and decay as it passed.
‘It’s him, the Reverend,’ Aquinas said, ‘the one who went mad, this is where he ended up. This is the dark heart of the house.’
Remembering himself, Aquinas produced some sort of camera and began to film this space. There was a triumphant gleam in his eyes - clearly he did not feel the emotional pressure which weighed upon me.
Feeling an irritation weigh creep upon me with my young companion and his obsession with filming everything, I returned to the primary source of my mediumistic ability, that of psycho-audiencing! If sight fails, listen and listen to what speaks within! I focused my awareness on the dripping sound and the intermittent rattle of the bones in the breeze.
I imagined still the Dark Goddess, feasting on her young and the dripping tapped on, louder perhaps, as if summoning me toward its origins; the rattle swayed around me, as if it would smother me and take me into itself...with such impressions, the dread returned in the form of a terror of the sudden plummet into a chasm and a leaden dragging at my limbs.
I became conscious of my own pulse, its subtle crunch aligning with that outer rhythm; the twin beats lulled the terror and I could have sat, peacefully as the dark, chilly depths drank of my leaking blood.
This post started with the claim that an initiate’s work is never complete; no vision of divinity ever total or complete, there is always more to explore and so it happened that whilst I sat thus, indifferent to my physical death in that darkness, the Goddess did not abandon me.
The idea that the damp indifference of the engulfing stone and the vast, crushing sea that thundered onto the shore below, were horrifying was not in my own awareness, I understood it was another’s as easily as if they had spoken it aloud. I sensed an awareness of the indifference of the elements, the glee in the winter wind’s whistle around the flesh, or in fire’s ravenous gorge on all that is plump, soft and moist and whilst I welcomed such indifference, there was one unseen who was terrified by it.
With a savage grunt, the hideous form of devouring Nature burst into mind, her mouth gaping, spilling glistening shreds of man across her shrivelled skin...and I laughed as I willed myself unto her jaws... and as the rattle of the bones became a choked wheeze and the drip, the slap of wet flesh on stone, the one whose dread haunted this place manifested. His voice spat into my ear, and his slick form hauled itself from the deep dark...
Sunday 19 December 2010
Friday 10 December 2010
The spirited man does not heed the dictates of common sense
Welcome again to my teachings, if this is your first encounter with my work,you should start at the first post and then proceed at your own pace chronologically through the subsequent. Should you reach this point, you will be the first; accepting of course my acolyte who dutifully commits my thoughts to computer.
I am communicating the decades of wisdom I have acquired, through a recount of an investigation of a haunted house in the North of England, during the summer of 2010.
I illustrated the value of treating one’s visions as real in my last post. It takes a while to cultivate the appropriate relaxation of one’s faculties which allow impressions from beyond the Ahamkara (the ego) and the unconscious shadow it casts, to arise. It takes longer yet to be able to yield to such experiences without falling asleep or seeking to consciously intervene and colonise them. Now that I sufficiently illustrated the insight which can be derived from such states of mind, I hope my students are inspired to devote themselves to training their consciousness.
It was no coincidence that the trance-induced vision - my instinctive apprehension of a space gaping beneath the hill - was confirmed by the actions of Crass and the other young man in the cellar; whilst I sat in quiet absorption, they had shoved much of the bric-a-brac aside and a hole had been forced through the plasterboard and wood bordering the upper part of the sandstone cellar. Rather than revealing more sandstone, the young men had uncovered a cramped hole gaping in the rock, although not before the subtle powers of the enlightened had discovered it first!
Aquinas expressed some displeasure at this destruction in the cellar, however as it afforded him an opportunity to use his torch, he soon perked up and discovered that the hole was in fact the opening of a dank passage way that fell slightly down toward the churchyard wall. A rank smell greeted us from that orifice, issued on sluggish air which dragged itself forth, the exhalation of the under earth. All of us knew that one should enter that space, yet even my own heart quailed at the thought of such an act. The young men felt more strongly than I did and we returned to the living room to consider our next action.
Common-sense dictated that none such enter there; we also had evidence of subsidence under the graves. Common-sense however is bred into us to allow us to negotiate the dangers of physical and social life; where matters of the spirit are concerned then common-sense should be overridden by the clarion call of one’s true self. Had not the spirits gestured under the staircase, in the very direction of this tunnel? Was not the wind itself draw down it, toward the heart of the hill? And above all, when one’s soul quails, is one not in the very presence of the Almighty as It ferments new possibilities from the ashes of what once was?
Once I announced my attention to proceed into the fissure and see how far it led, a look of relief came over the face of Aquinas who claimed he would follow behind me. Nozz was eager to proceed too and suggested that a rope should be employed to secure one another lest the floor should give way. Obviously we had no rope amongst our belongings. There were probably all manner of E-Ropes or virtual ropes on the computers but nothing serviceable for our needs, so the beds were stripped and sheets tied together around us.
Each of the young men shook my hand before I hunched and clambered into the jagged fissure. I had to contort myself somewhat, the stone seeking to snare my skin; certainly the sheet-rope was caught, halting me and it was only with a deft twist and a determined thrust down, that I was able to drag myself into the hole. I had the torch in one hand and by its light the sparkle of the minerals was revealed in the rock along with smooth, sweeping indentations, suggesting that it was man-made. Despite the dryness of the sandstone, the dank smell intensified as I dragged myself along the constricted passage. Sharp, crumbing sand scraped at my skin, drawing prickles of blood, arousing a fear that the earth itself was sucking on me. Calling inwardly upon the fearsome Goddess, such feelings were suppressed and happily, after twenty feet or so, the roof rose and I was able to crawl on all fours. Behind I could hear Aquinas shoving his frame through the gap. I reckoned we were under the garden now. Thirty feet on again, still downward, and I passed under a crumbling, partially-collapsed section which I understood to be where the wall of the churchyard stood. Behind, the two now gasped and groaned and I felt the sheet pull taut. Ahead, the air stirred and caressed me. A draught must have found access via a crack or fissure ahead. Although my followers were mere feet behind and I could hear them whispering to each other as the sheet now dug into me, I paused, feeling strangely isolated, conscious of the vast quantity of rock above and around me, and the space below, into which the draught passed and from which it was exhaled back.
Aquinas and the other dragged themselves along rapidly until I could feel their hot breath issuing around me as the sheets loosened. We crawled onward, the way opening up now and as we passed roughly forty feet along the tunnel, I sensed a gap above me. I paused and tentatively shone the torch up, illuminating a tunnel a foot wide, crudely hacked into the rock. I leaned up to it, the light uncovering a dark mesh of roots and packed soil beyond the sandstone and I understood some way above, a grave stood on the surface of the earth. Aquinas demanded to know why I had stopped and replying, I felt a chill draught descend. It joined the general current and I sensed that a host of barely perceptible airs descended from other, similar monuments above. For a moment the air noticeably stilled and there was a faint rattling before me and the draught returned, drifting passed to ascend to the graves beyond.
‘There has to be an opening on the other side of the hill, there has to be,’ I heard Nozz saying to Aquinas but as my body complained, I pressed onwards, still on all fours, rather than reply. I concede it was a struggle to detach myself from the complaints in my shoulders, elbow and back. The tightening of the rope and the muttering behind indicated the others were becoming similarly reluctant to proceed.
A further ten, fifteen feet further on, past another cavity hacked into the roof, the passageway widened. It was still impossible to stand but there was now a broad space culminating in a pile of sandstone boulders. In the torch light their blackened, smoothed shapes resembled deformed heads heaped before me, grinning, winking and tusked. I stretched out a hand as the two pressed close by me. The draught was drawn into and expelled from beyond these rocks. The stagnant odour of the air was stronger here and I could tell that the other two, with no experience of the subcontinent found it deeply unnerving. Leaning inward in search of a wider space between the stones, my joints cracked and I almost felt my age. The nagging fatigue returned like a hand that would gather me and usher me back to the house with its comforts. For a moment I nearly fainted and I was only able to continue by picturing an orb of moonlight beyond the stones toward which I reached out a hand as if I would plunge into it.
Revived slightly, I felt hot in this space with the three of us pressed together and a sweat broke across my brow as Aquinas’ phone commenced a rhythmic beeping. Finding a gap between the stones, I reached my arm through. My fingers waved in cool air. With my other arm, I then passed the torch under so that its light glared through the heap of stones.
‘There’s a bigger space,’ I snapped at the two who protested against the dark and casting the sheet from me (what help would it have provided if the floor or roof gave?), I contorted my body into the gap.
I am communicating the decades of wisdom I have acquired, through a recount of an investigation of a haunted house in the North of England, during the summer of 2010.
I illustrated the value of treating one’s visions as real in my last post. It takes a while to cultivate the appropriate relaxation of one’s faculties which allow impressions from beyond the Ahamkara (the ego) and the unconscious shadow it casts, to arise. It takes longer yet to be able to yield to such experiences without falling asleep or seeking to consciously intervene and colonise them. Now that I sufficiently illustrated the insight which can be derived from such states of mind, I hope my students are inspired to devote themselves to training their consciousness.
It was no coincidence that the trance-induced vision - my instinctive apprehension of a space gaping beneath the hill - was confirmed by the actions of Crass and the other young man in the cellar; whilst I sat in quiet absorption, they had shoved much of the bric-a-brac aside and a hole had been forced through the plasterboard and wood bordering the upper part of the sandstone cellar. Rather than revealing more sandstone, the young men had uncovered a cramped hole gaping in the rock, although not before the subtle powers of the enlightened had discovered it first!
Aquinas expressed some displeasure at this destruction in the cellar, however as it afforded him an opportunity to use his torch, he soon perked up and discovered that the hole was in fact the opening of a dank passage way that fell slightly down toward the churchyard wall. A rank smell greeted us from that orifice, issued on sluggish air which dragged itself forth, the exhalation of the under earth. All of us knew that one should enter that space, yet even my own heart quailed at the thought of such an act. The young men felt more strongly than I did and we returned to the living room to consider our next action.
Common-sense dictated that none such enter there; we also had evidence of subsidence under the graves. Common-sense however is bred into us to allow us to negotiate the dangers of physical and social life; where matters of the spirit are concerned then common-sense should be overridden by the clarion call of one’s true self. Had not the spirits gestured under the staircase, in the very direction of this tunnel? Was not the wind itself draw down it, toward the heart of the hill? And above all, when one’s soul quails, is one not in the very presence of the Almighty as It ferments new possibilities from the ashes of what once was?
Once I announced my attention to proceed into the fissure and see how far it led, a look of relief came over the face of Aquinas who claimed he would follow behind me. Nozz was eager to proceed too and suggested that a rope should be employed to secure one another lest the floor should give way. Obviously we had no rope amongst our belongings. There were probably all manner of E-Ropes or virtual ropes on the computers but nothing serviceable for our needs, so the beds were stripped and sheets tied together around us.
Each of the young men shook my hand before I hunched and clambered into the jagged fissure. I had to contort myself somewhat, the stone seeking to snare my skin; certainly the sheet-rope was caught, halting me and it was only with a deft twist and a determined thrust down, that I was able to drag myself into the hole. I had the torch in one hand and by its light the sparkle of the minerals was revealed in the rock along with smooth, sweeping indentations, suggesting that it was man-made. Despite the dryness of the sandstone, the dank smell intensified as I dragged myself along the constricted passage. Sharp, crumbing sand scraped at my skin, drawing prickles of blood, arousing a fear that the earth itself was sucking on me. Calling inwardly upon the fearsome Goddess, such feelings were suppressed and happily, after twenty feet or so, the roof rose and I was able to crawl on all fours. Behind I could hear Aquinas shoving his frame through the gap. I reckoned we were under the garden now. Thirty feet on again, still downward, and I passed under a crumbling, partially-collapsed section which I understood to be where the wall of the churchyard stood. Behind, the two now gasped and groaned and I felt the sheet pull taut. Ahead, the air stirred and caressed me. A draught must have found access via a crack or fissure ahead. Although my followers were mere feet behind and I could hear them whispering to each other as the sheet now dug into me, I paused, feeling strangely isolated, conscious of the vast quantity of rock above and around me, and the space below, into which the draught passed and from which it was exhaled back.
Aquinas and the other dragged themselves along rapidly until I could feel their hot breath issuing around me as the sheets loosened. We crawled onward, the way opening up now and as we passed roughly forty feet along the tunnel, I sensed a gap above me. I paused and tentatively shone the torch up, illuminating a tunnel a foot wide, crudely hacked into the rock. I leaned up to it, the light uncovering a dark mesh of roots and packed soil beyond the sandstone and I understood some way above, a grave stood on the surface of the earth. Aquinas demanded to know why I had stopped and replying, I felt a chill draught descend. It joined the general current and I sensed that a host of barely perceptible airs descended from other, similar monuments above. For a moment the air noticeably stilled and there was a faint rattling before me and the draught returned, drifting passed to ascend to the graves beyond.
‘There has to be an opening on the other side of the hill, there has to be,’ I heard Nozz saying to Aquinas but as my body complained, I pressed onwards, still on all fours, rather than reply. I concede it was a struggle to detach myself from the complaints in my shoulders, elbow and back. The tightening of the rope and the muttering behind indicated the others were becoming similarly reluctant to proceed.
A further ten, fifteen feet further on, past another cavity hacked into the roof, the passageway widened. It was still impossible to stand but there was now a broad space culminating in a pile of sandstone boulders. In the torch light their blackened, smoothed shapes resembled deformed heads heaped before me, grinning, winking and tusked. I stretched out a hand as the two pressed close by me. The draught was drawn into and expelled from beyond these rocks. The stagnant odour of the air was stronger here and I could tell that the other two, with no experience of the subcontinent found it deeply unnerving. Leaning inward in search of a wider space between the stones, my joints cracked and I almost felt my age. The nagging fatigue returned like a hand that would gather me and usher me back to the house with its comforts. For a moment I nearly fainted and I was only able to continue by picturing an orb of moonlight beyond the stones toward which I reached out a hand as if I would plunge into it.
Revived slightly, I felt hot in this space with the three of us pressed together and a sweat broke across my brow as Aquinas’ phone commenced a rhythmic beeping. Finding a gap between the stones, I reached my arm through. My fingers waved in cool air. With my other arm, I then passed the torch under so that its light glared through the heap of stones.
‘There’s a bigger space,’ I snapped at the two who protested against the dark and casting the sheet from me (what help would it have provided if the floor or roof gave?), I contorted my body into the gap.
Saturday 4 December 2010
Plunging into Eternal Peace
Welcome again to my teachings, if this is your first encounter with my work, then you should start at the first post and then proceed at your pace through chronologically. Should you reach this point, you will be the first; accepting of course my acolyte who dutifully commits my thoughts to computer.
I am communicating the decades of wisdom I have acquired, by a recount of an investigation of a haunted house in the North of England, during the summer of 2010.
“My soul’s fire fades to ash
Strength departs the heart
When I behold thee, Lord…”
...the words of Arjuna to Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita, my translation. My encounter with the Goddess in her hideous aspect, during a vision awoken by the Moon, brought these sacred words to mind. An encounter with the divine may be terrifying, just as terror may lead us toward the Absolute; as illustrated by my enlightened acceptance of Mother Nature’s impersonal aspect ushered a vision of apparent peace and love into my consciousness.
Why should a universe which is unforgiving enough on a physical level, communicate through such terrifying images? Is it an abstract adaption of mortality? A mystical memento mori which offers us a chance to accept our death, the Samadhi perpetual? If that is so, then how blessed are we to be offered the chance of preparing to let our temporal selves go? How the universe tempers its brutality with compassion!
I have previously described my summer’s activities as a quest to prevent Saturn strangling and devouring Shakti! What is Shakti? Simply put, Shakti is the power which animates the world, it is the divine principle buried within matter. The Shakti can be personified as beautiful and nurturing or as this hideous, monstrous mother who gorges on the live flesh of her young. If the latter is not feared but loved, the blows that lay one accepted as allowing another to live; if she is regarded as an expression of universal love then we may come to terms with the nature of our lives and our psyche is ushered unto the vessel which will bear us unto the Isles of the Blessed.
As to why physical pain must accompany existence and its attendant death, I cannot say; there are many who would say that death and loss are suffering enough. There are some who delight in pain one way or another deluding themselves into thinking they have mastered life. Perhaps we should suppose that those who accept the reality of suffering and death whilst assisting in the relief of others are those who shall master our true lives among the beyond the celestial sphere.
I can however, reveal a little more about the meaning of that curious phrase (Saturn strangling etc.) to adepts who by now should have gained some understanding. The divine power (Shakti-Tara, or Sophia if you will) which animates all life and which calls upon us to escape our dependence on physical existence in favour of the spiritual, was under threat from ‘Saturn’.
My literary work, as I have been compelled to call it, has been spent chronicling the encounters my Maternal Uncle – Sir Parnassus Mang – experienced with a giant in the south-west of England. This giant had both a physical and spiritual manifestation (in the form of a chalk giant on a hillside as a life-giving power and as a psycho-pompous – a guide of the dead, respectively) – and it was known locally as ‘Saturn’ after the Golden Age, over which Saturn / Chronos presided. Saturn thus possesses positive and negative associations according to Classical mythology: he devoured his own children to perpetuate his reign, before being overthrown and bound within the underworld, which was sighted in Britain, according to Plutarch.
To name the phenomenon which he encountered in the hills of the West Country ‘Saturn’, was to personify it without limiting its influence upon the land; my maternal Uncle wisely identified the giant with Krishna in his loving and terrible aspect, seeing any power emanating from ‘Saturn’ as ultimately derived from the Soul Supreme, the embodiment of the Absolute. His adventures can be read in the novel form available to read on your computer as ‘Binder of Bone, Keeper of Corn’.
Now I have not been rambling in my discourse so far (as suggested by my acolyte’s impertinent wife). Nor have my words have not been carefully chosen. That would be absurd! An enlightened man allows his words to well spontaneously from the well-spring of wisdom within.
The investigation of the house at St Hilary’s first attuned me to the threat which I faced across the summer just passed, although how far the visions which befell me in the house was generated by my own soul, how much it was specific to the house and how much universal, I cannot say; indeed as all is ‘Brahma’, or a refraction of the light eternal, I think it little matters.
My reward for accepting the Dark Mother seemed to be the vivid impression of a young man smiling from the sun. The youth’s features reminded me of a friend from my days in India. Just as the smell of smoke took me back to the funeral pyres on the riverbank, where I used to observe my devotions, so that vision brought to mind the Ashram, where we would greet the sun, climbing over the ancient temple. Sadly, that young man died on the subcontinent. I used to think that he had gained his enlightenment before he entered Samadhi although his silence in later years suggested that perhaps he was still bound to Samsara; however that vision in the stairwell persuaded me otherwise and reinvigorated my mood which had become rather melancholic.
Once I was able to descend and face the young men after these visions, I found them dining upon a late meal of oven chips and instant noodles. Once done, I agreed to sit in séance again with one young man stood on the landing above me and another on the stairs below me, observing proceedings. Although Crass and one of the others were concluding some sort of investigation in the cellar which involved all manner of crashing and bashing, I quickly slipped into trance.
I imagined the full moon, rising over the house and over the church, draping its veil of silver across the gravestones and I saw also the ocean spreading beyond. I became a wave, rising to draw he moonlight into my crest and so shining I passed across the waters. I became aware of a light in the distance. It was frail, like a candle atop a hulking outcrop, a fire on a distant shore.
Smoke then wafted around me and I was no longer in the sea but sat on the shore with a person, pale with ash, alongside me. I felt a peace from that one and I was back once again with the guru who had nurtured me on the banks of the sacred waters and through him, I plunged into the peace of the line of gurus who had guided one another, back through the ages, back unto their source, the All-Father, Krishna himself. A meditation upon such ideas can be most rewarding, even attuning you to the Divine source of all peace.
From my vantage point of calm detachment I perceived that three other persons were emerging from the gloom. The light had grown now into a fire and I they were silhouetted beyond it. As my awareness alighted upon them, the fire diminished and they drew me back to the house where I beheld the three positioned upon the stairs, each pointing down.
My accomplices perceived these indistinct figures too and were busy filming, blessedly in silence. There were several other shadowy presences, smaller, withered and equally featureless emerging onto the stairs. There was an uncomfortable sense of revulsion accompanying these husks, it was not a feeling from within but rather one that was imposed, rather like overhearing particular unpleasant discourse in a public place (a phenomena that I was alas familiar with since accompanying the young men to the Cheese.)
The manifestations overlapped a particularly calamitous crash from below, followed by Crass’ cry of, ‘I knew there was a space behind here, it’s a false wall.’
Even before he called, I had detected a space under the stairs; the spirits pointed it out to me and the smaller shadows emerged from it. I sensed that it was a cramped passage, bored into the rock, leading away from the house toward the graveyard. I can testify that a breeze trickled past me at the moment, drawn down toward that space, that space which inhaled the salt winds and the storm-charged rains and into which the dead of the graveyard tumbled from their coffins...
I am communicating the decades of wisdom I have acquired, by a recount of an investigation of a haunted house in the North of England, during the summer of 2010.
“My soul’s fire fades to ash
Strength departs the heart
When I behold thee, Lord…”
...the words of Arjuna to Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita, my translation. My encounter with the Goddess in her hideous aspect, during a vision awoken by the Moon, brought these sacred words to mind. An encounter with the divine may be terrifying, just as terror may lead us toward the Absolute; as illustrated by my enlightened acceptance of Mother Nature’s impersonal aspect ushered a vision of apparent peace and love into my consciousness.
Why should a universe which is unforgiving enough on a physical level, communicate through such terrifying images? Is it an abstract adaption of mortality? A mystical memento mori which offers us a chance to accept our death, the Samadhi perpetual? If that is so, then how blessed are we to be offered the chance of preparing to let our temporal selves go? How the universe tempers its brutality with compassion!
I have previously described my summer’s activities as a quest to prevent Saturn strangling and devouring Shakti! What is Shakti? Simply put, Shakti is the power which animates the world, it is the divine principle buried within matter. The Shakti can be personified as beautiful and nurturing or as this hideous, monstrous mother who gorges on the live flesh of her young. If the latter is not feared but loved, the blows that lay one accepted as allowing another to live; if she is regarded as an expression of universal love then we may come to terms with the nature of our lives and our psyche is ushered unto the vessel which will bear us unto the Isles of the Blessed.
As to why physical pain must accompany existence and its attendant death, I cannot say; there are many who would say that death and loss are suffering enough. There are some who delight in pain one way or another deluding themselves into thinking they have mastered life. Perhaps we should suppose that those who accept the reality of suffering and death whilst assisting in the relief of others are those who shall master our true lives among the beyond the celestial sphere.
I can however, reveal a little more about the meaning of that curious phrase (Saturn strangling etc.) to adepts who by now should have gained some understanding. The divine power (Shakti-Tara, or Sophia if you will) which animates all life and which calls upon us to escape our dependence on physical existence in favour of the spiritual, was under threat from ‘Saturn’.
What is Saturn?
My literary work, as I have been compelled to call it, has been spent chronicling the encounters my Maternal Uncle – Sir Parnassus Mang – experienced with a giant in the south-west of England. This giant had both a physical and spiritual manifestation (in the form of a chalk giant on a hillside as a life-giving power and as a psycho-pompous – a guide of the dead, respectively) – and it was known locally as ‘Saturn’ after the Golden Age, over which Saturn / Chronos presided. Saturn thus possesses positive and negative associations according to Classical mythology: he devoured his own children to perpetuate his reign, before being overthrown and bound within the underworld, which was sighted in Britain, according to Plutarch.
To name the phenomenon which he encountered in the hills of the West Country ‘Saturn’, was to personify it without limiting its influence upon the land; my maternal Uncle wisely identified the giant with Krishna in his loving and terrible aspect, seeing any power emanating from ‘Saturn’ as ultimately derived from the Soul Supreme, the embodiment of the Absolute. His adventures can be read in the novel form available to read on your computer as ‘Binder of Bone, Keeper of Corn’.
Now I have not been rambling in my discourse so far (as suggested by my acolyte’s impertinent wife). Nor have my words have not been carefully chosen. That would be absurd! An enlightened man allows his words to well spontaneously from the well-spring of wisdom within.
The investigation of the house at St Hilary’s first attuned me to the threat which I faced across the summer just passed, although how far the visions which befell me in the house was generated by my own soul, how much it was specific to the house and how much universal, I cannot say; indeed as all is ‘Brahma’, or a refraction of the light eternal, I think it little matters.
My reward for accepting the Dark Mother seemed to be the vivid impression of a young man smiling from the sun. The youth’s features reminded me of a friend from my days in India. Just as the smell of smoke took me back to the funeral pyres on the riverbank, where I used to observe my devotions, so that vision brought to mind the Ashram, where we would greet the sun, climbing over the ancient temple. Sadly, that young man died on the subcontinent. I used to think that he had gained his enlightenment before he entered Samadhi although his silence in later years suggested that perhaps he was still bound to Samsara; however that vision in the stairwell persuaded me otherwise and reinvigorated my mood which had become rather melancholic.
Once I was able to descend and face the young men after these visions, I found them dining upon a late meal of oven chips and instant noodles. Once done, I agreed to sit in séance again with one young man stood on the landing above me and another on the stairs below me, observing proceedings. Although Crass and one of the others were concluding some sort of investigation in the cellar which involved all manner of crashing and bashing, I quickly slipped into trance.
I imagined the full moon, rising over the house and over the church, draping its veil of silver across the gravestones and I saw also the ocean spreading beyond. I became a wave, rising to draw he moonlight into my crest and so shining I passed across the waters. I became aware of a light in the distance. It was frail, like a candle atop a hulking outcrop, a fire on a distant shore.
Smoke then wafted around me and I was no longer in the sea but sat on the shore with a person, pale with ash, alongside me. I felt a peace from that one and I was back once again with the guru who had nurtured me on the banks of the sacred waters and through him, I plunged into the peace of the line of gurus who had guided one another, back through the ages, back unto their source, the All-Father, Krishna himself. A meditation upon such ideas can be most rewarding, even attuning you to the Divine source of all peace.
From my vantage point of calm detachment I perceived that three other persons were emerging from the gloom. The light had grown now into a fire and I they were silhouetted beyond it. As my awareness alighted upon them, the fire diminished and they drew me back to the house where I beheld the three positioned upon the stairs, each pointing down.
My accomplices perceived these indistinct figures too and were busy filming, blessedly in silence. There were several other shadowy presences, smaller, withered and equally featureless emerging onto the stairs. There was an uncomfortable sense of revulsion accompanying these husks, it was not a feeling from within but rather one that was imposed, rather like overhearing particular unpleasant discourse in a public place (a phenomena that I was alas familiar with since accompanying the young men to the Cheese.)
The manifestations overlapped a particularly calamitous crash from below, followed by Crass’ cry of, ‘I knew there was a space behind here, it’s a false wall.’
Even before he called, I had detected a space under the stairs; the spirits pointed it out to me and the smaller shadows emerged from it. I sensed that it was a cramped passage, bored into the rock, leading away from the house toward the graveyard. I can testify that a breeze trickled past me at the moment, drawn down toward that space, that space which inhaled the salt winds and the storm-charged rains and into which the dead of the graveyard tumbled from their coffins...
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