As a child I was taught that it was un-Christian to believe
in ghosts (and I note that Muslims don’t officially believe in them either).
Yet ghosts were everywhere, in the sense that you could find stories about them
in books, on TV, on the radio; and discussed in the school playground.
Occasionally people turned up in the newspapers or on a nightly news programmes
claiming to have had a ghostly encounter, but our rational society could never
be seen to take such stories at face value – it was assumed that there was some
‘logical’ – i.e. physicalist or psychological – explanation. In the last 60
years society has in many ways become more secular, and perhaps less spiritual,
but definitely more physicalist, with the rise of the new atheists like Richard
Dawkins. It has become not just unGodly to believe in ghosts, but irrational to
believe in something as non-physical as God. Academics, like myself, know that
their intellectual credibility might well take a hefty blow if they admit to
believing in anything other than the material. The word ‘myth’ which can be
used to denote a narrative that expresses truths we understand at the deepest
level of our being but find difficult to put into words, is now used most often
to mean, simply, untrue.
So, despite this, why do 1 in 3 people in the UK believe in
ghosts? Is it just a primitive hangover from the dark days before the
Enlightenment? I’ve noticed that even the most rational people observe some
irrational superstitions (often going to great lengths to justify their
behaviour) and considering the millions of years human had to live without the
scientific knowledge we now have to guide and protect us, it’s no wonder such
superstitions are so deeply engrained, but it doesn’t of course guarantee their
veracity. So when I had been very frightened by a ghost story I was always able
to tell myself “but there’s no such things as ghosts anyway” and feel much
better.
I could tell myself this even after I had seen one at the
age of about nine, because I believed I had seen my guardian angel, not a
ghost. (This, despite the fact that it even took on a classic ghostly
appearance – misty white, see through and fading out below the knees. More on
that later.) However, after my second in-your-face encounter at the age of 25,
I could kid myself no longer. There were definitely ‘more things in heaven and
earth than were dreamt of in our philosophies’. I had already been beginning to
suspect that various occurrences which our prevailing materialist worldview had
to tie itself in unseemly knots to explain could be accounted for quite simply
if one accepted the existence of beings in other dimensions which occasionally
intruded into our own. Call them ghosts, call them angels, call them faeries,
call them jinn (genies), I decided to try accepting that there was a lot more
to existence than usually meets the eye, or could be explained by science in
its present state of development.
After all, nobody can disprove the existence of these
dimensions any more than anybody can prove their existence to some-one who has
not experienced them – and tested them – for themselves.
It always amazes me that people argue with such passion for
and against the idea of purposefulness existing within creation and evolution,
even in the most rigorous intellectual environs. Like the existence of other
dimensions, you simply cannot prove or disprove either that the universe has a
purpose or it hasn’t. The odds are that, if it has a purpose, it will be way
beyond what we’re capable of understanding anyway. The arguments usually say
more about the personal experiences, the hopes and fears, and the cultural
background of the arguers. I have chosen to believe that a lot of things that
seem accidental aren’t, because of certain experiences I have had and because
such a belief seems to me to actually be more rational. Note that I wish to
assert by adopting this position that I believe a non-physicalist outlook can
be a rational, i.e. coherent and functioning one, just as well as can a
‘scientific’ physicalist perspective. It has also
turned out to be a better belief system for living my life more effectively in
accordance with my other values. But an awful lot of questioning, research, and
forensic investigation has gone into what I choose to believe now.
As a youngster I found it very frustrating that there were
whole no-go areas where science would not, or could not, explain what was going
on. It is no wonder that an enquiring brain frustrated by the limitations of
physics will turn to metaphysics. The writings of the psychologist Carl Jung
were extremely informative, and these in turn led to my reading up on
Gurdjieff’s metaphysical system. I was told that this system was Sufi (the
‘mystical’ component of Islam) in origin, so I read Idries Shah. This in turn
led to my discovering the metaphysical system of Vedanta (a mystical component
of Hinduism). The joy of discovering these cosmologies, so complete and
un-mysterious (despite the label of ‘mysticism’) and logical, and furthermore
in broad agreement with each other, was great. When I came across Kabbalah, the
mystical component of Judaism, I found a system that used western references
with which I was very familiar having been brought up a Christian (Jesus being
a Jew, which many people seem surprised to learn). This brought further
intellectual understanding, and after a lot of thought and not inconsiderable
testing of its principles, I decided to use Kabbalah as my guiding metaphysical
belief system, (though note, I have a close friend who is a yoga teacher and
uses Vedanta as her guiding belief system. We are in accord in our deepest
beliefs.)
According to Kabbalah (and all the other wisdom traditions
with which I am familiar), there’s not just one other dimension but several,
not just one heaven but at least seven, not just one sort of ghost but several
(though note that Jesus makes it very clear that we should have nothing to do
with certain earthbound spirits.)In Kabbalah circles I have met people of
undeniable intellect and good sense (traditionally, you can’t become a
kabbalist until you’ve proved you are very well grounded in the physical world)
who talk quite openly about their ‘ghostly encounters’. One senior Kabbalist,
with a particular sensitivity to the dimension closest to our physical one,
came to the group meeting one week and relayed how he had been in a fatal
accident with a motorbike rider (fatal for the motorbike rider) who had
followed him home trying to find out what had happened and what he should do
now. Fortunately, Kabbalists know ‘what to do now’, a store of useful knowledge
that has been largely lost to the so called rational world. As a result I get
very cross with those programmes, mostly American and purely for entertainment
purposes, where ‘ghost hunters’ go round stirring things up, insisting on
earthbound spirits making themselves known (sometimes by goading them) and then
just go away again, even when whatever entity is there has clearly asked for
help. I hope that there will come a time, not too far in the future, when this
will be considered abuse and made as illegal as bear baiting.
So, in accordance with Kabbalah, I choose to believe that
angels are not dead people, they are a separate race of beings altogether with
a very different purpose to humans. What I saw standing by my bed that night
was neither a ghost nor an angel but probably a discarnate human being who was
not earthbound and had a personal or assigned interest in me and/or my family,
perhaps having a mission to achieve via us. In Kabbalah they are called
‘watchers’. ‘Ghosts’ are either the psychological remnants, which have not yet
dissolved, of people who have themselves gone on to another dimension, or
discarnate beings who have not moved on for their own personal reasons (for
example, some not knowing they’re actually dead, others too frightened of what
they might encounter when they move on, others too attached to people or things
at the physical level to want to move on, etc.). Personally, I am also willing
to entertain the idea that some ghosts are the ‘stone tape’ replays of events
that happened in the past, those events being so strong in emotional terms that
the physical surroundings absorbed them. These events will be sensed by some
people in those locations when the conditions are right, and ‘re-seen’. (As far
as I can perceive it, a wave of anger or grief is as real as a wave of the sea,
and can have as strong an effect.)
I should add here that Kabbalah is not particularly
interested in ghosts. Use of the Ouija board for example is considered to be
the psychic equivalent of physically playing in sewers. An interest in certain
aspects of the occult is dismissed as mere voyeurism. The aim of Kabbalists is
to assist in bringing heaven down to earth, and anything that distracts from
that is irrelevant.
Nevertheless, it remains a fact that my interest in the
mystical stems precisely from waking up one night and finding a tall misty
figure watching me from the side of my bed, reinforced by my second experience
nearly a decade and a half later. Without this very personal evidence that
there was more to life than the predominant physicalist paradigm which society
currently adheres to, I would never have gone on my personal quest to arrive
where I am now. And I consider that would have been a great loss.
I puzzled over the ideas of ‘djinn’ (genies) when I first
learned how strong and orthodox belief in them is in the Muslim world, given
that a non- belief in ghosts is also orthodox. Considering how much our culture
has imbibed from the Arab world, why don’t we have djinn in the West? But then
I realised that of course we do. We call them faeries, and they have now got
horribly confused with the little winged and child-like creatures represented
by the likes of Tinkerbell in Disney films. I think we would understand a lot
more about certain goings on in our own world if we strived to learn more about
djinn/faeries. Again, Kabbalah is cognisant of other these ‘other races’ but
considers them on their own paths back to reintegration with the Godhead, and
only of importance to humans when they interfere with human destiny.
Over the past 35 years I have studied this whole area as
assiduously, and as rationally, as I can; and I think I have reached the point
when I can generally tell when something is a made up story about a ghost, when
something might actually be a ‘real’ ghost of any of the varieties I have
described above and, more lately, when it might be worthwhile to apply the
concept of the djinn – some poltergeist cases for example.*
Why should I bother? Especially given that Kabbalah is not
particularly concerned with such entities. Because I believe that when religion
was far more common than it is now, people found the death transition that much
easier. I think that our physicalist attitudes now are not only leaving people
unprepared for death but, worse, leaving many deceased souls stranded where
they really don’t need to be for longer than necessary. To do nothing about
that seems to me to be simply cruel.
If you have read this far and are scoffing, simply remind
yourself that there are, officially, no such things as ghosts, or angels, let
alone faeries and nature spirits. At least until you encounter one……. then it
may be reassuring to realise that this happens more often than is commonly
admitted!
*I should include here, for those who are familiar with the
founding of Findhorn, that I believe modern society has the original concept of
faeries mixed up with the ‘nature spirits’ which act as the subtle counterpart
to every species of plant-, a belief in, and communion with, these nature
spirits an essential part of the Findhorn Foundation.
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