1 in 3 of you believe in ghosts. Why?

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.

Adjusting the viewpoint

The following is an excerpt from an essay I am writing as an introduction to kabbalah and other wisdom traditions. This part deals with pysicalism - the belief that only the material is real- and scientism - the belief that material science can explain everything.

"The theory of evolution, and the identification by Darwin and others of the mechanisms by which evolution happens, resulted in a huge leap forward in our understanding of ourselves and our fellow creatures. We now understand that changes in an animal or plant that make it better-suited to its environment make that creature more likely to survive, mate and produce offspring who inherit its parents’ successful, though accidental, adaptation.

To a physicalist mind-set, those changes cannot be anything other than accidental. A creature doesn’t change to fit in better with its environment; a whole species changes because the ones who happened to fit in better with the environment were the ones to survive and reproduce. We casually talk about an animal evolving “to better blend with its surroundings” for example, but of course in a physicalist universe there is no intention, purpose or will initiating the change. It is just as likely that an animal changes in such a way as to stand out in its surroundings, perishes as a result, and never goes on to produce offspring.

But as the American philosopher Ken Wilber says “although natural selection can account quite well for 'microevolution' (or variation within a given range of possibilities), it can account not at all for macroevolution (or the emergence of new ranges of possibility).” Some of those ‘new ranges of possibility’ have been quite radical, and some of them, judging by the fossil records, relatively sudden.

For some of us this more importantly draws attention to the fact that the universe and all the creatures in it spontaneously change, and do so all the time, from when the first hydrogen atom mutated to produce helium , up to the changes going on in humans as I write. One might ask ‘why’ and the reply from a physicalist would be “it just does”. There may well be other universes where nothing ever changes. We just happen to be living in one that does. The question of ‘why’ is irrelevant. Why was there a ‘big bang’ at all? There just was. Why is the universe changing in such a way as to produce greater and greater complexity? It just does.

This cannot be disproved, but no more can it be proved. For some of us “it just does” has never been a satisfactory answer. And to paraphrase the 13th-century philosopher Thomas Aquinas, all physical things have to have a cause, something that precedes them in time and makes them ‘happen’, (time being a very real element of the physical world, usually proceeding from past to present and on to the future) so it must have been something non- physical that needed no prior ‘cause’ itself, to produce the first physical energy/matter.

Nevertheless, one of the world’s leading physicists - and physicalists - Stephen Hawking, has famously said that there is no need for a non-physical explanation for how the physical universe came into being. In his lecture at the California Institute for Technology in 2013, he stated, 'General relativity on its own cannot answer the central question in cosmology: Why is the universe the way it is? However, if general relativity is combined with quantum theory, it may be possible to predict how the universe would start. Small fluctuations in the initial state of the Universe would lead to the formation of 'galaxies, stars, and all the other structure in the universe.'

His theory, he says, could be tested when science develops the ability to detect gravitational waves by accurately measuring the distance between spacecraft. These waves originated in the earliest times of the universe and have not been altered by their interactions by 'intervening material'. He was also of the opinion that we would get to know more about the start of the universe as we discovered more about the vast amount of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ that we now know exists in the universe. He suggested that the idea of time running in only one direction 'like a model railway track' was misconceived and that combining of general relativity and quantum theory can allow time to act just like another direction in space. But his main argument rests on his view that before the physical universe was created there was no time, so nothing could have happened.

Again, this cannot be disproved any more than it can be proved at the moment, but it rather misses the point, (which is something that philosophers and physicists frequently accuse each other of!) I wouldn’t disagree for one moment with the physics put forward by such a formidable brain as Stephen Hawking’s, and I can see no reason as to why he should be wrong about how the physical universe came into existence, in as far as what the process entailed.

But what does it all mean?  Why is there any physical universe at all? Again we come back to the physicalists’ main response: there just is, there doesn’t need to be a reason or meaning.

The explanations I have heard from physicalists about how matter and energy came into existence without something prior (that, unlike matter, needs no cause) have always sounded to me more illogical, to say nothing of mentally messier and convoluted, than assuming that something of a different order to physicality brought them into existence. Better minds than mine have challenged the physicalists on their own terms – my favourite being a book by Rupert Sheldrake, a Cambridge University biologist, called ‘The Science Delusion’. (See also Malcolm Hollick’s ‘The Science of Oneness’ and Varela, Thompson and Rosch’s ‘The Embodied Mind’.)

Furthermore science cannot help us to decide how to live our lives; in fact many atheistic scientists seem, from their writings, to have no knowledge of either wisdom traditions or anything but some of the most infantile concepts of ‘God’. Ironically this also applies to religious fundamentalists. Sometimes one would think, from articles appearing in the popular press, that there is only atheistic physicalism on the one hand and creationism on the other to choose from.

Possibly one of the main dangers of ‘scientism’- the belief that science explains everything, that there is nothing more to existence than matter/energy- is the fact that scientists are trying to do the job of mystics. Having not studied physics beyond GCSE level, I would never presume to question those who have studied physics for years about their conclusions concerning the physical universe. Yet some physicists claim to have as much knowledge about the non-physical world as metaphysical experts who have studied and carried out experiments as mystics for decades.

But back to Stephen Hawking’s view that time could not exist before the material universe did. From their own experiences and application of logic, kabbalists and other mystics disagree. Before the physical universe existed there was time (and ‘why shouldn’t there have been?' to use the physicalists’ own most common retort), albeit time that followed slightly different rules. (The only analogy I’ll draw here is to say that physical time is like standing on the Earth watching the sun rise, ‘travel ‘ overhead and then set. If you were in fact standing outside our galaxy you wouldn’t be able to see the Sun doing any such thing – you’d only be aware of its movements in relation to other stars. Yet the Sun itself is moving in exactly the same way, it’s simply your perspective on it that has changed. Thanks to Eckhart Tolle for that analogy)

So to return to the main point, the wisdom traditions part company with physicalists by teaching that there is another universe causal to the physical universe.It is necessary to point out that, while some of us, like Thomas Aquinas, have reasoned that there is something prior to and causal of the physical universe,the cosmologies of many wisdom traditions come out of the personal experience of some very devoted people, as a result of their using techniques developed and refined over millennia, and as the result of spontaneous revelation. Studying the wisdom traditions consists of reading about their experiences and explorations, and of developing techniques to follow in their footsteps, as and when one is ready. Devotion, concentration and absolute integrity are needed in spades.

It is difficult to find the language to describe how one universe can produce another of a different order, but then it is also difficult to imagine a hydrogen atom spontaneously producing all the other types of matter that evolved from it, or matter somehow evolving into living things. At this point I can only liken it to an artist transforming existing materials into something completely new with the use of imagination and manipulation.

To quote Brian L. Lancaster: “These worlds are not worlds separated in space, but realms of reality underpinning our everyday world of experience.” "