Mysticism is not practical, say its critics, just wishful believing. Little do they know.

This column will attempt to demonstrate the power of mystical ideas in the “real world”, or what those of us who pursue spiritual truths prefer to call, the shadow world.

Take musical notation. It’s not generally known that music began as a mystic rite. It goes all the way back to ancient Greece and Pythagoras’s “Music of the Spheres”.

The musical octave — eight notes with seven intervals — is based on the phenomenon of two notes sounding the same, despite having a higher or lower pitch. Everyone knows the “tune” of Doh, Ray, Me, Fah, So, La, Ti, Doh, especially if they have seen The Sound of Music. The first and final notes are both designated as Doh despite having different pitches.

This is a natural occurrence that is often called “the basic miracle of music”. It’s also common to most musical systems.

The octave contains a wealth of resonances, according to the mystic/magician Georges Gurdjieff, even related to project management.

It is called the Law of Seven, or the Law of Octaves. The eight-note scale has five whole intervals and two half-intervals, giving rise to Major and Minor keys. Great composers use them to magical effect in their compositions.

Neuroscience will have a reason for it, but there’s no physical explanation for its duplication throughout nature as a portal for a wide range of activities.

The octave is a template for every project, whether engineering or literary. For example, if you are writing a novel and have completed an outline of the plot, plus three chapters, you may send these to a publisher for consideration. If you get a nod of encouragement and settle down to continue, you might find it harder than you think.

You have hit the first half-interval in the scale. That fourth chapter is a devil to get right. The brain seems reluctant to tackle it with the initial enthusiasm. Your spirits droop, energy is in short supply, inspiration dries up.

The best way, I find, is to keep writing wildly, however bad it is, then come back to it later. After that blip, the creative juices return and zip the novelist on past the median line and beyond.

Then, wham! you hit the wall again, which is a bit like Beechers Brook in the Grand National. Another crisis occurs. You begin to doubt the project itself. It simply will not do. It’s not fit for proper publication. You contemplate Lulu.com.

At this point a true mystic will be more helpful than a brain scientist. Ah, they say, you’ve crashed into Gurdjieff’s ditch. Just get on and come back to it later.

Now, that scenario is similar to every major project ever begun. Wise heads know the stumbling points and push on to the end. It’s easy when you know the score.

Even the Music of the Spheres has its slow movements.

Great texts of all religions were written down many centuries ago, often in scattered tribal settlements or isolated monastries.

The Bronze Age authors had no expectations of a mass publishing industry. Manuscripts would not roll off the printing presses as Penguin books any time soon. That limitation coloured what and how they wrote.

All books are written for other people, a small group of like-minds, perhaps. For that reason, I doubt they were ever regarded as devotional texts to be worshipped as sacred in themselves. That came much later when direct knowledge of the authors had faded and “God” was seen as the ultimate inspiration, if not the scribe.

If you think about it, the great books that have come down to us from antiquity could only have a single purpose: to inform and instruct those with lesser knowledge. They were what we would call textbooks.

I’ve spent much of my life tracking down and reading ancient, and more modern, texts, now thankfully published as annotated Penguin books, or other imprints. It is obvious that the bulk of them are instruction manuals in mysticism, not devotional screeds; directions to follow rather than prayers for help.

The prayers came later with the spread of the Roman Catholic Church, and were written to glorify it and its mission to constrict whole populations into a single orthodoxy.

But what were the original instruction manuals teaching? In an age when life was wholly uncertain from birth to death, there was a keen market for explanations of existence and the means of making the best of what they had.

Watch the birds in the trees and small animals on the ground. Observe their wariness and lightning reactions when disturbed. Humans were like that once.

The yearning to understand the “beyond” of this world was strong. It still is, but we are deflected from it by people who claim to have perfect knowledge and to have solved all the riddles. We can only go forward alone. Congregations are like comprehensive schools, holding back the best at the pace of the slowest.

Then as now, there were plenty of sceptics who wanted to find out for themselves. They were the explorers of mind and matter and the relationships between. Mystic and scientist were one back then. It was only a growing market for technology that separated them into two distinct fields of endeavour, the one practical and earthly, the other spiritual.

The Judeo-Christian Bible, a vast collection of texts by many hands, collated over a vast timescale, contains endless examples of instruction manuals on how to live in desert conditions in troubled times, and secure your place in the afterlife.

The Indian Bhagavad Gita, composed around 500 BC, teaches the method of using the daily round as a springboard to mystical advancement. Buddhist texts teach mindfulness, and non-grasping for things as a clear path to the Pure Land.

Often the didactic core of a text is misunderstood by scholars not schooled in such arcane matters. Translations invariably miss the point completely.

The Gospels have been used in churches as devotional material for so long that any attempt at making them more transparent creates uproar, even fury, despite the fact that they are translations of translations that have taken on a life, and meaning, of their own. Hijacked is not a word I use lightly, but think on, Reader.

If there’s one God, one Mystery, and a unity of Being, the ground for all must be the same.

Coming full circle, it is not difficult to identify the spiritual instructions in sacred texts. It just takes eyes to see and ears to hear, qualities that are often lacking in modern commentators who have a politically-correct fear of anything that hints at mysticism and the unknown.

John Evans

… who is the author of The Eternal Quest for Immortality: Is it staring you in the face? Available from Amazon and all good booksellers.

Mystics in the Modern World is coming soon.

Recent Related Articles

The Spring Offensive is finally over. We have had Rose Garden II, the election for London Mayor, the Local polls, and now the Queen’s Speech.

What has struck me is how wobbly David Cameron has become. One day he’s going back to basic Tory values — how did he mislay them in the first place? — the next, he’s not budging an inch from the alarmingly soggy Coalition Agreement. Are we back with Dog Whistle politics?

Nick is still Dave’s best mate, and they are “renewing their vows”, a phrase almost designed to set Conservative’s teeth on edge.

The Queen’s Speech is a holding job, which pleases no-one except those anxious to hang onto their ministerial posts until 2015.

Where Boris was bold and took risks, with a wink and a grin, Dave is a cold fish best served cold. His talents are on the surface and lack soul.

Oh for a British Marshall Foch who famously telegraphed from the battlefield: “Hard pressed on my right; the centre is yielding; impossible to manoeuvre. Situation excellent, I shall attack!”

Leonardo Da Vinci is said to be the greatest artist who ever lived. I beg to differ.

To my eye, his work has the same effect as a sheaf of technical drawings. He was an engineer, not a great painter.

That is not to say he wasn’t a genius, he most certainly was, but as a draughtsman and visionary rather than a reflector of numinosity, which is the essence of great art. Compare any piece by Van Gogh, all of which fizz with inner light and mystic power.

Leonardo is everywhere now. The National Gallery’s exhibition of some of his major paintings last summer was a runaway success.

Currently, as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebration, the Royal Collection is showing a stunning array of Da Vinci anatomical drawings, many of which haven’t been seen by the public before.

One commentator thinks that this show has rewritten the Italian’s reputation as a scientist. His very early probings into the workings of the human body are as relevant today as they were during his lifetime, and just as mind-blowing.

Similarly, his notebook sketches of weird machines — tanks, aircraft and other weapons, all centuries before they materialised — demonstrate a man possessed of either a stunning engineering genius … or second sight.

In his day, most painters, writers and dabblers in what then passed for science, were members of secret societies that claimed to have access to hidden knowledge. Thus, today’s science grew out of mysticism.

Leonardo was another Nostradamus, perhaps?

Ben Macintire’s recent piece in The Times: Before we go, rebuild the Bamiyan Buddhas, is the best idea I’ve heard in ages. It will leave something memorable behind following our undistinguished, hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Buddhas were destroyed by the Taliban in an unforgivable act of religious spite and cultural despotism.

Let’s do it.

Poppycock Watch
The airwaves are riddled with laddish cookery shows. Does anyone really want to watch the antics of Hairy Bikers and their interminable Bakeathons?

And what about Hungry Sailors “searching our coastlines for recipes”? I can’t say I’ve ever found a recipe on a beach.

Then there are those frisky fellas over at River Cottage demonstrating their chopping skills. Leave it out … please! What’s wrong with Delia? Why this forest of hairy cooks all over our screens?

Call me old-fashioned but even sultry Nigella is preferable to television’s current obsession with hirsute forty-something attention-seekers with knives.

Let’s have fewer kitchen-based series all round. It’s time to raise the profile of the garden shed.

A few years ago, I got caught up in the small press movement. This is not the same as today’s self-publishing trend using print-to-order companies, such as Lightning Source, Lulu or Amazon, but involves getting hold of a printing press and doing the whole thing yourself from start to finish.

If that sounds tedious, it is, but was also tremendously satisfying in the days when the internet didn’t swallow everything. Earlier enthusiasts included, Leonard and Virginia Woolf with their famous Hogarth Press; William Blake, who painted all his own illustrations, J.L. Carr, William Morris, Alfred Wainwright … the list is long.

Maybe the internet is so easy to use, it doesn’t attract enough quality material. It’s also ephemeral and makes a mockery of time, which shortens dramatically.

Convenience products always seem to leave us even shorter of time than before.

Profundity of the Week
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” Walt Whitman.

John Evans

who is the author of The Eternal Quest for Immortality: Is it staring you in the face? Available from Amazon and all good booksellers.

Mystics in the Modern World is coming soon.

Recent Related Articles

Let there be light

I get a surprising amount of feedback on this website, despite the comments facility being turned off. Mostly it concerns the mysticism/science nexus which seems to have an enduring fascination for both sides of the apparent divide.

I’ve argued HERE and HERE that the one arises from the other, any differences resting on methodology: human faculty versus machine.

While you might expect technology to triumph every time, that is not the case at the limits of human knowledge and experience.

For example, while both versions arrive at an “emptiness” at the heart of the universe, only the serious mystic picks up the presence of consciousness in “nothingness” and a profound intelligence within it.

Science’s particulate model creates more questions than it answers, while mysticism’s “unity of being” solves many of the real problems in the field.

Recently, I suggested that the search for the Higgs boson (the “God Particle” that is said to give mass to matter) would result in a new flood of particles that hardly seem to exist at all. That prediction appears to have come true in weeks rather than months.

Jonathan Leake, Science Editor of the Sunday Times, this week reported that the Higgs could now be a family of five little blobs that will keep CERN’s intrepid explorers employed for another 20 years. Remember, this quest began in the 1960s, eating up multi-billions of taxpayers’ money.

Why do they need to give “mass” a cause and a name at all? What if it’s just written into the conscious fabric of the universe at a level beyond any mathematical process or human understanding? How could the thinking mind, with all its distortions, have any access to what it imagines is a machine-like, automatic process when it clearly is not?

Leake writes: “… ‘supersymmetry’, … predicts each known sub-atomic particle could be partnered by another ‘superparticle’, although these remain undetected.”

Worse, could they be using the malleable, conscious substance of the living universe to create a sub-universe out of human nightmares that no-one understands except a few Dr Strangeloves in Geneva?

Just look at video games and see what bright people produce from the latest technology. At the limit, everything is “mind-stuff”, the most dangerous substance in the universe if handled without understanding.

John Evans

… who is the author of The Eternal Quest for Immortality: Is it staring you in the face? Available from Amazon and all good booksellers.

Mystics in the Modern World is coming soon.

Recent Related Articles

Ken Livingstone, eh? You can’t live with him, and you certainly can live without him.

There’s an apocryphal tale told about his first period as Mayor of London which, I suspect, has grown with the telling.

On coming into office, as an indication of his Internationalist credentials he instructed a Labour sidekick to arrange an exhibition of the work of Nigerian rural artists.

When none could be found in London, he sent a team to Nigeria to round up the best of them and bring them back to display their work.

Unfortunately, Ken’s emissaries were told, at the highest level, that there was no such thing as country artists in Nigeria. Appalled, the new Mayor ordered his people to bring back a dozen Nigerian actors to play the parts.

“What about the pictures?” he was asked by his incredulous sherpa. “We’ll think of something,” replied the optimistic Livingstone.

Eventually, a group of actors, accountants and farm labourers duly arrived at Heathrow, fitted out in smart, dark suits. “Suits,” yelled the Mayor, “they’re supposed to be rural artists from Africa! Get them down to the theatrical outfitters in Monmouth Street.”

When the hapless underling presented them to the costumiers, he was in luck … or so he thought. “We’ve got just the thing,” said the attendant. “The D’Oyly Carte has just finished a production of The Mikado and all the costumes have been returned to us.” A white-faced emissary reluctantly agreed to take them.

Meanwhile, the Mayor had arranged a smart black-tie reception, including the pick of the London arts establishment as well as top broadsheet art journalists. It was intended to be a glittering occasion to launch his mayoralty with a bang.

“What are we going to do for art?” demanded his despondent aide de camp. “I’m sure you can find something in the junk shops,” says his nibs, “Or just give them some oil paints and make them daub stuff on big canvases. If schoolkids can do it, I’m sure a bunch of accountants and farmers can.”

The day of the reception at City Hall arrived. The great and the good were shepherded into the grand hall where a remarkable sight awaited them. Splodges of paint splashed all over the walls were running down onto the sprung parqued floor. “I’m afraid they got drunk,” said the aide, “I couldn’t stop them. They just went beserk.”

“Well, they are country artists,” says Ken to the startled art critics. “And here they come!”

Into the hall, in single file, staggered ten drunken Nigerians dressed as characters from The Mikado.

Now I’m sure that story has been embroidered mightily, but Reader, I suggest it’s too bizarre to be made up.

John Evans

Recent Related Articles

In my bookshelves I have a strange, battered, hard-covered book, published in 1950, that occasionally catches my eye. I use the reverse perspective deliberately, for I rarely seek it out.

It is In Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky, a Russian esotericist and a sometime student of Georges Gurdjieff (pictured), who sought enlightenment in the magical aspects of human life.

Gurdjieff had many students in England, mainly from the intelligent middle class and minor aristocracy, who were taught a ferociously difficult self-discipline of movement that mimicked ballet. The notion was that to achieve proficiency the students had to focus their attention at all times, or do themselves a mischief.

Gurdjieff was of Armenian and Russian stock and died in 1949. He was a one-off’s one-off, a spiritual master at the high-end of the second tier. He combined “crazy wisdom” with exceptional insights into the human condition.

His work covered a great range of topics, but we won’t delve too deeply into his arcane cosmology which owes more to a wild imagination and relentless complexity than an open-minded simplicity. He is best recognised for his thoughts on personality and essence, and a close examination of consciousness, which included his famous analysis of self-remembering.

“There are four states of consciousness possible for man,” he told his students. “But ordinary man … lives in the two lowest states of consciousness only.”

The vast majority of people live out their lives as habitual sleepwalkers, separated from any real awareness of reality by a massively tangled undergrowth of received beliefs, malign conditioning, and crippling distortions in the workings of the mind. We are unaware of who and what we are, and many of us can best be described as “the living dead”.

The two higher states of consciousness represent the turning points of his whole system. The third state is that of “self-remembering”.

Humans are mostly caught up in a stream of happenings which bear them along in life and over which they have no control. They forget their own sense of being and become slaves to the flow of life, their own consciousness fractured into bits as if they were many individuals, not one.

By the simple act of remembering oneself at all times, one can begin to unify it into a real conscious individual. This state is similar to the Buddhist practice of mindfulness and is clearly derived from it. It is also worth recalling the passage in The Gospel of Thomas: “When you know yourselves then you will be known, and understand that you are the children of the living God”.

The fourth level is that of objective consciousness. In this state, says Gurdjieff, we “can see things as they are.” All religions describe “a state of consciousness of this kind which is called enlightenment …” We have to live in the condition of self-remembering (the third level) in order to arrive at the fourth state of “seeing things as they are”. This is the practice: Gurdjieff’s celebrated “Work”.

The third state, then, is mindfulness successfully acquired. It mirrors the bliss state described HERE. This state causes the self to glow in such a way that self-remembering is a natural condition of its presence. The bliss state is self-remembering. Self-remembering is bliss.

The fourth state of objective consciousness or “seeing things as they are” is the condition of nirvanic experience. To see the world, and oneself, in its raw essence, without the interference of the comparing intellect and the running commentary of the idiot mind, is enlightenment, says Gurdjieff.

In nirvanic experience it is necessary to leave the body to sample this new type of seeing. Until we give up the shattered mental environment we normally inhabit in favour of our suprapersonal essence, we will always live within the orbit of birth and death, suffering and loss. The New Testament’s often misinterpreted maxim, “You must first lose your life in order to gain it” now becomes explicable.

Gurdjieff’s related insight that we are split between personality and essence throws yet more light on this process. Our essence is the level of contact we have with our suprapersonal nature. Personality is the extent to which we operate in the world.

Living immortality is having constant knowledge of both.

John Evans

… who is the author of The Eternal Quest for Immortality: Is it staring you in the face? Available from Amazon and all good booksellers.

Mystics in the Modern World is coming soon.
Recent Related Articles