I’ve long retained a healthy scepticism about the ancient art and practice of divination. I like to think I’m an empiricist in the English philosophical tradition. If I can’t make something work, I lose interest in it.

That doesn’t mean it can’t blossom for someone else, of course. The problem is that many of its practitioners seem to hang out on fairgrounds and slightly downmarket television shows. However, I was in for a surprise.

When I was reading psychology at university my hero was the great C.G. (Carl) Jung, a Swiss genius of towering breadth of learning and imagination. His mystical apotheosis was a revelation in every sense:

When the summit of life is reached, when the bud unfolds and from the lesser the greater emerges … and the greater figure, which one always was but which remained invisible, appears to the lesser personality with the force of a revelation, he … will know that the long expected friend of his soul, the immortal one, has now really come.

It doesn’t get much better than that. Jung was also a lifelong student of the Chinese Book of Changes, the I Ching — a rather intellectual tool for divination.

Its method is similar to most other systems of reaching out to foreknowledge, which use the physical to attain the mystical. In ancient China, Taoists used 49 yarrow stalks, throwing them six times to the ground to make up a hexagram. Jung was convinced it worked and practised diligently.

My own experience of it was one of tedium. I adopted the modern method of throwing three coins instead of yarrow sticks. I managed to get hold of three old British pennies, the surprisingly large and heavy copper coins that were in use until 1971.

At first the process seemed interminable, asking a question, then throwing the coins six times and building up a hexagram of six whole and broken lines. I used the Richard Wilhelm translation which had a stimulating commentary by Jung himself.

It seemed to work on many occasions, but could be densely obscure, lacking the vivid nature of real life. Perhaps I was expecting too much.

Some years later — not long ago — I was given a pack of Tarot cards as a present. These, of course, are much more associated with the fairground that ever was the I Ching. But as I shuffled through them, I recognised Jung’s Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. I was immediately attracted to them and began to try them out.

As often with divinatory methods, it takes a while to break yourself into the deeper aspects of the system. I had sporadic matches with various outcomes, but as with the I Ching, they seemed tenuous and distant, lacking immediacy.

But I didn’t give up on them, because of their archetypal dynamism and the brilliance of the commentary in the book that came with my version. Gradually, the mist clarified and the “immortal one” seemed to answer. I am still staggered by the relevance of the answers I now get.

The Tarot can be a bit scary. The first time you get the Death card is not for the faint-hearted: in some versions, it’s a black skeleton with a scythe riding on a black horse — truly the stuff of nightmares.

All is not lost. The card represents merely a decisive loss, perhaps a job (the sack?) or the need for a complete, beneficial, change of direction. Until, that is, your turn for departure from this world really does come.

If you can accept my assertion that it definitely does work, you stand a chance of making it relevant for yourself after a period of induction. So how does it work?

I suspect it has more to do with biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s “extended mind” — the universal, or Nirvanic consciousness, than any other theoretical medium.

This is genuinely mystical; that is, something beyond normal consciousness and means of seeing. It links our earthly life with what lies beyond. It is both accessible to those who want it enough and will guide them through mysteries without end.

Jung’s “culmination of life” was such an experience. Divination is just the opening shots in the greatest journey of all.

John Evans

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Memories
Like the corners of my mind
Misty water-coloured memories
Of the way we were …

We all have memories; some pleasant, some bad. They form the bone and structure of our lives.

Without memories, life would lose its multi-dimensional qualities. But what are they? Where are they kept? How are they managed? Surprisingly, science has no definitive answers to these questions.

Mysticism, in its widest sense as the study of consciousness, has. A persistent ancient assertion is that everything that happens, and has happened throughout time, down to the smallest detail, is recorded in a universal memory. This idea is now being taken seriously in unexpected quarters.

Modern materialists believe (and I use the word advisedly) that memories are stored as physical traces in the brain using a chemical or electrical marker, something like a database on a computer hard drive.

The problem for neuroscientists is that they have never been able to locate them nor even the cranial “hard drive”. Typically, they make an assumption that fits with their assumed model of the world.

When Google’s highly innovative founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, developed their Google Search system they realised that conventional database technology was physically too clunky to call up hundreds, even millions, of results almost instantaneously. They came up with the first Cloud technology.

Instead of a massive mainframe computer with whirring tapes and fetch-and-carry software routines to poll, find and retrieve the data, they brought in large numbers of cheap PCs — basic Dell boxes — and connected them all up together in a cooled room, rather like a huge refrigerator.

In place of a hard drive, they suspended their constantly-changing map of the internet in RAM memory — the lightning-fast sort that disappears when a computer is switched off.

This arrangement eventually allowed anyone in the world to access literally millions of results for a search query in a fraction of a second, almost as if it were their own memory.

The non-local openness of the technology freed it from the painfully slow hardware and software combinations of conventional databases. The information was, as it were, hanging in the ether, available to everyone.

Mystics have long known that human memories are non-local, not brain located. To store them in the brain would be the equivalent of a physical database. The mystic equivalent of the Google “Cloud” is that memories of an event are stored with that event in time.

When we remember something from the past we make a direct connection with it across time, somewhat resembling Carl Jung’s Synchronicity: a non-causal connecting principle, or meaningful coincidence.

The biologist, Dr Rupert Sheldrake in his new book, The Science Delusion, explains the process with the term morphic resonance. He points out that Ivan Pavlov, famous for his experiments on the conditioning of dogs, proved that this conditioning “could survive massive surgical damage to the brain”, showing that it was not brain-dependent.

Clearly, memories are not made of wired circuits within the skull, but have a non-local source more akin to telepathy than is conventionally understood. This extended mind, as Sheldrake terms it, is surrounding us at all times. We have built-in receptors to filter much of it out, but are mostly unaware of how this works.

Science too is struggling to explain the non-material part of the human mind, which many scientists believe doesn’t exist. The influence of Cartesian philosophy hangs over 21st-century science like a bad smell.

Gross materialism melts away when human consciousness is studied with an open mind.

* The Way We Were, the Barbra Streisand song was written by Hamlisch, Marvin/Bergman, Alan/Bergman, Marilyn.

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.

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Carl Jung, the great Swiss thinker and psychologist, did not mince his words when referring to immortality: “When the summit of life is reached, when the bud unfolds and from the lesser the greater emerges … and the greater figure, which one always was but which remained invisible, appears to the lesser personality with the force of a revelation, he … will know that the long expected friend of his soul, the immortal one, has now really come.”

A more perfect apotheosis could hardly be imagined, for Jung had spent his whole life rummaging about in his own mind and those of others. As a scientist he was naturally reticent – colleagues could be dismissive of any apparent “descent into the swamp of mysticism”. But, as the final chapters of his late memoirs, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, show, Jung had penetrated to the soul of the matter even while playing the part of a dull, diligent, boffin of the mind.

Extracted from The Eternal Quest for Immortality – Is it staring you in the face? by John Evans, published by Syntagma Books.

Like many folk this morning I have been trying to work out why Anders Behring Breivik murdered around one hundred people in cold blood in what he admits was an atrocity.

How could an educated, successful man from a settled culture, aware of the moral dimension, carry out such a despicable attack on innocent young people?

Events like this go beyond conventional decision-making and suggest the involvement of a deeper influence. My first thought was that a powerful archetype of the collective unconscious had been triggered by recent events.

It was hardly a coincidence that just four days ago the European Union agreed that northern states of the Eurozone should transfer massive sums of money to profligate countries in the south — in the middle of an ongoing recession. Many of the people who are paying for this largesse didn’t have a voice in the decision. It was a German-French stitch-up at the highest level cobbled together by Brussels. While Norway is not a member of the EU, the close affinities of the Nordic countries means it is affected by decisions in Brussels, especially by the free movement of people across Europe.

But, even so, the killing spree was beyond excessive. We need to look deeper for the motivation behind this inexplicable crime, for something that has been stewing for decades. The Nordic mentality is generally disciplined. It takes a great deal of pain to trigger an event of such horror and devastation.

What we know is that the brooding Scandinavian temperament has been awash with unease for years about the state of their countries and their ability to govern themselves.

It is closely connected with the continuing loss of national culture, sovereignty and a largely peaceful way of life. Oslo’s population is now twenty-five percent Muslim, thanks to the open borders created by the Schengen Treaty and a very generous welfare state.

The two policies are clearly incompatible. For the Norwegians, the end of the free movement of people around Europe is becoming the only option. Significantly, Denmark has recently reimposed border controls in defiance of Brussels.

The archetype finally made its appearance on Breivik’s social media websites: that old favourite, the Knights Templar.

The Templars were set up by crusading knights in the 12th century to protect the Holy Land, especially Jerusalem, from Islamic invaders. It grew into a mass movement throughout Europe, even reaching as far north as England and Scotland, then died out before being replaced by the Scottish Freemasons.

Events like yesterday’s can only be explained by the influence of apparently heroic causes and a sense of divine mission. All the elements were in place, it only needed a psychological mechanism for action.

Modern computers have a facility called Snap to Grid. It is the technology behind spreadsheets and CadCam design software.

A blank screen hides an invisible grid of small rectangles. As worksheets or technical drawings are prepared, new inputted data automatically “snaps” into the boundaries set by the hidden grid. The grid can be revealed by a keystroke. The facility can also be turned off completely. However, if you are not an expert, your work can appear rather messy.

The analogy in ordinary life is this: when we act with apparent freedom, our actions automatically, and without our being aware of it, snap to a grid. As we grow in awareness, we begin to discern the grid. A person with a high degree of inner awareness can turn off the grid and assume complete spiritual freedom. These are the three stages of psychological free will.

The “snap” stage is when we are ignorant of any predetermining factors on our actions. A powerful archetype can easily take over a person on this level of development, conferring an inflated sense of divine mission and absolute confidence. Adolf Hitler is the perfect example. It seems that Anders Behring Breivik was under similar “magnetic” influences during yesterday’s massacre of the innocents.

The second stage, the beginning of awareness (illumination), is when we can see the grid and, within limits, adjust its purpose. The third level (called unitive contemplation in the Christian tradition) is when we become one with the grid itself and are able to control it at will.

Real freedom is quite rare, which is why there are so many senseless atrocities in history. It is predicated on an ability to rise above internal and external impulses, which rests on the level of awareness attained by any individual.

Breivik thought he was fighting back against a culture of national decline, but he was just snapping to the grid of an ancient, tired mythology.

The only partial protection against such random outbursts is for a society to have a strong code of behaviour inculcated very young.

Norway has just such an unspoken culture of civility and good manners. That yesterday’s killing spree happened anyway shows just how far some individuals have been pushed.

I suspect this could be the start of many more incidents like this across Europe unless our feeble political class takes back democratic control of our nation states.

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. Muscular Mysticism is coming soon.

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They make for rattling good yarns by writers such as Dan Brown of The Da Vinci Code, and many another.

I confess I have something of a taste for these confections, although I read them more as comedies than thrillers. One attraction is that most modern novels are full of detailed research into the subject, subtly led astray by the writer’s imaginative interpretation and need for dramatic action.

But is there a scintilla of truth in the kernel of them? Do the Illuminati truly exist? Let’s start with some definitions from The New Oxford Dictionary of English:

Illuminati: People claiming to possess special enlightenment or knowledge of something: some mysterious standard known only to the illuminati of the organization.

Two examples are then given:

1. A sect of 16th-century Spanish heretics* who claimed special religious enlightenment. *Note: some genuine Spanish mystics of the period were infamously labelled “heretics” by the Inquisition. It’s a pity the OED follows that tradition.
2. A Bavarian secret society founded in 1776, organized like the Freemasons*. *Note: there is evidence that the Freemasons, especially those of the 33rd degree, did at some stage possess knowledge of the Great Death Contemplation that goes back to the Mystery Schools of antiquity and is identical with the “showing of the nature of reality” that I have written about extensively, for example: HERE.

One factor muddies the waters of our quest for the Illuminati. It is the presence of a large number of dandies eager to dress in colourful outfits and call themselves “Chevalier”, or some other term of personal inflatus. We can safely put them to one side.

Anyone who calls themself a magician or a magus is just playing around on the edges of psychic phenomena. They may indeed be sensitive to layers beyond physicality, but much of the information they uncover is so general and banal it’s better left alone.

Let’s start our quest with the obvious candidates: the clergy.

Could the priests, curates and vicars of our churches hide a secret cadre of true spiritual adepts? In my view, they are very thin on the ground … if they exist at all.

In Church circles, clergy are generally divided into Actives and Contemplatives. The Actives do the donkey work, while the Contemplatives (just a few in our times) lock themselves away in monasteries and other quiet places such as a handful of hermitages. They are worthy of our respect, but we must judge them on their merits.

In a recent edition of Andrew Marr’s Start the Week on BBC Radio 4, the head of the Catholic Church in England, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, remarked that if anyone thought being an Archbishop brought them closer to God, it was news to him. He said it with a rueful laugh. I believed him.

But there is a more serious candidate, the late Pope John Paul II, now beatified with almost indecent haste — does the Church know more than we do?

What we do know is that this immensely popular priest was brought up in Poland and joined the Rosicrucians, a mystical sect that followed “the Rosy Cross.”

After a bad road crash in which he was seriously injured, the future Bishop of Rome had a profound spiritual experience that closely matched a description given by his Rosicrucian master. I suspect it was a showing of the nature of reality, a privileged view of one’s immortality.

Such spiritual masters undoubtedly exist but work in the shadows. I doubt they have pretensions of power in the outer world or would wish to be known.

There are pockets of activists within the Church, such as Opus Dei, that have mystical objectives at the very least. And any number of shadowy organisations such as the Priory of Sion, of Holy Blood, Holy Grail fame, that live on the claim of genetic descent from Jesus Christ.

My own view is that anyone who claims mystical powers from their physical bloodline, or DNA, is a fantasist or a scoundrel.

Each one of us has long routes back in time that theoretically can be traced to the “Creator of the Universe”. But, as Carl Jung put it, “The sole and natural carrier of life is the individual and this holds true throughout nature”.

We are left then with specific individuals, not bloodlines or groups.

Any organisation that uses physical means to obstruct or defend what it believes to be divine power, is corrupt and acts egoically.

It was said that China’s Mao Tse Tung and his deputy Chou Enlai used magical aspects of Taoism, including Yin and Yang techniques, to pave their way to political power. Given the chaos they inflicted on the people, especially the middle classes which they slaughtered by the million during the Cultural Revolution, this example does not fit any of our definitions, even if true.

So, in the absence of real evidence — and I would be grateful for information from any reader who knows better — I will narrow down our quest to one area: individual seekers after genuine mystical experience, of which there are many.

Any genuine mystic knows that illuminations are given rather than taken and after a suitable period of request and spiritual alignment. You can’t claim your place in the mystical hierarchy, you have to prove your fitness for it first.

The existence of genuine Illuminati in the sense of powerful secret societies is probably a myth created by the runaway human imagination. In other words, Old Nick himself: the ego.

John Evans

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

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