THE RELEVANCE OF VISIONARY EXPERIENCE TO
CULTURE
20th June 2001, St. Thomas' Hospital, London
Copyright © Anne Baring
I know that all of us here today are deeply committed to finding ways
of alleviating human suffering. This paper suggests that our culture is
incomplete and impoverished if it fails to take account of visionary
experience in the ancient and original interpretation of its meaning that of receiving revelation, inspiration and guidance from a
transcendent dimension of consciousness that used to be called spirit…
----- From the first stirrings of conscious awareness, we have sought
relationship with the universe. This may be one of our deepest
instincts, the root of our desire to explore and to discover. Gazing in
wonder at the stars, naming the constellations, charting the rising and
setting of the moon, (1) connecting through visionary experience with a
divine intelligence which has brought the earth into being, we have
created many rituals, many images to engage with the mystery of our
existence. 14,000 years ago, in the deep pit of the great cave at
Lascaux, someone painted this figure of a shaman whose soul is
travelling like the bird on his staff to another world where it will
perhaps encounter the soul of the slain bison. In that time, so long ago,
it was the shaman (originally a sanscrit word) who transmitted to the
tribal group the messages received from an unseen world. Over time
these grew into the great myths that guided people on how to align
human life with the life of the universe. Later, religions devised the
doctrines and rituals that held immense numbers of people in
relationship with the transcendent. But at the root of all
institutionalised religion is the revelatory experience of the visionary or
seer.
----- A living myth arose out of the visionary experience of this man
(Christ, as shown in the visionary painting of the Resurrection by
Piero della Francesca). The same could be said of the Buddha and
Mohammed. I should say here that I am using the word myth not in
seer.
----- A living myth arose out of the visionary experience of this man
(Christ, as shown in the visionary painting of the Resurrection by
Piero della Francesca). The same could be said of the Buddha and
Mohammed. I should say here that I am using the word myth not in
the sense of something untrue or fabricated but in the sense that the
mythologist Joseph Campbell used it - a powerful story that influences
and even structures whole cultures.(2) A living myth can hold society
together, can transform and advance human consciousness, inspiring
the greatest works of art and literature. But a dying myth may lead to
the disintegration of society. A myth can only survive if it engages the
soul at the deepest level and if it can grow and evolve. If the religion
which transmits the myth has become too constricting to the questing
human spirit, if something absolutely vital is missing in its teaching, if
there is an aspect of its doctrine which deeply injures the soul, the
myth will ultimately lose its power or degenerate into fanaticism. At
the present time the Christian myth and the Judaeo-Christian image of
God which have structured Western civilisation for two thousand
years are dying: we are living through an interregnum where the old
moral consensus has gone and the old vision no longer guides us. I am
reminded of the words "Where there is no vision the people
perish." (Proverbs 29:18) Yet revelation may continually be trying to
reach us if only we have the ears to hear. The psychiatrist and
visionary C.G. Jung wrote this beautiful passage at the end of one of
his books, Modern Man in Search of a Soul:
"The living spirit grows and even outgrows its earlier forms of
expression; It freely chooses the men [and women] in whom it lives
and who proclaim it. This living spirit is eternally renewed and
pursues its goal in manifold and inconceivable ways throughout the
history of mankind. Measured against it, the names and forms which
men have given it mean little enough; they are only the changing
leaves and blossoms on the stem of the eternal tree."
-----Many myths of the ancient world and our own Christian myth tell
us that after a period of disorientation and confusion, there can be
renewal and regeneration. But new bottles may be needed to contain
the new wine. Those who create the new bottles are the visionaries or
seers who renew the connection with the transcendent in a form
attuned to the needs of a different age.
----- The visionary or mystical tradition of different cultures says that
renewal and regeneration. But new bottles may be needed to contain
the new wine. Those who create the new bottles are the visionaries or
seers who renew the connection with the transcendent in a form
attuned to the needs of a different age.
----- The visionary or mystical tradition of different cultures says that
like a child separated from its mother, we are separated from an
invisible and transcendent ground of being. This separation is
experienced by us as an exile, a fall, a state of disharmony and
disunion. But the memory of fusion or union lives on in us as a
longing for the reconnection of our conscious human self with that
unseen ground. We sail the fragile vessel of consciousness on the
surface of the great sea of life unaware, perhaps, of this primary need.
I feel that all our different quests spring from the basic longing for
reconnection - to discover our place in the universe, to know who we
are and why we are here, on this amazing planet. The image of the
quest breathes life into the great myths of the ancient world and is a
quintessential part of the Christian myth. It lies behind science's drive
to discover the secret of matter and the current fascination with
neuroscience. It is the instigator of the Apollo Mission to the moon
and the breathtaking exploration of the depths of cosmic space.
----- I see visionaries as bridge builders between two levels or
dimensions of reality - explorers or astronauts of the soul. The
visionary or seer who contributes to the regeneration of a culture must
always press beyond the boundaries of the known. In this image, a
man has gone beyond the known world, and is gazing in wonder at
what is being revealed to him. It is a powerful image of breaking
through limitations, an image of astonishment and discovery. It is the
very essence of the spiritual quest.
----- A visionary, seer or shaman - the word means "one who knows"
- is traditionally called to this role by a life experience which weakens
his or her focus on the usual concerns of society. It could be an illness,
a psychotic episode, an experience of catastrophic loss, a powerful
visionary dream, an out-of-the-body or near-death experience.
Whatever it is, it will shatter the pattern of so-called normal life and the
structures of defence we have built against the terror and disorientation
of such an experience. Our culture may see this experience as a
symptom of mental illness. Other cultures may see it as a rite of
initiation into a transcendent world - a break-through rather than a
breakdown. There are many kinds, levels and degrees of visionary
visionary dream, an out-of-the-body or near-death experience.
Whatever it is, it will shatter the pattern of so-called normal life and the
structures of defence we have built against the terror and disorientation
of such an experience. Our culture may see this experience as a
symptom of mental illness. Other cultures may see it as a rite of
initiation into a transcendent world - a break-through rather than a
breakdown. There are many kinds, levels and degrees of visionary
experience. Such an experience is an encounter with the numinous
and can be overwhelming and terrifying as well as exalting and
inspiring. The line separating the visionary, the genius and the
psychotic is very fine. All three have a psychic threshold which is
permeable to deeper levels of experience, to non-ordinary states of
consciousness. A culture may confirm or deny the validity of this kind
of experience and it may be the fear and denial of it which may
actually drive certain people into psychosis who in other cultures
would be confirmed and supported in their calling as a healer and
spiritual guide to the community.(3)
-----Jung commented on this situation:
-----"The archetypal image of the wise man, the saviour or redeemer,
lies buried and dormant in man's unconscious since the dawn of
culture; it is awakened whenever the times are out of joint and a
human society is committed to a serious error...These primordial
images are numerous, but do not appear in the dreams of individuals
or in works of art until they are called into being by the waywardness
of the general outlook. When conscious life is characterised by onesidedness and by a false attitude, they are activated - one might say
"instinctively" - and come to light in the dreams of individuals and the
visions of artists and seers, thus restoring the psychic equilibrium of
the epoch…" (4)
-----What is the visionary experience like? While I could draw on
hundreds of examples, I have chosen two, the first from Hildegarde of
Bingen:
"In the year 1141 of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, when I was fortytwo and seven months old, a burning light coming from heaven
poured into my mind. Like a flame which does not burn but rather
enkindles. It inflamed my heart and my breast, just as the sun warms
something with its rays.…The Light said to me: You who receive these
things for the manifestation of the things concealed, write what you
see and hear…I had felt within myself the gift of secret mysteries and
wondrous visions from the time I was a little girl, certainly from the
time I was five years old right up to the present time. I revealed my gift
two and seven months old, a burning light coming from heaven
poured into my mind. Like a flame which does not burn but rather
enkindles. It inflamed my heart and my breast, just as the sun warms
something with its rays.…The Light said to me: You who receive these
things for the manifestation of the things concealed, write what you
see and hear…I had felt within myself the gift of secret mysteries and
wondrous visions from the time I was a little girl, certainly from the
time I was five years old right up to the present time. I revealed my gift
to no-one except to a select few and I concealed my gift continuously
in quiet silence until God wished it to be manifest by God's own grace.
I truly saw those visions; I did not perceive them in dreams, nor while
sleeping, nor in a frenzy, nor with the human eyes or with the external
ears of a person, nor in a remote place, but I received them while I
was awake and alert with a clear mind, with the innermost eyes and
innermost ears of a person, and in open places." (5)
-----It is interesting that Hildegarde says that she was continually ill
until she began to write down her visions and to communicate them to
close friends and supporters.
----- The second is from a recently published book called Dark Night,
Early Dawn by Christopher Bache. Professor Bache taught religious
studies at an American University for 20 years and is now Director of
Studies at the Noetic Institute in California. During those years he
recorded the visions he experienced while using the holotropic
breathing method developed by the psychiatrist Stanislav Grof:
-----"The unified field underlying physical existence completely
dissolved all boundaries. As I moved deeper into it, all borders fell
away, all appearances of division were ultimately illusory. No
boundaries between incarnations, between human beings, between
species, even between matter and spirit. The world of individuated
existence…was revealing itself to be an exquisitely diversified
manifestation of a single entity." (6)
-----"Though these experiences were extraordinary in their own right,
the most poignant aspect of today's session was not the discovered
dimensions of the universe themselves but what my seeing and
understanding them meant to the Consciousness I was with. It seemed
so pleased to have someone to show Its work to. I felt that it had been
waiting for billions of years for embodied consciousness to evolve to
the point where we could at long last begin to see, understand and
appreciate what had been accomplished. I felt the loneliness of this
Intelligence…and I wept for its isolation and in awe of the profound
the most poignant aspect of today's session was not the discovered
dimensions of the universe themselves but what my seeing and
understanding them meant to the Consciousness I was with. It seemed
so pleased to have someone to show Its work to. I felt that it had been
waiting for billions of years for embodied consciousness to evolve to
the point where we could at long last begin to see, understand and
appreciate what had been accomplished. I felt the loneliness of this
Intelligence…and I wept for its isolation and in awe of the profound
love which had accepted this isolation as part of a larger plan. Behind
creation lies a Love of extraordinary proportions, and all of existence
is an expression of this love. The intelligence of the universe's design is
equally matched by the depth of love that inspired it." (7)
-----The visionary has to adapt the direct experience of a transcendent
reality to the level of understanding of his time and also struggle to
integrate it with his own understanding. He or she is really a kind of
translator. Jung was a visionary but it took him forty years to integrate
the visions which began when he was 35 with his life work as a
psychiatrist and healer of souls. In the prologue to his autobiography
he says: "In the end the only events in my life worth telling are those
when the imperishable world irrupted into this transitory one. That is
why I speak chiefly of inner experiences, among which I include my
dreams and visions…They were the fiery magma out of which the
stone that had to be worked was crystallised." (8)
----- Jung found it ironical that he, a psychiatrist, should encounter at
almost every step of his opening to the imperishable world the same
psychic material which is typical of psychosis. "This," he says, "is the
fund of unconscious images which fatally confuse the mental patient.
But it is also the matrix of a mythopoeic imagination which has
vanished from our rational age." (9)
----- Why has it vanished? The definition of a visionary prior to 1650
was one who was able and accustomed to see visions. By 1750 when
the belief that the physical universe was the only "real" one was
becoming established in philosophical and scientific circles, the
definition has changed to someone who sees something which is not
real. Today a visionary may be defined as someone who suffers from
delusions or hallucinations, who is at worst psychotic, at best
emotionally unstable. So why the change in perception?
----- To answer this question, I need to go back a bit to give an
overview of visionary experience in the past. In the ancient world the
definition has changed to someone who sees something which is not
real. Today a visionary may be defined as someone who suffers from
delusions or hallucinations, who is at worst psychotic, at best
emotionally unstable. So why the change in perception?
----- To answer this question, I need to go back a bit to give an
overview of visionary experience in the past. In the ancient world the
whole of nature was infused with divine presence. Mountains, trees,
rivers, springs each had their own particular spirit or guardian. In
dreams and waking visions people could walk and talk with gods and
goddesses and with angels and daemons who were seen as emissaries
and agents of divine spirit. They were looked upon as being as real as
you or I. The Old Testament as well as the Iliad and the Odyssey are
full of these encounters. (see the Books of Esdras and Tobit in the
Apocrypha and the Book of Revelation). There was a different kind of
consciousness to the one we have today, one that might be called
'participatory' rather than 'rational'.
----- In pre-Christian cultures (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece), there
was a long tradition of visionary healers who were initiated through
rites of incubation in temples and caves and who brought back
teaching from another world. (10) Far into the Christian era there were
contemplatives who sought out the solitude of forest and desert.
People went to them for spiritual counsel. The emphasis of this
contemplative tradition was on a gradual initiation through meditative
practice into the capacity to see, hear and understand things which are
not accessible to the normal range of consciousness. The visionary
imagination was nourished and cultivated in those cultures where
visionaries were regarded with awe and respect as messengers of the
invisible.
----- In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Europe there was a
flowering of the visionary imagination in the building of the great
cathedrals, in the wide dissemination of the Grail legends and the
troubadours who introduced a new image of romantic love between
men and women into the culture. All over Europe the Black Madonna
drew people in pilgrimage to shrines and holy places that had once
been sacred to older goddesses. This was the time when Dante, with
Beatrice as his spiritual guide, wrote his Divine Comedy after seeing a
vision of the Trinity, when St. Francis heard the voice of Christ
speaking to him from a crucifix in a tiny hermitage in Assisi, telling
him to rebuild His church, when Hildegarde of Bingen was
experiencing her visions.
men and women into the culture. All over Europe the Black Madonna
drew people in pilgrimage to shrines and holy places that had once
been sacred to older goddesses. This was the time when Dante, with
Beatrice as his spiritual guide, wrote his Divine Comedy after seeing a
vision of the Trinity, when St. Francis heard the voice of Christ
speaking to him from a crucifix in a tiny hermitage in Assisi, telling
him to rebuild His church, when Hildegarde of Bingen was
experiencing her visions.
----- However, certain events put an end to this flowering: the Black
Death in the fourteenth century, the long terror of the Inquisition
(13th-19th centuries), which effectively silenced visionaries,
particularly women visionaries, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and
the Protestant Reformation. This last coincided with the beginnings of
the scientific revolution in the sixteenth century. People became
disenchanted with religion because of the intransigence of the Church
towards the new discoveries and the fanaticism of rival religious
groups. 400 years ago there was a fundamental shift of focus from
religion to science, a shift of focus from faith to knowledge, from
confinement within a rigid and persecuting orthodoxy to a passionate
exploration of the physical universe and the significance of the
individual.
----- Tragically, because of its later effects on Western civilization, the
Christian Church gradually eradicated the earlier awareness of the
sacredness of the earth and of nature and the immanence of the
Divine. This was due, I think, to three things: its fear of animism, its
emphasis on the transcendence of God and its doctrine of the Fall of
Man and Original Sin. It also persecuted and eliminated the gnostic
visionary tradition which had flourished in Christian communities
during the first three centuries of our era. Many gospels in use at that
time were burned. So, in European culture, many different events and
beliefs contributed to the suppression and eventual loss of the
visionary imagination.
----- But the last fifty years have seen the recovery of the gnostic texts
buried at Nag Hammadi in Egypt (particularly the gospel of Thomas)
and the visionary traditions secretly transmitted from pre-Christian and
early Christian cultures. For the first time these lost texts and traditions
are accessible to all who are interested. What have also been recovered
over this same period are the mystical and healing traditions of India,
Persia, China and Tibet and the work of the great spiritual teachers of
these ancient cultures. These teachings and traditions can be seen as
----- But the last fifty years have seen the recovery of the gnostic texts
buried at Nag Hammadi in Egypt (particularly the gospel of Thomas)
and the visionary traditions secretly transmitted from pre-Christian and
early Christian cultures. For the first time these lost texts and traditions
are accessible to all who are interested. What have also been recovered
over this same period are the mystical and healing traditions of India,
Persia, China and Tibet and the work of the great spiritual teachers of
these ancient cultures. These teachings and traditions can be seen as
the "complementary" or missing counterpart of the traditions that are
more familiar to us and are an essential yet hitherto unknown aspect of
our spiritual inheritance. Included in this precious inheritance are
shamanic traditions of healing; travelling to other dimensions of
reality; encountering and speaking to the souls of the dead. All these
have enriched our culture and have broadened both our understanding
and our definition of spirituality. Spirituality is no longer associated
with the belief system of a specific religion but rather with the longing,
the quest, to become awakened, healed and whole.
----- However, I believe there is a major problem facing us: during the
last century in our Western culture, the human spirit has been
increasingly compressed between two ideologies - the older Christian
one which can no longer hold society together in a shared vision and
the new one of reductionist science which states that we live in a
mechanistic, lifeless universe which has come into being by chance.
By a subtle yet powerful censorship this new ideology excludes what
it defines as non-rational from our understanding of life. It regards
consciousness and visionary experience as the by-product of the
physical brain. It does not accept that there is a dimension of reality
transcendent to the visible world. There can be no survival of
consciousness after death because the death of the brain is the
extinction of consciousness. In this belief system God is an
unnecessary hypothesis and the concept of the soul an irrelevance.
The word mystic or visionary has become a term of contempt and
abuse - signifying irrationality and instability. This belief system
negates the whole past experience of humanity and sets the rational
mind against the instinctive need for relationship with the unseen
dimension of life. I feel that neither the totalitarian cast of this ideology
nor its subversive effect on our culture have been sufficiently
recognised and challenged. Religion has become, over time, a defence
against revelatory experience; so too has this dogmatic belief system in
science.
----- Having lost the participatory consciousness and visionary
imagination of earlier times, we now see stars as objects instead of
divine beings; angels, stones and trees no longer speak to us and we
do not stand in awe before the great mysteries which surround us. The
arrogant and dissociated human mind stands supreme over and against
against revelatory experience; so too has this dogmatic belief system in
science.
----- Having lost the participatory consciousness and visionary
imagination of earlier times, we now see stars as objects instead of
divine beings; angels, stones and trees no longer speak to us and we
do not stand in awe before the great mysteries which surround us. The
arrogant and dissociated human mind stands supreme over and against
nature. Cut off from its deepest instincts, its longing for relationship
and connection, the human heart is lonely and afraid and the neglected
territory of the soul a barren wasteland. It could be said that like this
alarming image of the Cyclops (Odilon Redon) we are a one-eyed
culture which has lost the visionary eye, the eye of the imagination. (A
friend of mine has defined the visionary imagination both as a faculty the reaching out of the human soul towards God, and as a place - the
place where the soul encounters the Divine). (11) I feel that our culture
is incomplete and impoverished because this vital aspect of the total
range of our human experience has been ignored and denied validity.
The visionary imagination is a supremely important faculty of our
nature, just as our capacity to feel and our rational intellect are vital
faculties of our nature. It is not an unfortunate aberration or an illness.
----- In the Christian Church, although there were great Christian
mystics, the voice of the soul - the voice of feeling and instinct - was
repressed, at times regarded as demonic. Nature and body were split
off from spirit, viewed as contaminated by the sin of the Fall. This is
what I was referring to at the beginning of this talk when I said that
something absolutely vital was missing in Christian theology and that
the soul had been deeply injured by it. In scientific reductionism the
voice of the soul is still repressed but here, conversely, it is the
dimension of spirit that has been rejected. Both belief systems appear
to have set up a phobic defence against what they have rejected and a
compulsive need for control. Why is there this tendency in us to seek
total control? Is it a defence against the non-rational, against what is
still beyond our comprehension? Or is it perhaps a symptom of an
unconscious fear of death, a defence against losing control of our life?
We establish a belief system and promote the system as infallible,
saying in effect "thou shalt have no other gods before Me."
-----What follows is a very personal view, and I do not put it forward
without many years of study and reflection, but I feel that both belief
systems have contributed to an imbalance in the psyche of individuals
and therefore to an imbalance in the culture as a whole. As many of
you know, what is split off and repressed can take on a driving,
persecuting, even demonic character. (12) Until the missing element is
reinstated and integrated with consciousness, things may become
increasingly out of balance. Perhaps this is the root of the increasing
addiction to drugs, sex and violence in our society, the obsession with
without many years of study and reflection, but I feel that both belief
systems have contributed to an imbalance in the psyche of individuals
and therefore to an imbalance in the culture as a whole. As many of
you know, what is split off and repressed can take on a driving,
persecuting, even demonic character. (12) Until the missing element is
reinstated and integrated with consciousness, things may become
increasingly out of balance. Perhaps this is the root of the increasing
addiction to drugs, sex and violence in our society, the obsession with
power and control, and the drive for omnipotence reflected in the Star
Wars Project and other military experiments where the earth itself is
used as a weapon of war. (13) Each of these might be seen as a
compensation to the experience of catastrophic loss - the loss of
something essential to our balance and wholeness.
----- How in this culture can people discover the rich and ancient
treasury of visionary experience or risk sharing their own unusual
experiences with others without the fear of being called irrational or
classified as mentally ill? How can they discover that they may not
necessarily be suffering from mental illness if they hear the voice of
God speaking to them? How can they learn to distinguish between a
genuine voice and the deceptive voice of an unconscious complex or
perhaps a discarnate entity? Can we exclude the possibility that there
may be a vast storage system of the collective memories of humanity
which can influence and even intrude on the psyche of the individual
who is particularly fragile or sensitive, or that the souls of the dead
may affect and influence the living? (14) Does psychiatric or
psychotherapeutic training teach students to affirm the validity of the
visionary experience, thereby pre-empting the need to enter a fullblown psychotic state? Does theology offer its students the insights of
the visionary tradition of all cultures? I know of only one place in this
country which offers an MA course on Mysticism (Kent University).
----- Until very recently there was no hope for the insane. Madness
was looked upon as something that could not be cured. Suffering was
an inescapable part of human experience and had to be endured. Until
very recently it was also thought that madness, like disease, was
something that was inflicted by God as a punishment for sin and for
that reason there was a negative projection onto the afflicted which led
to their being treated with great cruelty. (15) The neuro-physiological
discoveries which have been applied to the treatment of psychoses
have gone far to alleviate this appalling state of suffering. But the very
fine line between visionary experience and psychosis has become
increasingly blurred as the idea developed that visionary experience is
hallucinatory or delusional rather than a genuine opening to the
transcendent. Because visionary experience is now generally identified
with mental illness, in the same way that formerly it might have been
identified with demonic possession, it is very difficult for people not to
have gone far to alleviate this appalling state of suffering. But the very
fine line between visionary experience and psychosis has become
increasingly blurred as the idea developed that visionary experience is
hallucinatory or delusional rather than a genuine opening to the
transcendent. Because visionary experience is now generally identified
with mental illness, in the same way that formerly it might have been
identified with demonic possession, it is very difficult for people not to
be frightened of voices and images that seem to come from a
transpersonal dimension. The unconscious can indeed overwhelm and
fragment consciousness, yet this experience may be the psyche's
attempt to enlarge the boundaries of our normal experience, an attempt
to open our awareness to the existence of something currently beyond
our knowledge and our comprehension. In this sense visionaries may
be conduits to a deeper level of reality to which the culture as a whole
has no access.
----- Because visionary experience has generally been subsumed under
the heading of psychosis and because there is no familiarity with the
long tradition of this non-ordinary kind of experience, neither the
individual who has the experience nor the family, psychiatrist or priest
to whom he/she turns for help and counsel may have any frame of
reference other than that of mental illness with which to evaluate it.
Any method of treatment - whether with drugs or psychotherapy which can help us to contain and integrate the experience so that the
psyche does not fragment into a long-term psychotic state, is of great
value. But if we identify visionary experience with mental illness, or
insist that it is only a product of the brain's neuro-physiology, we
deprive the individual of access to its deeper significance and
meaning. Such a person may find herself unbearably alone, cut off
from society, with a deep sense of shame, terrified of the experience
itself and terrified that she may be diagnosed as insane if she tells
anyone of her experience. The stress suffered may lead to severe
depression or to a paranoid state where she feels persecuted and
threatened and this may in fact act as a trigger for psychosis. A
sensitive response to this situation could, I am sure, prevent many
psychoses but such an approach needs time, patience, professional
insight and a supportive environment. (16)
-----Interesting confirmation of the fact that many people have
experiences which they dare not speak of came into my hands last
week. This was a recent report of the Alister Hardy Research Centre
in Oxford which has been gathering material for the last thirty years
about people's spiritual experiences in this country. This shows that
"more than half the adult population of Britain believe they have had a
transcendent or spiritual experience such as awareness of a
supernatural or paranormal presence or power, a meaningful
patterning of events, extra-sensory perception, a feeling of guidance or
experiences which they dare not speak of came into my hands last
week. This was a recent report of the Alister Hardy Research Centre
in Oxford which has been gathering material for the last thirty years
about people's spiritual experiences in this country. This shows that
"more than half the adult population of Britain believe they have had a
transcendent or spiritual experience such as awareness of a
supernatural or paranormal presence or power, a meaningful
patterning of events, extra-sensory perception, a feeling of guidance or
answer to prayer.…People are often reluctant to talk about these
experiences, fearing to be thought odd or psychotic…The Centre's
findings show links between spiritual/religious experience and
personal wholeness and appear to overturn the widespread stereotype
which has created the taboo on admitting these experiences." (17) That
taboo goes back, I believe, not only to the fear of insanity but to the
memory of the time when to speak of such things was to risk being
accused of possession by the devil and to invite either incarceration in
an asylum or torture and death at the stake.
----- So, to sum up, I feel that in our spiritually impoverished culture
deep human needs are denied so that the questing human spirit which
instinctively seeks relationship with the universe falters. The visionary
imagination as a vitally important connecting faculty of the soul cannot
flourish. People are ill in spirit as well as in body. There is no deep
and sacred relationship with life, no sense that the life of the individual
has meaning and value beyond achieving a position of power and
influence in society. With this limited horizon is it surprising that so
many people are depressed? The artist Cecil Collins, who painted this
picture and who trusted his visionary imagination in the face of
contempt and neglect by the art establishment, wrote these words: "My
works are a visual music of the kingdoms of the imagination. There is
in all human beings a secret, personal life, untouched, protected - won
from communal life; and of which all public life is the enemy. It is this
sensitive life which my art is created to feed and sustain, this real life
deep in each person." (18) What is there in our culture that could
nourish and sustain this secret life, particularly the imaginative life of a
sensitive child? If we insist that there is nothing beyond this visible
world, if we ridicule mystics as deluded people, and fail to transmit to
our children the work of the great visionary artists, poets and seers,
what can give them the awareness that there is something beyond the
concerns of this material world that awaits their attention? The recent
exhibition of the works of William Blake at the Tate (spring 2001) is
perhaps a sign that things may be changing. If he had lived today, he
would undoubtedly have been classified as insane and given drugs to
bring his visions under control or get rid of them altogether.
----- What is missing and has been repressed for a long time in
Western culture is the connective principle of soul. It is this feminine
principle that carries our deepest longings, our deepest instincts. It is,
concerns of this material world that awaits their attention? The recent
exhibition of the works of William Blake at the Tate (spring 2001) is
perhaps a sign that things may be changing. If he had lived today, he
would undoubtedly have been classified as insane and given drugs to
bring his visions under control or get rid of them altogether.
----- What is missing and has been repressed for a long time in
Western culture is the connective principle of soul. It is this feminine
principle that carries our deepest longings, our deepest instincts. It is,
in essence, the root of the visionary imagination. It is this special
faculty of the imagination that seeks relationship with the invisible,
that can connect us with the unseen face of spirit. Like the thread of
Ariadne, it can guide us through the bewildering labyrinth of life. We
know that if we are deprived of sleep for too long we become
disoriented. Perhaps it is the same if we are deprived of the visionary
imagination.
----- We live today in an extraordinarily challenging time when we
face greater dangers but also greater opportunities than we have in the
whole course of our evolution on this planet. Many people realise that
this century will be the ultimate test of our survival as a species. Not
since the beginning of the Christian era has there been such a powerful
impulse for transformation. One could say that what is taking place
beneath the surface concerns of our culture is a spiritual awakening on
a planetary scale. This awakening is beginning to heal the great split in
the Christian psyche between spirit and nature and the dissociation
between thinking and feeling that lies at the core of scientific
reductionism. It is being led by men and women who are bringing into
being a new paradigm of reality and a spirituality arising from the need
for direct connection with a transcendent dimension, a spirituality
which recognises and honours the interconnectedness, indivisibility
and utter sacredness of life. Their vision is creating a powerful
alchemy in the culture, slowly transforming our understanding from
lead into gold. (19)
The earliest lunar notations date to 40,000 BC. See Alexander
Marschack, The Roots of Civilization. Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
London, 1972
2. Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, Doubleday, New York,
1988.
3. see Malidoma Patrice Somé's book, Of Water and the Spirit for a
description of a modern shamanic initiation in Africa. Penguin Arkana
1994. See also John Weir Perry for his three-fold distinction between
the potential visionary or seer, the person whose psyche is attempting
to integrate a hitherto repressed or atrophied aspect of itself and the
person with true schizophrenia. Trials of the Visionary Mind: Spiritual
Emergency and the Renewal Process, Chapter 3. State University of
1.
see Malidoma Patrice Somé's book, Of Water and the Spirit for a
description of a modern shamanic initiation in Africa. Penguin Arkana
1994. See also John Weir Perry for his three-fold distinction between
the potential visionary or seer, the person whose psyche is attempting
to integrate a hitherto repressed or atrophied aspect of itself and the
person with true schizophrenia. Trials of the Visionary Mind: Spiritual
Emergency and the Renewal Process, Chapter 3. State University of
New York Press, Albany, 1999.
4. C. G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, p. 197. Routledge and
Kegan Paul, London 1933.
5. Introduction to Hildegarde of Bingen's Scivias, translation by Bruce
Hozeski, Bear & Co, Santa Fe, 1986.
6. Christopher Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, State University of
New York Press, 2000, p. 74
7. p. 70
8. C.G. Jung, Prologue to Memories Dreams, Reflections p. 18
9. p. 181
10. see Peter Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom for his
description of the Greek philosopher Parmenides's shamanic journey
in the 6th century BC. Duckworth & Co. Ltd, UK. September 2001.
11. Belinda Hunt, An Exploration of the Hoopoe (Upupa Epops) as a
Mystic Symbol. Prologue to MA thesis, University of Kent.
12. see Donald Kalsched, The Inner World of Trauma, Routledge,
1996, for a brilliant study of the persecuting aspect of the archetype of
the Self.
13. see Dr. Rosalie Bertell, Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War,
The Women's Press Ltd., London, 2000.
14. See Dark Night, Early Dawn for a description of the memory
(morphic) fields which lie beyond the horizon of our consciousness.
See below for some of the dangers of the visionary experience (not
included in this talk for lack of time).
15. see Gregory Zilboorg, A History of Medical Psychology, Norton,
New York, 1941.
16. see John Weir Perry M.D., Trials of the Visionary Mind: Spiritual
Emergency and the Renewal Process. State University of New York
Press, Albany, 1999. Also Healing the Split: Integrating Spirit Into
Our Understanding of the Mentally Ill. by John E. Nelson M.D., State
University of New York Press, 1994.
17. From "Religious Experience and Spirituality today" The Alister
Hardy Trust, 42 High Street, Watlington, Oxford, OX49 5PY.
18. from the Catalogue of Cecil Collins' Exhibition, Bloomsbury
Gallery, 1935.
19. see Diarmuid ó Murchu, Reclaiming Spirituality, Gateway, Dublin
1997.
3.
University of New York Press, 1994.
17. From "Religious Experience and Spirituality today" The Alister
Hardy Trust, 42 High Street, Watlington, Oxford, OX49 5PY.
18. from the Catalogue of Cecil Collins' Exhibition, Bloomsbury
Gallery, 1935.
19. see Diarmuid ó Murchu, Reclaiming Spirituality, Gateway, Dublin
1997.
There is no better introduction to the visionary experience than
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience published by
Longmans, Green and Co. London, New York 1929 and Evelyn
Underhill's Mysticism, Image Books (Doubleday) New York, 1990.
The dangers of the visionary experience:
(I was unable, for want of time, to include this section in the talk)
The danger of too fragile a container. The conscious personality
cannot assimilate the numinous impact of the transpersonal experience
and takes the visions or messages literally instead of allowing time to
assimilate and reflect on them - a process which may take many years.
The danger of grandiosity and inflation - the cult leader - the recent
catastrophes of mass suicides (Order of the Solar Temple). Seeing
oneself as the messenger of God in pathological acts of vengeance,
terrorism and human sacrifice.
The danger of paranoid projections onto others and acting upon
them. The need to question the "voices" which urge one to acts of
destruction or self-destruction rather than obeying them implicitly as
the voice of God. It is important to know that these voices may come
from a dissociated unconscious complex which can, with help, be
integrated with the conscious personality to the great benefit of a
person's life.
The danger of nervous exhaustion, depression and suicide.
Depression is often the dark companion of the visionary experience,
particularly if the latter is not validated and supported by the culture or
by friends, relatives and therapists and there is no access to guidance
from others who are familiar with this kind of experience.
The danger of neglecting or persecuting the body in the belief that
self-mortification is a requirement of the spiritual life. Withdrawing
from commitment to life in this world and from relationships with
other people.