Note from the Editors

Could you please make the words in blue into links to what is below?

This journal is affirming and supporting the life and work of the Christian churches, with their varying theologies, and it aims to do so by giving examples of how science, mysticism, and human spiritual experience also affirm the core of Christianity.

There is a theme that seems to bind most of what is on offer in this issue, and that is Ken Wilber's concept of “No Boundary Awareness”, neither of any boundary between spiritual and physical, nor between any this and that. Our section, Experience, discusses Dowsing, where there seems to be no boundary of awareness between the mind of the dowser and the water, the metal, the medical diagnosis, even at great distance from what is being concentrated on. Our interview with Anthony Rogers presents his Out of the Body Experience, how he was aware of what was going on, even though clinically dead. We read of his encounter with the spirit of a former occupant of his flat, we read also of a horrifying accident, in which the premonition seemed to be a factor in causing a death.

No boundaries between the living and the dead, nor boundaries between a present and an apparently preordained future. We should read the quote, Wilber and No Boundaries where his point is made in a nutshell. We who participate in the Sacrament of Holy Communion, might well consider whether we have needless boundaries to our communion.

In Intelligent Design, Sjoerd Bonting shows that the ID-hypothesis makes neither scientific nor theological sense, indicating that proper boundaries between the two disciplines are disregarded by the adherents of ID. Richard Cocks writes of a boundariless God, with the Great Chain of Being, matter, soul, Spirit, all evolving in time. Victor MacGill sees creation as the essence of what God is. The Hitch hiker's guide to Panentheism gives another perspective, so does Claud Swanson's The synchronised universe. All this is plainly relevant to our Editorial, Mysticism, Immanence and the Church.

The St. Stephen quotations can be read as if they were the words of a modern mystic, and be found valid for us, or not.

We would like to draw your attention to some interesting and relevant resources. You might also like to check the identity of the production team. Submission of articles, and both positive and negative correspondence welcomed.

We would like to draw your attention to the section headed Experience towards the end of the Journal, which has much interesting material.

Books

Sir William Osler's A way of life and other addresses, Duke 2001

'The principle of continuity, or uniformity, so striking in ancient physics was transferred to the body, which, like the world, was conceived as a whole. Several striking passages illustrative of this are to be found. Thus to the question of Socrates, “Do you think that you can know the nature of the soul intelligently without knowing the nature of the whole? Phaedrus replies, “Hippocrates, the Asclepiad, says that the nature even of the body can only be understood as a whole.”

The importance of treating the whole and not the part is insisted upon. In the case of a patient who comes to them with bad eyes the saying is “that they cannot cure his eyes by themselves, but that if his eyes are to be cured the head must be treated”: and then again they say “that to think of curing the head alone and not the rest of the body also is the height of folly.”

Charmides had been complaining of a headache, and Critias had asked Socrates to make believe that he could cure him of it. He said that he had a charm, which he had learnt, when serving with the army, of one of the physicians of the Thracian king, Zamolxis. This physician had told Socrates that the cure of the part should not be attempted without treatment of the whole, “and, therefore, if the head and body are to be well you must begin by curing the soul; that is the first thing...” Quotations from Charmides, 156 b-c p 139 from section “Physicians in Plato”.

Dr. Claude Swanson's The Synchronized Universe

<http://www.synchronizeduniverse.com/index.html>

A new scientific revolution is quietly under way. Laboratories around the world have proven that many kinds of paranormal phenomena are real. It represents a new kind of force, one that is able to travel forward and backward in time, a force that does not weaken with distance. It is a force unlike anything conventional science has ever seen.

The Synchronized Universe summarizes this evidence for many kinds of paranormal phenomena. In many cases these strange forces have been demonstrated under rigorous scientific statistics, with odds of millions or even billions to one against chance. This evidence is presented in a "user friendly" way, with a minimum of jargon, and with over 140 photographs, figures and sketches.

The author, an MIT and Princeton educated physicist, Dr. Claude Swanson, has put together the "best evidence" showing that our present scientific paradigm is broken. He describes scientifically controlled remote viewing and ESP experiments, demonstrations of long-range healing, psychokinesis (mind over matter), scientifically controlled experiments in levitation, teleportation and out of body phenomena (OBE).

These are just a few of the areas where new research is defying the old beliefs of conventional science. It points the way to a new, expanded science which, instead of denying the role of consciousness and spirit, begins to integrate these forces into a larger, more highly evolved and integrated world view. The truly "unified field theory" must explain and understand both science and consciousness. In doing so, it begins to heal the ancient rift between science and spirituality. And in the last chapter of the book, he proposes some ways to modify and expand present science to begin to achieve these goals.

Some of the best proven paranormal phenomena are those of ESP, remote viewing, psychokinesis, and some group consciousness experiments. There are also rigorous experiments showing that energy healing has real benefit, although as with all the paranormal forces, our science does not understand the nature of the force. Evidence is also described for astral or out of body travel, the near death experience, levitation and teleportation. Certain gifted individuals have been able to master these forces and produce them at will. They are known as "adepts" and are also discussed in the book. In modern times a tradition still exists of the yogi, India’s "spiritual superman," who evokes some of these powers. The tradition and methods of training and development of these abilities is also described.

The last chapter of the book presents a new model of physics which may be able to explain some of these strange and mysterious phenomena. Present day physics has no hope of explaining the paranormal, which is one reason it consistently denies or ridicules scientific evidence for these forces. We propose that a deeper theory is needed, one which goes beneath the quantum realm to a more fundamental picture of the universe. This leads to the idea that every particle in the universe is connected to every other particle, that nanosecond to nanosecond they interact and are coupled across the vast distances of space.

This leads to the central idea that we are living in a "synchronized universe," one layer of which we see and interact with and are synchronized with. This means every particle, every atom that we see as "real" is synchronized with the other atoms and particles in what we call the "real" universe. Other universes, with a different synchronization, can coexist with our own and yet they can pass right through each other. The model explains in a very natural way the strange time and space effects of psychic phenomena. It explains how objects pass through walls in teleportation and astral travel. It begins to offer a way to understand how the soul, the center of human consciousness, can exist in a permanent form, surviving human death. It offers a useful beginning to a deeper understanding of the universe and of ourselves.

Thinking about Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design: A Critique
Prof Sjoerd L. Bonting MA PhD

bonting Emeritus professor of biochemistry and Anglican theologian, Goor, the Netherlands.

1. Introduction

Intelligent Design is a successor to creationism, but more subtle and more acceptable of the evolution theory. It arose from biochemist Michael Behe's book Darwin's Black Box,¹ and was seconded, mainly on statistical grounds, by William Dembski.² They claim that certain complex systems, like the immune system, bloodclotting, visual mechanism and bacterial flagella, cannot have arisen from a darwinian sequence of mutation-selection steps, but must be the result of 'Intelligent Design' (ID). Read [ the Article ]

[In 2005 Professor Bonting's new book, Creation and Double Chaos, Science and Theology in Discussion, was published by Fortress Press, Minneapolis. ISBN 0-8006-3759-3. 267 pp. There will be a detailed review of this book in our next issue.]

Were Human Beings Inevitable?
Prof. Richard Cocks MA PhD

richard Some time in the autumn of 2005, I heard a physicist say on (American) National Public Radio that entropy is the overriding force operating in the universe – the second law of thermodynamics reigns supreme. The fact that he was sitting there and able to say that, proves him wrong. If there were no countervailing force in the universe, then the Big Bang, should it still have occurred, would have produced cosmic dust which then would have proceeded to disintegrate into even smaller particles randomly distributed throughout space/time – itself not obviously a disorderly phenomenon. Instead, the dust gathered together, thanks to gravity, and produced stars, which, after going through a number of stages, produced matter suitable for planets and solar systems emerged. On this planet in this solar system life emerged. Not content to simply contradict entropy in this fashion, life then gave rise to more and more complex organisms, resulting in human beings, who, going beyond the restrictions of instinct, have engaged in cultural evolution where we, within limits, make up the rules ourselves.

Biologists have long had to choose between the route of hard science, trying to side with entropy; what Ken Wilber calls ‘winding down,’ or pay attention to the obvious opposing force, ‘winding up.’ Fortunately, having to choose one side or the other is no longer necessary. In recent years systems theory and chaos theory have found a middle ground where chaotic systems suddenly take on the aspect of order, such as wildly rushing water forming an orderly spiral down a drain pipe. It seems there is room for both phenomena in the universe.

The emergence of galaxies and solar systems represents order. The emergence of life, super order – an order with a drive to preserve its own order. The inevitable fate for any individual order; galaxies, stars, planets, and individual organisms is disorder and destruction (entropy). But the tendency to create order continues, giving rise to ever more complex systems, cultures and levels of consciousness. This drive, built into the fabric of the universe, Wilber calls Eros. Even our individual lives demonstrate this tendency as developmental psychology makes clear. Not content to stay warm, snug, well-fed in utero, we emerge as babies. Not content to be self-centred, but charming blobs of flesh, we go ahead and develop personalities, capacity to care about others, to take their point of view at times, read, learn, etc.. We seek to be happy, and our desire for happiness leads us to develop further – to be smarter, more loving, a better musician, a more considerate spouse. Stagnation, failing to develop further, means we will fail to overcome the problems which beset us. We solve our current problems through further development. Our suffering pushes us on to seek unity, wholeness, understanding, no alienation or division within ourselves or in our relationships with others. Ultimately, we, wittingly or not, seek God, or the Source, or the Godhead, or Shunyata, or Emptiness or however we (inappropriately) name Spirit, which gives rise to all lower levels of reality.

This Spirit seems to have some special connection with joy. In some kind of joyful superabundance, Spirit gives rise to lower levels, elements which though still Spirit, progressively forget their true nature until we end up with cosmic dust, or perhaps quarks or the strings of string theory – perhaps with no end of forgetting. But having played the game of forgetting, the spirit within everything seeks to remember too, so the world does not become a nightmare of suffering. To be, and to think oneself alone is to suffer. But even the suffering has a point, to drive us to remember our Source.

Plato describes in The Timaeus a God without envy. A generous god who wishes to see everything that can be, be. There should be no end to fecundity and difference. Every level of being should be filled. This is called the principle of plenitude. This belief meant that philosophers such as Leibniz correctly postulated the existence of odd life at the bottom of the sea and in volcanic craters, and things like missing links between plants and animals. Arthur Lovejoy points out that when given a temporal dimension by Schelling, the static Great Chain of Being; matter, life, mind, soul and spirit, was seen to emerge in time, and evolution was conceived. Darwin later bastardized this notion, seeking to give mechanical explanations for evolution which just confused the issue. Eros, or ‘macroevolution’ was lost sight of.

The overabundance of Spirit is Agape, the reaching downward of Spirit using amnesia as its method, completes the circle. Eros is not a one way trip and escape from the nightmare of creation. To think so, is to curse the offspring of the One, as Plotinus pointed out. The masculine reaching up for transcendence is ideally accompanied by the feminine compassionate embrace of all creation. Traditionally, and accurately, Eros is our love for God, Agape God’s love for us.

To blend the original Platonic conception with Plotinus’ amplification, the forms existed unaltered in Nous, the mind of God, one level down from the One, or what Plato confusingly called ‘The Form of the Good.’ (Confusing because it is no ordinary form, but gives rise to all the rest). This would make it seem as though God had perhaps had the idea or form of man in mind all along, preordained. But this picture seems more in keeping with the pre-Schelling static universe. Charles Peirce, Rupert Sheldrake, and others talk more about habits. Even the laws of physics, some physicists agree, may be more like habits than laws. Once the universe creates a life form, it has a habit of producing more of the same. Success in one instance, makes success the next time easier. Once one mouse has mastered the maze, the subsequent mice do it faster. Mankind may be thought of as a habit the universe has gotten into, rather than some predestined telos.

In an argument with a colleague, the colleague said ‘Eros doesn’t exist, it’s just that more complex systems are more stable.’ That seems to defy common sense. I look at my automatic windows in my car with suspicion because I know they are more likely to break down than the manual winder I had in my previous car. But if complex biological systems are more stable, then this is just another way of saying the universe seems driven to produce complexity and not simply for things to return to the dust or protoplasm from which they emerged. In actual fact, my colleague and I are agreeing. He thinks he is disagreeing because he can offer a ‘naturalistic’ sounding explanation – although it explains nothing. It just makes the tendency towards complexity sound like a natural law, and not a teleologically driven affair.

Biologists are taught to replace teleological explanations with mechanical explanations as soon as they become available. But one may argue that though mechanical explanations may facilitate manipulation (what John Dewey called prediction and control) they do not necessarily render the teleological eliminable. Heliotropic plants turn to face the sun to maximize exposure to sunlight to facilitate growth. One could say instead that the plant’s cells shorten on one side and lengthen on the other in certain lighting conditions so that the flower will continue to face the sun no matter where it is in the sky, and this tendency has been selected for because it confers a competitive advantage. But one can say, right back, that what is being selected for is the ability to maximize exposure to the sun. The heart is for pumping blood around large organisms where the sloshing of blood, as occurs in tiny creatures, just won’t do the job. Mechanical understanding of why hearts beat doesn’t mean its function disappears.

In nature, Spirit slumbers. In man, Spirit has the potential to become self-conscious. The universe seems determined to produce organisms capable of becoming Spirit made self-conscious. It does not seem necessary that mankind should be that organism, but that some organism develop the potential for the level of consciousness Spiritual awareness requires. That does seem built into the fabric of the universe. A creature capable of heeding St. Paul’s admonishment – Wake Up!

Creation – A Part of the Actual Essence of What God is
Victor MacGill make picture conform to the size of the others

victor The bible begins “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”, but if we look at the original Hebrew we find the verb bara is used for 'create', and what is interesting is that this is in the present continuous tense. That means that creation is not seen as a past event that is over and done with, but rather it is an ongoing event, and an event that you and I are a part of.

To my mind I cannot separate God from the act of creation. Rather than an outside God creating something off to the side, I see creation as be a part of the actual essence of what God is. Here I find the concept of fractals as described in Chaos Theory a very useful concept. A fractal is a whole system, which within hold reflections of itself at increasingly lower levels.

Consider a fern. Take a look at a side branch and you will see that it has the same general shape as the whole fern. If you look at a side branch of the side branch again, you see the shape is generally the same as the main shape. At each new level we find a reflection (not perfect) of the main shape. In nature we generally find fractal shapes are maintained for about seven levels, beyond which the fractal shape becomes too small to function in the real world.

The Mandelbrot Set is a mathematically generated fractal, that is not limited by practical contingencies, and in fact has infinite levels, each reflecting the general shape of the overall pattern.

I think God can be imaged as a fractal, with levels of being inside levels of being.. This way, we see God as a whole being made up of smaller parts. This allows God to be “three in one” and also allows we humans to be “the image of God” as fractal images of the totality of what God is.

Combining the two concepts of creation as an ongoing event and God as a fractal, allows us to see ourselves as an integral part of God participating in the act of creation. Intelligence is inherent in the system, rather than being something from outside intervening to create something “other”.

Intelligent Design proponents says that when one agent is taken from a complex system, that whole system collapses. This is a bold-faced lie and a gross misrepresentation of Complexity Theory. Complex systems, and in particular Complex Adaptive Systems, of which human beings are an example, have an amazing capacity to continue to function as more and more agents are taken out of the system. When a human being gets sick, the person does not die because we loose on cell. Instead, we have the capacity to have an enormous part of our whole body incapacitated and still continue to survive.

Complexity scientists have found that complex adaptive systems will continue to survive far beyond that we might expect, especially because other parts take on the functions that have been disabled. Our brain for example can often grow new neurons or use other neurons originally designed for another purpose to take over so we can continue to function as effectively as possible.

Further discussion about Boundaries

- Sjoerd Bonting writes a paper Reflections on Boundaries. <BontingReflections>

- Reponse from Victor MacGill <MacgillResponse>

- Reponse from Richard Cocks <CocksResponse>

- Brief reply from Sjoerd Bonting <BontingReply>

- Note from Michael Cocks. <MCocksNote>

Websites

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Panentheism

As a theology, panentheism appears to bridge the oft-cited rift between science and religion.

Chhavi Sachdev Article <http://www.stnews.org/articles.php ?category=guide@guide=Penentheism&article_id=408>

Spiritual Metaphysics

Owen Waters Article <http://www.infinitebeing.com/>

Catholic Scientists Take Issue with Cardinal's Message

A New York Times op-ed by Archbishop Christoph Cardinal Schönborn questioning evolution comes under fire.

By Nandagopal R. Menon December 5, 2005 SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY NEWS Article <http://www.stnews.org/rlr-2437.htm>

Editorial

Immanence, Mysticism, and the Church

David Livingstone et al. in Evangelicals and Science in Historical Perspective OUP US p.134 notes that "immanence was not a traditional theme with evangelicals";
David Wells opposes "a view of divine immanence that assumes that the being of God is washed ashore on the edges of our mind by the ebbing and flowing of our experience.” [page 180] "it also makes the assumption that there is no radical alienation from God within ourselves that would undercut experience as a trustworthy bearer of the divine revelation."
A Continental Evangelical theologian Lévinas, is mentioned by James K A Smith in Speech and Theology, as thinking, "that mysticism in fact represents a violation of alterity because it closes the space of 'separation’ and difference in its quest for ‘union’". [p.13]
As this journal is about immanence as well as mysticism, we need to take these comments from Evangelical theologians very seriously. In certain circumstances they are entirely valid, especially out of the context of a disciplined church life. New Age thinking is often concerned with my individualistic personal growth, my mystical experience, my sending out feelings of peace, love and harmony, my psychic abilities. Unchecked by the church and its book, the Bible, the way can be open to superstition, self-deception, a lack of insight into my own weaknesses, and a lack of concern for my possibly unenlightened neighbour. A perversion of New Age, is the wish somehow to control Spirit in the interests of my personal comfortable life.

To be fair, similar perversions can be encountered within the Church: if we are baptized and confirmed, if we receive the Sacrament, if we pray and obey moral rules put forward by our church, if we confess our sins and receive absolution, all will be well and we shall go to heaven and meet God and His Son Jesus. That kind of thinking keeps God safely locked up in Church and under control. The emphasis is on what we do, and how we behave. If we obey the rules as presented to us by the church, or if we obey rules self selected from the Bible. If we examine the articles on spiritual development in our last issue, we will note that this misrepresentation of things belongs to pre-puberty.

The Church as a Schoolteacher

The Church is a community of faith, and we can also see it as a kind of spiritual schoolteacher. For all its faults, with all the disagreements about theology and practice, it does speak of a universal God, in all, through all, and above all. With any threatening talk about the vengeance of God, it also proclaims that this in all, through all, and above all, is a God of love. Through the Mass or Lord’s supper, it proclaims that we are participants in the Body of the Cosmic Christ, that we are children of God, spirit as well as flesh, that if we die to the self-centredness of the flesh, we will figuratively rise again into an awareness that we are participants in the Kingdom of Heaven. The church provides us with ceremonies in which we are invited to die to this self-centredness, Baptism, Confirmation, Confession, Ordination. Love, though, is the key. Love involves many things. It involves self-examination, self-knowledge, being open about ourselves before God, accepting God’s forgiveness for the sins of our physicals, always picking ourselves up and coming back to God, like the Prodigal Son, it involves similar empathy and understanding of others, learning to love them as they are. We are to love others, as we love ourselves. We are exposed to the witness of our spiritual forebears who wrote the books of the Bible, and some of us our exposed to a variety of theologians who make their contributions in helping us get our heads around what it really means to surrender to the living God.

If we have learned what we should from our church, then we may gradually learn to perceive that school as a microcosm of the Universe, which is the true church, the true Kingdom of God, the true Kingdom of Heaven. We may learn to perceive not only the church, but all experiences and learnings of this earthly life as a school preparing us for the next stage of our development after the death of our physical bodies.

Wilber and “No Boundaries”

I wonder whether Ken Wilber is getting close to expressing the basic meaning of “The Kingdom of Heaven” when he writes,¹

Unity consciousness is the simple awareness of the real territory of no-boundary. We need no gimmicks to explain it, no mumbo jumbo, no mystical jargon, no miasma of occultism. If reality is actually a condition of no-boundary – and to deny that we will have to turn our backs on Relativity Theory, ecological sciences, the philosophy of organism, and the wisdom of the East – if reality is a condition of no-boundary, then unity consciousness is the natural state of awareness which acknowledges this reality. Unity consciousness, in short, is no-boundary awareness.

“Unity consciousness”, “no-boundary awareness” are straightforward ways of describing “The Kingdom of Heaven.” Peak experience awareness, seeing no boundary between the spiritual and the physical, being open to all of experience, to love, experiencing universal Spirit as the fundament of self, of all selves. It is the awareness we have when we intuit, when we are inspired, when we create from within. It is the awareness when we have empathy and compassion for others.

Doubt

Sri Chinmoy: ²

It would not be wrong to define “no-boundary awareness” as “faith”.

And the opposite of faith is doubt.

He writes,

“It is easier to disbelieve than to believe because disbelief is an act of our self-centred mind, whereas belief is an act of our self-giving heart.”

“A man of disbelief, with his eyes firmly closed, tells us what others are, what the world is, and what he himself can do for the entire world if he wants to. A man of belief, with his heart’s door wide open, tells us what God has done for him, what God is doing for him and what God will do for him.

Disbelief has a perfection of its own. Disbelief finds its perfection in the cyclone of separation. Belief has a perfection of its own. Belief finds its perfection in the music of universal oneness.”

“A man of belief loves the world. Why? He believes that this world of ours is verily the aspiring Body of God, the glowing Dream of God and the fulfilling Reality of God.”

“Why do we disbelieve? We disbelieve because we are afraid of oneness, afraid of the vast. We feel that when we enter the vast, we lose our identity, we lose our individuality, we lose our very existence. But we forget the undeniable truth that when we enter into the vastness, it is nothing short of the enlargement of our divinised consciousness.”

¹[1979, No Boundary p.42. I thank Patrick Burrowes for drawing my attention to this passage.]

²[Beyond Within, A Philosophy of the Inner Life, Blue Dove Press
1-88499-723-6, p 161ff “Doubt”. Thanks to reader Norman Kjome, for these quotes.]

Stephen's Prayer

“Lord, let me forget that I am me,
Let me know that I am with thee,
Let me not separate myself from thee
Because I am me.”

Praying for the Water

Stephen: I wonder if the prayer might be for the water that I have displaced.

Question: Would you explain what you have just said?

Stephen: We have spoken of prayer and we have broadened our views much, but not to the point of unselfishness.
We have said “Help in accepting the experience”. We have even condescended to judge.

We have not prayed for the water,
or the life that is that water,
that it may be calm?
This is the expansion of our thinking,
For we have said All is One.

We speak of experience
and that experience must be of the Whole.
Simply that we might speak,
might communicate with each other in this manner,
and might feel, understand,
show, and have emotions,
does not make us greater
nor even lesser than all else that is.

And our Lord said,
“Not one bird would fall from the air
that is not known by the Whole
and is not the experience of the Whole”

... We must understand our oneness with the Whole.
Do not think that I preach that we must consciously and purposively step forward to lose self for this is not possible;
the mere act of stepping forward to lose oneself proves oneself, and clothes you more in that self. It is to be open to understanding, to be open and learn through your experiences, to accept those same experiences and trust even that those experiences will come........

Then the prayer is more like praying for the water.

Question: Praying for the water to... ?

Just praying for the water.

Not to cause that the water should have done to it
or fail to have done to it
be saved from either contamination
or be protected from non-contamination
but simply that it is.

Question: What is the water, Stephen?

Stephen: The water is the Whole
And the boat is that body which you wear
With you in that boat, what prays is the mind and the personality of that body.

Communications from our readers

From the Rev. Earle F. Williams, MA(Oxon)

Co-author with his wife Elspeth, of Spiritually Aware Pastoral Care Paulist Press 1992

At the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, in Matthew and Luke say Jesus “will baptise you with Holy Spirit and with fire.” What does this mean? In my personal experience, the Holy Spirit both disturbs (or judges) and comforts, both disturbs and strengthens. “Strengthen” is the original meaning of the word “comfort”.

Before I understood what was happening, my life as a young adult underwent a major upheaval, a major shake-up. Now I know that what was happening was the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was asking me to wake up to what I was here for. It was not to please myself, ie through hard work become financially independent and my own boss. I was here to please God and to serve others. Or to put it another way, my reason for being here was to discover my true self, not to pursue some counterfeit image of myself.

The work of the Holy Spirit in each of us is twofold: to disturb or bring us to our knees, so that we may stand, not in our own strength, but in the comfort and strength of God. In psychological terms that means not surrendering to the appeal of our ego, but opening to our true selves, made in God's image. This surrendering to the Holy Spirit is a process which calls for both an inner and an outer journey of faith, of trusting in God.

This journey of trusting in God in and beyond ourselves is discouraged today in two important ways: firstly by the commonly-held view that only what can be seen can be believed, and secondly, a reason why the two-fold journey of faith, inner and outer, has been been discouraged is that the Western churches have often neglected the Spirit in the interior journey of faith.

Thirty years ago there were relatively few serious books on the Holy Spirit. Now there is a plethora of books on the Spirit, but with a significant lack of reference to the darker side of the struggle for spiritual integrity. These days may religious books emphasise the happy side of the spiritual quest but say little, if anything, about its dark side. Each of us does have dark side, and that side needs to be engaged and worked with for growth to happen.

We need to recognise and face these two discouragements in our inner journey – wanting like Thomas, to see before we believe, and not recognising the working of the Holy Spirit in all aspects of our inner life... For us to be spiritually healthy we need to foster both the inner and the outer journeys based on gospel values. A healthy introspection leads us to the God within who sends us out in the strength of God's spirit to engage with God's people in God's world.

[Excerpted from a sermon preached Dec 4 2005,and contributed at the Editors' invitation.]

We gratefully acknowledge help and contributions from three other readers:
Patrick Burrowes, Norman Kjome, & Dr Brett Mann

Experience

Dowsing – A Review
Anne Millar, Cambridge

Dowsers have recently defined dowsing as the 'art of knowing'. This reflects the fact that it was traditionally known as water divining and was a commercially important means of locating water and minerals, but it is often used today to detect a much wider range of apparently 'unknowable' information, from medical diagnosis to the location of lost objects. Read the article. <http://www.scimednet.org/Articles/SPSmiller.htm> [This is an article from Network Review, the journal of the UK Scientific and Medical Network]

An Interview with Anthony Rogers

An out of the Body Experience

Anthony Rogers is a 61 year old patient of one of Dr Brett Mann's colleagues, and has been seriously affected by cancer, and other medical problems. During his adult life he has been a travelling salesman, and latterly a publisher of art books. Most remarkable about his life, is the extraordinary number of times that fate or doctors have snatched him back from the jaws of death. Recently Anthony was feeling most unwell, and was consulting the medical colleague in his surgery. Anthony reported that he had said to the doctor, “I am ill, mate. I have horrendous pain in the back. My liver is playing up.” The liver had been affected by the cancer. He felt himself on the verge of passing out, and slumped in his chair. He heard the doctor saying, “We should get you to hospital in an ambulance.” Anthony said, “I came to, and then went. Then suddenly the pain left me. It was a glorious feeling. I lay back in the chair looking at him, and noted how the doctor was dressed, black sleeveless jersey, black pants, white shirt. Then suddenly I was aware that I was standing under the door frame. It was a foggy picture, but I could see myself sitting in the chair. I heard whispering, but there was no one there whispering. I turned and looked down the hallway to see if the whispering came from that direction, but there was no one there. For a time when I was under the door frame, everything seemed frozen in time. The doctor was motionless, and so was I in the chair. In actual fact the room was small, but from my position in the door entrance, it seemed as if both the doctor and myself in the chair were twenty feet away, and as if the room was very large. And next thing I felt myself back in the chair, and the pain came back.

“Then there was whispering, and my daughter came into the room. Then the doctor said to me, 'Don't ever pull that stunt again. I thought I had lost you.' 'I don't know what you are talking about.' said I. 'You have just come around again,' said the doctor.

A Haunting

“Because of my cancer in both bowel and liver, I had been receiving chemotherapy over a period of six months, ending October 2004. Then between December and April 2005, two or three times every week, at precisely four in the morning, I would wake up to see a shadowy figure coming through the bathroom door and advancing towards the bed where I lay. I was seeing more of an outline of a woman, than a clear figure. She was tall, with a cloth or headscarf on her head. Once I saw her face, and she appeared to be wearing a satisfied smile. Her appearances were so punctual that I could set my watch by them. Most times when she appeared I was very scared, and hid under the blankets. I would have pins and needles in my head. I consulted my doctor, and asked him whether I was hallucinating because of pills that were being prescribed for me. But the doctor said that he had not ever heard of such hallucinations being caused by medication. I did ask neighbours about the former occupant of my flat, and they confirmed that the previous occupant had been a woman, and that she was tall. And that she had died many months previously. Did she always have something on her head?, I asked. She always wore a headscarf, was the reply. A woman friend took my story seriously, and suggested that I hung a cross over a mirror, as means of being free of the haunting, to shut the bathroom door. Also to talk to the apparition and ask her to go. I followed my friend's advice, and told her to go in peace. And that was the last time that she came. I notice that I have strong feelings of scepticism about the experience. I also notice that I wouldn't dare not have that cross on the mirror. I think that my feelings of scepticism may come from not wanting it to be true that she had been visiting me at night. (Neighbours said that the former occupant of the flat had been a schoolteacher, and had been a likeable person.)

A Tragic Synchronicity

“Kate was up for the weekend, and they were going to celebrate her twenty-first birthday with a party. Kate's mother Diane had a brand new sports car, and Kate wanted to drive to pick up some lavender plants. When Kate asked to borrow the car, her mother had a horrible and overwhelming feeling that she shouldn't drive that day. She deliberately put the time off. Let's go later. Kate kept on nagging about it. The premonition seemed to wear off, so off they went. They were going on a country road with little or no traffic. Diane was telling Kate to drive carefully, when a motorcyclist seemingly coming from nowhere, collided head on with the car. The wrecked motorcycle's speedometer was jammed at 180 kpm. The rider was decapitated. His head was thrown one way and his body the other. The bike however came through the windscreen, and Kate was very badly injured, dying in her mother's arms three minutes later.

On her 21^st birthday, all unsuspecting I walked into the house decorated with flowers for her party, only to learn what had happened. Sad to say, that the birthday flowers were later laid on her grave.”

[Dr Brett Mann comments: “It appears that subjectivity in the form of very strong emotion as experienced in a crisis is one of the factors that can reverse time. Mind / subjectivitiy must be ontologically fundamental for events like this to occur.”] Readers