Salvation and Enlightenment

 The most distinctive feature of advanced mystical experience is the dissolution of self in which the sense of "I" is subsumed in the totality of what is. To be strictly accurate, this cannot really be categorised as an experience because there is, or seems to be, no self remaining to experience anything. There is simply a pure, universalised consciousness of bliss that shines in the mind and breaks down the barrier between outer and inner so that the duality of self and not-self disappears. It is a state beyond time, space, thought and any divisions of form when everything is taken up into illimitable being. But we do call it an experience because the experiencer always returns. For note this. These experiences are extraordinary but they do not make you a better person when they pass and you reenter the everyday world. And if you think about it, how could they since they have no relevance to life in the normal world with its characteristics of light and dark, good and bad, better and worse. They are above all that, relating as they do to being not becoming.

Two questions arise. If these experiences bear no relation to the world of becoming do they render that world meaningless? Or does the fact that they bear no relation mean they do not represent the ultimate goal of human endeavour as some would claim, but are simply expressions of one side of it and, in that respect, might even be seen as deceptive? That is to say, is life the absolute alone or the absolute and the relative together? The second would surely be more than the first even if the concept of more has no meaning in the light of the first taken on its own terms.

 

When the individual who experiences these transpersonal states tries to interpret them afterwards it is by no means certain he will arrive at the correct understanding. An experience and its interpretation are very different things. In this case, the ineffability of the experience might lead the person to draw the conclusion he has cracked the cosmic code of life. After all, what could be more than something that goes beyond the very idea of more or less, something that is whole and complete and unarguable in its completeness? But if the point of spiritual life was to enter into this supernal state what reason would there be ever to have been born in a world of duality? What need was there for a self in the first place if the goal was just to discard it? To think of life in those terms is to ignore a good part of reality which is obviously more than just pure being or we would not be able to ask the question.

 

Mystic states of oneness, sometimes regarded as pointers to enlightenment if they become permanent, are real. They may be rare for most people and they may not last long even when they are attained, but they certainly exist.  The question is what causes them? Are they a purely spiritual phenomenon or might they be the result of chemical changes in the brain and therefore linked to the physical body which would mean that the death of the body would probably bring them to an end and they would have no bearing on the post-mortem state and fate of the soul.

Mystical states can arise spontaneously or they can come about through spiritual or mental disciplines in the same way as body-building, diet, exercise, training etc, can develop powerful muscles. In India techniques have existed for centuries to manipulate these states into existence and we know they can also be brought about through psychedelic drugs which does rather suggest that chemical changes in the brain might be responsible for changes in consciousness. If we accept that we are spirits in corporeal bodies which are designed to experience the material world then we can see that these bodies might act as filters which block out higher consciousness so we can function in this world. It may well be possible that these filters can be removed under certain extreme circumstances causing mystical experiences to occur, either arising spontaneously through brain changes or else being engineered by technique and discipline.

 

But does this mean the subject is a more spiritual person? His I may have been removed for a spell but in itself it remains what it was. It has not been rendered pure and holy which I would submit is the whole point of the spiritual exercise and which, moreover, is something that can only happen through grace. God gives us a self for us to grow and develop until the point is reached at which we give it back to him and then he restores it, filled with his presence. This is a process not a sudden transformation of being which can take place at any time, and it is not restoring our original nature but creating something totally new which is the divine self, the God-infused self as opposed to re-absorption in the pool of original consciousness from whence we were drawn out at our creation.

 Some Indian gurus teach that enlightenment can be attained through awakening the kundalini energy. To be sure, they will say this is dangerous and should only be undertaken under the supervision of a qualified instructor but what they don't make clear is that kundalini has its roots in the physical body and so the consciousness changes its arousal can instigate are down to material changes not spiritual ones. As a Master in the book Towards the Mysteries in a talk given to Pandit Gopinath Kaviraj, an eminent Hindu scholar of the mid-twentieth century, says "Kundalini is not ‘spiritual’. It is ‘material’". The proper procedure is that it will arise naturally concomitantly with proper spiritual development but it can be forced artificially which is what these renegade gurus (let's call them what they are) teach. They may get results but these are unholy results because not in line with the correct way which is growth within character. Furthermore, being bodily instigated, they will cease with death leaving the subject back where he was or even worse off because he has sought to steal divine fire from God. This may well be the state of many supposedly realised yogis and the like after death. Their occult manipulations will have no bearing on the eventual salvation or otherwise of their soul. They may indeed jeopardise it.

To be continued.

The Recovery and Renewal of Tradition

Christianity can seem soft and feeble to many men today, a sentimental palliative that answers none of the deeper questions of life. It has become something of a nursery religion that looks to make people behave nicely to each other rather than something that addresses absolutes and can overcome death and darkness. The fire has gone out of it, and managers and consultants are raking over the ashes making the Christian religion just another form of liberal humanism.  What we need is a return to Tradition using the capital to make clear that it is the spirit behind Tradition we must rediscover rather than any particular form it might have adopted in the past.

Tradition isn't a theory or ideology and to think of it in those terms is to see it through the eyes of secular modernity. It isn't a system or a codification of some intellectual analysis or argument. Though it may have those elements within it, they are secondary and used to express the ideas behind it. They are not the source of them. The real source of Tradition is insight into the reality behind outer appearance, and this may either come from revelation or mystical experience which is to say it derives from the spiritual world which is primary. For Christianity and the West in general, the revelation was obviously Christ, the descent of the Logos into human form. Therefore, to restore the Christian vision we should go back to him as the source.

 

However, tradition in the Western world was based on Christ but not just Christ. Greek philosophy and thought, Roman law and military strength and the Northern European sense of the individual all determined the form it took. These coalesced into a spiritual ethos that shaped the world until it lost touch with the transcendent and collapsed into modernity which in turn collapsed into whatever we have now when not only the spiritual but more recently the rational too have been rejected.

 The rediscovery of Tradition does not mean going back to the past as it was because we are not the same people we were, and the experiences of the last few centuries have marked us indelibly. What it requires is the recognition of the transcendent and the divine principles rooted in that. At the same time, the forms Tradition took in the past were highly effective means of communicating those principles and until we have anything better we would be well advised to understand and appreciate them because they still have power when understood as receptacles for spiritual truth. We should not limit spiritual truth to the forms it took but nor should we neglect those forms since few of us are able to fully intuit spiritual reality directly. We usually need an outer vessel to convey its essence for us and there is still much to be learnt from the vessels that were built up by wise and inspired men over many centuries.

That having been said, our main goal should be to become aware of God ourselves, and the best way to do this remains through the figure of Jesus Christ. But which Christ? The unfortunate reality is that we have built our own images of Christ which reflect our own prejudices so how can we circumvent these false Christs and discover the true one? Obviously, there are the Gospels, especially that of St John, but there is also Western art and I would suggest that the image on the Turin Shroud is of particular relevance in this respect. It really does seem authentic not just in the sense that scientific analysis has, so I believe, confirmed that the cloth is of the right time and place, but also the image itself, the method of creation of which we still cannot explain. If I were told this was how Jesus looked I would not be disappointed. The face has such nobility and power and inner strength that it exceeds any artist's representation of what the Son of God might look like.

These are outer approaches to Jesus and we cannot do without them. But there is also the inner approach. This is the quest to find Christ within our own heart. I am not referring here to any concept of our own Christ nature or an abstract or Cosmic Christ. There is no inner, no abstract, no Cosmic Christ without the real person of Jesus Christ. That is the reality and the others merely borrow from that reality. But I do believe we can meet Christ within ourselves through prayer and meditation on his holy self, and that by this means we can start to know something of God and eventually unite our being to his. Then we are in touch with the true source of the Christian Tradition.

This is how we rediscover Tradition today. We go back to the source but we also look for it within ourselves. Each is required for the whole approach. Tradition is made up of both body and soul, the body to preserve it and the soul to renew it.

The Fight Against Evil

 Early on in my spiritual instruction I was told that the more progress I made the more I would be assailed by evil in all its forms. We know from the lives of the saints that as they advance on the path towards God they are increasingly attacked by the demonic forces, and we can conjecture this is so because every person who escapes the dominion of those forces weakens their power. The general populace can be corrupted by general corruption but those seeking release from the net of this world require special attention. God allows this to take place because it tempers the soul. Unto the pure all things are pure. Evil can only work on us by bringing out our own weaknesses, but when they are brought out into the open they can be dealt with if we are honest, alert and true, and if we turn to God for help.

Greater progress equals increased attack. How does this work? One might think that evil thoughts and desires that arise in one's mind show one's own sinful nature, and they might do. But they might also be put there. In dreams, for instance, we might encounter horrible things but this does not necessarily mean these things arise from our own subconscious and are somehow unresolved parts of our own nature. They might be, but they might also be a demonic assault. Attack might come from outside and other people, but it more often comes from within our own mind and we must learn to recognise it and see it for what it is. Then we just don't react to it. We don't fight it because that gives it energy and attention. We simply ignore it.

Evil in all its forms, they said. Evil has many forms. Obvious evil is obvious. We can easily recognise it, but the devil is a trickster. He can lure us down a path of sin through apparent good. How many people have thought they were fighting for God and truth when they had been deceived into following their own desires or had adopted an idol of their own making as God? The devil has corrupted whole religions in this way, not to mention political ideologies, and he can certainly corrupt us on an individual level if we are not alive to the possibility. We might think we are serving God when we are really just serving ourself.

Evil attacks at our weakest points, and these are often aspects of our character of which we are unaware. In a way, the whole spiritual path is the fight against evil which really means against our own fallen nature. The temptations that came to Christ on the mountaintop will come to all of us eventually though perhaps not in such a dramatic fashion. The way to deal with them is as Christ did. Submit yourself to God and keep him as your only goal.

What makes a real saint is conquering evil. Imagine a saint who never knew evil, who was always sweetly loving. Isn't that rather a shallow thing? What gives depth and wisdom and nobility is fighting and conquering evil within oneself. Someone who has never known evil can never be a saint. Does this mean evil is part of God's plan? I don't know but I do know he uses it to make good even better. He's clever that way.

Of Lions and Lambs

 We are living through the end times when spirit is obscured by matter as a result of which even when the spiritual is acknowledged it is often perceived through the distorting lens of modernity.

One of the characteristics of the end times is that the whole era returns as part of a general summing up of the age, but it does so in a form that is misrepresented by the reigning characteristics of the zeitgeist. Thus, we now have access to spiritual traditions of the past in a way undreamt of not long ago, but what we have access to are really only the bones on which we frequently put modern flesh.

An example of this is paganism which appears to be making a comeback in various forms. One particular form has come about in response to the feminisation of modern Christianity and the perception that it is a Jewish religion. The idea is that adopting a foreign religion has weakened the West as a whole and men in particular, and if you look at the Christian religion as it is today you can see there is truth in this. The new Archbishop of Canterbury makes it almost comically obvious. However, if you look more deeply the picture changes somewhat.

To begin with, despite appearances, Christianity is not a Jewish religion. See here and here. Obviously, it was born in a Jewish setting but Christ transcended that which was why the Jews rejected him. And then when the religion took root in the West it was transformed by its host to reflect the sensibility of Western thought and behaviour. The supposed feminine nature of Christianity is only because it shows the way to go beyond the egotistic self. Christianity has become feminised over recent years but that is not its real nature. There is nothing feminine about Christ nor his disciples who all fought and conquered the world but did so through force of spirit rather than force of arms.

Nonetheless, because Christianity has become a bland non-judgmental religion with its idea of love, originally fiery, become wet and soggy, it is not surprising that a more masculine mindset rejects it. Yet those who do reject Christianity for its supposed weakness are not seeing it as it is, only as it has become. Reacting against the soft and sentimental side of modern Christianity, some men adopt hard pagan beliefs in which self-mastery is key. Your mind must master your emotions, they say, if you are to be the master of yourself. They are right. The mind must master the emotions or you remain a slave like most of humanity. 

And yet, is this spirituality or is it self-development? Are you going beyond the self or are you reinforcing it?  It is easy to mistake self-development for spirituality. There is overlap but the former is only a preliminary phase, and problems arise when it is seen as an end in itself.

The resurgence of masculinity often goes with bodybuilding and working out at the gym but then these become ends in themselves, narcissistic ends. Its advocates want success and achievement and to make a mark in the world, and while these are part of human development, especially male development, they are not spiritual things. The self should be strong but it is an error to regard that as a spiritual state. It is only a foundation and it needs refinement and to learn sacrifice or it will degenerate.

Action and reaction are always equal and opposite. We should not allow the absurdities of the left, of feminism, of anti-racism and all the rest of the crazy catalogue of errors Western man has built up over the years, to lead to an excessive response. There are signs this is happening and I suspect the only thing that can keep us on the straight and narrow path, the razor's edge of true spirituality that combines both lion and lamb, is the risen Christ. Happy Easter!

della Francesca's Resurrection of Jesus

A Dark Guru

 Previously in this series about my life in India during the 1980s I've written about Europeans we knew but not much about Indians except in passing. But, of course, we knew many and were friends with several. There was Krishnamurti the tailor who always wore a crisp white shirt and sharply pressed khaki trousers. Then there was Ali who ran the Yercaud Club and who looked (I thought) like a benevolent crocodile. Dilip and Ashok were two brothers who, with their father, had a geranium plantation that produced an essential oil used for perfume and skincare. Subramaniam was one of many coffee planters in the area and Ramalingam lived in the bungalow next to ours. He fell on financial hard times so leased the front of his house to the Bank of India and moved to the back. It seemed to work for him.

But our main friends, apart from the Matthews whom I have previously mentioned, were Mr and Mrs Neelakantan. He was a Brahmin and had been well off, but he was persuaded to invest his money in a film studio which went bust and lost the lot as a result of which he had come to Yercaud where his wife Prema found work at one of the private schools in the town, enabling their sons, Kumar and Prakash, and daughter, Sudha, to get decent educations. They were all very bright and took full advantage of the opportunities offered. Neelakantan was probably in his mid to late 40s but retired or, at any rate, no longer working, considering himself to be in the Vanaprastha stage of life which, according to Hindu teaching, is the third stage when one starts to withdraw from the world and focus one’s energies more on Moksha or liberation. He sought us out because he heard we were interested in spiritual matters, and we had many conversations, even debates, about Indian philosophy. He was a disciple of Swami Muktananda who was a prominent guru of the day teaching something called Siddha Yoga which claimed to be able to awaken the kundalini in its practitioners. Traditionally, this was a secret path only open to a dedicated few after years of spiritual discipline, but Muktananda offered the awakening to anyone, and Neelakantan said he had experienced it. It did not seem to have changed him in any significant way for the better though, and he admitted as much which was more than many others who have undergone this experience are willing to do.  

Neelakantan gave me Muktananda’s autobiography to read, and I could see that the man did have power of some sort, but it was also obvious that it was not true spiritual power. Like many Indian sannyasis he had tapped into a form of occult energy through his guru, but this energy appeared more demonic than divine. And rather like Sai Baba, you only had to look at a photo of Muktananda to see a darkness in his soul. When the stories of his sexual misdemeanours came out, as almost inevitably they did, I was not surprised.

 

There was a misconception of spirituality common at the time which many of the gurus flooding the West took advantage of as they preyed on the naive. They may even have been victims of it themselves. It saw the spiritual in terms of consciousness, experience and power, and believed that the self could be transformed before it had been fully purified, and that what was required to do this was technique regardless of motivation. They would have spoken of proper motivation as one must to be taken seriously, but it was not put front and centre as it should be and was often confused with aspiration. It was the old spiritual problem of the desire for heaven, even the greed for it, taking precedence over the love of God.

 

It could not be denied that Muktananda had been through some extraordinary psychic experiences under his guru, but these cannot be regarded as spiritual in the proper sense because in cases of genuine spiritual transcendence the self is not splintered and shattered as happened to him. It is more a case of the ego falling away as it is outgrown, or melting in the light of the spiritual sun. There may be an initial pain and sense of loss, but there is not the violence and terror described by Muktananda which indicate that something other than divine forces is in play. Many Indian gurus mistake the occult for the spiritual, and Muktananda certainly did. 

 

Neelakantan admitted he had not been changed by his experiences, but others were not so lucky. A commenter on this blog a few years ago wrote that he had followed an Indian guru (unspecified but obviously Muktananda) who gave shaktipat which is a supposed infusion of grace that opens the kundalini and sends the energy upward through the chakras. He said he had had many amazing experiences but even now long after he could not sit to meditate without being taken over by spontaneous pranayama and mudras, as well as the occurrence of strange mantras. He had left the guru’s organization years before when the stories of scandal and abuse surfaced, but the psychic experiences persisted. He thought they could be the result of astral forces and wondered what to do. My opinion was that they were undoubtedly caused by the premature opening of psychic centres in the body which, it cannot be emphasised enough, is an occult procedure not a spiritual one. The remedy is prayer and focus on Christ. This is the best way to cleanse the soul of the unhealthy psychic residues it picks up through these techniques. 

 

The moral of this story is that one should not be deceived by the spurious glamours, antinomian delusions and false promises of the lefthand path. The road to God is through purity and love, not magic in any form.

 

I would not have suggested focus on Christ to Neelakantan who was a proud Brahmin and not going to abandon his heritage for a Western religion, but fortunately he had not gone too deep so not suffered adverse consequences. He reverted to his traditional path and turned for inspiration to the Jagadguru of Kanchipuram, a genuine holy man who lived for nearly 100 years (1894-1994), spending his life travelling round India teaching the sanatana dharma or ancient religion of the Vedas. The Kanchi Sankaracharya was a traditional guru who was the 68^th in line from the famous advaita philosopher Sankara, and exemplified the best of his religion in contradistinction to most 20^th century gurus, obvious exceptions like Ramana Maharishi aside, who seemed to be promoting themselves. He made no grandiose promises but simply taught love of the divine for its own sake.

 

An amusing postscript to this story comes in the form of two young evangelical Christian missionaries who stayed at our guesthouse. They were sincere and enthusiastic but didn’t fully appreciate the richness and depth of the Indian spiritual tradition. On one occasion they were with us when Neelakantan came round for morning coffee as he sometimes did, and we introduced them before they left to visit a local church. A couple of days later we heard they had gone round to his house to try to convert him and his family, no doubt with the best of intentions, but you don’t convert a Brahmin to Christianity. Neelakantan, normally a very courteous man, had lost his temper and thrown them out. I tried to explain to them that it was very bad form to tell a Brahmin that he worships demons, especially when you are a guest in his house, but they were fired by missionary zeal and didn’t understand that Christ may be universal but Christianity, especially the desacralised 18th century form they promoted, is probably not which is why it will never catch on in India except in a limited form. It is too foreign.

 

Ancestor Worship

This blog is called Meeting the Masters which indicates its origins, but I don't write much these days about the spiritual beings I call the Masters. That is partly because my experience with them ended over 25 years ago though perhaps I should say my conscious experience since I believe they are still a factor in my life, just one of which I am not outwardly aware. That means they could be a factor in many people's inner lives, acting as guides and instructors. Perhaps we contact them in sleep or perhaps they communicate on the spiritual plane in the form of impressions which we then must pick up and interpret as best we can. That way we can grow as individuals because we are responsible for ourselves.

This leads to the other reason for me not writing much about the Masters now. This is my blog and while I do think they have prompted me from time to time, I do not know what might come from them and what comes from me. I am neither a medium nor a messenger which is as it should be in the modern world in which we are called to the path of spiritual adulthood.

Enough of that. What I thought I might do here is examine what the Masters are and how they stand to us, and I say us because although I may have had the experience of talking to them in my younger days that doesn't mean I am associated with them more than anyone else. If, as I believe, they represent the teachers of humanity (under Christ), then any spiritual aspirant is associated with them to some degree. We all have our teachers and guides in the higher worlds.

So, what then are the Masters? First off, they told me to think of them as messengers from God, and I do. But that just describes their function. What are they in themselves? I have considered this and I have decided that the best way to think of them is as spiritual ancestors. The group that spoke to me would be my ancestors and, no doubt, the ancestors of many others, but other people might have other, different but similar, groups as their ancestors.

As above, so below runs the famous saying. Everything true, natural and good in this world is a reflection of a higher reality. We have biological families and ancestors, and I am sure we also have spiritual families and ancestors. Not linked by blood as in this world but by something else which would be a similar point of spiritual origin meaning here origin of the soul, the individual component of our being. There will be a spiritual version of blood, perhaps some quality of light, and this is what binds spiritual families together. Sometimes these families may coincide with our earthly families, but sometimes not for reasons of learning since that is what we come here to do. What a wonderful thought it is to know that we have a loving family in the higher worlds, one to which we completely belong and from which we cannot be separated. The bond is actually closer than to any earthly family since spirit is thicker than blood.

The Masters then are the senior members of that family. They are our spiritual ancestors which is why we owe them honour and respect. They have gone before us on the journey of life and reached the destination or destination as it applies to the human state. There is no point at which spiritual growth and expansion stops as long as life is in a state of manifestation. Heaven cannot be a static place because it combines being, eternity, the absolute, stillness, oneness, with becoming, change, development, growth, variety, individuals, to make something more than either of these on their own. Love comes out of that. Can there be love in pure being, absolute oneness?

In the pagan past we venerated out ancestors and this was a good instinct. Sometimes we thought of ourselves as descended from the gods, or some of us at any rate, and I see this as founded in something real too. The gods in this sense might be those who have gone before us, who have achieved, and this is how I perceive the Masters. They are forerunners who have done what we are trying to do. They are the realised end of the human state which is attainable by all of us if we do the work. I like to look at the origin of words to see what the root meaning behind their current meaning might be. The modern English word 'worship' derives from the Old English weorðscipe meaning the condition (scipe) of being worthy (weorð), hence of being due honour or respect. With that in mind, thinking of the Masters in terms of ancestor worship seems appropriate.

You might say what need have we of such beings if we have Jesus and that is a fair point, but I would counter that Jesus worked through his disciples as well as directly so the one does not preclude the other.

Spiritual Atmosphere

 Certain places, even in today's world, retain an atmosphere that speaks of a reality beyond the everyday and the mundane. There are natural sites that have this quality and these were often adopted as sacred places in bygone days by our pagan forefathers. Springs, wells, mountains, caves and many other naturally occurring features were marked out by a sense of presence which indicated that a god or spirit of some kind was in attendance. Nowadays we might be inclined to think of this, if existing at all, as a phenomenon associated with earth energies, perhaps coming from a geological peculiarity or even mineral deposit of some sort, but our ancestors always associated sacredness with spirits. That is to say, with beings either from another world or another dimension of this one.

Some places have a sacred aura but others can acquire that aura by the action of human beings who gather there to worship and pray. I say action but contemplation might be a better word as the spiritual power engendered by contemplation can build up and imbue its environment with a special quality that is detectable to the sensitive soul. Places of worship can have this property, and they are often designed to help in its creation with their high ceilings and vaults on the one hand and enclosed sanctuaries on the other, bringing to mind the open sky on a mountain top or a deep, dark cave representing respectively the Father and Mother of Creation. These spaces can then receive and hold the power built up the worshippers. This was the genius of architects of the past that their descendants in our day have either lost or failed to understand. The atmosphere is not created by the architecture but can be supplemented by it, and it does not depend just on the ritual but the ritual and attitude of the worshippers, both together. A ritual can be designed to build up power but it will only be properly effective if the participants attend with their heart and spirit as well as their mind and body.

I suppose it is possible that a modern church can have a spiritual atmosphere, but it is unlikely due to its construction being based on secular/materialist principles and its lack of connection to the transcendent principle. Not to mention, its ugliness. I once met a monk who told me that it doesn't matter what the outer form in which you worship is like, it's the worship that counts. The silly fellow meant well but he was ignorant. In that case why did people put so much energy into building stone hymns to the Creator? Of course, a loving heart can worship anywhere but the outer affects the inner just as the inner affects the outer, and to dismiss beauty as irrelevant shows a dead spirit. The grandeur of a Gothic cathedral is not required as a pure simplicity can be just as effective in its own way, but harmonious proportions and natural materials are important if one wishes to create a holy space in which to connect to the divine. Beauty is part of God just as much as love and wisdom.

Three places come to mind for me as environments where I have felt a strong spiritual atmosphere. There are many more I could add, but these three form a good cross section, being illustrative of different types of atmosphere. I am referring to man-made places only here so leaving out examples from the natural world.

The first is the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid of Giza. The first time I went there was 1978 and I was fortunate enough to be left on my own for a while in the dark centre of the structure. There was a slight artificial light but I shut my eyes and was absorbed by the stillness and silence around me. There was a sense of extraordinary antiquity as though one had been taken back to the beginning of things before form of any kind developed. This was the very ground of creation, but also the seat of the tiny seed of spirit at the core of the heart from which all life grows. For a moment I felt myself to be entering the originating point of mystery and returned to where all things began.

The second place was Akbar's Tomb which is the mausoleum of the Mughal emperor Akbar in Sikandra just outside Agra. When I first went there in 1979 I felt as if part of me knew this place and I had a right be there, though I am not claiming a past life as a Mughal courtier. This was just a feeling, but it was a happy one and it came over me as I walked along the path that led through the quadrangular charbagh, representing the garden of paradise, up to the mausoleum. At the southern entrance to the tomb there was the most beautifully decorated vestibule with geometrical patterns picked out in delicate blue and vivid gold and then, in stark contrast, you entered a dark passage leading to the plain, unadorned central chamber that was Akbar's cenotaph. Here in the dim light under a high vaulted ceiling an attendant sounded the Muslim call to prayer. It echoed and resounded throughout the chamber, lasting for several seconds before gradually dying away, and, in that environment, seemed like the voice of God calling all the worlds into being out of the darkness of primeval space. If the inside of the Great Pyramid was like the time before creation, this resembled a microscopic scale version of the creative moment at the beginning of time.

The vestibule ceiling

The cenotaph chamber

My third example of spiritual atmosphere comes from Verona in 1987. It was in one of the numerous old churches in that city though unfortunately I can't remember which. There are a few examples here. I was there as a tourist, visiting the various sites as tourists do. There is a 1st century Roman amphitheatre in an excellent state of repair and still used for opera performances, and then there is the Casa di Giulietta with its balcony that is certainly not authentic but serves as a touching homage to young love. There are also several Romanesque and Gothic churches such as the Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore and the Chiesa di Santa Anastasia which is stuffed full of extraordinary artworks. But it may have been while visiting one of the city's smaller churches that I opened a door to a little side chapel and was hit by a wave of such power that I almost fell back. It was rather like exiting the air-conditioned interior of a plane in the tropics when the outside heat suddenly crashes into you. A guide told me that monks had conducted a service there shortly before, and the after-effects of that service were certainly a testimony to the intensity of their worship. 

Although I had once encountered something similar at Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight I had not previously appreciated the extent to which true worship can build up an atmosphere so strong it seems almost a physical thing. If the previous experiences had brought to mind the early days of the universe this one was different in that it spoke of the reciprocal love of God and Man. It also seemed noticeably Christian and was a reminder that not all experiences called spiritual are necessarily the same thing.

Basilica of San Zeno