The Call of
Isis
by
Olivia Robertson
4. Rescue Work.
In
her sitting-room in London, leaning back in an armchair, lay my friend
Marie. She was in a trance. In her case there
was no need for me to induce trance through suggestion. All I had to do
was
to say a prayer, and to formulate our
intention. For it is not enough to have good intention; one needs to
express clearly
what one wishes to do. In this case Marie
wished to use her natural gift of trance. Up to now, there had been men
who had
tried to exploit her gift, so she had given
up any adventures into the world of the unseen. But not to use a gift is
to feel
frustrated, restless. And I knew that there
could be much good work for her to do in the way of healing and psychic
therapy.
For disembodied spirits need psycho-therapy
as much as those in physical bodies. Often more so.
Marie had
entered
trance quickly. Now she began to display
agitation, and reported that she found herself inside an aeroplane. And
she knew
that this plane was going to crash. I asked
her for more identification, but she said that she could not understand
the passengers'
language. Her attention was focussed on a
small girl with fair pig-tails. This girl was with her parents. Marie
said she was
trying to communicate with the parents, but
without success. However, she said that the child was aware of her
presence.
Now Marie became so upset that I wondered should I
encourage her to return from trance. She kept repeating that the
plane was running into fog, and that it was
going to crash. She mentioned ice forming on the wings. I realized that
she was
so fearful of impending disaster, that I must
bring her out of the plane at once. So I told her to leave before the
crash,
and bring any passengers she could contact
with her. Here was the use of directed trance, and the ability to build
scenes.
I described a garden, and told Marie to shut
her eyes, and imagine she was in the garden. There was a pause and she
said she
was there. I asked her to open her eyes and
describe the garden. I did this because I wanted to make sure she was
located
in consciousness out of harm's way. She
described a simple English style garden which sounded pleasantly
suburban. Then
came the important part. I said could she see
any passengers from the crashing plane? She replied that the little
girl was
with her in the garden. The child was in a
great state of distress at losing her doll. It had been left in the
aeroplane.
Marie could not comfort her.
Remembering
the rules of dream world, which I felt also applied to this psychic
realm,
I suggested that Marie would find the doll in
the garden - but first I asked her to get a description of it from the
little
girl. For teleportation in this sphere was, I
knew, accomplished through visualization, and an effort of the will.
There was
a wait while Marie searched. Then,
triumphantly, she declared that she had found the doll lying among some
bushes!
I felt that she had been in trance long enough. For I
always timed sessions according to arrangement with the Sensitive.
But what should we do about the little girl?
For somewhere, at some time, I believed that this plane crash had
reality, And
so the child's plight mattered. I asked Marie
to send out a strong mental call for help. I joined her in this. I said
that a Helper would come.
As is so often the case, the Helper was not a romantic looking Guide in flowing robes
- but someone perfectly prosaic.
'A
nurse is coming into the garden by the gate,' said Marie.' She
is very brisk and efficient. I don't like the
bossy way she's talking to the little girl. Surely she should be more
sympathetic? She is retying her pig-tails,
and she's saying: "That doll needs a good wash"! Clearly Marie felt
that 'the newly dead' should be addressed
with more respect: but I was used to nurses, and knew that their hard
commonsense
helped far more than sentiment in a crisis.
Marie gave the nurse's name and that of her hospital.
'She
says when she was on our side she
was a sister in this Liverpool hospital';
explained Marie. 'She says they ran out of penicillin there during the
war.
Now she is taking the little girl away with
her I wondered what happened to her father and mother?'
I said
firmly that it was time for Marie to return to everyday life.
Afterwards
I asked her what the degree of reality had been in comparison with
everyday life. She replied that she
felt that she had really been in that plane.
Consciousness of her physical body on the armchair had completely
disappeared.
In fact she kept repeating that if she had
stayed in the plane she would have been killed with all the passengers! I
had to
repeat more than once that her body had been
sitting in the armchair all the time, and that she had been reporting
back to
me.
For this is a story of dual
consciousness. How could Marie report coherently to me, her body in an
armchair
in London, while she herself believed that
she had been in an aeroplane? One can see how hard it would be for an
observer
to make out which of us was speaking the
truth, if we were to tell our stories separately.
The only way a
psychic
experience of such actuality can be
identified as such, and not confused with the physical, is when the
psychic herself, as
in this case, knows that she is in trance. In
fact, I like the joke of one spirit saying to another: 'Do you believe
in
life before death?'
The
only way one can understand
multi-consciousness is to realize that our experience of the five senses
is only a fraction of
total consciousness. And that psychic
awareness is also only a fragment of the totality of what we truly are.
Schizophrenia
is not merely a disease of some, but the
endemic state of the entire human race! We only see in reflection a part
of our real
selves.
So 'Rescue Work' is really
the identification of fragmented parts of people's souls, and trying
to co-ordinate the part in harmony with the
whole. The task is to find the unhappy dreamer and help him to wake into
happiness.
Indeed one could say, from a metaphysical
point of view, that all physical life on earth is a form of related
group dreaming.
Each individual has the limitation of 'self',
and finds himself forced to have relationship with the other dreamers.
Seldom does the dreamer awaken. For the very
doors of a higher reality are barred to him by the oblivion called
sleep. And
the psychic plane too maybe regarded as an
area of group dreaming; but on a more conscious and so on a greater
scale.
As the greater contains, and so controls, the lesser, so
therefore power over conditions of the psychic area gives
also control of physical life. Disease and
psychosomatic disturbance are best cured from the inner plane of the
emotional
life of the soul. And emotional control
itself is brought about by the use of mind. The kind of mind that learns
to use the
psychic faculty is best understood as a
creative union of reason and will. The power it uses is that which we
underrate as
'imagination'. For what is art - painting,
music, sculpture - but an expression of the awareness of the soul of
that
reality behind our dreaming earth life?
There
are those occultists who wish to side-track the psychic level; and
mystics who prefer to ascend in consciousness
straight up to the cosmic level of Spirit, ignoring the intervening
level of
the psyche. This is the path of the Master
Builder whom Ibsen describes as ascending a church spire, which he has
caused to
be built, until he has attained the very top.
But the fate of the Master Builder was that he fell off! This fall in
the play
is - as so often - attributed to Woman. There
are the three aspects of Eve in the play: the meek follower who obeys,
the dominating
wife, and the ideal daughter figure. The meek
follower bores him; the wife wants to put him in a mental home; and the
'ideal
daughter' eggs him on to the heights. But she
is the one who destroys him by waving a white scarf in his honour -
like
that White Feather distributed to men by
patriotic females in the First World War, egging them on to kill.
Distracted by her
enthusiastic waving of the white scarf - in
the height of his triumph - he falls.
So may the aspiring
spiritual
climber, pursuing the goal of becoming Adept,
a Master, fail. His symbol is the Tarot card of two figures falling
from the
window of a tower which, struck by lightning,
itself tumbles to the ground. One can imagine a planet itself torn
apart by
unbalanced use of the will by those aspiring
to the heights.
The answer to such a problem would appear to lie
in the mysterious words I once heard, but
could not then understand: 'None may reach Christ save through Mary'.
Or,
as I was given from the world of Spirit: 'One
must approach Truth with courage: Love through humility'. The
Initiation
of Water, of the good use of the emotion,
must be undertaken before the Initiation of Fire, the use of the
intellectual will.
And, in many Western traditions, Woman
represents the lunar or psychic sphere of the soul.
Truly one is
asked
by the presiding Powers to enjoy, not to
deny, one's soul. And the soul's essence lies in true individuality, in
which
exists the spark of divinity within each
being. Not a snowflake is like another. It is in difference that lies
the pleasure
of harmony of the whole. If anything or any
being were an exact replica of another - it would not exist! It would be
a mere
reflection.
It seems strange that
anyone should have to defend the psychic sphere and the psychic
faculties. But
the dualistic teaching of a divided Divinity,
of two forces, Dark against Light, has given anyone exploring the
metaphysical
consciousness a fear of 'the astral'. Astral
means starry, and I do not care for a euphemism that refers to 'the
lower astral'. It sounds like cold cream for
sore feet! But perhaps well describes that disapproving attitude of the
righteous
when facing the whole sphere of spiritualism,
psychic research and parapsychology.
If I were to give one word
that expresses the essential importance of
the psychic or 'astral' sphere, I would say Beauty. How repellent is the
Do-Gooder, the Intellectual, the Spiritual
Climber, without beauty! For beauty does not have to push and climb,
need not seek
to out-strip others, nor denigrate rivals,
and does not have to look to some future end. For Beauty already has
attained,
already exists in The Now. And, above all, is
loved by every living thing. Hence it has perfect humility without
knowing its
own humility. Let us then enjoy 'the Astral'
plane, as a perfect work of art, a pleasing play put on by Divinity for
the mutual enjoyment that brings us into
harmony with all other creatures. For the Master Builder was alone up
there on his
solitary spire. He had left those who loved
him below on the ground ... They survived him.
This humble
harmony
with all other creatures is particularly easy
to enjoy in the psychic realm. For anthropomorphic statements that 'Man
is Lord of Nature', 'Man is the most
Advanced', 'Only he has the gift of speech', 'only Man has a
soul', have no meaning in the psychic sphere.
For in that world it is a fact that animals have souls, because there
they
are, having survived! And it is possible for
us to communicate with them. And they can talk to each other. Alice
found that,
through the Looking-Glass, Tiger-Lilies
talked to her. This was no fantasy, though told in a children's story.
In the
psychic world plants can talk in their own
way. So they may do on this side but in the other world one can listen
and even
join in the conversation! For a greater level
of awareness extends the limitations of one's self-consciousness: it
overlaps
into the consciousness of other beings.
Sensitives
see as many spirits of animals as humans, though these contacts are not
so often recorded; for the simple
reason that animal relatives on this side are
not asking for communication! They seem to have it anyway - especially
cats.
Angela, who has a particular love for cats,
gave me an interesting example of this. She was setting out for her
London office,
when to her horror she saw the body of a cat
that had been run over, lying in the middle of the road. It was very
dead. But
she also saw clearly the spirit form of the
cat beside its dead body. She said that the ghost cat could see her, and
she persuaded
it, though it was frightened, to come into
her arms. Finally it settled on her shoulder, and she half expected
someone would
call attention to it! The cat remained with
her all day at the office perching on her shoulder as she typed, and
even went
to lunch with her! As it showed no sign of
leaving her, her problem was, would her own cat at home notice this
supernatural
guest, and object; which she would certainly
do to an earth cat coming to stay.
Angela duly arrived home to
her
flat - and was left in no doubt as to the
psychic faculties of her own cat. She hissed and arched her back, and
made every
effort to drive the unwelcome guest away.
Angela felt like a smuggler of an illegal immigrant. She did not want to
send the
ghost cat away and sent out in thought a call
for help. Suddenly appeared a tribe of spirit cats! Her ghost cat lost
interest
in Angela and decided to join the ghostly
pack. And off they all streaked.
Those who live in the Castle
develop
an attunement with living nature. Valentine
can physically communicate with plants and flowers. Curiously enough,
she finds
it more embarrassing to talk about this, than
to describe seeing human spirits. Plant communication has the
association of
'twee' children's stories, of 'Tinker Bell',
and of 'Feyness'. For all I know serious Professors,
Brigadiers and School-mistresses may go into
their gardens and have long conversations with trees and flowers; but
rather
naturally do not mention it. Only children of
under seven are allowed to use 'the daffodil telephone'. It is certain
Russian and American scientists now who are
bringing this psychic faculty into good repute, by experiments
suggesting that
plants respond to our thoughts. Hundreds of
people have known this all their lives.
I asked Valentine to
tell
me about her conversations, and what trees
and plants were like in character. Was she certain she was not in
actuality conversing
with nature spirits tending the plants? She
said she could communicate with nature spirits occasionally, but that
she could
converse directly with flowers and plants.
'I
can't talk to the cultivated ones in the garden', she
said. 'They don't talk to me, though perhaps
they do among themselves. "It's the wild flowers that talk'.
'In actual words?'
'I hear
them in words. For instance, yesterday I heard a tiny little
call coming to me from the end of a field. I
was going in to lunch, but I had to find who was calling ... She wanted
to be
looked at. Finally I found her, a tiny little
dog-violet plant at the wild end of the hedge at the bottom of the
field. Some
flowers talk in verse. These ones are very
moral; They like telling people to be good. The May Trees though are
wild and gay
and untidy. The dog-violets are more natural
and jolly, and the purple ones are quite different and shy. Gorse bushes
are
proud and glorious.
'I did see a
dog-violet fairy a short while ago. She wore a gown just like a flower,
and
she was saying something about being happy
and how gloriously happy the spring is. How perfect everything is. I
don't
often see tree fairies. Last autumn though,
in the wild wood, I saw a hazel-nut boy. He had curly brown hair and was
very
funny. He didn't really like people coming,
but he said he liked the children gathering his nuts. But he mostly
liked
the red squirrels coming and taking his nuts.
I haven't seen the squirrels, but I'm sure they come.'
I
guessed that Valentine could communicate
with flowers easily on the earth plane
because she lived very much in the present. She said she never even
thought, let alone
worried, when she went for a walk across the
fields. She needed no arranged séance or meditations. She was part of
nature herself.
And this is the
secret of 'Rescue Work'. You rescue trees and flowers and people and
animals
from hurt because they are part of yourself.
On the earth plane this is hard to realize. On the psychic level,
harmony of
all beings is a law which, when understood,
gives one the freedom of that sphere.
Back to The Call of Isis
On to Chapter Five