Most of us have our periods of good humour and bad temper, and these are separated by long stretches of quiet contentment in which we do our work efficiently and in harmony with those around us. Contentment can easily degenerate into complacency when we sincerely believe that all is right with the world and with us by inclusion. Such a selfish view of existence has little sympathy, indeed understanding, for those of our brethren who cannot live up to the model of success that we have erected for ourselves. It is therefore beneficial that we are periodically cut down to size by less successful episodes, success in this superficial evaluation being a state in which we enjoy the world's prizes without consideration of our own moral well-being. Let me say at once that worldly success is not to be summarily dismissed, even deprecated, for it should be the result of clean, sober, morally immaculate living. The Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25.14-30 stresses that we are expected to use the gifts with which we have been endowed to the benefit of a Master who in the first case gave them to us. This Master can be identified with the Creator whom we may call God, who in turn would expect us to use these talents to the benefit of our fellow creatures, according to the following parable, Matthew 25.31-46. Here Christ is identified with the diseased and fallen creatures languishing on the wayside of a dynamic life frequented by a busy population too intent on its own interests to notice anyone else on the way. From all this we can distinguish a false success from a true one. The first is self-centred to the extent of using all creatures on the way for its own benefit - or what it mistakenly regards as its benefit. True success leads to the growth of the person into an integrity that mirrors the great saints of humanity, and this growth into sanctity spreads far beyond the limits of the individual personality to influence vast populations of humans hovering indecisively between good and evil, between life and death.
It is a moment of trauma to be conceived in the maternal womb and to grow from the solitary zygote into an embryo whose differentiation into organs and external features is so rapid and at the same time so co-ordinated that a person begins to take shape almost under our very eyes. There is a school of psychotherapeutic thought that stresses the importance of the emotional state of the mother in initiating the mental conditioning of the foetus. However this may be, the foetus is soon born, and is then confronted with a combination of undemanding maternal love and cruelty of some kind or other by adults who are emotionally disturbed. Child abuse has recently become a burning issue as if it were a new phenomenon, but in fact it is as old as human nature. In most instances it shows itself purely in physical cruelty, but in more than a few there is also sexual interference with the unfortunate, defenceless child. I remember vividly how a very fat attendant, called a "nurse", belaboured me with blows and abuse when I was four years old. I suspect that her evil actions were motivated by an amalgam of jealousy that I was so well-proportioned and good-looking and unassimilated regret that she could never have a child of her own. Being an only child, a truly mixed blessing or curse depending on how one regards the matter, I had no contemporary peer either to share my suffering or to offer support. My parents seemed tragically oblivious of all the suffering rained down upon me. At one time I believed I was especially unfortunate, but my later work in the counselling field taught me how mild my pain had been in comparison with that of many other people.
One thing is certain, the suffering and my exposed situation as an only child had a permanent effect on my psychological development. I became withdrawn and unable to cope with the company of other children. I felt greatly inferior to them, so much so that if anyone had praise for me, I glowed and expanded to almost magical proportions. The poor self-esteem that seems to form the basis of the depressive type of personality was inculcated early in my development. In fact I suffered from minor episodes of depressive illness long before the major eruption that I described in the last chapter, but these were so well overlaid by intellectual exhibitionism and compulsive activity that I was easily able to cope with and conceal my disability. I survived an emotionally starved childhood by spontaneously developing my intellectual faculty, thereby parrying the natural brutality of the children around me at school. This state of affairs is common enough, but is worth describing in relation to the equally common depressive state. There was, however, another factor which is less often discussed: the inner life of the person. The phrase "inner life" occasions unease amongst many professional carers even nowadays. I remember with discomfort even today the response I produced about fifteen years ago when I attended a conference on causative elements in cancer. The usual exogenous (exterior, environmental) ones were discussed, and then I was asked to make a contribution. I said with great trepidation that we professionals should also consider the inner life of the patient. The deadly silence that ensued cowed me into a state of near-paralysis, but quite soon the wise scientific words of the conference continued. I escaped from this group as quickly as possible, my innate shyness reaching a nadir of shame (as if I had been guilty of an indecent act) as I drove home from the provincial centre. The person who had put my name forward as a potential contributor, I subsequently discovered, had completely forgotten my "contribution" and merely said that the conference had not been a conspicuous success. I was rather relieved that my indiscretion had apparently gone largely unnoticed amongst the learned workers present at the gathering.
Our inner life includes the state of mind that our background has produced through our past experience. But there may at least in some individuals also be an awareness of a reality that is apart from the affairs of the local scene. This is the intimation of the mystic that lies embedded but largely disregarded in the depths of the psyche of a surprisingly large number of people. This awareness tells us that there is more to our mortal life than merely what confronts us in our daily encounters with the world, whether in living out various relationships with our loved ones and colleagues or in making our living by actualizing our gifts and talents amid the varied activities around us. Our gifts provide us with the recompense necessary for survival, while our relationships make that survival a meaningful effort and one of joyful recognition. "All real living is meeting", wrote Martin Buber, the authority on a lovely type of Jewish mysticism called Hasidism that flourished in Eastern Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and was obliterated by the Nazism of the twentieth (except for a small remnant in Israel). It is not difficult to dismiss these transcendent stirrings as emotional compensations that the psyche evokes in order to render the present sufferings endurable, but they seem to come out of their own accord, and help to raise the person from a persistent position of complaint to one of patience and endurance with a song of joy in the heart. One somehow knows that all is well in a situation far beyond human experience, and can continue with one's work despite "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" against which Hamlet inveighs in his famous soliloquy. While we live in this world there are many experiences that only some people can acknowledge; whether they are products of a diseased mind or intimations of a reality greater than is available to most of us cannot be definitively proved. But the criterion given by Jesus is the important practical one, "You will recognize them by their fruit" (Matthew 7.16 and 20). If a person suffering the pains of mortality, whether through outer circumstances or inner torment, can still present a smiling face to the world and behave with intrepid self-control and concern for the feelings of others, that person is close to the divine source however we may choose to define that source. Human folly usually parodies wisdom most pathetically when it solemnly gives dogmatic judgements about matters of which it is blindly ignorant. This, for instance, applies to the familiar near-death experience which is written off by nearly all psychologists as merely a giant hallucination conjured up by a failing brain. Be this as it may, one can hardly dismiss the subsequent moral and spiritual effect this hallucination produces when the subject returns to normal consciousness. To quote Hamlet once more, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy".
Returning now to my own inner life, the topic which sparked off this long dissertation, I was aware even as a small child that, though the dice of happy material living was loaded against me, and, far more important, always would be loaded against me, I had important work to accomplish in this world, and that I was, and would be, supported from a much higher level than mere mundane sources. This focus of supranatural awareness I intuitively identified with God, and throughout my life, even during the severe depression I previously described, the awareness did not forsake me. But I had to strive harder to reach it; thus my prayer life continued albeit at a much lower ebb than normal. This sense of destiny did not in any way boost my ego; I have already described my low state of self-esteem which was accompanied by a paralysing shyness, which even today as a man in his later sixties is still, much less severely, with me when I move socially among strangers. But paradoxically - and spiritual modalities seem always to have a paradoxical quality - my shyness also emphasized my uniqueness, which set me apart from other people. Thus the thought of terminating my life simply did not occur to me even when I was feeling very low. On the contrary, I developed an iron will so that I might achieve those objectives for which I strove.
The will is a function of the personality that even today is often poorly understood. It is often claimed that free will is a pure illusion. We are, so it is said, merely the objects of circumstances in our environment on the one hand, and forces in our unconscious on the other. The psychic energy that poses as the will is simply being driven by one of these two sources against which we are powerless to resist. As an example, take the man whose will is to make as much money as possible: to do this he will practise parsimony in his private life while doing everything in his business to accumulate wealth. Eventually he may succeed in making his fortune, but to what end? The answer is likely to be security against misfortune, or the wish to move in esteemed social circles where show is impressive, or to ensure that his children are well educated as a preparation for a "successful" life (the poor children are really hostages to their father's possessiveness and the unrealized ideals in his own life). But there is in addition to this a focus in us all, though realized in only the few, which is truly ourselves; it is called the soul, or true self. This responds to the moral imperative of acting according to truth and common decency which we know as part of our own being. While this centre may be ignored or swept aside according to the convenience of the moment, its impact cannot be perpetually ignored. As Jesus puts it, "What does anyone gain by winning the whole world at the cost of his life? What can he give to buy his life back?" (Mark 8.36-37). This life is the soul, which is the arbiter of what we really stand for. He says also "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Matthew 6.z1). When our treasures are worldly they are merely egoistical, but when a deeper chord is struck, usually as a result of misfortune that tears away the mask of illusion, the soul is laid bare, and its insistence on the higher values is obeyed. It would seem that my soul has always been in a bare state, hence my natural grasp of psychical and spiritual realities even when very young. The soul is excruciatingly vulnerable, and is as sensitive to emotional wounding as the retina of the eye is to light. The sight would be permanently destroyed if one were to look directly into the sun even for a short time, and the retina is shielded by the contraction of the iris, which makes the pupil smaller, when it is exposed to intense light. It would seem that the soul also has an inbuilt means of protection, which is its capacity to act positively against invidious stimuli, doing what it considers to be right. This action of the soul is the free will; it will disregard convention when it knows that it has to act independently. This is the way of the hero, but is not on this account automatically right. The soul itself has to be guided by the spirit within (using spatial metaphors) where the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, is known. It is present at that point which is both within the soul and transcends it on a universal level.
It seems to me that when one is depressed the soul is especially vulnerable. Its own will is diminished, and the superficial ego seems to be swept away by the emotional influences among which it normally plays its part in the world's affairs. The over-sensitivity of the soul is severe until it is relieved by an antidepressant drug which calms the mind, allowing precious sleep to start a healing process. I recall two incidents in my youth that demonstrate my iron will; I will recount them though neither is creditable. The first occurred in an upper form of my school. A fellow pupil wanted to borrow a book of mine, but I steadfastly refused. He was one of a group who were unfriendly to me, and I stood out against his request. The lady in charge of the class was asked by the boy to intervene and suggest that I yielded to his request and give him the book for a loan, but I remained adamant. And there the matter rested. The boy was angry and pinched me hard, but I did not care. I did not see why I should be coerced into lending my property to an unfriendly fellow pupil.
The other incident, even more reprehensible, occurred several years later when I was a medical student. I was attending a ward round directed by the professor of medicine. Suddenly there came a request from the nurses to help to turn round in bed another professor who had bone cancer, an extremely painful condition. Volunteers were requested, and the professor directing the ward round glanced in my direction, but I did not move. The dying professor was a noted racist, and I had the greatest sympathy for the black people of the country. The event occurred in South Africa some ten years before the implementation of the grossly unjust apartheid system, in which blacks were segregated in sub-standard parts of the country or in locations if their labour was required in the larger cities. Nevertheless my attitude was hard and judgemental. My will was of the Old Testament flavour with justice as its motive, rather than that of the New Testament with its emphasis on love. I subsequently embraced Christianity sufficiently to become an Anglican priest, but I have sadly to admit that the spirit of love is as far from many Christian groups as it is from non-believers and those of other religious persuasions. It is the person who determines the sentiment of the religion just as much as the religion that influences the goodness of the person. Events in Northern Ireland and Bosnia at this present time endorse this judgement.
My will determined my life-style even as a youth. I knew I would never marry, and that a life of solitary asceticism was in store for me. I envied those who married and especially those who gave birth to children, but I had to leave these desires behind me as I forged my own way ahead. This was to embrace many years of medical practice, while subterranean forces were moving me ever closer to the Church and ordination. I did not like these movements, but I knew I had to conform, and not play the part of a ridiculous Jonah. This consideration brings us back once more to the question of free will. In fact I believe that much in our lives is predestined; we can either work with the tide by being obedient and living decent lives or else we can deliberately or unwittingly flout the rules of constructive living and fail in the mission ahead of us. I know of many gifted professional men and artists who have ruined their careers by their addiction to alcohol, promiscuous sex, or occult practices of the "black" type. God clearly shows us the way, but does not force us to follow. His grace is abundant for all who will receive, but it needs to be accepted in the faith which finds its apogee in undemanding love. Shakespeare writes in Julius Caesar: "There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries." At the end of the last chapter I mentioned the apparent arbitrary gifts of God in relation to the growth of the personality, so that some people are severely handicapped in the race of life. But it could be that these individuals are specially gifted, for if they can triumph over their adversities, they can make a greater contribution to human advancement into spiritual knowledge than masses of "normal" people whose lives seem merely to skirt the outposts of reality as they go on from one "success" to another. The Psalmist has much to say about the illusory prosperity of the unjust, but I suspect that the same is true of the many unimaginative types of individuals who close their eyes to reality rather like the priest and the Levite in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke l0.30-37). Only when misfortune dogs their steps may they sit down and consider their lives in greater depth. "Now come, let us argue this out, says the Lord. Though your sins are scarlet, they may yet be white as snow; though they be dyed crimson, they may become white as wool. If you are willing to obey, you will eat the best that earth yields" (Isaiah 1.18-19). But as the prophecy continues, recalcitrance will be followed by war and destruction.