FROM THE SMALL group of people that gravitated around the teacher of self-understanding who restored the light of spiritual day to me, I was to make contact with an ever-widening circle of acquaintances, some of whom were to become firm friends. I soon became aware that my path was not, indeed never had been, random or fortuitous, but was being directed by a power far beyond the strength of my own will. To be sure, I had the choice of rejecting this higher direction, but as I grew more fully into a real person, so I accepted this higher impulsion and actively co-operated with it.
This is, in fact, the meaning of free will. In one respect we are never free, for if we live in a state of complete licence and anarchy, we soon come to disintegration and destruction. We can either conform to the lower law of worldly society, and gather in the immediate benefits and later sufferings, or else we can become obedient to God and give ourselves entirely to His service. It is this service which, paradoxically, is the meaning of true freedom, for having transcended the thraldom of the personality, we are now living the eternal life of the true self, or soul. The servant of God does not divorce himself from worldly society and its law; on the contrary, he co-operates joyously with it, in order not merely to benefit from it, but also to redeem it. Christ's admonition to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's follows from this. Even the works of Caesar are given by God, and are finally subordinate to Him. When St. Paul could describe himself as an apostle of Christ, he was free even during the periods of intense suffering.
The path I was to follow, as I knew even in my childhood, was one to a knowledge of God. The mystical experience I had as a youth was both the consummation of my childhood aspirations and the confirmation for the work that lay ahead. The prolonged period of darkness was a time of testing. I survived by faith, sometimes against all faith, and proved conclusively to myself that spiritual values were the most real aspects of existence. I had to learn to co-operate with the powers of this world, but I could not conform to them. St. Paul puts this very well. He says: "Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God" (Romans 12:22). It is, as he points out, by the remaking of the mind and the consequent transformation of the whole nature that one can discern God's will and know what is right. This remaking of man in the divine image can be initiated and executed by God alone, but only with the full, unstinted co-operation of man. The gift of free will, man's most priceless personal possession, ensures that God Himself cannot - and indeed will not - trespass on the holy ground that He Himself has bequeathed to man, until man bids Him enter. But when He does enter there is a reforming of the whole personality, which entails a prior demolition of much that was regarded as sacrosanct to man's well-being. And if He is then repudiated, there is terrible suffering. No wonder it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31).
The circle of people I now associated with - and they grew progressively in number as one introduced me to another - were all seeking actively for God, though most of them would not have seen their endeavours in such stark relief. They wanted answers to their particular difficulties, and had had enough bitter experience to realise that the orthodox sources of enlightenment - the medical profession and the Church - were of little use to them in their searching.
I myself was brought up in the Jewish faith, but in its liberal rather than its orthodox tradition. My parents could hardly be described as devout religionists, but we did at least observe the most important holidays. Synagogue worship was a joy to me, and I was well aware of the presence of God when the sacred Scroll of the Law was presented, unrolled, and read during the most holy part of the service. I am very grateful that I was brought up in the Jewish religion, which I still regard as the central manifestation and guardian of God's self-revelation to man. Never at any time did I submit to the temptation of changing my name with its obvious religious overtones, for I knew that both its glory and its burden were part of my heritage, and one that had to be both acknowledged and redeemed. In fact I suffered minimally from anti-Semitic prejudice, unlike my unfortunate relatives in Lithuania, all of whom were burnt alive in their village synagogue by the Nazis during the early part of the Russian campaign.
And yet Christ disclosed Himself to me when I was scarcely out of infancy. I could never escape from Him even had I been so inclined. I began to see Him both as the consummation of all that Judaism had taught and witnessed, and also the power of God universalised to all men, of all races. I knew that, though He was a man as I was, in Him the power of God shone eternally, and He was in His life and witness to the truth, the manifestation of the one God in the flesh. He had fulfilled the universalisation of Judaism to which the Prophets had looked forward. From all this I deduced that God was greater than the Jewish religion, and in Christ was available to all people. A restricted, racially orientated view of election and salvation was not sufficient. No one group of people was specially selected for God's love or favour. My illumination made this fact absolutely clear.
But what about Christianity, the religion that had arisen as a direct result of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, and had eclipsed its mother Judaism? Logically I should have sought admission within its portals as soon as I was independent of my parents. But I discovered, very soon, that this too was no divinely inspired religion. Even when a child in South Africa, I met enough Christians to see that their religion did not appear to bear any great impress of holiness. They were selfish, racialistic, mean, and as dishonest in their personal relationships as those who did not profess a religious belief. Indeed, if anything they were rather worse, because their religion produced a veneer of sanctimonious piety that drew out their deeper spiritual deficiency. I must confess that the Christian religion that I observed in my youth was not an attractive proposition for anyone contemplating the spiritual path. Its Catholic exponents were arrogant and triumphalistic, while the Evangelical groups preached a doctrine that damned man and dishonoured God, who was made to resemble a ferocious tyrant rather than the Lord of love. I personally could never be other than liberal in my religious views, but my liberalism was mystically inspired and not rationalistic. And mystical awareness, I was to find, is a rare commodity amongst Western religionists, whether Jew or Christian.
A sweeping denunciation of the type of Christianity I observed in my youth is bound to be unjust. Amongst the indifferent mass of Christians who lorded it over the lesser breeds, there were truly saintly people whose lives were devoted to the service of others, and courageous priests who, at great personal peril; denounced racial injustice and cruelty. But these were voices crying out in the wilderness; the flock were at best ambivalent in their response to their pastors. This local situation mirrored that occurring in Germany at the same period. The main churches played a sinister role in the triumph of Nazism, largely through their innate anti-Semitic bias, and even at the worst period of terror, their witness was ambivalent despite the self-sacrifice of a few really great Christians.
From all this I learned that Christ was far greater than the Church that had arisen in His name. He is the power, the light that enlightens every man, which moves all men on from the lesser to the greater, from the personal self to the spiritual self where God is known, and where Christ dwells and His Spirit sanctifies the whole personality. The reverse side of this spiritual truth, the importance of the Christian Church, was hidden from me at this stage. I was later to come to this understanding also.
During the dark period of my life when I came to England, I finally broke with traditional Judaism; a complete stranger, I now chose my own way of life, and moved as I wished. The main churches were unhelpful, for the religious atmosphere of the Fifties I found to be self-assured and triumphalistic. The breakthrough into real religious awareness came, significantly, from the Roman Catholic Church, previously the most reactionary, recalcitrant, and triumphalistic of all the churches, through two great personalities, Pope John XXIII and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The former was to humanise his church during his short period of office, and to replace triumphalistic assurance with humble service in the steps of the Master. Teilhard, despite the limitations of his perspective, which was mystical rather than truly scientific, laid the foundations of an authentically humanistic Christianity that saw Christ as the very process of evolution to that far off day envisaged by St. Paul, when the universe was to be freed from the shackles of mortality and enter upon the liberty and splendour of the children of God (Romans 8:21). At last the church was being shaken to its foundations, and was no longer merely the repository of dead tradition.
It was in this changing atmosphere that I at last emerged from the shadows. Radical religious thought was in the air, and many of the past assumptions were being openly questioned. I myself joined a non-credal liberal Christian group whose basis of belief was rationalistic. Its members did not accept the divinity of Christ, but followed Him as a great ethical teacher and exemplar. Likewise they dismissed the "supernatural" part of the Gospel, including the healing miracles, as relics of past ignorance, now mercifully superseded by the all-encompassing wisdom of modern science. Despite the obvious deficiency of this presentation of the Christian faith, I am grateful for my stay with this group. Their intellectual honesty was refreshing and enlightening, and there were moments of great depth in our worship when the desiccating intellect could be stilled in a brief, but eloquent silence. I soon realised that when the divinity is taken away from Christ and He is put in His place as one of many great human teachers, He becomes increasingly unnecessary to us. Likewise, the intellect that can dismiss all aspects of life that fall outside current scientific thinking as unreal or meaningless, can soon demolish the concept of God. Such rationalistic religious liberalism tends to move progressingly towards atheistic humanism. And I could never be a humanist, much as I respect the courage and intellectual integrity of the ethically based non-believer. The root defect in the rationalistic view of reality is a failure in imagination.
Fortunately my spiritual diet did not consist only of rationalistic Christianity. The people with whom I had most in common had, as I have already noted, a yearning to know the true God, who did not seem to reveal Himself in the mainstream churches or to be found in books of philosophy or psychology. Many of them had had transient psychical experiences, and a few had even had a glimpse of the greater reality of mysticism. Few were completely balanced emotionally, and few were intellectually proficient. The contrast between them and the rationalists could hardly have been more stark, but they shared one quality: a dissatisfaction with conventional credal religion and a passionate desire to find a deeper meaning to life than the mere repetition of surface activities from day to day until the time of death. It was inevitable that this group of people should follow the non-rational path to reality. Their interest in psychism led them either into spiritualistic groups or else into the more pretentious schools of theosophical thought that had their basis in the writings of H. P. Blavatsky and her numerous successors. A few were anthroposophists, followers of that remarkable seer Rudolf Steiner, while others followed the teachings of the schools of New Thought, the basis of which was that, by thinking positively, our lives could be changed and all manner of good things come to us. Some of the more powerful personalities were attracted to the self-realisation philosophies of Gurdjieff and his pupil P.D. Ouspensky.
It seems that I was taken, under the auspices of the Holy Spirit, on a short visit to these various outposts of the occult, in order to understand their attractions and to discern their overall inadequacy in fostering true spirituality. It was at that time that the concept of a "New Age" was becoming current amongst many younger, more mystically aware people. This "New Age" was linked closely to the constellation Aquarius under whose astrological influence the earth was now beginning to move. Aquarius, the water-carrier, symbolised the down-pouring of cosmic energies on to our planet, and these forces would inspire receptive, open-minded people to psychical and mystical realisation. The rigidity of the past would be superseded by a Spirit-filled generation that would, like the earliest Christians, turn the world upside down. All this was very exciting, and I believe contained more than a germ of truth. Certainly there are strong psychical forces at work in the world now; the Charismatic Renewal in the churches, itself an ambivalent manifestation, is one aspect of this power, but so also are the menacing social and political upheavals that are now an everyday event even in previously stable societies. It is evident that not every psychical current is divine; quite a proportion of psychical manifestations are demonic.
My first impression of non-rational (which is not the same as irrational) occult teaching was favourable. It was apparently open, non-credal, universalistic in scope, and knowledgeable about the deeper aspects of reality, including the life of the soul after death of the physical body. Much of what had been revealed to me was taught by practitioners of these schools of thought. At last I seemed to be in the right milieu. But soon my inner discernment bade me beware. The surface was plausible enough, but the undercurrents were treacherous.
I found that advocates of spiritualistic communication with the unseen world through mediums, or sensitives, did not grow into fullness of being. Having jettisoned the authority of the Bible or the Church, they had merely bound themselves to the voice of the medium through whom a "control", or "guide" (often with a Red-Indian name), spoke. The teachings varied much in quality. Being only on the periphery of Spiritualism, I did not come across anything very disturbing, but I was soon aware of the prosaic, platitudinous quality of even the higher teachings.
The nature of a spiritualistic guide is itself questionable; is it merely a part if the medium's personality that has split off and acquired autonomy, or is it a discarnate source from the formless world beyond the grave? And, above all, by what authority does it teach and give advice? Whatever the answers to these questions, it became evident to me that there was far too close a dependence of many Spiritualists on the advice of the guide. They had substituted a psychic source of authority for a religious one, and no matter how sincere its teaching, they were not growing fully as persons. Many went for advice about mundane matters to these sources, so that their own powers of judgment were gradually weakened. It was accepted that direct communication occurred frequently between the living and the dead through the medium and his (or more often her) guide. My own investigations, aided by the power of spiritual discernment, suggested that on some occasions this claim was justified, but by far the majority of communications were simple mind-reading exercises by the medium, who gave the sitter the information he unconsciously desired. This was no conscious fraud on the part of the medium, who was in my experience a dedicated, sympathetic person, but simply an aspect of the treacherous terrain of the psychic world. The phenomena of extrasensory perception, of which I had had much experience in my own life, were shown to me, as a detached, objective observer, to be real and fully deserving specialised investigation by competent psychical research workers. But as a way of life and a guide to God they were illusory. Psychical understanding illuminated some of the more obscure episodes of the Bible, especially the amazing gifts of Jesus and those who had preceded and followed Him, but in themselves they led merely to self-inflation and delusion.
The psychic path comes to a dead-end. It substitutes meretricious phenomena for God-inspired love in action and self-inflating sensations for the peace that passes understanding.
My contact with various theosophical schools similarly revealed conflicting currents. Much of the basic teachings hailed from Hindu, and to a lesser extent Buddhist sources. This in itself was unexceptionable, but on this scheme of the perennial philosophy there were grafted esoteric systems of thought allegedly derived from high sources, or "Masters" as they were called, which infused the elect with a special aura of superiority. They were the ones who knew. They had many answers to life and death; the scheme of reincarnation was open to them; and they spoke with great authority about their previous lives on earth. Though I was myself very sympathetic to the concept of reincarnation, as I have already said, this mechanical view of life and its recurring round of rebirth according to past actions, or "karma", without the fertilising power of love to redeem it, troubled me. I could not find the love of Christ in this scheme - although Jesus was assuredly included as one of the "Masters". There was much in theosophical teaching that reminded me of the gnostic sects that so troubled the early Fathers of the Christian Church. There was an escape from the sordidness of the world into a realm of spiritual enlightenment presided over by persons who "knew". Salvation was linked to self-attained knowledge. A knowledge of God, however, comes not by esoteric wisdom but by love. I found much in theosophical teachings of interest and some of importance, but by itself, this approach comes to another dead-end. This was also my conclusion about anthroposophy, which hung on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner. Some anthroposophists did wonderful educational and remedial work amongst the mentally handicapped and the crippled. They were, of all students of the occult, the nearest to the heart of Christ. On the other hand, their strongly gnostic affinities led to exclusiveness and isolation.
My impression of New Thought groups was also mixed. While it is certainly better to take an optimistic view of the situation that confronts one than be pessimistic about it, and to see the bright side of all circumstances rather than the dark, one should not blind oneself to the darkness and evil in the world and also in oneself. While it may be possible, by concentrated powerful thought, to influence situations and people to one's own advantage, it is doubtful whether the benefits that follow are either long-lasting or even good for one's proper growth. Since the beginning of his conscious life, man has sought after magical means of overcoming his difficulties. The psychic path often leads to a dependence on magic, which is the employment of "occult" forces to influence the physical world to the advantage of the practitioner. Such attempts, even if they are well intentioned initially, invariably become demonic, or "black", and the power injures both the object and the agent.
A rather similar criticism applied to many schools of character development and self-realisation that I investigated: their basis was selfish and grasping. Submission to God and the experience of grace in the downflow of the Holy Spirit, Who alone heals and sanctifies, were absent from these systems that relied entirely on man's own abilities. Some groups stressed a conditional immortality dependent on the amount of personal growth one had achieved in this life. The all-embracing, welcoming love of God - as typified in the Parable of the Prodigal Son - was not included in this philosophy. The loveless rigidity and self-consciousness of some of these groups were all too obvious to behold. Their spontaneity seemed to have been destroyed, and there was no real communication between the members and other people. All were intent on self-mastery, and there was no compassion or love for others.
It was evident that I would find no home in this confused mass of esoteric thought. If I had to summarise the essential failing of both the rationalist and the esoteric seekers after wisdom, it would be that neither could be receptive to divine grace. Each had to be doing or learning something for his own growth. Neither had learned that true wisdom comes from within, not through grasping but by waiting patiently on God in prayer. A divine ignorance is the portal to divine knowledge, the knowledge of the love of God.
On the other hand, I also found much of value in my occult studies. Psychic communication is a fact, and it extends both among the living and those who have died. I knew this already from the experience of my own silence, and it was confirmed in my studies of Spiritualism. Personally I deprecate indiscriminate communication with the unseen, and believe mediumship should be reserved for scientific study. But I have no doubt that as one progresses in spiritual stature, so one can communicate far more effectively both with those living around one and with those who have departed this world. I hope that this type of communion, which is always initiated by the deceased, will be of more frequent occurrence in the future. I have much less confidence in the thrusting type of communication initiated by the bereaved through the agency of mediums. Here delusion is much more likely.
The teachings of the theosophical schools also shed light on the continuity of life, even if their scheme is too assured and dogmatic. I dislike the emphasis on "Masters", who tend to assume the potentialities of gods. But who can deny the possibility that the Holy Spirit works through the whole communion of saints, of which we all, both in the flesh and in the world beyond death, are members? Amongst "all the company of heaven" may there not be advanced souls (the spirits of just men made perfect - Hebrews 12:23) helping the world to grow into divine understanding? Perhaps this is the most valuable insight that both Spiritualism and Theosophy have to offer us, even if we may disagree with some of their practices and assumptions.
Of the importance of thinking about uplifting things St. Paul says, "Whatsoever things are true...honourable...just...pure ...lovely...of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things" (Philippians 4:8). This is real positive thinking. It moves towards the searching honesty of the intellectually proficient as well as the beauty of the aesthetically pure. The spiritual life also needs an assiduous inner discipline, not so very different from some of the techniques taught by schools of self-realisation. But the aim is to make the person a better servant of God - which entails the humility and simplicity of a child - and not simply more full of power and dynamic magnetism.
The occultist's approach to spirituality is often very close to the true article. No wonder it is said that false Christ's and false prophets shall rise, and shall show signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect (Mark 13:22). But there is one certain sign of the true prophet - a burning love of such a kind that he does not hesitate to give up his life for mankind.