Do not trust any and every spirit, my friends; test the spirits, to see whether they are from God, for among those who have gone out into the world there are many prophets falsely inspired This is how we may recognise the Spirit of God, every spirit which acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit which does not thus acknowledge Jesus is not from God (1 John 4: 1-3)
IF THE PSYCHE can be equated with the mind of an individual, the psychic field of mankind is the collective shared consciousness of the entire human race. Carl Jung speaks of a "collective unconscious" that unites our primitive ancestors" thoughts, fears and aspirations with our own in a system of symbols and mythology. One thing is certain through our experience in relationships: we are not in psychic isolation. There is, as it were, an osmosis of feelings and thoughts between ourselves and others. In truth, "no man is an island, entire of itself." The outer material dependence we have one of another is merely a superficial expression of the deep inner coinherence that is the fundamental connexion between all living forms. The power that binds disparate forms, bringing them into a coherent pyschic whole, is the Spirit of God. He is the cement of all relationships. If He is excluded by a selfish action, that person excludes himself from psychic communion with his brothers.
Jesus tells us to come to terms promptly with anyone who bears a grievance against us, lest we end up in a prison from which there is no release until we have paid up all we possess (Matthew 5: 25-26). This prison, seen in ultimate terms, is a state of isolation from our fellow men. If I have cheated or defrauded even one person, I have broken relationship with the whole human race, so tightly knit is our psychic solidarity. That person will have nothing to do with me, and I, in my turn, know that I have betrayed myself as well as the family from which I am derived. Until I put myself into alignment with the flow of psychic life once more by confessing my sin and seeking forgiveness (which, as I have already pointed out, is granted as soon as it is earnestly requested), I am inevitably separated from full fellowship with my brethren. The life of a criminal sees this psychic disintegration proceed to the point at which there is no effective communication between that person and the remainder of the world. No one trusts him or wants to know him. He becomes the foulest thing in the world. This is the real punishment of all who lead criminal lives or betray deep relationships with reckless abandon. By contrast, the penal systems that society has devised to deal with their criminal element constitute merely a mild deterrent.
It is also worth remembering that there is One alone who can redeem that criminal who has broken all psychic links with his brethren, the One Who though divine by nature, took on Himself the full burden of humanity. And the humanity was not only the glorified humanity of the healer and miracle worker, but also the stinking humanity of the Man on the Cross Who took the attributes of the criminal upon Himself and was regarded as the foulest thing in creation. He could link up even with those beyond human relationship in the state of hell, and reclaim them from the prison of death, bringing them through purification to salvation.
We are, assuredly, members one of another. As John Donne wrote in his Devotions: "Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind, therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." The medium of membership in the corporate unity of life is the psychic field. By it we know each other's disposition by sharing in it. We are in fellowship with the hopes and fears, the debasements and aspirations of all men by experiencing them in our own lives. It is in this sense that we can understand how Jesus took on Himself the psychic darkness of the entire human race when He was nailed to the Cross. Although He could not have experienced the sophisticated cruelties perpetrated by contemporary intelligence nor died of the terrible diseases to which we are all heir, He could and did experience the inner sickening, the dark loss of faith, the personal dread, and the uncommunicable loneliness that confronts each one of us as he contemplates the last moment of his mortal existence, whether in a concentration camp, an aeroplane accident, an earthquake, or by the terrible inroads of cancer. It is this irrevocable impotence that marks the end of mortal man. It is this shared knowledge of mortality that unites us psychically. Until that psychic medium which is the repository of all the hopes and fears of the human race since the beginning of its history is enlightened by the Spirit of God, it is a foul, airless enclosure. It is indeed the Sheol of Old Testament belief, where the shroud-like shades of the dead survive, moving in the noiseless tumult of agitated apathy. There purposeless motion prevails, and hope lies dormant in perpetual inertia. It is the Hades of Greek mythology, not a place of active suffering but of passive depersonalisation. Remember, even the agony of the Cross is not simply the physical pain of a tortured body, but the inroads of spiritual obscuration as the thought of God's rejection or even God's possible non-existence, suddenly impinges on the mind of the Anointed One. He took this on Himself so that even the knowledge of His divine origin (and by inheritance our divine spark also) might be occluded, at least temporarily, from His own sight. Then He could be identified with Hell, and in that union with the state of preternatural darkness, He could effect relationship with those souls incarcerated in its limitless dimensions by their own fault and through the sin of the world into which they had been conceived. As He gave of His apparent worthlessness to those multitudes who had lived worthless lives on earth, so His humiliation took on the quality of glory, a glory revealed as uncreated light. This is the light which enlightens every man, and made fully real as it came into the world at the time of His ministry. It could at last illuminate the dark recesses of Hell, proclaiming the eternal victory of light over darkness, of life over death. It was in this way that the realm of psychic fellowship was raised from a dark, blurred underworld of wraith-like forms and insubstantial apparitions to the full communion of glorified souls working out their salvation in hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.
St Paul says: "Be humble always and gentle, and patient too. Be forbearing with one another and charitable. Spare no effort to make fast with bonds of peace the unity which the Spirit gives. There is one body and one Spirit, as there is also one hope held out in God,s call to you; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, Who is over all and through all and in all." (Ephesians 4: 2-6) It is the Spirit of God that unites us, but we have to raise the pitch of that unity to a living fellowship. When the Spirit is with us as a conscious reality, mankind becomes a living organism. This is the difference between a static, impersonal, cosmic harmony and the dynamic flow of the whole created universe impelled by the Spirit of God, a created universe "waiting in eager expectation for God's sons to be revealed." This is the point of concurrence of eternal life and the prophetic growth into the knowledge of the Living God that is made manifest in the life of a fully realised man, the life pre-eminently of Christ.
The entire cosmic life is mirrored in the psyche of a man. There is a body, a soul, and a spirit. Thus man is carnal, psychical, and spiritual. All three elements are of divine origin, and none is to be exalted above the other. Man mirrors the persons of the Holy Trinity; he is one being comprising three elements that always act in close relationship but are distinct in themselves. The body acts, changing the world around it, and by its suffering teaching the soul. The soul informs and chastens the body until it is fit for resurrection. The spirit leads the soul to its encounter with God, so that it may attain divinisation. But without the lowly, yet vibrant body of flesh and bones, this scheme of personal redemption could never be effected. The soul is rational, emotional, and possessed of will. It is personal and therefore tainted with selfishness. It is also the repository of the spirit within from which the Holy Spirit radiates. The transformation of the soul from a focus of self-centred consciousness to a God-centred source of benediction for the whole world is the end of man's life. The soul is the very centre of the personality, but until the Holy Spirit's effulgent brightness illuminates the soul, that person is in a state of darkness and imprisonment.
This is unfortunately the condition of most people today; they live at the level of self- centred gratification instead of divine realisation. In other words, they believe that the personal self-centred life is the authentic arbiter of truth, and they miss the deeper centre within, where the divine presence reigns. Man was created to be a god reflecting the nature of his Creator, and until he realises the Christhood within himself, he will find no inner peace. This insight helps us to evaluate psychical reality and understand how the psychic realm must be delivered from enslavement to the lower impulses by the sanctifying action of the Holy Spirit.
Many people have a degree of psychic awareness. They are able to effect a deep, non-rational relationship with the world around them and with people far removed from them in physical contact. Communication of a rational kind that uses sensory information is a very superficial manifestation of the deep inter-relatedness which is a natural property of all life. The Spirit of life, which is the eternal Creator Spirit, is the bond that relates all living forms and reminds them of their mutual dependence. If psychism could be seen as non-rational communication between separated forms of life, it would cease to have its eerie connotations of preternatural principalities and powers. The psychically sensitive person has the power of deep, silent communication with his fellows. In itself this is good, provided the communication is selfless Of all the creatures in this world, man most fully connects the body with the spirit through the soul. He functions as a person through psychic contact, and the effect of that contact lingers long after it has been made. Those of us who are sensitive remember a psychic impression because it impinges on us, and its savour is not easily dissipated. In the psychic dimension, memory has a timeless repository, and the souls of those who have died to the physical body survive and grow into full humanity. To be sure, their body is not an earthly one, since "flesh and blood can never possess the kingdom of God." (I Corinthians 15:50) The body is of spiritual substance, composed not of the corruptible matter of the earth but of the attitudes of mind that have accrued from past experiences. These mental attitudes are the composite units of psychical reality. Some are beautiful and inspiring, and form the basis of a radiant spiritual body. Others are aberrant, broken and fit for nothing. They persist in the psychic dimension as a stumbling-block and try to attain completeness by possessing those which are radiant. As a soul dies to its body, so it finds its place according to the attitudes and values it once lived by. Thus the psychic world is a vast conglomeration of mental attitudes and emotional forces under the variable control of the will of those who function in that world. It is intrinsically no more evil than the physical world we all know, but because of its nebulous, intangible quality, it cannot be easily grasped, even by those who are psychically attuned. It is alternately a world of noble aspiration and dangerous delusion, and the more it is embraced, the more control does it assume and the greater the loss of personal free will does it exact from those who associate with it. But, as I have already noted, it is an integral part of reality, and no one can avoid contact with it, either at this present moment, or, even more significantly, after death. Were it not for our soul, where the authenticity of the personality is recognised, we would never make a relationship of meaning with anyone else. And this authenticity, whether it be of the saint or the criminal,is transmitted psychically from one person to another. It is the simple, the unencumbered, the gently receptive who attain psychic awareness. A small child can sometimes divine the unreliability of a grown-up person that an intellectually accomplished adult would entirely overlook. Indeed, one has to attain the openness of a little child before one can enter the kingdom of Heaven, which is probably a high state of psychic reality, at least in its introductory phase. Only with greater self giving does the soul gain the vision of God, which is the One from Whom all love and light arise and bind the creation in a composite whole as undivided as the seamless robe of the crucified Christ.
Creation is indestructible. It is made by the Word of God, and it exists eternally in His Mind, the Mind of Christ. What we banish from the physical world persists in the psychic realms. Indeed, its psychic potency is enormously increased when it is deprived of a physical basis, since there is now nothing to contain it or limit it. This sobering thought is important when we consider the death of a wicked person or one who has been grievously wronged. If we think we have disposed of an unpleasant incubus from the realm of the living, we deceive ourselves. It is therefore contingent upon us to attempt the redemption of every living creature here on earth now, so that its aberrant psychic emanations may be annulled and eventually brought to cosmic harmony. Whenever we try to get our own revenge, we are adding to the cosmic disharmony of the world and ensuring our own discomfiture in the future. It is with these thoughts in mind that Jesus great teaching about not setting ourselves against the man who wrongs us rings true. This does not mean ignoring the demand for justice; it means that gratuitous revenge must be eschewed. Justice administered is the first stage in the redemption of the wrong-doer. Revenge, on the other hand, assures that both he and we will remain outside the company of righteous men, as vindictive and unappeased as ever. Justice and compassion together can effect redemption, but the process may be a very long one.
The psychic field is therefore to be understood as the realm of habitation of insubstantial forms that emanate from the living and represent those who are no longer alive to the physical body. It is the means of communication on what may be called the soul, or truly personal level. It is promiscuous in its contacts, and is as unreliable morally as the world in which we live. All its inhabitants, which comprise what we collectively call "the living and the dead", are among the Communion of Saints, at least in potentiality. The true Communion of Saints has sworn its allegiance to God, and works selflessly to His service. These are the spirits that St John, in the passage from his first letter quoted at the beginning of this chapter, would describe as being from God. These spirits acknowledge that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. I do not believe that a mere mental affirmation of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ is implied by this acknowledgement; presumably an evil spirit could make the same confession but without honest intent. What is required to prove the God-based authority of a spirit is the working of the Holy Spirit through it, so that it becomes a mouth-piece of God and the way of formulating truly prophetic teaching. To put this on a more earthly level, the person in contact with the Holy Spirit is inspired to come closer to Christ by being prepared to make a sacrifice of himself for others, whereas a falsely inspired person centres all demands on himself and grows in power at the expense of his fellows. He who leads the Christ-life is inspired by His Spirit. In other words, the "spirit of a good man made perfect", one who is in direct communion with the Spirit of God, leads us on our earthly plane of existence in the way of Christ. It leads us, through fellowship, to sacrifice our own interests for the coming of His kingdom. The end of our life is a realisation of the life He led when He was here in the flesh with us.
By contrast, an intermediate spirit in the psychic world inspires us falsely, so that we centre all life's demands on ourselves and attempt to attain personal power at the expense of others. The numerous subtle ideologies and cults around us at present emphasise this tendency for groups of individuals to grasp power for themselves under the guise of spiritual development. Those of us who become enslaved to the control of intermediate psychic presence's are anchored to the world of illusion, where our own progress takes precedence over that of our brethren. In fact, as soon as we become restricted to ourselves, even in regard to spiritual progress, we at once move out of the light into the shadow realms of selfish craving. Those, I repeat, who are restricted to communication with the intermediary powers that inhabit the psychic world cannot see beyond that world. They place themselves at a distance from the knowledge of God's presence. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, not only leads us to a full encounter with God the Father, but also attires us for the encounter. As we see Him, so we resemble Him. The image of God in which man was originally formed begins at last to radiate from the core of our personality.
I believe this Holy Spirit often comes to us through the medium of the Communion of Saints. These then effect the psychical transmission of God's message to us. The Communion of the "spirits of good men made perfect" takes us to the eternal source of power and love, where God's will is open to our knowledge.