AS THE PERSONALITY BECOMES better integrated so the soul within it makes its presence known ever more strongly. It becomes more articulate as we advance to the inner silence where the voice of God is heard. But in this silence other impressions enter our awareness also. These are from the extrasensory world that interpenetrates our own material one. In it float the fears and desires, the dejection and the aspiration, of all those in contact with us, and also those who have passed into the greater life beyond the grave. The soul's eloquence is touched by the urgency of psychical communication, and the personality is very liable to be overwhelmed by this influx of extrasensory information which comes to it from the unconscious reaches of the mind. Such a personality may easily lose its balance unless the origin and validity of psychic communication is pondered on with care and compassion.
The fact of extrasensory sources of communication is not treated kindly by materialistically inclined intellectuals, who would confine all forms of communication to the tangible five senses of the body. Yet in all relationships it is the unspoken word that makes the deepest impression, and the unenunciated impression that lasts longest. As we become more attentive to the silence round us, so other modes of apprehension make themselves known to us.
The feature that these impressions have in common is their circumscribed area of influence. In other words, they are strictly personal in character. They speak directly to us as persons, sometimes enhancing our own opinion of ourselves, but often broadening the scope of our understanding by bringing to our awareness new modalities of existence. Sometimes these sources of communication have a demonic character, instilling a fanatical sectarianism into the recipient of the information, and interfering more and more with the conduct of his life. In all, the psychic realm is one of transition from the solid stability of the earth to the eternal presence of the spiritual life.
Much of the psychic side of life emanates from dark forces in our own unconscious minds and those of other minds around us. It is quite probable that certain mentally ill people are unusually receptive to psychic influences, but because of their poor powers of discernment, they are unable to comprehend the source of the communication or evaluate its significance. Various drugs used for gaining psychedelic experiences may have a similar effect. Let us consider some of the manifestations of the psychic field.
The first point to be made is that the soul is the organ of both psychical information and spiritual enlightenment. The more active the reasoning mind, or intellect, the more are psychic impressions excluded. On the other hand, those who are not subservient to the intellect, whose minds are still and attentive, will be aware of greater psychic communication from those round them, and finally even from the world beyond the grave. If survival of death is to be a reality for us, we need to acquire the stillness within so that the departed may speak directly to us. If our relationships with those still alive in the flesh are real, so likewise will we come to know of their dispositions long before they confide them to us. The psychic realm is particularly tractable to primitive races who have not as yet developed the reasoning side of the mind sufficiently to exclude ubiquitous psychic impressions. Such people can, in their primitive way, live in passionate harmony with their surroundings, even the climatic ones, and they have much to teach us about communion with nature. Their souls are ardent but their personality is integrated on such a humble level of performance that they are incapable of embracing a view of humanity wider than that of their immediate surroundings. The reasoning mind is both the censor of impressions reaching the consciousness from outside and the co-ordinator of these impressions, so that they become fashioned into a coherent body of knowledge.
The intellect is naturally suspicious of those intangible modalities of existence which it cannot immediately dominate. If it is left in charge of the whole personality, it will suppress and deny anything that it cannot understand. This dominance of the intellect is both a feature of our contemporary scientific way of life, and a source of bitter denunciation by various irrational groups that flourish as a protest against the desiccating power of pure reason. Neither point of view has, in my opinion, the whole truth. If the intellect is in total command of the personality, the result is a truncation of the full man. The emotional, or feeling, response to reality is played down, and all thoughts or ideas that cannot be accurately measured or proved experimentally are derided and dismissed from consciousness.
Of course, the emotional nature with its strong psychic undertones cannot be quenched as easily as this, and it makes its presence felt in outbursts of irrational behaviour that mar the calm facade that the intellectual person presents to the world. We cannot, in other words, insulate ourselves against the onslaught of psychic impressions. It is particularly unfortunate that the church as a whole is still opposed to the psychic dimension of reality. While it should be rightly suspicious of many psychic manifestations, it should also practice the gift of discernment of spirits so that it can teach its flock what is good and what is questionable. A blanket denunciation of psychism is a terrible error, and one which in its turn can lead to the excesses of witch- burning and other atrocities against those who possess psychic gifts.
Nevertheless, irrational groups of people who are guided by the psychic sense without using the reason as a censor also cause much harm. The danger is not so much that of being taken over by evil, demonic forces, though these certainly exist and can cause dangerous obsession in people especially open to the influence of unseen powers because of their own weak will. The real danger is that the power of free choice, which is the essence of the will, is gradually stolen from the person who comes to rely increasingly on irrational occult forces.
The flight from reason in our own century is one of the most terrible manifestations of the power of demonic possession. It was seen in its full flower in Hitlerite Nazism, but the many groups now practicing occultism are in a similar danger. Once the reason is totally abdicated, man becomes the victim, indeed the repository, of dark forces that arise within him but originate as part of a psychic residue of evil that has accumulated from the beginning of time through the selfish abuse of free will by sentient creatures. And do not let us limit these only to human forms. The angelic hierarchy, an object of derision amongst materialists, is real enough to those with powers of seership-and the angels are very different from the winged creatures depicted in popular paintings! As man becomes fully himself, he begins to have some greater conception of the magnitude of the world he inhabits ! The astronomers are amazing us with one aspect of the vastness of the universe, but it is to the psychologists and especially to the mystics that we must turn for other insights into the meaning of reality. Again I stress that none of this is to be taken on trust. Until such time as it is shown directly to us, an attitude of courteous agnosticism is mandatory. Always hold on to reason, but never let it dictate the nature of truth. Its function is to assess new insights, and if these are acceptable, to bring them into harmony with past knowledge so that a new synthesis may be effected.
How can one test the validity of psychic impressions? By the nature of the communication, the personality of the communicator, and above all by the effect the impression makes on the aspirant. "By their fruits ye shall know them" is the acid test. The fruits of undeveloped psychism are seldom very attractive. The psychic ability usually boosts the personality of those who have it, leading to a dangerous psychic inflation, which is one form of spiritual pride. There is a temptation to meddle in the lives of other people, to read their thoughts, and to sit in judgment over them. All this stresses once more the very personal nature of psychic communication, whether between two friends in the flesh or between a discarnate source and an aspirant still on earth. The distressingly low level of spirituality that one so often finds in spiritualistic groups is an indication that the psychic way is not necessarily superior in spiritual worth to the sensory way of communication that we use from day to day.
There is another, much more attractive aspect of psychism. This is the increased psychic sensitivity that develops in those who are on the spiritual path, the path beyond self-gratification to self-sacrifice for the love of man and God. As one progresses in the way of the spirit, so the gifts of the Spirit are bestowed on one. This way is usually far less spectacular than the rather dramatic downpouring of the Holy Spirit that occurs in the pentecostal experience, but in my opinion, is of considerably greater profundity and worth. The danger of a dramatic experience, especially in a group whose religious emotions have been stirred up into a vortex of enthusiasm by the techniques of revivalism, is that it tends to exalt the personality. The person in question feels he has arrived, and is spiritually superior to those who have not been similarly initiated ! This is one of the great criticisms of the psychism found in immature people. It boosts their personal self so that it becomes inflated and masquerades as the soul, or spiritual self. On the other hand, the psychism that develops as a part of the integration of the personality is unobtrusive, fleeting initially but eventually becoming more constant, and is not concerned with boosting the personality of the aspirant. In fact, it quickens his understanding of and compassion for other people, whose need he feels before they have had time to utter it.
Such psychism is purposeful. It does not impinge on the consciousness simply to make its presence felt. It comes to us, on the contrary, to direct us into a positive response to some outer circumstance. This is the type of communication that may start between husband and wife, or between those very close in friendship. The most authentic mode of communication is by thought or mental telepathy. This comes unheralded and in perfect lucidity as a message entering the head. Its invasion of the silence is usually so abrupt and decisive that your whole trend of thought is disrupted and a new direction of thinking is thrust on you. Alternatively, a transmitted value judgment may arrive in one's awareness as a feeling, exhilarating or sickening as the case may be, in the region of the solar plexus. Those who are psychically attuned learn to pay attention to these indications of communication from others round them. The proof lies in the rapid confirmation of the material transmitted by an occurrence on a worldly level. This in a strange way substantiates the purposefulness of the impression vouchsafed psychically. In other words, the psychism of the spiritually advancing person is well planned by the active soul, has a clear purpose, and does not boost his personality. There may also be shafts of clairvoyance in which features of another's true nature are revealed in terms of an external emanation of radiance, called an "aura". And even the past and future may to some extent be laid bare so that some of their contents are glimpsed. All this emphasises that the true being, or soul, lies outside the limitation of time and space, while being directly enmeshed in it through its connection with the body and the reasoning mind.
Spiritual directors warn their disciples against the psychical path because, in itself, it is as much a dead end as is naked materialism. The lower psychic powers, or "siddhis" as they are called in the East, have much glamour attached to them. And by the use of them the occultist can gain power over both the material world and the lives of other people. Apart from the disastrous effect that such power has on its objects, it destroys the practitioner even more completely, for abused power separates the subject from the world around him. Occultism is to be thought of as the study and use of psychic powers, both receptive and executive, to gain greater understanding of one's environment, including other people. When seen in this context, the term is divested of some of its invidious associations. Its occult nature is related to the hidden aspects of the world-hidden, that is, from the spiritually blind individual-and does not necessarily indicate secrecy. But the difficulty lies in human nature which is very likely to seize occult knowledge for personal gain. It is very doubtful whether practitioners of occultism ever achieve happiness personally or bestow happiness on others. The occult path comes once again to a dead end.
St. Paul speaks eloquently about this : "And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing." It is the superimposition of power, without love, on knowledge that renders psychism and occultism a dead thing. But if the spiritual nature is in control, the psychic faculty blossoms into increasing beauty and much of what is "occult" to the world at large becomes open to the seer.
It is therefore right to regard the psychic sense as a natural human faculty usually best developed in quiet, unintellectual people. In itself it can be a very useful adjunct to the personality so long as it does not get out of hand or inflate the person's self-esteem. But it is never infallible. At times it is remarkably accurate, but on other occasions it fails miserably. To disregard it is foolish, but to rely on it absolutely is disastrous. It is in the deeper part of the soul, where the spirit lies, that truth may be known, but such knowledge of truth is not a function of the psychic faculty any more than it is one of the unaided intellect. The psychic faculty is unreliable because it is closely attached to the emotions, which are a notoriously bad guide to action or the discernment of truth. The prejudgment, or prejudice, that is an inevitable part of our emotional response to people and things will attach itself to the psychic faculty and pervert it. This is why mediumship is full of pitfalls and is so unsatisfactory in bringing down to earth really important inspirational material. The great creators of the race have always worked on a higher level of reality than the crudely psychic.
Nevertheless, the psychic sense is not to be deprecated. It is our first intimation of a realm of unspoken reality that lies beyond the solid earth on which we set our feet. Many people are jolted unceremoniously out of naive positivism, whether humanistic or traditionally religious, by a sudden opening of their psychic faculties. A convincing experience of mental telepathy may be talked away as mere coincidence by the compulsive sceptic, but the person who has had the experience is left questioning the nature of reality, and he will seek an answer in the future course of his life. Even more impressive is the not uncommon out-of-the-body experience, when the conscious part of the personality is so detached from the body that it can look down upon it and see it lying inertly below. On some occasions the focus of consciousness, which is in fact the soul, can move beyond the limitation of the body and travel some distance away from it, and confirm the experience by bringing back verifiable information. Cases of this type are well recorded in the annals of psychical research. Furthermore, the disembodied soul can on occasions penetrate realms of existence that are not of this earth at all, but are part of the greater life of the world to come in which the departed may be encountered. And on rare occasions a realm of light devoid of all objects of sensation may be attained. This is the state of transcendent meaning and is the realm of the mystic. There are then gradations from the trivialities of much mundane psychic communication to the world - transcending vista of the mystic. All are psychically mediated - by which I mean that the communication is mediated through the soul with recourse to sensory substantiation. All teach us of the reality of the soul, which is the very centre of the personality and its fixed point. All convey the basic realisation of the unity of life that transcends all divisions and brings the divided parts home in a new synthesis. We are indeed all members one of another. It is the psychic sense that confirms this fundamental truth. Without this understanding we would be eternally fighting to preserve and enhance our own lives at the expense of the greater body of mankind. No one who is psychically aware can doubt the close communion that exists between men, and potentially between man and the kingdom of nature.
It may be asked why if the psychic sense is as real as I have portrayed it, scientific investigations into the paranormal have yielded such equivocal data. It seems clear that the type of attitude necessary for psychic sensitivity to blossom is not easily cultivated in research laboratories, supervised quite often by compulsive sceptics who are, at least unconsciously, determined to explode the myth of psychic awareness. This hostile attitude, or even a coldly detached one, cannot but detract from the performance of any psychically sensitive person (indeed called a "sensitive", or more contentiously a "medium"). In psychic work the harder one tries, the more certain is one to fail in the task. This is because the reason forces itself to the helm of conscious personality and is determined to take charge, even to the extent of producing data that transcend the reason ! It is in quiet relaxation and trusting tranquillity that psychic communication is most likely to penetrate the clear untroubled mind. As soon as the personal self takes charge, it looks for results which will enhance its own prestige.
It is fortunate indeed that the psychic sense is not under the direct control of the selfish will, although occultists have tried hard throughout the ages to render psychism subservient to their drive for power. This whole question of the will and the spiritual life needs great clarification, and it is therefore appropriate that we should now examine its nature and function in our approach to God.