The encounter with fear does not end on a purely personal plane; it has communal, indeed cosmic, overtones. In our private lives, we may think we are "windowless monads", to use a term from the philosophy of Leibnitz, but we can hardly stray from our own homes before we encounter other living forms. The homes to which I refer are not merely the places in which we dwell but are, much more significantly, our own minds. These are the "infinite hives" (to quote John Donne) in which are contained not only our private emotions and thoughts, but also a constant, yet ever changing, concourse of mental images from the world in which we live and the vast psychic sphere beyond rational consciousness. There are to be found the forms of minds that have passed beyond bodily death as well as those beings that have never been clothed in a physical body, the angelic intelligences and their demonic counterparts. This vast mass of intelligences, both benign and mischievous, are part of the mental world we inhabit.
To be unaware of this psychic milieu means that we cannot communicate in depth with our fellow human beings, because in our meaningful exchange of ideas it is usually what remains unsaid and undisclosed in sensory contact that contains the heart of the message. Although people are constantly subjecting themselves to a barrage of words that pass as conversation, they seldom actually listen to what they are saying, let alone to what the other person is feeling inwardly. Lao Tzu has wisely said: "Without stirring abroad one can know the whole world; without looking out of the window, one can see the way of heaven. The further one goes, the less one knows." This is the paradoxical logic of the mystic. He knows that his own being embraces the universe just as the universe embraces his own being. There is a psychic sympathy between the farthest star and the individual creature, however humble by human assessment, so that a cosmic harmony embraces all its parts. Jesus said likewise: "Are not sparrows two a penny? Yet without your Father's leave not one of them can fall to the ground. As for you, even the hairs of your head have all been counted. So have no fear; you are worth more than any number of sparrows" (Matthew 10:29-31).
This teaching of Christ illustrates both the indwelling nature of God in His creation, an insight especially dear to the mystical tradition, and the delineation of the creation into hierarchies of excellence, which brings in the vitally important consideration of moral values. Men are worth more than mere animals, not because the divine spark is limited to the human species, but because man, among all the animals of our world, has been given a rational mind and individual soul that can work in fellowship with God, as co-heir with Christ. To whom much is given, much is expected, and the responsibility inherent in the gifts can weigh heavily on the creature.
The psychic dimension is in constant interplay with our own souls, which though individual, are also in intimate communion with all other souls, and through the spirit with God. It is this spiritual communion with God and psychical inter-connection with other souls that lies at the heart of intercessory prayer. This is not, as is sometimes rather naively thought, a willed telepathic interplay between two minds, that of the intercessor and that of the one being prayed for, so that a powerful personality can attempt to influence someone at a distance by extrasensory means. Such an attempt to influence another person would find its end in magic no matter how well-intentioned the motive. In true intercessory prayer, it is the Holy Spirit who links the person who prays with the one in need. The Holy Spirit interpenetrates the spirit of those who pray and knocks at the door of the soul of the one being prayed for. He does not effect a forced entry: the free will of each individual is sacrosanct and is not set on one side even by God - He admittedly knocks at the door of the soul, but will not come in until He is made welcome. This is in great contrast to the work of the occultist who attempts to force the portals of another person's mind by telepathic communication. In the end that person would be in serious danger of enslavement to the practitioner of psychic power.
It can be seen from all that has been said, that the psychic realm is one of intimate communication by extrasensory means between various forms of intelligence. In itself it is morally neutral. Only when it is purified by the Spirit of God does it become a clear channel for spiritual communication. In its native form, however, it is sullied and darkened by perverse thoughts and negative attitudes that derive from maladjusted human beings and evil entities in the realm beyond death of the body. It is the inherent murkiness of the psychic dimension that has led to its being depreciated by most religious traditions. However, practitioners of these religions often fail to acknowledge that the prophetic or mystical impulse that inspired their founders and saints has come to them through the psychic realm; the same applies to the charismatic phenomena that are such a life-giving revelation to our present Christian scene.
Heraclitus says: "You can never find out the boundaries of the soul, so deep are they." The personality of man intermingles with all the psychic darkness that has accumulated from the misdeeds and vile thoughts of his forebears since the very dawn of his creation. It also has direct access to the ineffable Godhead through the vast communion of loved ones and their emergent energiies in the realms beyond human exploration. The crown of this vast concourse is the God of rational theology (as opposed to mystical theology, if such a distinction is valid) who shows Himself to man as person to person, whose divine essences are known to Christians as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the Godhead the Holy Trinity finds its eternal generation, and "at the last day" even the Son will be made subordinate to God who made all things subject to Him, and thus God will be all in all (I Corinthians 15:28). The Trinity itself will be subsumed in the unity of the Godhead, and the creation story will have ended in the deification (the raising to the divine nature) of all things.
This vast cosmic plan of the raising of all things to God requires a preliminary identification of the higher nature with that which is low and debased. Thus it is that the Word of God, by whom all things are made, incarnates Himself fully in the form of a man (in our small planet) and takes on the burden of humanity. Though rejecting the temptation of setting Himself above anyone else, or, as would be said in theological terms, being without sin, He gives Himself voluntarily to take on the sin that has accumulated throughout the whole time of creation, in order to bear it even to the point of self-destruction. And in bearing it to the annihilation of His very reputation, so that He is numbered among the criminals, He redeems all that is sordid and disreputable and brings even this into the realm of the holy. This is the Christ story; it is the particular insight that the Christian religion has to offer mankind about the nature of reality shining as a faint yet inextinguishable light amid the gloom of the world's illusion.
The illusion has its own validity in our world, but it is empty of moral value and fails to satisfy the soul despite its attractiveness to the ignorant and unwise seeker. The darkness of this realm can easily irrupt into the consciousness of psychically sensitive people. Indeed, such sensitivity is a painful gift since it allows its possessor no rest; on the contrary, it makes him aware of the pain that afflicts the whole world. The wise of this world are well advised to avoid all knowledge of this sensitivity, since they can then remain restricted and enclosed in their small but cosy world of personal comfort. But those who are so obtuse in sensitivity as to escape contact with the darkness that pervades the psychic realm will not be able to relate fully with their fellows. The full openness of psychic sensitivity that leads one to enter the deepest recesses of hell is a terrible burden. But it brings with it, for those who can withstand the agony of the encounter, an ability to enter into the deepest experiences of other people and to act as agents of healing.
One does not plan an exploration of the negative force of the collective psychic hell. If one did, the ego would be in control, and through its lack of enlightenment the explorer would be led away from spiritual reality to a mere satisfaction of the innate desire that all men share for power over the natural order and the lives of other people. Far from planning an expedition into the dark psychic realm, one usually finds oneself there inadvertently and unwillingly in the course of one's work in the world. It seems that the aspiring person is gradually trained spiritually by the Holy Spirit to take on a greater burden of suffering as part of his service to the world. If he succeeds in this great enterprise, he emerges stronger and more fulfilled, and therefore able to take on more pain subsequently. The reward for service effectively carried out is more service; the end is the transfiguration of darkness to light, of evil to good. But when we are incarcerated in psychic gloom, this end is seldom tangible to us. Even Christ on the cross cried out in agony to His Father, Who appeared to have forsaken Him in His moment of greatest despair.
I have always believed that Jesus' greatest suffering was in the Garden of Gethsemane rather than the terrible six hours on the cross. The Gethsemane experience was interior and associated with the almost complete obliteration of the natural consciousness of a healthy man by overwhelming psychic darkness. Something of the intensity of this experience has been known by others also, though assuredly to a lesser degree, for no one other than the Word Made Flesh could have borne it on a human level and retained His sanity, indeed His life. The effect of being submerged in the darkness of the psychic realm - and here I do not refer particularly to demonic influences, but simply to the accumulated psychic debris of unredeemed sin that has found its expression in frank despair since the beginning of human consciousness and perhaps even further back than that - is a most terrible depression. This depression is of such an intensity that it obliterates all emotional response except overwhelming fear of imminent annihilation. This is not the fear of death that we all have to come to terms with in the course of our lives on earth. The worst - and some people would say the best - that this threat of personal obliteration can bring is a sense of total oblivion such as occurs in a deep, dreamless sleep. To the unbeliever death is comparable to a state of sleep or general anaesthesia, such as is induced before a surgical operation, with the crucial difference that there is to be no awakening. Those whose lives have for one reason or another been hellish cannot be blamed for welcoming the possibility of total personal annihilation; indeed such a view, unsatisfactory as it is in achieving a full understanding of growth of the person in the knowledge of God, is no less unworthy than one that sees survival of death in terms of personal comfort for services rendered to God. Until the ego is displaced from the customary seat of pre-eminence, it will dominate our views about survival. The ego looks for rewards, the soul seeks eternal life in God. The difference between these two approaches to reality is vast.
I have often heard it asserted that Jesus' agony in the garden was due to the sudden realisation of His impending death. It is hard to believe that such a mighty soul would flinch from this natural event in the lives of all creatures with this degree of dread. He above all others had little to fear on a personal level, so blameless had His life been. I find it much more probable that, in Gethsemane, the burden of the psychic load of sin incurred by the cosmos was laid on His own person, and the despair that this engendered brought Him to the breaking-point of His own mental stability. It is recorded in the Synoptic Gospels how anguish and grief came over Him, and He said that His heart was ready to break with grief. He fell on His face in prayer and begged His Father to let the cup pass Him by, but nevertheless according to God's will, not His own. This agony was repeated twice more; the disciples slept (which means that they were simply not with their master since their field of consciousness was so limited), and Jesus was enveloped in the dark, acrid stench of psychic hell, which, not without reason, has been compared with sulphurous fumes. These fumes penetrate the whole person, affecting the physical body with a sense of having the heart torn out of the chest and the throat so constricted that breathing becomes painful. The desire to vomit is almost uncontrollable. The darkness of hell has the final effect of dismembering the whole psyche. If left unimpeded, it would kill the body and smash the soul so that the creature would be returned void to the primal chaos whence it had been fashioned.
All this Jesus experienced completely alone. The ultimate temptation of His ministry was to fail, under its terrible impact, and in the words of Job's wife, to curse God and die. But He persisted. The key to His triumph in this darkest of moments lay in His rapt prayer to God. He was able to lift Himself up - or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that He allowed Himself to be lifted up in prayer - to God, through the acrid fumes of psychic despair. This is one of the greatest fruits of prayer. In Luke's account of the agony (22:39-46), it is stated that an angel appeared from heaven bringing Him strength, and in anguish of spirit He prayed the more urgently, and His sweat was like clots of blood falling to the ground. However we interpret this angelic presence (I personally accept it literally), the episode tells us that in spontaneous "arrow" prayer of rapt intensity, one can be available to the whole company of heaven who will sustain one in one's most agonised moments. But the cup is not removed-it never is in the hard school of life - and every drop of the bitter potion has to be drained to the dregs. Yet somehow this forbidding task becomes easier as the draught is swallowed. Even the darkness of hell can become tolerable when one has had the courage to persist in faith. But this faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and it is attained by the practice of intensive prayer and self-giving to God and man. For those who do not have this burning intensity of faith, the temptation to cut short their lives can be almost irresistible.
The one who has tasted the dregs of psychic despair and inhaled the acrid fumes that spell death to all mortal passion, and yet has survived the ordeal, emerges as a changed person. It is as if he were born again; he has passed through the dominion of death and come out alive on the other side. "When anyone is united to Christ, there is a new world; the old order is gone, and a new order has already begun" (II Corinthians 5:17). This well-known account of the new life in Christ that St Paul described is especially true of the person who has had the courage and the faith to hold on to God through the ultimate baptismal experience, the experience of which Jesus Himself had to partake fully before He was ready for resurrection. When Jesus tells Nicodemus that a man has to be born over again before he can see the kingdom of God (John 3:3), He may well be pointing to this ultimate experience, for all earlier encounters with the Holy Spirit are as introductions to the mystical life compared with this cataclysmic initiation into the reality of darkness and its ultimate transmutation to the light. The great change that marks this final initiation is the capacity for full, universal love. We will return to this topic later.
But there are, I believe, many people who have felt the impress of only a small degree of psychic darkness and have not been able to bear it. These may be among those individuals who have been driven to putting an end to their own mortal lives. When a person, in the depths of an overwhelming depression, attempts suicide, it is, in my opinion, an excruciating experience of inner dereliction and disintegration that drives him to this extreme act of self-destruction. It has been shown me that people seldom take their own lives as an intellectual protest against the insoluble difficulties inherent in existence. It is much more likely that the act of committing suicide is a way of escape from the intolerable darkness that obfuscates the personality of the one under trial. Of course, like all categorical assertions, this too has its exceptions and modifications; it may well be that there are some mentally-polarised pessimists who view the world quite dispassionately as a vale of fruitless suffering, and whose nihilistic philosophy leads them to opt out of life quite deliberately. However, this type of cerebral detachment is not the way of real living people whose existence is intimately bound up with the flow of the universe.
The little ones of God live courageously a day at a time, knowing intuitively that they are provided for moment by moment even when the future appears hopeless and the present is scarcely bearable. But when psychic darkness descends on them, even this innate confidence in the providence of God is obliterated and they have the experience of drowning in a vast sea of dark, meaningless chaos. It is probably this experience that induces the victims of severe depression to end their lives. Who could blame them for resorting to this extreme action? Yet, if they were able to withstand the temptation to quit this life, and instead persist in the name of God who seems to have hidden Himself completely from them, they would, quite literally, be saved. The greatest privilege that lies in store for the person who has emerged from the valley of the shadow of death is the ability to guide his brethren through that same valley to the delectable mountains that lie beyond it.
I have in this account touched on what I regard as the most terrible suffering that can befall a human being: the total obliteration of all hope in an ocean of psychic darkness that finds the victim drawn into the chaos of non-existence from which we are told the world was created (II Maccabees 7:28). And yet in that non-existence, the awareness of self persists. This paradox resembles that of the directly opposite experience of mystical union with God. In this supreme illumination, the ego is obliterated in the uncreated light of the Godhead, and yet for the first time in his life the mystic experiences his true being. As St Paul puts it, "The first man, Adam, became an animate being whereas the last Adam has become a life-giving spirit" (I Corinthians 15:45).
It was no chance event that Christ's transfiguration preceded His agony and His descent into hell. No doubt the spiritual illumination of the great mystical experience of eternity helped Him in the journey into darkness that punctuated the final period of His ministry.
MeditationThough my life has, up until this moment, apparently been one of ease and fulfilment, may I never be far in thought and prayer from those who are overwhelmed by the sin of the world. I too can be a soldier of Christ when I remember Him in steadfast love by praying withhout ceasing for the coming o the kingdom. This I do by keeping the name of God in my remembrance at all times no matter how trivial the work at hand. Whatever I do with my whole heart directed to God plays its part in lightening the burden of the world. And when I may be called on to suffer, I too will be sustained.