GREENLEAF MAGAZINE

A person is said in common talk to have "Spirit" if they think positively, are active and decisive, and resiliant in overcoming difficulties. You could say they believe in what they are doing and they believe in themselves. The Spirit is something that inspires, and such people can also inspire others. If you look at where that energy, that experience, comes from, it comes from within and we're talking about inner experiences, what are called subjective experiences, although I don't like the term because it tends to imply nowadays, assumptions about what is real and a philosophy that distinguishes some experiences as real and some as not real is deeply flawed for several reasons I need not go into now.

Behind these common uses of the word does lie a philosophical conjecture that has meaning, however, it is the idea that there is another world beyond the world of space and time, a world of The Spirit. The argument for such a world is that the mind does have powers that transcend the rules of ordinary space and time. There is telepathy, where one mind perceives what is in another mind, there is clairvoyance, where what is perceived is in a physical object, there is psychokinesis (PK), where mental intention causes movement of physical objects, and there is precognition, where what is perceived has not yet happened. These are technical terms in parapsychology, and these phenomena have been shown to exist by experiments carried out in a laboratory (Notably by J.B.Rhine and others).

Outside the laboratory ordinary people have natural spirit experiences, like manifestations informing them close relatives are dying, and prophetic dreams. Those open to accept such experiences, mystics, pagans, magicians, and others who follow a spiritual path, learn to take such things as everyday facts of life. Out of the sky you see and hear something which is invisible and soundless but guides your life. A blue pouch is made and chanted over and the person who wears it recovers health with remarkable speed. Manifest clouds appear in the sky which prove to prophecy a danger that threatens in a few days. By petitioning a spiritual being the weather can be influenced.

These are just examples which I can vouch for of the many manifestations of The Spirit. The manifestations are actually experienced, but it should be clear the use of the word "Spirit" is an intellectual hypothesis saying approximately, that there is an energy and an intelligence in a world beyond (mathematically "at right angles to") space and time so that duration and distance can be, sometimes, suspended or transcended. For the more exact, mathematical hypothesis to be effective, it is necessary not only for us to have a spiritual "component" but for it to be available everywhere. This mystics down the ages have always asserted to be the case. Essentially this leads to the "primitive" doctrine of animism. Trees and herbs, even rocks and crystals, have spirits that can be addressed as if they were people. This pagans in general, know to be true, they get valid answers and responses.

While not all spiritual experiences are the same, it is possible to believe that the source, or at least the process by which they are perceived, are the same. Rather than believing there is "a channel" however, which supposes a long tube or "wormhole" separating us from the otherworld, I think of the otherworld as potentially being always present and available. The difficulty is in us finding it. Look into the place which is not a place and perceive a time which is timeless. Invocation might help but we all know how sometimes our words work and are powerful but sometimes they are but empty prayers into a hopeful void. Our most powerful experiences normally happen spontaneously, we find the Spirit "moves in mysterious ways", that it has "a mind of its own" and it is not only energy, not only intelligence, but it has a Will and a Purpose. It therefore has to be personified and the most effective means of producing results is to enter into a relationship with such beings whether they are seen as deities or nature spirits or animal guardians or ancestor spirits or fairies or saints or angels is an optional terminological and cultural matter and secondary to the fact that a link with the otherworld has been made.

If one can get to the stage where one is having a conversation of a sort that rarely happens, through a process that is hard to repeat, with a spirit that has a will and a purpose of its own, neither of you is wasting this opportunity with idle chat, you are negotiating and contracting a deal, you almost invariably have something that you have to do for them, agreed by sacred contract. People come away from such an experience saying sometimes openly, but more likely only inwardly to themselves, that they have sworn away their lives, they have a mission, a purpose, a plan, they are on a path.

Another type of experience is an experience of One-ness that cannot be described but from which people always extract some meaning in varying different pardoxical ways. I see it as likely that all religions, even though they are different and even contradictory in many of their beliefs and practises, derive their inspiration from such experiences. Pagans perceive many different spirits, gods and goddesses but it is another hypothesis that they are all facets of the Divine, and there is at the centre of everything a Divine Union, which includes them all. This is a philosophy can can allow pagans to treat with christianity, islam and buddhism, and recognise how these belief systems arose from earlier pagan traditions. It is thus an eclectic and unitarian proposition that recognises the validity of everybody's spiritual experience. To recognise the validity of the experience is not necessarily to approve of all the beliefs practices and deeds that imperfect humans may then create as a result. I do want that to always remain clear. Not only is it helpful to retain if you can a critical perception as to whether to take on board another's vision, you should leave open the possibility that your own is flawed. How are you to know that? Usually by testing it practically. With the wisdom thereby gained there is the possibility of meeting people of other religions and sharing spiritual space with them. The more spiritual you both are the easier this becomes.

The mystic experience that cannot be described is certainly at the root of Daoism and Buddhism, it appears in the mystical traditions of Christianity and of Islam, through the Sufis. It is only one class of spiritual experience. But there are certain qualities of an experience that can be looked for. Firstly however bizarre the experience, you strangley enough recognize it as completely valid. Given a choice, which we always have, to pursue it, we perceive it of such value interest and potential, we choose to do so. We experience profound emotions, personal growth, our lives are changed, but it takes a while before we have come to terms with the experience. Even if we have an experience limited by tribal, racial or group consciousness it has a tendancy to reach beyond and embrace all nature, all creation, the global and even the transgalactic. Such is the nature of The Spirit.

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