Mystical Paths (54 page)

VII

Power began to stream from his psyche. It wrapped us up, propped us up, supported us. It was like a blood transfusion, a triple-brandy and a steel corset all rolled into one. I remember feeling high, as if I’d had more to drink than normal. I wonder now if he had somehow managed to release in us a supply of the morphine-like substance which the brain is capable of producing naturally.

‘In the name of Jesus Christ Our Lord ...’ The words, though referring to a real person, were simultaneously reverberating with symbolism, the multi-symbolic image of the Eternal Christ. Light began to flicker across my psyche in kaleidoscopic patterns. I wondered if my father, with his visual gift, was seeing bright colours. ‘In the name of the healing power of the Holy Spirit ...’ I tried to focus on the words of the prayer but I kept losing my grip on it. It was as if the rational side of my mind was slowly being submerged beneath a deeper level of consciousness. ‘... we pray that we may be aligned with Thy will. Our Father, Which art in heaven ...’ I thought: is he hypnotising us? But I didn’t think he was. We weren’t being put under. We were being in some extraordinary way raised up, offered to God, as it were, on a platter. ‘...
Thy will be
done ...
’
I thought: I must concentrate, must take all this in, must analyse exactly what he’s doing .. .

Then I realised I was no longer capable of analysis.

VIII

‘
...
for thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory ...
’

The prayer was like a blow-torch, each word sending Catherine wheels of sparks in all directions.

‘... for ever and ever ...’

I was thinking of the Book of Revelation. All those symbols. Apocalyptic. ‘I saw a new heaven and a new earth ...’

‘Amen,’ said Lewis in such a brisk voice that I opened my eyes with a start.

I tried to say ‘Amen’ too but nothing happened, and a second later I realised my father also was silent. It was as if we were conscious but paralysed.

‘You can both hear me, can’t you?’ said Lewis in his most matter-of-fact voice. ‘Now whatever you do, don’t start hypnotising yourselves into believing you’re hypnotised. We want to keep hypnosis right out of this. The effects of hypnotism wear off. We’re looking for a permanent cure involving grace and will, not a temporary relief generated by mind-control. Say something to me, would you, Nicholas, just to prove you haven’t hypnotised yourself into being a zombie.’

The power of speech was instantly restored to me. ‘I was thinking of that quote from Revelation: "I saw a new heaven and a new earth."‘

‘Fine. What were you thinking, Jonathan?’

‘I was thinking: "Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life and few there be that find it."‘

‘Good. Both of you ultra-receptive but both of you
compos
mentis.
We’re getting on. Now lean forward and grip each other’s forearms.’

Instantly we obeyed him, and as I noted the lack of hesitation I suddenly saw what it meant. All our minds were now operating in unison. It wasn’t a case of hypnotism where Lewis’s mind would have been in control of ours. All three minds were now flowing into and out of one another without impediment.

‘Not much room ,there,’ reflected Lewis, for the table was not large and our arms covered most of the surface. He paused, the surgeon contemplating the body on the operating table, and then to my surprise moved to the fireplace. On the mantelshelf stood the vase of daffodils which my father had earlier threatened to smash against the wall. As I watched, Lewis selected the largest, yellowest daffodil, brought it back to the table and laid it with care across our joined forearms.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘take a moment to reflect how confined youare by your present position, how handicapped you are by those joined forearms which deter all spontaneous movement. Think what your lives would be like in the physical world if you were permanently welded together like that. Imagine what a narrow world it would be, how distorted and fragmentary and frustrating.’

The silence began.

He allowed it to last a full five minutes, and throughout that time he was not controlling our psyches but supporting them with that unceasing, phenomenal power. It gave us the strength to concentrate, to focus on the horror of a crippled, diminished existence, and by the end of the fifth minute I could hardly wait to tear myself free.

But Lewis said: ‘Keep holding each other; maintain that position but allow your fingers to relax. I want you to reflect for a moment on three texts, all from St John’s Gospel.’ And when we had slackened our grip he added: The first is from chapter eight. Jesus says: "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."‘

He paused again, and in that silence I heard the sentence resonate as the footsteps of mysticism and Gnosticism echoed and re-echoed in that classic Christian corridor. Then I saw Truth as a multi-sided diamond with the themes of heresy and orthodoxy all glittering facets of a single reality, and beyond the facets I glimpsed that mysterious Christ of St John’s Gospel, not the Jesus of history but the Christ of Eternity who in turn pointed beyond himself to the Truth no human mind could wholly grasp. And I thought: there is no truth but Truth, but that sounded so paradoxical, so odd, just as words always do when they’re labouring at the outer limits of human understanding, and meanwhile Lewis was speaking again; Lewis was saying:

‘... and the second text is from chapter ten. Jesus says: "I am come that they might have life, and that they may have it more abundantly."‘

I felt my father tremble.

Or perhaps I was the one who was trembling. The author of that Gospel seemed so close, speaking my language, striving to express the inexpressible, reaching deep into the well of mysticism to grasp the symbols which illuminated eternity. And I thought: he’s present, he’s here – although of course that was impossible, but now we were moving along the boundary of the possible and the impossible, and Lewis was talking again; Lewis was saying, raising his hands at last to touch us:

‘... and the third text is from chapter eleven. It’s the text which so many people nowadays associate with funerals, but that’s such an irony as it’s the greatest call to life that’s ever been uttered. Jesus says –’ He broke off, then began again. It was as if he were shifting into a higher gear, and simultaneously, as the timbre of his voice changed, I felt his power lifting us to the very top of his psychic range.

‘– Jesus says: "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me,
though he were dead,
YET SHALL HE LIVE –’

The Force erupted in our midst.

IX

There was no sound but the air was rent from top to bottom as that boundary wall between the possible and the impossible was finally blasted to pieces. I saw Lewis, the channel, shudder under the impact of the explosion, but a second later as his right hand pushed down on my head, a brilliant light blinded my eyes, and I saw my mother –

**********

– and there she was, sitting in the nursery rocking-chair and reading me a bedtime story about my hero, Jesus the healer. She was quoting: "Suffer the little children –"‘ but I was interrupting impatiently: ‘No, not that bit, read the story where he raises the little girl from the dead!’ and my mother laughed.

I was in 1949 – how did I know it was 1949? – I’ve no idea, but it didn’t matter because my mother in 1949 was now side by side with my hero the healer in the first century – but both were present with me in 1968. And as this truth shot through my consciousness I realised that the walls of time were buckling beneath the mighty power of the Spirit –

* * * * * * * * * *

– and then suddenly the walls collapsed completely so that we were all eternally present in the mind of God, the child raising his tin soldiers from the dead, my mother laughing in the nursery, my father striding through the front door after a day at the Theological College – and with us was not only the Jesus of history but the Christ of Eternity, holding us together in a moment of triumph over death and victory over darkness. 1949 – 1968 – it didn’t matter, it was all one, because the power of Christ was beyond time, no other power could withstand him, and now the darkness generated by my mother’s absence was being rolled back and back and back – back until it was utterly extinguished – by that light which was the light of the world –

* * * * * * * * * *

– Light of the World. In the name of Jesus Christ –’

I heard the voice of the exorcist in 1968, the exorcist who was delivering us from the Dark, and when I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was the daffodil shivering on our forearms.
‘
In the name of Jesus Christ –
’

Some sort of arrow-prayer followed – a brief sentence – something about going forth separately – new life – in harmony with the indwelling spirit ... But I could barely hear the words because I was so mesmerised by the daffodil. I found I couldn’t stop looking at it, couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop – Lewis suddenly removed his hand from my head. I almost passed out as the power was withdrawn, but I couldn’t pass out because I had to keep looking at the –

‘... Amen,’ I heard Lewis say in a voice barely above a whisper. Then slowly, very slowly, he drew my left arm from my father’s right, and slowly, very slowly, he drew my right arm from my father’s left. Exhausted we slumped back in our chairs, but between us in the open space created on the uncovered table, the daffodil glowed, brilliantly present, in the spring sunshine which streamed through the window.

X

Lewis drew the folding chair back to the table and sat down.

Then nobody spoke and nobody moved for a long time.

I just sat listening to the silence. I could not remember when I had last heard such a silence, but at last I realised why it was so silent. My father’s psyche had stopped screaming. The torment was no more.

I took a quick journey around my new self and patted the ragged edges into place. Birth’s an untidy business. My new self felt very vulnerable. I enfolded it instinctively with my psyche and waited.

In the end it was my father who spoke first. He began to recite the General Thanksgiving, and I closed my eyes in prayer but when I opened them afterwards I saw him with heightened clarity. He looked very old, very frail, very tired, but his eyes were luminous, as if still reflecting the light which had flowed through Lewis. I had barely been aware of my father during the healing, but Lewis’s left hand had been placed on his head, just as Lewis’s right hand had been placed on mine.

I looked at our healer. He was grey with exhaustion, limp as a corpse, his eyes closed.

‘Nicholas,’ said my father, ‘fetch the brandy from the medicine cupboard.’

‘No, not brandy,’ said Lewis, opening his eyes. ‘It has no effect immediately afterwards. Tea’s best. With sugar in it.’

I made the tea while they sat in silence. In the kitchen I found Whitby hiding behind the door. Odd how sensitive animals areto atmosphere; they always know when something peculiar’s going on.

When I returned with the tray my father said, picking up the daffodil: ‘I shall press this and frame it and hang it on the wall, and every time you come here, Nicholas, it’ll be a sign that I want you to be yourself, just as Anne would have wished.’ My father had no pictures on the walls, only a crucifix over the bed. I nodded. Then suddenly I felt so weak I couldn’t even pour out the tea. But my father was able to do it. I could see he was stronger now.

We drank the tea. Lewis’s face lost its greyish tinge and he made a series of normal minor movements, rubbing his nose, scratching the back of his head, shaking his watch to get it going again. I said: ‘Does it often stop when you heal? And why exactly does it stop? Is it to do with an alteration in the magnetic field?’ but Lewis merely said: ‘You and your passion for rational analysis!’ and I knew it was the wrong time to cross-question him.

Meanwhile my father was fingering the bandage on his right hand and saying: ‘I felt no pain when I picked up that heavy teapot. Perhaps my hands are already cured.’

‘I’d be very surprised if they were,’ said Lewis dryly, at last sounding like his normal self. ‘I don’t go in for miracles.’ ‘But they’ll get better quickly now, won’t they?’

‘Yes – provided you take care to eat properly and get plenty of rest. I’m sure you’ve been very debilitated for a long time.’ My father said simply: ‘I can hardly remember what it’s like not to feel ill with exhaustion. It required such an enormous effort to keep Nicholas safe– and in fact after that journey to Grantchester –’ He stopped.

I drew in my breath sharply but before I could speak Lewis said in his most sympathetic voice: ‘It must have taken every ounce of strength you had.’

My father was stunned. ‘You know?’ he said as if he could hardly believe his ears. ‘You know about my journey to Grant-chester?’

‘I know about it in the sense that I’ve grasped what hap- pened, but I confess I’m still in the dark about how you managed to do it. I’ve never before encountered a case of bilocation.’ ‘Oh, as a case of bilocation it was all rather a failure,’ said my father with a deep sigh. ‘Obviously I’m too old now to make a success of it. I found I couldn’t travel as I am, you see. Insufficient strength. So I had to travel as I used to be — which made a mess of everything.’

‘You mean you made a conscious effort to travel in that form?’

‘No, it just happened that way. The problem was that I needed all my energy to break down the spatial barrier, and when I got to the temporal barrier there was no energy left so I couldn’t, as it were, bring myself up to date ... But Father, tell me: how did you know about this journey?’

‘Nicholas saw you at Grantchester.’

‘But how extraordinary!’ My father was suddenly tense with excitement. ‘I saw him, but I didn’t think he saw me. He just sat there on that bench and .. His voice trailed away as he became absorbed in re-examining the experience.

I said: ‘Tell us how it happened,’ and my father, collecting his thoughts, answered willingly: ‘It all began when Martin phoned on ... was it Monday? I was beside myself with anxiety,’ he added, turning to Lewis, ‘because I knew Nicholas wasn’t confiding in me and I could feel such evil engulfing him. Then Martin telephoned the house and left a message to say Nicholas had gone to Grantchester and I wasn’t to worry because he’d be safe with the monks. Martin’s so kind to me. Down he comes here regularly to listen while I talk about my worries — what an old bore I must so often seem to him! But he’s so good and he never complains.

‘As soon as I got Martin’s message telling me not to worry I began to worry myself to death. I thought: he wouldn’t be sending that special message unless he felt Nicholas was behaving so oddly that I needed extra reassurance. And in my agony I said to myself: if only I could be there! If only I could rush at once to Grantchester to protect Nicholas from the evil that’s engulfing him! But it seemed I could do no more to save himthan align myself once more with Our Lord in that very difficult and demanding form of prayer.

‘But as I prayed I was conscious of my longing growing. I longed and I longed and I longed to be at Grantchester, and in my mind I could see the house so clearly just as it was in those days when I’d been the Abbot. Then suddenly, Nicholas, I knew — I
knew —
you were in the visitors’ garden, and at once I thought: if I could be the Abbot again before the war I could be in the garden, doing my stint of outdoor work — we all had to help in the garden in those days — and instinctively I thought not of the spring but of the autumn, when I’d so often raked up the leaves. I always found that particular task so satisfying, tidying up the garden and making it neat, and soon the scene was so vividly imprinted on my mind that I could almost smell the smoke from the bonfire.

The next moment, before I could stop myself, I was taking my crucifix down from the wall, and holding the cross in both hands I said aloud: "I
will
be there, I
will,
I WILL!’ And I called on God to bestow his grace upon me and give me the strength I needed for the journey.

‘Then the colours of the objects around me began to change and I moved out of my body to the corner of the ceiling up there and I looked down on my body, just as I always do prior to a vision, but within seconds the darkness, moving from left to right, blotted out the room and I covered my eyes with my hands.

‘When I opened my eyes again I was at Grantchester, but it took me a moment to work out where I was because I was in the tool-shed and I had expected to be on the visitors’ lawn; I suppose I had been thinking so hard of getting the rake in order to tidy up the leaves. However, once I’d got my bearings I found the rake and went out. Then I got another shock because there was a hedge in front of the shed, a new hedge — what a surprise! As I stood staring at it I realised how strong the sun was, so automatically I pulled up my cowl — and the moment I drew it forward I began to get very confused about what time I was in. The new hedge and the warm sunshine certainly suggested I was in the spring of 1968, but as I stood with the rake in my hand I had the terrible feeling I was revisiting a hot autumn day thirty years earlier; I had a picture of two times juxtaposed but not touching, a picture of myself watching another time through a wall of glass which I knew I could never break. It was then that I glanced down at my hand, and when I saw the Abbot’s ring on my finger I knew my worst suspicions had been confirmed.

‘But I told myself stubbornly: it won’t matter. I’m here, and when I see Nicholas I shall come up to date.

‘I didn’t put the rake back in the shed. I was too confused. I just walked on with it down the path towards the peach-tree – doing
very
well that peach-tree was, so much more substantial than I remembered – and then as I glanced across the lawn .. .

‘The strange thing was, Nicholas, that as soon as I saw you I knew beyond any shadow of doubt that communication was impossible. I couldn’t bring myself up to date after all, so you remained
now,
in 1968, while I remained
then,
in the late 1930s. I saw the spring around you, the green leaves on the beech-tree, the flowers blooming along the border, but it was no spring I could ever enter as I was.

‘I was so stunned, so absorbed in this conundrum, that I moved like an automaton. I didn’t stop, I just walked into the kitchen-garden – I think I had some last desperate hope that once I passed through the archway I might find myself in my eighties again, restored to 1968, and indeed that did happen but not in the way I wanted. My journey was terminated, not extended. Once I was in the kitchen-garden the darkness returned, moving from right to left to cut off my vision, and when I next opened my eyes I was lying on my bed in this room and feeling so exhausted that I thought I might die.

‘How Padre Pio achieved his psychic journeys I’ve no idea but obviously he was considerably younger and very much more gifted than I am. How depressed I felt afterwards! I didn’t believe you’d seen me, Nicholas. Certainly I hadn’t been able to help you in any way. All I’d done was project the image of my past self through space, and I couldn’t be more surprisednow to learn that I was in fact visible to you. But was the projection something which could have been witnessed by people other than you? Or was it only an image transmitted between two abnormally gifted psyches which were also abnormally linked together?’

I said firmly: ‘I saw you with all my eyes – the two physical ones and the psychic one. They were all working together.’ Then I became aware of Lewis looking at me quizzically so I added: ‘But I could be wrong.’ And finally I concluded: ‘I don’t know.’

‘All that matters,’ said Lewis to my father, ‘is that you were there in some form or other, just as you were present in the chapel this morning.’

At once my father said: ‘I was terrified. I could feel Nicholas’s psyche screaming, begging me to save him, and I knew he was in the chapel, but I was so weak that I realised it would take me several minutes to get there if I tried to walk. So I grabbed the crucifix again and begged God for His help, and the moment I opened my eyes after the prayer I was at the chapel; the translation was immediate. I was standing outside the main door – but once again I was in the wrong time. I was at least twenty years younger, I knew that, because nothing ached, although I could see the age-spots on my hand when I raised it to open the door.

‘Inside I saw Nicholas beside the altar with two people – or was it three? I couldn’t look at the other people properly. I was so terrified that I just shouted Nicholas’s name at the top of my voice – but of course he was in 1968 and couldn’t hear. So then I shouted: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, SAVE HIM!" and the next moment I saw the flash of metal in Nicholas’s hand as he held a little cross aloft. He was invoking the power of Our Lord, just as I’d done, and as soon as I’d realised that, every muscle in my body relaxed – it was like a sign that he was going to be all right. I had to wipe away tears of relief, and when I opened my eyes again I was lying slumped on my bed at the cottage.’

‘That time you did help me,’ I said. ‘You saved my life.’

‘He can hear about that later,’ said Lewis, standing up. ‘At present nothing’s more important than that he should rest.’ ‘No, wait!’ said my father, clutching his sleeve. ‘I know Nicholas is out of danger now and I know you’ll train him how to keep himself safe in future, but Father, I must just take a moment to beg you to be patient with him. As I’ve already said, he’s a good boy at heart, but he’s
very wilful,
so wilful at times that you may well be tempted to hit him as you once hit me – and that reminds me of a question I’ve always wanted to ask you: did you regret your behaviour afterwards? I understood, of course, why you acted as you did. You weren’t just giving vent to a sadistic impulse; you genuinely felt I had to learn the hard way that humility saves and arrogance kills. But of course, your violence was very unbecoming conduct for a priest, wasn’t it?’

I could bear the senility no longer. By that time I was emotionally exhausted and my patience finally snapped. ‘Father,’ I yelled, ‘this is
not
Father Darcy! This is –’

But then I found I was no longer so sure who he was.