DOES HE KNOW A MOTHERS HEART, by Arun Shourie.

 

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DOES HE KNOW A MOTHERS HEART

by Arun Shourie. 

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If one is, for whatever reason, not familiar with personal details of the authors life, and is only familiar with the valiant battle he's continued in the public life from emergency era onward if not before, the opening in this book is startling, and one immediately wonders how this man with so huge a dark cloud on his family as an only child burdened so very tremendously.  

His account of the personal part is as simple and direct as his writings have made a reader expect, not shorn of emotional part. But here he begins the story by asking a question that really doesn't belong as much to an Indian frame - whether of philosophy or faith, tradition or bringing up - as one of an abrahmic one, and this is where he moves on to, after the personal account, asking the question that the title has incorporated. 

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"My father’s courage as he evacuated Hindus in July-August 1947 out of Lahore—where he was City Magistrate at the time. The courage with which he settled, comforted and on occasion quelled the raging refugees in camps across Punjab. My mother’s courage as she comforted her mother and father when they lost a young son, as husbands deserted two of their daughters. My mother-in-law’s courage as she went on looking after all of us even as rheumatoid arthritis twisted and turned and crippled her hands and feet. Malini’s3 courage, Veena’s4 courage evident in the dignity and fortitude with which they have borne blows of unimaginable severity, faced life, brought up their children single-handed, and, on top of it, continued working . . . Here we are: we get so puffed up just because we have stood up to some authority-of-the-moment. And here are these girls: they have stood up to life itself."

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"Adit has taught us lessons upon lessons. He has given us a sense of proportion. I am dismissed from the Indian Express? But he hasn’t had and isn’t going to have a job at all. In losing my place at the Express, I feel that my tongue has been yanked out? But Adit can scarcely speak at all. At every turn of this kind, I have but to look at him—he is laughing away, almost breathless, with someone over some little joke, happy in his little world."

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"Malini was born to Mithu Chib—now Mithu Alur. She and her husband were in London at the time. Malini too had been struck by cerebral palsy. 

"They had returned to India. Mithu is another of those ladies who just won’t give up or give in. She set up the first school for spastic children. Her sister, Mita Nundy, set up the second one in Delhi. It was in all of two or three rooms. 

"Anita would drive Adit to the school. Soon, she joined it. 

"Again, so many helped. Mrs Nargis Dutt had helped raise funds for the school in Bombay. For the school in Delhi, Mr Rajiv Gandhi, then the Prime Minister, sanctioned governmental assistance. Mr Jagmohan, then the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, sanctioned land at institutional rates. Mr N.A. Palkhivala got TISCO to send steel at a concessional rate . . . A building specially designed for wheelchair-bound children came up. ... "

" ... Many placed impediments. One casteist minister, who contributed to ruining several institutions, demanded to know the caste-wise breakdown of students and teachers and the reasons why the school was not implementing the reservations’ edicts of government . . ."

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"Subbulakshmi began a song, Yaad aave, Vrindavan mein Krishna ki leelaa . . . She had just sung a stanza or two, Adit pursed his lip and began to cry . . . I immediately took him out of his chair and lifted him on to my shoulder and pressed him to my heart . . . ‘Adit tum royo mat, yeh to gaanaa hi hai . . .’ ‘No, no,’ Subbulakshmi said. ‘That shows how much he understands music. I have a granddaughter. She too, on this very song, at this very line, begins crying . . .’"

"Thirty years later, a role reversal. We are in Chennai. Adit is to be examined at the Sankar Nethralaya. We are staying at the house of dear friends. Recitations and bhajans are often going on in their home. Early morning. Having completed my pranayama and asanas, I come out of our room. Subbulakshmi’s voice. She is singing Meera’s bhajans. 

"I rush back, bring Adit out—for he knows this set of bhajans. He is all attention—he has his head lowered as he does when he is concentrating. I am stroking Adit’s shoulders and back. Subbulakshmi sings: 

'Ansuan jal seench seench prem bel boyee . . . 

"I just cannot hold tears back. I try, but I just cannot, though no sound escapes my lips. The song over, I take Adit back to our room. I have deliberately kept myself behind him, out of his sight, gently pushing the wheelchair. But he turns, pulls me to himself. Takes my head to his chest, holds it there, and, as he often does, twirls my ear. ... "

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Here on, he turns to questioning religions, looking at Bible - both Old and New Testaments - and Koran. 

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"Suppose there are forty-five righteous persons, Abraham asks. Will You spare the city then? 

"God assures him, I will spare it . . . 

"If there are forty? Thirty? Twenty? What if there are ten? 

"Each time God says ‘I will not destroy it for the sake of forty/thirty/twenty/ten.’12 The same argument could be taken to there being just one righteous person in the city. And God would have to promise not to go ahead with His resolve to destroy the cities. But Abraham does not press the point. Set those two cities aside for a moment. And think of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the coastal settlements that were hit by the tsunami, think of the regions in POK in which nearly 90,000 people were killed by the earthquake. Could it be that God did not find a single righteous person or ten or twenty in any of them?"

"Two angels come to Sodom in the evening. They reach Lot’s house. He prostrates before them, invites them to spend the night in his home.13 

"Men from Sodom surround the house. ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight?’ they demand. ‘Bring them out to us that we may know them carnally.’14 

"Lot begs them to spare the men. ‘See now, I have two daughters who have not known a man; please, let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you wish; only do nothing to these men, since this is the reason they have come under the shadow of my roof.’15 What have the poor daughters done that their father should be so ready to make an offering of them to the lust and vengefulness of the Sodom men?"

"Lot and his family leave. Lot’s wife looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt.17 Reflect for a moment: Why has this fate been visited upon her? Because she disobeyed a command? Because a longing for what she was leaving behind lingered in her heart?"

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"Nor is His obsession about being revered limited to individuals. Pestilence, destruction, death are brought down on entire peoples—including, and especially on the people He has Himself chosen. Entire cities are obliterated for faltering in their reverence of Him. ‘If there is a calamity in a city,’ we read in the Book of Amos, ‘will not the Lord have done it?’26 God sets out how He will bring down cities and empires because they have had the audacity to browbeat the people He has chosen.27 Then he turns on the chosen people themselves. In part this is because of what might be seen as personal sins and wrongdoings:"

" ... I will punish all—the circumcised as much as the uncircumcised, He declares, because the former—‘all the house of Israel’—‘are uncircumcised in the heart’. Through His prophet, Jeremiah, He decrees calamity upon calamity, and declares that, though the people, hammered thus, shall cry out for relief, He shall not relent. ‘They shall die gruesome deaths,’ Jeremiah reports God as having told him. “They shall not be lamented nor shall they be buried, but they shall be like refuse on the face of the earth. They shall be consumed by the sword and by famine, and their corpses shall be meat for the birds of heaven and for the beasts of the earth . . .’ ‘Behold, I will bring such a catastrophe on this place, that whoever hears of it, his ears will tingle,’ God vows. The days are corning when this place shall not be known by its name but as ‘the Valley of Slaughter’. I shall cause the cities and their inhabitants to suffer defeat and destruction at the hands of their enemies and of those who seek their lives. I shall break the cities ‘as one breaks a potter’s vessel which cannot be made whole again’. ‘I will make the city desolate and a hissing; everyone who passes by it will be astonished and hiss because of all its plagues. And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and flesh of their daughters, and everyone shall eat the flesh of his friend in the siege and in the desperation with which their enemies and those who seek their lives shall drive them to despair.’ ‘Their infants shall be dashed in pieces,’ God declares, ‘And their women with child ripped open . . .’30 All this for what? Because they have ‘committed prostitution with pagan gods’! ‘Because they have forsaken Me and made this an alien place, because they have burned incense in it to other gods . . . and filled this place with the blood of innocents.’"

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December 30, 2020 - December , 2021.

Kindle Edition, 432 pages

Published February 25th 2013 

by HarperCollins Publishers India 

(first published July 2011)

ISBN:- 139789350295410

ASIN:- B00BL04VWQ 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4426951821

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1962 Indo - China War Hero: Jaswant Singh Rawat, by Panini Yadav.

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1962 Indo - China War Hero: Jaswant Singh Rawat,

by Panini Yadav. 

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One gets a sample of the book so as to form some idea about whether one would like to buy it, akin to being able to see it on a reasonable book store. 

This one, the sample provided by Amazon on Kindle has one blank page, supposedly in middle. 

While that might force some people to buy the book, others woukd be disgusted enough to never wish to do so. 

It will, at the very least, take time for getting over the disgust, to decide - with no basis whatsoever - whether one should buy it.

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At the very outset it's clear that the story writer isn't from an affluent background, just from the level of his language skills in English - it isnt ckear if its a translation from an original hindi account, or was written as it is, in English by someone not well versed therein - but also, that the publication didn't involve a competent editor who could point out and make the necessary corrections. 

It's not at all odd that this convinces one of the sincerity of this effort on part of someone to tell the story of this simple soldier who gave his life defending India in 1962, among many other such soldiers, in a war when the army didn't even get minimal necessary funding from the then government of India - often the soldiers spending winters on Himaalayan heights lacked warm clothing, boots and bkankets as well, not to mention adequate ammunition, because the then PM was so very Gandhian that he almost agreed to a proposal by his leftist advisor Menon to the tune of converting India's ammunition factory to close down and produce household pots and pans for poor. 

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The book is very small, so much so this review might just have more words. But the succinctly told story nevertheless is impressive. 

A valuable factor is the set of photographs with account of afterwards. ...............................................................................................

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November 25, 2021 - 

December 30, 2021 - December 30, 2021. 

Purchased November 29, 2021. 

Kindle Edition

Published May 23rd 2020

ASIN:- B08943D7H4

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4355224009

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Zombies, by Colin Wilson.

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Zombies, 

by Colin Wilson. 

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"Zombies, according to Alfred Metraux’s book, Voodoo (1959), are “people whose decease has been duly recorded and whose burial has been witnessed, but who are found a few years later . . . in a state verging on idiocy”. In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, says Metraux, “there are few, even among the educated, who do not give some credence to these macabre stories”. Understandably, such tales have met with skepticism outside Haiti."

"According to Zora Hurston, people were “zombified” if they betrayed the secrets of the Haitian secret societies. No one believed her, and Metraux writes patronizingly of “Zora Houston [sic], who is very superstitious”. Nevertheless, Metraux tells a story involving two members of “high society”. After his car broke down, one of them was invited to the home of a little white bearded man, a houngan or vodoun (voodoo) priest. Piqued by his guest’s skepticism about a wanga (magical charm), the old man asked him if he had known a certain M. Celestin – who had, in fact, been one of the visitor’s closest friends. Summoned by a whip crack, a man shambled into the room, and to his horror the visitor recognized his old friend Celestin, who had died six months earlier. When the zombie reached out for the visitor’s glass – obviously thirsty – the houngan stopped him from handing it over, saying that nothing could be more dangerous than to give or take something from the hand of a dead man. The houngan told his visitor that Celestin had died from a spell and that the magician who had killed him had sold him for twelve dollars.

"Other stories recounted by Metraux make it clear that he considers zombies to be people who have literally died and then been raised from the dead. Understandably, he rejects this as superstition. In fact, as we shall see, Zora Hurston was correct and Metraux was wrong.

"Haiti, in the West Indies, was discovered by Columbus in 1492, but it was not until two centuries later that it became a base for pirates and buccaneers. French colonists developed Haiti’s rich sugar trade, using black slaves kidnapped from Africa. The Spanish ceded Haiti (or Saint-Domingue, as it was called) to the French in 1697. 

"The slaves were treated with unbelievable cruelty – for example, hung from trees with nails driven through the ears or smeared with molasses and left to be eaten alive by ants. Another horrifying practice involved filling a slave’s anus with gunpowder and setting it alight, an act the Frenchmen often referred to as “blasting black’s ass”. In spite of the risks, slaves ran away whenever they could and hid in the mountains, until, eventually, certain mountainous regions became “no-go areas” for whites. In the 1740s a slave named Macandal, who had lost his arm in a sugar press, escaped to the mountains and taught the runaway Maroons (as the slaves were known) to use poison against their oppressors. Mass poisoning of cattle was followed by mass poisoning of the colonists. Macandal was eventually betrayed and sentenced to be burned alive (although, according to legend, he used his magical powers to escape). But from then on, the secret societies spread revolt among the black slaves. After the great revolts of the 1790s, French authority virtually collapsed, and although it was savagely restored under Napoléon, he was never able to conquer the interior of the island. A series of black emperors ruled until 1859, but the island has alternated between a state of virtual anarchy and harsh authoritarian rule ever since, both of which have nurtured the secret societies."

"When Davies went to Haiti to investigate, his attention focused on Datura stramonium, known in America as jimsonweed and in Haiti as zombie’s cucumber. ... Davies later concluded that “zombification” is not simply a matter of malice. The secret societies had a sinister reputation, but it seemed that they were less black than they were painted and often acted as protectors of the oppressed. Zombification, it seemed, was often a punishment for flagrant wrongdoing."

"But it was clear to Davies that the poison of the puffer fish is not the sole secret of “zombification”. In his extraordinary book The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985), he describes his search for samples of zombie poison. His aim was to obtain samples and take them back to be tested in the laboratory. But although he met a number of houngans and witnessed some remarkable ceremonies – in a number of which he saw people “possessed” by spirits (so that one woman was able to place a lighted cigarette on her tongue without being burned) – his quest came to a premature end when one of his major backers died and another suffered a debilitating stroke. But his book leaves very little doubt that the secret of “zombification” is a poison that can produce all the signs of death. When the body is dug up, an antidote is administered (Davies was able to study some antidotes and concluded that the “magical” powers of the priest seem to be as important as the ingredients themselves), and then the victim is often stupefied by further drugs that reduce the subject to a level of virtual idiocy."

"Wade Davies was left in no doubt about the reality of “zombification”. But his investigation into the vodoun religion also seems to have convinced him that not all the phenomena of vodoun can be explained in such naturalistic terms."

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December 22, 2021 - December 22, 2021.

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Patience Worth, by Colin Wilson.

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Patience Worth, 

by Colin Wilson. 

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" ... Patience seems incapable of using one word where ten will do, bringing to mind Lincoln’s remark: “He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.” It was impossible to get her to answer even the simplest question with a direct reply. ... "

"On the other hand, the book seemed to indicate a knowledge of ancient Rome that Mrs Curran insisted she had never possessed. The distinguished psychical investigator G.N.M. Tyrrell, writing thirty years later, said: “There is not here the greatness of genius, but . . . there is a fount of inspiration which might have provided the material for a work of genius had it been expressed through the conscious mind of, say, a Coleridge instead of . . . Mrs Curran”, and he went on to quote Caspar Yost’s view that the book revealed an intimate knowledge of the Rome of Augustus and Tiberius, and also of the topography of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. But then, of course, Yost was a somewhat biased witness, having been one of the original “discoverers” of Patience Worth."

"In that same year – 1916 – Emily Hutchings called upon the eminent literary critic William Marion Reedy, and showed him the first ten thousand words of a novel about Missouri politics and journalism. In recent years Emily had dropped out of the limelight, for it had become clear that her presence was not essential for Patience to manifest herself. Reedy was impressed by the novel, and congratulated her. A week later he probably felt like eating his words when Emily called again, and confessed that the novel had been “dictated” by the spirit of Mark Twain – then proceeded to produce several pages with the help of the ouija board. The novel was accepted, and published under the title of Jap Herron, and was well received – although it was generally agreed that its quality was much inferior to the works Mark Twain had produced while he was alive. An effort by Mark Twain’s publishers to suppress the novel was unsuccessful. 

"During this period Patience’s fame continued to grow. The Victorian novel Hope Trueblood met with an enthusiastic reception from many respectable journals, although the reading public found that even Patience’s “modern” style was too wordy. In England the book was issued without any indication of its “psychic” origin, and received mixed reviews; but at least most of the critics seemed to assume that it was the first novel of an English writer. The Currans also launched Patience Worth’s Magazine, to make Patience’s poems and lesser writings accessible to her admirers; it was edited by Caspar Yost, and ran to ten issues."

"For those who are willing to accept the possibility of life after death, the most convincing explanation is certainly that Patience was a “spirit”. But that does not necessarily mean that she was really what she claimed to be. Anyone who has studied “spirit communication” soon recognizes that “spirits” are very seldom what they claim to be; G.K. Chesterton put in more bluntly and said that they are liars. If Patience was a seventeenth-century Quaker who was killed by Red Indians, it is difficult to understand why she was so evasive and why she failed to answer straightforward questions that might have enabled the Currans to prove that such a person really existed. Litvag’s book leaves one with the conviction that if Patience was a spirit, then it was probably the spirit of a frustrated would-be writer with a strong tendency to mythomania."

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December 22, 2021 - December 22, 2021.

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Who Was Harry Whitecliffe? By Colin Wilson.

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Who Was Harry Whitecliffe? 

By Colin Wilson. 

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"According to a book published in France in 1978, one of England’s most extraordinary mass murderers committed suicide in a Berlin gaol in the middle of the jazz era. His name was Harry Whitecliffe, and he murdered at least forty women. Then why is his name not more widely known – at least to students of crime? Because when he was arrested he was masquerading under the name Lovach Blume, and his suicide concealed his true identity from the authorities.

"The full story can be found in a volume called Nouvelles Histoires Magiques – New Tales of Magic – by Louis Pauwels and Guy Breton, published by Editions J’ai Lu. In spite of the title – which sounds like fiction – it is in fact a series of studies in the paranormal and bizarre; there are chapters on Nostradamus, Rasputin and Eusapia Palladino, and accounts of such well-known mysteries as the devil’s footprints in Devon ... "

" ... He was a handsome young man of twenty-three, likeable, eccentric and fond of sport. He was also generous; he was said to have ended one convivial evening by casually giving a pretty female beggar five hundred pounds. ... "

"Meanwhile he continued to write: essays, poetry and plays. One of his comedies, Similia, had four hundred consecutive performances in London before touring England. It made him a fortune, which he quickly scattered among his friends. By the beginning of 1923 he was one of the “kings of London society”. 

"Then, in September of that year, he vanished. He sold all his possessions, and gave his publisher carte blanche to handle his work. But before the end of the year he reappeared in Dresden. The theatre there presented Similia with enormous success, the author himself translating it from English into German. It went on to appear in many theatres along the Rhine. He founded a press for publishing modern poetry, and works on modern painting – Dorian Verlag – whose editions are now worth a fortune. 

"But he was still something of a man of mystery. Every morning he galloped along the banks of the river Elbe until nine o’clock; at ten he went to his office, eating lunch there. At six in the evening, he went to art exhibitions or literary salons, and met friends. At nine, he returned home and no one knew what he did for the rest of the evening. And no one liked to ask him."

"This was the man who had committed suicide in his prison cell, and who addressed a long letter to his fiancée, Wally von Hammerstein. He told her that he was certain the devil existed, because he had met him. He was, he explained, a kind of Jekyll and Hyde, an intelligent, talented man who suddenly became cruel and bloodthirsty. He thought of himself as being like victims of demoniacal possession. He had left London after committing nine murders, when he suspected that Scotland Yard was on his trail. His love for Wally was genuine, he told her, and had caused him to “die a little”. He had hoped once that she might be able to save him from his demons, but it had proved a vain hope."

"This is the story, as told by Louis Pauwels – a writer who became famous for his collabouration with Jacques Bergier on a book called The Morning of the Magicians. Critics pointed out that that book was full of factual errors, and a number of these can also be found in his article on Whitecliffe. For example, if the date of Blume’s arrest is correct – 25 September 1924 – then it took place before Whitecliffe vanished from Dresden, on 3 October 1924 . . . But this, presumably, is a slip of the pen.

"But who was Harry Whitecliffe? According to Pauwels, he told the Berlin court that his father was German, his mother Danish, and that he was brought up in Australia by an uncle who was a butcher. His uncle lived in Sydney. But in a “conversation” between Pauwels and his fellow-author at the end of one chapter, Pauwels states that Whitecliffe was the son of a great English family. But apart from the three magistrates who opened the suicide letter – ignoring Blume’s last wishes – only Wally and her parents knew Whitecliffe’s true identity. The judges are dead, so are Wally’s parents. Wally is a 75-year-old nun who until now has never told anyone of this drama of her youth. We are left to assume that she has now told the story to Pauwels."

But an author who decided to write about him and corresponded with the two authors received no response, so she moved on to London, where there was no trace of his name or existence, either in theatre or in crime. Finally she found his identity by writing to Australia. 

" ... They usually start off as petty swindlers, then gradually become more ambitious, and graduate to murder. This is what Blume seems to have done. In the chaos of postwar Berlin he made a quick fortune by murdering and robbing postmen. Perhaps his last coup made him a fortune beyond his expectations, or perhaps the Berlin postal authorities were now on the alert for the killer. Blume decided it was time to make an attempt to live a respectable life, and to put his literary fantasies into operation. He moved to Dresden, called himself Harry Whitecliffe and set up Dorian Verlag. He became a successful translator of English plays, and may have helped to finance their production in Dresden and in theatres along the Rhine. Since he was posing as an upper-class Englishman, and must have occasionally run into other Englishmen in Dresden, we may assume that his English was perfect, and that his story of being brought up in Australia was probably true. Since he also spoke perfect German, it is also a fair assumption that he was, as he told the court, the son of a German father and a Danish mother."

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December 22, 2021 - December 22, 2021.

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Vortices, by Colin Wilson.

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Vortices, 

by Colin Wilson. 

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From atoms and molecules and smoke rings, to vortices... the last of which was what Kelvin considered his top achievement. 

"If, as Kelvin believed, matter is made up of “vortices” or whirlpools, what are these whirlpools in? Ash replies that the very question is based on a misconception. Before Einstein, scientists believed that light was a vibration in the “ether” – an unknown fluid that pervades all space. Two physicists named Michelson and Morley showed that the “ether” does not exist. Light seems to be “pure movement”, not a movement in something. A simple illustration might clarify this idea. Suppose I toss a book across the room – as I am always tossing books from my worktable onto the camp bed that serves as a halfway house to the bookshelf, while the book is in motion, it remains in every way the same book; a tiny Martian scientist sitting on it would detect no difference whatever. Yet its motion is undoubtedly real. You must regard its motion as a kind of invisible additive. Now try to imagine this invisible additive on its own. It is impossible, of course; but that does not prove that it cannot exist. When you look at the night sky you cannot imagine space going on forever; yet common sense tells you it does, even beyond the edge of the universe. Ash is suggesting that, just as energy is more “fundamental” than matter, so “pure movement” is more fundamental than energy.

"So why should energy be restricted to the speed of light? Ash writes: “If movement could have a faster speed, it would give rise to a completely different type of energy”. This he calls super-energy. (In fact, physicists have suggested in recent years the possibility of a particle called the tachyon, which is faster than light.)"

"A Cambridge don named T. C. (“Tom”) Lethbridge, who was also an archaeologist, often used his own dowsing abilities to detect buried objects. He also discovered that a pendulum – a weight on a piece of string – worked just as well as a dowsing rod – the pendulum would swing in a circle over things he was looking for. He then made another discovery that sounds absurd but that all dowsers will verify: that he could “ask the pendulum questions” and that it would reply in the negative or affirmative by swinging back and forth or in a circle. The theory advanced by scientists – like Sir William Barrett – is that the unconscious mind knows the answer and causes the muscles to make the pendulum move in a circle or a “swing”."

"So far, Lethbridge was merely “proving” that different metals caused the pendulum to respond at different lengths. He next proved to his satisfaction that all substances have their characteristic “rate” (length of the pendulum swing): oak (11 inches), mercury (12½ ), grass (16), lead (22 – the same as silver), potatoes (39). Many substances, of course, “share” a rate with others, but Lethbridge found that the weight “circled” a distinct number of times for each – for example, sixteen times for lead and twenty-two for silver."

"Lethbridge had established, at least to his own satisfaction, that emotions and ideas, as well as substances, caused the pendulum to react at a definite rate. The rate for death was 40, and this was also the rate for black, cold, anger, deceit, and sleep – obviously connected ideas. When he drew a circle divided into 40 compartments, and placed each quality or object in its appropriate compartment, he found that “opposite” qualities occurred where you would expect to find them: safety at 9, danger at 29, pleasant smells at 7, unpleasant smells at 27, and so on. 

"In a moment of idleness, he tried placing the substances at their appropriate distance from the centre – sulphur at 7 inches along line 7, chlorine 9 inches along line 9, and so on – then joined up the dots with a line – which was, of course, a spiral. Spirals (vortices) seem to play an important part in most primitive religions; they are found carved on rocks all over the world. The vortex obviously embodies some important primitive idea. And now, looking at his own spiral, it struck Lethbridge that a spiral can go on indefinitely. Why should the “dowsing spiral” stop at 40?"

"Lethbridge’s deduction from these observations may sound totally arbitrary, although in his books he makes it sound reasonable enough: that since 40 is the “rate” for death, then the pendulum beyond 40 is reacting to a level of reality “beyond death” and to yet another level at 80, another at 120, and so on, possibly ad infinitum. (He found it impossible to test a pendulum at more than 120 inches because it was too long.) 

"One of the oddities that Lethbridge observed is that in “our” world – below 40 – there is no “rate” for time; this is presumably because we are in it, and so time appears “stationary”, as a stream would to a boat drifting along it. At the second level – beyond 40 – time “registers” at 60 inches but – oddly enough – seems to have no forward motion. (I do not profess to understand what he meant.) Then, in the world beyond 80, time disappears again. 

"Lethbridge concluded that many “worlds” coexist on different “vibration rates”. We cannot see the world “beyond 40” because it moves too fast for us, so to speak, just as you cannot read the name of a station if the train goes through it too fast. But some people – “psychics” – are better at reading fast-moving words, so to speak, and keep catching glimpses of the next level of reality."

"Lethbridge died in 1971, but he would undoubtedly have approved of David Ash’s vortex theory and of the notion that paranormal events can be explained in terms of super-energy (or, as he would have said, higher vibrational rates). He would probably have added that each level of reality has its own level of super-energy and that there is no obvious limit to the number of levels. 

"This notion of levels is fundamental to occultism. Madame Blavatsky taught that there are seven levels of reality, the first three of a descending order and the last three of an ascending order. Earth is situated at the bottom, at level four, the “heaviest” and densest of all levels. Yet the sheer density of matter means that human beings are capable of greater achievement than on any other level – just as a sculptor can create more permanent works of art out of marble than out of clay."

"If I shine a beam of light through a pinhole it will form a circle of light on a screen (or photographic plate). If two pinholes are opened up side by side, the result – as you might expect – is two overlapping circles of light. But on the overlapping portions there are a number of dark lines. These are due to the “interference” of the two beams – the same effect you would get if two fast streams of traffic shot out on to the same roundabout. Now suppose the beam is dimmed so only one photon at a time can pass through either of the holes. When the image finally builds up on the photographic plate you would expect the interference bands to disappear. Instead, they are there as usual. But how can one photon at a time interfere with itself? And how does a photon flying through one hole “know” that the other hole is open? Could it possess telepathy, as Einstein jokingly suggested? . . . Perhaps the photon splits and goes through both holes? But a photon detector reveals that this is not so: only one photon at a time goes through one hole at a time. Yet, oddly enough, as soon as we begin to “watch” the photons, they cease to interfere, and the dark bands vanish. The likeliest explanation is that the photon is behaving like a wave when it is unobserved, and so goes through both holes, and interferes. The moment we try to watch it, it turns into a hard ball."

"In Science of the Gods, Ash and Hewitt have made a brave attempt to show how the vortex theory can explain many kinds of “psychic phenomena” in scientific terms, from ghosts and miracles to reincarnation and UFOs. It is an exciting and imaginative program that – inevitably – falls short of its objective. But at least it makes us aware that when Kelvin had his flash of “vision” in 1867 and developed it into the vortex theory of atoms, he may have laid the foundation for a new and more comprehensive science of reality."

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December 22, 2021 - December 22, 2021.

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Velikovsky’s Comet, by Colin Wilson.

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Velikovsky’s Comet, 

by Colin Wilson. 

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" ...  Worlds in Collision ... According to the author, Immanuel Velikovsky, the earth had been almost destroyed about three and a half thousand years ago by a near-collision with a comet; in the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that followed, cities were wiped out and whole countries laid waste. ... "

"Immanuel Velikovsky was a Russian Jew, born in Vitebsk in June 1895 who had studied mathematics in Moscow. He went on to study medicine, qualifying in 1921, then studied psychiatry in Vienna with Freud’s pupil Stekel. In 1924 he moved to Palestine to practise, and became increasingly interested in Biblical archaeology. The turning-point in his career was a reading of Freud’s Moses and Monotheism (1937). In this book Freud proposes that Moses was not a Jew but an Egyptian, and that he was a follower of the monotheistic religion of the Pharaoh Akhnaton (see chapter 11), the king who replaced the host of Egyptian gods with one single sun god. Freud proposed that Moses fled from Egypt after the death of Akhnaton (probably murdered) and imposed his religion on the Jews. 

"The obvious historical objection to this theory is that Moses is supposed to have lived about a century after the death of Akhnaton; but Freud contested this view, and moved fearlessly into the arena of historical research. Dazzled by his boldness, Velikovsky decided to do the same. His researches into Egyptian, Greek and Near Eastern history soon convinced him that much of the accepted dating is hopelessly wrong. But they led him to an even more unorthodox conclusion: that the pharaoh Akhnaton was none other than the legendary Oedipus of Greek myth, and that the story arose out of the fact that Akhnaton had murdered his father and married his mother."

"In 1939 Velikovsky moved to the United States, and continued his researches in its libraries. What precisely was the “great catastrophe”? The Austrian Harms Hoerbiger had put forward the theory that the earth has had several moons (see chapter 2), and that the collapse of one of these moons on the earth caused the great floods and upheavals recorded in the Bible and in other ancient documents. But Velikovsky came to reject the Hoerbiger theory. There was a far more exciting clue. Before the second millennium BC – and even later – the planet Venus was not grouped by ancient astronomers with the other planets. That might have been because it was so close to the sun that they mistook it for a star – in fact, it is called the morning star. But what if it was because Venus was not in its present position at that time? Velikovsky found tantalizing references in old documents to something that sounded like a near-collision of a comet with the earth. In legends from Greece to Mexico he found suggestions that this catastrophe was somehow linked with Venus. Only one thing puzzled him deeply: that other legends seemed to link the catastrophe with Zeus, the father of the gods, also known as Jupiter. He finally reconciled these stories by reaching the astonishing conclusion that Venus was “born out of Jupiter – forced out by a gigantic explosion. Venus began as a comet, and passed so close to Mars that it was dragged out of its orbit; then it came close to earth, causing the Biblical catastrophes; then it finally settled down near the sun as the planet Venus."

" ... Gordon Atwater, chairman of the astronomy department at New York’s Museum of Natural History; he published a review urging that scientists ought to be willing to consider the book without prejudice; the review resulted in his dismissal. James Putnam, the editor who accepted Worlds in Collision, was dismissed from Macmillan. Professors deluged Macmillan with letters threatening to boycott their textbooks unless Worlds in Collision was withdrawn. Macmillans failed to show the same courage that had led them to ignore similar veiled threats from Shapley; they passed on Velikovsky to the Doubleday corporation, who had no textbook department to worry about, and who were probably unable to believe their luck in being handed such a profitable piece of intellectual merchandise. Fred Whipple, Shapley’s successor at Harvard, wrote to Doubleday27 telling them that if they persisted in publishing Velikovsky, he wanted them to take his own book Earth, Moon and Planets off their list. (Twenty years later, he denied in print ever writing such a letter.) 

"Velikovsky himself was rather bewildered by the sheer violence of the reactions; it had taken him thirty years to develop his theory, and he had expected controversy; but this amounted to persecution. He was willing to admit that he could be wrong about the nature of the catastrophe; but the historical records showed that something had taken place. Why couldn’t they admit that, and then criticize his theory, instead of treating him as a madman? The only thing to do was to go on collecting more evidence."

" ... In Velikovsky’s dating, Queen Hatshepsut, generally assumed to have lived about 1500 BC, becomes a contemporary of Solomon more than four centuries later (in fact, Velikovsky identifies her with the Queen of Sheba), while the pharaoh Rameses II – assumed to live around 1250 BC – becomes a contemporary of Nebuchadnezzar more than six centuries later. The great invasion of barbarians known as the Sea Peoples, usually dated about 1200 BC, is placed by Velikovsky in the middle of the fourth century BC, about the time of the death of Plato. The arguments contained in Ages in Chaos (1953), Oedipus and Akhnaton (1960), Peoples of the Sea (1977) and Rameses II and his Time (1978) are of interest to historians rather than to scientists, but, like the earlier works, are totally absorbing to read. Two other projected volumes, The Dark Age in Greece and The Assyrian Conquest, have not so far been published. But a third volume of the Worlds in Collision series, Mankind in Amnesia, appeared posthumously in 1982. It expands a short section in Worlds in Collision arguing that catastrophic events produce a kind of collective amnesia. ... "

" ... textbook of astronomy states that the temperature on the surface of Venus “may be as high as boiling water”. Velikovsky argued that it should be much higher, since Venus is so “young” in astronomical terms. Mariner 2 revealed that the temperature on the surface of Venus is about 900°C. It also revealed the curious fact that Venus rotates backward as compared to all the other planets, an oddity that seems incomprehensible if it was formed at the same time and evolved through the same process. 

"Russian space probes also revealed that Venus has violent electrical storms. Velikovsky had argued that the planets have powerful magnetic fields, and that therefore a close brush between the earth and a “comet” would produce quite definite effects. The discovery of the Van Allen belts around the earth supported Velikovsky’s view. There also seem to be close links between the rotation of Venus and Earth – Venus turns the same face to earth at each inferior conjunction, which could have come about through an interlocking of their magnetic fields. In the 1950s Velikovsky’s assertion about electromagnetic fields in space was treated with contempt – in Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, Martin Gardner remarked dismissively that Velikovsky had invented forces capable of doing whatever he wanted them to do. His electromagnetic theory also led Velikovsky to predict that Jupiter would be found to emit radio waves, and that the sun would have an extremely powerful magnetic field. One critic (D. Menzel) retorted that Velikovsky’s model of the sun would require an impossible charge of 1019 volts. Since then, Jupiter has been found to emit radio waves, while the sun’s electrical potential has been calculated at about 1019 volts. It could be said that many of Velikovsky’s theories are now an accepted part of astrophysics except, of course, that no one acknowledges that Velikovsky was the first one to formulate them.

"Another matter on which Velikovsky seems to have been proved correct is the question of the reversal of the earth’s magnetic poles. When molten volcanic rocks cool, or when clay or brick is baked, the magnetic minerals in it are magnetized in the direction of the earth’s magnetic field. At the turn of the century Giuseppe Folgerhaiter examined Etruscan vases, looking for minor magnetic variations, and was astonished to find that there seemed to have been a complete reversal of the magnetic field around the eighth century BC. Scientists explained his findings by declaring that the pots must have been fired upside down. But in 1906 Bernard Brunhes found the same complete reversal in certain volcanic rocks. Further research revealed that there had been at least nine such reversals in the past 3.6 million years. No one could make any plausible suggestion as to why this had happened. Velikovsky’s suggestion was that it was due to the close approach of other celestial bodies and that the earth’s brush with Venus should have produced such a reversal. His critics replied that there have been no reversals in the past half-million years or so. But since then two more have been discovered – one 28,000 years ago, the other about 12500 BC, and one of Velikovsky’s bitterest opponents Harold Urey, has come to admit that the “celestial body” theory is the likeliest explanation of pole-reversal. Yet so far the crucial piece of evidence – volcanic rock revealing a reversal about 1450 BC – has not been forthcoming."

There's one problem with all this, namely, the various ancient civilisations across the world with megalithic sites seem to have given importance to a time period that has to do with orbit of Venus and earth, a matter of over 26,500 years, which does not accord with Velikovsky's theory about Venus; but it could all fit if another celestial body were involved, such as one doing everything that Velikovsky's theory says Venus did, but striking Venus instead of being Venus, and that after an encounter with earth. 

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December 21, 2021 - December 22, 2021.

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Vampires: Do They Exist? By Colin Wilson.

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Vampires: Do They Exist? 

By Colin Wilson. 

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Colin Wilson gives, to begin with, instances of documented cases, from region nrear Belgrade - Transylvania? -, most of which involve inspecting buried dead and finding them indicated, rather opposite. 

Does cremation prevent the occurrence? Hopefully so. 

"After the examination had taken place, the heads of the vampires were out off by the local gypsies and then burned along with the bodies, after which the ashes were thrown into the river Morava. The decomposed bodies, however, were laid back in their own graves. ... "

"As we study this strange account (which is admittedly difficult to do without skipping), there is an obvious temptation to dismiss it as a farrago of peasant superstition. Yet this is no secondhand tale of absurd horrors; the three doctors were officers in the army of Charles VI, Emperor of Austria – that newly emerging power that was succeeding the Holy Roman Empire. They were thoroughly familiar with corpses, having been serving in the army that had fought the Turks since 1714 and that defeated them four years later.

"A brief sketch of the historical background may clarify the emergence of vampires in the first half of the eighteenth century. For more than four centuries the Turks had dominated eastern Europe, marching in and out of Transylvania, Walachia, and Hungary and even conquering Constantinople in 1453. Don John of Austria defeated them at the great sea battle of Lepanto (1571), but it was their failure to capture Vienna after a siege in 1683 that caused the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. During the earlier stages of this war between Europe and Turkey, the man whose name has become synonymous with vampirism – Dracula, or Vlad the Impaler – struck blow after blow against the Turks, until they killed and beheaded him in 1477."

Colin Wilson gives a brief biography of Vlad Tapes, known as Dracula. He goes on to mention varios cases across Europe, both continent and U.K., and one factor common us the ceasing of disturbance after cremation. Thereafter Wilson digresses, discussing poltergeists, possession, and even a case of a spirit taking over a body of a small boy and reviving, but claiming the identity of the spirit and proving its truth; thus last one is called reincarnation by the original author, and it occurred in India, but Colin Wilson names it as possession; technically Wilson is closer to correct - since reincarnation involves a completely new life, not taking over body of someone dead at the same time. 

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December 21, 2021 - December 21, 2021.

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Unidentified Flying Objects, by Colin Wilson.

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Unidentified Flying Objects, 

by Colin Wilson. 

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"The story of modern sightings began on 24 June 1947 when a businessman named Kenneth Arnold was flying his private plane near Mount Rainier in Washington State; against the background of the mountain, he saw nine shining discs travelling very fast – he estimated their speed at a thousand miles an hour, far beyond the speed of which any aircraft was capable at that time. Arnold said they were flying in formation, like geese, and that they wove in and out of the mountain peaks; he later compared their flight to a “saucer skipped across the water”. So UFOs came to be referred to as “flying saucers”. 

"Arnold’s story was widely reported in the American Press, for he had a good reputation and was taken seriously – he had been out searching for the wreckage of a lost plane at the time he made the sighting, and obviously had no reason to invent such a story. Four days later, two pilots and two intelligence officers saw a bright light performing “impossible manoeuvres” over Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, and in Nevada on the same day another pilot saw a formation of “unidentified flying objects”. As these and other sightings were reported the Press began to give prominence to stories of flying saucers, and by the end of that year there had been hundreds of sightings – a number that soon grew into thousands."

" ... But was it conceivable that thousands of people – in fact, millions – could all be mistaken? For by 1966, a Gallup Poll revealed that five million Americans had seen flying saucers. ... "

Wilson discusses Chariots Of The Gods and points at various discrepancies in various works by the author, and things the author said but retracted later, yet let them continue in subsequent editions. 

"As his investigation progressed, Keel became increasingly convinced that UFOs had been around for thousands of years, and that many biblical accounts of fiery chariots or fireballs are probably descriptions of them. In 1883 a Mexican astronomer named Jose Bonilla photographed 143 circular objects that moved across the solar disc. In 1878 a Texas farmer named John Martin saw a large circular object flying overhead, and actually used the word “saucer” in a newspaper interview about it. In 1897 people all over American began sighting huge airships – cigar-shaped craft. (This was before the man-made airship had been invented.) Dozens of other early “UFO” sightings have been chronicled in newspaper reports or pamphlets; Chapter 26 of Charles Fort’s Book of the Damned – written thirty years before the UFO craze – is devoted to strange objects and lights seen in the sky. One of the most convincing sightings was made by the Russian painter Nicholas Roerich (who designed Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring ballet); in his book Altai Himalaya (1930) he describes how, making his way from Mongolia to India in 1926, he – and the whole party – observed a big shiny disc moving swiftly across the sky. Like so many modern UFOs, this one suddenly changed direction above their camp. (In many UFO reports, the object seems to defy the laws of momentum by turning at right angles at great speed.) It vanished over the mountain peaks."

" ... Vallee devotes a chapter of The Invisible College to studying the case of Uri Geller. Geller, the Israeli psychic and “metal-bender”, was “discovered” by the scientist Andrija Puharich. Geller’s powers aroused such worldwide interest that it seemed inevitable that the first full-length book about him would become a bestseller. In fact Puharich’s Uri: A Journal of the Mystery of Uri Geller (1974) came close to destroying Puharich’s reputation as a serious investigator. It seems to be full of baffling confusions and preposterous and inexplicable happenings. Yet it also provides some vital clues to the mystery of “space intelligences”. In 1952, long before he met Geller, Puharich was studying with a Hindu psychic named Dr Vinod when Vinod went into a trance and began to speak with an English voice; this trance-entity announced itself as a member of “the Nine”, superhuman intelligences who had been studying the human race for thousands of years, and whose purpose is to aid human evolution. Three years later, travelling in Mexico, Puharich met an American doctor who also passed on lengthy messages from “space intelligences” – the odd thing being that they were a continuation of the messages that had come through Dr Vinod. When Puharich met Geller in 1971 the “Nine” again entered the story; while Geller was in a trance a voice spoke out of the air above his head explaining that Geller had been programmed by “space intelligences” from the age of three – the aim being to prevent the human race from plunging itself into catastrophe. Puharich goes on to describe UFO sightings, and an endless series of baffling events, with objects appearing and disappearing and recorded tapes being mysteriously “wiped”. Puharich assured the present writer (CW) that he had left out some of the more startling items because they would be simply beyond belief."

Colin Wilson has, not only in this chapter but throughout the book, used the term "spiritualism" in the sense of, not spiritual life or person as in yogi, but in sense of a medium dealing with spirits. 

"In The Flying Saucer Vision (1967), the English writer John Michell also takes his starting-point from Jung. Michell accepts Jung’s view that the UFO phenomenon is somehow connected with the “religious vacuum” in the soul of modern man. He associates UFOs with ancient legends about gods who descend in airships, and his conclusions are not dissimilar to those of von Däniken, although rather more convincingly argued. But Michell also has an original contribution to make to “ufology”. In his researches he had stumbled upon Alfred Watkins’s book The Old Straight Track (1925), in which Watkins argues that the countryside is intersected with ancient straight trackways which were prehistoric trade routes, and that these tracks connect “sacred sites” such as churches, stone circles, barrows and tumuli. Watkins called these “ley lines”. Michell argues that the ley lines are identical with lines that the Chinese call “dragon paths” or lung mei. The Chinese science of feng shui, or geomancy, is basically a religious system concerned with the harmony between man and nature; it regards the earth as a living body. Lung mei are lines of force on the earth’s surface, and one of the aims of feng shui is to preserve and concentrate this force, and prevent it from leaking away. Michell was mistaken to state that lung mei are straight lines, like Watkins’ leys – in fact, the Chinese regard straight lines with suspicion; the essential quality of lung meis is that they are crooked. But Michell takes an important step beyond Watkins in regarding ley lines as lines of some earth force; he believes that ancient man selected spots in which there was a high concentration of this force as their sacred sites. Points where two or more ley lines cross have a special significance. Michell also points out that many sightings of flying saucers occur on ley lines, and particularly on their points of intersection – for example, Warminster, in Wiltshire, where a truly extraordinary number of sightings have been made. In a book called The Undiscovered Country, Stephen Jenkins, another serious investigator of such matters, points out how often crossing-points of ley lines are associated with all kinds of “supernatural” occurrences, from ghosts and poltergeists to strange visions of phantom armies. Once again we seem to have an interesting link between UFOs and the “supernatural”."

In fact, Colin Wilson had published a book, read three decades ago when it wasn't new, that spoke of Ely lines, Salisbury mound and more; recent search hasn't helped in identifying it, if it's at all available on kindle or Amazon. 

" ... Like Vallee, Holiday finally became convinced that the answer to the UFO enigma lies in “the psychic solution”. It must be acknowledged that there is a great deal of evidence that points in this direction. On the other hand, it would be premature to discount the possibility that they may be spacecraft from another planet or galaxy; this is a matter on which it would be foolish not to keep an open mind."

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December 20, 2021 - December 21, 2021.

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The Great Tunguska Explosion, by Colin Wilson.

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The Great Tunguska Explosion, 

by Colin Wilson. 

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"On 30 June 1908 the inhabitants of Nizhne-Karelinsk, a small village in central Siberia, saw a bluish-white streak of fire cut vertically across the sky to the north-west. What began as a bright point of light lengthened over a period often minutes until it seemed to split the sky in two. When it reached the ground it shattered to form a monstrous cloud of black smoke. Seconds later there was a terrific roaring detonation that made the buildings tremble. Assuming that the Day of Judgment had arrived, many of the villagers fell on their knees. The reaction was not entirely absurd; in fact, they had witnessed the greatest natural disaster in the earth’s recorded history. If the object that caused what is now known as “the Great Siberian Explosion” had arrived a few hours earlier or later it might have landed in more heavily populated regions, and caused millions of deaths. 

"As it later turned out, the village of Nizhne-Karelinsk had been over 200 miles away from the “impact point”, and yet the explosion had been enough to shake debris from their roofs. A Trans-Siberian express train stopped because the driver was convinced that it was derailed; and seismographs in the town of Irkutsk indicated a crash of earthquake proportions. Both the train and the town were over 800 miles from the explosion. 

"Whatever it was that struck the Tunguska region of the Siberian forestland had exploded with a force never before imagined. Its shock-wave travelled around the globe twice before it died out, and its general effect on the weather in the northern hemisphere was far-reaching. During the rest of June it was quite possible to read the small print in the London Times at midnight. There were photographs of Stockholm taken at one o’clock in the morning by natural light, and a photograph of the Russian town of Navrochat taken at midnight looks like a bright summer afternoon. 

"For some months the world was treated to spectacular dawns and sunsets, as impressive as those that had been seen after the great Krakatoa eruption in 1883. From this, as well as the various reports of unusual cloud formations over following months, it is fair to guess that the event had thrown a good deal of dust into the atmosphere, as happens with violent volcanic eruptions and, notably, atomic explosions."

Wilson gives details of subsequent exploration, begun only after Russian revolution, and discovery of the devastation at Tunguska, along with hundreds of locals testifying to the strange trajectory of the object as it swerved. First explorer thought it was a meteor, but the impact site was very different from others, and no fragments found. After WWII the effects were recognised as thermonuclear blast, and other theories were put forth. 

"More recently, it has been pointed out that the Tunguska event took place on 30 June and that on that same day each year the earth’s orbit crosses that of a meteor stream called Beta Taurids, producing a “meteor shower”. ... "

" ... Professor Alexis Zolotov (the leader of the 1959 expedition to Tunguska) calculated that, whatever the object was, it was about 130 feet in diameter, and exploded about three miles above the ground with a force of 40 megatons, 2,000 times greater than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima."

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December 20, 2021 - December 20, 2021.

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Time in Disarray, by Colin Wilson.

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Time in Disarray, 

by Colin Wilson. 

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Wilson begins with something he mentioned in an earlier chapter, about Ivan T. Sanderson and his wife in Haiti suddenly seeing Paris of five hundred years ago. 

"When eventually they arrived back home they were surprised to find that their servant woman had a hot meal waiting for them, and a large bowl of hot water, in which she insisted on washing Mrs Sanderson’s feet; the head man had prepared hot baths for Sanderson and Fred Allsop. They would not explain how they knew that Sanderson and his companions would be back at dawn. But one of the young men in the village later said to Sanderson: “You saw things, didn’t you? You don’t believe it, but you could always see things if you wanted to.”"

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December 20, 2021 - December 20, 2021.

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Synchronicity or “Mere Coincidence”? By Colin Wilson

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Synchronicity or “Mere Coincidence”? 

By Colin Wilson. 

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Wilson gives varios examples of coincidences, before going into story of Jung. 

"For most of his life Jung was unwilling even to conceive of such a possibility – at least publicly. (He was, in fact, using the I Ching as an oracle from the early 1920s.) 

"In 1944, when he was sixty-eight years old, Jung slipped on an icy road and broke his ankle; this led to a severe heart attack. While hovering between life and death, Jung experienced curious visions, in one of which he was hovering above the earth, out in space, then saw a kind of Hindu temple inside a meteor. “Night after night I floated in a state of purest bliss”. He was convinced that if he recovered his doctor would have to die – and in fact the doctor died as Jung started to recover. The result of these strange experiences was that Jung ceased to be concerned about whether his contemporaries regarded him as a mystic rather than a scientist, and he ceased to make a secret of his lifelong interest in “the occult”. In 1949 he wrote his influential introduction to Richard Wilhelm’s edition of the I Ching, in which he speaks about the “acausal connecting principle” called synchronicity; in the following year he wrote his paper On Synchronicity, later expanded into a book. ... "

Wilson proceeds to then argue against Jung, before resuming examples of coincidences. 

" ... In 1898 a novelist named Morgan Robertson wrote a book about a ship called the Titan, “the safest vessel in the world”, which hit an iceberg on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic; fourteen years later his story came to life in the tragic maiden voyage of the Titanic. Moreover, the editor W. T. Stead had written a story about a ship that sank, and concluded: “This is exactly what might take place, and what will take place, if liners are sent to sea short of boats”. Like the liner in Morgan Robertson’s novel, the Titanic did not have enough boats. And W. T. Stead was one of those who drowned."

"In 1885 a playwright named Arthur Law wrote a play about a man called Robert Golding, the sole survivor of the shipwreck of a vessel called the Caroline. A few days after it was staged, Law read an account of the sinking of a ship called the Caroline; the sole survivor was called Robert Golding."

"In the month preceding the Allied invasion of Normandy – D-Day – the Daily Telegraph crossword puzzle gave most of the codewords for the operation: Utah, Mulberry, Neptune and Overlord (the last being the name of the whole operation). MI5 was called to investigate, but found that the compiler of the crosswords was a schoolmaster named Dawe who had no idea of how the words had come into his head."

"Jung worked out his idea of synchronicity with the aid of the physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Pauli himself seemed to have some odd power of causing coincidences. Whenever he touched some piece of experimental apparatus it tended to break. One day in Göttingen a complicated apparatus for studying atomic events collapsed without warning, and Professor J. Franck is said to have remarked: “Pauli must be around somewhere”. He wrote to Pauli, and received a reply saying that at the time of the accident his train had been standing in the station at Göttingen, on its way to Copenhagen. Pauli, understandably, was intrigued by Jung’s ideas about synchronicity, and Jung’s book on the subject was published together with a paper by Pauli on archetypal ideas in the work of Kepler – Kepler had apparently stumbled on the idea of archetypes three centuries earlier, although he meant something closer to Plato’s “ideas”. ... "

Wilson speculates about synchronicity being the right Britain halves reminding us that grinding bore is not all there is to life. 

"But even if synchronicity declines to fit into any of our scientific theories, this is no reason to refuse to believe in its existence. Science still has no idea of how or why the universe began, of the nature of time, or of what lies beyond the outermost limit of the stars. In fact, science continues to use terms like space, time and motion as if they were comprehensible to the human intellect; no one accuses Cantor of being an occultist or mystic because he devised a mathematics of infinity. Science continues to grow and develop in spite of its uneasy metaphysical foundations."

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December 20, 2021 - December 20, 2021.

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The Skull of Doom, and Spontaneous Human Combustion, by Colin Wilson.

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The Skull of Doom, by Colin Wilson. 

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A quartz crystal skull with prisms for eyes, Mayan temple, Maya and Atlantis, lost treasures, .... knights templar, .... 

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December 19, 2021 - December 19, 2021.

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Spontaneous Human Combustion, by Colin Wilson. 

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Wilson discusses various incidents and more. 

" ... G.H. Lewes, George Eliot’s lover, took issue with Dickens and declared that spontaneous combustion was impossible, so in his preface to Bleak House Dickens contradicts Lewes and cites thirty examples from press reports. Yet at the end of his article on Krook in The Dickens Encyclopedia (1924), Arthur L. Hayward states dogmatically: “The possibility of spontaneous combustion in human beings has been finally disproved”. He fails to explain what experiments have “finally disproved” it."

"Another investigator, Larry Arnold, put forward his own theory in the magazine Frontiers of Science (January 1982): that so-called “ley lines” – lines of “earth force” may be involved. The man who “discovered” ley lines, Alfred Watkins, noted how frequently places called “Brent” occur on them (brent being an old English form of “burnt”). Other “ley-hunters” have suggested that megalithic stone circles are placed at crucial points on ley lines – often at crossing-points of several leys. It is again interesting to note how many stone circles are associated with the idea of dancing – for example, the Merry Maidens in Cornwall; Stonehenge itself was known as “the Giants’ Dance”. It has been suggested that ritual dances occurred at these sites, so that the dancers would somehow interact with the earth energy (or “telluric force”). 

"Larry Arnold drew a dozen or so major leys on a map of England, then set out to find if they were associated with mystery fires. He claims that one 400-mile-long “fire-leyne” (as he calls them) passed through five towns where ten mysterious blazes had concurred. He also notes several cases of spontaneous combustion occurring on this “leyne”. He cites four cases which occurred on it between 1852 and 1908."

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December 19, 2021 - December 20, 2021.

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