Who is Aslan?

Who is Aslan?

I’d like to take some time out from the subject of my journey of self discovery at the Hundredth Monkey Camp to talk a little about something that came into my thoughts while I was meditating the other day.

I’m a big fan of CS Lewis and all his writing, including the Narnia books which I have known since early childhood.  Of course these days everyone knows that Lewis was writing with a Christian message, but it is too much overlooked that in the early days he didn’t promote it as such in anything like the obvious way that Christians like to present it today.  I think I had probably read most of the seven books before I heard anything about the embedded Christianity.  And yet they still had a powerful and inspiring strength to them.  Students of Lewis will know all about how he was extremely pagan in many ways and also found the roots of his belief in Plato, who lived and wrote centuries before the birth of Jesus, and a lot of this stuff is much more obvious in the Narnian stories than the Christianity.

I know for sure that a lot of people are even turned off from the whole Narnia thing because they find the Christian selling thing unattractive and pushy.  I am sympathetic to this.  Narnia was never preachy in the way that some try to make it.

What interests me is what one might call the archetypal roots of Narnia, what it connects with in the human psyche and why it has such numinous power.  That power doesn’t arise because Lewis thought of some clever new invention but because he tapped into archetypal sources of energy from the universal mind which Carl Jung would have recognised as expressions of the Self, the core of existence.

And what is the core of Narnia?  Aslan of course.  The wild, joyous, fierce and fiery son of the Emperor over the Sea, creator of Narnia, who sang it into existence.  As it is always said, ‘He is not a tame lion’.

So why is Aslan so powerful?  Surely not just in the skill of Lewis’s writing, marvellous and expressive though it is.

The symbol of the Lion is one which existed long before Lewis came on the scene.  Golden, fearless, loving, above all courageous.  What is courage?

I was reminded of the appellation given to one of the mediaeval world’s most well known figures, Richard, Coeur de Lion, the Lion Heart.  Certainly in a modern context his crusade against Islam is politically incorrect, but we need to look deeper to understand why he won such a title, why he inspired the mediaeval mind in this way.  It was his leadership in battle, the utterly fearless way in which he stood at the front of his army and defied his opponents with total disregard for his own safety, his courage.

And here we find the key to the mystery of Aslan.  Courage comes from the French root Coeur, meaning the heart.  The Lion is the symbol of the heart also, golden and fiery like the sun, the heart of our solar system, giver of all life.  Jesus too as the risen Christ is associated with, and seen as, the Sun, the most joyous and admirable of all archetypal images.  Jesus and Aslan are givers of love, but it is the manner in which this love is displayed that gives us the understanding of how this works.  Love is the expression of courage, it is fearless.  As the saying goes, ‘Perfect love casteth out all fear’.

The ancient function of a king was not to dominate his own people, but to defend them against threat.  To be prepared to die in defending them.  The self sacrificing heroic god king of ancient myth is the same archetype as the Christ, as Aslan.  The superficial understanding of the sacrifice of Jesus is that he takes on the sins of the world in order to grant us forgiveness, but the deeper and greater meaning is that he shows the way.  He shows us how to deal with those difficulties which we all must face in this material world of conflict.  What are leaders?  A leader is someone who is at the front, who finds the pathway, where the leader goes others follow.  The leader is the example, at the cutting edge, the forerunner.  He said that we must become like Him.  We shouldn’t follow Jesus because he can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, but follow his way, his example.

Something I find of profound importance to the understanding of the world of Narnia and Aslan is that there is no priesthood.  Aslan doesn’t need someone to mediate between him and us.  He is the Heart, he is our Heart.  There is no separation.  All we have to do is shed our dead skins of ego defence like Eustace in the Voyage of The Dawn Treader to free our vulnerable but true inner selves, surrender to the expression of the inner being, from the core.  And it is no coincidence that the word core comes from the same root as Coeur, our heart is the core of our being, both physically and spiritually, the heart is the giver of life, sustaining the body with its flow of lifeblood.

And this is congruent with the deepest understanding of quantum physics.  In the old Newtonian world objects are separate, but in the Quantum world everything is a part of everything else.  The universe is a quantum matrix of undifferentiated vibrational energy, which only takes form when observed, when the ego takes a relational standpoint to the sea in which it is afloat.  As Leibniz observed, the universe is made up of infinite monads of consciousness reflecting each other in their relational perspectives.

So, who is Aslan?  Aslan is our inner being, Aslan is the soul of existence which gives itself tirelessly, as the ceaselessly breaking wave of existence, fearless in its self sacrifice to perpetually recreate all things anew, eternally.  Aslan is within us all, forever ready to accept and reintegrate the fearfully self separated ego which will only die and wither as a leaf which is cut off from the branch if it tries to exist in isolation, or fix itself in unchanging form.  Aslan is existence, truth, unbounded joy, adventure and endless forgiveness as we let go of the past in the crashing storm of quantum chaos and infinite creation.

He is not a tame lion.  He is your heart!

copyright © 2011 Claire Rae Randall

The Hundredth Monkey World Healing Camp Introduction to the First Allting : Mururoa Nuclear Testing

The early part of the day slipped by easily with a few casual meetings and I was in my tent putting on some makeup when I heard the delicate sound of a handbell and Anna’s voice saying “Allting… Allting, time for the Allting, we begin in ten minutes.”

                                               

She walked past our circle and on to the other campfire circles.  I could hear her repeating the announcement as her voice receded and she continued on her progress.  I gathered my cushion and blanket to sit upon as we had been advised and made for the meditation circle.

The sun shone into the entrance of the meditation marquee.  A portion of the canvas wall had been removed in the Eastern facing wall.  A pole remained in the middle of the gap with about five feet or so on either side.

A tall and blonde, slightly portly woman perhaps in her late fifties wearing a pink jumper and long blue skirt was standing by this entrance with a dark blue velvet bag slung over her shoulder on a plaited cord.

“Angel cards?”  she proffered me her bag.

“Ah, thanks!”  I dug a hand in, stirred around the leaves in its depths and pulled out a small paper about two inches by one and a half folded like a paper dart.  “I brought these for daily blessings.” She explained.

It bore a stylised silhouette of an angel blowing a trumpet and the word ‘Acceptance’.  Interesting, I hoped I would be able to accept the different views that were to be expressed.  I had heard of these Angel cards, but never seen them before, a kind of divinatory tool akin to Tarot cards evidently.  They were photocopied and cut by hand judging by the irregular edges.  Blessings by the handful!  We had all been invited to take on some role or identification for the camp, so she had chosen to be the Angel card lady.  I wondered what other blessings or insights she might have in store for me later.

She was offering the bag to all and sundry as they streamed into the interior space and were finding themselves places around the edge.  I saw a gap to my left and set myself down in it, some half dozen or so poles round the circumference from the entrance.

Two women whom I did not recognise were waving smouldering bunches of dry leafy twigs around, wafting the smoke around, drenching themselves in its aromatic fragrance.  I did not recognise the herb or its smell, but like so much of this world I had found my way into, found it highly evocative, just as a good incense should be.  Now they were offering it round the gathering, the participants fanning the fumes over the heads and faces in what appeared a ritual manner.  I followed suit when it came to me.  I was experienced with some types of ritual magic;  mostly Cabala based high magic of the Western Hermetic tradition.  What I was being introduced to now seemed more pagan based, with a strong feeling of the native American tradition.

The space was becoming quite full now, the incoming flow had slowed to a trickle of stragglers and these were squeezing into the remaining small spaces.  A total of thirty-two poles supported the perimeter.  I didn’t count the number of the crowd present, but clearly most of those on site were there.  The poles acted as useful backrests and with two or three people in the spaces between each of them our number must have been close to one hundred.

A few had curious wooden seats without legs, but comprised of long flat boards which lay on the ground with backrests that could be removed or slotted into the groundboard and propped up by chocks behind them.  Each one of these was entirely unique, they were obviously individually handmade and designed for no other purpose than that to which they were now being put.  Some were plain unadorned wood, others varnished and still others painted with designs of leaves and flowers or stars and planets. There were also a number of portable canvas camp chairs, some of these with short or no legs, so that the majority of the gathering were sitting at ground level.

  

The clothes of the assembling multitude were perhaps the most varied collection that I had ever seen in one place.  Palden’s invitation to shamanic dress had been exuberantly embraced.  Not only casual everyday wear, jeans, woolly jumpers and tee shirts, but tie-dyes, flamboyant hippie gear, all manner of baggy trousers, combats, leggings, bright colours, leather waistcoats, flowing skirts, bangles, beads, headbands, carved and ornamented staffs, bare feet, shoulders and arms, boots, sandals, rustic hand woven meditation blankets spread out and wrapped around willy nilly, embroidered cushions and my bearded neighbour from last night in a tweed jacket somehow did not seem out of place.

Like a ship’s mast the central pole upon which the circular marquee depended was strung with ropes lashed to stays at its base, a weblike dream catcher hanging from it at head height.

In front of this facing the entrance was another tree stump like the one at the centre of the field,  a tangle of roots spreading out to all directions.  On and about it were a multitude of candles, smoking joss sticks and incense cones in brass holders. Some devotional pieces were spread before it on a small patterned blanket.  A Buddha, a mandala, several crystals, one of them a huge rose quartz the size of a child’s head and a polished wooden box about fifteen inches by three by two with a brass clasp.

Palden and Anna were sitting opposite the entrance, conferring over notes, jotting the odd thing down.  Palden was wearing a pink speckled jumper, red trousers and floppy hat.  Anna a long flowing skirt and rainbow tie-dyed tee-shirt.

The hubbub began to quieten and I felt a tremendous anticipation.  The gravitas of the previous evening’s Om returned and was amplified.  We were now assembled for what we had committed to do.

Once the silence had been established for a few seconds Palden spoke.  “Let us all hold hands and open the circle.”

The link was made and we held it in silence for a moment which seemed to have an immense depth.  Distant sounds of children reached our ears from outside, but within our circle was absolute stillness broken only by the occasional brief muffled sound of a cough or clearing throat.  The signal of the pressed hand rippled round the multitude and we were back in the present.

Palden stood up.  “Welcome to the Hundredth Monkey circle.  Before we begin our meditation I just have a few pieces of information to share.  This afternoon we shall begin the workshop groups.  To help choose who shall be in which we have decided to let the Universe decide, and so we shall pass round a hat with the names of the group leader/facilitators in it, so that you can choose one at random.  If you really feel you would rather be with another group, go and speak to its leader to see if they have room, but please think about why you want to change if you do, and what it is you are looking for.

“Soul friends: you will each have been given the name of another camp member who you do not know.  These are your soul friends.  The purpose of this is twofold, a stimulus to reach out and mix with new people, and then to have someone with whom you are able to share your experiences, your highs and lows.

“At the Oak Dragon Camps the morning circle was called Pow-Wow, drawing from a perceived Native American tradition.  However this term is not actually used by Native Americans, but is rather an invention of White Americans from the late nineteenth century.  We did not want to use a term which might be seen by some to be a stereotyped caricature of Native American culture and traditions, so we have taken the name Allting, derived from Scandinavian culture.  A Thing was a moot or gathering, and so an Allthing or Allting is a moot in which all things may be discussed, a grand council if you will.

“Now today we begin the Hundredth Monkey Camp with our first meditation circle.  The subject is the testing of nuclear weapons by the French at the Mururoa atoll in the Pacific.  You are welcome to meditate using any technique which you are comfortable or familiar with, but there is a method which we have been offered by the beings who have asked us to set up this camp.  When we begin meditating, go in your mind to the place of our focus and wait to see if there is anything which draws your attention.  Don’t try and actively change what you see, but allow yourself to become part of the situation, respond naturally and observe the outcome.  We are visiting observers who are there to help.  Don’t force yourself into the scene if those already there don’t seem to want your involvement.  Just see what happens, don’t attempt to control what is there, even for the better.

“By the way you may be interested to know that this is the same marquee which we used for an Oak Dragon camp in the Spring of 1986.  Chernobyl had just blown and an Easterly wind brought rain to Britain which carried particles from the dust cloud.  Some of those particles are perhaps still embedded in the fabric of the marquee.  Not at dangerous levels I hasten to add, but perhaps leaving a homoeopathic resonance.  This nuclear theme is a synchronicity which may be appropriate to our first meditation.

“We’ll take a  five minute break after the meditation which will be for twenty minutes, and then we shall reconvene for the Allting.

“Let us begin.”

He sat down and gently clashed a pair of finger  cymbals.

The gentle ringing faded.  Shutting my eyes I listened to its sharp note slowly disappear, swelling and ebbing to an almost imperceptible beat frequency between the two brass cymbals until it was lost in the ambient background.  We began.

I had a moment of anxiety.  My intellect did not know what to do with the situation and I had to actively work at disengaging it.  I focussed my attention on the feeling of the ground against the weight of my body, the smell of the grass which is always magnified under canvas, the gentle sounds of that canvas as it swayed in the light breeze, the creak of the guy ropes which held the shape in place and the presence of all those attendant.

Looking inward I pictured a nuclear explosion.  It was surrounded by water in all directions.  On the horizon were miniature vessels.  It seemed that all the world was there to witness and record the event.  Momentarily I felt I was in a crowd meditating on that image.  How did the rest of the world see this I wondered?  Then I was in Northern Nigeria.  A young Fulani boy had heard the news of the tests on the radio and was wondering what it meant.  He asked the teacher at the local school what this thing was and why people on the radio were so concerned about it.  The teacher said: “This is a terrible weapon that the white people have.  It is like a spear of fire which they shoot from their aeroplanes, but it can destroy a whole city like Lagos or Kaduna.”  The boy had heard of Lagos, the great city on the coast in the South, but of course had never been there.  Kaduna he had seen once before when he had accompanied his father to sell cattle in a market there.  He could not imagine a larger city, it had stretched for miles in all directions with tarmac roads flanked by stalls selling everything from soap powder to fruit and vegetables, sunglasses to transistor radios.  Everywhere was crowded and in the centre were huge buildings.  They had an airport and even television.  The teacher continued: “When the fire is made it sends out a terrible burning wind like a thousand Harmattans which flattens everything before it, but the dust it carries is not sand, it is a terrible poison which kills slowly and for which there is no medicine.  Afterwards the land is poisoned and any crops grown will be too”

 My young Fulani boy was bewildered and frightened.  “But why did the white people make this terrible weapon.  Is it not enough to kill  their enemies, why do they burn and poison the land?”

“Many years ago,” the teacher replied “ when the village elders were no older than you are now, one of the nations of the white people rose up and made war on the others.  It was defeated, but it’s ally in the East would not surrender and so they used this weapon to vanquish it.  It was made by the magic which is called science.  They have looked into the deepest knowledge of how the world is made and discovered the secret of how to destroy creation.  This weapon has never been used again in war, but when the white people had defeated the Eastern enemy they turned against each other in suspicion and threatened each other with the weapon.  Knowing that to use it would mean that both sides would be destroyed, they both feared its use, and after many years made peace, not long ago.

“Now the French, the white people whose language they speak to the North in Niger, fear that they have forgotten how to make this weapon, or that theirs is not as strong as that of others, and so have practised making it again.  They burn it in the great ocean on the other side of the world, but even there people live on small islands and are afraid that it will poison them.  The white people argue amongst themselves as to whether this is good or should be stopped.”

The Fulani boy had a lot to think about.  The power of the white people could not be avoided.  His grandfather had been a young man when Nigeria had gained independence from the British and had told him how high the hopes had been for the future then.  But many years of civil war and military rule had left the people disillusioned.  Meanwhile the white people played their terrible and frightening games on a stage totally removed from the affairs of Africa.  He felt very small.

The sibilant ring of the cymbals sought my attention and I stood back from the pool of imagining.  Who was this boy?  Did he even exist?  Was he any more than the projection of my own unconscious and what difference had I made even if such a thing might have happened?

 copyright © 2011 Claire Rae Randall

Luck, Quantum Consciousness and Creating the Future

I remembered a cheeky metaphysical thought I had once had.  “I had this idea a while back about evolution.  We are each the end point of lines of ancestors who date back to the origin of life.  From a statistical point of view there must have been a lot of lucky breaks, the ancestors that were not too close to the volcano or the flood.  These ancestors didn’t have any special biological adaptations, they were just lucky and so survived.  So from a point of view of morphic resonance, we have inherited their luck!”

“Yeah, successful exploratory behaviour has a lot to do with luck, but what is luck?  Since all life is connected through the quantum web of consciousness underlying all manifestation and existence, then maybe luck is as much about connecting with what you need through ‘seeing’ it with the inner eye.”  He was well down with this conscious creation thing.  “Knowing what it is that you need or are looking for and thereby creating the synchronicity that brings it into your field of experience.  Sympathetic resonance is a well understood phenomenon.  A guitar string will sound when another that is tuned to the same note is plucked.  People of like interests congregate, that has happened here.  How did we all come to connect?  Any group of people who have shared concerns self select, it is through choice and consciousness, matching, but also through reaching out with our minds to find those things, those people that we resonate with.  It can be an unconscious act.

“So through quantum resonance we find what we are looking for.  The clearer the idea we have in our minds the closer we can come to finding it, pull it out of the quantum flux, mould it out of the formless clay and give it reality.  If it isn’t based on something that is possible then it won’t get very far.  Science fiction has been a history of radical ideas that have proved to have potential and have been the basis for an incredible amount of manifested reality."

copyright © 2011 Claire Rae Randall

The Dance of Life

Sunday 27^th August 1995

I awoke to the gentle sound of a flute.  The simple melody was repeated in variation.  I could discern the movement of the sound’s author as he circled the encampment.  The sun was up and shining on the rear wall of my tent, the direction from which the call of reveille came.

I was not accustomed to early rising, and snuggled back deeply into the warmth of my sleeping bag.  As I dipped in and out of my receding slumber I became aware of movement behind me.  Muttered morning greetings, throat clearing coughs and the shuffling noises of people gathering for the first Dance of Life.

A man’s voice had begun speaking, just a little too quiet and distant for me to clearly make out what was being said.  The voice had a calm and soothing rhythmic quality, and I began to drift back to the security of unconsciousness.

“Ama tikki wo-oo, a-ne-o-he, o-oh sha-anna, he-a-na, he-a-no, he-iyaa.”

I was returned to the world of awareness by the chanting of those who had gathered to dance with Ivan.  The texture and cadences were clearly derived from the native American tradition, but also evoked something deep within that I could not put a name to.  A feeling of longing akin to that which the djembe awoke, but with a higher resonance as if it were reaching for the limitless sky or seeking to view beyond the horizon.

The chant was repeated, then segued into a new line.

“O-oh hey-a-no, ha-a-i-ya!” slowly rolling around with a feeling of memory and hope, rising sharply in intensity and volume at the end as if all this energy were being encapsulated and then thrown out to the world.

“O-oh hey-a-na, hey-a-no, he-ey-iyaaa”  The final vowel sound was sustained and then softly faded like the autumn; after a moment’s pause the entire chant was repeated.  Four times in all the chant was made as I lay in my den absorbing its subtle vibration, wondering what movements might be accompanying this wonderful song, and resolving that I should endeavour to join this in future days.

Just as I thought the gathering around the altar in the centre of the field was over, there was a sudden roar of a shout from those assembled.  This was followed by laughing and mirthful voices blending into a chatter which slowly faded away as the group dispersed.

The Hundredth Monkey Camp: And So It Begins…

Suddenly there was perfect silence and stillness in that crowded café tent.  A feeling of immense gravitas overcame me, the serious nature of what our endeavour amounted to now present in my thoughts and my heart.  I felt privileged, awed to be present at such a unique gathering.  We had chosen to give what we could of ourselves to aid a world in pain and crisis, or perhaps we had been chosen.  There was the sense of a huge responsibility which we had shouldered.  The awareness of that to which we were committing ourselves filled me with both pride and humility.  The hushed crowd had the presence of a congregation at midnight mass on Christmas Eve, with a touch of the dignity and solemnity of Remembrance Sunday.  Palden, tall and lanky, bespectacled with a stubbly smile wide full of teeth would be our choirmaster.

He began the chant with a resonant “Ooo…….”  Slowly at first, but with growing strength we joined in.  The multitude of voices created a rich chord, blending from deep male basses through the majority of mid-range to the sopranos who floated above the chorus.  It reminded me of my prep-school where the pupils would sing the ‘Amen’ to grace at mealtimes, led by one of the senior choristers who would sing the first note.  We were like the schoolchildren falling in behind that keynote, following the initiation made by Palden.

We seemed to have entered a dimension in which time had a different velocity, density and viscosity.  Slowing down our connection with the outside we went more deeply into ourselves through that sound, touching our deeper beings in the inner stillness, awakening parts of our souls which had been lying dormant, waiting for the moment, waiting for the call.

The vibration penetrated with the smoothness of a knife through melting butter.  Our psychic defences were as much use as that butter in keeping it out of our souls.  To have resisted would have been more disturbing than to go with it, it would have shaken me apart like a jack-hammer.  Better to let it slide smoothly in to connect with whatever it was seeking, gently loosening obstacles in its path to the being at the centre of each of us.  In those moments we were exposed to ourselves, knew our apprehensions, our fears and ambitions, even a glimpse of what it was we had come in search of.

The energy focussed like a standing wave in the centre of the circle, resonating subtle ripples out through the ethers.  It truly felt that we were creating a new beginning, seeded from the aspirations and intentions which we brought with us and encoded in the harmonies of that great hum.  Briefly a thought crossed my mind ~ what hidden notes might lie unnoticed within the harmonies?  In the Ainulindale, the creation myth in Tolkien’s Silmarillion, one of the Angels sings a note which is disharmonious, causing conflict and destruction.  My ear detected no dissonance, but what might be hidden within those sonorous layers of textured sound?  Tolkien’s primal chord had had its antiphony, but it had been disguised at first within the whole.  Only as the variations found their way into manifestation did the conflict, the clash of wills and directions become apparent.  But this had been part of the Great Design, so that discernment could be exercised in differentiating the divergent vibrations, understanding the confusion and making a world which could rise above these contradictions.

This thought was but a small voice as the cadence within our circle rose and fell, breathing with us like the sky I had seen less than 24 hours before, singing our new creation into existence.  Our souls, like stars, the source of worlds yet to be born, realities yet to grow from the seeds we brought with us.  We would overcome the conflict and hostility endemic in the world by our example, so that by the Hundredth Monkey effect new patterns would be adopted which did not engage with these negative energies.

The sound of our congregation rolled around the circle like the backwash of the Big Bang, the Cosmic Background; its centre of gravity now here, now there, now in the middle as we exhaled our breath into this deep space and united ourselves for the journey we were beginning.

“….ommmmmmm.”

I counted 128 faces in that circle, adults and children.  Two to the power of seven.  An interesting number.

The chorus abated.  It had lasted perhaps little more than thirty seconds, but in that time we had travelled to the centre of Creation and back again.  I felt that I would have travelled for this alone, for the privilege of chanting with all these others, most of whom I did not know and had not met before.  Diverse our paths may have been which led us here, but we had now all been united in a shared experience, all been affected by the vibration we had shared, become one in opening ourselves to each other in this.

We stood there holding hands in silence until we felt the press of our neighbours fingers pass round the circle, signalling the moment to release from this union.  Slowly, reluctantly, like lovers parting, we let our hands relax and slide free.

The silence was almost as profound as the chant; reluctant to part from the moment we stood meekly, like children respectful of the sanctified atmosphere in a great cathedral.  Slowly, hesitantly, we began breathing again, the rustle of movement returned, someone cleared their throat and then we were back in normal space-time in the late twentieth century again.

copyright © 2011 Claire Rae Randall

Synchronicity

Temporarily satisfied with my work I began arranging my belongings inside my tent.  The ground I was to lie on was not as flat to the back as it had seemed to the eye.  I was left shuffling my sleeping bag, clothes and guitar until I had what seemed a satisfactory solution.  I lay down with my feet  toward the Westering sun which spilt through the gaps between the loose flaps at my feet.

Resting from my efforts I could hear the sounds of activity, voices, children running about and screaming with the freedom of their new-found territory.  The heavier tread of an adult brushed past within inches of me on the other side of my nylon walls, and I could hear its owner enter the large tent  to my right.

“Yes I’ve found it, Tina” I heard the voice say.

“Sean…. Sean Kenilworth, well I’ll be darned, it is you” I exclaimed as propelling myself forward I rose out of the front of my den and confirmed what my ears had told me.

Sean was an old friend from way back in Leeds.  I had recently graduated from the University when I first met him through a mutual friend, and we had shared a social group whose interests had begun with magic mushrooms and grown into investigation of mysticism, meditation and metaphysics.  ‘Exploring the limits of reality’ as he had once put it.  The early eighties had seen us explore paths of the Cabalistic Tree of Life and the corresponding images from the Major Arcana of the Tarot.  As so frequently happens with such groups, our meditation circle had self-destructed when the psychic archetypes we had activated led us each to our own individual paths.  The flower had withered, but was replaced with seeds that were blown by the wind to find places where they could grow and flower again in their turn.

I recalled Sean had once said in the about 1981 “I wonder what we’ll all be doing ten years from now?”  That decade had come and gone.  I lost touch with him, heard that he was living in a community in the West Country, tried to re-establish contact, had been stonewalled by his former girlfriend who misunderstood my reasons, and eventually given up my search.  Now after all this time the trajectory of his life’s destiny had intersected with mine again.

Reductionists will tell you that synchronicity is no more than the inevitable workings of statistical laws.  That in the vast number of events which occur all the time, improbable connections will occur simply because it is possible.  We do not see or count the occasions on which such connections do not obtrude but only notice when they do.

I fully accept that statistical laws are the means whereby such events happen, but the Reductionists fail to understand that meaning and recognition of patterns are characteristics of our nature.  The fabric of meaning and interpretation which we construct from our experience is a meta-layer above the material events.  To deny that we exist on this level is to negate the value of our humanity.  Scientists such as Roger Penrose have recently begun to point out that possibly the most interesting thing about the whole universe that we have begun to explore is the very existence of us exploring, perceiving, trying to understand it.  We are a function of the universe and so the impulse to find meaning is no less than a function of the universe too.

Much has been made of the fact that so-called primitive magical thinking relies on correlation of events which may be no more than unrelated coincidence. Scientific methodology shows us that we need to build up a valid statistical picture, and the advance of technology in the twentieth century has shown us the practical value of such an approach in the causal realm.  But humans are much more subtle, and less predictable than the materials we manipulate by our technologies.

Apparently chance meetings are not reproducible events, and so their significance is ignored by statisticians and methodologians.  But our intuition tells us that they have meaning, and so they do.  We must make of them what we can.  Invest no meaning and the event will be meaningless.  We are beings who search for meaning, construct it where we can, and wither without it.  The interpretations we arrive at may be maladaptive, like fanatics defending a backward and dying religion or political system, but we must credit the misguided with at least the drive to find meaning, even if the conclusion is hazardous.

Recognition of a synchronicity is not fatalism; at least does not have to be.  It can be a perception that a richer vein of possibilities is now available, and that it is up to us to choose how we deal with it.  Meaning is not causality, but interpretation.  Carl Jung called synchronicity an ‘acausal connecting principle’.  Material things are connected by causes, consciousnesses by meaning.

Alchemy was in one of its strands the infant chemistry, seeking new possibilities from combining simple materials.  As humans we are richly woven with varieties of influence;  engaging with the influences of another can lead to the development of new understandings, the equivalent of a new chemical with mysterious properties.

So recognising a synchronicity can be an opportunity to enrich one’s personal fabric;  it may be the recurrence of an energy with which we have not yet fully dealt and over which we need to exercise discrimination.  Either way the universe is requiring us to make a judgement and take a choice.  I am reminded of a story I read in a magazine in which a woman described a synchronous meeting with a childhood friend.  At the time she thought it would be an opportunity for the friendship to resume, but she said it did not.  It sounded to me as if she had neither put the energy and will into it, nor decided that she did not want to.  Her description was merely that nothing came of it.  She had made no choice, and was left wondering why nothing happened.

For the present I was not to be allowed to ignore the fact that an old psychonautical friend was now camping next to me for the coming week.  I did not shrink from re-establishing connection.  We had shared metaphysical exploration in years gone by, and I saw no reason to pass up the chance to do it again.  Our divergent experiences over the last few years would provide alchemical enrichment for us to connect with.

A slightly built woman of medium height with shoulder length ginger hair, wearing khaki trousers and a loose fitting multi coloured top was approaching.  “Hey Tina, look who’s camped next to us, my old friend Claire from Leeds!”  Sean exclaimed. 

copyright © 2011 Claire Rae Randall

The World Dream

It seemed to me that the opportunity for some sort of collective breakthrough presented itself at this meditation camp.  If as a large group of people in harmony we could reach that trusting point beyond fear, then perhaps it really would be possible to move something in the mass psyche of the world. 

The present World Dream is running to a script which decrees that greed, domination and revenge are primary motives.  Control.  Moving beyond the present world agenda is of the essence.  Recommended background reading for the camp included “The Celestine Prophecy”, which, though a work of fiction, nonetheless purports to offer a blueprint to do just that.  At bottom it is a worldview which says that we create our own future realities by the energy that we put out and the corresponding energy we attract back.  If we put out love and trust to the Universe then we can expect it to lead us on, but one of the main lessons of the book is how fragile this reality can be to the invasion and destructiveness of fear.  I thought my faith was strong enough to allow me to face my fears, but all the weirdness that I had ever known before was nothing to the abyss into which I was eventually to peer.

As the summer progressed last minute updates and information about the camp arrived.  We were to be gathered in a number of campfire circles, meals were to be had in the cafe marquee served by the crew, morning meditation was at 10 a.m. followed by Allting till lunch.  Afternoon was to be taken up with small group workshops led by people with unusual skills and experience.  I didn’t actually pay much attention to this at the time, although they included various references to such subjects as native American practices and psychic work.  Late afternoon and the evening were to be taken up with a variety of one-off optional talks and workshops. We were invited to bring devotional objects with which to create altars, and to wear colourful or shamanic dress.  Every morning we were to have the opportunity to join in with the Dance of Life, a sacred dance of the Cherokee people, and besides being a vegetarian camp, there were also to be no generators or power cables on the site at all and no electricity except for batteries giving low voltage D.C. for torches and suchlike.  Acoustic instruments and music only were to be allowed.  Electronic games were not.  There was a children’s programme so that parents could attend meditations and groups knowing their kids were being taken care of, a shower, hot tub, and shop.  It was so well organised by the sound of things I thought that I had really stumbled onto a total bunch of post-peace convoy New Age adepts who had every angle covered.  It was to be a full on attempt to cut ourselves off from the outside world for a week, and not be involved with anything out there except what we might pick up in our meditations. 

Certain advice was given; not to have any ongoing business which might require your attention during the camp, and not to leave the camp.  This is sound advice for any closed group process, and since one of the phrases that Palden had used was ‘pressure cooking the worlds problems’, it would hardly be suitable to have a pressure leak.  There would be designated people who would be empowered to deal with whatever necessary and unavoidable interactions there might be with the outside world, like milk deliveries, or collections of medicine from local pharmacies. The literature stated that the organisers unashamedly wanted to run a tight ship, indeed one factor in this was that the location was to be kept a secret, and participants were requested not to divulge it when it was disclosed shortly before the starting date.  There was on the part of the organisers a feeling that we might be considered fair game by gatecrashers if the venue became known in certain quarters of the alternative world.  Events at a number of Glastonbury festivals with the so-called Peace Convoy had perpetually raised the spectre of disruption at this sort of outdoor summer event, and splits within the Camps movement had led to the development of groups with a somewhat more anarchistic frame of mind who it was feared might wish to join in the proceedings uninvited as if it were some kind of impromptu and open party. 

Consequently there was an edge of military espionage about it all.  We were even warned that we might experience elements of psychic attack and attempts to prevent us from reaching the camp by the appointed time.  

copyright © 2011 Claire Rae Randall