Figures in a landscape

I didn’t see the figures on the sands when I took this picture. I was more interested in seeing how the polarising filter would help bring details out in the sky, while leaving the sands recognisable as, well,… sands. It was only later when I put the picture up on the bigger screen of my PC, then cropped and zoomed,  other details became apparent, and the ghosts emerged.

No, I didn’t know they were there, I don’t know who they are, and of course I don’t know where they are now. They’re simply gone. But for that moment, at 14:53 hours and 53 seconds on the 17/2/2013,  they were everything, creating a living harmony out of what is otherwise nothing.

I get this same eerie philosophical melancholia from watching crowds. There are so many of us alive, and each life of infinite importance to itself, each of us viewing the universe from the centre of ourselves in a uniquely different way.   But for me there’s something about the lone figure or a small group of figures set against a vast landscape that turns up the wick, and applies a more intense heat to the question of what it is to be human in the world.

On the one hand the seeming smallness of our presence can make the individual life appear worthless and futile, while on the other it might be said it’s in the very uniqueness of our  perspective there lies a value that goes beyond the material –  that it’s in adjusting to this perception of ourselves, and seeing more clearly through what one might call the eye of spirit,  we each have the potential to realise the preciousness that is the individual life lived well, no matter how fleeting and superficially futile that life might appear to be.

I’m reading Field and Hedgerow by Richard Jeffries at the moment. Jeffries (1848-1887) was a small-town English journalist, essayist and novelist, who, after labouring long in obscurity, became quietly popular in the late Victorian period. Another of his works “The Amateur Poacher” has been my companion since childhood, and I still find much in him to admire. His particular forte was nature mysticism. To say Jeffries revered nature doesn’t quite get to the point of him, though revere it he most certainly did. Here was a man who could look at  a grain of sand under his fingernail and tease the meaning of life from it  – all without the aid of opium –  but he was careful not to over-romanticise – being conscious and respectful of the red-in-tooth-and claw dimension of nature as well. He was also a man who saw more of God in a Greek statue than in the whole of King James.

Stay with me, this is relevant.

Of course we’re not all blessed with the divine attributes of a Greek statue, and I suppose Jeffries was getting at more than seeing a literal image of “God as deity” in hominid physiology. What the Classical Greeks saw in the human form, Jeffries hints at in his various works, while the rest of us cover it with loincloths for modesty, mistake it for a perverted Eros, and childishly titter at it. What is it? I don’t know, but if you’ll allow me a moment’s nudity, I can gaze for ever at John Collier’s Lillith (Atkinson Memorial Gallery, Southport UK), and see more than just her bosoms. There’s a ghost in her, and like my figures in the landscape, she gives me pause.

Getting back to the subject of nature, in “Field and Hedgerow” Jeffries writes of an unemployed farm labourer rejecting the grim soulless state-handout sanctuary of the Workhouse and choosing instead to survive the winter living rough, sleeping in out-buildings, finding what few scraps of charity he can from the farm wives. Jeffries suggests that in his struggle to maintain a personal dignified independence, against the rigours of nature, there is something noble, even Godlike about him.

Nature is impassive, impervious to our complaints. The rain falls and the frost bites regardless of our wishes, or the quality of our clothes. Still, on a sunny day, when the butterflies come out, you can look for God in it, a God that transcends deity, as the Romantics would say. Indeed when it’s not inflicting pain upon us, there’s enough stillness and sublime beauty in nature to see projections of all sorts of things. But whatever we discover, compassion will not be among its qualities.

In my  photograph, the tide is out. Three hours later it would be in, and the small lives that had scampered across the sands that afternoon would have to scamper for safety or be washed away. The beach is also known for quicksand. An unwary figure going down in them could not rely upon nature, or the gods, for deliverance. For the survival of calamity, or nature’s worst excesses, we’re always going to need the compassion and the selfless intervention of other human beings. We might pray to our deities but it will be another human being who pulls us from the mire, offers reassurance at our tremblings, and a hot cup of  tea to soothe away the aftershocks.

Some might take this as evidence the Divine works through us, that our capacity for compassion is a manifestation of the ineffable at work in the world. I’m coming to the same conclusion. It was Jeffries who taught me you don’t find God in mere deity, (Story of my heart), but only through a higher form of soul-life. And, incredible, as it seems, the fact remains that in a world apparently on fire, torn apart by the darker side of our natures, it’s only in human beings we find the contrary, even paradoxical evidence of a divinely transcendent and infinitely compassionate dimension, a dimension, the existence of which, is the only thing worth all the living and the dying for. If we are to understand the value of the individual life, no matter how fleeting or anonymous, like my figures in the landscape, we must first do what we can to nurture a compassion for the lives of others, and trust we’ll find it in others when we’re most in need of it ourselves.

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Further adventures in non-literal reality.

I’ve been reading a lot of Patrick Harpur’s books lately and it’s through these I’ve become familiar with this fascinating phrase: non-literal reality which, so far as I can tell, equates to the world of imagination, a world most of us do not consider to be real – even those like me, writers of fiction, who spend a great deal of time exploring it, and inventing stories in it.

Imagination is strange, entertaining, and very useful in that we can imagine scenarios and rehearse them “imaginatively” before doing things for real. Also by imagining what others will do, it grants us the ability to outwit them, to second guess their defences and thereby defeat them in combat or in competition. Simpler creatures, no matter how physically superior, are ultimately no match for the imagination of mankind, and this has ensured our dominion over them.

But for all of that, once we turn our focus back into the real world, into literal, tangible reality, we do not suppose for a moment that the imaginative, non-literal reality continues to exist. We simply switch it on when we need it. Imagination, we suppose, is confined to the insides of our heads and does not dwell in an independently existing imaginal continuum.

Partick Harpur’s thesis is that the imaginary world does indeed exist, and that much of our philosophy, from the pre CE Greeks to the Nineteenth Century European Romantics describe ways in which we can maintain a healthy relationship with this imaginal world. The imaginal world is what has been called by various cultures the otherworld, the underworld, heaven, the afterlife, or in New Age speak, the non-physical plane – and that once we quit our mortal coil we return to it; it is a real place and we can make our way in it as conscious, self aware beings, just as we do anywhere else.

Chinese Daoist philosophy also tells us that human beings exist at this interface between heaven and earth – the imaginal and the physical, the inner and the outer, the yin and the yang, that we can see reflections of the one in the other and in order to live properly we must be respectful of both. If we focus too much on physical reality, if we become too materialistic, utilitarian, and clinical, it’s bad for us. Similarly if we shun the material world and retreat completely inside our own heads, we risk madness. These are old lessons, like how we are taught that smoking and drinking will kill you, and we know these lessons are true, but equally we ignore them.

So, the imaginal world is real, but we must be careful not to take it literally. The reality of the imaginal world can explain all manner of Forteana – the strange creatures, the fairies, the goblins, the spooks, the demons, even the more modern UFO’s and alien encounters that no one of a rational frame of mind will ever take seriously, but which others have none the less repeatedly spoken of witnessing with compelling sincerity.

There will never be any convincing evidence that these things exist (in literal terms) because in literal terms, they do not. That they do exist is evident  from the things people tell us they’ve seen, but their reality must not be confused with their actual physical existence. This sounds like a paradoxical statement. They do exist. They have always existed, but if we go looking for them, looking to define them in literal, physical terms, if we try to measure or capture them, we will fail because we are looking for literal certainties where there are none.

The imaginal realm is something that exists inside of nothing, as indeed we apparently exist inside of nothing ourselves. The cosmos as we can see it is an infinitely small percentage of the cosmos as it truly is, because the cosmos is infinitely big, and anything divided by an infinite bigness equals nothing, as any pocket calculator will tell you. It has no size. It is therefore just as easily nothing as it is infinitely large, for both concepts have no physical meaning, and therefore all the cosmologies that mankind has come up with must deal with this paradox of something coming out of nothing.

But how difficult is this to imagine, really? In literal terms we seem to agree that life on earth began in the oceans, a long time ago, that it began from nothing, from a mixture of the right physical ingredients coming together by accident  and that the rest, the route from creeping slime to consciousness was simply a steady process of improvement by adaptation. And if the universe consists of a background matrix of purely non-literal, indefinable, non-measurable energy, as quantum physics seems to be telling us it does, then how much greater a step is it to imagine that there might have evolved an underlying conscious plane of non-physical reality that came about by the right twists of non-literal energy coming together,… purely by accident?

Clearly we exist, and if we accept our existence, as we self-evidently must, then how can we offhandedly deny the reality of an inner world as being fanciful? Equally though we have to respect the boundaries and not go looking to establish the physical reality of what is not physically manifest. Each in it’s place, and all that.

However,…

The two realms do have a relationship, and it’s this relationship that has granted so much richness to human life. Without it, life is sterile and pointless. The muse, who is the voice behind every written word, including these, is a dweller of these mysterious inner realms, as are other, darker creatures who can wreak havoc in the world by the same blunt instrument the gentler muse employs, namely the hand of man. These are autonomous entities, and they do exist, but you will not find them in the world because, you guessed it, their reality is not meant to be taken literally.

For a creative person, the muse is an unavoidable reality. She seems closely related to the idea of the soul, or the anima of Jungian thought. I am not schooled in these matters and can only go by experience but she seems like a facet of one’s multifaceted soul, for it is a fact that all things in the imaginal realm defy easy categorisation. She is soul, she is muse, she is both, she is none, she is lover, demon, harpy, and then muse again,… all within the same human heartbeat. But she is not a literal being, though sometimes we may project her onto unsuspecting women and pretend that she is..

How does one cope with such metaphysical fickleness? Pretty much as one copes with fickleness in real life: you accept the reality of it, you invite her counsel, but do not demand it. You welcome it when it comes, but do not chase it when it is no longer forthcoming – and above all you accept both its reality and its value to you personally and to some larger purpose of which you may have not the slightest inkling.

It is this acceptance that’s the important thing, the thing that appeases the denizens of the inner world, and grants us an inner pleasure that comes through our relationship with them. They are our kith and kin. They they tap upon the bell-jar of our consciousness, and they grow impatient if we pretend they are not there.

Our understandable incompetence in these matters is no barrier to making way, for the creatures of the inner world are possessed of infinite patience, provided we remain open and trusting, and then they will teach us what we each need to know. Individually, this relationship is essential for our sanity, for our sense of well being, and in maintaining our proper path in life. Collectively it means the difference between a world at peace, and a world on fire.

All of this is very simplistic of course. The imaginal realm is infinite in its scope and its possibilities, yet we can only think of it in terms of the pictures we have taken of our own physical reality, so anything we think or say or believe about the non-literal realm will limit its potential for us when we are eventually drawn back into it. We make what we will of the various afterlife journals that have supposedly come back to us from the likes of Frederick Myers and T E Lawrence, but they both speak of an imaginal realm that reflects very much our expectation.

If this is true I have a cottage waiting in the Lake District, at the foot of Drummaur Fell (you’ll have to read the Lavender and the Rose to know roughly where that is), oh, and a brand new pair of Scarpa walking-boots already broken in. But this otherworldly abode is no nearer a realisation of the ultimate nature of reality than is the physical nine-to-fiveness of the present workaday world. It’s still a literal interpretation, in a sense, and there is a suggestion from reading these curious afterlife journals that one’s progress tends to be further and further away from any form of literal or visually interpreted reality at all – that it becomes increasingly abstract, and even if we dismiss these afterlife journals as the rambings of an overheated imagination, we can still imagine how they might be true.

What I struggle to understand, however, is why the denizens of the other-world, if such there be, should bother themselves with us mere mortals at all. Why should they be so easily piqued by our blatant disregard of them, that they should feel the need to startle us now and then with flashes of their fantastic forms? Surely they can have no longing for the limitations of our literally interpreted reality? Compared with the infinite potential of the non-literal realm, our lives must seem sorely handicapped – worthy of their pity perhaps, but sorey unworthy even as humble pawns in their Machiavellian intrigues?

Why, dear muse, do you feel the need to speak to me at all? To have your voice travel from the world within, to this sterile world? What is it through the pattern-music of your words you seek to achieve? Is it only to remind us to look both ways now and then? Or are you not long gone from this life yourself and seek to impart your newly found wisdom of the wider reality to this enclosed one, from which you are still so freshly estranged and intimately attached? Is your dalliance with us the first stage on your journey to the abstract realms? Or have you never been flesh but eagerly await your turn?

** The picture at the top is Lillith, by John Collier (1892). If you want to see her in the flesh – and I recommend that you do – you’ll find her in all her resplendent glory at the Atkinson Art Gallery at Southport, Lancashire UK.

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All true things must change – C G Jung

Southport was cold and grey and wet this morning, and yet more shops had been boarded up. The massive Woolworths store they cleared out a year ago is still empty, still carrying its cheery red Woolworths logo, but there was little to be cheerful about and in one of the half empty malls there was a character with oiled hair handing out cash in exchange for gold,.. and he had plenty of customers offering their unwanted trinkets for him to squint at.

I’m lucky. I still have a job and can gaze upon this awful spectacle with the air of a detached observer. I wear only two pieces of gold: my wedding ring on my left hand and my father’s wedding ring on my right, and it’s easy for me to say that the oily haired man could go $@#£ himself, if he thought he’d ever be getting his hands on those. But how about when the rent’s due and there’s no money coming in and there’s a bully boy collector at the door?

There but for the grace of God, and all that.

I tried to buy a coffee and was offered more choice than I could cope with: Latte, Mocha, Americano, blah di blah di blah. For some reason this business of “choice” really irritates me now and I long for simpler days when I could just have one bloody thing that actually worked. I hear my politicians speaking of “choice” as if it were the holy grail, and yet I detect a curious hollowness in their words as if they don’t really believe it either and are simply reciting a mantra presented to them by a legion of obscenely highly remunerated political consultants.  Anyway,… I listened to the girl reeling them all off,…. all these varieties of highly desireable choice, coffee-wise,  and to be honest, I hadn’t a clue what any of them were. Feeling a little tired and confused I asked if  I could just have an ordinary filter coffee.  She sighed at my ignorance before replying with practiced patience that they were all filter coffee’s sir.  I apologise dear reader – urbane I am not. I like my coffee plain and strong. It does not come with a label.

I received an infinitely friendlier reception at the Atkinson gallery, where a group of handicapped kids (can I still say that?) were having a delightful sing-song, and the girl manning (can I still say that?) the reception desk  welcomed me up the stairs with a smile that instantly erased the memory of the pretentious coffee incident. Yes, this was “sanctuary”. I was safe, and looking for old friends: Dorette’s sister, the gloriously erotic Lillith of course, and a bewitching seascape by an artist called JHG Millar, whom no one seems to know anything about.

Then I ran into a major synchronicity.

I need to rewind here and explain  I’d just booked 2010’s summer holiday, on the  Northumberland coast. I have a memory of my last night there in August 2003, coming off the beach at Bamburgh after flying kites with my boys. The east coast beaches have a special charm.  The sea was lively and there was a mist overhanging everything. I paused for a second, just to look back  and take it all in. There was something bewitching about it. Then, six years later, I walk into the Atkinson, the day after booking my return trip, and I’m staring at a picture of the same scene, painted from the same spot!

Take no notice of the skeptics, nor the smug statisticians: Synchronicities are important. They are like a glitch in “the matrix” – if you’re into movies – if not then never mind. They indicate a change – that something is changing, that something in the mind is manoeuvering. But you will never understand a synchronicity in literal terms – try too hard to look for the meaning in them and they just smile at you, inscrutable as Alice’s Cheshire cat. The best you can do is feel the current tugging at you, and surrender to it.

After the Atkinson it was Broadhursts bookshop and a browse through the second-hand titles. I trust every major town in the UK still possesses a die hard establishment like Broadhursts. If books, real books, are your bag, then you know the sort of place I mean – they cleared out of the smaller county towns decades ago, to make way for the publisher’s clearance outlets – who really aren’t the same thing at all.  Anyway,… I found myself smiling when I noticed works by Richard Dawkins side by side with those of Derek Ankora here. It was a marvellous irony. But it was Carl Jung who drew my eye, and for a few pounds I came away with a second hand copy of  “Psychological Reflections”, an anthology edited by Jolande Jacobi. It’s a  while since I studied Jung and maybe the memory of that earlier synchronicity forced my hand.

Reading it later on in bed, I found myself a little too tired to do it justice, but one quote struck me between the eyes so hard, I had to write it down: All the true things must change and only that which changes remains true. It could easily have been a line from the Tao te Ching!

Those of us who tread the spiritual path away from the mainstream would do well to remember it. There is no clear definition for what it is we seek. It does not have a name. To define it is to kill it, to make it old and grey and useless. Therefore we hold no clear convictions, no unassailable beliefs, and we are not afraid to change, not afraid to say: I was wrong, not afraid to say: I don’t know.

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