Inside-Out Thinking

How Much of Your Book do You Believe?

I've been asked this on the radio and feel guilty that I've given glib answers, and now I've been asked on this site – and that deserves a considered answer.

In a way it's an unwelcome question, because the aim of the book is to create a feeling of uncertainty. It's about trying to withhold from rushing to impose conventional beliefs on experience, about waiting for a richer, deeper pattern to emerge.

Critics have been sharply divided between those who get it and those who don't. I sent an early copy to Gary Lachman, one of the founder members of Blondie, who now lives and works in England as a writer on esoteric subjects. He's one of very few reviewers in the national press prepared to take esoteric books seriously. In the event he was unable to persuade the literary editors he writes for it was worth reviewing, but he sent me a nice letter saying so. He said something to the effect that while he wasn't sure about every detail, he found it a more convincing model of reality than the conventional, materialistic one - describing it as a Morning of the Magicians for the twenty-first century:

'I like your take it or leave it approach ... Behind the torrent of factoids and believe-it-or-nots there is a serious, philosophical purpose at work. I took away from this book a strong sense that, regardless of how factually 'true' the esoteric account of the world and ourselves may be, it is certainly more 'existentially' true than the reductionist rationalist one.'

Gary, who has studied Gurdjieff, understands the underlying intention.

The Secret History of the World is packed with tall stories, esoteric believe-or-nots and factoids. (Did Norman Mailer coin that word in his book on Marilyn Monroe?). The criterion for inclusion in my book was not necessarily that they could be proved to be true – but that people in esoteric circles have believed them. Some of these people have left written records of their beliefs. In other cases they were things I was told by remarkable people I have met in esoteric circles. These people, both historical and contemporary, tend to be super-intelligent.

As I write in the intro, these stories, these claims would require a whole library to even begin to try to document them and, besides, most are stories about the supernatural, which are not in principle 'provable' on the page.

The point of bringing all these tall stories, these factoids into one book, one narrative is to show that they form a surprisingly unified, coherent, cogent view of the world. They make meaningful patterns in history.

I believe these patterns can be seen in history – and that they wouldn't be there if science explained everything there is.

Towards the end of the book, in the latter part of chapter, I get to the real point of the book. I ask the reader to look at his or her own life and ask if these same patterns can be discerned there too.

I know they can be seen in my own life.

My book's plea is that we should trust to our own personal experience rather than the say-so of experts. We have given too much away in that regard.

I've known many dons, as teachers and as friends, and while I'd trust their judgment in their own fields of research, not all of them are so well-rounded, well-integrated and good-hearted, not all of them have such well developed Higher Selves that I would trust their judgment on life.

Idealism and Religious Imagery

All the great imagery of our religions was formed in eras when everyone believed without question in idealism – that mind came before matter, that matter was precipitated from mind, that matter was made for mind, that the material universe is made for humankind, that human spirits descended into this material universe, that this material universe, controlled by the great comic mind, nurtures us, that one day matter will dissolve and we will return to to great cosmic mind.

These images couldn't be more familiar, but maybe we tend not to appreciate them because we come to them with a non-idealist – indeed materialistic mind-set.

This all religions have near their centre the image of mother nurturing the child. This the clearest possible image of the 'anthropic' universe – the material universe made to nurture us.

All religions have the image of the cross. This is the image of matter, having been emanated from mind and finally become fixed in the solid, foursquare we know today.

Jesus Christ, then is pinned to the Cross so that he can begin the process of spiritualizing it, dematerializing it. In Christian idealism this event is right at the centre of history.

These are simple things we tend to miss, but obvious when you think abut it.

I think Christianity has to re-embrace idealism, by the way – or it is nowhere. Modern liberal theologians are the nicest, most well-meaning people in the world, but if you compromise with materialistic philosophy you soon find yourself with nothing left to defend.

Sorry, one of my hobby horses.

you DO have a lot to say, don't you?

oh dear, another discouraging comment on this blog from a colleague.

By the way, I've been away from my usual PC for a few days, and haven't been able to post replies to comments. Hope to make up for lost ground shortly.

Mind, Body, Spirit

I'd hoped to be able to say that Lorna Byrne's book, Angels in My Hair, is number one in Ireland, but it's slipped from number two to four in the charts - partly, I think, because shops have underestimated hunger and there are few copies left on the shelves.

There hasn't been a single review, but then MBS books (Mind, Body ,Spirit, the conventional bookseller's category) are almost never reviewed, even though they form such a large proportion of total books sold. Maybe my book was widely reviewed because it didn't look MBS.

Lack of reviews doesn't seem to affect sales of MBS books, maybe because people who are spiritually-minded know not to expect coverage of their kind of literature on the literary pages.

As for feature coverage, that's easier, though you still have to deal with people who worry they are going to look foolish if they appear to take MBS seriously and give it house room. Even journalists who are believers often suffer from this.

Some people worry about meeting Lorna because they fear she will see the state of the soul, the dark, discolouring thoughts, anything that's twisted or neurotic or plain bad. It's true that she will, but she will regard these things with complete compassion, and people will come away from a meeting feeling blessed.

Then there are extreme cases. Because of who she really is - and that for the moment will have to remain a secret - demons have to show themselves to her. And nothing but good can come from that.

There are some thoughts you must never let in

no matter how hard they knock

Destiny and Dematerialization

Met Fatima Bhutto, a beautiful, fascinating woman with an exceptionally strong, fine nose. When I said something about her family and particularly her aunt being regarded by the West as a bulwark against fundamentalism, she rather told me off, saying Benazir Bhutto had compromised with them.

She wants to influence things from below, by writing, but I wonder how long she can her evade her destiny as a political leader?

I think maybe we all have propensity to do this – as well to run away from real love when we find it. I first began to think about this when I read Rilke's retelling of the Prodigal Son in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. In his version the son leaves because he can't take the responsibility of being loved.

Of course there is an esoteric - or at least idealist – interpretation of this story too. The son leaves to descend into the material world, gets the fatted calf when he returns because he had acquired qualities his brother hasn't.

The Eve of Midsummer

A couple of nights ago an owl was terwitterwooing nearby and made our neighbour's dog howl - a small sign of changes coming. Today I went back to the woods where I got lost last week. I saw two fox cubs playing and a green woodpecker, and a young deer stepped out right in front of me.

The world is a great door turning on its hinge, and tonight we may be able to slip through and visit the world between the worlds - the Green Wood where 'things do best please me that befall preposterously'. The Green Wood is a place we enter in an altered state of consciousness. There we may become aware of the ways the supernatural works in the world, ways which may well appear 'preposterous' to the everyday, waking mind.

You may be turned upside down and inside out, mixed up and made a complete fool of, you may be terrified, but at the end of it you will be realigned with the sacred purposes of the world, helped to be as you were wont to be and to see as you were wont to see.  Above all you will be helped to love as you are meant to love, as we see the lovers united with those they are meant to love at the end of the play.

When you are in love with someone you see wonderful qualities in them no-one else can - and your love can help those qualities blossom in a magical way so that they become visible to everyone. Esoteric philosophy is about trying to love the whole world in the same way and with the same results.

I'm talking about faith in things which are too good not to be true - even though the worldly may hate them.

The secret societies who had to shelter from the world's hatred practiced secret techniques to cause a sacred dew to rain down in the mind. Shakespeare alluded to this when Oberon says 'Let the field dew consecrate'. His play is not fantasy but a work of the imagination. He knew what he was talking about.

Sweet dreams.

The Wrong Kind of Nut

Very glad to say my paperback edition is published and the cover can now be seen to the right of this post. I think I prefer it to the hardback.

It may surprise people not in the publishing business to know that the dust jacket, cover, blurb, even the title of a book is decided by the publisher. Of course established, successful and otherwise powerful authors can exercise a lot of influence, and these days publishers are much less likely to go with something an author hates, but  convention and precedent says that the publisher in the end has say-so.

Apart from making my book a bit like a conventional history book - which of course it isn't - the hardback jacket was a bit dark, and I think there was also a danger it might've attracted nutters who want to believe that the world economy is controlled by a cabal of rich old Jews or that when you reach the highest level of initiation in Freemasonry, it is whispered in your ear that in fact the organization is dedicated to the worship of Satan.

Nutters like this have minds that are drenched in hate. They want to believe the worst.

The sort of nutters I want to meet want to believe the best. Their brains are drenched in demethyltriptamine - the secretion which gives rise to imagination - and people who have enough imagination know that it is a sacred faculty, at its roots a part of the impulse that creates the world.

What I want to show in my book is that is it is a crucial feature of the human condition that we have immense latitude when it comes to choosing what we want to believe about the world, and it is important that we become aware of which part of ourselves we use to do the choosing. Is it the best part or the worst part? Choosing with the best part is what that great initiate St Paul meant by 'Faith'.

Evolution as outlined in archaic eastern records

The Oxfam shop in Stratton Ground usually has a good selection of old books on religion, no doubt because it's near Westminster Abbey and various other religious houses. Two weeks ago there was a book in the middle of the window, at £6.99 much cheaper than the books usually displayed there.

When I bought it, the manager said he'd looked at it, and his meaning look made me wonder if this had been perhaps more than idle curiosity. One of the effects I strove for in my book was to make it like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

This strange old book was printed in China and written by someone called Robert Crump. Its illustrations include an Easter Island statue depicted with engravings since lost to us, the planisphere from the temple at Denderah - illustrating the evolution of the species as  envisioned by the ancients - and the lizard-like Thesphenodon or Tuatera with the Third Eye still protruding from its forehead, one of the 'straggler' species to survive the Flood.

The Making of Jordan

Recently – as Mark Booth - I've been saying in the press and on radio:

Why the hell are people making such a fuss about Jordan not writing her own book? – how is it different from the Monkees not making their own records?
(In the day job I am Katie Price's publisher, among many other authors).

But now I've thought of a much more irritating comparison. I'm going to start saying that the collaborative effort involved in creating her novels is like the building of medieval cathedrals.

Really people are incredibly naïve – or perhaps just intellectual snobs. They LIKE to look down on footballers, pop celebs etc., but do they really suppose that in the normal run of things politicians, businessmen, lawyers, indeed any of our elders and betters write their own books?