REVIEW OF BOOKS
Books of the occult
Brian Inglis on the values of an occultist
There is still, I find, quite a widespread assumption that those of us who accept the existence of extra-sensory perception also accept the existence of the full range of phenomena as related in the encyclopedias: from Abominable Snowmen to the theories of K. G. Zschaetzsch, who identified. the inhabitants of Atlantis with the Aryans. Not SQ. We are touchily selective in our beliefs. The early members of the Society for Psychical Research, and very distinguished they were, believed in telepathy but not in clairvoyance: and since that time there has always been spirited and sometimes sour controversy over what can legitimately be investigated, and what should be left severely alone.
To declare my own prejudices: 1 find Zen pretentious and boring, my irritation in no way lessened by the recognition that there is a truth at the heart of it, continually masked by all the clap-with-one-hand fudge at the periphery. As for motorcycling, I once in the Spectator called down the wrath of its devotees by suggesting it should be banned. This now unnerves me, since without motorcycles we would not have had Robert Pirsig's remarkable book,. which in fact deals little with Zen but extensively with a motorcycle, and contrives without the aid of whimsy to make that uncouth monstrosity into a living, sensitive creature.
The story is on various levels. The motorcycle carries Pirsig across the prairies, over the Rockies to California. It also carries his eleven-year-old son. Chris, with whom he is trying to re-establish contact, following an unhappy period when Pirsig was in a mental hospital. And along with them goes Pirsag's former self, "Phaedrus." Phaedrus had been" one of those arrogantly inquisitive men a soul incapable, in Yeat's phrase, of remorse or rest; and he had driven Pirsig out of his mind. He too, like Chris, has to be fused back into Pirsig's new life.
The questioning is still there, but no longer the arrogance. The ride represents search not so much for the meaning as for the quality of life, reflected in, among other things, the delicate tuning of the motor cycle's engine even in the precision with which the correct screwdriver is chosen and the correct force applied, to a screw.
It may sound contrived, and occasionally it is. The interruptions to Pirsig's reflections, ostensibly to meet the demands of the narrative, the scenery, or the weather, can come as unnaturally as 'natural breaks' in television programmes. Yet it is a compelling tale, quite unlike anything I have come across before.
Phaedrus is a ghost from Pirsig's own past; the ghosts in We Are One Anothert are from far back in time, yet they haunt their present-day incumbents in a curiously similar fashion. Some years ago Dr Arthur Guirdham came across a patient who, apparently, was the reincarnation of a thirteenth century Cathar. Investigating her case, he began to find that he, too, was part of that melancholy story, whose climax was the burning at the stake of the defenders of Montsegur. Since then he has found other Cathars•or they have found him.
Again, to declare my own incredulity: detailed and persuasive though Dr Guirdham's evidence is. I cannot see that he makes out an _ entirely convincing case for the reality of -reincarnation. It seems to me reasonable to surmise that an event like, the fall of MontsQur created a kind of psychic trauma which persists, so that certain individuals are still capable of being affected by it, if circumstances tune them into it. The weals on the body of one of Dr Guirdham's circle, derived as he believes from her Cathar forerunner being struck with a burning brand, must be related to the scores of instances where devout Christians have developed the stigmata, without thinking of themselves as Christ recincarnated. It seems more likely that they have been picking up transmissions about the crucifixion (or, rather, about people's reaction to the idea of the crucifixion: the stigmata, it appears, correspond to the popular conception of the waa Jesus was crucified, as evidenced in thousands of paintings and statues, rather than to the waY it was actually carried out). The explanation of the events Dr Guirdham describes, however, is of less importance than the fact that, unquestionably, some of us are capable of receiving transmissions from the past. There are many more, in all probability, who are unaware of their power's, because in a society still dominated by the materialist fallacy, the 'receivers' consciously or unconsciously push the material out of their minds, for fear of going crazy or being thought to be get° crazy, and being locked up. It is probable that, there are scores of people kept in mental hospitals simply because they cannot come to terms with their Phaedrus, or their Cathar; because science does not recognise the existence of such psychic entities. It is Lir Guirdham's achievement that he makes them real.
It is beginning to look as if scientists are going to be compelled to recognise the existence of what might be called paranormal botany: and in this field I must confess to being credulous. Somewhere, years ago, 1 read that,a mushroom can sprout its way up througt concrete; and have not wished to be disithici" sioned. Well, according to Peter Tompkins ail Christopher Bird "the lowly alfalfa plant" can do it; and if the alfalfa plant, whatever that maY be, can do it, so surely can the Amanita muscaria, or even the puffball. • The Secret Life of Plants a consists of a surveY of the research that has been done into 110" plants react to experiences of a kind vaheret; because of our arbitrary differentiatio t between them and the animals, we would riPc expect any reactions: to magnetism, to tnns.i; to prayer, and to love. What emerges wl"aa devastating clarity is that orthodox Darwinia'a biology is in an even more rickety conditt°1; than orthodox Newtonian physics. unmentionable cad, teleology, is demall°1",rt readmission to polite scientific society. Is„'e simply by chance, the authors ask, that ta"e Trichoseros parviflorus orchid can imitate t",e female of a fly so accurately that the Maio attempts to mate with it, and in doing 5 pollinates the orchid"? By natural selection, this could not happen, because in the inter"en.; ing stages the orchid would not have resemblau. • the fly, and would not have been pollinate° How, then, but by some form of precognitin0. leading to its destiny? Again, though, theorising to. account tor tne phenomena is less important than securing recognition that they exist. And this is nec71; sary not just to provide the world WI., better-informed botany. Every farmer, gardener, even the humblest window-h?,%5 will find the information useful as well to diverting, not to mention the chanceaair undertake individual research among vegetables, their flowers, and their weeds.
Brian Inglis is a former editor of The SpectaWr
The Secret Life of Plants Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird (Allen Lane £2.75).,
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