Part Six: Mystical Experience

‘Once, in a flight of philosophic gloom, Margot Asquith turned to her dinner partner and said, “Winston, in terms of infinity, we are cosmic dust – we are just worms.”

“Perhaps, Margot,” Churchill replied, “but I am a glow worm.”’

from James Humes

Definition of mystical experience: the great psychologist Carl Jung, near death following a heart attack, provided as good a defining description of a mystical experience as I have read:

“I found myself in an utterly transformed state. It was as if I were in ecstasy. I felt as though I were floating in space, as though I were safe in the womb of the universe – in a tremendous void, but filled with the highest possible feeling of happiness….I can describe the experience only as the ecstasy of a non-temporal state in which present, past and future are one….I was woven into an indescribable whole….”

(from ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’ (Collected Works Vol 16 1967) – quoted by Stuart Holroyd, p 160, ‘The Arkana Dictionary of New Perspectives’ 1989)

Carl Gustav Jung

Note: By an odd coincidence, the following piece of writing from autumn 1971 surfaced at the same time – in the autumn of 1995 – as the description of a visit to my grandparents’ grave in the summer of 1970 which is featured in “Grief – personal and collective” in this serial. Both extracts were published both together and separately  in several articles in the USA, the UK and  Australia during the 1990s, as well as in a recent article on ‘Writing from the Twelfth House’ called “The Life Changers: Uranus, Neptune and Pluto cross the I.C.”

Perthshire hills, Scotland, Autumn 1971

I had a mystical experience at the age of twenty four; it has continued to inspire me, especially in dark and painful times, ever since. The filters through which it manifested would appear to be connected to my Celtic heritage, where nature – the first filter – both inspired and dominated my early island life. The second filter was the melancholy pibroch music of the Scottish bagpipes, through which my ancestors have celebrated the poignant ephemerality of human existence for countless generations.

Fortunately, I wrote a full account at the time.

Here it is.

“ It was a clear autumn evening. Peter called just after seven; he was going out to practice some pibroch. Would I like to come along? It was a rare time of balance – in the weather, in the satisfaction of work which was still new enough to be stimulating, in the fact that Peter and I were falling in love.

Peter drove several miles out of town, winding slowly up deserted country roads to a hill above a small village. Taking out the pipes he began to blow them up, and after much tinkering began to play. To avoid distracting him, I strolled slowly down the road. Peter was standing on a bank of grass at the top of the hill; on his left was a little wood. On the other side of the road was a ditch thick with whin bushes.

Beyond the ditch was a rusty, sagging fence; on the far side of the fence, smooth, mossy moorland dotted with whins, their vivid yellow colour fading into the deepening dusk. In the distance I could just see the  Highland hills, purple and rust, gathering shadows in the autumnal twilight.

A myriad of stars, taking their lead from Venus, were growing bright with increasing intensity. A mellow harvest moon was slowly rising, casting a glow on the hills. The air held a hint of cold. I could feel the melancholy music of the pipes flowing through me like a magical current.

Reaching the foot of the hill, surrendering myself completely to the intensity of the moment, I lay down in the middle of the road. Spreading out my arms, I gazed up at the stars.

A gentle breeze blew over my body, soughing through the reedy grass. Drifting with the music through the night sky, slipping away from awareness of myself or the present, I was a timeless spirit of the air, travelling the vastness of space on the notes of the pibroch. An unobtrusive rhythm, a pulse, began to beat; growing more and more steady, it became a whispering message in my mind :

‘ There is nothing to fear,’  it said. ‘ There is nothing to fear.’

An image of my lying dead, under the earth, came to me. Such images, occurring at other times, had filled me with panic and disgust. Now, there was none of that. I could gladly have died at that moment; my flesh would return to the earth and nourish it, my spirit would soar to infinity. The pulse continued, flooding me with its light :

‘ There is nothing to fear, nothing to fear, nothing to fear….’

At that point of spiritual ecstasy, I felt the absolute reality of my soul.

Such a moment might have lasted a second, an hour, or a hundred thousand years; but the music ceased, and the chill which was gradually taking over my body drew me back gently into the present…….”

The knowledge that such a vitalizing sense of connectedness was possible, glimpsed during the above experience, kept me going through the long struggle to believe that  life had an overall meaning, and to find my own way of offering my energy creatively in the years which were to follow.

Ancient Witnesses

TO BE CONTINUED……next chapter is Part Seven : POLTERGEISTS

1000 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page

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