MANY PATHS, ONE HORIZON
© Kit Constable Maxwell


Chapter 13.

MIRACLES AND PRAYER

MANY PATHS, ONE HORIZON
The story of mankind's spiritual awakening, and of the part we play in it.
© Kit Constable Maxwell

13. MIRACLES AND PRAYER

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ghosts, black magic and superstition... we are fascinated by the paranormal, as any book list will show. The human state is much nearer to the spirit world than most of us care to acknowledge. We are a spiritual entity; our body unwittingly clothes a spiritual element and we are powered by the spiritual faculty of intuition; and this extra-terrestrial experience of awareness regularly manifests itself in our physical world.

On a BBC Nationwide programme recently a Brazilian psychologist, Luiz Gasparetto, entered a trance state and proceeded to paint 21 pictures in some 75 minutes. Some were painted upside down, some with both hands simultaneously. Every picture bore the unmistakable style of old masters, from Toulouse Lautrec to Modigliani, VanGogh to Picasso. The speed, variety and quality of the pictures defy explanation, but millions of viewers witnessed this feat which was conducted under strict studio conditions. The pictures were sold for charity.

Gasparetto is a psychic artist. He has no artistic training, yet he can draw with both hands at once, in the dark, in 30 different and immediately recognisable styles. He is one of many psychic mediums who can 'channel' communications from a wide variety of deceased entities.

MUSIC IN SPIRIT
The London housewife Rosemary Brown writes music for long deceased composers like Liszt, Chopin and Brahms - producing work in their definitive style in a feat far beyond her elementary musical skills. Most have been performed in public and all have been acknowledged by musicians worldwide for their authenticity. In the meantime, numerous instances of automatic writing are recorded, some even authentically signed by authors and poets from centuries past. While we can't jump to conclusions about the source of these extraordinary phenomena, the sincerity of these quiet and usually private people cannot be questioned. We cannot question, either, the fact that an energy we call spirit, that is, without physical form, is constantly present in our world.

Sometimes this takes other forms. There are many well documented cases of twins suffering simultaneous emotional experiences throughout their lives which inexplicably span both time and space; and of mothers' sudden and unexplained knowledge of their children's imminent danger. Telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance and premonitions, not to mention out-of-body experiences, synchronicity, and a host of altered states of consciousness induced by psychedelic drugs, breathwork, prayer, meditation and hypnotism, all demonstrate mankind's spiritual inheritance.

In animals this 'sixth sense' is taken for granted - in a dog's nervous response to a psychic or haunted environment, or a rat family's precognition of disaster when they will all suddenly vacate a doomed ship days before it sails.

Far up a lonely track in the Scottish Highlands, I once visited a remote, abandoned shooting lodge; the atmosphere of that unhappy house was hostile and unwelcoming. The two lurchers with me refused to enter the house. I camped in the house with two friends while the dogs whinged and growled and spent the night outside. Later I discovered the cause for the dogs unrest - a murder victim had been concealed beneath the foundations, some fifty years before….

THE OCCULT
We both indulge and fear the occult. We are both curious and denouncing, and yet we engage in prayer, convinced that our spiritual utterings will create a physical response in our world - which they often do, as much for psychological and physiological reasons as for those phenomena we call miracles. Just as the mind shapes Light, the frequency of universal energy, so the mind can shape our present and our earthly future. Collective prayer, the combined energies of aligned groups, multiplies this force with often spectacular results. We can heal ourselves and others of terminal disease, paralysis and physical malfunctions; we can perform miracles....

How ?

Pilgrims flock to traditional shrines, to places of spiritual hope and healing. The fervour generated in shrines like Lourdes, Medjugorie and Mecca is a powerful experience which cannot fail to engage the deepest of human feelings. The atmosphere is imbued with a sense of hope, love and expectation. Personal identities are elevated to collective awareness and human values ennobled. In this rarefied state pilgrims pray for forgiveness for all their transgressions, perceived and real, and pray for their sick and their dying, and for peace in their societies and success in their wars.

They unite in a common energy, and this energy can manifest itself as physiological power. Illness is most often an unsolicited response to trauma and an unconscious cry for love. The emotional charge of this spiritually aligned group can invoke this love and the sufferer may be released from the full burden of illness. A problem shared with the collective energy of prayer can answer this cry, negate the trauma and trigger recovery. Such is the beauty of love and the great energy of our poorly conceded spirituality and our ill developed power of healing.

In Arabia I have witnessed the fervour of peasant pilgrims making their once-in-a-lifetime visit to Mecca. Mountain people from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen assemble alongside Somalis, Eritreans, Philippinos, many of them illiterate and most quite ignorant of the outside world. Sometimes their pilgrimage is collectively financed by their fellow villagers. Some suffer immense hardships on journeys that can take them months or even years, but the delight on their faces as they near the Holy City tells of a joy which elevates them above the limitations of their humble origins.

Healing ministries, deliverance services and the so-called Toronto Blessing17 can all trigger amazing biological response, all fired by sudden changes in our spiritual outlook. These do not prove the existence of some beneficent (or in the case of deliverance, malevolent) force, only our willingness to submit to higher energies in search of spiritual alignment. Prayer is the word we use to invoke these energies, and participatory ritual is the vehicle that triggers prayer.

17Whole congregations are observed to fall down in the aisle, laugh uncontrollably, weep and speak gibberish. Participants describe the phenomenon as the 'coming of the Holy Spirit'. Since the first occasion in Toronto, up to 4,000 churchgoers in UK have had the same experience. The established church dismisses the occurrence as mass hysteria.

Prayer is generally devoid of a common goal and more often devoid of a spiritual goal. Inherited traditions die hard, and most Western religions, and some Eastern ones too, are preoccupied with the worldly excesses of sin and sex. They spend too much time talking about the sins of the world, of unharnessed gratification and moral impropriety. Sin becomes the public enemy that unites the faithful, and in our condemnation of sin we forget to embrace the unjudgmental face of spiritual maturity, clearly missing the point of prayer and the healing energy of Love.

Eroticism and sexual ritual has played an important role in religious development through the ages. The Tantric forms of Hinduism advocate sexual union, generally through yoga and coitus reservatus, to commemorate the male and female gods of the universe, Siva and Sakti, who together represent our dual experience of mind and body, spirit and matter18. Taoism elevated coitus reservatus, (sexual union un-interrupted by orgasm), into an ethic of righteous living.

18 The Kamasutra is the historic guide to sensual pleasure, love and the good Hindu marriage. This renowned work dates from the 3rd century BC

Enabled sensation, heightened through ecstasy, is a recurring theme among mystics and saints of the Christian world. Fasting in the rarefied atmosphere of a mountain top, prolonged meditation, deep concentration in prayer, sense deprivation and self conditioning all lead to forms of ecstasy which sharply define our experience of spirit and matter.

SELF RECRIMINATION
Traditional Christians loved to declare themselves sinful, wallowed in self recrimination, denigrated sex and spent long hours nurturing the martyred child of their own immaturity. They relished telling their god how awful they were, how unworthy, how lowly, and they prayed for salvation.

Many Christians retain a lingering conviction that a stern and judgmental god can be pacified with repentance. The tradition of penance clashes with modern social teaching... an innocent child born to endure the preposterous concept of original sin will be unlikely to shed its preconditioning, so powerful in a developing child, and to turn the concept around into self love and the life long regeneration of its spiritual potential. This cult of blameless burden can cause lasting trauma to sensitive recipients and lifelong guilt to the remainder.

Grovelling ingratiation speaks of the confused perspective of one who has yet to accept his rightful place in the Universal hierarchy, and accept the joyful responsibility of his godly nature. Just as we feel 'good' after running a 10 mile marathon, pitting grit and determination against apathy and worldly excess, so also the grit and determination of our prayerful penance feeds our flaccid brain with physical fatigue and unwarranted emotional expenditure, while doing nothing for our spirituality, which waits eternally for us to embrace its rich reality and to spread spiritual energy throughout our life and our world.

PRAYER AND THOUGHT
Prayer and its modern partner, Positive Thought, do not quench our anxieties or defuse our unconscious strife. All too often prayer attempts to bury our emotional problems, to subjugate them to a higher power or to self delusion. But that higher power is within us, in our own soul, which will not be silenced by prayer alone. There is no shortcut to spiritual maturity; we are born wanting, by our own pre-carnate choice, that our wants and needs may lead us to our own reality. Not through a dictated notion borrowed from an ageing book of words, but the vibrant knowledge of a living spirituality which belongs to us all.

Christian and Jewish cultural interpretations are confused and man made. No god ever advocated pain, penance and retribution; these are the unreasoned words of power-starved teachers beating their recalcitrant followers into religious submission, with talk of salvation and other hints of psychological coercion. People are easily led and a burden of responsibility must fall upon some of the more vociferous missionaries, the born again zealots and the evangelists who sometimes forget the real message of our religions.

Growth is all about expansion of the soul. Many lesser religious teachers order restriction, denial and subjugation of the soul, usually for their own ill-formulated objectives.

The message of all religions is clear; it can be summarised as 'the ennoblement of human values, manifesting as spiritual love'. It is only the words used by different religions to engage our attention that gives rise to division, misinterpretation and confusion.

GOALS
So our religious aspirations should embrace a clarified perspective, a change of goal... instead of feeling guilty and inadequate we should accept our spiritual heritage, cherish our godly capacity for love, compassion and forgiveness and ensure we are not held back from our spiritual destiny by unlived negativity, unexpressed emotion and an inner anger for our unquiet unconscious mind. Our prayers should seek to exploit our strengths and our spiritual gifts. Our Positive Thought must set workable and achievable goals - goals which cherish growth, nourish self love and spread the light of Knowledge.

HEALING
The channelling of harmonious vibrations into the aura, the etheric body or energy centres is called healing. The spirit- guide, Gildas, proffers the charming reflection that: "any hand, offered with love, is a healing hand". The power and energy passed from one human to another, by whatever means, triggers activity in our psycho-spiritual self, and healing results at one or more levels.

Healing is not limited to the physical realm. We have a human energy-field or aura, (well demonstrated by Kirlian photography) which spiritual healers can treat with non invasive methods. These methods include the channelling of concordant resonances into the subject's unbalanced energy fields.

At a healing session in London recently, a healer friend showed me the power of this channelled energy - a broad blight, bright scarlet, ran down the centre of both arms, terminating at his hands - indicative of a sudden and tremendous energy transfer. The healer was exhausted, the patient was healed; the treatment was free.

HIGHER SELF
Prayer is a channel to the higher self and to the universal collective. But much more than this, prayer is a channel to our inner self, and in prayer, contemplation and meditation lies our slot for spiritual refreshment and psychic renewal. Pray for healing, pray for spiritual strength, pray for comfort in bereavement, in distress. Pray for others by beaming our unique energy to them, by bathing them in beatific light. By praying for others we pray for ourselves. Pray for the ego's union with our spiritual depths and a growing experience of the energy we call god, wherein dwells our redemption, our liberation and our salvation.

Next Page  

 


 

Table of Contents - click on any chapter to open it
Section
Title
Page
i
Prologue                   Click here...
v
ii.
Preface
viii
1.
Space and Matter
1
2.
Evolution of Life
5
3.
Birth of Awareness
14
4.
Spiritual Goals
28
5.
Psychology
43
6.
Evolution and Astrology
52
7.
Astrology and Fate
59
8.
Light, Love and Feeling
68
9.
Primal Scream
75
10.
World Religions
82
11.
Ethics of Caring
96
12.
Thought Conditioning
102
13.
Miracles and Prayer This page
108
14.
Shadow and the Unconscious
116
15.
Journey in Spirit
124
16.
Pantheism and Matter
131
Appendix I
Glossary of Terms
136
Appendix II
Bibliography
139
Appendix III
Acknowledgements
144