Chapter 7 

It’s not Where We Are - it’s Where We Are At 

This year, 1986, is the centenary of the birth of Edward Bach. One hundred years ago on September 24th he was born at Moseley near Birmingham in the heart of England. He lived a convenient 50 years and died in the evening of November 27th 1936. Like many who lived and worked in the first decades of this century he saw the great upheaval of the western world and the revolutions of society. It is customary to notice change by reference to aeroplanes and motor cars and certainly during his life he saw the technological stirrings of the 20th century. As a young man before the Great War he must have seen the first flights and may have shared the general enthusiasm for innovation. He arrived in London just in time to see the last horse-drawn omnibus and during the next 20 years (he lived in London 1910-1930) he cannot but have noticed the effect of radio and telephone upon the city institutions. We now witness the electronic revolution and computerisation, it is another surge of change. 

While Bach studied medicine and qualified as a medical doctor the great landmarks of modern science were being mapped. In the first discovery of radiation by Becquerel (a name we all have good reason to remember) when Bach was 10 years old, the workings of modern physics were implicit. And indeed some of the workings of modern medicine. The ideas of 50 years ago become the reality of today. And it is only to state the obvious to observe that the century since Bach was born has seen the discovery and development of devices that have radically changed the context of life for every one of us. 

The changes in physical and social circumstances, however, are less significant than the changes in ideas themselves. We see the outward show of new design and can plot a sort of progress by the speed records and space flights but they are less significant for life than the changes in thought. Thought it is true can create those material forms but the greatest alteration has come in relation to how we think about ourselves. This has been born out of a slow change in the great thought forms that control the psyche of mankind. These dictate that in the cultures of different ages mankind has seen a differing reality: the world view of the Greek being different to that of the Roman, the medieval churchman seeing a different picture of the hierarchy of being to the philosophers of the 18th century. Whilst there is debate as to when we encountered the nadir in the great cycles of cosmic thought it is generally agreed that we are now on the upswing and we are moving progressively from the dark ages of materialism. 

A signal of the changing consciousness of people in western society during the last hundred years is the coming of the term ‘psychological’. In the 1880’s a few philosophers hinted at the workings of the subtle mind. The Romantic Poets who wrote in terms of longing for the soul guessed at the workings of the psyche. But most people knew only the simple injunctions of religion . Few indeed saw anything beyond the stability of a society based upon material wealth and the personal power that derived from it. Today our outlook may still appear to be materialistic but our world view has been enlarged in great measure. Ideas only slowly become acceptable to the public consciousness. As we have come to understand the subtlety of electricity so our consciousness too has changed. If we were to walk now into the street and ask “what is psychology ?” we can be sure that the vast majority would understand the question and give a reasonable answer. 

This shift in perception has now become universal. Rather as the colonialists of the 19th century explored and occupied the physical world so in the 20th century we have explored and colonised the psychological world. The effects of this are apparent even in the comic books of our children: the moral stories of missionaries in Africa have given way to robot transformers in a world where not all is what it seems. The moral struggle of good and evil now takes place within the geography of our minds. 

As we know the foundation stones of our modern understanding of the mind were laid in Austria and Switzerland by Freud and Jung. It is unfair to suggest that they were entirely original: Mesmer had worked in Austria too a hundred years before but now everyone knows these names and they are among the folk-heroes of modern thought. Yet whether history is made by individuals is debatable and the event that helped so many people into the recognition of the psyche was the First World War. Again it was the poets who were first into the field (Graves and Sassoon, for instance) but almost every household encountered the effect of shock, mental trauma and fatigue and saw the way their loved ones must deal with it. War was no longer the noble pursuit of young braves but a horrific initiation into torments of the mind. It was not a pointless slaughter, however: as the shells rained down upon the trenches the karmic shells of a generation were cracking open. 

With the great changes that shook Western Europe in World War I came the opportunity to look afresh at life patterns. It is true that in some measure the karmic shells were carefully reassembled and glued back together again so that the appearance of normality was resumed. But as we know from history the flood of change was washing at the steps of many of the grand monuments of authority. A simple recognition of humanity began to replace the blind assumptions of privilege. 

For some the shock of the war left them incapable. A new medical term came to describe them as ‘shell-shocked’. Nothing much could be done to help but observation concluded that when the mind was strained beyond all bearable limits the body responded in peculiar and unpredictable ways. There was the dawn of an idea that our mental state affected our physical state. Like any idea it can be turned for good or ill and from such a seed could grow the horrors of brain washing and the basis for a new medicine. 

Historians have suggested that a second world war was inevitable after the way that the first was ended. Between the wars two great forces seem to have been at work. The one was to file claims for justice and a proper resolution to grievances (social problems and national socialism) the other to persuade people to see humanity in a different way. During these years many great teachers worked in the west trying to change the consciousness (psychological outlook) of their followers. Gurdjieff, Steiner, Annie Besant and the Theosophists for instance. As grieving families tried to contact their dead loved ones spiritualism grew popular: accounts of life beyond the grave were provided by A soldier and other spirit guides. 

These sort of influences changed the thinking of a generation; unseen in many ways but none the less potent for that. Perhaps the most significant teacher came to the west on the first passenger ship to leave India after the war. It docked in New York in late September 1920. Swami Yogananda brought a spiritual knowledge from the east that might transform the consciousness of mankind — the ancient creedless teachings of Kriya Yoga . 

At about this time many texts of oriental philosophy and religion began to be available in new translation. First they were seen as being of scholarly interest but gradually they dissolved like honey into the warm water of our soul consciousness. They held a hope for the future, a possibility that new ways of thought from ancient thought might offer insight to the perplexity of western rationalism. 

After the Second World War a generation were born to whom the journey to the east, whether in book or in body was a strong attraction. If a list of names can serve to remind us it is such as Jung, I Ching, Lao Tzu, Herman Hesse and Tolkien who have shaped our thoughts. The ‘love generation’, hippies, flower children et al are the offspring of the spiritual renewal that took place in the years between the wars. Even the interest in wholemeal food and a vegetarian diet started then. We have been the inheritors of the aspirations and thought forms of the grandfathers: ideas germinate for a generation before they grow in force. 

Instability in times of change produces diversity of thought: we are not all sold on the notion of mysticism and for that we may be thankful. But it is helpful to recognise that we work within the context of certain thought forms. The products of scientific modernism (call it what you will) are all too well known to enumerate. So the ideas that stand as alternative in our society seem the more interesting. Of course what value we place upon them is a matter for the individual to decide. 

The advent of psychology , a science of the mind, has spawned a host of areas of study that relate to our physical and mental states. As science was once the total study of all matter and has now become a number of specialisations so too has the study of the mind proliferated. An instinct of our time seems to be this urge to divide things up into categories and parts so that we become immersed in smaller and smaller details. By becoming special (specialisation) we hope to find identity. But another form of thought suggests that a whole being is greater than its assembled parts and that we cannot hope to understand life if we dissect it and cut it into pieces. 

As ordinary human beings (not specialists) what are we to make of this matter? It appears that no sooner is something discovered than it becomes another department of study to which we are not allowed access, the doors being locked by jargon and scientific terminology. The findings of the specialist are published as new knowledge which a generation later we are expected somehow to understand as it is taught to our children as scientific fact. The difficulty is that we have no general formula for life to which we can refer matters. In times gone by we might use religion but it is clear that science and religion have moved to worlds apart. 

No sooner had we come to accept the idea of the psyche than we had to contend with differing opinion, competing schools of thought with differing theories, claims and counter claims. It is difficult for anybody who is not in the game (a specialist) to know what to make of it. In fact, of course, what we try to do is to get on with our lives and ignore it all. That is fine until something goes wrong. If our car breaks down we go to a mechanic (specialist), if the television is on the blink we have it repaired (specialist), if the body starts to judder we go to a doctor (specialist), and if the mind begins to reel we seek out psychiatry (a specialist). In all of this we act as consumers without an informed view or point of access to what is under the bonnet or inside the box. 

It will be argued that it is difficult to keep relating back and forth from the general to the particular. We must have the details apparently since observation of the detail will provide the scientific facts for life. Each time we find a new detail in some sub-sub-sub category of a science we cannot hope to relate it to every other detailed fact and piece of information. And if some new idea emerged from another specialist how difficult it would be if that conflicted with the idea structure that we have built in our own specialised world of study. Often we don’t want to look at changes in life for fear that they may demand that we change too. 

It has been suggested rather optimistically that western science is nearing the end of the assembly of information. As if the world were really a pile of material to be dug out and sifted through in order for understanding to be achieved! But there is no end to the number of thought forms and there is no end to the possibilities of life. This being so because life is change and change provides new possibilities and potential for life. Only when we stop looking at the details and look at what supplies the details will we understand what we are seeing. Only by perceiving the life force that fills the thought forms will we perceive the process of life. 

Essentially this process begs that we work with a different approach. It is the mind that works with this assembly of facts, the ordered argument. But as we know, the argument too quickly runs into debate and discussion; we cannot hold the centre of our thinking. The mind totters without the ordered hierarchy of knowledge. 

We must learn to think with our hearts.....The mind says that the heart cannot think.....the heart laughs.....the mind says that sounds like madness.....the heart is open to receive. The heart knows that all life is one.