Author’s Note: Occasionally the names of people and locales have been changed in the interests of those not wishing for publicity

Introduction

A book about the paranormal should open with a sense of wonder and delight. Therefore I am deliberately leaving my more critical comments for later in the book. Chapter One takes us without preamble straight into the astonishments of the ‘alternative universe’ — that breathtaking world which somehow exists in complete contradiction to the universe our normal senses discern around us. The alternative universe is in fact not part of this objective universe. It is somewhere else.

The notion of ‘somewhere else’ is very hard for us to grasp, let alone to define. Still more difficult is the fact that while we are very definitely in and part of this present objective universe, we are also, fitfully, in touch with that other universe. So in some sense, apart from being here, we are also simultaneously there as well.

Nevertheless, it is not the case that the alternative universe is mysterious in itself. It is mysterious only to us. For our nervous system is poorly equipped to understand the paranormal. As I sometimes remark, it is not that god is inexpressible, it is only that we are incapable of expressing him.

The alternative universe — I should really say universes — of the paranormal do have their own laws and their own coherent existence. It is the case, however, that these in no way resemble those of the objective universe. They simply bear no relation to the rules of every day. This, in brief, is why the application of science and the scientific method to the paranormal not only produces no results, but rather literally causes the phenomena to disappear.

In a dark room the face of a luminous watch glows at me in mid-air. I switch on the light — and the watch face disappears as does the watch itself in a jumble of objects. The watch face is the paranormal and science is the light.

Just one look at this point at my harder comments in later parts of the book.

Years ago as a very young child I saw a gardener at work in a garden. He was pruning a large rose bush in the centre. He went on snipping and cutting and snipping. After a while I realized he was trying to kill the rose bush, but I wondered why he just did not dig the whole thing up. In the end all that was left was a mutilated stump. The next summer a glorious bush, filled with roses, appeared on that spot.

What the gardener did for the rose bush I hope to do for the paranormal in this book.

My image of the rose bush is a metaphor. But perhaps I need also to spell out my intention in plainer language. Part II of this book, then, does contain some rather severe criticism of paranormalist beliefs and attitudes. This section does not contain only criticism, by any means, but it is the criticism which may initially predominate in the eye of the sensitive believer.

So it is most important for me to emphasize that I am not engaged there in any task of destruction, but in a work of reconstruction. I indicate the shakiness of some paranormalist thinking simply in order to build more surely from a stable base in Parts III and IV. I believe the edifice I construct there will satisfy the largest appetites for creative vision — but importantly, with the added knowledge that we build on a sure and certain foundation.

It is no longer the question whether science will recognize the paranormal. It is rather a question of allowing science to apologize with as little loss of face as possible. But still there is a last price for the paranormalist to pay for his victory — and that is the price of putting his own house in order. The paranormalist and the psychic must demonstrate to the scientist that they too are willing to act responsibly and as adults, not expecting all that glitters to be gold, nor to be right always, all of the time.

I cannot too strongly state my belief that paranormalists gain absolutely nothing by extravagance or by adopting standards in respect of the paranormal that they would never for a moment tolerate in their social and economic lives. They not only do not gain — they lose. Why on earth (or in heaven) should we trade this priceless possession, the paranormal, for the momentary, spurious gains of extravagance, euphoria and wishful thinking?

The paranormal is the most glorious gift that life has to offer. This book is in affirmation of that fact.

The Paranormal
Chapter One

Mysterious Midlands

At the age of twenty-six I went to become a teacher in Coventry in the English Midlands. The year previously I had spent as a management trainee in the scrap-metal business, but had found the commercial world not really to my taste. Prior to that, I had spent some years obtaining a degree in Modern Languages. In Coventry I taught not Modern Languages, but general subjects in a secondary modern school.

I had no acquaintances in that part of England. After the day’s marking and preparation was done, the choice really was between watching television with my Irish landlord or going to a film. An occasional variation was the once-a-week dance, or the once-a-week concert, or a visit to Coventry repertory theatre.

To fill the series of empty evenings I enrolled for three sets of evening classes. Two of them involved folk-dancing, one of them gymnastics. The gymnastics was needed also for another reason — I had to teach it to my class.

I was, and remained, in the beginner’s class in gymnastics. One evening in the changing room, however, a member of the advanced class struck up a conversation with me. He subsequently told me that his ‘spirit guide’ had instructed him to do so. The following week he and I had a cup of tea in a buffet near the Institute after the classes.

In due course he told me he was a spiritualist and himself a medium. He suggested I might like to go along to the church service the following Sunday, on the far outskirts of Coventry. I did so that week, and also for several weeks subsequently.

I found the unadorned simplicity of the church (apart from the habitual enormous basket of fresh flowers in front of the altar), the service itself and the people very appealing. It was quite unlike anything I had seen in frankly miserable Christian churches. The hymns were especially delightful, many of them written by spiritualists. The service was always followed by a display of clairvoyance. This I found completely fascinating, but to my disappointment I myself never got a ‘message’.

Eventually Peter (as I will call him) suggested I might like to attend a séance at his parents’ house. Apparently all his family were psychic to some degree. I had in fact already met the family — very genuine, rather rough-and-ready people, who ran their own greengrocery business. They lived outside Coventry in a rambling house, parts of which were several hundred years old. It had once been a public house, and the room in which the séances were held was the old taproom.

This was an extremely atmospheric building and an extremely atmospheric room. We — some eight or ten of us gathered on that evening — sang one of the simple spiritualist hymns, and the presiding medium gave a short prayer. We were not sitting in a circle nor at a table, but on ordinary hardback chairs facing the medium. In the distance the house-dog, Bruce, barked and wailed dismally from the room in which he had been shut.

At this point I became aware of a certain light-headedness. And then suddenly it seemed to me that a great wind was rushing through the room. In my ears was the deafening sound of roaring waters. Together these elements seized me and carried me irresistibly forward. As I felt myself swept away I became unconscious.

As I have written elsewhere, the great force and the abruptness of the onset very much conveyed the impression of a dam or barrier having suddenly collapsed. Something, perhaps, could flow through which had previously been denied.

When I regained consciousness I was standing in front of the chairs, my face covered with tears, and the medium was holding my two hands and talking to me. It seems, as I was told later, that several ‘entities’ had spoken through me — one of them, apparently, a cousin of mine of the same name as myself, who had been killed during the Second World War.

I will speak later of mediumistic trance and what it is that I think then occurs. For the moment, the upshot was as follows. The presiding medium told me that I was myself a strong natural medium and that I ought to develop the gift. She suggested that I attend her own weekly circle, which consisted entirely of mediumistic individuals.

These weekly séances proved the gateway to wonders.

There would be seven or eight people, of whom Peter was one. Apart from an occasional change, it was always the same people. The purpose of these seances was to develop further individuals who had already shown evidence of strong psychic powers, and to explore, as a joint force, the farther reaches of the spirit world. The people involved, aside from their actual gifts, were straightforward, uncomplicated individuals — a shopkeeper, a railway porter, a secretary and so on. These seemed to have no difficulty in reconciling the mundaneness of their everyday existence with the marvels which occurred in the small suburban room.

The room was lit by a very small lamp with a slightly yellowish, but almost white bulb. This was not, therefore, the standard red light recommended for these occasions. We could actually see quite well, once our eyes became accustomed to the low intensity of light.

Aside from physical light there was also a less tangible form of ‘electricity’ in evidence. That is, we often felt that the air, or at any rate our skins, tingled. This sensation was, I think, physical, and not psychological. I think it was not just ‘in the mind’. The others assured me it was a manifestation of the psychic power which we collectively generated. Some claimed to be able to see it sparking about the room. I never saw it myself, though sometimes I did see the faint auras of individuals. Years later I experienced the same (or at least a similar) power, much more strongly, in the presence of such gifted psychics as Jan Merta and Marcel Vogel.

Each member of the group was, on different occasions, the vehicle for an evening’s work. Sometimes the meeting consisted of an address from one of the ‘higher guides’ speaking through a particular member of the group in trance. On some other occasions we had a rescue circle.

A rescue circle is where the spirit guides bring into the circle the spirits of individuals who, allegedly, have died but do not realize they are dead. These spirits are said to wander about in darkness, attached to the Earth and to those they cannot forget. The idea is then for the members of the circle gently to educate the lost spirit in the facts of death.

It is a strange experience to be possessed by one of these lost souls — stranger even, that is, than ‘normal’ possession by the more conventional spirit guides. Normal possession is certainly amazing enough. Although some mediums go into deep trance (or full unconsciousness) and remember nothing of what has transpired on waking, it is possible to learn to remain conscious while the possession occurs and unfolds. Subjectively, one withdraws one’s consciousness to a place apart. It is as if one steps aside from one’s body, although the expression is incorrect — for one does not then occupy another space in the physical sense. One is in a somewhere else that is nevertheless still within oneself.

Then it seems, again subjectively, as if another being ‘materializes’ or arises within one‘s body and pervades it. The sensation, surely enough, is of someone else putting on your body as you yourself might put on clothes. There is a very clear and definite sense of another person within you. You now have — or rather are — the body of an old man, a young girl or whatever. You feel, for instance, the arthritic joints. Fingers become gnarled and twisted — or fine and slender. You grow tall, or short, or fat. You now stand and walk in a way that is characteristic of someone else. You begin also to have other memories — though these are sketched in rather than fully drawn. You have a sense of being the person you have now become, and this person is not you. Your voice, when you speak, if it is that of a young girl, has no trace of falsetto, no unnaturalness. This is someone else’s own voice.

When one experiences, or becomes, a lost spirit in a rescue circle, experience goes yet further. You feel the agonizing pain of broken legs, the bursting lungs filled with water, the flesh hanging in shreds after a road accident.

These were some of our séance evenings. On yet others, events took a turn of their own. The most memorable occurrence of this kind for me was as follows.

We had not long been settled into our seats, and the presiding medium was talking quietly to us about ‘the work’, as she often did, when we became aware of a figure in a comer of the room.

This was a crouching, ape-like shape, which became clearer as the moments passed. I guess it approximated to most people’s idea of what an ancient cave-man would look like. Yet one could not make out too much detail — the eyes were hidden, for example. It stood half in shadow, watching us, breathing heavily as if nervous. I must say, though, that I sensed rather than heard the breathing. I could not decide whether our visitor was wearing the skin of some animal, or whether it had a rough coat of hair of its own.

After a time the group leader addressed the creature. Did it want to tell us something? Would it like to come into the circle? Could we help it in any way? There was no reply, and very little reaction. After a while the image of the creature simply faded — and our séance continued. I was quite breathless with delight. The others seemed to take it calmly enough.

After each séance I always said very little and never anything that would ‘lead’ any of the other witnesses. I waited instead to see what the others had to say. In this way I could compare their reactions and perceptions with my own, without having fed them information which could modify or add to their reports.

On another occasion the presiding medium announced we were to have a lecture from a very highly-evolved spirit indeed. The lecture began. The spirit speaker told us that his message was coming to us from the highest realms of light, not far below the Highest One of all. The light of the message, he said, was beaming down to us through many layers of spirit, a gorgeous radiance beaming down, down through the darkness of matter. A wondrous radiance, beaming to us the love and compassion of the highest-evolved spiritual realm.

This basic theme was repeated by the speaker in different words over and over again. And then, finally, the centre of our circle grew bright as if a light shone down from the ceiling, and for a while a radiance illumined even the dark corners of the room.

It was clear that these events we occasionally saw were at the very least collective hallucinations. There was, in other words, considerable general and detailed agreement in the reports each individual gave. Yet even the minimal ‘explanation’ of a collective hallucination is a happening unheard of in modern psychology.

It should not be imagined that there was actually very much discussion after a sitting — in fact no discussion in any sense, just casual conversation. One would think that after such experiences a room would be filled with the babble of excited conversation. But not at all. My fellow sitters reacted to the miraculous happenings of the séance in much the same way as they might have reacted to seeing a more or less interesting film.

Later in this book I shall be talking about what I think underlies the mediumistic experience. For the moment I will just say that, in my opinion, the manifestations of our séance room were not physical materializations. That is, I do not think that any of the happenings would have registered on a photograph of the scene. These were psychological, that is, parapsychological events. But even though I describe them as psychological, you can search, as I did in the years ahead, all the psychology textbooks of the Western world and find no mention whatsoever that such things as I witnessed and underwent could even take place — much less, therefore, any attempts to account for them.

As regards the figure of the cave-man, which so very much impressed and haunted me both then and afterwards ( in a wholly agreeable way, I must add) — I had and could not have had any inkling that one day I would write books about Neanderthal man. For those familiar with these matters, I wonder if it was classic Neanderthal I saw that evening.

Meanwhile, outside the séance room, my ‘education’ in other aspects of psychic affairs continued.

On the negative/sceptical (though never destructive) side, I kept, for instance, a mental note of the names and addresses which the ‘lost souls’ of the rescue circle sometimes gave us. I wrote to all these addresses, and sometimes visited the locales described. None of these places or addresses existed. I said nothing of this to anyone.

On the positive side, I had many talks and walks with Peter.

He took me once to a dark, deep lake, the bottom of which he said had never been fathomed, and where a number of people had committed suicide. He said that if one opened oneself to the experience, one could sense the dead souls in the water. It is true that on doing as he instructed I felt a great and indefinable sense of melancholy.

Thereafter I would sometimes go to country graveyards and isolated, ruined houses. It seemed to me then that in such places one did make contact with some kind of presence — I even felt I learned something of the emotional history of the houses in question. But I at no point followed up or checked on any aspect of these particular situations.

When I knew him better, Peter offered rather condescendingly (he was always very full of his own mediumship) to let me have a private session with his own spirit guide. The guide was a former Red Indian. I cannot today remember whether he was called Grey Owl or Grey Hawk, but I think it was the second.

Accordingly we went to the house of one of Peter’s relatives, well out in the countryside. Around the back of the house was tethered a goat. I was astonished to hear that Peter’s aunt made her own milk and cheese. As a city boy of working-class antecedents, such situations and antics amazed me.

Peter and I sat in a darkened room. Outside, and within, all was completely peaceful (the reason why we had come). Peter went into trance. Gradually, as he did so, his dim face and profile became those of a non-European — of a story-book Indian in fact. In dim light I have often since observed faces in trance take on the features of the guide or spirit in question and many others report the same experience. It is not just the face, but the very bone structure which appears to alter.

Grey Hawk gave me a long lecture on the nature of spirit. He disliked being interrupted (very much like Peter!) and clearly did not really want me to ask him any questions. The lecture was nevertheless very moving in a quiet, poetic kind of way. Grey Hawk said that spirit incarnated in matter is like the ripple one sees on the surface of a lake when the breeze touches it. After the breeze goes the lake is still again. The invisible and elusive breeze is spirit.

I have since heard talks by many guides and have read books ‘dictated’ by them. I do not deny that there is a certain poetic quality in the best of them. Yet all of them remain a kind of intellectual candy-floss. This is not to imply that they are sweet or sickly — I mean that when you try to chew on these utterances, there is nothing there. The mouth is empty.

Peter also went in for spirit painting and automatic writing. In spirit painting the medium, using a conventional easel and paints, allows spirit forces to paint through him. I thought Peter’s work was rather good, with an ethereal or out-of-this-world quality. I have since seen other spirit paintings and find in all certain common qualities. (I do not think that the painters are copying each other or conforming to an accepted style, in that sense.) The paintings have many curved lines and few or no straight ones. There is great use of colour, but often pastel shades — unsaturated colours, I believe the term is. The subject matter is often ‘angelic’ or ‘heavenly-pastoral’.

Although I was never personally attracted to the idea of spirit painting, I tried automatic writing for myself as soon as I heard of it. After only one or two attempts my hand began to write vigorously and fluently.

To perform automatic writing one is usually advised to sit somewhere quiet, in not too strong a light. One holds a pencil or pen in one’s hand, which rests on a writing pad or a sheet of paper. One then relaxes or ‘meditates’, trying as far as possible to pay no attention to the hand and certainly not attempting to use it in any normal, conscious way. After a few sessions, perhaps even in the first, the hand will begin to twitch occasionally of itself. Marks and scribbles may be made. In time many people can progress to a hand that writes coherently by itself.

This is a slightly daunting — though of course exciting — experience, at first. However, one gets used to it quickly enough. I can produce automatic writing at will at any time in any circumstances (as, in fact, I can go into full trance at any time in any place in any circumstances). At the time of which I am speaking, automatic writing seemed to me to offer an invaluable method of investigating aspects of the paranormal without the agreement or assistance of any other person.

Just as in the full mediumistic trance, all kinds of ‘personalities’ express themselves in automatic writing. At first respectful of the ‘communicators’, I soon became more cavalier with them. Long conversations with my hand more and more firmly dissuaded me of the idea that any real, disembodied spirit was talking to or through me.

Sometimes the hand produced the solemn, soulful tones of the spirit guide. At other times the naughty remarks of the ‘impish spirit’. And occasionally the cursing and filth of the true demon or devil. But I discovered that I could cause the tone (and the style of writing generally) to switch from one form to another in an instant, simply by a mental command — not, of course, by any deliberate, physical action. I could also lead the conversation in any direction I chose. I could easily catch out the communicant by causing him or her to contradict something said earlier. There was here much food for thought.

Also on this more negative side, I observed that in the séances where a guide or spirit spoke a foreign language known to me, it was never more than a meaningless copy of the real language. I myself was once possessed by a medieval monk, who chattered on a bit in ‘Latin’. It was nothing of the kind — just a plausible-sounding imitation. And finally, when guides or communicants spoke with a foreign accent, as they quite often did, it was the foreign accent as the Englishman mistakes it, not the accent of the true foreigner.

Nevertheless, genuine wonders remained in plenty. Towards the end of my stay in Coventry, Peter took me to visit a friend of his who was a psychometrist. Psychometrists are individuals who by holding an object belonging to a person can paranormally ascertain facts about that person’s past or future.

This particular psychometrist was a rather elderly lady, not long for this world, I thought. I gave her a ring of mine, which she held in her hand for a while. Then she began to give a string of generalizations about my future, to none of which I paid much attention, precisely because of their generalized vagueness. That was by the way. The important event was as follows — and now we begin to touch material of the kind I shall discuss in the next chapter, ‘Footprints in the Sand’.

The psychometrist said that I would soon meet a girl with whom I would have a rather significant relationship. Now, such an event is commonplace and likely enough in the life even of a rather neurotic young man — so I asked the psychometrist whether she could give me some sign whereby I could identify the event when it came, something specific. She thought for a moment and said: ‘Her blue eyes.’

I was completely unimpressed with this remark, as indeed with the whole session.

A few weeks later I left Coventry and spent a month on a farming camp before returning to London. On my third day at the camp a party of German girls arrived. My attention was immediately caught by one of the group, a most unusually attractive girl. She had the largest and most striking eyes I have ever seen, of a blue that was close to true violet. She was blonde, but had thick black eyelashes. The young Elizabeth Taylor was lucky never to have found herself in the same room as this girl.

It genuinely did not occur to me until I had been keeping company with this girl for several days — and then abruptly it did — that this was the girl with the blue eyes. Of course, so far a sceptic could not unreasonably plead mere coincidence — perhaps aided by an unconscious impulse on my part. But the next day I received a letter from Peter, whom I had not contacted in any way since leaving Coventry. His letter began: ‘How is the girl with blue eyes? A little bird tells me you’ve met her.’

(To round off the incident, the girl was actually from East Germany. In those days, before the Berlin Wall was built, if they were prepared to take the risk, it was possible for East Berliners to cross into West Berlin, change East marks illegally into West marks, and travel abroad. This the girl and her friends had done. After she returned home we corresponded, and the affair was serious enough for me the following spring to go to Berlin and cross not just into East Berlin, which was legal for a foreigner, but into East Germany — a silly risk to take. In the end, there proved too many such difficulties in our way.)

This, then, was my Coventry experience, though there remain a few important details to bring out later.

I returned to London fully determined to follow further this trail to wonderland I had discovered. I joined the Society for Psychical Research, the Marylebone Spiritualist Alliance (as it was then) and enrolled in a psychic development class at the College of Psychic Studies. In Coventry I had read Joan Grant’s marvellous autobiography. Time Out of Mind, and I now prepared a full reading list of relevant books. I in fact read a good many, yet I found no other book that impressed me so deeply as Time Out of Mind.

Further Developments

The Society for Psychical Research was a disappointment. I had great schemes for experimental programmes, and though the Society did publish one of my papers, its initial enthusiasm for my ideas suddenly waned. I also felt, reading the Society’s Journal and books published by its members, that these people had very little real grasp or understanding of psychic phenomena. My opinion has not changed since.

The Marylebone Spiritualist Alliance was a disappointment in a different way. People there seemed to display exactly the same uncritical attitude as the mediums and psychics in Coventry. It was the mixture precisely as before, sense and nonsense rolled into one unquestioned ball.

Progress came via the College of Psychic Studies. I had applied for and obtained a place in one of the development classes then operating there. During my initial interview with the class leader, he said in the course of conversation: ‘You have recently lost someone. I get a strong impression of whiteness and the name Alma or Anna.’

As it happened, my father had died a few weeks before. He and I had not been close in any emotional sense (though I have since come to understand him better). His death had not really affected me. I do not believe I displayed any outward signs of grief and certainly I had no black tie or armband. Still, possibly my face might have given something away that could register, at any rate unconsciously, with a sensitive observer. There was, however, far more to this communication.

As a very young child I had been taken to see the body of my grandmother (my father’s mother) whom I had seen living only twice before in my life. She lay in a white coffin, but to me the striking thing was that she herself was absolutely white, as if drained of all blood. I was paralysed by the whole situation, but was nevertheless forced by the adults present to kiss the corpse. My grandmother’s name was Alma. My mother’s name is Annie.

It is interesting — and perplexing in terms of trying to understand what is going on in psychic communication — to see how various elements are jumbled together in the paranormal ‘message’. Often quite diverse elements are woven together to form a totally spurious story-line. This aspect of mediumistic communication strongly reminds us of dreams, and of what Freud called the dream-work.

This particular event, incidentally, was also picked up by another medium many years later. She said: ‘I get a strong impression of whiteness; and this person was someone you were not close to, but in later life you thought you would like to have been close to.’

The actual development class comprised seven or so students, plus the class leader. This was not intended as a class for trance development. Trance and possession were in fact firmly discouraged. The medium who led us took the view, common among more intelligent psychics, that the so-called guides and spirits of the average medium are nothing of the sort. Only a few gifted mediums are considered to have ‘real’ guides and genuine contact with the true spirit world. No one, however, can tell you what are the essential differences between pseudo and true guides! I do not myself believe that there are any.

At any rate, this class was not concerned with possession and trance. Instead, during some three-quarters of an hour, we sat together attempting to obtain information about each other paranormally. The particular exercise which the leader recommended, though he did not mind if one devised a strategy of one’s own, was as follows. We were to close our eyes and then mentally lift ourselves as it were above our own physical bodies, and with the mind’s eye and in fantasy see what other members of the group did.

The method was surprisingly effective. For example, performing the exercise as instructed, I ‘saw’ the group leader go over to a glass-fronted cupboard and take out and examine some crystal goblets and decanters. When I later reported this to him, he said that he had a set of valuable crystal goblets, which he had decided to sell because he needed capital. He had already placed an advertisement in the press.

On another occasion I ‘saw’ one of the female members of the group constantly stand up, turn around, and adjust her cushion. (In actuality, none of our chairs had cushions.) When I reported this to her she told me that she suffered quite severe back pains — and during her favourite pastime of watching television she would continually have to rearrange the cushions around her to ease the discomfort. I was by now also pursuing a course of teacher training at the London Institute of Education, having decided, after some actual teaching, that I ought to be better prepared.

At the Institute I met Dr John Read, the counsellor to the students there and at the London School of Economics. I discussed with him my experiences of the paranormal and my wish to discover what it all really signified. He himself felt there was something real involved in the paranormal, but that it was wrapped in a good deal that was not. Someone was needed who had experienced the phenomena at first hand, but who also had a firm critical sense. Dr Read’s encouragement was actually invaluable to me, and to him goes some of the credit for the genesis of this book.

Despite all the activity I have been describing, it was nevertheless clear to me after six months that my involvement with the paranormal had now lost some of its impetus, and certainly a lot of its excitement. This was all dull stuff indeed compared with the atmospheric richness and the sense of wonder of my year in Coventry. Here in London there was no sense of a psychic community. Nature herself was far away. On all sides was a frenetic rush to get somewhere — while in that suburb of Coventry people had been happy just to ‘be’ somewhere.

Yet what was I to do? There could be no going back to the simplistic level of my early mentors. On the other hand, here in London, intelligent people, in particular my fellow teachers and students, had no interest in the paranormal except as an occasional game. From another point of view I now realized how altogether ill-informed I was about the normal mechanisms of the human personality. I had no normal background against which to measure or compare the paranormal. How could I square the mental mechanisms involved in parapsychology with normal psychology, unless I first understood normal psychology?

The passing of another six months saw me installed as Head of Department in a London grammar school. In addition I had now registered for a degree in Psychology at Birkbeck College. And I had also begun a personal psychoanalysis.

In the last case Dr Read again proved invaluable. I had discussed the matter of having analysis with him and he had asked me what kind of psychoanalysis I wanted, so that he could make the necessary arrangements. Without an instant’s hesitation I replied ‘Jungian’.

This answer was in itself remarkable. Although I had by now made the acquaintance of the Freudian school of psychoanalysis (via Karen Horney and the neo-Freudians) and was an enthusiastic admirer of Freud’s ideas, Carl Jung was nothing more to me than a name. Yet the issue was not in doubt for a moment. It is possible that from some overheard chance remark I had unconsciously grasped the idea that Jung was a champion of the paranormal, while Freud detested it (‘the black tide of mud of occultism’ as he called it). Yet, I think not.

The years that followed at first and in one sense took me ever farther away from the direct experience of the paranormal. But the movement was what geometrists call a parabola — a curved path which surely and inevitably led me back to my departure point. Or rather, as with a spiral — a circular movement which also rises — I found myself returned at a higher level and with a greatly extended overview. In the intervening years I gave up my post at the grammar school and began teaching maladjusted children. Ultimately I became Senior Research Psychologist at the National Children‘s Bureau. I was also married and divorced. So there were events enough to take up my days.

Looking always for further knowledge about the human condition, I was at the same time prospecting for a framework which could accommodate all the information that was accumulating. I thought perhaps the problem was that nobody had yet used a broad enough canvas. They had tended always to treat religion as religion, politics as politics, science as science — and of course largely to ignore the paranormal altogether. Might it be possible, on a giant canvas, to create a set of terms, a theoretical framework, in which all aspects of human existence could be considered simultaneously?

Not only did I feel such an attempt to be desirable — I felt it to be absolutely essential. For I was quite clear, first, that such apparently divergent individuals as Freud, Marx, Christ, Nietzsche, Jung, Skinner, Pavlov, Russell, Darwin (and many others) had all been talking about one and the same human being — you and me. Second, that these individuals, far from being variously uninformed or misguided, were all extremely gifted and insightful men. Instead, then, of saying that all, or all but one, of these thinkers were wrong, I took the opposite view and said that all must be right. Every one of these seemingly differing views must be incorporated in any would-be universal statement of man.

So gradually a schema began to emerge. I began, principally, to discern an enduring and persistent duality in all of man’s activities, in everything he is and does. This central duality or dualism seemed to offer the hope of a framework both of adequate dimensions and of adequate explanatory powers. My list of dualities always grew. In time I began to consider that all the items on the left-hand side of the short list below had that in common which could be used to explain all of them — and that those on the right (the polar opposites of those on the left) had, similarly, that in common which could define their central nature.

spiritualism — psychic research
psychoanalysis — academic psychology
unconscious — consciousness
religion — science
psychic phenomena — materialism
dreaming — waking
magic — logic
child — adult
the left hand — the right hand
female — male
Neanderthal man — modern man

Between 1969 and 1976, I set down an outline of my general theory of the human personality in a trilogy of books. With that task finished, I knew I would then be free to write about the paranormal directly and in detail — although of course the paranormal had also formed part of the earlier work. The result of my freedom is the present book.

Stan Gooch 1978, 2003

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