Mystical Paths (36 page)

CHRISTOPHER BRYANT

Member of the Society of St John the Evangelist

1935-1985

Jung and the Christian Way

I

‘
I know what you’re thinking,’ I said at once. ‘You’re thinking I’m badly mixed up, but I assure you that I’ve spent a long time examining my situation and submitting it to rational analysis.’

‘In that case I’d be most grateful if you could share your conclusions with me.’

‘Sure. My logic runs like this: one, like everyone else I’ve got to seek my true self in order to achieve integration – by which I mean that my task is to realise as far as possible in this life the unique blueprint designed for me by God, because to be at one with God’s will is to be happy and fulfilled. Two, God intends me to be a replica of my father. Three, that must mean my personality blueprint is in all important respects identical to my father’s. Four, that in turn must mean I can only achieve integration – happiness, fulfilment, wholeness – by striving to become my father’s replica.’

‘Very sound,’ said Lewis. ‘Well done. But aren’t you forgetting something?’

What’s that?’

‘The whole point about a unique personality blueprint is that it’s unique, and as far as I know cloning exists only in the pagesof science fiction. Did your mother play no part in your genetic make-up or was her womb merely leased by God so that He could have fun and games overriding the law of biology?’

‘Well, of course if you want to make a joke of it –’

‘I assure you I’m taking what you say very seriously indeed. What a strain your life must be at present! This acute anxiety about your father’s lifespan, the non-relationship with your brother which makes it impossible to turn to him for help, the inevitable emotional demands of a fiancée – and to cap it all, ordination looming on the horizon! No wonder you seized the chance to escape from all those pressures by investigating Christian.’

I ignored this speech. ‘Despite all your smart talk of cloning and womb-leasing,’ I said, ‘you can’t knock down the fact that my father saw me in a God-given vision well over a year before I was born and knew at once that I was going to be a replica.’

‘That tells me a great deal about your father,’ said Lewis, ‘but I’m not sure it tells me anything about God. The problem with visions, Nicholas, no matter how God-given they are, is that they have to be interpreted by fallible human beings.’

‘But my father’s so wise, se gifted, so holy –’

‘He may well be all those things, but that doesn’t mean he’s incapable of making mistakes. How interesting it must have been for you to see how Christian coped with – or failed to cope with – his own very successful clerical father! In fact I can quite see now why Christian intrigued you so much. Here’s a man with a curiously similar background to your own: the distinguished clerical father who adored him, the mother who died in his teens, the paternal expectation that he would go into the Church, make an excellent marriage -’

‘Talking of marriage,’ I said, ‘I still haven’t told you much about Rosalind, have I?’

‘The phrase "nice girl" speaks volumes – and implies we must add sexual abstinence to your list of difficulties. How are you coping with that?’

‘Fine.’ I was already on my feet and heading for the door. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll –’

‘If you can bear to hang on a moment longer,’ said Lewis, ‘perhaps we can make a plan for tomorrow morning. I assume you’ll be coming to mass?’

‘Well, I hadn’t got as far as thinking about it, but —’

‘It’s extremely important,’ said Lewis, turning on the full power of his personality, ‘that you should be in good spiritual health when you’re dealing with a situation which is potentially demonic. When did you last attend mass?’

‘Friday. With my father in our chapel.’

‘And when did you last make your confession?’

‘A formal confession? To a priest?’

‘Well, since you claim to be an Anglo-Catholic —’

‘Yes, of course, let me think. It must have been — oh, not long ago. Quite recently, in fact. At College before the end of term.’

I’m sure a lot of water’s flowed under the bridge since then. Why don’t we return to this confessional at seven tomorrow morning? Then you can make your confession to me before we attend mass.’

‘Okay.’

‘If you’d prefer,’ said Lewis pleasantly, ‘I can arrange for one of the monks to hear you.’

I nearly fell into the trap but scooped myself back just in time. If I refused to confess to him he’d think I had something to hide. ‘Oh no!’ I said. ‘I’m quite happy for you to hear me! Why not?’

He smiled, his eyes very dark in their shadowed sockets, and followed me from the room.

II

Halfway up the stairs I succumbed to a bout of profound uneasiness and came to a halt. ‘What can you be thinking?’ I said nervously. ‘All those questions ... and all my answers .. . Have you secretly concluded that I’m crazy?’

‘I can come to no worthwhile conclusion until we’ve staged the reconstruction, but so far one of the most interesting aspects of this case is your apparent sanity.’

I slumped against the wall for a moment before resuming my journey up the stairs.

On the landing Lewis said: ‘If you have trouble sleeping or if for any reason you feel uneasy during the night, do please wake me up so that we can talk things over. Oh, and wear your cross. Don’t leave it on the bedside table.’

‘Okay.’

Five minutes later I was tethering my ankle to the bedpost and preparing for a quick dive into oblivion.

III

I awoke slowly, drifting back through the levels of consciousness until I became aware that the room was bright with moonlight. That startled me because I knew I had pulled down the blind earlier, but suddenly I realised that it had been the flutter of the rising blind which had woken me. Someone had drawn it up. I was no longer alone in the room.

A monk was standing motionless by the bed.

I gasped but when he said: ‘It’s all right — it’s only me,’ I knew it was Christian.

He was wearing his cowl up again so that his face was in shadow, but I recognised his trick of speaking fast with a barely perceptible stutter. I whispered: ‘So Father Wilcox was lying!’ but he only answered: ‘Sorry I couldn’t stop in the garden. Come back to the shed now and we can talk.’

I scrambled out of bed and the string tugged at my ankle. Wait!’ I said urgently to Christian, and he paused by the door as I untied the knot. The texture of the string was rough against my fingers and the linoleum was cool against my bare feet. ‘Should I get dressed?’ I asked as I became aware of the chill in the air, but he answered: ‘Just put your jacket on over your pyjamas,’ and when I obeyed him he added: ‘You can take off that cross you’re wearing because my crucifix will do for us both.’

I saw him touch the little brass crucifix which hung from his belt. I was unable to see the shape clearly but the brass was gleaming in the pale light.

As I put my cross on the bedside table I said: ‘Lewis lent me that — Father Lewis Hall from St Paul’s in Langley Bottom. Father Wilcox called him in so that they could say I was a hallucinating psychic who hadn’t really seen you at all.’

‘There’s no Lewis Hall at St Paul’s.’

I was transfixed: ‘Then who the hell is he?’

‘He’s one of the London monks, and his real name is Darcy.’
‘
Darcy?
’

‘
Shhh. Come outside and I’ll explain everything.’

We left the room. It was very dark in the passage but Christian had no trouble seeing his way and I followed close on his heels. In the hall he said unexpectedly: ‘You must be the one who unlocks the door — monks are forbidden to unlock doors at night,’ so I stepped forward to draw back the bolt. ‘Leave it on the latch,’ he said as the door swung wide. We don’t want to lock ourselves out.’

I pressed down the button, drew the door noiselessly back into the frame and followed him along the path which led to the back-garden.

The lawn was shining in the moonlight. The branches of the beech-tree, black against the pale sky, were soughing softly in the faint breeze and I was aware of the scent floating towards me from the herb-garden. The dew on the grass was so cold that I gasped.

‘How stupid!’ I muttered. ‘I’ve forgotten my shoes.’ ‘Never mind, it’ll be dry in the shed.’

We reached the peach-tree and followed the path alongside the kitchen-garden wall towards the hedge that screened the shed from the lawn. The area behind the hedge lay in deep shadow, and again Christian took the lead, moving past me through the blackness to open the shed’s door. ‘I put a candle in here earlier,’ I heard him say. ‘Wait till I’ve struck the match.’

I waited on the threshold. When light flared a second later I stepped forward but Christian remained with his back to me. Having lit the candle on the shelf in front of him he picked up the three-pronged gardening fork nearby and raised it aloft as if it were a sword.

I said sharply: ‘What are you doing?’

He laughed. Then he spun to face me, flung back his cowl and I saw he was the Devil.

In terror I shouted: ‘Father, save me!’ but even as I spoke I knew I was beyond saving. I’d slipped too far over the rim of the psychic world and now I was to be savagely destroyed.

‘You’re mine now,’ said the Devil. ‘All mine,’ and as he laughed harder than ever I saw that his crucifix was hanging upside down.

The candle burst into flames. The raised fork glittered in the light. Every prong was now a spear, and in the intense heat the alien lines of the Devil’s face blurred into a mess of red eyes and bleached bones and black blood. Blind with terror I turned to run but I was too slow and the next moment the spears had struck me in the back. I sank to my knees, my breath coming in great tearing gasps, the tears streaming down my face, my voice shouting: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ — and then as I crawled dying from the shed into the moonlight I saw Lewis standing motionless in front of me, his crucifix held high in his hand.

IV

‘Lewis, Lewis, Lewis —’

‘Yes, you’re all right, you’re safe —’

‘No, I’m dying — Christian’s killed me, he turned into the Devil and he killed me —’

‘That was the dream. This is the reality, and I’m saying to you that you’re going
to wake up —
look at me, Nicholas,
look at
me,
I’m telling you IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST —’ I suddenly became aware that this last hallucination of a dying man was taking a new direction. I had been lying gasping on the ground, shuddering from head to toe, but now I dreamed that Lewis was yanking me into a sitting position and ramming his crucifix against my chest.

‘Feel the metal,’ he was saying urgently. ‘Feel the image of Christ on the cross. It’s all real, isn’t it? It’s not a dream. You know it’s not a dream, you know you’re alive because you’re waking up, Nicholas,
waking up –
’

‘
No, I’ve been through this before. I think I’m waking up but in fact it’s an illusion because I’m still asleep. So I wake and I wake and I wake, but I don’t wake and now I’ll never wake because I’m –’

I stopped. I had suddenly realised that the crucifix was still warm from its contact with his living flesh. But perhaps the fire in the shed was heating everything nearby. I glanced in panic over my shoulder at the fires of hell – But I saw only darkness.

The door of the shed was open but there was no fire within. Farther down the path the peach-tree was basking in the moonlight. An owl hooted. The branches of the other trees were still soughing faintly in the night breeze.

‘Oh my God,’ I said. I reached up and touched Lewis’s face. It was warm, heated by real blood which was circulating in a real body. ‘Oh my God.’ I dropped his crucifix and covered my face with my hands.

Lewis retrieved the crucifix instantly, slipped the chain over my head and tucked the crucifix itself into the open neck of my pyjamas. All he said was: ‘Are you awake or asleep?’

‘Awake.’

‘Are you alive or dead?’

‘Alive.’

Was Christian a reality or a dream?’

‘A dream.’

‘Good. Now lie flat on your back and take some slow, deep breaths ... That’s it ... Yes, hold the crucifix if you like .. . And keep breathing deeply –’

‘Jesus is Lord.’’That’s right, make it clear you’re not possessed ... And now relax your muscles, beginning with your toes and working upwards ...’

I said ‘Jesus is Lord’ again to reassure myself that the first time was no fluke. The crucifix seemed glued to my sweating palm.

When the shuddering finally stopped and I was once more able to stand I said: ‘I was possessed earlier. But you delivered me.’

‘No,’ said Lewis firmly. ‘You were merely having a nightmare and I was there to help you recover from the shock when you woke up. Rule number one when dealing with the paranormal: always look first for the normal explanation because nine times out of ten the normal explanation will be the correct one.’

‘But Lewis –’

‘You weren’t possessed, Nicholas. If you’d been possessed you’d have tried to kill me. The dream was caused not by the Devil but by the most profound stress, so what we now have to do is not exorcise you but explore what your unconscious mind was spelling out to you during that nightmare.’

I said tentatively: ‘A rational analysis?’ and began to feel better.

Lewis smiled but merely said: ‘You need to be wrapped in blankets and dosed with sweet tea to counter the shock. We’ll go to the kitchen.’

V

When the kettle came to the boil I was at last able to say: ‘What exactly happened?’ Wrapped in the eiderdown from my bedroom I was sitting at the kitchen table. Lewis, fully dressed, . was standing by the counter and spooning tea-leaves out of the caddy.

‘I had a hunch you’d sleep-walk,’ he said. ‘I know you’d denied suffering from somnambulism but I thought you’d almost confessed to sleep-walking after your mother died, and since you were once again in a stressful situation –’

‘I don’t know why I lied to you.’

‘No? I’d imagine it was easier to blot out the memory than to confront it. After all, somnambulism’s an unnerving activity, isn’t it? Not to be consciously in control of one’s actions – to wake in a place where you’re not supposed to be – to have no idea what you might have been doing along the way –’

‘I thought I’d killed Martin the other night. Of course now I can look back and laugh at the idea, but at the time I was terrified.’

‘Of course. Somnambulism’s no joke – which is why I was on my guard tonight.’

‘So when I started out –’

‘I’d left the door of my room open and I heard the creak of your bed as soon as you began to get up. I took a look and there you were, undoing the string around your ankle, putting on your jacket and taking off your cross. The removal of the cross intrigued me. It suggested that you were gearing yourself up not to beat back the Dark but to examine it in a confrontation which required you to be spiritually vulnerable.’

‘How did you know I was asleep?’

‘You remained unaware of me. And you were exuding that Mechanical air common among sleep-walkers, the air of someone moving in accordance with a pre-set programme. I knew at once you weren’t awake.’

‘So what happened next?’

‘I followed you downstairs where you unbolted the door and left it on the latch. Interesting, isn’t it, how sleep-walkers can take trouble over little details; you should have been too far under to worry about locking yourself out of the house, but not a bit of it – you were determined not to suffer any inconvenience.’ He made the tea before adding: ‘Off we both went into the garden, I keeping a respectful distance behind you, like the Duke of Edinburgh accompanying the Queen. When you reached the shed you went inside and stood in the middle of the floor for about twenty seconds while I watched from thethreshold. I did dutifully hold up my crucifix in case there were any demonic forces around, but I saw no abnormal manifestations and you, in fact, were behaving in a very typical manner for a sleep-walker. Sleep-walking always looks so sinister but most of the time there’s nothing particularly interesting going on.

‘Then just as I was thinking it would be more fun to watch a robot the action began. You yelled: "Father, save me!" and I realised you were having a big nightmare, but usually it’s best not to wake a somnambulist. So I drew back and prayed you’d somehow find your way out of the drama without waking, but the next moment you’re staggering out of the shed, falling flat on your face and shouting: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" At that point I knew I had to intervene ... Here, have some tea. I apologise for the sugar, but think of it as medicine.’

The tea tasted disgusting. For a while the silence was broken only by the sound of Lewis munching a flapjack, but at last when my cup was almost empty I began to describe my dream to him.

‘Did Christian explain why he didn’t stop to talk to you yesterday?’ said Lewis as I recalled the dialogue in my bedroom.

‘No. He gave the impression that he shouldn’t have been communicating with me and that he was breaking a rule by seeking me out.’

‘It’s certainly a rule that the dead don’t normally communicate with the living.’

‘But it never occurred to me that he was dead! My reaction as soon as I saw him was: so I was right – he’s alive.’

‘Maybe your subconscious mind was cleverly juggling with both possibilities. Was it he who told you to take off your cross?’

‘Yes, he said his crucifix would do for both of us.’

‘That suggests that you felt you had to align yourself with him in order to gain some new insight. Did you argue with him?’

‘No, but for some reason I mentioned that my cross belonged to you. Then Christian said –’ I stopped.

‘Yes?’

‘Well, I know this sounds crazy, but –’ I broke off again. ‘I shall have a stroke in a minute,’ said Lewis.

I laughed, finally seeing the absurdity of my embarrassment, and said: ‘He told me there was no Lewis Hall at St Paul’s.’

‘So you secretly doubt my reality! Quite right too. Always treat an exorcist with grave suspicion! However –’ He pulled out his wallet and produced his driving licence ‘– let me instantly offer proof of my identity.’

‘Good heavens, Lewis, of course I don’t seriously think you’re a fraud!’ I protested. But I did take a quick look at the licence.

Did Christian deign to inform you who I was or was I just written off as an anonymous conman?’

‘He said you were one of the London monks and that your real name was Darcy.’

Lewis dropped his second flapjack. Crumbs from the edges spun across the kitchen table towards me. ‘But how extraordinary!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why should your subconscious mind have been playing with that idea?’

‘Oh, that’s no mystery – my father’s been wishing for years that I could meet a modern version of his mentor, and obviously I must have been thinking that you fitted the bill.’

‘I realise you intend that remark as a compliment,’ said Lewis dryly, ‘but I think we should get right away from this notion of yours that human clones are either possible or desirable. Would it really be beneficial for you if we staged a rerun of the Darcy-Darrow drama? I’d heard they had a tough, abrasive relationship whenever they weren’t seeing psychic eye to psychic eye.’

I said sharply: ‘Who told you that? It’s not the kind of thing anyone outside the Order would know.’

‘Oh, but think how indiscreet those old monks can be after a couple of glasses of claret!’

‘Even so –’

‘No, let’s waste no more time discussing the monastic weakness for gossip. There was Christian, you said, telling you that my real name was Darcy ...’

I continued to recall my dream while Lewis gathered up the fragments of his flapjack and ate them. Finally I was able to conclude: ‘Now that I’ve reviewed the dream I think I can analyse what it all means.’

‘This is what impresses me,’ said Lewis at once. ‘Your dedication to rational analysis means that you’re always trying to grasp reality and beat back illusion. You may not always succeed, but at least you keep trying. I regard this as strong evidence of your basic stability.’

This remark completed the restoration of my self-confidence. Sweet tea, the fading of shock, the re-emergence of common sense – all had contributed to my recovery, but the major contribution had come from Lewis as he subtly smoothed my mind back into shape.

Embarking on my interpretation of the dream I said: ‘The first thing I have to admit is that I hadn’t faced up to the whole truth about Christian. I’d refused to accept the facts I didn’t like, and the purpose of this nightmare was to force me to face the dark side of his personality.’

‘Why do you think you’d been so reluctant to face this?’

‘I wanted him to be just like me. So I rejected all the evidence – such as the bisexuality – which indicated he wasn’t. You’d already grasped that I needed him to be just like me – you signalled as much at the end of our third session – but I couldn’t discuss it with you then because I couldn’t tolerate the implications. I chose to change the subject and bury the memory of what you’d said, but once I was asleep the memory began to rise up through my unconscious mind until it produced the dream symbolising the dark side of Christian, the side I didn’t want to know.’

After a pause Lewis said: ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have tried to force the pace, but I wanted to find out how far you were aware of the identity-game you were playing with him.’

‘I was both conscious and unconscious. I always knew he seemed to have a special message for me, but I couldn’t work out what it was or how his life could connect with mine. All I knew in the end was that I had to sort out the mystery of his final months, and when I found out he was alive, the meaning of my quest at last became obvious. But I couldn’t talk about it, even to you, because I recognised it was bizarre.’

‘Let’s see if your explanation matches my deductions.’

I hesitated in order to choose my words with care but at last I said: ‘I was in a muddle about many things. Then one day I looked across at Christian and saw someone who had apparently mastered similar problems. I thought he could show me the way out of my muddle.’

‘So the more like him you were, the more chance there’d be that he could offer you salvation.’

‘That’s it. He had to be an alter ego because if he wasn’t, his situation would differ, his solutions would be inapplicable and his life would hold no message for me. And if there was no message for me –’ I broke off before saying: ‘No, I still can’t face that. If there are no solutions after all, what do I do? I was absolutely relying on Christian to provide me with the answers, and when I realised he was alive – oh, how excited I was! The idea of rebirth, of slipping out of a suffocating life and moving sideways into another identity ... I thought: if he can do it, I can do it too, and amidst all my despair I began to hope. My fundamental problem,’ I said, finally summing up the crisis, ‘is that I hate being me and I want to be someone else.’

‘No,’ said Lewis. ‘Your fundamental problem is that you hate being someone else and you want to be you.’