Mystical Paths (39 page)

THREE

‘Those who have investigated the evidence of extra-sensory

perception – telepathy, clairvoyance and the phenomena which

attend spiritualistic séances – have built up massive support for

the conviction that everywhere mind flows into mind, that individuals

are not wholly separate from each other but are unconsciously linked

together. Like islands of an archipelago, joined together underneath

the sea that separates them, we are knit together by invisible and

unconscious ties.’

CHRISTOPHER BRYANT

Member of the Society of St John the Evangelist 1935-1985

The River Within

I

At once I remembered the instruction to keep running so I stumbled on down the path, but I tried hard to see where he was hiding. Even if he had been sheltering behind the row of stakes which supported peas in summer he would still have been visible in that black and white habit, and nowhere else offered any hope of concealment. Reaching the back-door I immediately swung around, unable to accept the reality of that empty garden, but no one was there.

‘LEWIS!’ I bawled, and immediately, hearing the note of panic in my voice, he reappeared.

But he was on thé other side of the archway.

I tore back to him. ‘How did you do that?’ I demanded between gasps. ‘How in heaven’s name did you do it?’ - ‘As the RAF used to say in my young day,’ said Lewis satisfied, ‘it was a piece of cake.’ He stepped back into the kitchen-garden and led me along the wall to a point where it embraced a slim pillar, built to provide support. Placing his back to the wall he lined himself up with the pillar and flattened his body against the bricks. ‘The niche isn’t deep,’ he said, ‘but when you bounded through the archway I was sufficiently hidden to ensure you never saw me out of the corner of your eye. Provided you didn’t look back I was invisible, and you weren’t going to look back immediately because you were going to be much too busy trying to work out if I was hidden among the vegetables. As soon as you were well past me I nipped out and doubled back through the archway.’ He patted the pillar and added: ‘I noticed the niche when I made a reconnaissance of the garden on my arrival yesterday.’

‘I can’t think how I missed it!’

‘You haven’t had an army training. One develops an eye for cover out in the field.’ He turned aside. ‘Let me shed this habit before I pass out. One of the biggest arguments against being a monk is that one has to wear such impossible clothes.’

I hurried after him. ‘But Lewis, this is a sensational discovery! It proves I really could have seen a flesh-and-blood person!’

‘Yes, but it doesn’t prove that you did.’

‘At least it gives me some sort of defence against a charge of hallucination!’

‘You don’t need the defence because I’ve no intention of bringing the charge. Where did the top of my head come in relation to the peach-tree?’

I turned to look at the wall. ‘The second branch from the top was the crucial one,’ I said, pointing to our markers, the branches on the right-hand side of the trunk. ‘Your head came just below it – and as soon as I saw that, Lewis, I remembered that the top of Christian’s head came above the branch, but that makes sense, doesn’t it, because you’re shorter than he is.’

‘You’re sure about that position?’

‘Positive. What happens next?’ I demanded as he began to strip off the habit.

Lewis smiled at me. Then he said: ‘Let’s go down to the pub and have a drink.’

II

We drove in his glistening white Beetle to a pub called The Laughing Fish which overlooked the river half a mile beyond the village. A curvy-mouthed trout was painted on the signboard. In the garden I chose a secluded table shaded by an umbrella while Lewis bought two pints of bitter.

When we were both seated with our tankards he said: ‘Okay, let’s do a complete run-through of all the solutions, normal and paranormal, and see where we get to. We’ll start, as one always should in such cases, with the most obvious explanations before we let rip with the fantastic.’ And he paused to drink deeply from his tankard.

The most obvious explanation,’ he said, pulling out his packet of cigarettes, ‘is that you’re mad. However, I’ve already made soothing noises to you on the subject of your sanity, and I’ll now explain exactly why this obvious explanation isn’t, in my opinion, the correct one.’ He lit a cigarette before continuing: ‘If you were suffering from a specific mental illness and were sick enough to be hallucinating, I think your behaviour would be abnormal in other respects. Even if you weren’t hearing voices and believing Russian agents were trying to kill you, you’d have, betrayed to me by now in your general behaviour that you weren’t quite tuned in to the rational world — or alternatively, could only tune in erratically. But what’s so striking about you, as I’ve already remarked, is that not only do you appear completely tuned in but you’re even capable of analysing your situation. Of course it’s clear you have your problems and your hang-ups, but that’s normal. I’ve yet to meet the man who has no problems or hang-ups of any kind.

‘It also occurs to me that if you’d suffered a hallucination triggered by mental illness, the hallucination itself would probably have been far more bizarre than it was. After all, what happened? All you saw was a monk in the garden of a monastery. You didn’t see six topless dancers or Genghis Khan.

‘So we discard the possibility that you’re suffering from a specific mental illness, but can you be suffering from what is euphemistically known as a nervous breakdown? Now, nervous breakdowns come in various shapes and forms, usually as the result of prolonged stress, but I see no sign that you’ve actually broken down. You’re still functioning, still going out and about, talking to people, having a drink with me now at the pub. People who have broken down to the point where a hallucination becomes a possibility can’t function as normally as that. The typical sufferer from a nervous breakdown prefers to stay in bed all day with the blinds drawn — or if he gets up he’s fearful of going outside. Remember how I asked you yesterday if you minded conducting Session One in the garden? But that didn’t bother you in the least. No agoraphobia there.

‘So we discard the possibility that you’re hallucinating as the result of a nervous breakdown, but on the other hand this is where we have to acknowledge that you’re quite clearly suffering from stress. I don’t believe sheer stress alone could have caused a hallucination so long as you were still functioning normally, but I do think that stress is almost certainly a factor in this case. You’ll remember me implying yesterday that psychics can get up to odd tricks when they’re under stress. I was referring then to somnambulism — which you rightly pointed out isn’t confined to psychics — but I could well have been referring to the fact that a psychic under stress is more receptive to paranormal phenomena. His psychic faculty is rubbed raw; the protection provided by the rational faculties is weakened and he’s more exposed to both malign and benign forces. You’ve never, you say, had a visual psychic experience. But that doesn’t mean you’re incapable of having one.

But we’ll get to the paranormal later. Let’s refocus on the normal explanations and consider the possibility that you experienced something which I’ll call "a waking dream", a phenomenon closely related to somnambulism and triggered, like somnambulism, by stress. In this form of abnormal day-time sleep you’d think yourself awake and be convinced that what you were seeing was actually happening but in fact you wouldn’t be fully conscious and what you saw would be
a
dream.

‘At first glance this seems a promising explanation, particularly when we know you’re currently prone to somnambulism, but I don’t think the theory can be right. It’s true that directly after the somnambulism last night you were unable to distinguish between reality and the dream, but that muddle only lasted seconds and was entirely consonant with the fact that you’d received a severe shock. If Christian’s appearance had been a waking dream I think that afterwards you would have recognised it for what it was; you’d have been able to look back and see the kink in reality which occurred not only when the dream ended but when it began. Yet you’re absolutely certain that the episode formed part of one uninterrupted reality. If I believe you – and I can’t think why I shouldn’t as you’re so obviously
compos mentis –
then this experience of yours can’t have been a waking dream.

‘Another hypothesis is that you might have unconsciously hypnotised yourself into believing you saw Christian. People under stress can do this – it’s part of a syndrome known as "conversion", and at first sight this theory too looks promising, particularly when we remember how clever you are at hypnosis. But I just don’t believe that someone like you, who’s still functioning, still tuned in full-time to reality, would suffer a full-blown hysteric experience like that. The hysteric temperament is just as common among males as among females, as the medical records of the world wars prove, but with your analytical mind and your notable mental toughness, you’d be most unlikely to experience a hysteric episode unless you were already suffering from a complete nervous breakdown. I’ll back up that opinion by saying that if this was unconscious self-hypnosis, triggered by your urge to communicate with Christian, I believe you’d have done just that: communicated with him. One of the most interesting aspects of this appearance is that Christian did no more than appear.

‘All right, so much for the theories arising from the possibility that this experience was the result of disturbed mental activity. Let’s turn to the next most obvious possibility: that this was, as you put it, a flesh-and-blood person whom you saw.

‘Now, there are two possibilities here: one, you saw Christian Aysgarth. And two, you saw someone physically like him and made a mistaken identification.’

At once I said: ‘I’m one hundred per cent certain I saw Christian.’

‘I know you are, but that analytical mind of yours must surely realise we have to consider every possibility in order to reach the right conclusion. Try not to feel threatened. I’m very willing to believe you saw Christian, but it’s my job to test the theory thoroughly.’

I drank some beer and forced myself to say: ‘Go on.’

‘The reconstruction underlined the fact that whoever the monk was, his face was in shadow and even when he turned to look at the bench, the shadow was only partly reduced. When you were the monk I recognised you without difficulty but one must remember that (a) my distance vision is exceptionally good and (b) I knew it was you. You wear glasses which give you normal sight, but your distance vision may still not be as good as mine; I don’t know. What I do know is that if I’d had no idea beforehand whom I was about to see, I doubt if I’d have been quite so sure, even with exceptional distance vision, that my identification was correct. When I prepared to play the monk you remarked how a habit changes a man’s appearance by muting his individuality, and I don’t see how one can avoid saying that the habit heightens the risk of making a mistaken identification.

‘But if this man wasn’t Christian, who was he? We know it couldn’t have been one of the monks or visitors because everyone was accounted for. It could certainly have been an undergraduate frolicking around as the result of a bet, but if we accept that idea we soon run into difficulties. How did he get hold of the habit? The surplus ones are in the enclosed section of the house, and none of them was missing from the linen room. Monday’s laundry day here; all the habits in this house, apart from the surplus ones, were either in the wash or being worn by the monks. You can’t order a Fordite habit from an ecclesiastical shop like Wippell’s; they don’t supply them. Could you have it specially made? Or could you make it yourself? Yes, but why go to all that trouble and expense? The whole theory bristles with improbabilities which only multiply when one pursues it further.

‘For instance, supposing he eluded you, as I did, in the kitchen-garden, why did he bother to replace the rake in the shed? Surely his main preoccupation would be to escape without delay. And when he did deign to escape, how did he do it? We know that the monks working in the garden would have seen anyone who took either the herb-garden exit or the path around the side of the guest-wing, and we have the evidence of Daniel and the visitor in the common-room that no one broke into the guest-wing through a window. He could have flown over the perimeter hedge, but we don’t seriously think he grew wings. The mystery of how he vanished from the visitors’ lawn is, as it turns out, far more intractable than the mystery of how he vanished from the kitchen-garden.

‘Now let’s put aside the idea that the monk was an unknown impostor and return to your conviction that the monk was Christian. We must accept Father Abbot’s word that Christian is not and has never been a member of this community, so that means he too has to be an impostor, facing all the difficulties I’ve just listed – and confronting us with the additional complication of a complete absence of motive. If it was Christian you saw, what on earth was he doing here dressed as a monk? And again, how did he get hold of the habit and how did he escape from the visitors’ lawn?’

I said obstinately: ‘There must be an explanation.’

‘If there is, I’d very much like to hear it. In my opinion the theory that you saw a flesh-and-blood person just doesn’t work out.’

After a pause I said: ‘So where does that leave us?’

‘At the point where we turn to the paranormal. Let’s onceagain start with the obvious explanation and work through to the fantastic: the most obvious explanation, of course, is that you’ve seen a ghost, but unfortunately we must discard that possibility straight away.’

We must?’

‘Father Wilcox confirmed to me that there’s no ghost at the Grantchester house.’

‘Would he necessarily know about it?’

‘Yes, it would have been recorded. Paranormal occurrences have to be taken very seriously in an enclosed community because they can cause such trouble.’

‘But couldn’t the ghost have been making his first appearance?’

‘I did ask Father Wilcox if anyone had died here recently in unfortunate circumstances, but he said no, and in fact you wouldn’t normally expect to find a ghost in a modern monastery because the monks tend to die in a state of grace. It was different in the pre-Reformation monasteries, many of which were run-down and corrupt.’

‘So what’s the next possibility?’

‘A much more promising theory: you may have experienced a slip in time. In other words, you could have seen either the past or the future or the present – but not the present that was happening here at Grantchester; you’d be looking sideways in time and seeing a monk somewhere else. The American scientists investigating paranormal phenomena call that process "remote viewing".’

This excited me. ‘Christian could be a monk at the London house or at Starwater Abbey! I could have looked across and –’

‘You could have done, yes, but did you?_I’ve never heard of a "remote viewing" case where a present event occurring somewhere else was extracted from its setting and instantly replayed in the viewer’s own environment. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen – the human mind is capable of the most amazing psychic feats – but it would be extremely unlikely. If you’d seen Christian against the backdrop of the London garden or the Starwater grounds, I’d find it much easier to accept the "remote viewing" theory — but don’t be downcast by my scepticism because the best of the time-slip theory is still to come.’

‘If I saw the past —’

‘If you saw the past, you couldn’t have seen Christian because we know he’s never been a monk in this community. The other possibility is that you saw a past monk and made a wrong identification. That wouldn’t be the same as seeing a ghost, of course. When you see a ghost, you and the ghost are in the present. When you experience a time-slip backwards, you and the person you see are in the past. The theory that you wrongly identified a past monk is actually quite attractive, but the trouble is —’

‘Supposing I saw the future?’

‘Ah!’ said Lewis, willing to be diverted. ‘This is the time-slip theory in its most compelling form because it’s the theory that chimes most harmoniously with your belief about what happened to Christian. One could argue: yes, he did choose to disappear, and yes, Perry did take him to France, and yes, he’s still there, but he will eventually be at Grantchester, for all the reasons you’ve already deduced. Father Wilcox pointed out to me that he would never accept as a postulant a man who had abandoned his wife and children, but if Christian were to build a new identity in France for, say, five years, he’d reach the stage where he could produce the right references and none of the referees would know of his marriage. Of course it would be a gross deception to attempt to enter the Order in that way, but although it would be immoral it wouldn’t be impossible.’

I set down my tankard with a thump. ‘So that’s it — that’s the answer! Mystery solved!’

‘Unfortunately,’ said Lewis with regret, ‘there’s a fly in the ointment. I was about to say so just now when I was commenting on the possibility that you could have wrongly identified a past monk. The theory of the time-slip, attractive though it is, seems to be fatally flawed — and for the same reason which led us to reject the idea that you’d had a waking dream: whenyou looked back on the experience afterwards you remained quite convinced there’d been no break in reality.’

‘But does there always have to be a break?’

‘There has to be a point when the time-slip begins and reality alters. Usually this is easy to pin-point — people appear dressed as Cavaliers and Roundheads, for instance, or trees which should be bare are suddenly seen in full leaf. However in your case the monk is a timeless figure and you noticed no change in the garden, so we’re forced to search for more subtle markers — a slight change in light or temperature, sound or smell. Yet there was no change of any kind, was there?’