Cart is empty 
Greg Branson explores how to express the psychic gifts within a mystical nature.
It was May 1972 when I enthusiastically left my home in Australia and flew off on a three month sabbatical to the mother country in search of my true purpose in life. My previous spiritual activity had been confined to reading books and attending occasional lectures at the theosophical meeting house which were far too stuffy and arcane for my liking.
A couple of Indian gurus had come and gone and, after two years as the only man in a hatha yoga class, I gave up subjecting my knees to torture in the lotus position and put my search for eternal bliss on hold.
On my arrival in London, I soon visited the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain (SAGB), ensconced in their Belgrave Square headquarters amid multifarious foreign embassies which were, in those turbulent days, fronted by machine gun toting guards, for an appointment to see one of their mediums.
It was the perfect place to contact my own spirit inspirers directly for the first time and as I emerged from the rotating front door into the grand entrance hall, there they were, occupying corners where shadows ought to have been. “We are here to support you,” one of them said to me.
After a stunned pause to take that in, I snapped back, “That isn’t good enough. Be more specific.”
“Everything will be revealed in it’s own good time,” was the unhelpful addition. Suddenly, I was back in the hall, rather dazed, and wondering why I was there. Oh yes, a personal sitting with a medium. Perhaps some useful guidance will come then. The reception desk person gave fairly convincing evidence that she was really there when she handed over a coupon and pointed towards a small side room where a friendly middle-aged woman was waiting.
“Oh, you are certainly one of us,” was her opening line.
“Us?”, I repeated, under my breath.
She didn’t hear this and continued, “You will be a healer and a humble teacher of the eternal mysteries of human existence.” Not exactly the successful career in the theatre I was hoping to hear about.
“Your psychic abilities will be unusual, much more specialised than what I’m doing. But, before this, you must embark on a journey back in time to rescue fragments of yourself trapped there. You will find a doorway to the underworld and enter. Down there, you will discover the deeper purpose to your life”.
I was about to say, “What bunkum” but she continued before I could.
“To be ready for this challenge, your guides are telling me, you must address your emotional blocks.” She went on to tell me about Quaesitor, a newly formed organisation promoting unorthodox approaches to psychological and spiritual growth facilitated by young group leaders brought over from America. I thanked her profusely.
On weekdays, it was sightseeing and at night I attended as many theatre shows as I could afford but, she was right, at the weekend, Quaesitor was the only place to be. Gestalt one week, bioenergetics the next.
“Why are you here?”, the group leader usually asked.
“I want to find my true self”, I always replied, allowing myself to feel a bit exposed. I blush easily. It probably seemed a bit pretentious.
There was the obligatory encounter group where we sat naked and let it all hang out. We went without sleep for 48 hours to break down our inhibitions and barriers to spontaneous expression, to “access the deeper reaches of our fears and dreams”, according to the brochure I still have, “and to discover the hidden depths of what makes us human.” But my inhibitions remained firmly in place.
Continuing my search, I was invited to a dead of night occult meeting in Soho where I had great difficulty bowing down to their horned deity. This certainly showed me what I must not get involved in. Creepy stuff.
I returned to the Quaesitor office where they told me about an ‘Enlightenment Intensive’ to be held, right at the end of my London sojourn.
“Attaining enlightenment is surely why I came to England”, I mused, “This will be the high point of my trip, an experience that will stay with me and nourish me forever. I will return home an illuminated being, and everyone will marvel.”
I did get my first enlightenment near the end of the three days but it was nothing like I expected. I felt my past flowing out of me and my mind oscillated between being the Lord of the Universe, the creator of everything that is and the Lord of nothing. Then I was drawn violently away from that into my heart and impending annihilation. I resisted that for many hours before succumbing. Then, once again, I knew myself to be everything and everywhere, the creator, certainly, and totally fulfilled.
Before my ego had the chance to grab onto that, everything switched suddenly to being very ordinary and matter of fact. Had I lost it? No, I could sense a deeper reality still there behind the scenes and I was fully at peace with myself as I returned to the ‘real world’. My grotty Kings Cross hostel was bathed in light.
Over the final two days of my London adventure, I sat modestly on tube trains accepting my fellow travellers as equals. They stared back at me, marvelling at my divine presence or, perhaps, wondering what I was high on.
Alas, as I walked to the aircraft to return home, the enlightened state retreated even further into the background. Oh dear. I thought I had reached some kind of lasting perfection. Buddha did it. Fortunately, my spirit guide was still there with me, telling me that I had to give up my teaching position and return to London the following year, which I dutifully did.
—————————————-
On arriving back, I joined a psychic development group at the S.A.G.B with the marvellous medium, Ivy Northage, while at the same time, continuing my search for an even deeper enlightenment that would last as the Buddha’s had.
However, the psychic and mystical paths seemed incompatible. The psychic gifts are solely for the benefit of others and most spiritualists didn’t seem much interested in sustained spiritual development at all. Whereas, the mystics I spent time with were seeking personal enlightenment and they kept telling me to avoid the “inferior” psychic under all circumstances. Yet, I had to follow both paths and blend them together.
The mystical path requires a connection to God or the great spirits through meditation and daily practice. The Tantra of the inner Life. However, I found maintaining silence and a relentless search for Self revelation a very isolating path. I did spend a day, with thousands of devotees, in the company of the portly 14 year guru, Maharaja Ji, leader of the Divine Light Mission who claimed to be “A saint by inheritance, the born lord of Yogis.” It was a well orchestrated event but when one of his disciples tried to pass on ‘the knowledge’ and none got through to me I decided that using a guru as an intermediary was not the way for me.
I enjoyed Sufi dancing for a while and whirled derivishly but got no closer than that to their religious practices. I then approached the Rosicrucians who maintained that their beliefs date back to ancient Egyptian mysticism when they understood the true nature of the universe and they were in contact with far off planets where, they believed, all human beings came from.
With them, I realised that elaborate arcane rituals or hierarchal traditions have no real place in mysticism. True mystics do not believe that there is only one path or correct way to experience divinity. They understand that every person has a unique perception of life’s potentials and, through sustained practice, can experience flashes of the ultimate reality on whichever path they choose.
Those Christian mystics who challenged the rigid formality of the Church structures and beliefs were usually shunted off to an isolated monastery out of the way. Christianity would not be where it is if they had allowed people to talk to any old spirit who turned up. If there was a medium in every church tuning into spirits and asking for guidance which would probably question their outmoded practices, what would the congregations make of that?
So, what did I learn from all this that would be useful to me in the service work I was gradually being drawn to do? That the chakras are essential. Not that I was much drawn to the illuminated crown chakra, opening up to the cosmos, that features in many depictions of the Buddha with his face bathed in tranquillity. Did he have a halo beneath his bottom chakra as well? I was more interested in that. Certainly, most mystics I knew concentrated on reaching the higher planes through their crown and third eye chakras in combination, which gave them an other-worldly feel.
I was more drawn to the few who held their energies tightly to the ‘I’ and were able to combine the base and sacral regions which grounded them in a simple human reality – but this was a very personal experience and their influence didn’t extend out very far. I wanted to add in my psychic capabilities to eventually reach many people.
Buddha did not impart a lot of psychically accessed philosophy to his followers. He was more interested in keeping everything simple and focussed. Personal enlightenment remains the mystic’s main objective and there is a traditional structure of practice when they do become illumined beings.
To achieve that, Buddha also taught of the need to fall into the Heart of Darkness where the self is sacrificed over and over in order to know its true nature. Many seekers have backed away from this when they began to feel rejected or abandoned by God. Yet, it is the path all mystics must travel if they are to reach their ultimate personal evolution.
I certainly wanted to bring a deep personal truth to what I was doing for others by bringing my enlightened mind forward more. That meant that I would have to go through my own dark night of the soul.
Before that happened, I was standing in a field on the last afternoon of a 14 day Enlightenment Intensive when a massive breakthrough occurred and I was propelled out through the crown chakra into another reality. Heaven, was it? I was surrounded by a group of friendly folk expressing joy that I had found a way to visit them. Some were my guides that mediums had told me about over the years, and one I recognised as the old sage who had visited me as a child when I was crying out desperate for help. He told me that this marvellous experience beyond the crown was only half way towards completing my soul initiation.
Back in the field, I suddenly realised that my ‘dark night’ required me to go down through the base chakra deep into the earth to balance what had just happened. This was a shocking prospect, to venture alone into Hades where I might have to meet up with the dreaded Satan.
Most people try to bury what they fear will hurt them in the deep recesses of their minds, not realising that underneath what appears to be dark and dangerous is always an offering of light. The advanced mystic lives ever conscious of the divine living in all things. Within the outer, which is fleeting and ever changing, there is an inner core which is imperishable and eternal.
The journey of the mystic is a silent and marvellous one which is open to all and is so near at hand, yet many who long for its embrace after many challenges have been faced and the time comes, still turn away from the simplicity of it, thinking it is unworthy of them.
I certainly hadn’t fully accepted this hidden karmic part of myself that had to be revealed, clinging instead to a self-identity which was based on images and mental concepts that I knew would have to be completely surrendered in the impending annihilation.
Simplicity was the key. I slowed down to attune myself to the eternal ‘I’ within me, which extended towards the centre of the Sun but also towards the centre of the earth equally but, however hard I tried, my heart felt abandoned and desolate. I was unable to register even a spark of light and as I descended further into the earth, there was a chilling of my sensitivities.
“Do not stray from the heart as you descend”, a stern voice informed me.
“Is that possible?” I retorted. There was only silence in response. I had to work it out for myself. On the one hand, there is the mystical aspect of me who craves to access more and more compartments of my Source Self and the psychic me who sometimes spirals out to engage with the far reaches of this great creation but mostly just wants to be a teacher.
My big breakthrough in understanding came when I realised that the central heart chakra is the crucial focal point for all spiritual seeking and especially when divine service is called for. When everything is still and balanced in the heart, one can reach up and down equally from there and, at the same time, be active at any point along this column of consciousness, the true ‘I’. This was the key to merging the psychic and mystical disciplines that I had been looking for.
———————————–
The source mind is always active in support of the life of service every medium must undertake, constantly feeding us with compassionate thoughts and urging us towards noble deeds. I don’t always listen though. Traditionally, the proof of survival evidence is received by clairvoyants through a combination of the throat and brow chakras. They can see and hear spirits and pass this information on, but few ground their abilities sufficiently to gain access to a much more profound guidance. This is possibly because not many people ask them for this depth of communication.
They need to balance their usual throat and brow combination with a fusion of he solar plexus and sacral chakras. The sacral is where it is easiest to contact the soul and the solar plexus region is where the psychic power is generated. It is the psychic brain, where energies are sensed and prepared. From there, the psychic energy is passed up, ideally through the heart, to the higher chakras. Few however direct this energy down to the base and beyond as Jesus taught his disciples to do, with only limited success.
It is sad that many psychic organisations and churches are pandering to the surface demands of their clients. There is no inner circle in any of the spiritualist places that I have visited, with quality trance mediums channelling higher wisdom and practical advice. This is also much needed in the Christian churches who still cling to their old outmoded beliefs – the virgin birth, for instance, and I found Satan to be not such a bad chap after all. There certainly needs to be an inner circle of special people behind the scenes in parliament, quietly advising those who lead us. Where are those wise ones today? I believe they are there but holding back until their worth is recognised and they are invited forward.
Out of the chaos of recent times, which is not likely to end soon, a new energy is being liberated into the centre of our lives. It is like a mighty river, surging forward with such force that it threatens to engulf everything; but it hasn’t even approached it’s climax when it will spread out in every direction, the currents circulating over the whole earth, and its magical influence transforming everything it touches.
Everywhere today, people are demanding social justice and environmental action but this is mostly being ignored by the powers that should be. We need to go deeper, draw on both our psychic and mystical capabilities to penetrate into the minds and hearts of those in positions of influence so that they will genuinely listen and act on the truths that are coming to them from below – so that, then, leadership can become a truly collective thing.
The mystic moves little from a simple core, yet nothing can rest still when consciousness is enlivened by that great solar energy setting it free. It is a call for the death of desire that will lead inevitably to the resurrection of our entire society, ushering in a golden age that will involve all of us as never before.
Enough of our personal barriers need to be removed first and we don’t have much time to do that before they will be even more violently confronted. An evolutionary force is arousing people to action and is driving the protests everywhere. All lives matter. We can no longer retire to the woods and the caves for the inspiration we need from nature and our spirit inspirers. We visit them every night in our sleeping consciousness and bring back the fruits of our deliberations there which can most easily be accessed on waking.
We need a larger faith today backed by far more trust, so that our society can receive what it most needs. So, relax now and join me in facing the fear of non- existence that allows all false concepts of Self – especially those providing a sense of security in the elevated reaches of the “I” – to be tossed into the Fire of Transmutation.
Then out of the ashes of this surrender, the Phoenix with golden wings will rise to inspire us to give freely with open hearts, so that the call to greater service coming forcefully through our psychic channels will result in further awakening in the human world around us and genuine change will most certainly happen.
MEET THE AUTHOR
GREG BRANSON is an enlightenment teacher and past-life therapist who leads the Guild of Peacemakers, formed in 1976, which meets regularly to focus and direct energy to secure peace in our time. They are also earth energy workers, releasing trapped spirits and harmonising the underlying power grid in many places around the country.
On the web
Greg can be contacted on greghelios@outlook.com
Bookshelf
WE ARE SIRIANS: A SPIRITUAL ODYSSEY FOR OUR TIME BY GREG BRANSON, published by Filament Publishing, paperback (240 pages).
