Monday 19 August 2013

WE HAD TO DESTROY IT TO SAVE IT...

WE HAD TO DESTROY IT TO SAVE IT

Chapter One of the book

Listening to the silences
In a world of hearing voices.

By

ROY VINCENT

(Abridged)




“We had to destroy it to save it.”



Such was the bizarre reasoning given by the U.S. Authorities to justify the annihilation of a village during that most bizarre of conflicts, the Vietnam War.

As I have begun to write, I have trawled through my own memory, and read, and come to terms with, the copious notes and correspondence that form my medical records.

 When you read what I shall write, I think that you may agree that the same ‘justification’ could be applied to the almost-achieved outcome of the treatments that were brought to bear to ‘save’ my malfunctioning mind.  The treatments were applied with good intent, I have no doubt, by people who were established in their professions of medicine and psychiatry.  In the process of being treated, my mind was almost annihilated. 

So what went wrong?  Well, to start with, at the outset, there was nothing wrong with my mind - it was functioning well and I was in control.  But something must have gone wrong and to describe it is the purpose of the first part of my tale. 

The path ahead may at times seem a little tortuous, but I am sure that you will find the journey interesting.

In the past, I have always enjoyed writing, although my authorship then had a different purpose in my professional rĂ´le - reports, papers, proposals, were the offspring of my love of language, constrained by the accepted forms of technical writing.  A fellow Welshman, whose evocative use of language has never ceased to please me, is Dylan Thomas.  When I listen to a recording of Under Milk Wood, from memories of people and places locked in my mind in my youth, I can ‘see’ all the exquisitely drawn characters, I can ‘walk’ down Cockle Row, I can ‘look’ through the mind’s eye of blind Captain Cat. 

For me there is only one recording - the first made by the BBC, with Huw Gryffudd as Captain Cat; the Reverend Eli Jenkins was spoken by Philip Burton, the English master at my school, and the one who set in train my love of language. 

But most of all, and no matter how often I listen, guaranteed to produce the same thrill of anticipation are the opening words spoken with his unique timbre by long-ago schoolmate Richard Burton.

I can do no better than to recall his voice and echo it as he speaks......


TO BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING...

A high flyer was I.  Was I?  I shall never know now.  No self-vaunted Icarus was I, flapping higher and higher on phoney wings, only to crash to destruction when the deceit was uncovered by the harsh sun of scrutiny.  No: by dint of the steady wing-beats of hard work, dedication and loyalty, I was rising and being lifted from time to time on the up draught of peer approbation.  So: how did I lose my feathers?  Why did I crash?  Why did I have to learn to walk again?

How is it that such destruction can be visited on someone in broad daylight, in a civilised society, in his own home, in the midst of a caring family and, at work, under the gaze of a solicitous employer?

And what did I lose?  I lost a home which was still being carefully built up and consolidated; I lost my wife and, effectively, my daughter; in time I couldn’t sustain my job and retired prematurely; financially, in today’s (2013) values, I have lost almost a million pounds, while each year I receive in pension about one third of what I could reasonably have expected. 

But of greater worth, a worth which can not be measured in cash, I have lost a swathe of my memory; memory of a time when life was very good; when I had a wife whom I loved and who was yet young; when work was very rewarding and successful; when my daughter was blossoming.  Do you know, I cannot remember how she used to talk when she was little; the things she said; bath times; bed times; Christmas; picnics and holidays; ponies….  I can barely remember the Sunbeam-Talbot that was the family’s pride, or taking my mother and in-laws for ‘runs’.  I am fortunate in that I have a former work colleague whom I meet from time to time, whose reminiscences remind me of the highly successful and rewarding times we had as vital players in a cutting-edge project that was a world first, otherwise that memory would also be lost.

So, how did I lose so much?  How did I lose it uncomplainingly, trustingly?  Surprisingly, and sadly, I lost it at the hands of, or perhaps more accurately, I had it all stolen by, the very people whose prime intent and professional purpose was to care for me.  I lost it through the intervention of medicine and psychiatry.

There is only one way for you to understand the extent of my loss - the actual loss over the years and the potential of what might have been - and that is for me to take you sufficiently far back in my life and career to find a convenient staring point. 

So how about 1947?  I was 21 years old, in transition between life as a Petty Officer Radar Mechanic in the Royal Navy, and life as an undergraduate electrical engineer in the University of Wales at Swansea.

Three years and an Engineering Degree later saw me, in 1950, make what was for me a very desirable move to the Lake District in Cumbria - scene of several pre-war family holidays - to work in the embryonic nuclear industry.  My radar training and experience, combined with my degree, fitted me for the very fascinating and often novel world of measurement.  I was becoming an Instrument Engineer.  First promotion, and 1953, and I was part of the team destined to run the world’s first nuclear power station, Calder Hall - which at the time that I joined was just a large hole in the ground!  An exciting time of very hard but fascinating and rewarding work, and of personal change - of marriage in 1955, and parenthood in 1956, and a second promotion.

The Works developed and expanded, as did the science and technology, and my responsibility - which led to a further promotion at the end of 1960.  Thus, in what turned out to be an exceedingly crucial year, 1961, at age 35 I had the grade of ‘Principal’, and a salary (2013 equivalent) of £80, 000.  I had been to France as an advisor during the commissioning of their first power reactor, and to Stockholm to address an international conference.  I had a career, a home and a family, and the probability of more children.  And with a further thirty years of potential employment, who knows how my future might have blossomed?

To mention ‘diarrhoea’ in the context in which I am writing may seem an unnecessary and unpleasant irrelevance: unfortunately, it became very relevant.  We lived in Seascale, and in the late summer of almost every year the notorious ‘Seascale Bug’ would strike, bringing stomach upsets, sickness and diarrhoea to the populace at random. 


When, thus, in 1961, I started with my episode of the ‘runs’ it just seemed as if I was one of that year’s unfortunates.  But this was no ordinary visitation of the ‘Seascale Bug’.  Soon it seemed as if the whole of my inside had turned to fluid - the mediaeval term ‘the flux’ was probably very appropriate.  Day after day after day it continued, defying all the usual nostrums and quick-setting cements that were commonly effective.  My ‘samples’ yielded no known bacteria.  My weight dropped by over a stone; the lavatory pan was my boon companion.
             
Then, one day, a visit to my G.P. produced something new, something different.  My medical certificate sported the letters C.A.N. in place of the usual ‘enteritis’, and a prescription which, when dispensed at the local pharmacy, produced a bottle of black and green capsules coyly hiding behind the label bearing the legend ‘Librium’.  Now, remember, this was 1961; Librium was brand, spanking new; the word 'tranquilliser' was not in common parlance.  No warning bells rang in my mind - and why should they have?  Like most people, I believed implicitly in the medical profession, in what they said was wrong with me, in the ways in which it should be put right.  The average layperson has no base from which to query or dispute the medical opinion; one’s view is often met with the slightly tolerant smile that seems to say, “ The patient has an opinion, humour him and it will go away”.
             
I promise you this: there had been no discussion concerning my nervous state, nor was anything said about Librium, its purpose or its side effects.  I had to deduce, yes deduce, that C.A.N. meant ‘chronic anxiety neurosis’, and that I was ‘on’ a tranquilliser.  You may wonder at the lack of communication.  All I can say is that I was very debilitated and unsure of myself, and that the doctor in question was very reserved, almost taciturn, and did not open himself to discussion. 

One former colleague at work even now reminds me of the response that he got when suggesting an alternative to his continuing treatment; whatever he was then told was prefaced with the put-down “We in the learned profession...”.  (I must emphasise that I am not recounting this to denigrate in any way the doctor in question, who was immensely appreciated in the community both as a person and G.P., but simply to emphasise something to which I will no doubt return many times in this account and the other parts of my ‘story’, namely this communication gulf between medical professional and lay-person).

So, dutifully, I took my Librium in complete and blissful ignorance of the most common side effects - of confusion, drowsiness and inability to control voluntary muscular movements - and physical dependence!  How, I wonder, would my employers have reacted had they known, for the Department at work of which I was head was responsible for every one of the measuring and safety devices in the whole nuclear power station of four reactors and eight turbines?

No doubt everyone has those events in their lives over which they groan internally and long to extinguish the event and its consequences; this is one of my most desperate, as must be that of anyone who has started to take an addictive substance.  How many clocks would be put back if given the chance? 

My anguish is made all the greater with the 20/20 vision with which all hind sight is blessed, and the knowledge, gained some 25 years after the events, of a newly identified parasite that can inhabit the lower gut and produce uncontrollable but self-limiting diarrhoea.  Such a parasite one can acquire from polluted water or milk, or from animals - a route that the family hobby of riding and horse-work made readily available.

Cryptosporidium is the name of what it is now believed was the cause of my illness - one of a group of parasitic protozoa.

Looking back at the events covered by the next two years, much of what I did, felt and suffered can now be understood and many things fall into place.  First, there was the growing addiction.  My very first act on waking was to pop a pill.  If I didn’t get my noon ‘fix’ on time I started to get the shakes.  It was while I was doing this one day at work that I received my one piece of cautionary advice.  It came from a former G.P. who had given up medical practice to found a firm which made endoscopes; he was visiting to supervise the installation of one of his industrial size ‘scopes.  When he saw the pill going in, he advised me instead to unwind at home each evening with a glass of sherry.  Kind man that he was, on his next visit he handed me a brown wrapped bottle - “ Special varnish” he said, “Don’t open it here in daylight”.  I still think of rich, dark port wine as ‘special varnish’. 

How I wish that I had been able to take his advice, but by now I believed that I had a C.A.N.  How else could I explain the shakes that were cured by my next ‘fix’?  How else to account for the drowsiness that was besetting me in my office, the ‘numbness’ which enveloped my midriff and radiated outwards, the confusion or slowness in understanding the developments in computing, which specialist members of my department were engaged with?  How else could I explain to myself the frequent malaises that had all the hallmarks of ‘flu without the temperature?

Life at work was getting difficult, particularly the drowsiness - but how can you explain to your next senior something that you didn’t understand yourself, and which he didn’t confront directly?  (The problems contained in that one sentence, and all the other examples that emerge of the inability to address or articulate a difficulty or problem, of the impossibility of admitting or communicating to one’s partner, friends, colleagues, medical advisers, more than an inkling of the gut-wrenching, mind-warping fears and fantasies which emerge, are topics to which I must return somewhere in the discourse if I am to draw meaningful conclusions and offer advice to others on ways to cope or support; but how difficult it is!).

In the main, I was still doing a good job; no catastrophes, and many innovations at which I was particularly good.  I remember, too, delivering a lecture to the Engineering Society on the subject of computers in general, and the ones in particular that we were then incorporating into the plant - the last major, positive event at work for some time to come.  Such changes as were happening to my life and demeanour were yet acceptable and bearable compared with what was to come as 1963 was settling into autumn.

The G.P. who had made the original diagnosis and prescription had moved back to his beloved Scotland, and to his replacement I remember saying “You have inherited my chronic anxiety neurosis” - me still accepting what I had been told, and he having no reason to question it.  Socially we got on very well and his wife and mine became firm friends.  However, his professional visits to the home began to cause him some concern and in time, he expressed the view that what I was experiencing was psychosomatic. He advised that I should see a psychiatrist and arranged for me to do so. 

After the encounter with Librium, the meeting with the psychiatrist has become another of my life’s great  ‘I wish it hadn’t happened ’ moments.

From this point on, I have copies of all my medical notes for the next thirty years - both those of the consultant and those of the local practice.  The reason why I acquired them is revealed much later in my saga.  Reading the notes - not an easy experience to cope with - it is revealing to see oneself as a ‘he’, a third person, almost a specimen with a label. 

To me, as an engineer, the most glaring difference between my profession and that of the psychiatrist, is the latter’s lack of certainty, of objectivity.  I was used to dealing with a reality - my whole purpose in my work was measurement - the complete delineation of the state of being of a piece of plant or an operation as it was then, at that moment.  I had seen my devices - the nerves of the plant - put in place (nearly 50 years on, I have the personal and professional satisfaction of knowing that many of them, those completely inaccessible inside the nuclear reactors, are still there, still functioning).  Their characteristics were known, for we had calibrated them; they told the operator exactly what was going on in the remote reaches of his plant; if anything broke down outside the reactor I had to know exactly why it had failed, and could only replace it with apparatus that had been thoroughly tested and calibrated.

My Consultant (MC) appeared to be thorough, no question of that.  We talked, he arranged tests, e.g. was hypoglycaemia a possibility?  But to the outsider, there appear to be no certainties in psychiatry, only opinions and educated guesses based upon the personal experience and training of the one particular practitioner; possibly even the ‘school’ of psychiatry to which he subscribes; no precise measurements or standards.  Labels are put on ‘bottles’ of symptoms - but the contents of the bottles seem to change at the whim of one school of research or another. 

Take for instance Alzheimer’s disease.  I can read the standard, original definition of a ‘pre-senile dementia’, which, when originally identified and defined by Alzheimer himself, applied essentially to persons under the age of 55.  Yet in a recent paper describing research into the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease amongst professional footballers, the author states that the condition is rarely experienced in persons under the age of 60!

It is only in later years and being outside the maelstrom that I was then in, and fully in charge of my life and mind, that I can look back and be critical.  But let me emphasise again, as I do through all that I write, that apart from those whose reasoning and lack of perception I condemn, and who will emerge later, I am not critical of the intent of any individual: I appreciate most deeply the care and concern which were lavished upon me by all the people whom I encountered. 

But I am a professional in my own right; my training and experience were on a par with most of the medical practitioners in their profession, and so I justify my own right to be critical of analysis and results.  All this, of course, looking back with the benefit of the records in my possession, to let me see into the thought processes of those who were examining and analysing mine.

My perception of the lack of objectivity begins in the letter to GP2 sent after my first consultation.  I was seen effectively as a 'garrulous, bespectacled, Welsh hypochondriac’.  Welsh and bespectacled were irrelevancies that I couldn’t alter, but who would not be a garrulous hypochondriac after two years on a continuous and substantial intake of Librium (which modern professional medical opinion now recognises as having been totally inappropriate and unnecessary!)?  The fact that he rated me as of above average intelligence mollifies the personal affront to my self-image, which itself pales into insignificance before the recollection of what else appeared in the letter, and its immediate effect. 

After two years continuous use, at 10mg tds, my Librium was stopped forthwith and replaced by Tryptizol.

Oh Boy! - Does anyone want to know what ‘cold turkey’ is like?

My advice: don’t try it!  Recollect - I had been taking Librium in substantial dosage for over two years.  Information readily available and unequivocal says that it is for short-term use.  There is also full information about withdrawal after use - in my case after such dosage for so long my withdrawal might have taken over one year!  Mine was overnight! 

The bizarre reactions and symptoms that I experienced are only partially recorded in my notes, but it was enough that when food was put in my mouth I lost contact with it, for I had no taste, no feeling down my throat.  My stomach might not have existed for there was no sensation when I pressed that region, and I had no pressure sensation in my bladder.  It was as if everything from my mouth to my fork no longer existed.  The symptoms which I was experiencing were in fact so ‘global’ that in the correspondence between MC and GP2, they were referred to as ‘..this remarkable set of symptoms’ and 'multi-various physical symptoms’. 

The possibility that they might be the effects of the instantaneous withdrawal from Librium was just not considered; everything I was experiencing was put down to a never-before-recorded idiosyncratic reaction to Tryptizol.

Time off work and a return to Librium produced a measure of stability.  ‘Stability’?  Huh!  Work was becoming a daily nightmare, if that isn’t too paradoxical, while what was going on in the minds of my wife and daughter, I would not like to examine even after all this time.
If you don’t succeed in flattening him at the first go, why, just have another.  A couple of days on Stelazine - immediate disaster - then a second bash, this time with Melleril.  Same result; bizarre symptoms; brief flirtation with Nardil; reduced to quivering jelly.  Hospital?  Yes please.  Refuge.  I could, with relief and without feeling guilty, put aside my responsibilities at home and work.

E.C.T.? -- If you say so. 
“Sign here” - as a voluntary patient.
 
Bang! 
The next assault on my precious mind began.

Isn’t it amazing how docile we are?  Or maybe then we were more docile, accepting, than people are now.  Perhaps people nowadays are better informed, or demand more information; also there are patients’ support groups, and others active in attempts to outlaw E.C.T - it is, after all, a bizarre and dangerous ‘treatment’.  Whatever the analysis, there I was, good little Indian, ready to accept what the kind gentleman said because it would make me better.  I am sure that you want to know all about it, for it is done in your hospitals, and by people who, indirectly, you employ.

Three times a week the Ward went into its well-rehearsed routine.  You wake and get up as usual, but have no breakfast.  Shortly, you have an injection of a belladonna (deadly nightshade) derivative whose purpose is to dry the mouth and prevent you choking on your saliva.  Meanwhile the nurses are playing trains with the beds, pushing them end-to-end in the corridor outside the treatment room.  Next, as your turn approaches, a second injection, this time of a curare derivative.  Curare, as you probably know, is the poison that South American Indians put on their blow-darts; the object of its use in this situation being to cause complete muscle relaxation and minimise the risk of vertebral fractures (after all it is electro convulsive therapy) - no mention of the possibility of these when I gave my ‘informed’ consent!





       Let me quote from The Oxford Companion to the Mind:

E.C.T: Applying a voltage with surface electrodes on the head
across the brain.  This is done under anaesthesia or muscle relaxant, as it produces convulsions which can be dangerous.

E.C.T is extensively used as a convenient and quick treatment for depression, though there is no theoretical basis to justify it.

There is considerable criticism of its extensive use because it may produce permanent brain damage, especially losses of memory and intelligence, though the evidence is not entirely clear.

I want you to take particular note of the last sentence for reasons that will become pertinent later.

You lie on the bed, shoes off and tucked under the mattress end.  Chug - chug, the train moves on and your ‘carriage’ is manoeuvred into the treatment room.  Dentures out and into a glass.  An anaesthetist tries to find a suitable vein in your arm and, when successful, dribbles in Pentathol, or a similar anaesthetic.  Gentle bliss and oblivion.  Next, electrodes are placed on your temples and a burst of electricity is switched into your lovely, delicate, unsuspecting brain. 

You don’t know this, of course; what next you are aware of is gradual reawakening, bemused, head not present, an aching void in its place and sticky jelly clagged in your side hair.  You gingerly get up, reclaim your shoes and teeth, and emerge into a pointless day.  Nothing has really gone away - although it is at this point, and from now on, that your memory starts to be eroded, never fully to return.

The staff were all immensely kind.  I joined occupational therapy and became adept at basket making (“In front of two, behind one was the oft repeated cry!), washed the dishes, and whiled away the evening in the quiet room.  Then welcome bed, sans teeth, sans mind, and with hope of oblivion.  Of course, there were sleeping pills - Soneryl, Sonergan, Seconal, Amytal, Mogadon - all have gone down my throat.  But they were never effective at the time when I wanted them to be. 

Three in the morning.  Someone once said that 3 a.m. should never have been invented; how I and many others would fervently agree.  Wide awake, and staring into the void of my mind - not a place for exploration - torch flash on face as the ‘night watch’ passes.  Finally, and inevitably, get up for a pee (do all hospital ward toilets have such an unpleasant odour?).

Lovely, kind Nancy, wife of Keith, a foreman at work, sitting in the night-station; brief chat; Sorry, I can’t give you another sleeping tablet; here, try a Paracetemol; back to bed, maybe fitful sleep until the dreaded, but welcome day dawned again.

I do not want to remember too much detail of such a drab time in my life.  Nor, I suppose, will you want to read about it - but you should, for I am sure that unless it is to visit a close relative, or as a patient, you won’t enter a Psychiatric Ward.  You won’t see the uncontrolled misery and loneliness in faces; you won’t see the eyes glazed with drugs or E.C.T; you won’t see the hopelessness of a person cut off and isolated from a welter of problems that will still be there on discharge.  But like you, no one will want to visit.  People can’t cope, don’t know what to say  (Except, perhaps, “It’ll be all right if you pull yourself together - yes, that’s it - pull yourself together”).  Great original thought; how many times did I hear it being said - often by husbands to wives, or wives to husbands, themselves full of woe at the disaster that had befallen their lives and homes.

My own wife was magnificent.  Never missed a visit; even later, when attending an evening class to prepare for employment should I become incapable of returning to work, she made sure that she came during the day.  But she was the only one in a total of about twenty weeks in hospital.  Nor were there visitors to the home when I was there and recuperating, apart, that is from a good friend and colleague from work and our Parish Priest.  Not one.

When, later, I became involved in complementary cancer care, I heard the same story; very few people, even close relatives, will chat.  Most go out of their way to avoid even simple contact, conversation.  There seemed then - I’m not sure about now - to be a stigma attached to someone with mental health problems, and a reaction that almost seemed to say that it was the fault of the ill person.  (Many times have I heard people say, and I have said it myself, “I wish I had a crutch or a leg in plaster so that folk can see that there is something the matter!”).

But don’t you think that you have a duty to learn more, to be compassionate, to understand, to be able to talk to people about their problems?  For, after all, people are now being discharged to ‘Care in the Community’.  Well, for God’s sake, you are the bloody community; they are there with you - in your care, not conveniently isolated, socially sanitised in some distant Victorian pile.  The only time you want to know is when someone has an intractable  ‘personality problem’ i.e. someone who might be a sexual deviant, a paedophile.  Then, Geronimo!, get out the vigilantes; hound them out of the community; castrate the buggers; lock them away even though they haven’t committed a crime. 

They used to burn witches and social undesirables, didn’t they?  Not much really changes; the hysteria is still there.  It is your duty to ‘get real’, to understand fact and not mob panic.  After all, not every schizophrenic is an axe-wielding maniac; most of them are very sensitive, isolated people.  Statistically, you are just as likely as the next person to succumb to a nervous condition, a mental illness; if you learn more about it now perhaps it will never happen, you’ll recognise the warning signs!

In writing this account, I have started what has become, for me, a very interesting process.  I have, until now, only read my medical notes in a very tentative way, just enough, really, to be able to compile a coherent account for my lawsuit.  What little I read disturbed me and brought back such painful memories, un-bottled such nasty genies, that I hastily put the stopper back in the bottle.  But as I now have a worthwhile reason for analysing that past, I am delving further and further in as I search for actual dates, actual events, actual drugs and treatments, actual dosages. 

Memories of events, sequences, dates and people are emerging, but, apart from the recollection of some individuals who did their utmost for me, I am finding much to cause me serious disquiet, and some to make me so very angry - even after so much time has passed.  So angry that I can’t yet begin to write about it, but shall confront it later when I finally summarise.

In total I had ten E.C.T.s as an in-patient and, after the greater part of eight weeks in hospital, I was discharged home ‘much better’, still taking Librium and Seconal.  I am not a pharmacologist, but I can read, also I have or have had a number of friends in medicine and some in psychiatry, so an appreciation of drugs and their effects, alone or in combination, is not beyond me.  While I intend to summarise and comment upon my various ‘therapies’ during my conclusion, it is worth noting a few facts as I go along.  Thus, Seconal is a barbiturate from which there can be severe withdrawal effects similar to those seen in alcohol abstinence.  Librium, on the other hand, is a benzodiazepine, which also can cause dependence and withdrawal symptoms, and is prescribed for the short term (2 to 4 weeks only) relief of anxiety; its use should be reviewed regularly and should be discontinued as soon as possible - and other cautions and side effects too numerous to list here – except that benzodiazepines and barbiturates should not be taken simultaneously! 

At this point in my story, I had been taking Librium for thirty months.
             
For some reason the notes and correspondence in my file are a bit sketchy over this period, don’t ask me why.  What I next see recorded, is that I had thirteen E.C.Ts as an outpatient between 14th April and 24th May 1964.  I look at the copy of the form that I signed indemnifying the hospital against any injury that I might suffer in treatment, and at the form listing each session - the voltages and duration etc. - and memories come back of the breakfast-less journey to the hospital, crammed in a Social Services car, and the return journey, zombified.  And I weep inside now, as I must have done openly then.
             
Thus fortified, I finally got back to work.  While I had been off there had been some logical organisational and staff structural changes.  Calder Hall had become just another power station.  The cutting edge of technology had transferred to the up-and-coming Advanced Gas Reactor, and staff of my grade were being dispersed, some to AGR and, in my case, to create a brand new department.  Because of my innovative skills in the field of measurement that had come to the fore during the commissioning and experimental phases of the Calder reactors and plant, I was to be involved with experimental instrumentation.

But where had I put my mind, my technical knowledge and expertise?  Who were these people?  I couldn’t put names to faces or faces to names.  I was isolated - physically in an office high in a new, tall building, and mentally because I had no base from which to think.  At work I paced the office, bemused and feeling trapped.  I couldn’t express what I was feeling to anyone at work, for apart from the fact that you feel ashamed of your own lack of purpose, lack of achievement, people get embarrassed when you talk about personal, particularly nervous, suffering. 

(It was only later when I was competent again and people saw me working and coping with the aftermath of what I had been through, that their confidences came pouring out, because they knew that I had been ‘somewhere’ - somewhere akin to where they were in their heads and lives.  Gradually, I began to learn that behind practically every second door in this peculiar artificial village in which we lived, there was a little hell, disguised from the world by the special face that was kept by the door and put on when going out).

When your mind is empty, incapable of constructive thought, it is very wide open to all the anxieties, doubts, and uncertainties concerning your present and future.  What future?  You can’t even face the present, this day.  Night is awful.  Whilst bed is so desirable, such a refuge, the effects of the sleeping pill soon wear off, and you lie there sweating, almost seeing the entire board of management in censorious array like vultures on the bed-end.

One reason why there was not a lot written and my notes are so sketchy at this time, is because I wasn’t talking about what was actually in my mind, what I was planning to do.  I was planning to take my own life.  But I couldn’t talk about it - it had to appear to be an accident, and if I showed premeditation, I thought, my insurance policies would not pay out; but I couldn’t ask anyone if they would pay out because that might show premeditation and my insurance policies might not pay out.  My planned method was electrocution, but that is difficult to stage in the home in such a way as to appear to be accidental, and my ingenious mind just was not functioning.

As I walked to the train each morning, I used to look at the wheels of the school buses and wonder if I could find the courage to stumble under one; or, on the platform, whether I could contrive a fall in front of the train as it came in.  At night I used to wish fervently that I had been killed along with the thirty-five friends and shipmates who had been fragmented or incinerated within feet of me when the destroyer, HMS Saumarez, in which we were serving, was mined.  Obviously, I did not succeed or even attempt, (though it has only struck me as I write that in the Seconal at home I had the ideal ‘remedy’ - easy to overdose, but in my state of mind I couldn’t even see that possibility).  

There is, however, something that I can tell you without fear of contradiction: there is no place on earth more lonely than the mind of someone who wants to die, to achieve oblivion (unless it be the mind of someone facing execution).  The most isolated Siberian tundra or Gobi desert wastes would provide more solace than the domain of your mind.

Before I contrived my ‘accident’ or otherwise achieved my own destruction, I was saved by Pentathol.  Have you lost the plot?  Let’s get up to date.  We are now at the end of July 1964, and a new strategy was being proposed.  I may not be giving them enough credit, but MC, GP2, and the medical staff at work were individually and collectively concerned about my state of mind and future, and discussing ways and means.  The Pentathol strategy applied the relaxing anaesthetising properties of the drug to achieve within me total bodily relaxation, in the hope that my mind would respond as well.  (In case you have forgotten, I still had no mind).  So, three times a week I was driven to the hospital in a Works’ car and had Pentathol dribbled into me as I slowly ‘blissed out’, as my Buddhist friends would say.  There was one Indian registrar who could dribble it in very slowly and actually inject two syringe-fulls - oh! the ecstasy (and the agony - for nothing goes away, and the let-down on waking is so bleak).

But fear not, dear reader, (sound of bugle, yet far off) help is on the way.  MC has been to a conference, and come back bursting with new ideas.  For me there had been a paper in which excellent results had been achieved in some creatures - possibly wild dogs - in which large doses of Valium (or Librium, I am trying to recall a memory) had been used to good effect.  Well done!  You’ve caught up with the plot!  I would have large doses of Librium (or Valium). 

There is nothing that I can find in the notes that relate to this particular trick, but like some other ‘special’ memories that have stayed with me, this one is particularly vivid, as is the memory of the reaction of GP2.  He visited me at home almost every day, in my darkened room from which I wouldn’t stir.  After several days, he stared into my eyes, realised where I was (or wasn’t) and said “You’re drugged out of your mind!”. 

Before you can say ‘benzodiazepine’, I was back in hospital.

All of my files, notes and correspondence were obtained by my Solicitors as we sought to make a case to sue the makers of these drugs, an abortive venture, as it turned out, so fickle is blindfold Justice.  In making the case, I had a long session with a Consultant Psychiatrist who was retained by the various law firms.  He started interviewing me in the usual manner, but as my story unfolded he just sat there, silent, a sad, sympathetic little smile on his face, his head sometimes shaking from side to side in sheer disbelief that so much could have been visited on one person.

But don’t go away, psychiatry has so much to offer.  The time has come to introduce you to yet another form of shock treatment - insulin shock treatment, or, as it now is, modified insulin treatment (it was modified so that there is now a smaller chance of killing you).  This form of shock treatment relies on the injection of increasingly large doses of insulin with the object of reducing the blood sugar level and bringing on a coma. 

This is how the modified form works: you are woken at about 5 am and given an injection of insulin.  You continue to lie in bed for a couple of hours and soon start to sweat and shake uncontrollably, then, while still in bed, you get placed in front of you a tray with a dish of corn flakes heaped, and I mean heaped, with glucose powder, and a full fried breakfast plus toast.  No problem eating it, you are ravenous.  A little while longer in bed then get up and have a shower (compulsory).  I became so inert and depressed that I couldn’t even bother to shower, sweaty and niffy though I was – sometimes I just used to shut myself in and pretend.

I had in all twenty-six such episodes that, at five a week, took me into the sixth week.  How depressed I got, so very, very depressed.  I used to pace the corridors feeling utterly lost, pointless and empty; sometimes I went into the next-door geriatric ward just to see people who had less mind than I had.  I craved exercise, but when I asked if I could go to the older, former hospital not far away where I knew there was a rehab gym, I was fobbed off and got no help - “Just go for a walk”.  Where?  In the wet, featureless lanes with their potholes and puddles, just behind the hospital, in the autumn?  So drab, so weary, so empty - the name ‘Sneckyeat Road’ does as little for me now as it did then! 

One day, MC said to me “You were referred originally with an anxiety state, now you have a full blown clinical depression”.  Well, we were making progress, that’s something.

When it looked as if I was in for a long haul, the occupational therapist suggested something that I had always wanted to do.  Weaving.  There was a table loom as yet untried.  Great!  I’d have a go.  What to make?  “ Why not place mats?” said my wife who occasionally came in to OT.  So off she went, and came back with some bright orangey Courtelle, and I started.  Things that I had only read about before began to become realities - making the warp, the poree cross, and whatever the other one is called; heddles, shuttle, and beater all became realities.  Then, entering the warp.  That could have been difficult, but one of the nurses had worked at Coates’ thread factory where she had been involved with just such a task in making up thread samples for display and advertising.  So, with one at one end and the other at the other end of the loom we were soon ‘entered’ and I was away.  While my days weren’t ‘swifter than the weaver’s shuttle’, they nevertheless received a boost from this particular shuttle.  I had to overcome some difficulties of technique, but eventually I created six place mats, a centrepiece and a tray cloth.  I still have them, a little worse for wear.

One hears so much these days in our new  ‘consciousness’, our new awareness, of ‘body, mind and spirit’ - the totality of being human.  My body was still there, recoiling from the many attacks made upon it; my mind had a certain ephemeral quality, though, on reflection, it had the reaction of a lead balloon showing sudden half-hearted attempts to lift off.  My spirit?  Now there’s a thought; if I ever had a spirit, where was it now?

Becoming a Catholic when I married I had become a very diligent follower of my new ‘brand’ of Christianity, but in my depressed state, where indeed was my spirit?  Had I just been going through the motions?  Had I ever had anything of the sort?  Must find out.  The church not far away was manned by Benedictine monks, and so, remembering one whose words one Sunday at Mass had impressed me, I rang.  With not a moment’s hesitation, he jumped on his Noddy bike and put-putted over to see me. 

I still have a little book which he gave me (Funny, his name was Father Little; the book - They Speak by Silences was a series of meditative thoughts by an anonymous monk of the silent Carthusian order and is one that I still, more than thirty-five years later, use for ‘provocative’ meditation) in the hope that I would find solace in its words, and to this day I am grateful for his earnest attention and compassion.  But in spite of his help, what I now know as  ‘spirit’ never materialised in me, and never did until I experienced the events that I write about elsewhere.

Here is a thought, though; if you want to know what it is like to be in deep depression (no, it is not just being ‘fed up’!), read Psalm 88 - at least that is its number in the Jerusalem Bible. I’ll quote briefly, but do read it all for you may get some insight. 

It is called  ‘Lament’: as he cries out to his God...

...hear my cries for help;
for my soul is all troubled.
my life is on the brink of the Underworld;
I am numbered among those who go down to the Pit,
a man bereft of strength;
 a man alone, down among the dead,
among the slaughtered in their graves,
among those you have forgotten....
...You have turned my friends and neighbours against me,
now my one companion is darkness.


But soft!  What is happening?  MC is beginning to have self-doubts.  Would I like a second opinion?  - He would.  So ‘twas arranged, and one November morning I was driven with others who had a variety of appointments, to the ultimate seat of learning; me to see a Big Wheel (BW), one who went on to become a Very Big Wheel, at the mention of whose name a young psychiatrist, to whom I quoted it many years later, visibly genuflected.

But no, such is the way that things work, protocol etc., I did not immediately see BW; instead, at first, I was taken to his Registrar or Little Wheel (LW).  For about half an hour, possibly forty minutes, he interviewed me as if it was my very first encounter with a psychiatrist. 

Now, there is an unkind saying in education that  “those who can, ‘do’; those who can’t ‘do’, teach; those who can’t teach, teach others to teach; while those who can’t teach others to teach become either education administrators or researchers”.  I feel that there must be an equivalent gradation in psychiatry.  I don’t know what had brought LW into the profession, and into research in particular, but it certainly wasn’t his human interplay.  He exhibited not one glimmer of concern or sympathy for my condition or experiences; he had about as much empathy towards me as a gardener has towards a green fly. 

He was hostile, sarcastic and belittling.  Just one example will suffice: I tried to explain the depths of my desire to die, to commit suicide.  Had I, as one does, gone to a high place to throw myself off?  No?  Well, I couldn’t have been all that serious, could I?  It may not sound a very great put-down, but in the context of the others, the sarcasms and negations of what I was telling him, it was.

However, he had been well primed in his negativity.  The letter from MC itself was so negative, but not only that, he seemed to go out of his way to be negative.  Take, for instance, his comments about the state of our marriage: he records that both my wife and I said that we were happily married; however, he knew better, he had got a snippet (apparently from GP2) which cast doubt upon our understanding of the situation, doubts that he reinforced, but did not specify from a source that he didn’t identify.  One wonders why he had to put in yet another negative, unsubstantiated, keyhole-peering remark.  Why did he not rely on what my wife and I said?  After all, we were the main players.  Throughout this period, she could not have been more devoted, more caring; ‘TLC’ might have been coined to describe her attitude.

In our wider life, and with our daughter, we were fortunate to have a family interest - almost obsession - in riding and horses.  We rode whenever possible, had riding holidays, took a deep and intelligent interest in improving our riding skills, mixed with like-minded people and made many friends outside the works environment, outside the peculiar Seascale society.  Many of these friends we still have.  Yes, we!  For although, as I shall describe, we ultimately parted and divorced, we have remained excellent friends, a friendship manifested in a variety of ways that are not here relevant.

Before my life was so bludgeoned, I frequently rode a particular horse that was being looked after by some friends.  Smokey.  Such an eager, willing horse; black; not very big; but he took me everywhere, from the miles of beach to the fell-tops, and along all the many bridle-paths with which this area is blessed.  He was a boon companion and I can still recall his moving body under the saddle.  When I was recuperating after the first spell in hospital, my wife told me what she had been keeping from me - Smokey was dead, killed by lightning in his field.  She also told me that she had been saving up to buy him for me.  That reflects the marriage that I knew at that time, not the almost evil representations or half-hints that the letter contains.

I have tried since, indeed, I am trying now, to deduce why things were being said about our marriage that at the time were patently untrue.  Since we are in the domain of Sigmund Freud perhaps we can get a little Freudian.  I have observed in many men, probably in myself also, the in-built, virtually unconscious belief held by each that he is the one who can take over this female’s life, protect her, sort her problems, give her better sex than she is currently getting.  To do which, as in nature, he has to expose the weaknesses, real or invented, in her current husband, partner, boyfriend; particularly if the latter is in any way vulnerable.  I see a manifestation of this occurring among the fifteen or so rams that are sometimes held in my field in the autumn.  If one has any defect, first one ram and then all the rest in turn or together, will butt and harry him persistently, all, no doubt, responding to the in-built behaviour of their evolution.  We are the sum total of our evolution, nothing lost, nothing taken away, and we have it within ourselves to behave just like the rams.

I am not in the remotest way suggesting that anything improper was even thought, but my wife was a very attractive woman, not only in her looks, but also in her vivacity and openness of speech, and the marriages of GP2 and MC were under stress.  Remarks made to me by GP2 during his consultations showed a certain disillusion, while MC in a short time parted from his wife and they ultimately divorced.  In my analysis, I am suggesting their own personal situations were unconsciously being played out in mine, and in my ‘vulnerable’ state I was the ram being ‘butted’ - and once one starts everyone joins in.  A bit convoluted, but I know what I mean.

You may think that I am being selective, or that I have an agenda of vindictiveness against the people whom I perceive as having perpetrated wrongs upon me in the past.  I can tell you this; if anyone has proper credentials and a legitimate reason for wanting to see the letters and reports, they can come here and I will willingly show them and put them in context. 

What I find hard to reconcile are the two images that I now have of MC - the man who sat, as I shall describe, urbane and friendly, tying salmon flies in a little hand-held vice, while I had my fortnightly ‘psychotherapy’, and the man who wrote the letters and reports that contain nothing to indicate that I had any achievement or standing.  In fact the reverse; his whole thrust seemed to say that I never had any potential and never would.  I know that he had only seen me from the outset under the influence of Librium; I know that when first seen I had a label around my neck which said ‘Anxiety State’, but I would have thought that he would have had some discernment, and would have realised that I wouldn’t have got where I had without talent. 

We were roughly of an age, and had reached about the same level, each in our own profession, and, indeed, I had reached at thirty-five a grade that many engineers in public service didn’t reach in their whole careers.  As I wrote earlier, I had represented the Company in France and Stockholm, and, big disappointment, I was told when I was making recovery that it had been intended that I should be seconded to Japan during the commissioning of some of the Japanese nuclear reactors, but that my illness had scotched the move.  So perhaps you can understand my perturbation and inability to comprehend the behaviour of someone in whom I confided much and perceived as a friend and confidant. 

However, now I realise as I read deeper and deeper in my files that what I thought were personal confidences were, in fact, incorporated into the next progress report to my GP, and retained in my personal file where they remain yet, colouring the view of me of every subsequent GP who has read them.

When LW had completed his interview, he went to see BW and was confined with him for about twenty minutes, after which I was invited in.  Neither sat; I don’t remember whether or not I did.  I was not put at my ease, nor made to feel welcome - I felt I was an irrelevance.  I still had my raincoat folded over my arm; such was the extent of the courtesy offered to me.  I remained in the room for no more than ten minutes, and can only remember one question or remark.  This was to be asked what my greatest concern was, to which I replied that my memory had been so affected that I feared it would not fully return.  I was assured that it would - and that was that.  Back to the hospital and await the verdict.  When it came, I was told that Pertofran and Valium had been recommended, and that the recommendation would be accepted.  So began the next phase of my drug regime.  I was eventually to take Pertofran for ten years and Valium for twelve.

I don’t know whether MC knew, or even guessed, that the letter that he received analysing my consultation had not been written by his Guru.  I know now, having read it several times, that it may have been signed by BW but was definitely drafted entirely by LW.  There is virtually every undermining remark, put-down or sarcasm that he had spoken to me appearing in black and white.  This letter, too, has its niche in my surgery file.  Therefore, MC was, in reality, relying upon the analysis and opinion of someone effectively of lower standing, and one presumes, less experience than himself.

I recollect when, early in my career, I attended a junior management-training course.  One of our group exercises was to conduct a court of enquiry into a site accident.  We were given the ‘official reports’, witness statements and other corroborations that we studied, and then we called and interviewed every one of the parties, admirably role-played by staff of the Training Department.  We questioned and re-questioned and then we deliberated and finally reached our conclusion.  But where had we gone wrong?  What had we missed?  Well, I’ll tell you.  The accident had happened on a day late in November, at 4 pm.  It had been dark!  So obvious when you see it, but it had eluded some eight or so budding young managers. 

So what relevance does this bit of philosophy have here?  Well it concerns the analysis essentially by all three, BW, LW and MC, of the reasons for my loss of memory and my great concern about it.  I won’t rehearse the reasons given other than to say that the word ‘hysterical’ appears.  Now, can you recollect that earlier, after the description of E.C.T and the definition quoted from my reference book, I asked you to note a particular sentence?  Hands up who can remember.  Read: learn: memorise:- There is considerable criticism of E.C.T because it may produce permanent brain damage, especially losses of memory and intelligence. How many E.C.Ts had I had?  Well done, that’s it:- twenty-three.  I rest my case.

No, I do not rest my case! Just where had they come from, these three ‘soothsayers’ who, each like an ancient Etruscan haruspex, were picking over the entrails of my life and mind?  I have related how it came to pass that I was suffering this ‘disembowelling’ process, but how was it that they came to have such jurisdiction over my mind, my precious mind?  Were they part of a self-selecting, self-perpetuating ‘priesthood’?

The next time that Stephen Hawking appears on your television screen, pause a while and reflect upon that contorted body, the twisted face and head; read some of what he has written, and reflect further that this is one of the most brilliant minds of our time contained there in that pathetic shell.  When you have done that, see whether you can disagree that one’s mind is the most precious of one’s possessions.  I was in grave danger of losing mine, of having it destroyed; I know how precious it is and I defy you to disagree!

Some years after the time of which I am writing and, as I shall relate, I made my way back up the recovery ladder, I was, for a time, in charge of training for the whole of the Sellafield complex.  As part of my self-education in this post, I took myself off to a conference at Cambridge organised by a research team who looked at aspects of industrial training.  One of the discourses involved someone from the Bristol University Dental School.  The school had a problem.  Aspiring dentists proceeded into their training for several years before they actually came to grips with a tooth in a mouth.  At this stage, it was found that some were so lacking in manual dexterity that they were forced to abandon dentistry and transfer to normal medicine on a parallel course.  To minimise the waste involved in this abortive training, the Dental School were working with the researchers to try to devise a simple test of manual competence that could be used to assess aspirants before they embarked upon a course for which they were obviously not suited.

Is there, one wonders, an assessment process for aspiring psychiatrists, one that seeks to determine whether they have the necessary skills and talents to be allowed access to the most precious possession that anyone can have?  Do not treat this as an irrelevance, a hypothetical question, for statistically you are as likely as the next person to have the ‘entrails’ of your mind picked over, to have your brain corrupted by some mind-altering drug, potentially with side-effects far worse than many ‘conventional’ illnesses. 

I have only, within the last few days, noticed a small letter ‘hiding’ in one of the files of my records.  It is the letter written by MC to BW following receipt of his advice with respect to my further treatment.  He thanks BW for his advice and taking the trouble, then goes on:

       ‘I must both thank you and apologise to you for the trouble you have gone to with the cases I have referred to you during the year I have been over here.  They have, I am afraid, run to this sort of pattern and you will appreciate that this is the result both of the difficulties that they present and, I fear, lacunae in my own training.’
                          
Yes, I have looked it up, just to confirm what I believed the definition to be: a lacuna is a gap, omission, hiatus; lacunae obviously are these in plural.  Imagine what would have been my thoughts had I been aware at the time.  I had been a patient for just one year and was, therefore, one of the first patients of the consultancy; there had been other second opinions; had we, by any chance, each fallen through a lacuna?

Let me look back at the end of this ‘formative’ year in my life.  When it began, I had already been taking Librium for two years; I continued for virtually the whole of the year, with a mid-point interval at a double dose rate, before changing to Valium.  There had been brief interludes with Tryptizol, Melleril, Nardil and Stelazine; there had been Soneryl, Sonergan, Seconal, Amytal and lastly Mogadon to pacify my nights.  I had suffered twenty-three sessions of E.C.T and twenty-six episodes of modified insulin shock treatment.  In total, I had received forty-three injections of Pentathol, plus twenty-three each of belladonna and curare derivatives, and now I was going to start on a regimen of Pertofran, Valium and Mogadon. 

(Dare I ask you to remember that at the very outset, I had no episode or history of nervous or psychiatric ailments - I had uncontrollable diarrhoea, nothing else?).

In time, all good things come to an end and I left hospital and recuperation, and started back at work.  My employers were very supportive, and placed me with congenial people in work that was quite undemanding.  So slowly I settled.  The gradual restructuring of my life began and the building of confidence was real.  After a time I was asked to take over Engineering Training and, eventually, the Training Department covering the whole of the establishment.  At one time, had I been taken to a high place and, with all of the possible jobs in the Works laid out before me, asked to pick one, the last, the very last choice would have been Training!  However, I was more grateful than I could say to the Works’ management for the way in which I had been reintegrated into work, and, anyway, it is said that in every Welshman there is a latent preacher or teacher, so maybe I had met my destiny.  Many interesting developments were taking place in the world of industrial training and I was soon absorbed.

At home, I found in time that my wife had carried the burden of my condition for too long, and she herself became ill.  There came a time when it felt as if we were two drowning people clutching at the same straw.  MC, who was aware of what was developing, urged me most strongly one day - “For God’s sake, get out - go and camp somewhere, but get out”.  And so I did.  I took a flat in a converted farmhouse - and by one of those quirks for which fate is so famous, the flat below me was taken simultaneously by the Clinical Psychologist from MC’s department.

Once one has separated, it seems to be virtually impossible to reunite and rebuild what had been before, and so, inevitably, my wife and I divorced.  In time, I was lucky in finding this house with its land suitable for horses, moved here in 1971 and have lived here ever since.  Again, giving the lie to what MC had said about our marriage, it was my former wife who actually was instrumental in my finding it in the first place.

Almost without a break until about 1970 I continued with psychotherapy, although, at the time I wasn’t aware that that is what it was, so little did the ‘medicine of the mind’ figure in one’s everyday considerations; all I knew was that it was ‘good to talk’.  However, coping with a solitary life and the increasing demands of work (ironically, because I became enthusiastic and could see the potential of the new moves in industrial training I was placing the demands on myself), because of these factors I found myself ‘going backwards’ at work.  Whereas I had had much support following my initial return to work, and when I took up my role as Training Manager, now I found that patience seemed to have run out, and my absences were seen in a different light.

It was not realised, probably wasn’t even addressed, that the continuous drug regime was taking a devastating toll of my faculties.  I was even now taking Pertofran and Valium, and had recourse to Mogadon at night, so you may perhaps judge that the start of each day was a little uncertain.  I had a most marvellous Girl Friday at work, Val, who could look at my eyes first-thing and then decide if she should stall callers until after 10 am. 

In time, the constant struggle became unbearable, and one day, in late summer 1976, I set out for work and didn’t arrive.  Instead, I turned off my normal route and took refuge with a friend with whom I holed-up for two days.  That, essentially, was the end of my working career.  In time I was pensioned off at fifty-two and then a new phase in my life - indeed, a new life - began.

But what sort of new life?  The very state of not going to work was in itself a new life, and I knew within myself that I had had enough; nothing was worth the growing loss of ability and status, and the struggle to do well things that previously I could have done in my sleep.  If I had known how this new life was going to unfold, what would I have thought, what would I have done?  But I wasn’t yet in the state of mind to ask myself “What am I going to do with this freedom now that I have made my escape?”.  I was rather more like the survivor of a shipwreck who has only just made it to a shore - he didn’t care what shore - all he knew was that he wasn’t fighting something alien anymore. 

When I look back at that time, it is quite startling to recall how a new life developed almost by spontaneous combustion.  I marvel at the expansion - expansion of my circle of friends, expansion in the range of my activities; activities and contacts that opened up an entirely new world - a world that I hadn’t previously explored or even thought much about.

And my spirit?  I had never, not since I posed the question in hospital twelve or so years previously, found an answer - never really given it much further thought.  Just five more years down the line and I was to have some enlightenment.  It was as if in me there was taking place the metamorphosis of a former caterpillar, now in its cocoon, waiting to emerge to make its destined flight.  But I knew as little of what was involved in flying as did the caterpillar when it started to spin the silk of its cocoon. 

All of this lay ahead.  I still don’t know whether I would have taken a different path - too often in life we never have the option to choose, or never realise that there is a choice, until we have committed ourselves.  As you read further, perhaps you will have an opinion; for myself, I shall leave the analysis until I reach it in the logic of the narrative. 


At this moment, I have just been cast up on the shore and I am so grateful that I have survived.

Thursday 18 April 2013

O, WHAT A WORLD OF UNSEEN VISIONS AND HEARD SILENCES...





O, WHAT A WORLD OF UNSEEN VISIONS
AND
HEARD SILENCES,

THIS INSUBSTANTIAL COUNTRY OF THE MIND!

THIS CONSCIOUSNESS THAT IS MYSELF OF SELVES,

THAT IS EVERYTHING, AND YET NOTHING AT ALL,,,,

WHAT IS IT?
AND WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
AND WHY?

With this quotation from Julian Jaynes’ book “The Bicameral Mind”, I open Chapter 6 of my book –

LISTENING TO THE SILENCES
IN A WORLD OF HEARING VOICES

Read this Chapter and you will come to realise how easy it is to fall into the ‘trap’ of hearing voices: how easy it is to become dominated: how easy it can be to lose your own will and identity: and how, with appropriate help, it is possible to regain control of your life – indeed to begin a new one.

Then read the complete book, and discover how I, myself,  found a completely new life.  A life that I had never dreamed existed.  A life within which I discovered my own talents as a natural healer – and much, much more besides.

But, whatever you do, will you please tell your friends about this book and the Blogs?

Now, please read on…..


CHAPTER 6


Julian Jaynes had not expressed these thoughts in public at the time that I had that conversation with Gilbert B...  Even if he had, I doubt whether they would have exercised my mind for very long - definitely not in the context of what it was that Gilbert wanted to tell me.  I certainly could never have dreamed - not even in my wildest dreams - where this conversation would ultimately lead me, or by what strange paths.  That it induced such a major change in my life may be judged from the fact that at times I am glad that it took place, but that at others, I curse it profoundly.  Yet, at the time, an interesting conversation and demonstration involving two practical and pragmatic engineers did not seem all that significant.  It happened like this...

One afternoon at work, I was passing Gilbert’s office when he called me in - “I’ve just had a rep. in from K..’s Fire Detectors, and he showed me this... (producing a pair of thin welding rods bent into the now familiar L-shape).  He got me to hide things under the carpet, and he found them by holding the rods in his hands.  Then, when they swung and crossed, the hidden thing was immediately below...like this”, and he demonstrated....  Of course, I had a go and lo! - it worked for me also - my first encounter with practical dowsing.


Typical dowsing or divining rods


At that time, (1971), dowsing or divining did not have the exposure that it enjoys today - I had, indeed, seen only one other person use rods, and he was a professional surveyor who used properly made telescopic ones with balanced pivoting handles.  Even though he was successful in locating drains, the significance of what he was doing did not register with me.  In my own case, I did very little then with this newfound skill, other than finding drains and pipes for farming friends and showing them how to do it themselves.

I watched very little television at the time, thus the rapidly expanding use of rods and pendulums for archaeological dowsing, and by people seeking so-called ‘earth energies’ (largely and, as I keep protesting ad nauseum, wrongly called ‘ley-lines’ by many) in the main passed me by.  It is quite probable that my interest would have waned completely had I not chanced upon a significant book, The Practical Pendulum, by Dr. Bruce Copen.

It was a seminal moment when, in the local library, I took out the slim book, that I could so easily have passed.  As its title suggests, it was very practical, with much ‘how-to-do-it’ information.  It also attempted, through a sort of pseudo-science, to explain the mechanism of dowsing using a short pendulum.  And so it was that I made myself a pendulum as the book described, and soon found that all that was suggested in the text worked for me.  The acquisition of a catalogue of new and second hand books on esoteric subjects took me one step further, for I found there a second book by the same author - Dowsing from Maps - which I bought, together with a professionally made Perspex pendulum.

What I didn’t know was that I was about to set out on a very perilous journey on which, literally, I could have lost my mind.

Very detailed instructions were given on how to dowse from maps, while included in the text were several charts and diagrams that one could use in a variety of analytical functions.  Everything worked for me just as the book described, and the pendulum became a constant companion.  What did not ‘work’ for me were the explanations offered for the way in which it responded.  The concept of subtle energies, and even more subtle muscle responses, carried no weight, particularly when one considered that the pendulum was hovering over a piece of paper and not a piece of real-estate.

To explain why I made my next move it is necessary to describe some of my background and beliefs…

As you have read, my working life as an electronics engineer in the field of measurement and control had been cut short some three years earlier (1976) by a serious depression that had been caused, originally, by the completely unnecessary and, now professionally acknowledged, inappropriate prescription of Librium.  That was now behind me, and I was beginning to revel in my total freedom in my tranquil rural home.  It was a mind that was curious, but not much more, that led me on to explore and experiment with the book as a guide; a mind obviously coloured by experiences and events that stretched back into childhood.

One side of my family had been very actively involved in spiritualism.  It had never drawn me, in fact the reverse, and I had not been personally involved, except to be aware of beliefs and practices.  What I did have was a firm belief in the actuality of spiritual beings, which, when one boils it down, is the basis for all religious belief.  The little experience that I had had of spiritualist practices, had been with direct voice trance mediums, nothing more.  By extension, however, I knew that there was a potential for spiritual intervention in other ways.  To me, it was a logical deduction, correct as it turned out, that the pendulum was being controlled directly by spiritual means.

The moment one uses the word spiritual, one releases in one’s hearers or readers all their own attitudes, beliefs and prejudices about spiritual concepts that form the basis of the religion in which they have been brought up, or which they have later espoused, or which they reject.  Ideally, I would like to proceed without the preconceptions of any religion, but only with the understanding of the existence of a spiritual ‘dimension’ and the reality of individually acting spiritual beings.

As I have written, my own spiritual life and religious practice had been virtually extinguished in the void of the depression; but from whatever cause, vague stirrings were being felt.  For reasons that completely escape me now, I began to think in a minor way about Buddhism, and in particular about the possibility of reincarnation.  At the time, (1979), there was a resurgence of the threat of nuclear war that would inevitably create worldwide desolation.  In another field, the ‘experts’ were predicting an imminent mini ice age.  My reasoning went thus: if there is going to be nuclear desolation or an ice age, I did not want to reincarnate.  So what did I have to do not to have to return?  This was not obsessive thinking, rather was it a series of vague stirrings, and the beginning of exploration.  In every respect, I was buoyant and my mind was active - friends call me ‘the ideas man’, very much a lateral thinker and seeker of practical ways and logical solutions.

Thus, what did this pragmatic engineer do with his knowledge of a spiritual state of existence and his belief that the pendulum was being controlled by a discarnate spiritual entity, in ways that he could not determine?  He did what many have subsequently insisted that he should not have done, he made an alphabet and numeral chart!

This advice should be heeded by anyone thinking about doing the same, as the experiences that follow should show.

       I had never thought much about, and had certainly never experimented with, a planchette or ouija board, nor had I tried any other forms of divination.  I was certainly not looking in any way whatsoever for deep insights nor for predictions.  I was just looking, in total innocence and without expectation.  The spiritualist activities of my parents and grandparents had always appeared to have assumed the presence of benevolent spirits.  If they had any concept of, or protection against, the intrusion of spiritual malevolence, I was not aware of it.  The possible existence of such never even entered my mind.  (Recent conversation with my brother, who was a much more active participant than I was, has informed me that there were indeed careful and stringent precautions and practices aimed at guarding against such intrusions.)

              I cannot recall in any detail the particular day in the spring of 1979 when I first sat down with the pendulum suspended from my right hand and hovering over the centre of the alphabet chart.  What I do know is that immediately names started to be spelled out, names that slowly and laboriously I wrote down with my left hand; being right handed it presented something of a difficulty.  I responded in my thoughts and in no other way.  I would ask when and where the alleged person had lived, and how and when they had died, together with such ancillary detail as seemed appropriate - information that would, in the main, answer specifically my mentally posed questions.

              In their spiritualist activities my parents had participated in a so-called ‘rescue circle’.  To such a ‘circle’ the spirits of people who had died in trauma - accident, suicide, homicide, war - were alleged to be brought by the medium’s ‘guides’, in order that by continued, but regulated, contact with still living people they might ultimately be reconciled to the reality of their death, and then make progress in their spiritual domain.  It was in this manner that I reacted to the names and circumstances spelled out by the pendulum.  Always my thoughts were of reconciliation with their circumstances and the manner of their dying, and encouragement to progress spiritually.

              As I look back nearly twenty years, I marvel at my ‘innocence’, lack of awareness and, I cannot emphasise too much, my gullibility.  No, I was not controlling the pendulum in any way, nor had I any pre-conception of what would be spelled; and yes, the pendulum was spelling logical responses to my thoughts - and not solely to my thoughts.  A visitor at the time used to sit beside me, and as I held the pendulum, would ask questions or make comments in her own mind, and to which I was not party.  I remember quite distinctly the occasion on which the response to her was “We are not fortune tellers”.

              On another occasion, my friend and I had been debating aspects of abortion and euthanasia in consequence of some high profile cases proceeding at the time.  When I sat that evening, the pendulum spelled out “Read Leviticus Chapters 18 to 22”.  I obviously knew that Leviticus was a Book in the Old Testament, but I can say, with almost 100% certainty, that I had never read it.  When I did read the prescribed chapters, I found that there were elements that could be interpreted as having relevance to the debate.  However, on re-reading the text to refresh my mind as I write now, it could be that I was being warned against …those that have familiar spirits…and …wizards…who, it was ordered, should be stoned to death.  I shall never know!  What these accounts should show, however, is that I was not exercising any physical or mental control over the pendulum, but that it was being controlled by a ‘mind’ that was separate from mine.

              I was fully aware of the spiritualist concept of ‘guides’ - attendant spirits, whom, it is believed, have access to the mind of the medium and control the admission of other spirits.  Thus, I was not surprised when a trio gradually identified ‘themselves’.  The identities that they claimed were, in turn:

       1 Ibn Ubar  - mid- to late nineteenth century, well placed (chief) in Masai-type people of North East Africa.  Claimed that when he was old and infirm, he had deliberately set out to kill a lion knowing that he himself would probably be killed - almost in reparation for the lions that he had killed whilst protecting his cattle.

       2  Degef Gayad  claimed to have been a monk on the Tibet/Nepal border;  had held a lowly position as  keeper of a beacon for travellers; said that he had been killed by a bear whilst tending a remote beacon.

       It is difficult to explain how a presence or ambience could be experienced whilst simply holding a pendulum, but it was actually the case in that a seriousness or portentousness accompanied the third member of the trio -

       3  U Gedafad  who, it was said, had been a Buddhist priest in Burma in the late eighteenth century. As I remember, his life and death were never discussed.

              I am writing as if these were the actual spirits of real people.  It is difficult to do otherwise, for while I have a different understanding now that qualifies everything that happened to me, it is something that I cannot at this stage anticipate, but must try to write of the experiences and beliefs of the time when they happened, and in the sequence in which they happened.

              The Buddhist began to encourage me to study Buddhism. When I asked why, I was told,  “every priest needs a pupil”.  I was encouraged to join the Buddhist Society, which I did, and to get hold of a book, First Steps in Buddhism by W.V.Trapp.  Written in German, it was said, and translated into English in 1927 by Lionel Fellows, the translator being inspired by U Gedafad.  When I asked the Buddhist Society Library for the loan of the book, I was told that they could not obtain a copy; I was never told that the book did not exist - whether or not it had ever existed, I shall never know.

              I did not persist with the Buddhist Society for more than a few months.  Many of the concepts and much of the terminology I found alien to my existing beliefs.  Also, as with many Eastern religions or philosophies translated to the West, much seems to revolve around a particular guru or group of ‘in’ people, with which again I am unhappy.  Something that I was asked to do and which I did adopt and persist with, was the setting aside of a quiet time at 11 a.m. each day, during which I practised a simple form of meditation.

              As the spring merged into summer, hardly an evening passed without its time with the pendulum and chart.  No longer did I need to write down each word as it was spelled, for the pendulum darted, almost just hinting at letters.  ‘Conversation’ became very rapid - so much so that a time was reached when I really knew what was going to be said in advance of the spelling, and I was being well prepared for the events of an exceedingly significant day.

              My 11 am sitting place was in an upstairs room looking north east to the nearby mountain tops - Scafell, Great Gable, Yewbarrow and others.  I settled into my chair, easing my neck onto the high wingback, and rolled my head gently from side to side to smooth out any tensions, and then something happened that was so dramatic and far-reaching, and yet, paradoxically, was totally devoid of drama.  A  ‘presence’ that I could not see, moved from the space in front of me, into me, and immediately my mind was charged with another ‘voice’ or provoker of thoughts, thoughts over which, then, I had no control, and which were not initiated by me.  In my head began conversation as between two separate people, one of whom was me.

I began to ‘hear voices’.

              That same evening, I settled with the pendulum and, as I held it over the chart, it started to whirl around rapidly and horizontally at its fullest extent, faster and faster, and continued whirling for several minutes.  When it finally stopped and settled it spelled out “we’ve won we’ve won”.  Who had won and what had been won, only time will reveal.  

I have never used the pendulum from that day to this; it simply does not respond!

              The fact that I was not wary or apprehensive about the events that were taking place may surprise some, but it can be explained by the reasoning that such limited contacts as I had had with spiritualism had always been of a benevolent nature, and indicated a caring practice.  As an example let me quote an incident that occurred in 1950 in my home in South Wales very shortly before leaving to take up work here in Cumbria.

               Quite by chance, we had a visit from the medium who presided at the meetings held at the home of one of my aunts.  After chatting for a while he went into trance and I was spoken to.  Comment was made concerning a proprietary medicine that I was then using to counter a sinus problem.  I was advised to stop taking it and instead to use Morton’s ‘Nervatogen’.  When we obtained some it turned out to be an herbal tincture that had the most benign and relaxing effect.  My sinuses cleared, and I subsequently took the drops whenever needed for other reasons until all the bottles that my mother had bought were exhausted.  After a number of years, I tried to obtain a further supply, but it was no longer available.

              Essentially, I believed that the named individuals had previously existed, and now, in spirit form, had access into me and my mind.  Thus, when a further contact was made who was alleged to be my late father, I had no reason to doubt it.

              Many of the conversations were about very practical matters.  My concerns regarding the desolation that would follow nuclear war, or a returning ice age, were developed, and I was encouraged to believe that there could be survivors in such quiet places as that in which I live.  It was suggested that I should learn as much as I could about basic survival techniques that would be needed if I survived, or which, if I died, I would be able to pass by inspiration to such survivors as there were and to their descendants.  This seemed all the more logical as I began to appreciate that already, worldwide, there were individuals and small groups living remotely and learning and practising these skills; indeed, I came to know of one such man living not ten miles from me!  Myself, I was encouraged to acquire a lurcher pup from a neighbour’s litter in order to learn the skills of training a hunting dog and using it to obtain food.  Many other topics were introduced for study - an activity in which I found no hardship, for I had long been active in many outdoor pursuits such as fishing and wildfowling.

              As well as my physical survival, or the survival of knowledge with me, much thought was being engineered concerning my spiritual survival.  My exploration of Buddhism was short lived; nevertheless, there was strong argument that I should become morally impeccable, but that I should not choose a philosophy or religious affiliation because it allowed a degree of moral latitude.  It was put to me that as, at an earlier time, I had elected to be a Catholic, I should ‘return to the fold’, or, if not, then my rejection should be for sound reasons of belief, and not because I was looking for a path with less exacting moral standards.

              I was encouraged to adopt a sincere prayer life and spent long periods in prayer each night.  More and more the theme of the ‘Second Coming’ of Jesus was developed, and then, quite bluntly, it was put to me that He would return in a more mature person than was generally expected, and that I was a suitable candidate within whom He could manifest Himself.  I cannot remember exactly how I declined such an offer that, it must be thought, no one could refuse.  I do remember that I declared that I was too much of a coward to be able to accept such a high profile role.

              Equally with the encouragement to be morally and spiritually ‘clean’, I was being urged to be most punctilious in my physical cleanliness.  My underwear and socks I washed each night, and daily clean clothes became the norm, while bodily I entered another dimension.  As an example I was encouraged to wash my anus each time I defecated, following, allegedly, Middle Eastern and Oriental practice.  I was even schooled in how to be able to do this in a public loo.  There was not an aspect of my life and thought that was free from scrutiny, for I was even counselled against a normally accepted practice that had developed in my heterosexual love life!

              By a sequence of happenings that are too complex to relate, the spirit of a young (twenty-ish) woman was introduced into my ‘coterie’.  Her physical presence in me was most noticeable in ways which can only be experienced and not described.  It was particularly apparent when any music was being played.  I normally respond to dance rhythms with movement, having always enjoyed dancing.  Now the ‘feeling’ of the movement became subtly different - feminine and sensuous.

              Little by little, I was being accustomed to what some might find difficult to accept, namely the actuality of spiritual-physical contact.  Thus, when I adopted my usual late-evening stance, leaning against the rail of my Rayburn cooker in the normal bum-warming posture and musing before going to bed, it seemed to come as no surprise when my head was moved by external influence: gently, from side to side, back and forth, easing tension out of my neck.  Each day the interventions became more positive and, ultimately, I stood away from the cooker.  ‘Hands’ pressed on my shoulders and I was ‘eased’ into a back-bend posture, where I was held for as long as I could tolerate it.  When I stood up, I was eased into a forward bend as far as, and for as long as I was able to bend.  Subsequently every evening I went through this routine, being bent further and held longer as time went on.  My thigh and abdominal muscles became rock hard, my breathing improved, and, coupled with the dietary advice that I had been given and followed, I became as fit and healthily slim as I had been for a long time.

              Again and again I have to emphasise that all that was happening I saw as being entirely benevolent, and I was a willing participant.

              The culmination of this ‘body tuning’ came one evening and without preliminaries.  My body began to be manipulated as if by two skilled chiropractors.  I was then fifty-five and my frame had acquired its share of the residue of past accidents and strains - playing rugby, being mined at sea, riding horses, plus all the rest that can be classed as fair wear and tear.  Over the course of that evening and the one that followed, every one of the affected areas was worked on with consummate skill.  I was stretched and manipulated as must be someone on the rack, but while it was happening, in the words of the Scottish Bard, McGonagle,  “He felt no pain”.  Somehow my pain centre was inhibited, although there were body reactions which seemed to indicate that a natural response was taking place - towards the end of the second session I felt as if I was going to faint, while at the same time my feet were performing a little ‘drumming’ dance.

              Yes, I felt no pain while it was happening, but as soon as it stopped my whole body screamed in agony.  I literally climbed the stairs on my hands and knees, and had to take an analgesic to be able to sleep.  On the morning of the third day, I was carrying a bale of hay to the stable adjoining my house when I had to put it down.  It was large and was bearing against a knee that for some time had troubled me intermittently by filling with fluid.  Still very much aware of the two previous evenings, I looked up and said in my mind, “You have forgotten my knee”.  That night I woke in bed to find the knee being worked on ‘ethereally’, and happily, it has never bothered me again in over twenty years.

              Life carried on in the same general vein for some little time, though it could not be said that it continued ‘as normal’!  There was an episode of automatic writing that recorded nothing of importance, and the presence of the young woman became almost tangible, to the extent that I found myself reaching for a hand when about to cross the street.

              It was an extremely wet autumn, and the work of keeping a horse stabled at night was becoming very tedious.  Gradually, over this and other activities, I found myself being ‘needled’.  Criticisms began to invade the previously harmonious exchanges.  It is, indeed, very hard, in retrospect, to recreate those particular days, and to understand how it became possible for me to be dominated by an altogether different group (or the same group acting differently).  Living alone, enveloped in a foul early winter, everything outside soaking and muddy, it was fast heading for a ‘bleak midwinter’.  Certainly, and principally, the lack of association and the inability to put the events in perspective and discuss them with people living more varied lives completed the isolation.  It was thus that I found myself being alternated in my mind between two groups - the one needling and critical, the other supportive and encouraging.  (I discuss the strategies and ploys used to dominate and torment people later).

              The two areas of attack were the religious practices and the horse.  It is quite easy for religion to be used as a source of criticism and torment.  Once one has undertaken to engage in intense practices and a highly moral life, the possibilities of being accused of backsliding and lack of devotion or compliance are endless, and need not be enlarged upon.

              The way that the horse was used was interesting and quite unique.  In Britain, the horse has a special place allegedly going back into early culture and worship.  The linkage with the past nature/horse devotion was now being quoted at me as predating any modern religion, and which, without fail, should govern my treatment and care of my mare Bokhara.  In reality, my care was very good, as my friends commented when later they had to take over, but because the newly introduced concepts of ‘the old ways’ were being cited, it was being demanded that the mare should be treated with an almost religious devotion, and that my management of her should be impeccable.  This attitude was brought home forcibly to me in a way that, looking back, is reminiscent of attitudes and incidents from some of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.  If my mucking-out and remaking the bedding were of a high order, then the barrow load of dung and straw was as light as could be and was whisked along as if I had a host of helpers.  If, however, I was skimpy in my work, it seemed that the barrow was filled with lead and that its progress was being actively resisted and my work impeded.

              When one’s family has fragmented, and there are no longer children at home around whom the celebrations of Christmas normally revolve, the ways in which it is observed away from the religious context are normally somewhat contrived.  Thus, I found myself ‘contriving’ a merry Christmas but being pulled in several possible directions; no one else was actively contributing but all were relying upon me to ‘provide’.  My lack of commitment must have showed, for one by one the others found alternatives.

              I am writing this over twenty years later.  The sun is shining, the trees that were bare then are full of leaf and birds, the field that contained my mare is rich in grass awaiting mowing for hay and not the sea of mud and icy rime that it was then, and the mountains are hazy and cloud-shadowed not stark and snow topped.  In spite of that, as I look out towards the mountains I have only to let my eyes go out of focus, and I can ‘see’ the reality from all those years ago, and even though I have pages of notes that I made soon afterwards, I do not need them, for every detail is as real as it was then, but now, fortunately, without the terror and torment that were building up.  It may be wondered why I did not share with others at the time what I was experiencing, and ask for help.  All I can say is that, exactly as I found later when I did need real help, - it is virtually impossible to convey or even hint at the reality of these events, just as many people, in broad daylight, cannot relate the torment and reality that were theirs at three o’clock earlier that morning.

              Many times over these intervening years, I have retold my story to a variety of people in a variety of situations.  What has remained with me after these various tellings has been the fact that almost no one has returned to the subject, asked supplementary questions, or followed through with any analysis, except for those in two groups.  The first is the group of people who have had deep spiritual experiences of their own - they recognise and accept all that I say, and then there is nothing more to say, but only to empathise, with the understanding that can only come with shared personal experience. 

                The second group is composed of one individual, one of the several Rogers amongst my friends.  He used to come to stay for a few days at a time to talk and derive the healing that the house and environment provide.  On one occasion, he harked back to his previous visit and what he had discerned within me, namely my anger, albeit unexpressed.  In an effort to help Roger from insights derived from my own experience, I had recounted in detail all that I am writing in this and the next two sections.  His response was to begin to analyse me to myself!  He was very much ‘into’ Jung, and all the Jungian jargon came pouring out in the convoluted analysis of which only he amongst my friends was capable.  In the ‘let me be your counsellor’ role in which I found myself, I could not let my anger manifest itself, but internally I was seething, and it must have showed; with his perception of it, I was able to take off the string that had been tying down the safety valve, and express myself.

              Which really is me getting to the point of saying to you that if you are reading in a state of total disbelief or with the intention of ‘doing a Roger’ on me, there doesn’t seem to be much point in your reading any further.  What I am writing does not allow of any interpretation.  It all happened, and in the manner and ways that I am describing.  If you are reading with the intent of using what I am writing for the benefit of others, well ‘welcome’, be my friend; while I live I’ll talk with you, enlarge, tell you all that you want to know.  But now, stay with the narrative - things are getting really serious!

              The final departure occurred three days before Christmas Day itself, a Saturday, and as I drove my last remaining visitor to the station yet more strange things began to happen.  Making my way along narrow roads, I found my driving was being interfered with - at times my vision clouded spontaneously and I had to stop; on some corners I was forced to mis-steer and likewise had to stop to avoid crashing.  At the station - well, you may have guessed - Saturday service; the next train was not the next train, but the one after that.

              When I finally got home it was mid-evening, very dark, very cold, very damp, and there was still Bokhara to be seen to.  First, I had to muck-out her loosebox, and here again I encountered the interference or help with the wheelbarrow.  Looking back, I am reminded of one occasion when I was about thirteen.  I had gone fishing in a small trout river several miles from my home, cycling there with my rod tied to the crossbar of the bike.  When I reached the river, I had to leave the road and push the bike over some terrain resembling a links golf course.  I had been joined by some lads whom I knew by sight, who lived locally and were about a year or two older.  They helped me negotiate my bike over a railway line that I had to cross, and then I started to fish.  I had hoped that they would go on their way, but no chance, and after a while, they got bored and started interfering with everything and behaving provocatively.  Fishing was pointless and I packed up and decided to head across the mixed grass and sand to where it was possible that my parents had gone for a drive.  My tormentors I had hoped to leave behind; some hope!  They pushed against me, pushed against the bike, grabbed it from behind and stopped me from going forward, until, in desperation, I lashed out with my rod that I was carrying.  That did it.  I was set upon, harried and punched to the ground, continuing while I was lying there unable further to defend myself against the onslaught.  Finally, they had their fill and left me a sobbing heap on the sand.  It is amazing how the detail has come back, and how exactly it matches the interference of those harrying ‘imps’ of the wheelbarrow, and the reactions that they provoked in me and me in them.

              Whatever, I finally got Bokhara installed and dried and fed, in the midst of what varied thoughts I cannot remember, although I have no doubt that I was being forced to concentrate upon aspects of my moral life, and my fitness for a life of improving spirituality.  Let me again emphasise, there was nothing in my moral life, past or present, with which I could reproach myself to any significant extent, but somehow, everything was trawled, examined, and even the most minor peccadillo could, in my then state of mind, be made to seem to be an enormous ‘sin’.  Gradually, the whole thrust of the 'catechism' and analysis wound around the ‘Christmas story’, and subtly, and by allusion, around all past relationships with my parents.  Any misunderstandings, any ‘wish lists’, were extracted within the ‘Holy Family’ context, as if my parents were near at hand and conscious of all that was transpiring.
                Yet again, the wheel turned and there was being stoked a feeling that I should go to the local church on Christmas Eve, but only to stand outside, not being fit to proceed to join the ‘good’ people inside.  It all sounds so ludicrous as I write it down, and I do so solely to show how ones sense of proportion could be made to be so distorted as to accept such dominance as reality.

              What next I remember, is going into the storeroom side of the stable to get some hay to fill the manger.  Before I could start to cut the strings of the bale, I found myself forced down onto it on my knees, and made to stare downwards, but it was not to look at the assorted feed bags and twine that I would have expected to see.  No, I looked into a void, but not a void.  Picture the most drear, cold landscape of your imagination.  I was in a narrow steep-sided valley, and it was grey, and cold.  A white, snow covered landscape has some charm, but not this that I saw.  The wind blown, snow blown terrain and scree was so grey and lifeless; not a plant grew, not a creature moved, not a bird flew, and it was soundless.  And on my back was a great weight of ice, as if the whole of a glacier lay there, bearing me down.  I was so utterly cold and alone, and I knew inside me that this could go on and on and on for ever.  But in spite of that, I could muster the shadow of a wry smile, for I knew that this could in fact be a state that deliberately I had chosen, for, in essence, I was being shown what Hell could be.  What I was seeing and feeling would be the equivalent of having once known and experienced the warmth of Divine love, and then of having deliberately rejected it, given it a derisive gesture, in full knowledge of what I was doing, and the remembrance of what I had lost by my rejection would be with me for eternity with no chance of recall.

              I have no knowledge of how long my ‘vision’ lasted, though lasted it did sufficiently to have stayed with me unabated for over twenty years.  Nevertheless, gradually the warmth returned and I was eased to my feet as my benumbed knees regained their function, and so, standing comfortably again, I turned and looked out over the half stable door.  The clouds had cleared, and the sky was full of stars.  So full of stars.  And the reality of Christmas, and the unqualified unique love that it had brought with it into the world, swept over me.
              It is impossible, and I will not even try to convey to you all of the sensations and reactions and emotions that engulfed me during this and the next day.  Even now, when considering some of them, I only take a sideways look with half an eye, and I marvel that I could have become and been so embroiled in a situation that emotionally took me from feelings of deep and abiding love and commitment, to those of absolute despair and terror.  I know and understand more now having lived with and thought much about the consequences, but then, then much was so incomprehensible, and yet it was all interwoven with the everyday functions of making meals, making the bed, doing what had to be done.

              And so I did what had to be done during the following morning, a Sunday, and two days before Christmas Day.  Whatever I did, it was completed by noon, and experiencing a total urge to escape from everything, I went to bed.  But escape I did not.  What a fertile ground is the mind; what a source of memory; memory that can be stirred and trawled by skilled spiritual inquisitors.  The strange thing is, on reflection, that I did not question the right of this particular inquisitor who dominated the ‘examination’, for that is indeed, what had developed.  And how strange it is, and awesome, to realise that everything is already known - everything that I had ever thought, had done was accessible - or was skilfully extracted.  What a catechism followed!  And all set by reflection within the Easter ‘story’.  For three hours I stayed, wide awake - held enthralled and being forced to confront everything.

              It was only by conscious reflection sometime afterwards that I realised that I was being purged, stripped of any ‘handholds’ in my mind by means of which my composure or credibility could be undermined - just as a Greek wrestler of Classical times would oil his body and remove all hair to deprive any opponent of an anchorage for his grip.  I am sorry that I cannot share with you what was being awakened within me - not awakened then for I was exhausted; the core of my being lay like a skinned animal and I was sore inside.  The awakening came with time - the realisation of the actuality of the fundamental message and essence of the Christian faith, and the reality and individuality of the Holy Family.  It is not that I do not want to share what I came to experience and know - I just find it impossible.  To return to an earlier analogy - experiencing the summit of Mount Everest.  One could go there with all of the sophisticated video and sound recording gear and give a detailed commentary, but never ever bring back one’s own inner spellbinding thrill of experience, and of knowledge gained.

              Always it is only by analogy that it is possible to convey the wonderment and awesomeness of an experience, and analysis is often banal.  Yet, on another plane of understanding, it can induce further appreciation.  Take the actual Everest.  We know that what is now the summit was once at the bottom of the sea, and that the huge forces of tectonic plate movement have thrust it up to its incredible height.  Likewise, by analogy, it might be said that Jesus has appeared as a pinnacle thrust upwards by the turmoil and pressure of human spiritual developmental forces, to become a focus and goal that the aspirant soul seeks.  Opposing the height of the mountain is a deep core descending far below the Tibetan plateau which, in my analogy, reflects the core of evil influence and aspiration that the perceptive will know actually exists, and is allowed to flourish.

              But Everest is composed of a type of rock that can be found in many places all over the planet, and likewise Jesus was/is human and, equally, can be found anywhere that he is sought.  This was a reality that I found with the passing months, as I did with the other members of the Holy Family, each in their own role.  The reality and its effect upon me will emerge as my narrative progresses - as has my experience and understanding of the opposing deep root core of evil which, had I but known, I was to experience in full measure, and soon.

              Vulnerable and open to any influence, I undertook the chores of horse and stable management with all of the intrusive domination at its most intense.  Detail is pointless, sufficient to say that I was threatened, and accepted and believed the threats of what would transpire if I attempted any of the escape routes open to me.  If I was to take the car, I would be so influenced in my driving as to swerve and cause an accident killing someone.  If I set out on foot, I would find myself run down by someone else who had been forced to swerve.  If, nevertheless, I did set out in the car to either of two possible refuges and arrived without accident, in each there were young girls and I was threatened that I would be found committing some sort of sexual assault.  And so much more.

              In spite of it all, I completed my stable work and went indoors, very bemused and not knowing how or where to seek help.  How, or to whom, is it possible to convey the reality of what, after all, was unseen, and in my mind and body?  Yet, for me, the physical presences that invaded me were oh so very real and potent.  By a process and sequence that I cannot now recall, I was nevertheless encouraged to clean myself thoroughly and get into completely clean clothes - I can see myself now, white shirt, navy seaman’s jersey, strong riding breeches and stockings, and slippers.  The kitchen has undergone some significant changes since that night.  The decor is vastly different, and the Rayburn cooker has gone, replaced by some gas hobs of my own design.  The changes have been made for essentially practical and aesthetic reasons, but, withal, they have achieved a sort of exorcism of that evening.  Then, the Rayburn was a place of refuge, an anchor.

              I think that, possibly unconsciously, people choose this type of cooker for the ever-present comfort that it can bring - not just its warmth, but the focus and stability.  But my stability was not to last for long.  Back to the brothers Grimm, and the teasing tormenting imps, hobgoblins.  Little puffs of air started to be blown on my face and head from all directions.  Tugs and pushes from all around caused me to let go of my ‘anchor’, and I headed for the phone.  I cannot remember who I was going to ring, but as I attempted to do so the dial achieved a life of its own and whirred randomly and tormenting.  I stood, temporarily defeated, one hand on the phone shelf, the other on a high backed chair, and then found my head nodding up and down.  You will perhaps have seen a braying donkey doing just that between brays.  Well I became that donkey - inside the donkey, looking out through its eyes in a world of heavy loads and thoughtless beatings.  Now, I knew that it was me within the donkey, but I had absolutely no way of letting anyone know, nor of getting out - and this could be another form of hell, I realised.

              Then I was back in the kitchen.  At one stage, I remember winding my wristwatch and seeing the hands, as I tried to set them, whirling round and round at their own volition, as had the phone dial.  Next, totally trapped, I paced up and down, back and forth - you will also perhaps have seen polar bears in the zoo mindlessly to-ing and fro-ing on the terraces of their enclosure.  This time I was the polar bear.  I was inside the bear looking out through its eyes.  I could look down the terraces at the deep pool and the wall and the people beyond, and, as with the donkey, I knew all, and again realised that this also could be a view of hell.

              I cannot now put a time scale on any of this, and I know that my writing is shortening the span.  If I were writing a ‘lost week-end’ type of novel, I would enlarge and draw out every nuance of horror, for horror there was aplenty.  In actual fact, it is all that I can do to recall objectively, and I only do so in order to inform, so that everything in its context leads to a logical understanding - that is if you are prepared to believe the actuality of what I am writing.  If you are not, why, I thought that we had parted company long ago.

              Somehow, and I cannot remember how or when in the sequence, I rang my GP friend Sandy.  He, as I found out later, had been alerted by another friend who had suspected that all was not well, and, although I could hear the sound of a pre-Christmas party in the background, he promised to come at once.  And so he did.

              I let him in, but cannot recall what, if anything, I was able to tell him of my recent torment.  The next that I remember is being seated in an armchair, while Sandy stood beside a small table to my left.  He had longish side-burns and wore glasses that had fine gold frames; his bag was reminiscent of a Gladstone bag - and all of this conspired to make him look like a doctor from many years ago.  He stood there filling a syringe, and I am sure that I was trying to talk to him, but I was aware of no response - and I could see myself, held in a time-warp, for ever trying to communicate with Sandy while he just stood, and could not hear my anguished calls.  And this was another potential hell.  It was odd, all these ‘visions’ of possible hells, for I have never ever thought about hell as a concept, nor as a possible reality - whenever I had had cause to think analytically about any spiritual belief or practice, I had always looked for the positive, the buoyant, never the downside.  So this was new territory for me - and yet more was to come.

              Suddenly, yet again I wasn’t there; instead there were disturbing, tormenting voices - “Let’s get him!  What does he fear most?  Hanging - yes, let’s hang him” - and there I was, standing on a gallows, ready for the drop, staring down into eager, gloating faces, terror in my every fibre.  “What is bliss?” -”Yes, Pentathol, that’s it”, and I was floating.  “What does he fear more than hanging?  Yes, beheading” -and the scene changed to the headsman - then back again to bliss.  Once again back to terror and the prospect of being impaled, and then back to bliss.  Finally, the prospect was of being frozen to death in some dark, alien landscape...  Then I opened my eyes, only to look down at my arm and saw blood down the forearm.  “Oh shit”, I thought,” I’ve tried to commit suicide”.  In reality, Sandy had had difficulty in locating a suitable vein and there had been a dribble of blood.  Finally, tranquillity arrived and I sat chatting with him, the terrors subsiding.  He wanted me to go in to the nearby cottage hospital, and I willingly agreed, and so, next, we were involved in practicalities.  What did the horse need?  Where were clean nightclothes?  How do you turn the Rayburn off?  How do I contact your brother, daughter?  Who do you think will help look after the horse?  Then the ambulance arrived and soon I was ferried off to the cosiness and security of a small room that I shared with a ninety-year-old rabbit catcher from a small hamlet near my own.

              Living as I do in a fairly unsophisticated area well off the mainstream, it is not surprising that one’s activities embrace a range of people who keep popping up in other guises.  Thus, here was the nurse whom I previously had met in a violently mauve leotard, moulded to her every ample curve, in a yoga class.  Then there was Dorothy, Bob’s daughter-in-law, who lives not far from my home.  Thus word got to Bob, and here he was visiting me and having good crack with the rabbit catcher, whom he had known for many a year.  This was Christmas Eve, and a day mostly in bed, a bath and company having restored some equanimity.  My daughter came with some presents, and life was becoming rounded again.  Christmas Day, and well-decorated Dorothy and her colleague were in the room with a song and a dance and breakfast on a tray, with presents that they had acquired and wrapped for us.  And thus there began for me a process of enlightenment, a process that has continued without cease to this very day.

              During my stay in the little hospital, attached as it is to a retirement home, and during the events that followed over the Christmas and New Year period, I met at first hand the people who care.  They don’t figure in the pop-charts; their obituaries never make the national media; most don’t figure in the New Year’s Honours lists - in fact they get very little recognition at all, and most would probably get a little embarrassed if you went out of your way to praise or thank them.  How about the Salvation Army musicians who brought carols and joy; the volunteers who had time and something for the older people in the next door home, many in temporary residence over Christmas, as their families had respite and a chance to visit elsewhere; the clergy of the different denominations; the man with the accordion who played while we danced?  And many more.

              Thus I danced my way to an appearance of normality, and as the beds were allocated by medical practices for their own emergencies, Sandy wanted his for the sorts of emergency that the time of the year frequently generate.  And so it was, eventually, that arrangements were made for my departure and transport home on, as I remember, the day after Boxing Day, the 27th of December.  I had not, in fact, been thinking very clearly, and had not forewarned my daughter, who had my house key, of what was happening.  Thus it was that I found myself set down by the ambulance in my slippers at the minor road junction adjacent to my house – set down into a light powdering of snow.  “Woe, woe, thrice woe” he cried!  Cursing myself for a fool, I went around to the back of the house, broke a window in a small conservatory, and managed to get into the house.

              I will not labour you with the tedium of restoring warmth, rooting out food, and of getting myself organised, all with a mind that was again under attack.  One event, however, deserves mention.  I still had my practice of praying by my bed, and the next night I was thus engaged.  I often held a bible as a focus and possibly to read a little, and I had not been on my knees for very long when the book itself was being ‘attacked’.  I found myself wrestling to hold on to it, while at the same time my head was being plagued by a horde of physical knocks and tugs - for how long, I am not sure.  While this was happening, or just afterwards, it was put into my mind that this was 28th December, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the day dedicated to the remembrance of the infants who had been murdered by Herod in his attempts to slay the infant Christ.  Far from being honoured by the fact that their lives had ended so that, effectively, Christ could survive, frankly, they were not best pleased.  Thus, on this day dedicated to their memory and honour, so I was told, they went world-wide creating as much havoc as they could, joined, one suspects, by the spirits of all the infants and young who are slaughtered or aborted for the sake of ‘expediency’.  Whatever the truth of this, I know for sure that I had not been in the least aware that this was, in fact, Holy Innocents day.

              And so it came to pass that on the next day I spoke again to Sandy, and managed to put something into words to Peter and Tricci saying, as I remember, “I have more problems than I can cope with”.  Again, the wheels of caring started turning, and arrangements were made.  During this time and that which followed, Klaus and Brenda had taken over the care of the horse and cats, and eased my mind of many problems, though, throughout, I was never able to convey even an inkling of what was besetting my mind, nor give adequate thanks for all the help that I received.  Eventually, seeking refuge, I was taken by a volunteer driver, and delivered to the familiar scene of the psychiatric ward of the main local hospital, on Saturday evening, the Saturday between Christmas and New Years Eve, 29th December 1979, when the ward would probably have been expecting a variety of admissions, many the product of the festivities and the season.

              On arrival, I was interviewed by the duty Consultant Psychiatrist.  I cannot remember what I said to him, and I certainly did not know how he had been primed by Sandy.  I know that I tried to describe some of what had happened to me - with what success I have no way of knowing, but, on a busy Saturday evening, with the bustle of the season and other new admissions, it was of necessity not a long interview.

              I was allocated a fairly stark room - probably one used for all emergency admissions, some of whom would be the worse for drink or drugs.  I was free to mix generally, but in that room when I went to bed, the sense of isolation and of being spied upon was intense.  In the wall opposite my bed, was what remained of a chrome bell push, and in my state of mind, I feared that this was a viewing channel through which my behaviour could be studied.  My feelings of isolation and persecution became almost unbearable.

              Fortunately, after two nights, I was placed in an open ward with about seven beds, and my composure gradually began to return - very slowly at first as I started to realise that I was not being spied on, and then more positively as I began to observe and talk to my fellow inmates.  I also had a second interview with the psychiatrist that I found difficult to respond to, the principal reason being that he was accompanied by a male nurse.  Had he been alone, I am sure that my story would have flowed, but, for whatever reason, I simply could not talk about voice hearing and the recent terrors, and went along with the suggestion that I was suffering from a recurrence of my previous depression.  And so, for the rest of the week I found myself being ‘infused’ with an anti-depressant via an intravenous drip.  As I was not suffering from depression, it had no apparent effect, except to stabilise my bowels, which had become disturbed.  Notwithstanding that, I appreciated greatly the care and concern with which I was being treated.

              The care and concern extended outside the hospital to my friends, and soon I was being visited and supplied with items that I had not even begun to think about in my sudden departure from home.  One friend in particular, Val, who had been my secretary at work, and who, because of a long-standing problem, was a frequent inhabitant of hospital respiratory wards, provided the practicalities of 10p pieces for the phone, writing materials and tissues.  The feeling of ‘normalness’ induced by these everyday necessities, her thoughtfulness and concern and the similar responses of other friends, contributed greatly to the rebuilding of my self confidence and assurance, which was doubly strengthened by the arrival from London of my brother.  His practical application was inspirational.  Remembering that this was early January, he had driven well over 300 miles to arrive at a home that was bitterly cold and not as salubrious as it might have been.  My brother cleaned the kitchen, cooked a good meal, discussed my affairs at the hospital and extricated me for the first weekend.

              Although my financial affairs were essentially in good order, obsessive thoughts about such things as tax matters were being forced into my mind, and a whole ambience of anxiety was being engendered around me.  Fortunately, again, my brother took everything in hand and, in a comparatively short time, had the imagined problems examined and proved them to be non-existent.

              Back in hospital for a second week, I was able to see more clearly and assess the thoughts that had begun to emerge during the first week, and to understand why I found myself to be so alien within my surroundings.  I found that I was able mentally to detach myself from these surroundings and the reason why I was within them, and to look objectively at some of the others with whom I was sharing them.  In time, I saw a pattern of individuals who just could not cope with the season ‘of good will’ and to whom it had, in fact, become a burden.  There was, for example, the middle-aged bachelor, still living with his parents who had become alienated and depressed by other people’s apparent enjoyment; the younger man, whose brother I knew, who immediately previously had been seeking spiritual ‘enlightenment’ at several isolated monasteries, and who had somehow ‘lost it’ in his own spiritual isolation at Christmas; the Evangelical preacher with a drink problem who found Christmas overwhelming, who, nevertheless, was able to make his mark with gentle ‘preaching’ to the young isolated man.  It turned out that I was learning, as I had been in the cottage hospital, something of the nature of this particular time of the year, this particular season of celebration.  I was learning of different peoples’ inability to cope, and also was seeing the wealth of ‘caring potential’ that exists.  From all of which, and over the intervening years, there has come my own determination to try to understand, and to be part of that same ‘caring potential’.

              All of my ‘insight and understanding’ lay yet in the future.  In the sequence of events, I had encountered the Consultant Psychiatrist (MC) of my previous 'incarceration' and who agreed to let me transfer to his care.  I was able to tell him that my difficulties were psychic rather than psychiatric, upon which he stopped the intravenous medication and just left me to take stock.  The next weekend saw me being driven home by some good friends and starting to cope again, returning to the hospital solely to sign myself off.  When I say ‘cope’, the word seems inadequate in the context of an entirely new ambience that began to be created around me, and seemingly within me. 

               At all stages in writing this account, I am meeting many problems of communication; not with the mechanics of communication, but in finding suitable words with which to convey the reality of experiences that are not part of the everyday life of the majority of those who will read my work.  Thus, and for example, how can I describe to you the exact nature and function of a wordless communication through which I was encouraged to achieve, and shown the means of achieving, goals for which my previous life had not prepared me?

              It was not to be plain sailing.  Once the door to the body and mind has been opened, it is most difficult, if not impossible, to close it again.  One can learn or devise techniques to control access, but one is dealing with immense subtlety and cunning.  There is, however, the great consolation that the same routes, the same channels are available to, and can be used by, sources of spiritual help and ‘goodness’.  How to recognise each for what it is, minimise the potential harm, accept, and enhance what is good and profitable, is the subject of the chapters that follow.

              Before I move on, I reflect on what I have written, and particularly on the three original ‘characters’ that were first on the scene.  Of these, ‘Ibn Ubar’ is the one who has left the greatest impression.  Following an interest that has nothing to do with the foregoing but more to my study of exploration and ancient routes, I found my thoughts and reading being focused upon the lost city of Ubar (or Iram, as it is referred to in the Koran).  Long sought by explorers such as the legendary T.E.Lawrence (of Arabia, fame), it had eluded discovery until an American, Nicholas Clapp, had the brilliant idea of having taken from space-shuttle and satellite, visual and ground-penetrating radar photographs of the area of Oman where legend had it that Ubar was located.  The city had allegedly been the centre for distribution of the frankincense that is produced in the area, and was fabled far and wide for its beauty and lavish water supply, and for its verdant surroundings.  Until one day it, or a large part of it, collapsed into the ground, and the area was reclaimed by the desert.
              The satellite photographs showed faint outlines of the arrow-straight caravan routes from times long gone, routes that converged on a place that an expedition later revealed as, indeed, the lost city of Ubar, called by some the Atlantis of the Sands.  Built over a huge limestone cavern, the source of its abundant water supply, the city had fallen into the hole created when the cavern roof collapsed.  Thus it was destroyed, and not by an angry God, as subsequent legend would have it.  Just across the room as I write is a copy of Clapp’s book The Road to Ubar, which makes fascinating reading.  Now there are those who would make a big thing of the coincidence of the two ‘Ubars’.  As for me, well....


I hope that now you will continue and read my complete story and learn of the life that opened up before me.

It has been a wonderful life – and continues to be, even though I am now 87 and beginning to feel some of the effects of ageing!