Posted on 30 August 2019, 15:33

The Bible story

Perhaps you remember the story from the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a high mountain. At the peak they see him transfigured as he truly is spiritually, shining white. With him were Moses and Elijah.  Then a “bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”

The 14th century book and Centering Prayer

That bright cloud reminds me of the anonymous14th Century mystical book The Cloud of Unknowing advocating stilling the mind, and relaxing into the arms of the God of Love Is. This called “non-dual meditation, or Centering Prayeer

When at least we have surrendered to Spirit to some degree, putting aside self-centredness, we too may have a mountain top experience, and encounter the Cloud of Unknowing. In such meditation we looking, so to speak, in the right direction. We are basking in the arms of creative Love, the Source of all that is, in pure submission,

But we need to approach Spirit in other ways at other times. With open hearts and mind to the infinite wonders of creation as revealed by open minded science, and all forms of creativity, our hearts can almost burst with wonder and praise
That will help deepen our submission before the Cloud.

Carl Jung and the Collective Unconscious

Behind The Cloud of Unknowing is the creative Spirit which creates all that is in the physical.
Three major early investigators of unconscious thoughts and feelings that give rise to mental and emotional disorders were Sigmund Freud, who considered that repressed thoughts and feelings about sexuality gave most trouble,  while Kurt Adler thought it all related to the need to express power. These men adhered to Materialist beliefs. The psychologist,  Carl Jung accepted the reality of Spirit.  He developed a theory of personality types, and his research has been widely used in Jungian therapy.

But he also explored the paranormal and the psychic phenomena recorded in countless case studies involving telepathy, clairvoyanc, and sychronicitiese apparently enabled by an infinite network of Spirit, not readily apparent to the conscious mind.  He called this network “Collective Unconscious” i.e. What waking humanity is not conscious of, what is clouded from view.

He worked with prominent physicist Wolfgang Pauli, and perhaps a majority of modern QM-physicists would regard Jung’s work as sound.

He also studied glimpses through the Cloud in the shape of premonitions,, synchronicites , and all sorts of other paranormal events.  These give us suggestions about how we we may be interconnected in a vast network behind the Cloud, behind the Collective Unconscious of incarnate humanity. We need to be humble about these intimations, for the God in whom we live and move and have our being, can only be perceived part.
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The awakening of our spiritual senseses

I began by mentioning how the voice of God was heard in the cloud on the mount top. Let us start by imagining that we are standing on a mountain top on a still and equable day. We gaze in every direction as far as the horizon, and at the blue sky above flecked with clouds. We are high and lifted up, all our tensions and worries drop away. Our hearts expand, and we are filled with pleasure.

We are having a “Peak Experience”, we feel spiritually and emotional awaked, and we begin to recall what it means to be One with Spirit.

We are having an experience of dying to self-centeredness and rising with Christ.

We know that, should we have a telescope, the more that we manage to see, the more we could include in our inner “Mount of Transfiguration” and look intently at anything whatever in any direction at however narrow a field, our hearts can catch fire, and can be filled spirit.

I am reminded how if one points a telescope at an apparently empty part of the night sky, and applies sufficient magnification, billons of stars and galaxies appear yet to be found.

Scientists have made a big contribution to thought about spirituality

Max Plamk, Quantum Mechanics founder’s founder, saw all reality as the product of mind, both in the creative dimension, and the created.

J.B.S Haldane wrote that the universe “is not only clearer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

The psychologist Carl Jung worked with Nobel Prize winner Wolfgang Pauli to explore what Jung called the Collective Unconscious, the world of Spirit inaccessible to the waking mind . cf “The Cloud of Unknowing “

They explored meaningful coincidence, dreams, arch types,  the “paranormal, the psychic as created by spirit. He worked with QM physicist in exploring synchronicity, or meaningful coincidence It is becoming a mainstreams   fact that many QM physicist of the front rank investigate synchronicity as real phenomena.
Thus we have the Conscious world accessible to the waking human mind, and the Collective Unconscious,  or The Cloud of Unknowing.
We can access this Collective Unconscious through developing various paranormal abilities, including distance viewing, all forms of mediumship, conversations with those in the spirit world, musical and art mediumship.
We access this world in artistic and all creativity of all kinds,, through prayer and meditation, and through church worship.

Remember alo George Herbert’s

“ A man that looks on glass,
      On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
      And then the heav’n espy

All this, and all the interactions of our daily lives can lead us towards not being explainers and conquerors, but conscious participants in the universe. One with God.

Michael Cocks edits the journal, The Ground of Faith.
Afterlife Teaching From Stephen the Martyr by Michael Cocks is published by White Crow Books and available from Amazon and other bookstores.

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