God Series - Chaptner No4

Here I describe my very early attempts at establishing the authenticity of my ability to take automatic writing, the anxieties, doubts, and fears.

Chapter Four

 

“What a bloody fool you are, “ I thought.   “Here you are sitting up at a table late at night waiting to be contacted by ghosts or whatever, and actually believing that something might happen.”   It was the living-room scene all over again.   Only this time instead of an upturned tumbler and an alphabet under glass, I simply had pen and paper.    My initial experiment with automatic writing was about to begin.

 

            “Write,” I said.    And nothing happened.

 

            “Write!” I almost demanded.   And still nothing happened.   So I sat back and waited, trying to still the mind’s verbal thought.   I was determined to give this a reasonable chance.   But I was equally determined not to cheat, not to “help the start” or anything like that.   It seemed I waited for quite a time before that slight giddiness which indicated a change in my awareness finally came.

 

            My body seemed to sway ever so slightly    Yet it did, in fact, remain perfectly still.   It was not until many years later that I was to learn of the ‘subtler bodies,’ the etheric, the astral, and the mental dimensions of which we are all part.     The auric egg, which surrounds our physical is in continuous motion.   That was what I was sensing now.    Though it was to take thousands of hours of meditation and some fifteen to twenty years of living, before I realised this, as fact.

 

            The pen began to move.   It moved awkwardly.   The fingers gripping the pen were relaxed enough.   But the third and little fingers on my writing hand felt somewhat tense.   It was as if someone unfamiliar with my body was trying to manipulate it.   The concentration taking place was enormous.   But it was not my concentration.   I was contributing little.   I was the medium.   The real concentrative work was being done by someone else.

 

            Slowly the pen moved; a quarter of an inch; a little more.   Then it moved in an arc.   A tiny circle was drawn, no more than an inch across.   The movement stopped.   It was as if the thing moving, working through me, needed time for a breather; a time to recover energy and think what to do next.

 

            Again the pen moved.   The extensor muscles on the outside of my forearm and along the outer edge of my palm seemed taut.   Muscles that I was not used to employing in this manner were being used.   Yet I was not pushing.   Or if I was, it certainly wasn’t being done consciously.

 

            The pen moved again.   It drew another circle.   It moved back and forth.  Gradually it seemed to become easier for whatever it was that was manipulating me.   The curves became smoother.   There was less effort involved.   Although this improvement was far from rapid.

 

            The room in which I sat was not dark.    A low wattage electric bulb burned in the centre of the high ceiling.   Outside, a gentle breeze blew.   Again, it was late at night-   way past midnight.

 

            “Can you, whatever you are, communicate with me?   Can you write?” I thought.   

 

            Slowly, ever so slowly, the answer came.   The pen moved, wavered to and thro for what seemed a long time, the upper end describing slow circles, the point not moving from its position on the writing paper.   Then slowly the business end of the ball point began to move.   In a baby hand it wrote awkwardly, laboriously”  “Yes.”   

 

...............

 

 

When I awoke the next morning I found that I had reached a decision.  I would carry on with Automatic Writing.   I would keep records.  I would be careful not to overdo it.    I would keep it a secret.   No point in advertising it to the world.

 

            From the time of that decision my reading of books dealing with such subjects as Spiritualism, Eastern Philosophy and Religion, Yoga and the like took an upwards swing.   Up until then I’d always read widely, favouring no particular area.   Now, fiction, travel, history, geography, science, gave way to Theosophy, Buddhism, and Hinduism.    Humanistic Psychology replaced Freud, Adler, and Skinner.   Jung, though rather difficult to comprehend, became a favourite, as did Assagioli, in later years.

 

            I have little doubt that the books I read had a great influence on my outlook on life.   Many of my questions, put to my “Spiritual Guides,” about automatic writing bear this out.   I was later to move back to a more balanced diet in literature.   But during those early years my thinking was much concerned with the Supernatural.

 

            On December 26th, 1968 I began keeping records.   I thought, at that time, that perhaps they would one day be of use to the Psychic Research Society or some other broad-minded school of psychology.   I did not spend time in devising their most efficient utilisation.   My main interest lay in the writings themselves; interesting and stimulating communication in the here and now.   The recordings were of secondary importance.   Because of this, these records are of the simplest type: just actual handwriting, and the date on which the writings were received.   But let us begin.  Let us see what came to be recorded in this rather weird way.

 

 

.............

 

 

It is a hot, summer afternoon.   I am sitting behind the wheel of my car, in a parking area a few hundred yards from my place of work.   It is 2-30p.m., and I am not due to go on shift for another thirty minutes.   Outside, there is bustle and noise.  The whine of aero engines comes to my ears.  My place of work is Sydney Airport.   But I am unhurried.   There is plenty of time.    Plenty of time to indulge in my new-found interest, Automatic Writing.

 

 

            A little notebook is lying open across my knees.  My left hand holds it steady.

The sunlight reflects brightly on the white paper.   In my hand, held ever so lightly in a normal writing grip, is a ball-point pen.   My heart is pumping a bit faster than normal.   I feel a vague excitement.   Here goes.

 

            “Can you communicate with me?”

 

            The pen stirs ever so slightly.   I wonder if perhaps the bright sunlight, and the fact that I am wide awake, will hamper the process in some way.   “Can you get through to me?”  I think again.

 

            The pen moves.   With the awkwardness of a child learning to write, yet with a mature handwriting style, a word is written.   “Yes.”     The handwriting bears little resemblance to my own.   In fact, the letters slope backwards and to the left.   No, it is decidedly different from my own.   And then as if to convince itself and myself even more, the word is repeated.  “Yes.”

 

            At this early stage I am not recording my questions, only the answers I receive.

My note book shows as series of “e’s” and “l’s” in the following manner:

 

            “elelecetyeledelectrity”

 

            The word electricity comes to mind.   All the letters are joined together.  The pen moves again.   Once again, there is no punctuation, no break in the words, no dotting of ‘i’s” or crossing of “t’s. ”   The pen is held continuously on the paper and the words flow out that way.

 

            “gellecteceeeeftheieeeyeller”

 

            I stare at this, trying to interpret its meaning.   I cannot recall my thoughts after all these years but I get an answer.  “Yes.”    So it would appear that at least part of my interpretation is correct.

 

            The pen continues its scrawl.

 

            “Check

 

            ekerietherey

 

            check

 

            eeeee reeecheepereytheiree”

 

            And so it goes on.   It is a seemingly senseless scribble.   Though there is that repeated word “check,” and an occasional word can be made out amidst the jumble.

 

            “Yepeeeepelltheireleee gllllthepethereeeo,” it goes.

 

            On the second day, 27th December at 4-00p.m. I am again in the car park.   This time the writing is a little better.   Some of the words make sense.   My note book records:

 

            “Yes ceturutllloeptecheeetetitelephone

 

            Yes yeathegirl yes

 

            Want very much you telephone your sister-  yes.”

 

            I will not go into further detail here.   But apparently the “thing,” my “subconscious mind,” or whatever it was, wanted me to contact my elder sister, Ada.   I had not seen Ada for many years.   No explanation was given as to why I should call now.  

 

            However, I did not call, probably because it was inconvenient and I felt no real compunction to do so.    Despite being family, Ada and I had little in common.   In fact there was, at that time, some antipathy on my part towards both her and her husband.    My elder sister’s husband was a Baptist minister.     An earlier altercation with him and Ada, and the inference that I wasn’t on the right path unless I embraced his particular brand of Christianity, had left somewhat of a rift between us.

 

            This was the first of many such suggestions put to me; suggestions which were of little practical benefit.    Over the next sixteen months I was to receive much information, some good advice, and many a long and detailed philosophical discussion.     However, I cannot recall any of it being directly and concretely beneficial.

 

            By that last statement I do not mean that I gained nothing from these months of discourse.   I most certainly did.   But the benefits gained were those of a psychological nature.    Practical events, that is things of this physical world in which our fleshly bodies live, were affected little, if at all.

 

            Because of my frequent practice, by the 28th December the writings had improved.   I was making a conscious effort to break off the writing between each word, thus editing what came through.   The words were no longer one long, continuous scrawl.      At this particular time I’d been thinking about my friend, Rex Bunn, a trainee homeopath.    The pen is moving more freely and with far less awkwardness now.     It writes:

 

            “Nettle nellie returning nelely nettle nelle returning nettle the return of nellie yesterday reliable really very reliable repeat repeat very reliable.”

 

            Unfortunately, I did not at this early stage keep records of all that was said.   The writings were taken down on pieces of scrap paper and either thrown away or destroyed.   But it is worth mentioning that at an early stage in my development as an automatic writer I was introduced to my “spirit guides.”     Or, to be more accurate, they introduced themselves to me.

 

            I had noticed from quite an early stage that at the termination of most communications, the spirit entity  (by this time I was beginnning to refer to the communicant as a separate entity, rather than as a part of myself) would terminate its writings with a peculiar little signature:  the letters U.R.    These letters were joined together in a rolling fashion much as a man would write his initials.

 

            Later, other “spirit guides” were added to my repertoire until, after a few weeks, I had three main guides.    The first was U.R., whom for some reason I always regarded as the most reliable and mature.    The others were Celia, and John.

 

            These last two had surnames.   The former was Celia Walker, the latter, a John Willoughby.    All three had distinctly different personalities.    So distinct, in fact, that it was not long before I could often sense which communicant was “talking” (writing)  before they had identified themselves.

 

            But let us return to these early notes.

 

            To some readers, these earliest writings will be of less interest to those received later on.    However, to those who approach this book with a view to discovering how the author “ticks,”  I have little doubt that it is in these earlier writings that they will glean information to either strengthen or weaken their own theories on the subject.

 

Self:     U.R..  Are you there?

 

“Up rechept redipecjesd retrof”

 

Self      Would you prefer I use the smoother-tipped pen?     (I refer here to my

Sheaffer fountain pen)

 

“Retrepettion is the means of success.”

 

            The next word was crossed out.   Then:

 

“You re repitition returning nettle nellie jeck mondeys repetition.”

 

Self:     Are you trying to tell me something about Nettle Nellie (Whoever she is)

and Jack Mondey  (the latter was supervisor at my place of work)

 

“Phrases only.”

 

Self:     You mean you are practising the art of shaping your writing?

 

“Best repetition”

 

            There then followed a lot more senseless words, many of which were joined together, and some of which were crossed out.

 

Self:     “You seem weaker today.   Do you wish to give it away for a few hours or so?

 

“No.”

 

Okay.   We will continue for fives more minutes, if that is all right with you, U.R.?

 

“Yes, neptunre please plestioner repetition.”

 

That last word was well executed

 

“Repetition yes”

 

“Try again.”

 

“Yes.   Please don’t anticipate my words.”

 

            Now this last was a definite statement.   There was no punctuation, and the “t’s” and “i” were not crossed or dotted.    The words, however, were separate.

 

Self:     “I am sorry, U.R., but it seems that sometimes I “hear” or sense all or part of your answer.   I will try to take no notice of this “voice”   -At least, for the time being.

 

“Yes, repetition, very good.”

 

“See you later.   Cheerio.”

 

“Yes.”

 

            End of exercise.   Time: 10-31a.m..

 

...............

 

The exercise to follow was undertaken the next morning; time 9-30a.m..   I am sitting at my desk at home, notebook open before me.    It is a warm summer morning.

 

Self:     You there, U.R.?

 

“You’re very tired”

 

“Yes, I am.   I haven’t had enough sleep.”

 

“Go and have a rest before continuing with our conversation of last night.”

 

            Actually, although this was the sentence eventually received, it was not given out as a full sentence until the third attempt.   The first two words were incorrectly executed, and were therefore deleted by my spiritual communicant.

 

Self:     “Understood.   But can we continue with something in a lighter vein for the time being?  That is, for the next fifteen mintues or so?”

 

“Just for a few minutes;  at fifteen we pack up.”

 

Self:     “My grandmother White (My maternal grandmother whom I never met in life)

was on last night.   Her signals - influence- was strong.   Is she very accomplished at contacting my world?”

 

“Attend getting...intend getting girl friend for your brother  (My younger brother, Robbie, had died after injuries sustained in a motor-cycling accident seven years earlier)  and for your good half at midday tomorrow, and a midday the next day too.”

 

Self:     “Do you mean one personality for both of us?    Or two different people?”

 

“I mean two different people.”

 

“Will mine be of the spirit world, too?”

 

“Yes.   You can’t do her any harm there.

 

“It’s 9.15 a.m..   Must go.   Cheerio, U.R. and thanks.”

 

            The answer was:

 

“Get at the writing, yes, and get at the...”   There were then a couple of crossed out words, followed by the word “attendant,” and the usual signature.

 

            It should be remembered that at this time the writing was still in its very early stages experimental-wise.   It was laboriously slow at times.   Moreover, it was interspersed with corrections and crossings out.    It was as if my spirit guide were selecting the most precise word or phrase to convey his thought.    The fact that it took fifteen minutes to write 150 words, including those consciously written by me, will give the reader some indication of the speed of communication at this stage.

 

            The next recorded conversation took place on the same day.    It is now 7.30p.m..

 

Self:     “U.R.  Are you there?”

 

“Getting better at contacting you.”

 

“Yes.  Though I guided those first couple of words a little more than I should have; I can see my handwriting in it.”

 

“Got really good news for you.”

 

“Then go ahead, please-   I await.”

 

“Girl friend here now.”

 

“That’s wonderful, U.R..   Put her on.”

 

            The new entity’s writing was a little more hesitant than that of U.R.s, but the writing was not discernibly different.

 

“How are you, Tom?”

 

“Great.   Though a bit lonely at times.   But then, you can read my thoughts before I even write this, can’t you?”

 

            To which came a most unusual answer.   It was as if a third party had been listening in, and was now putting forward his or her viewpoint.    And I was later to learn it was a third party.

 

“Letting electricity be our guide.   They are going to marry us in the Spring of...”

 

            The pen gave a few unintelligible wriggles.

 

“You know how much that message affected me then.   But in a way I am glad you did not give any definite time.”

 

“Any time you want.”

 

“But I don’t know you;  don’t even know who you are.”

 

            A wriggly line, then:  “Celia Walker.”

 

Me, incredulous-  “Not the Celia Walker I knew as a fourteen-year-old boy when I lived in London?”

 

“The same.”

 

“When did you die?”

 

“Leave that for now.”

 

“Okay.   My thirty minutes are up, anyway.   Must go-  but want to stay so much.”

 

            Now, this was a very strange thing for me to say.    It was as if I were searching for and reaching out for a certain love and understanding.     Yet I was not consciously unhappy with my own domestic life.   At that time I had been married eight years.    My relationship with my wife, Rita, was as good as it had ever been.   Of course, our marriage was not a perfect one.   Whose is?   We had our differences.   But there was no strain, certainly no disliking.    If anything there was, and still is, love.

 

            At that time Rita and I had a family of three small children.   We were all healthy and happy.   We were paying off a comfortable old home.   We owned a good, second-hand car and had all material comforts.    I could see no reason for being desirous of an extra-marital relationship.     Such a relationship would, of course, have been exciting and flattering to the ego.    But I felt no need of it.

 

“Yes, me, too.”

 

“Haven’t you any jealously?    You know what I mean.”

 

            I meant, of course, my wife, Rita.    Was Celia jealous of my wife?

 

“Celia loves you.”

 

            There were then a few indeterminate scribbles, followed by the signature of U.R..    The session had come to an end.

 

            At this point I feel I should give the reader a little of my background.   No doubt the Freudians and the Behaviourist-type psychologists will want to ascertain how this “Sex Symbol,” Celia, fits into the pattern of my subconscious thinking.   I do not know whether the information I present now will help them.    Nevertheless, I will give it.

 

            Mine had been an interesting and fuller-than-average life.    Yes, even by the age of thirty-two when I first took to automatic writing.    But to begin...

 

            Arthur Thomas Ware was born on the 18th April 1936 in Plumstead Public Hospital, London W13.   He was the third child in a family of five children, having both a brother and sister older and younger than himself.     His parents were Working Class.    Arthur’s father had been a professional soldier of enlisted rank until he was discharged in 1930 at age twenty-eight.    The author’s father had joined the army at fourteen years of age, way back when the British were still fighting the Turks.      Such professional soldiering hardly equipped him for civilian life.    When Arthur was born, his father was a lowly factory labourer working at Woolwich Arsenal.

 

            On the other hand, Arthur’s mother had been born in India and spent the first thirty years of her life there.    She was the second eldest daughter of an Indian Army officer.   On Arthur’s mother’s side, the family ran to seven children, two boys and five girls.   Arthur’s mother had been a school teacher.   She was also a fine musician, and quite an academic.   She and her husband, must have both wondered what they’d let themselves in for after the initial infatuation wore off.     As if was, they lived unhappily together for twenty years before parting quite amicably in 1951.    

 

            Arthur Thomas Ware was breast fed as an infant.    No, he does not recall this.    But then, all of Elsie Mabel Ware’s children were breast fed.    Little Arthur did not feel any rejection or feelings of not being wanted.    But I am being facetious.

 

            However, I will continue to write in the third person as I describe my background.    In that way it might not only sound less vain, it will, hopefully, be more objective.

 

            For the first four years in his life our hero lived in a rundown, slum-like area of what was then the world’s greatest city-    London.    He has early memories of a savage black cat, a high-walled backyard, a toy train set for Christmas, a big cuddly teddy bear, and a cot.     He has memories of being made by his disciplinarian father not to leave his bread crusts.    These he would tuck away under the rim of his dinner plate, out of view of the authority who sat sternly opposite.    But invariably he was caught.

 

            Father enjoyed his beer and his time out with the boys.   But, to our hero’s knowledge, was never drunk in the home.    He did not bring alcohol into the house.    As a father, Harry Edwin Ware was neither particularly good or bad.    He was hard on his children, but not overbearing.     His children, for the most of the time anyway, loved and respected him.

 

            By the end of 1939 Father was back in the army again.   Hitler’s troops had invaded Poland and the “War to end all Wars” had proved farcical.    But what of our hero’s mother?

 

            Well, she was a quiet, gentle, little woman not giving to mixing with people.    A bit of a loner.    But with four of her five children already born she had plenty to keep her busy.    

 

            When the Luftwaffe’s bombs began to fall upon London the authorities thought it time to evacuate as many children as they could to the safety of the countryside.    It is in this era that little Arthur was to begin his wanderings, wanderings which were to continue pretty much for the next forty years of his life.

 

            Without going into fine detail, he was evacuated three times from the great city during the war.    He spent time in Torrington, Devon, living with an elderly couple, though his mother was close by, looking after his younger brother, Robbie.

He returned to the “Blitz,” the night raids.    He recalls the barrage balloons, the searchlights stabbing the night skies, the crump! crump! crump! of the big guns being fired on Woolwich Common.   

 

            Then he was off to a tiny hamlet called Hanging Houghton in Northhamptonshire.    Here he found himself a new mother, a wonderful young woman who had one child of her own.    Arthur was then six or seven.

 

            It was a wonderful year.    In this year Arthur attended a tiny, one-teacher school, helped at his chum’s father’s dairy farm, and played in the surroundings woods and fields.    He was, on recollection, a very normal, happy little boy.   But to continue.

 

            He returned to London for a short time.  By then the war had ‘moved on’ and the best the Germans could do were to send the occasional V1 flying bomb or ‘doodle bug’ over.   But the British Government’s Evacuation Policy still applied, so this time he went with his elder brother, Tippy, to live in Bury, Lancashire.

 

            The war ended and the four elder children: Ada, Tippy, Arthur, and Robbie, returned to London.   Mother and the baby, Sophie, were already there.   Then Father came home from the war.

 

            To condense a long story.   Arthur and his family, along with a host of cousins, migrated to Sydney, Australia in 1951.   Father stayed in England.    Arthur took his first job, commencing work with the Australian Post Office as a telegram boy, the day after his fifteenth birthday.    At eighteen he joined the navy for six years.   He married in 1960 and then commenced an eleven year stint with the Australian Department of Civil Aviation.   It was in the later years with this employer that he took to his Automatic Writing.    

 

            Looking objectively at his life, there seems to be nothing to indicate why he should suddenly turn his interest to the study of this strange phenomena, let alone become involved in it.    Although, as a child, he had had a couple of very strange experiences.   Firstly, he remembers quite vividly seeing a ‘ghost’ or ‘apparition’ as a child at about age ten.   They again, seeing the ghost of his recently deceased brother, Tippy, when he was fourteen.    But let us press on to Chapter Five.

 

 

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