Radical re-centring

Part of the wonderful journey of discovery resulting from researching Irene Pickard's archive – it was like being a tourist for six years through other peoples minds and spiritual experiences – was encountering the radical re-centring that seems to lie at the root of Quakerism. 

The derailing of the spiritual authority of the Catholic Church by the Reformation and of its replacement, the Church of England, by the dethroning of Charles I, left a space for ordinary people to explore their spirituality without the fear of punishment. 

The publication of King James' authorised translation of the Bible into English (1611) and the spread of literacy due to the availability of books and other printed material, enabled many of the post 1611 generations to have direct access to 'the word of God' which had been denied to earlier generations. They had the tools to explore what had formally been the preserve of Latin reading priests, and some of them did just that:

At another time it was opened in me that God, who made the world, did not dwell in temples made with hands. This, at the first seemed a strange word because both priests and people use to call their temples or churches, dreadful places, and holy ground, and the temple of God. But the Lord showed me, so I did see clearly, that he did not dwell in these temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people's hearts; for both Stephen and the Apostle Paul bore testimony that he did not dwell in temples made with hands, not even in that which he had once commanded to be built, since he put an end to it; but that his people were his temple, and he dwelt in them.
The Journal of George Fox 1647

Fox was far from alone. The combination of direct access to the Bible and the freedom from fear of persecution led many to be radically adventurous, following where their deepest conscience led. And that was the point: they had not lost their lust for spiritual truth, if fact, set free of the fetters of church authority, it grew stronger. They sought for new centres of authority for their spirituality to replace the crumbling edifices of institutionalised religion. As Professor Alec Ryrie suggests in his Gresham College lecture The Spiritual Quest against Religion, they were bravely going where only heretics had dared to tread.

Their conclusions could be extremely radical. Here is Margaret Fell telling of George Fox's words which had so profoundly altered her life: 

'The Scriptures were the prophets’ words and Christ’s and the apostles’ words, and what as they spoke they enjoyed and possessed and had it from the Lord’. And said, ‘Then what had any to do with the Scriptures, but as they came to the Spirit that gave them forth. You will say, Christ saith this, and the apostles say this; but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?’   Margaret Fell, 1694

Conclusions that anyone could have direct access to the same source that had inspired Christ and the apostles – an inward 'light' that made truth shine in the heart; and when the light shone, the world changed:

Now I was come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter.   George Fox, 1648

It was the charismatic experience of communion with the holy spirit (that of God in everyone). A radical re-centring which validated the spiritual experience of each and every person. Experiences that led to 'great openings' as Fox called them. 

And I went back into Nottinghamshire, and there the Lord shewed me that the natures of those things which were hurtful without were within, in the hearts and minds of wicked men. The natures of dogs, swine, vipers, of Sodom and Egypt. Pharoah, Cain, Ishmael, Esau, etc. The natures of these I saw within, though people had been looking without. And I cried to the Lord, saying, 'Why should I be thus, seeing I was never addicted to commit those evils?' And the Lord answered that it was needful I should have a sense of all conditions, how else should I speak to all conditions; and in this I saw the infinite love of God. I also saw that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. And in that also I saw the infinite love of God, and I had great openings.   George Fox, 1647

That radical, iconoclastic path was never going to be comfortable to follow, as the Woodbooke tutor Stuart Masters told in his 2020 Salter Seminar, Creating Heaven on Earth: The Radical Vision of Early Quakers: The World Turned Upside-Down.

Three hundred years after George Fox, Carl Jung was encouraging his patients to discover and connect with exactly that same centre, the inner well-spring of guidance and inspiration, no matter what they termed it: it would present itself to them in whatever form best suited their prejudices. 

The language available to Fox in a deeply Christian milieu was always going to shape the expression of his 'openings'; the language available to Jung's patients in a much more secular-scientific age would likewise shape theirs. What they shared in common was the force of that inner compass once it was discovered.

What Is Spirituality? Spirituality is like an adventure park waiting to be explored

Firstly, you don't have to give up! You don't have to be like people who equate spirituality with a religion they decide is false, then abandon. It is possible to look at spirituality another way, as something free of institutional structures and hierarchies, not so much about dogma and beliefs as about attitudes, values and practices, about what motivates you (us) at the deepest level, influencing how you think and behave, helping you find a true and useful place in your community, culture and in the world.

Larry Culliford, M.B., B.Chir. (Cantab), M.R.C. Psych. (UK), is the author of The Psychology of Spirituality and a psychiatrist in Sussex, England. The quote comes from his blog. 

Silently waiting, sitting, hour on hour, week after week, slowly tempering the 'soul' – that inner spirit that drives life forward – like a patient hen sitting on her eggs. This is why they speak of Quakers being 'seasoned', like timbers; raw and green freshly felled wood is of limited use – it will warp and twist too much. The self, too full of ego, twists and warps. Tempered over time, seasoned by the long hours of silent waiting, the 'must have now, must do, must …' subsides as it cannot have the instant gratification it craves. Then the slow hatching of a deeper compassion and care for the living emerges. 

Before Jung 'religion' and 'spirituality' were equated. You were either an entirely secular – a non-believing, reductively rational materialist – or practised one or other religions: signed up and induced into the 'fold' and fed with a pre-packaged meal of belief, which you might be required to regurgitate on occasions. Increasingly that was a diet that was proving to be too indigestible for many.

What Jung found among his patients were increasing numbers who had become alienated from 'religion' as proffered, and who were suffering from varying degrees of ennui as a result. They were – as the title of one of his books suggested – examples of Modern Man in Search of a Soul. They were cast adrift from the anchoring points traditionally provided by religions, but had found no substitute, often believing they needed none: that is why they were floundering and came to him for help. 

His prescription was to look inwardly into the deep mind, often using dreams as a portal – although preferring what he called 'active imagination' – to try to find some anchor points. These often appeared symbolically represented in the pregnant imagery generated in the liminal spaces between full consciousness and the hypnagogic or hypnopompic stages of sleep.   

Such discoveries activated the spiritual aspect of his patients lives – put them in touch with their 'soul'. He was little concerned what symbols triggered such awakening, which religion they might come from – he suspected that they were older than any particular religion – just recurring in different guises as religions transformed and evolved. What mattered was their psychological function in helping his patients become more integrated – less distressed and broken.

That shift from outward induction into a received religion, to inward seeking for what resonates, marks the change from being religious to being spiritual. A phenomena even more marked in recent times than in Jung's lifetime. Books such as Spiritual but not Religious (Robert C Fuller), After Religion (Gordon Lynch), After God (Don Cupitt), or even the Dali Lama's own Beyond Religion being testament to that shift. 

What Jung admired about the Quakers was that they had already made that shift. Their centuries old practice of silent waiting opening them to being spiritually alert rather than being tied to outward forms of worship – the proscribed rituals of religion. Their rejection of creeds and dogmas readying them to respond to what arose rather than providing them with fixed formulas and ready answers.

It was a fascinating part of my research discovering the interactions between the Jungs (both Carl and Emma) and the Geneva Quakers on exactly such topics; and then tracing the consequences of that encounter for the Quaker world and beyond.

Every human has a story

Jung came to the conclusion that every human being had a story, and the derangement came when that story was denied, or if the story was rejected; and it was only in the discovery of this story, enabling the patient to rediscover his personal story (within it), that the patient could be healed again.

Laurens Van der Post: BBC - Time Life film on Jung,

Untangling what it was about Jung that so fascinated, engaged and enthused a group of Geneva Quakers that they would spend the rest of their lives expounding his virtues as someone who had given them the keys to unlocking their deeper selves and vitalised their spiritual lives was perhaps the biggest challenge of my research. Between them, they had created an extensive archive of materials, contributed articles to two journals, one either side of the Atlantic, addressed conferences, written books, acted as editors, and mentored and inspired many younger people as well as their contemporaries. They had been catalysts for change and modernisation, reinforcing trends that has already been at play in the communities they were part of.

The discovery of Jung, and their direct contact with him and his circle, made them more at ease with their spiritual life, more fully engaged with it and more willing to explore it. It helped them to realise its importance to their lives in spite the pull from their being 'modern', well educated and forward thinking people. They bucked the trends and fashions of their age: the affectation of a somewhat bohemian detachment from anything over serious, allied with a cynical disparagement of old fashioned things like religion which could not possibly stand the rigours of critical analysis. Religion was the opium of the people, and was utterly dreary. The stripped down religion of a set of left over tea-total puritans, with all their earnestness, social conscience and pacifism, was unspeakable. 

But somehow, that set of young, intelligent, and highly motivated people found something at the core of the Quaker tradition; in the shared, contemplative, ruminating silence, and in what arose from it; something that inspired and liberated them; and Jung gave them the intellectual justification for opening up to it.

For me, researching their left-overs – what little survives in the aftermath of life – it meant following their spiritual journeys, and tracking their footsteps in what material there was. Annoyingly, such material is always deficient. It is like a giant dot to dot drawing, stretching over three-quarters of a century, two continents and two world wars. Sometimes the dots are years apart. Sometimes they are scattered across diverse and disperse documents, articles and books. It was a six year journey on my part, and one which in some ways shadowed their own. To comprehend their journey meant undertaking one of my own, being forced to question many assumptions about my own life and attitudes. 

In many ways they confirmed Jung's contention: they found the big story which could contain the smaller stories of their lives. I think I have yet to achieve that.

Faint traces in time: Elined Kotschnig

Then there was Dr Esther M Harding, who died only recently in 1971 but made one of the greatest American contributions of all in volume of work and depth of character, although she was English. Her books on various aspects of psychology, literature and history, seen from a feminine point of view, have far-reaching consequences for the nature and wholeness of human awareness. Close beside her was Dr Eleanor Bertine — I speak only of those I knew personally — and many others like Elined Kotschnig and the gallant Martha Jaeger, both Quakers who laboured to carry Jung into the Society of Friends and make those indomitable “children and servants of the light” realise the the clearer the light the more precise the shadow.

Laurens van der Post:  Jung and the Story of Our Time.

One of the privileges of having the luxury of spend time researching an archive, and what you can of the lives of those who created it, is the joy of discovery, and the chance to place what traces are left of their lives into some sort of historical context. Elined Kotschnig was one such discovery. 

There were a few papers by her in Irene Pickard's archive of Jungian materials. They reveal that it was Elined who introduced that small circle of Quakers in Geneva to Jung in 1934, pointing out that he was a 'modern mystic' – modern in the sense that he underpinned his mysticism with his 'scientific' discoveries about the human mind – mystic in that he stressed the importance of deep, fully felt relationship with the the totality of being, not mere intellectual acknowledgement. Over rationalised relationships with life estranged and alienated people, creating the modern malaise he encountered so much in his practice as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Its antidote was discovering deeper, felt, connection. 

Elined was a born in Trefeca, Wales, and was a graduate of the University of Wales and a post graduate student at Cambridge. She married an Austrian, Walter Kotschnig, lived in Geneva, Switzerland, encountered Carl Jung, becoming in time a Jungian therapist, emigrated to the United States where she was one of the founders of the Friends Conference on Religion and Psychology (FCRP) and long time editor of its journal, Inward Light. 

Unfortunately, so much of the records of her life and contribution to psychoanalysis and Quakerism was lost after her death, when her papers were auctioned off by mistake with the furniture from her home. All of Elined's diaries, consultation notes, reflections, draft papers and letters were lost. What has survived are the few articles she wrote for Inward Light, one privately published book, Womanhood in Myth and Life, and the papers she wrote in Geneva which were preserved in Irene Pickard's archive.

There is so little reference to Elined outside Quaker circles that encountering her in van der Post's book was gratifying. She deserves to be much better know. Her synthases of Jungian and Quaker thought, extending them into a life affirming framework, was of great benefit to so many, and not just her patients, as was testified by the only person I met who met her. As a young woman my informant had attended some of the annual FCRP conferences where she had encountered Elined. She found her inspiring and liberating as well as deeply challenging: Elined excelled in confronting people with their shadow – those aspects of ourselves we would rather not see.

Peace: A Three Piece Suite

Peace: A Three Piece Suite

The first peace, the deepest, the root from which it grows; the silence that calms and heals; the point of is-ness when there is no I, no me, no not me, no knowing, no not-knowing, no you, no not-you, no us, no not us – just pure being and the ground-of-being – the rest point of being in the moment – at one with the in-breath, the drawing-in of all that there is and all we are part of – open and accepting to whatever comes. At one with the out-breath, circulating fully and giving out all that we are. Being without attachment or aversion as the Buddhists say. Knowing that the attachments and aversions are what distorts and blinds.


The second being at peace with those around you. Being at peace with the small things of life; a peace that begets patience and concern; a ministry of presence for others, wholeheartedly witnessing their being, no matter how small the transaction, no matter how small the moment. Others are not simply instruments to our well-being - they are not background music to our songs - it is together that we are the choir of life. We are each and all witness to each other; we are each and all ministers one to another. It is of the small things of life that the world is woven.


The third piece is that world peace; that of governments and societies; that of renouncing violence as a means, as a political weapon, of not letting war be, as Clausewitz remarked, “… a continuation of politics by other means”. It is not the continuation of politics - it is the failure of politics, in fact, the greatest of all its failures.

Having recently visited a country that has been at peace for two-hundred years, that has not killed or harmed even so much as one person in its name, I cannot but feel shame to come from a country that has not even managed a decade in those two hundred years when it has not killed and maimed, has not wrought violence and havoc, has not devastated lives in its name.




This is the three piece suite of peace - and one on which we could all sit comfortably if we choose.

[Published in the Friend of 24 February 2017]

In the silence

In the silence of a Quaker meeting

During the silence of the meeting, in that deep and tranquil quiet, in that calm and safe-feeling and shared place, I became aware of what can only be described as that life-light that burns unseen, yet know if only we will but know it, within each and every one of us. I was also aware of it as burning in all the other people there, only in each one it was a different colour. There was a realisation that it was by each person letting their light shine and contribute to the brightness of the whole that the colour of the whole would be much nearer a pure white - the sum of all the colours of light being white, or, if you will, being pure or complete light.

The Quickening of its Beat

From the silence grows the words. Observe the silence deeply, let it culture in you what it will. Before the first word there was what? Silence? Or is there just silence about what there was? And after the last word what? Silence? Or just silence about what there might be? The knowing that is deeper will not let us say, cannot be shaped and packaged into words, will not conform into thought, is not of the mind or of conception, is of the heart alone and is no more than the quickening of its beat.

At a Quaker Meeting

A moment of quiet. A collection of my thoughts - a ragbag stuffed with the past: overfull sometimes, memories spilling out of it and spitting venom at me. Then the silence of the moment begins to absorb them all like old-fashioned blotting paper. There is the sense of others settling and finding their own inner peace, of their quietening as they sit, almost radiating their inner calm.

There is something so very infectious about sitting with others in a Meeting*. That silence is not yours, not theirs – it is something other; something shared and created, and at times tangible; a bit like a sheet spread over the room with each person holding a corner and helping it to unfurl and open until the whole space is enveloped.

It is in that space, in that quiet, in that stillness, that you are confronted – confronted most by its peace, by its acceptance, by its inclusion of all, and of all that is thought, or felt, by me, by others, by, one might almost venture, the very universe itself.

The language of Meetings is old and flavoured with words that I often find hard. They are from a mindset and time that is not mine. How could it be? I have been born the other side of massive intellectual divides – The Enlightenment and the continuing revolutions in science. They are sometimes discordant and often jarring. I do not find them in the least bit easy. They are a wrapping that could so easily blind one to what is to be found within. What I find within is peace, a peace that is so meaningful, so giving of succour, so healing.

You may ask why I should go and sit, time after time, in Quaker Meetings? I am a well educated, rational, sceptical and largely atheistic person of some years – enough years to give me white hair – who has never shown any inclination towards taking part in, or tolerance of, organised religion. The answer can be given in one word: peace. That inner and outer peace. That shared peace. That peace that comes in the silence. That peace that speaks so deeply to that which is within. 

Is it comfortable? No. That peace asks questions. It demands your being and your attention. It asks of you; of who you are and of how you live; of others and how you are with them; of the world and how you add to it.

Are the Meetings full of others who are like-minded? No. Every person has their own way of seeing and of being, of believing or not believing, of speaking and of understanding; and often they are challenging to accept. But that, too, is to the good. To listen fully and deeply to their honestly spoken words; to consider them and to try to come to terms with why they are so moved; why they feel and understand as they do; what it is that has touched them; to take all of that in whilst keeping true to your own inner integrity of feeling, of thought, and of belief; that indeed is a challenge, but one that makes you grow. To only ever be surrounded by those of like-mind, although comfortable, is not wholly beneficial: if anything it is even ossifying. We need the challenge of others and their way of being to shine light into our own.

*Quakers traditionally call their meetings "Meetings for Worship"
(This is a slightly re-edited version of the one published in "The Friend" of 13 January 2012)

Houses of words

We build houses out of the words we believe so that we made hide inside them safe from the unknown, safe from the uncomfortable, safe from the threatening, safe from the questioning, safe from exposing our utter nakedness and want of coherence in the presence of a universe so vast that we cannot encompass it or comprehend it. “God” you utter and yet another brick is forced into place shielding you from all that you would keep outside. You offer me this brick and I have no idea what to do with it.

Creating monsters

Listening to the truth within,
Observing the wonder without.
Unbinding from the shackles of words:
Name it God and you create a monster,
Name it not and you close your heart.

Take no thought

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day [is] the evil thereof.

I was stuck much by this as I sat in the silence last Sunday, it seemed to speak so clearly to my current situation, for I have been much vexed by fears of the future and what might become of me; but uncertainty must be embraced as part of so many lives in these times, and compared to the uncertainties of earlier so much less reasonably so - earlier times of war, times of famine and times of plague. We here in the West have been blessed with almost a lifetime without these. We have come to expect peace and prosperity as being the norm. Yet every time has its uncertainty, even the most stable, for every apparently stable time has within it the potential to collapse into chaos and disorder, which in turn will see a new stability arise from it, but it may be a long time before that emergence is seen, and there may be much suffering before it is achieved.

The duty of Truth

Truth, sometime an overvalued and overworked term, is however, fundamental, at least as far as letting what flows naturally through you is concerned.

These notes to myself are some sort of attempt at reminding myself that there is a duty of truth in what one feels, in how one is, in how one lives even - or at least an honesty to know that one does not know.