Partnering with ghosts of the other world
Recently, quite apart from other subjects which have become contentious, the #MeToo movement has gained momentum in India, shredding reputations, drawing sympathy and/or indignation and evoking a whole range of emotions. Elsewhere in the world too, there are numerous issues keeping matters on the boil, dividing opinions, be it Brexit, US President Donald Trump’s policies and announcements, Russian meddling or Chinese machinations. Even an august body like the Swedish Academy, the organisation that decides the Nobel Prize for Literature said it will not announce an award this year, after it was riven by a scandal over sexual assault allegations. The scandal is the biggest to hit the prize since it was first awarded in 1901.
Politically and socially, a somewhat malicious hand seems to be stirring the pot continuously. What if somebody suggested that all this unrest and a growing number of unsavoury expose’s are being orchestrated from the other world? That it is being in done in retaliation for or as a reaction to the callous, thoughtless manner in which the rights of the denizens of the other world are being trampled upon? Preposterous? Maybe, but it still deserves a thought in the light of recent and current happenings around the world and the well known ability of supernatural entities to manipulate human minds and activities.
On the one hand there is the fact that an increasing number of people seem to believe in the supernatural. A 2017 survey by Chapman University found that 52% of Americans believe places can be haunted by spirits, an increase of approximately 11% since 2015. On the other hand is the fact that the connections of the other world on and to earth are increasingly under threat due to a variety of factors linked to human expansion.
I’ve written earlier about the growing problem of homelessness amongst ghosts. In the case of a majority of ghosts who are thoughtlessly evicted, they make sure that the new residents cannot flourish in the new building or “developed” area. And if the evicted ghost happens to be of a “low variety”, after wrecking the dreams and health of those who have wrecked its abode, it takes to wandering around, staying for short periods as and where it desires but always taking misfortune where it goes. Clearly, homelessness amongst ghosts is a major problem, growing steadily as development takes a toll on their abodes.
In earlier times, there were certain prescribed rituals and do’s and don’t’s which ensured that a ghost or ghosts who were about to become homeless were compensated in some way and naturally, that way had to be mutually agreed upon. Today too, it would be worth taking earlier practices into account instead of “de-homing” a ghost, particularly nature spirits, in an ad-hoc manner and harming oneself and a lot else in the process. In Iceland, even today, authorities ask psychics to communicate with nature spirits and sometimes alter their building plans for roads or houses to avoid disturbing them.
As Gabrielle Blocker has pointed out, all cultures speak of nature spirits and their interaction with humans. “In ancient times… the interaction between these two worlds was far more common. The portals between these two worlds were more easily crossed…”. In the dimensional portal which invisible other world denizens occupy time is not the same as in the world of humans, and yet “…children perceive these beings that are very real indeed, they just don’t vibrate on the same frequency and in the same dimension as we do - they don’t have physical bodies. We sometimes call them the invisible people… While growing up we have closed our capacity to see them, we have closed our third eye though we were born with it open…”
Nature spirits or elementals, Blocker explains, work for the well-being of plants, trees and animals as well as the different elements they are associated with. They vibrate at a higher frequency than ours; they live in a much lighter world made of light and love. They don’t understand the negative and destructive human behavior towards nature. The different elementals were first classified by the Swiss doctor, astrologer and mystic Paracelsus in the 16th century.
Earth elementals included gnomes, pixies, sprites and trolls. Air elementals included fairies, elves, sylphs, etc. Water elementals included undines and nymphs, naiads, wyverns, etc. Fire elementals included salamanders who are said to feed on the fire. There are numerous stories of love unions between nature spirits and humans. In certain shamanic traditions there are also children that result from such unions.
According to Wikipedia, Paracelsus conceived human beings to be composed of three parts, an elemental body, a sidereal spirit, and an immortal divine soul. Elementals lacked this last part, the immortal soul. However, by marriage with a human being, the elemental and its offspring could gain a soul. The Jain concept differs on this. “In Jainism, there is a superficially similar concept within its general cosmology, the ekendriya jiva, ‘one-sensed beings’ with bodies or kaya that are composed of a single element, albeit with a 5-element system of earth, water, air, fire, and plant, but these beings are actual physical objects and phenomena such as rocks, rain, fires and so on which are endowed with souls or jiva…”
Obviously, the number and types of invisible entities living on earth is vast and the threat to their habitat from human expansion is replete with dangerous consequences at many tangible and intangible but very important levels. What then, is the answer to this strange problem ? After all, times change and development is an integral part of change. Wise people, those who are sensitive to the other world or have active links with it, those who have had or heard about supernatural experiences or displacement incidents and the consequences generally try and make their peace with the ghost or ghosts to move out peacefully.
Many even arrange for the alternative or alternatives suggested by the ghost. Some spirits request a small bit of undisturbed space at another or a new location, even a tiny room in a new building. Curiously, very few want to leave earth. Wiccans and followers of nature-based religions have already made a start in trying to establish a useful dialogue between the seen and the unseen worlds. Perhaps, to end the growing chaos on earth and the threat to its environment, it’s time to re-activate in a bigger way a meaningful partnership with invisible but powerful beings from the other world.