Four visions
By Nicholas Hagger
Visions: rapture
I was “rapt”: I felt the ‘divine presence’ steal up suddenly from below and fill my soul, slow my breathing, lock my body rigid as a fakir’s. I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes. I surrendered the deepest crevices of my soul and was given more visions: of beautiful golden furniture, of temple columns, of a brown statue head, of the celestial curtain, and then, marvellously, of the diamond in luminous blue light. This was the first time I had seen the colour blue in my secret journeys, and it stood out in my memory afterwards, even though it blended into the Golden Flower and was followed by perhaps half an hour of light flashing up into my inner night like a dawn.
Later I wrote in my Diaries: “Visions again. So many I can’t remember them…. There were gold items of furniture (e.g. table leg) and a lot of old masters and temple columns, one old brown statue head, a celestial curtain, the diamond in blue light, and a yellow flower. A lot of light breaking, like a dawn turning into morning or like the sun coming out.”…
Visions: three more raptures
At twilight I ate peacefully at the dining-table and looked across Chelsea at the lights in dusky windows. I sat rigid for a while, then stood up and left Ann, went through to my bedroom and lay on my bed in the dark. Soon I was breathing slowly and deeply, possessed, in union with the Light. After perhaps a quarter of an hour my breathing became heavy and reached a kind of sighing climax. Feeling thirsty I put out a hand. As my body recovered its sensation I felt satisfied behind my lungs….
I recorded this experience in my Diaries:
“I am aglow with the mystic Fire.” Two days later, on 19 April, I wrote in my Diaries:
I feel like St Paul – after reading passages from St Augustine and St Gregory in Dom Cuthbert Butler’s Western Mysticism. Both speak of the inner Light as the aim of mysticism, as God, as Being which is unchangeable…. I have had it what? Some twenty times since September?… Contemplative and active lives…. ‘Rapture’ is being snatched up.
After that quite abruptly I stopped going out. Instead I sat in my window at my leather-covered antique desk and looked down at the new plane-tree beneath me, behind which, like a heart, was hidden a magnolia. I drank gunpowder tea and pottered among my old papers and possessions, rooting myself and paring them down.
I was again ‘snatched’, this time while finishing a Saturday lunch on 22 April. Looking out over Chelsea, and feeling the peace rising up around me and enfolding me, I put down my spoon, pushed back my chair and sat cross-legged, hands clasped. Soon I was breathing deeply and sinking into a trance that made me rigid, so that I felt no discomfort in what would ordinarily have been an uncomfortable position. As I sank deeper I saw a wonderful pale blue light that blended with a dazzling white light like a diamond shining in the sun. I sighed in ecstasy. Stiffly I walked through to my bedroom and lay on the bed and the Light came and went again, only more faintly this time. I came slowly out of my trance. For the rest of the day I felt very creative, very alive, full of intimations of inner power.
I later wrote in my Diaries:
The second time this week I have been ‘rapt’…. Again I was sitting at my sitting-room table, looking down on the world beneath me, and again I felt an immense well-being come over me. Everything was good, I felt contented – at peace…. There was a glorious light blue light that blended with a dazzling white light of much greater circumference than I’ve ever seen before – almost like a diamond shining in the sun. It was not with me for long, but I went and lay down on my bed and the light came and went, faintly, again, and then I came slowly out of the trance. I had not felt my body at all, for about 45 minutes, and now I finished my pudding: raspberry fool.
I had another visitation a few days later, on 28 April…. The presence revealed itself again on the Friday evening. My breathing slowed and my fingers locked so that I again could not hold a spoon without difficulty. I closed my eyes and wandered into my bedroom. The white light came up with blue tints. I felt an ecstasy grow in me. I began to catch my breath and the white light grew brighter and bigger and brighter. Suddenly, there was a round halo before my closed eyes like a hoop of light, exactly the same as the sun-halo I had pinned near my Tibetan mandala. I gave a gasp and fell away. It was then shortly after 10 p.m.
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Nicholas Hagger is a poet, man of letters, cultural historian and philosopher. He has lectured in English Literature at universities in Baghdad, Tripoli (Libya) and Japan (where he was a Professor), and is the author of more than 35 books. These include a substantial literary output of nearly 1,500 poems, over 300 classical odes, two poetic epics, five verse plays and a thousand stories, travelogues and innovatory works in literature, history and philosophy.
My Double Life Volumes 1 & 2 is a writer’s successful search for meaning, purpose and truth, and emergence from a Dark Night of the Soul to illumination and unitive, universal consciousness during the Cold War. It is published by O Books March 2015. Vol 1 ISBN: 978-1-84694-590-8 (Paperback) £25.99 $45.95. Vol 2 ISBN: 978-1-78099-714-8 (Paperback) £34.99 $57.95