LET’S TALK ABOUT GUIDES AND ANGELS

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: LET’S TALK ABOUT GUIDES AND ANGELS : YouTube talk 3a © Nigel Peace, 2023

As a callow youth preparing a university thesis on parapsychology, I visited a middle-aged man in north-west England who was some kind of psychic artist. It was a life-changing event. John Cotton was a quiet, humble chap who had spontaneously developed an extraordinary ability to produce beautiful oil portraits, apparently of spiritual beings. This was despite his being a lay reader in the Church of England and never having had an art lesson in his life. And despite being in trance with his eyes closed.

In his small home studio, as sacred music played in the background, paint and brushes flew about at breakneck speed while John muttered in Italian. Within fifteen minutes he had painted a superb portrait of a Franciscan monk for me.

A deeply committed Christian who rejected Spiritualism, John nevertheless believed, through his strong clairaudience, that he was guided in this work by the Renaissance Master, Pietro Perugino. My painting was indeed signed ‘PP’. In his later healing work, he also trusted implicitly in the guidance of seven spirit helpers led by an Austrian surgeon, Karl.

All spiritual mediums tell us that they have at least one special guide, or gatekeeper, and there is a common belief that indeed every one of us has a guide, if not a whole team of spirit helpers. It’s a comforting thought, even if most of us are completely ignorant of this celestial help. That doesn’t stop many people assuming that any significant event in their lives has been orchestrated from above. Only the good events, of course. When individuals suffer traumatic or tragic events, one wonders why their guides were asleep on the job.

As we chatted later over tea and biscuits, John reached for a drawing pad and quickly sketched another pencil portrait for me, without once looking at the paper. This was of a Presbyterian minister, Jamie McIntyre, another spirit helper whose earthly life in nineteenth century Scotland I have since confirmed. But who was the monk?

“This is your spirit guide,” began John. “He… oh, I’m sorry, I can’t give you his name.” Can’t, won’t or not allowed to? John merely smiled apologetically.

The beautiful portrait and its mysterious identity would haunt me for years and I visited one medium after another for an answer. Who is my spirit guide, please? A few times I was met with, “Sorry, I can’t say. I’ll give you your money back.” At other times I received a confident, “Oh yes, he’s a Native American Indian chief…” or “He’s a wise and holy Persian magus…” Ancient Chinese doctors and South American Shamans also found their way into this befuddled list of candidates.

Mine is not an unusual experience. It turns out that virtually everyone has one of these highly evolved guides, and Native Americans in particular seem to be working overtime in the afterlife. Moreover, it seems that spirit guides are always male.

That aside, if we believe in an afterlife there must be many spiritual souls who would want to help us in this world, not least our own friends and family. And those among them who had special skills in, say, medicine, art or music, may wish to continue their work through us.

Apart from John Cotton, there have been the intriguingly evidential accounts of ‘Doctor Lang’ who performed operations through the amazing spiritual healer George Chapman, and the medium Rosemary Brown who claimed that her music was dictated to her by Debussy, Chopin and others.

The great majority of us, however, have no way of knowing who our guides are and what they’re up to. And it simply isn’t good enough just to assume that they’re there and actively involved in our lives.

From my own early years, there were many psychic experiences, especially precognitive dreams and synchronicities. One example – and you’ll need to suspend your disbelief here – was the regular spiritual guidance I received from car registration plates.

With my own family scornful of my alternative interests, one evening at a development circle I discovered to my astonishment that I had a healing gift. On my way home, still bemused, I realised that I’d been following the same car all the way. For some reason, I read the registration plate LUK 946 E as a Bible reference: the Gospel of Luke, chapter 9, verses 4 to 6. In this paragraph, Jesus commissions his disciples to go out healing the sick.

Yes, it felt like a ‘message’ from another world, encouraging me that I was on the right track in my spiritual journey. But should I believe that, in a small office somewhere in Heaven, a Franciscan monk was checking out New Testament quotes while scrolling through Google maps and ANPR software on a celestial computer?

No, this was pure synchronicity. In a heightened state of awareness, and if we are lucky, sometimes the deep unconscious arrives in harmony with the conscious mind and its understanding becomes visible to our senses. Like overhearing a conversation between strangers on the bus that exactly answers the problem that’s been plaguing us, meaningful coincidences like this are wonderful and valuable, and prove the incredible power of our minds’ psychic senses.

But they are surely nothing whatsoever to do with spirit guides. We are accessing that higher state of consciousness where, as Carl Jung would say, everything is connected.

Dave was on the production line of a steelworks when a section of pipe slipped and molten hot iron at 1500 oC poured towards him. “I froze,” Dave told reporters, “but then out of nowhere I felt something push me hard out of the way. It must have been an angel.”

Bella was driving steadily along the motorway when a speeding car crashed right in front of her. “I was in shock,” she said, “but an angel took control of my car and steered it to safety. I swear I didn’t touch the wheel. It was a miracle.”

No, primitive reflexes in our bodies create automatic muscular responses to danger, faster than conscious thought. We get ourselves to safety without having any idea how we did it. There are no guardian angels involved. In any case, why didn’t the other driver’s guardian angel prevent him crashing?

In Part Two of this talk, we’ll take a closer look at angels…