CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 3 ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’
Hamlet, I, v, 166–7
Time moved on and I began the hormonally charged years of puberty. I don’t know if there was any connection, but it was then that I had two psychic experiences.
The first one happened in the bathroom at Rutland House, a long thin room about 10 foot long, with the loo at the back facing the door. It was while I was sitting on the loo – a good place to be for what happened subsequently – that I suddenly looked towards the door and there it was.
It was an ill-defined shape standing in the doorway. The outline was that of someone with a sheet thrown over them, but it was all a gritty grey colour and staring out of it was a pair of yellow eyes. They were looking right at me.
Literally frozen with fear, I looked down, desperately trying to think what to do. There was no escape – it was in the doorway.
When I finally forced myself to look back, it had gone.
I had no idea what it was. There was no question of a trick of the light. It was broad daylight and quite a clear day.
I never told anyone about this incident, but now I knew why my sister used to make me run to the bathroom to switch on the light. She always felt that there was something down there and she was afraid of it.
For a while I was very wary of going down that corridor, but whatever it was, I never saw it again.
Since then I have heard that water is an energy field that can be used by discarnate beings to manifest in the material world, and I have wondered about the old well that was just under the bathroom. During the war it was part of the emergency water supply, so obviously water ran in there somehow or other, maybe from a spring.
I was shaken by the experience, but gradually I got over it. After that, whenever people talked about ghosts or paranormal phenomena I would think back to that shape, but it didn’t set me off enquiring, which is what these things are meant to do. I would want to know about anything strange, to hear all the details, but I would leave it there. I didn’t start enquiring seriously into such matters until years later.
The other paranormal experience I had was very different. Again I was at home. One night I woke suddenly to find bright moonlight shining into my room, making it almost like daylight, and there, floating just above the foot of my bed, was a large light blue Buddha. With it came a beautiful feeling of peace. Although I am not a Buddhist, I do feel an affinity with Buddhism and possibly it was something I embraced in a previous life. Again, I never told anyone about this experience. I didn’t really know how to explain it, or what to say, so I just kept it to myself.
It was around this time that I was having the very unpleasant experience of waking up in the morning unable to move. Only after a superhuman effort could I suddenly break free of this, and I would dread going to sleep knowing what was waiting for me when I awoke.
I did ask people about this inability to move in the morning, but no one seemed to understand it. My father dismissed it with, ‘It will pass.’ Later on, through my metaphysical studies, I found the explanation. At night, while we sleep, our spirits leave our bodies and go onto another plane, the astral plane, and actively participate in the life there. Sometimes we can wake up before our astral bodies have fully returned, and this was what was happening to me. Fortunately, after a short time, it stopped. Perhaps I had just started visiting the astral plane and was taking a while to adjust to the experience.
Let me explain: when a spiritual being is ready and wants to incarnate, it isn’t just a bit of pure spirit suddenly plunged into a physical body; there’s a gradual descent through lower and lower vibrations. So imagine a bit of pure spirit which has to descend into something like a big heavy diving suit at the bottom of the sea, and that is our physical body. Our physical body is just a vehicle in which we can function on the material plane. The spirit lowers its vibrations gradually, starting with what we call the mental body, which is a slightly lower vibrational shell. Then it descends into an even lower vibration, which is the desire body getting an even thicker shell on it before descending into an etheric body. The etheric body is the lowest vibration before the physical body of which it is an exact replica. In it are all the plans for the type of being it is going to become and to some extent its destiny – just like an oak tree is inside an acorn. This is planted into the embryo and the vehicle for the incarnation begins to grow. The incarnating spiritual being is around during the conception and makes the final descent into the embryo, sealing off all memory within the first three months. Science has proved some of this in a way by the discovery of DNA, which gives an indication of your physical destiny, appearance and, quite often, how you are going to go out of this world. This would be shown by you being predisposed to a disease. Sceptics will ask, ‘Well, what if a cure is discovered for your predisposed disease?’ The answer to that is, ‘If a cure is discovered while you are here, that is part of your karma, it is not by chance. There are no accidents in God’s world, so by and large our destiny is laid out – but we do have free will.’
Now some people are in contact with people in the spiritual realms and can communicate with great clarity. This is done either telepathically by automatic writing or by actually using a medium. Either method will describe in detail what the spiritual realms are like. The philosophy of Silver Birch – a Native American who was a great teacher – was communicated through a medium called Maurice Barbanell. Barbanell would hold meetings at which Silver Birch would convey through him words of such outstanding wisdom that they were written down and, happily, these books can be bought and read to this day.
Other people work consciously on the astral plane. Rudolf Steiner was apparently able to have meetings there with people who were physically far away and he was able to remember clearly all that happened.
When we sleep we visit the astral plane and when we return we have no recollection of this because it is our mind that has gone out and not our brain. However, there is an exercise for developing the ability to remember more of these astral visits. As you are slipping into sleep, try to keep your consciousness with you. After a while you will find that you are able to do this for longer and longer periods. Also make the effort to actively participate in your dreams – try to have some say in what is going on. Instead of your dream being something you are looking at, you are there in it, so involve yourself – you can. Learning to participate in your dreams can bring you useful insights into your life and help you to move forward.
I knew nothing of this during my teenage years, but it was at this time that I started trying to find out more about what everything meant. I knew there were answers out there somewhere, but where?
I was driven by two great fears, both of which really emerged during adolescence. The first was the fear of death. I was so frightened of it that I could not talk about it. Just to see the word would trigger the fear. I couldn’t believe that something as sophisticated as a human being could just end.
This fear was especially acute when my father had to go out and visit people with an infectious disease. I was always terrified that he would bring it back. This went on for years. I was particularly frightened during the big polio epidemic of 1949. This was in the days before the vaccine was discovered. It is amazing in fact how rarely doctors contract a disease like this from their patients. It’s probably because their immune systems are so tough. But their bravery is taken for granted.
Generally my father never discussed his patients, though I remember him once talking about going out to see a miner who had his whole leg ripped off, right up to the groin, in some machinery. He had died of his injury. But that was really the only time I remember my father speaking about the people he had treated.
I myself didn’t have any serious illnesses during my childhood. I was very fortunate. I didn’t have anything, apart from measles, and that very mildly. I remember the whole school went down with chicken pox once and there were only four of us who didn’t get it and we were put in the isolation ward. My sister was pretty healthy too. I think I remember her having mumps at one point, but that was all.
The closest I had come to death in any form was when I was about 12 or 13 and was home for the summer holidays.
At that time my Great Aunt Ede was living with us in the room next to mine. She was small and thin and smoked like a chimney all day long and drank Wincarnis fortified wine. She was always asking me to get a bottle for her – I didn’t mind, as I was very fond of her.
Then one morning my mother came in with a cup of tea for me, which was unheard of, and she said, ‘Auntie Ede has died.’ As she went back downstairs, I realized the tea had been meant for my aunt.
While I was getting dressed, I kept thinking, ‘In the next room, my aunt is lying dead.’ I’d never seen anyone dead. So I made myself go in and have a look.
It was something of an anticlimax. Auntie Ede was lying there quite peacefully and to my surprise I didn’t feel anything particularly. As I stood there looking at her, my only thought was, ‘I wonder if you’ve got any sweet coupons left,’ which, I know, was dreadful.
As far as I was concerned Auntie Ede had just gone. I didn’t think about where she’d gone. Even though I was afraid of death, when I saw her lying there like that, all I felt was the realization that she wouldn’t be there anymore. I did say goodbye, but that was all. I didn’t think beyond that.
Death was still frightening, and now more immediate. A little later on I suddenly started to get palpitations. It was probably just an adolescent hormonal thing, but I was convinced there was something seriously wrong with me and I was going to die. I walked around very carefully for a couple of days, just in case any sudden movement finished me off, and finally I thought I’d better tell my father.
I waited until he’d finished surgery then knocked on the door.
He said, ‘Yes, come in.’
This time I was very polite and formal in my father’s surgery. Besides, it was hardly a giggling matter. I said simply, ‘I think I’ve got something wrong with me.’
I said ‘It’s my heart. It’s palpitating. I think it’s quite serious.’
‘Come here,’ was his response.
I walked cautiously towards him and to my horror, he reached out and pushed me, punched me almost, in the chest. I crashed backwards into the wall, thinking, My God! You’ve killed me!
‘Look,’ said my father, ‘I’ve got enough all day with people being ill. I don’t want you coming in at the end of surgery adding to my problems.’
I stared at him in amazement then got up and walked out, thinking, Great! A doctor who doesn’t care about his own family!
I felt quite indignant for a while and then as I calmed down I suddenly realized that I felt all right. I wasn’t going to die after all. And from that moment the palpitations disappeared.
I don’t know how my father knew it wasn’t anything serious. He was not a violent man and that single punch – more of a hefty shove, really – was the only time he ever laid hands on me. He had probably seen me walking around carefully thinking I might die on the spot. But what he did was totally right – it snapped me out of it and I didn’t have to go knocking on the surgery door again.
My other great fear was also one which led me to look into esoteric philosophy. This was just as strong as my fear of death and may at first seem strange. But sometimes I would look up at the stars and think of a spaceship with self-generating fuel setting off in a straight line. I would imagine it going on and on, and on and on, and on and on and on and on and on… Then there would come a point when my brain felt that it was going to explode and I would have what we now call a panic attack. I was terrified by infinity.
The thing was, there was something different out there, something beyond our comprehension. We were incapable of understanding it. Why?
I wanted to know more. I needed to know more. No one had taught us about anything like that at school and my parents hadn’t either. It was particularly unnerving to think that there was this conspiracy of silence. Something inside me said, There is some information here that I’m not getting. I wanted to get it.
I didn’t know where to turn. I tried the Church. We weren’t great churchgoers in our family and I had never been sent to Sunday school or anything like that. My father was quite friendly with the local vicar, but that was a social thing – doctors, vicars and MPs were respected members of society and they got together. Reverend Butterton was a nice old guy, but we’d only go to church, other than for weddings, funerals and so on, about once or twice a year. So I asked the school chaplain instead. But he wouldn’t answer my questions and neither would the headmaster. I even had arguments with them over it. That started quite early on, when I was around 11 or so.
At home there weren’t any answers either. My sister and I never discussed anything significant. We weren’t particularly close at that age. I was always very much the little boy, the junior. So I couldn’t get any information from her.
Strangely, I didn’t blame my parents for not telling me whatever it was. I didn’t think they even knew, because they would have told me if they had. It didn’t seem to me that such questions bothered them that much. My father was simply getting on with keeping people alive and my mother was a wonderful hard-working mother.
Soon I realized that the grown-ups I looked to for answers couldn’t tell me what I wanted to know. It ought to have been part of my education, but it wasn’t. And no one else was even asking these sort of questions. I felt totally alone.
This wasn’t as bad as it may sound, however, as in those days it was the norm to have to find your own way. You were left to find out quite important things for yourself. Nowadays of course everybody talks about everything all the time – you see people opening up their hearts on television every day – but back then you had the feeling that it was up to you to find the answers to any questions you had.
It was similar if you had a problem of any kind – you didn’t go to counsellors, you just had to sort yourself out. I’m not saying it was good or bad, and in fact it was lonely in many ways, but the idea was that keeping a stiff upper lip was good for you. It was quite a tough attitude, but was pretty much the attitude of the day. And people will be born into a certain era because it’s right for them, so in some way or other that was right for me. I think that growing up during the Second World War did make me self-reliant, so at some level I must have needed that. Certainly I didn’t feel in any way deprived or badly treated because no one had the answers I craved. That was just the way it was.
Now, looking back, I am certain that my two great fears were deliberately given to me, and I can see the purpose behind them. It was the fear of death that led me to find out what happens after death and it was the fear of infinity that made me look beyond the material world. So I thank my higher self for giving me those fears, because they led me to search for understanding. They set me on the right path.
So I would say look at your fears, because overcoming those fears, or even simply facing them, is something that’s going to help you. There’s always something good in your fears. They’re not very nice – in fact they’re horrible – but if you can overcome them, you will have taken a great step forward. It may be that you don’t even need to overcome them but just to look at them and see where they might lead you. Realize that fear is there for a reason. It will give you a greater understanding of yourself. All fears can be overcome.
One fear I had to face up to was moving on to the senior school at Oakwood Park. But once I was there, I soon got used to it. It had a very different atmosphere from the junior school, but we all had a lot more freedom there.
Oakwood Park had been a hotel and golf course before the war and was in a beautiful setting facing Conway Mountain. I spent two years there before returning to the main building back at Colwyn Bay to complete my education. My classroom was in the former cocktail bar and overlooked a large lawn. I remember spending most of my time looking out of the window.
One day it was particularly interesting, as a small herd of Welsh ponies arrived on the lawn and stood around grazing while a mare started foaling. In a very short time the foal was born and within minutes the mother was pushing it with her nose, trying to get it to stand on its gangly legs. Eventually she succeeded and it was heart-warming to watch her gently nosing it as it wobbled about as though on stilts. Soon the herd set off again, the long-legged foal lunging and lurching at its mother’s side, and I marvelled at how the herd instinctively knew when the foal was able to keep up with it. The whole process had taken under two hours. I learned a lot in the classroom that day, but not from the teachers.
Though we had a lot more free time at the senior school, on Monday evenings between the hours of six and eight it was compulsory to pursue a hobby. There was a wide variety to choose from, but they all seemed to demand a lot of mental or physical energy. I stood with my friend Tuckey in front of a notice board displaying all the options and we struggled to find something that was not too exacting.
Behind us the door to the school hall was open, revealing a small group of boys lounging about on the back seats. Some had their feet over the seat in front of them, one was reading a comic and another was yawning. Without a word, Tuckey and I started walking towards them.
As we joined the loungers, we became aware of a small group of senior boys at the other end of the hall having an altercation with a master. We could not hear what was being said, but suddenly all the senior boys turned and left the hall. The master paused for a moment, looked at us, and then, as he slowly walked towards us, said, ‘I am afraid that you are all that’s left of the school dramatic society.’
That’s how my acting life began. At least that’s how I remember it but in hindsight I think that Tuckey had already decided and took me with him. He went on to become a very successful theatre director.
It would be good to say there had been a strong vocational calling to do drama. There hadn’t, not at that point. But I do know that nothing happens by accident and that there is no such thing as a coincidence. It was meant to be.
My friend and I went on to become the leading lights of the society, both of us in turn winning the drama prize, in my case when I appeared in Ibsen’s Enemy of the People. However, for the first few years I was given all the female parts, including Lady M. in Shakespeare’s unmentionable.
My mother came up to see me in this. She was a keen amateur actress and directed all the plays for the Townswomen’s Guild of Ilkeston. This was the first time she had managed to see me in anything since the curtain incident and I was eager to please her. I got through the performance without grinding to a halt and afterwards I was expecting a few nice comments, but instead, without any preamble, she started to give me notes on how I could improve my performance. I can’t even remember what they were, as I was too busy thinking she could have said, ‘Well done, but…’ However, she did mean well and her notes were no doubt a big contributing factor to my eventual success in the school dramatic society.
‘Expectation and desire are bride and bridegroom.’
Not everything went well, however. Music was important to me, but I was bad at it. I wanted to be able to sing and I couldn’t. There was a school choir – in fact there was a concert choir with Penrhos that did the Messiah – but I would never have got in it. This was really my first experience of wanting to be good at something but not making it. I dreamed about being able to get up and sing, but I could never hold a tune properly.
Instead I took up the piano, then, after a year, transferred to the trumpet. I desperately wanted to be a really good trumpet player and I practised away and practised away. In vain. The neighbours in Ilkeston always knew when I was home – they’d hear an awful trumpet noise blasting out of the back room. I was never any good.
I did, however, have the distinction of being the only trumpet player in the school. In fact I was a kind of oddball because I was the only one. I desperately wanted to play with other people and sadly there wasn’t a school band or orchestra. Once I even went and asked my father if I could join the Salvation Army, because they were the only band in the area, and he said that wasn’t the right reason for joining, which was quite right, so that was it. Nevertheless, in the school music competition, which took place every year, I used to play something accompanied on the piano. I did ‘Jerusalem’ once wearing my rugby blazer and the adjudicator said he thought I should stick to rugby and forget the trumpet.
Taking up the trumpet, what does that tell you? A single instrument blasting out – you can’t get more individualistic than that! I was beginning to want to stand out in some way.
I started to have a go at anything that excited or interested me, even – or especially – if I couldn’t do it. I’m still like that – if there’s something I think I can’t do, I will try to do it all the same.
Back when I was about 17 or 18, I desperately wanted a car and our maid Renée’s husband Sam had just bought one. I can’t even remember the make of it now, but it was a strange contraption mainly made out of wood. I’d just got my driving licence and I went with Sam to Newstead Abbey, Byron’s former home, to collect it and drove him back. It wasn’t far, 15 miles maybe, and in those days there wasn’t so much traffic on the road, but I never thought about insurance, tax or anything like that, and it was quite a difficult car to drive. It was amazing that Sam let me do it, really, but I did have a great rapport with Sam and Renée. Their daughter, Janet, still writes to me occasionally – it’s been a great friendship.
Roughly around the same time that I drove the car for the first time, a friend of mine had a motorbike.
‘I’m leaving it at school during the holidays,’ he told me.
‘Oh, it’s a really nice bike,’ I said wistfully.
‘Well, you can borrow it if you want.’
I hadn’t got tax, insurance or a licence. I said, ‘Oh, yes.’
‘Can you ride a motorbike?’
‘Yeah.’
I’d never ridden a motorbike in my life and this was a BSA 250cc, quite a powerful bike. I don’t know why my parents let me do it or what I’d told them I was doing. I just might have said I was bringing it on the train…
Anyway, I set off optimistically from Colwyn Bay, wearing goggles and a leather helmet like a Japanese kamikaze pilot, and stayed in first gear for the first 20 miles because I didn’t know how to change gear.
By the time I reached Snake Pass there was a snowstorm. I was only wearing a light raincoat and the snow kept building up on my goggles. Finally, I got a nosebleed and had to stop. I pulled in at the Cat and Fiddle.
As I stumbled through the door, all snow and blood, the barman said, ‘We’re closed.’
‘I’m a traveller in distress!’
‘We’re still closed.’
I stormed back out and the annoyance from that encounter – I was tempted to write ‘anger’ there but I don’t get angry and I don’t like to see it in others – got me going and I carried right on to Ilkeston. I can’t remember how long it took me. I fell off twice, skidding in the snow. But I could ride a motorbike when I got home.
I was actually quite ill by then and had to stay in bed for two days. But I’d done it.
That’s what I was like then – if there was something I really wanted, I wouldn’t think about the consequences or the legalities, I’d just get on with it. In some ways it was completely reckless.
In other ways, though, I was quite shy. I did once summon up the courage to ask one of Beech House’s maids, a girl called Gwendoline, to meet me behind the school pavilion, but we just spent all our time talking about when we could see each other again. I wasn’t helped by the fact that two of my friends were hiding behind nearby bushes and sniggering. I never did date Gwendoline again, though she always smiled at me in the school corridors.
My fears and unanswered questions apart, the last years of Rydal were enjoyable. I was a prefect and head of house and played for the school at cricket and rugby. Most of the time in my last year of sixth form was spent playing canasta, which was all the rage.
I had also developed a passion for the cinema. Every Saturday night in the winter term at Rydal films would be shown in the school hall. Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, Will Hay and Old Mother Riley were my favourites – all the old films of the ’30s.
When I was in the sixth form, most afternoons my friends and I were able to go out to the matinées in Colwyn Bay. We were only supposed to go four times a term by special pass, but we were never caught. Of course it all mounted up and wasn’t cheap. Often we would club together to buy a single ticket and one of us would go in, nip to the loo and open the fire door to the rest of us. Anyone seeing one boy go into the toilet and six come out would have wondered what was going on, but we were never caught at that either. I probably saw more films in those two years than I have in all the years since.
The film that excited me beyond measure was The Jolson Story, a musical about Al Jolson’s life. There was one scene where as a young boy he suddenly stood up in a theatre and started to sing. He had a beautiful voice and I remember thinking, My God, if I only could stand up and sing like that… I recognized then the exhibitionism involved in acting – the showman side of it, the showing off. It’s a very immature thing really. But I walked out of the cinema absolutely enthralled with his performance. Jolson was a great showman – he was the first entertainer to have a causeway constructed in the theatres where he appeared so he could go out and get right amongst his audience. He would take any song and hit it beautifully, just punch it over to the audience, and all you could do was take it and enjoy it, and you wouldn’t have it any other way. That was the impact of that man and I absolutely loved him. I bought not only every record of his I could lay my hands on but also the sheet music, which I would hammer out on the piano and play on the trumpet.
Later of course I found out that he was an absolute monster – a horrendous guy! He would take songs that people had written and give them virtually nothing for them. He would insist his name was put on them as joint writer… But to be like that, to have that confidence and that dash, you’ve got to have a sort of arrogance, I suppose.
I thought that all actors were full of confidence. That’s why, in spite of the acting I’d done and the prize I’d received, I thought I’d be no good at it. Actors seemed to have lots of self-confidence and personality, and I was very shy. So, although I longed to be an actor, I thought it was an unrealistic ambition, just a dream. I didn’t tell anyone about it.
By then my sister had left school and gone on to agricultural college. There she met a fellow student and they got married. My father helped set them up in a little 40-acre farm in Markfield, Leicestershire. They bred pigs and it was a pretty tough existence, but they managed to keep going.
I was taking chemistry, biology and physics in the sixth form and the idea was that I would follow in the footsteps of my father and grandfather and get a place at St Bartholomew’s. Although my heart was not committed to medicine, my august predecessors were a persuasive presence.
I disliked chemistry and physics, but enjoyed biology. It was taught by Mrs Olive James, who was a war widow, I believe. She gave me extra tuition at her house in Llandudno and I liked her very much. She also liked me, but I didn’t have the confidence to take anything further. However, I got a good grade in my biology exam, though not in physics and chemistry. I would have to retake those before I could go to Bart’s.
Then fate intervened. During the summer holidays I received my call-up papers for National Service.