Readers who follow our other websites across Syntagma Media’s network will know we have for a while had an informal supplement, or grouping of blogs, concerned with spiritual and paranormal topics.

Now that A Spirit of Place is no longer with us, owing to the author losing interest in writing about places she had never visited, we have just two sites left in this section: this one and Supernatural, authored by Deborah Woehr.

However, in September we are going to extend the group with a number of new sites based on different topic areas. One we are very hopeful of setting up arrived as a result of A Spirit of Place and may manifest in the form of a blog written directly from Arunachala, that mystical place which was the home of Ramana Maharshi in the first half of the 20th century.

Others are in the pipeline and will make up a new supplement called MetaSyntagma. Stay tuned for more information.

Another month, another book about “cosmic ordering”. Another text telling us, at inordinate length, how to “ask the universe for everything we’ve ever wanted”.

If Jonathan Cainer’s book was just like that I wouldn’t be reviewing it here. Unusually for a psychological can-do book of this genre, Cainer is more concerned with some genuine spiritual principles, and the book is full of insights and intuitions that continue to strike chords as the text progresses.

Jonathan Cainer is an astrologer who writes a column for the UK Daily Mail and a number of websites. His work is often described as “spookily accurate” even though the most people read are their Sun sign forecasts which can be said to describe one-twelfth of the population. Spookily accurate, however, is how I would describe Cosmic Ordering — how to make your dreams come true. Don’t let the subtitle put you off, it was probably concocted by the marketing folk over at Collins, the publisher.

Where this book differs from the ones we’ve seen before, is that Cainer puts himself in the role of the “force” or “entity” — call it what you will — that fulfils your cosmic orders (for want of a better phrase).

At first I thought, “he can’t possible keep this up” — playing “God” is a difficult enough task even for God. But somehow he pulls it off. There’s a feeling of genuineness about the writing and a depth of nuance that prevents it becoming yet another get-rich-quick slim volume. Here’s a small sample of the text:

There is another factor that can come into play here too. No matter how many chances I put before you, you have to seize them and make them work. That requires a degree of level-headedness on your part, but passion and perspective are like sunshine and starlight — you rarely see both at the same time. As soon as you have a lot of one, the other vanishes.

This book is now at half-price at Amazon.co.uk (£3.99/$7.38). Well worth the entry fee for an interesting read whether you believe in ordering from the cosmos or not.

Here’s another interesting emailed quotation from Andrew Cohen. I won’t comment on it as there’s no need. If you want to sign up for the emails click Andrew’s name at the foot of the quotation.

A Doubtless Conviction
Fourteen billion years ago, something came from nothing. The energy and intelligence that initiated that explosion is the same energy that is driving this whole process right now. It is what I call the evolutionary impulse or creative principle. And at the leading edge of development, that same evolutionary impulse emerges in human awareness as the spiritual impulse, the urge to become more conscious. It is experienced as the mysterious longing to develop spiritually, the ecstatic compulsion to become more awake and more aware. That impulse is what I call the authentic self. And anybody who experiences this authentic self will realize, upon reflection, that it is a completely different part of the self than the ego. The ego and the authentic self are parallel lines that never meet.

The ego is full of unresolved issues and unfulfilled desires, deeply fearful and ambivalent about the very fact of being alive. But the authentic self is only interested in creating the future. And that part of your self and that part of my self is not self-conscious and is not afraid of life. In the authentic self, there’s not a trace of ambivalence. There’s no hesitation. There’s no doubt. There’s no existential confusion. And it’s not a choice that needs to be made. The authentic self, in you and in me, once we awaken to it, is already completely committed. Absolute conviction is inherent in the nature of the authentic self, and that is why when any one of us awakens to that self, we experience an intoxicating joy and confidence, a fearless passion and pure doubtless conviction about being here and doing things right in order to create a better future. Why? Because we recognize that that is the very reason we are here.

Andrew Cohen

Plotinus, the Neoplatonist, has always been one of my favourite spiritual writers. Here’s a short passage on the soul from his most famous work, The Enneads:

We may treat of the Soul as in the body — whether it be set above it or actually within it — since the association of the two constitutes the one thing called the living organism, the Animate.

Now from this relation, from the Soul using the body as an instrument, it does not follow that the Soul must share the body’s experiences: a man does not himself feel all the experiences of the tools with which he is working.

It may be objected that the Soul must however, have Sense-Perception since its use of its instrument must acquaint it with the external conditions, and such knowledge comes by way of sense. Thus, it will be argued, the eyes are the instrument of seeing, and seeing may bring distress to the soul: hence the Soul may feel sorrow and pain and every other affection that belongs to the body; and from this again will spring desire, the Soul seeking the mending of its instrument.

But, we ask, how, possibly, can these affections pass from body to Soul? Body may communicate qualities or conditions to another body: but — body to Soul? Something happens to A; does that make it happen to B? As long as we have agent and instrument, there are two distinct entities; if the Soul uses the body it is separate from it.

But apart from the philosophical separation how does Soul stand to body?

Clearly there is a combination. And for this several modes are possible. There might be a complete coalescence: Soul might be interwoven through the body: or it might be an Ideal-Form detached or an Ideal-Form in governing contact like a pilot: or there might be part of the Soul detached and another part in contact, the disjoined part being the agent or user, the conjoined part ranking with the instrument or thing used.

In this last case it will be the double task of philosophy to direct this lower Soul towards the higher, the agent, and except in so far as the conjunction is absolutely necessary, to sever the agent from the instrument, the body, so that it need not forever have to act upon or through this inferior.