18th September 1998

Sound waves of the shofar are uplifting

Rosh Hashanah goes by many names, because it means many things. I believe its most beautiful name, and its deepest meaning, is ‘The Day of Sounding the Shofar’.

The notes of the Shofar set the whole body trembling, as though the music is resonating through every level of our being, as though God is calling to us.

The mediaeval teacher Maimonides wrote that the shofar’s voice was created to proclaim a spiritual revival. “Awake, ye sleepers,” he declared, “and ponder your deeds. Remember your creator and go back to him in penitence. Be not of those who miss reality in their hunt after shadows, who waste their years in seeking after vain things which cannot profit or deliver. Look well to your souls and consider your acts. Forsake each of you his evil ways and thoughts and return to God, that he may have mercy on you.”

Awake ye sleepers. Centuries after Maimonides lived, humanity is waking from a psychic slumber which may have lasted almost a thousand years. We are rediscovering the spiritual core of our souls.

I believe this is part of a cycle. In the centuries before we learned to write – in the years before history, because history is writing – we had psychic powers beyond our imagination. Powers so vast that even now we talk of them, and are thrilled by the memories passed down from generation to generation.

Superhuman strength, as Samson possessed. The power to become animals, as the Greek gods and the native Americans possessed. The gift of knowing all languages, telepathically – a faculty of the mind which was drummed out of our brains as we began living in cities, with too many of us crowded in upon each other. Imagine the telepathic confusion of a tenement block – now you know the meaning of the Tower of Babel.

All cultures hark back to a Golden Age, an Atlantis, a Dreamtime. Even Western man, in his culture of science, has created a myth of Von Däniken days, when aliens came to teach us geometry and architecture. Earlier this year archaeologists, using laboratory experiments, demonstrated that the massive blocks transported by Egyptian pharaohs to build the pyramids may have been moved by sound waves. Trumpets sounded and vibrations were set up and 100-ton rocks floated.

Does this science explain the Bible story of Joshua and the walls of Jericho? Or is the idea born of the myth?

We lost those powers. But they returned, when the Roman Empire was collapsing and Islam was being born. In Britain another Golden Age is remembered, when Celtic magic crackled throughout the country, and lake-spirits presented kings with swords of immortality, and men could put on the faces of their enemies. Vikings sailed to Iceland and America, and found lands where psychic powers had not been crushed by disbelief.

And once again we lost those powers. They came crashing down with the Crusades, when the West became infected with bloodlust and marched on the East. What followed? A millennium of war. There has not been a day since the First Crusade when one nation was not at war with a neighbour, or with itself. Mindpower is a spiritual commodity, of a part with peace and love. It does not thrive in wartime. And almost since proper records began, it has been wartime.

Awake ye sleepers. War doesn’t have to go on for ever. We can use our minds to conquer the physical urge for fighting. The cycle that took our gift away is bringing it back. Everyone sees it. For the first time in my lifetime, it is acceptable for anyone to discuss paranormal realities – telepathy, mind-over-matter, life after death, even aliens. And even God.

The Day of Sounding the Shofar is here, not just for this year but for a new millennium. We must let the sound waves lift us, and shatter our vicious ways. Then a 1,000-year regime of war can be destroyed – just as the walls came tumbling down when Joshua sounded the shofar.