Making Sense of the New Reality

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The Philosophy of 

Para-scientific Inquiry

 

 

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A British Society of Dowsers seminar

held at Cardiff University

March 5th, 2014

 

Copyright 2014: Nigel Twinn/The British Society of Dowsers

 

The right of Nigel Twinn and The British Society of Dowsers (BSD) to be identified as the joint Authors of this Work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

 

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Introduction

 

Dowsing is a timeless craft, which dates back to the very horizon of human history, and probably way beyond.  

 

Images from ancient Egypt show people apparently dowsing in a manner that would not look out of place today.  Civilisations across the world, and across the millennia, have used structured intuition to ‘divine’ their important places and sacred sites, and to locate sources of water for their inhabitants.  

 

In the modern world, dowsing is still used for finding supplies of fresh water, especially in the more arid parts of the globe, but it is also used by prospecting and utility companies and corporations, archaeological researchers, wellness practitioners and a whole host of individuals researching the impact of the natural world on the human realm.  As a practical skill, dowsing is in rude good health.

 

However, the very fact that dowsing is so widespread and has stood the test of time so well - yet it appears to have no rational explanation within the existing parameters of mainstream science - makes it some thing of a conundrum.

 

It has long been said that the path of rational progress, from one philosophical platform to the next, can be viewed to take place in three main stages - denial, derision and decoding.   Whilst there are still those who adopt one of the first two approaches to the existence and worth dowsing (perhaps for reasons that we will see suggested in the following presentations), the heart of the chase has moved on to the third - seeking an understanding of why dowsing might work, seemingly independent of time and space.

 

The outlook of science changed radically during the 20th Century, and it continues to do so today.   The old certainties of the Newtonian world, which still form part of the bedrock of our modern understanding of the cosmos, have progressively given way to a less well-defined, yet hugely more expansive, approach.  

 

In this rapidly self-dismantling universe, it is no longer satisfactory for dowsing to be regarded as just a useful way of extending our ability to find ‘stuff’.  In a world where information is coming to be regarded as a fundamental building block of reality (either personally, or collectively), the dowser’s ability to locate seemingly any kind of information, for almost any purpose, puts the craft at the cutting edge of discovery. 

 

With that in mind, it was decided to organise a trial seminar to discuss ‘what dowsing means’.   The response was enthusiastic and the feedback almost universally supportive.  Quite where we go from here, in an unfolding reality with such an apparent absence of form, is not clear.  However, we have clearly tapped into a particularly rich vein of thought - and it’s an exciting time to be a dowser! 

 

 

Nigel Twinn

March 2014

 

 

Making Sense of the New Reality

(a summary of the event for publication purposes)

 

 

This was a dowsing date with a difference.  Eschewing for a short while the gothic grandeur and muddy fields of practical dowsing, a self-selected sub-group of us chose to spend a day in the city centre of a constitutional capital.  Fun and philosophy may sound like strange bedfellows, but we found both in abundance for this first-of-its-kind event at Cardiff University.

 

I started dowsing, under the tutelage of Alan Neal, a couple of decades ago.  I soon came into contact with many skilled hobbyists and professional practitioners - people who could perform amazing feats of information retrieval from the cosmic ether, seemingly at will.  What I could never quite understand was why so many of them seemed satisfied with using their mind-boggling intuitive ability in the same way that I would use a chainsaw or a car - a valuable tool in the right hands, but no more than that.  Over the years, I came across other dowsers, who had also come to realise the far-reaching implications of that simple phrase ‘dowsing works’ - but those deeper aspects of the dowser’s craft never quite seemed to come to the surface.  In the end, as much out of desperation as desire, I decided to see who else shared my secret obsession with trying to view the whole of reality through the dowser’s portal.  A chance encounter with Andrew Edgar, a philosophy lecturer and also a BSD member, provided me with both the opportunity and a collaborator.  The die was cast.

 

I decided to open the batting myself, with a general introduction to the subject (as I saw it) - a catalogue of some of the BIG questions that dowsing inevitably throws into the ring.  We know dowsing works, and we even have an improving idea about how it might work.  But why does it work?  Why should it work?  What sort of an environment do we inhabit that enables, even requires, it to work?  Do we, as Hamish Miller and Barry Brailsford assert, co-create our own reality - using dowsing as a diagnostic tool and archive retrieval system?  Where does the cutting edge of consciousness fit into this picture - and why is dowsing so darned subjective?  How do we make any rational sense of the dowser’s straightforward access to the spirit world - and what does dowsing imply about the nature, and even the very existence, of time?  There seemed to be rather a lot of virtual rabbits coming out of the hat, and we hadn’t even got to the first comfort break!

 

Next up was Derek Woodhead, who helps to organise the Essential Bury St Edmunds dowsers in Suffolk.  Derek had only returned from a long break in Namibia (where he used to work for many years) the previous day, and I had no need to ask him to think outside of the box, as he’d probably had no opportunity yet to re-enter it.  Derek, who skilfully runs the insightful dowser’s line between science and spirituality, based his talk around the statements of the wise and the academic through the millennia.  From Rumi to Planck, Gandhi to Einstein, the great and the good have tried to describe the indescribable.  But take away the cultural and temporal context, and they could even be sat together around a table in an imaginary pub, using the phraseology of their day to portray much the same concepts, albeit from their own unique viewpoint.  Does the diviner need the divine?   Well, yes probably we do, but it all depends what you mean by ‘divine’.   Time for lunch, and the chance to reset the compass for the second half.

 

If anyone can sense the formless boundary between the realms of science and philosophy, it’s Jim Lyons.  An intuitive rationalist, who prefers to think of himself as a humble engineer, Jim has spent the latter part of his life retrieving facts and phenomena from beyond the accepted fringe with the assistance of dowsing, much to the delight of the Dowsing Research Group of the BSD.  True to the scientific model, Jim reaches through the veil to grasp ideas and concepts that back up his actuality as a dowser.  From there, he draws up his hypotheses and searches for the concrete output that will either refute or substantiate his reasoning - and it’s sometimes a bit of a revelation to appreciate how much of today’s bedrock science started out as just so much philosopher’s pipe-smoke.  Like each of the speakers, Jim is only too aware that consciousness is close to the heart of the quest.  His weapons of choice may be the Large Hadron Collider and the Hubble Telescope, but much of his ammunition is provided by the bits of bent wire and the bolt dangling from a piece of string.  Jim’s talks have both expanded in scope and coalesced in form over time.  Despite the easy-going down-to-earth persona, Jim is a hard man to pigeonhole, and his ever-quickening plasma of dowsing-supported ideas may yet be the closest we will get to a ‘theory of everything’.

 

Andrew Edgar was a philosophy lecturer long before he was drawn into the dowsing community - and his lively and intense presentation was very much the philosopher’s take on the dowser’s realm.  I am forever fascinated that so many new angles and aspects continue to be brought to bear on the diviner’s output.  Andrew’s approach was refreshingly novel, even in a dimension where novelty is the norm.  He explained that while natural science provides causal explanations, social sciences seek to provide understanding.  Clearly, various aspects of dowsing have elements of both approaches.  Drawing on his own academic heritage, he described the philosophical trail that led from Hume, via Popper to Kuhn - who emphasised the importance of building paradigms, and thereby effectively created the baseline for this seminar.  Andrew also introduced the concept of hermeneutics (the science of interpreting messages and meanings), which brought us right up to date - with the act of dowsing becoming understood to be in meaningful communication with, rather than just having a causal relationship with, the sites and phenomena that we dowse. 

 

The San Bushmen that Derek had worked with in Africa are no scientists, nor are they theologians (at least, not in the European sense of the word).  Yet, they have a worldview that works for them, using their own experience and heritage - and it is a story that is repeated the world over.   We dowsers have such an overwhelming deluge of untainted new information available to us, coupled with the great wealth of our original experience.  If we can’t make a workable picture of the cosmos out of all that, then  . . .    Andrew’s embryonic suggestion was that instead of trying to wedge the dowser’s worldview into a sub-set of physics, sociology or religion, maybe we should have the confidence and insight to treat dowsing (and its consequences) as a discipline in  its own right - with its own language, its own imagery and its own paradigm.  Talk about finishing on a high note.

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We actually ended the day with a discussion between the Panel and the floor, which could easily have seen us through to breakfast, but in the make-believe world of post-industrial capitalism, trains leave and cars need to be unparked.  It was a hugely encouraging start to a chain of discovery, which may yet lead us to understand those ineffable questions about the meaning of life - and why the SatNav in my car refuses to work in Wales.

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Many thanks indeed to Andrew and Grace Edgar for all their hard work in converting this wonderfully vague idea into a practical reality, to Cardiff University for kindly hosting our apparent eccentricity - and to Derek and Jim for showing such commitment by travelling so far to support us.

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Nigel Twinn

March 2014

 

 

 

 

Dowsing asks BIG questions

 

Nigel Twinn

 

Dowsing works for most people at least some of the time.  It is a ‘real’ phenomenon, within the bounds of human perception.

 

Dowsing can be enlightening, but also challenging.  It can be inspiring, but also disconcerting.  Dowsing is not for the insecure or the faint-hearted - scientifically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually or philosophically.

 

It is a journey of discovery and realisation - but for every aspiring Edmund Hillary or Neil Armstrong, there is the possibility of a Captain Scott or an Apollo 13.  Modern dowsing is cutting edge - exciting, cathartic and potentially profoundly life-changing.

 

I have always been surprised, even slightly disappointed, at the number of dowsers, even some very experienced and able practitioners, who are satisfied in using their new-found ability to find objects of various kinds - and that’s it.  It seems as if they are treating their mind-boggling skill a bit like learning to use a garden implement, or to drive a car.  You have acquired an additional ability that makes life easier, or more expansive, but in essence you are still in the same paradigm - just a couple of steps further up the same ladder.  To misquote the Buddha, there may only be one mountain, but there are many, many ladders available to the broad-minded seeker.

 

Once I had understood the basics of the art, I soon came to realise that dowsing was less of a non-technical innovation, and more of a virtual window on a wider view of reality.  It is something that subtly links the seen with the unseen, and the scientific with the spiritual, in a manner that all-but-defies description.  

 

It gradually dawned on me that whilst I could engage competently with the practicalities of horticulture or transport, my role (some might even say my destiny) might be more to consider the implications that flow from them - to be a narrator or facilitator, as much as a participant.     

 

With that in mind, I have tried to stand back a little from the outputs of dowsing, and to look at (or should that be sense) more closely what underpins the dowsing process - and, in turn, to try to understand what that process implies about the nature of the reality in which it is hosted.

 

To bring some very esoteric ideas and conjectures into a more manageable and accessible format, I resolved to deconstruct the somewhat rhetorical question ‘Dowsing works - so what!?’ into a number of major, yet digestible, areas for the consideration of anyone with an enquiring mind.   Dowsing asks some BIG questions, but can dowsers rise to the occasion? 

 

Perhaps we should start with a question closest to the familiar rational worldview.  Can we explain away finding water, or lost objects, without resorting to the mysteries of dowsing at all?  There are certainly those who feel they can. Maybe these abilities are just the result of detecting faint radiations, perhaps coupled with acute sensory perceptions.  If we adopt a strictly rationalist standpoint, this might be just about possible - but it is right at the edge of credibility.   It is rather crudely seeking to fit the ‘science’ of dowsing into the current paradigm.  Whilst this approach is not to be decried as a line of reasoning, it can only be considered as a starting point.

 

However, once we move up to the second floor, we have to find a mechanism for what could potentially explain map dowsing and distance healing.  These well-documented and widely practised crafts are completely outside of the existing scientific paradigm.  Even the founder of the British Society of Dowsers, retired Corps of Royal Engineers officer, Colonel AH Bell, came to that conclusion - and it led to a philosophical rift between his new world view and that of his closest colleagues.  Professionals and hobbyists alike now routinely use non-local dowsing - and time has been very much on the side of the late Colonel.

 

Without the benefit of modern science, and the knowledge of concepts such as the Information Field, AHB could never have bridged the gap between the more rigid pre-war outlook and the mindset of the new millennium using logic alone.  However, he did come to appreciate that it had something to do with ‘the subconscious’.  It was a bold mental leap, which put him well ahead - perhaps too far ahead - of his colleagues.  

 

The work of the psychologist, Carl Jung, on the ‘collective subconscious’ informed this debate around the turn of the last century.  Yet, right up to the present day the arguments rage on, between and within both science and philosophy, as to whether the seat of the conscious mind is within us or without us (to misquote George Harrison).  Consciousness is very much the new frontier, the new cutting edge of both the more physical and the more philosophical tendencies.  

 

Strangely, it is also the area that (almost) unites the scientists and spiritualists - or at least it provides them with an ill-defined no-man’s-land, where there are the building blocks of a common language between the various factions that could enable them to co-exist and to communicate.

 

For dowsing to work as well as it clearly does, consciousness must surely lie, at least in part, beyond the human frame - with the brain, or mind, or soul presumably rebadged as a very high quality information receiver and/or processor.  And if consciousness really is external to the human realm, and possibly a universal phenomenon, is that where the dowser’s information cache resides?

 

If the functionality of dowsing requires us to re-evaluate our own role in the great scheme of things, what are we - and what (if anything) is our role?  Could we be: 

 

• Vital cells of a cosmic body?

• Insignificant insects in an infinite hive?

• Fated individuals in a sea of information?

• Cosmic driftwood, floating aimlessly through space and time? 

 

or are we hapless (or critically important) cogs in a Grand Plan?

 

While we may each have a variety of suggested potential ripostes to these questions, based on our own respective heritage and baggage, dowsing throws us ever more tricky and prickly conundrums.  If there is a ‘plan’, whose plan is it?   Who runs, owns or even invented this ‘information field?’  Could it be a divine entity, the cosmic consciousness (aka the Holy Ghost), or is it some manifestation of our higher selves - either corporately or individually?  Or is there no plan B (or even a plan A), just an inevitable unfolding of events - a reality without meaning, purpose or direction; a random distribution of forces and matter?  It’s a theoretical possibility.

 

Dowsing demonstrates that we can interact with our energetic environment - and probably many other dowsable phenomena too.  Whether we are passing the time of day communing with earth energy lines or pinpointing and redirecting the dowsable impact of underground water; whether we are interacting with the spirit world or healing the hurts of the past, we are very much active participants in the world beyond the veil.  Is this akin to being at one with the cosmos?  Is that interactive relationship what some would term ‘talking to God’ or ‘having a conversation with Gaia’? Is it actually (on a minute scale) what philosophers call ‘co-creation’?  Are we co-creators of our own (or a shared) reality?  These are BIG questions, with BIG implications - and we will need to seek some BIG insights to even get our minds around them.

 

But if we really do have this astonishing ability, and a job spec to go with it, why don’t we use dowsing more openly and more actively?  Most people can dowse quite successfully at least some of the time, yet the majority of those same people don’t even acknowledge the fact.  Is it all too obvious - or is it an inconvenient truth?  Do we fear that dowsing might mean the destruction of a worldview that has taken us a lifetime to construct, and to come to terms with - or do we just not get it?  Is it simply that we all use intuition all the time anyway so, why bother with the bits of coat hanger?  Whichever one of these answers you pick, and even if you try a mixed portfolio of them, the scenario just doesn’t add up.  Dowsing may have been overtaken by technology to some extent for finding gas pipes in the road, or coal seams in the countryside, but it is a transcendent skill which takes you to the very edge of anything you can imagine - and still it carries you on beyond the far horizon.  That seems quite exciting to me - and well worth taking seriously.

 

Is our reluctance as a society to take dowsing on board an internal, or maybe an external, protection from information overload?  Is it an intuitive realisation that such an open-minded adoption of the dowser’s realm could drive us insane (and therefore be unable to fulfil our ‘function’)?  Or is it that a deep appreciation of the insights delivered by dowsing would inevitably destroy many of the building blocks on which our post-industrial socio-economic culture is founded?

 

Is it an inbuilt protection against detrimental or malevolent forces or tendencies?

If so, will we eventually be forced to return the dowser’s art to the secrecy and security of the guild or the cult?  Or will we be able to use the enlightenment afforded by dowsing to evolve a modern, even ‘rational’, understanding of the essence of  ‘spirituality’?

 

A cosmos forged out of information could explain why dowsing works,

but not why it needs to work, and it certainly doesn’t explain why we don’t use it!

 

Before we can hope to address these other questions, we have to try to unravel the conundrum of why dowsing is so hugely subjective.  Why does just about every dowser find something slightly different - with even the very best and the most experienced showing subtle (and not so subtle) variations in their results?  While there is enough commonality of output to substantiate a claim for dowsing, as a physical reality, to be way, way above statistical significance, there is also usually quite a wide range of responses to even the tightest of dowsing questions.  Subjectivity is both dowsing’s Achilles’ heel and its hidden key.  Unlike other branches of both science and philosophy, our craft displays all the hallmarks of a collaboration between the dowser and the dowsed, the observer and the observed.  It could even be described as dowsing’s unique selling point.  Moreover, it seems to indicate the vagaries of the human condition in action, and probably working in quite a hostile environment.  

 

But not all of dowsing is so equivocal.  There are a host of well-respected and very well documented water diviners, who have found their (very physical, even drinkable) targets with monotonous regularity over many decades.  The veteran George Applegate and the late Donovan Wilkins are prime examples - people who can get success rates well up into the 90 per cent range.  With no water, no fee, you have to be pretty accurate, given the huge cost of a dry drilling.  So, why is it that water divining so different?  Is it just the relentless focused practice and an unbroken tradition going back into the mists of time?  Could all aspects dowsing be as accurate with a few more centuries of dedicated concentration?  Or is something to do with the water itself?  Could it be that as we are composed primarily of water ourselves, that we have an inbuilt witness for the object of the search?  However, we don’t seem to have a similarly reliable ability with the location of bones, blood or viruses, so perhaps one of the other explanations is closer to the mark.

 

What does dowsing imply about the world of spirits?  There appears to be an increasing number of human practitioners, who can help and ‘manage’ spirits - most of which seem to be in a form of inter-life limbo - what Buddhists term a bardo state.  Even a journeyman improver, such as myself, can locate and identify a spirit and interact with them (albeit rather tentatively!)  However, if the parting of the veil in this respect is such a straightforward dowsing process, what does this say about the continuity of life?  If it sank in that we might be ‘coming back’ or plunging back into the great ocean of the life force, or whatever, it would clearly make no sense at all to treat our home planet, let alone our friends, neighbours, fellow creatures - even our enemies - in the way that we do.  

 

Or is the whole idea of timeless spirituality just a grand piece of psychological theatre, orchestrated by that old devil, the desire for wish fulfilment?  Are we finding what we want to find, and making up the missing bits to suit our own expectations?  Even if the ghosts and the angels were imaginary, they are ‘real’ enough to so many people as to impact on the way in which we all approach our own psychological makeup. 

 

What does dowsing tell us about the nature of time?   Dowsing implies that time is illusory, as the dowser can transcend the time barrier almost at will - at least when looking chronologically backwards.  Even comparative novices can be shown how to take up the tracks of the ancient inhabitant of a community living in a circle of huts, before the arrival of the Romans, on what is now open moorland.  We can follow the villager down to their water source, accompany them back up the hill, empathise as they lose their precious cargo against a long-removed rock, and return to the river to collect another consignment.  It may be a bit disconcerting for the relative beginner, but in essence it’s not the dowser’s equivalent of rocket science.  Is it just too unbelievable when judged against the current paradigm?

 

Is future dowsing just crystal-ball gazing - or is it really intuitively applied science?  Dowsing future events tends to be less precise, and the outcomes are generally less reliable, than similar questions asked of the past.  Is this because we are using our higher-self computing power to extrapolate a probable future from the information available in the present - or is it that this is one veil that we must not, cannot, transcend?  360-degree intuitive vision would make nonsense of the concept of free will, and could probably negate the unique role (if there is one) of the human domain.  

 

With or without dowsing, can we make any comprehensible sense of the metaphors of The Information Field and The Akashic Record, which imply that - at least at a quantum level - time is a constant, rather than a moving continuum?   New questions reveal yet more new questions.

 

Dowsing is a virtual bridge, which permits us a portal onto another view of reality. But our progress as dowsers is akin to taking many, hesitant little steps on a long and winding road.

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Dowsing asks many BIG questions, but it might also help to provide us with some equally BIG answers.

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Nigel Twinn is a former accountant, town planner and transport strategist.  He was a Council Member of the British Society of Dowsers between 2010 and 2013 and has been an organiser of the Tamar Dowsers, based in East Cornwall, UK, since 2002. 

 

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Do Diviners Need the Divine?

 

Derek Woodhead

 

I lived in Africa for about 15 years, and I have just come back from a trip to Namibia, a country just south of Angola.

 

When I was at school, I remember a poem, which was part of the GCE syllabus, by Walter de la Mare.  It was called The Hour Before Dawn, and it spoke about the mystical feel of an Irish peat bog at that time of day.

 

When I was in Africa, I often used to get up very early, sometimes at around five o’clock in the morning - before dawn - and I would go to some of the wild places.  If I was in a game reserve, I loved to go to a waterhole, while it was still dark - and you could hear nature start to wake up the world.  At night you could hear the crickets, then just before dawn came certain frogs and then insects, and then certain birds starting to call just before sunrise.  It was almost as if they each had a time allocation. 

 

I didn’t realise it at the time - I was in my early thirties then - that I was feeling the power of nature.  When you are sitting by yourself, surrounded by nature, it feels very powerful.

 

When I got into dowsing about 15 years ago, I was delighted to find that I could use rods and a pendulum to measure the power of nature around me.  I found it tremendously meaningful.  While I was in Namibia again this last month, I rose early several times - at around four o’clock in the morning - to be with nature and to watch the world wake up.  It’s a time of day when I feel you have a wonderful ‘broadband’ connection to the universe.  I seem to have my most intuitive thoughts at that time.

 

While I was there, I was doing some water dowsing for a charity called N/A’AN KU SÊ, which supports the San Bushmen community and their wildlife, on the eastern border of Namibia, where it meets Botswana.  I am hoping to get in touch with (the dowsing charity) Village Water across the border in Zambia, to see if they are interested in extending their operations across the border into Namibia.  

 

In my late thirties, I came across the Sufi poet Rumi, who said ‘The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you - don’t go back to sleep!’  It was a quote that has always stuck in my mind, as it did recently, when I was out there with nature - raw nature.  It’s a wonderful feeling.  

 

There are two aspects (of the dowsing environment) that I would like to talk about today.  One is the universal information field.  When I went to some of my first workshops, when I was just starting to learn about dowsing, I was told that as dowsers we have access to a vast field of information outside of our conscious awareness.  Not only that, but we can access the truth, the pure truth.  I always thought that was a fairly staggering claim to make!  If you can imagine that Google came up with an application, which claimed that ‘with this software you can access absolutely everything, and it would be the truth’ it would seem to be an amazing concept.  Yet dowsers seem to be remarkably blasé about this ability.

 

The other aspect that I would like to touch on is our relationship with spirituality - something that seems to be ‘the elephant in the room’.  Most (dowsing) workshops don’t mention God - or our relationship with what we may or may not regard as the divine force or the divine entity, which some call oneness or the source.  In particular, we don’t seem to address how that may affect our dowsing.  On some of the workshops I have attended, there has been a passing mention of ‘your higher self’, but not a lot more than that.  It’s a bit like when Tony Blair was the Prime Minister.  In one speech, he wanted to talk about his Catholic views, but his spin-doctor, Alistair Campbell, was horrified by this idea.   He said words to the effect that ‘Prime Minister - we don’t do God!’  It almost seems that on dowsing workshops we ‘don’t do God’.     

 

As dowsers, we straddle the worlds of science and of magic - and we are very familiar with both of them.   Science has served us tremendously well over the five or six hundred years.   We live longer, healthier lives - and some would say we live more fulfilled lives.  

 

But we also have the world of magic.  It is a word that I believe comes from the Arabic derivation ‘maghi’, meaning wisdom - and hence the biblical three wise men, the Magi, were the people with wisdom.  In the shamanic world, the shamen are the people with wisdom.  So, we have ancient wisdom, combined with proven fact. 

 

One of the things I love about dowsing is that we have a foot in both worlds.   We have the common sense, logical, reasoning side, and we also have the magical side as well.  I feel that some dowsers tend to decry scientists, which I think is a great shame.  They feel that scientists have a very narrow field of view - and that we as dowsers are somehow more enlightened.  They feel that scientists should be more expansive in their outlook.  But, of course, science itself looks at the rational, the proven - and scientists are obliged to look at the world through rationalist glasses.   If we put a scientist in a sound laboratory with a piece of classical music, they will analyse the sound waves, the frequency and the amplitude of the music, what’s going on in the eardrum, what’s going on in the brain with the electromagnetic signals. They could doubtless produce a tremendous factual report about that piece of music.  Yet to get the meaning, the emotion and the feeling behind the music, you need an appreciative audience in an auditorium.  Science can only take it so far.  Then you need people to make sense of the whole experience.  That’s not to decry science, but we need to take something from both approaches.  I think it’s important at times for dowsers to remember that.  

 

I would like to just touch briefly on the idea of our perception of reality.  In our visual cortex, we only see light, yet there are great swathes of energy that we can’t see.  Our conscious mind filters out most of the other waves that are coming to us.  Some insects and birds can see a little more into the ultra violet, but we have a fairly narrow band of perception of the visible world.  We tend to spend a lot of our time using our ‘left’ brain, our logical brain, and rather less time in our ‘right’ brain, our inspirational, visionary, aspirational side.   As dowsers, we try to work with both aspects, but we still tend to spend most of our time using the ‘left’ part of our brains.  

 

Because of the filtration by our conscious mind, the programme in our brain makes sense of our reality, and we perceive things, mainly, three-dimensionally.  Consequently, our perception of time is essentially linear.   Yet, occasionally, as dowsers, we see beyond the veil.  In recent times, we certainly seem to have had many more reports of people seeing through the veil - and into other worlds.  

 

I would like to give you a couple of quotes from Albert Einstein: ‘The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant.  We have created a society that honours the servant, and has forgotten the gift.”  Those first seven words have always resonated with me.  You will notice that Einstein calls our intuitive mind ‘a sacred gift’.  We often have a hunch, or a gut feeling, that we all too often just shrug off, yet Einstein calls that a sacred gift.  A second well-known quote is that ‘Energy is everything and everything is energy.’  I think that helps us to understand a lot about dowsing, when we see the world in that way. 

 

When thinking about the subtle energy that we dowse, if you ask a quantum physicist for his definition of that energy, he may say ‘It’s in all things, it’s everywhere, it’s endlessly abundant, it’s always changing  - it’s the fundamental driving force behind creation.’    Yet, if you ask a theologian the same question, he may equally describe God using exactly the same words.  It makes you wonder if they are actually talking about the same thing.  

 

Max Planck talked about the force that binds the minute ‘solar system’ of the atom together.  We have come to understand that the atom is almost completely empty space.  If a nucleus was the size of a grape, the other atomic particles would be the size of gains of sand orbiting a couple of miles away.  So, what we perceive to be solid matter, such as this table (knocks table) is in fact completely empty space.  Quantum physicists say that what holds the world together is the quantum field, and vibrational strings of energy.   However, as dowsers, I sometimes feel that we get a bit carried away with terms such as the quantum field and quantum entanglement.  I have tried to research some of these concepts, and I have found them to be extremely complex.  Even scientists struggle to come to a consensus about them.  Until we can get a better understanding of what these ideas mean, I feel we should be wary about putting too much store by them. 

 

However, I do think we can have a look at concepts such as the individual consciousness, the collective consciousness, the universal information field and the resonance of the energy of thought.  

 

With regards to the mechanics of dowsing, and to the science behind it, there was a lot of work undertaken in the 1960s by Dr Jan Merta, a Czech scientist, who came to the conclusion, after a tremendous amount of experimentation, that it was actually the wrist muscles that were contracting to make the pendulum or the dowsing rod move.  He concluded that it was due to a stimulus outside of the normal five senses, but he couldn’t detect what it was.  There was about a half second gap between the receipt of the stimulus by the nervous system and the actual contraction of the muscles.  Of course, we often find that experience when we are dowsing.   We know it’s a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ response, even before the rods start moving.  We just sense it.  What he couldn’t tell was what made the rods turn a certain way - to the left or to the right - or why they crossed or uncrossed.  

 

Let us turn to have a look at concepts such as ‘the subconscious mind’, ‘the sixth sense’, what we might term ‘the seventh sense’, and what we mean by ‘the Akashic Field’. 

 

If we take our conscious mind, it is our reasoning mind, which processes information from our five senses, makes decisions and reaches conclusions, based on the input that we receive.  The conscious mind deals with about 500 ‘bits’ of information a second.  If we had any more than that, we would probably be unable to compute it all.  

 

However, the subconscious is vast.  It can deal with up to half a million ‘bits’ of information a second.  If you drove here today, you will have driven past a good many streetlights.  You saw them with your vision, but your conscious mind really didn’t process them.  However, their existence will have entered your subconscious - and possibly under deep hypnosis you might be able to recall the number of lamp standards that you passed on your way here.   The subconscious mind doesn’t make decisions or form opinions, but it is receptive to programming.  It doesn’t engage in reasoning, but it does respond to our thoughts and takes directions from our beliefs - and I feel our beliefs are quite important to us as dowsers.    

 

The biologist, Bruce Lipton, states that ‘in reality, the subconscious is an emotionless database of stored programmes, whose function is strictly concerned with environmental signals and the engagement with hard-wired behavioural programming.  No questions asked; no judgments made.  So, the subconscious is a programmable hard-drive into which all of your life experiences are downloaded.’  This has two aspects for us, as dowsers.  We programme our subconscious to enable the rods or the pendulum to move to indicate ‘yes’ or ‘no’.  But the way we programme our minds with our beliefs, indeed our self-beliefs, can make us a skilled dowser - or it can completely scupper us.  

 

I remember talking to the very talented health dowser, Elizabeth Brown.  Her approach was to state affirmations, such as ‘I am a skilled and successful dowser, and my dowsing benefits all of creation.’  She repeated this to herself for a few weeks and, in a very short time, the number of her clients increased immeasurably.  This programming of our subconscious mind is very important.  What we believe can affect the outcome of our dowsing.     

 

George Applegate, the well-known water dowser, said ‘Just remember that your subconscious must be absolutely convinced of your ability to dowse.’  If there is even an inkling in the back of our minds that we can’t do this, then we might not get the right answer.  

 

Let’s talk about the sixth sense, and how it affects field, map and informational dowsing.   The Czech scientist, Dr Harvalic, carried out a huge number of experiments back in the 1970s, which proved that dowsers have a sensitivity to magnetic fields.  He felt that minute changes in magnetic fields were responsible for the dowsing signal, and he came to believe that it was coming from a physical source.     He concluded that the human being was a ‘living magnetometer of incredible sensitivity’.  

 

Dr Jude Currivan states that the sixth sense is ‘a physical, but very subtle, achievement of the physical and electromagnetic fields’.  The perception of the sixth sense could help to explain what we call field dowsing, but it doesn’t explain map or informational dowsing.  An electromagnetic signal tends to decrease over distance.  Whereas, as we know as dowsers, distance is not necessarily a key factor. 

 

Let us move on to the seventh sense, which seems to be a non-local ability.  While the sixth sense may relate to the physical presence of something, the seventh sense addresses the fact that, with some types of dowsing, time and distance are of less relevance.  The US scientist, Candice Pert, says that ‘Your brain is not in charge.  The mind is not just the brain, but it is distributed throughout the body by a process of signal molecules.’  When we say we feel something ‘with every fibre of our being’, that may be our distributed mind picking up a feeling - not just our brain.    

 

The Institute of HeartMath carried out a major study in the 1980s to try to determine the location of consciousness in the body.  They concluded that it was partly in the heart and partly in the brain, but it was elsewhere too.  

 

Dr Rupert Sheldrake believes that ‘the stretching of the mind beyond the confines of the body supports the idea of a seventh sense.  It is part of our intrinsic biological nature.  We share a telepathic communication ability with other animals’.  There has been quite a lot of work undertaken at Universities in Hawaii and in California into telepathy over the last few years.  This work particularly relates to couples with a strong emotional bond - married couples, who have been together for 40 or 50 years - using the output from ECG ‘brainwave’ equipment.    

 

Professor Valerie Hunt uses the term ‘mind-field’, referring to energy radiating out from the cells of our body, which moves to the surface of the body, where it creates an aura. This we can sometimes see as the silvery outline of an energy field around a person.  In religious paintings we have the aura (halo) - which may also be the biofield that Candice Pert describes.   Some of us can see this field in colour, too.  For example, we might say that someone is in a black mood, is green with envy, browned off or yellow with fear.  This concept appears in various native cultures, such as the North American Indians with their multi coloured headdresses - and even in the sparkling colours displayed in coronets and crowns worldwide.    

 

Dr Malcolm Hollick talks about the energy transfer between people, by stating that ‘despite their slightly illusive and mysterious nature, fields are very real - indeed, fields are a more fundamental aspect of reality than matter.’ 

 

It is fascinating to appreciate the energy relationship between people, and our sensitivity to it.  If we meet someone for the first time, very often we would stand about an arm’s length away from them, which is the typical breadth of a human energy field.  We might shake hands with them.  If that person stepped towards us, by as little as another few inches, we would feel it straight away, and we would probably move back a bit - and if they advanced again, I would probably move back a bit further.    Once we have met that person several times, we might stand a bit closer - and if we have a ‘romantic relationship’, we might stand even closer again!  So, we are very sensitive to these fields.    

 

Max Planck, the physicist and quantum theorist said that ‘all matter originates and exists by virtue of a force.  We must assume that behind this force is the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind, which is the matrix of all matter’. 

The concept of a matrix is very interesting.  Dr Valerie Hunt believes that the field ‘consists of energy packages, or quanta - and that those quanta inform us’.  She believes that ‘this is where consciousness can be found - not in the brain, but in the mind-field outside of the brain, which is limitless’.   

 

If we look at the work of Neale Donald Walsch, who wrote the Conversations with God series of books, (purportedly quoting God!) ‘you are sending off energy, emitting energy, right now, from the centre of your being, in all directions.  Every thought you have ever had colours this energy, every word you have spoken shapes it.  Everything you have ever done affects it.  Your energy is interacting constantly with everything and everyone else.  It’s a matrix of inter-twining, inter-woven personal vibes, which form a tapestry, more complex than you can ever imagine’.   

 

Dr Ervin Lazlo talks about ‘a non-local ability to access information from beyond the limits of space and time’.  While Dr Rupert Sheldrake comments that a ‘non-localised, but subconscious, awareness of our sixth sense reveals our innate connection to the (Akashic) field - the all-pervasive substrate that corresponds to our understanding of the cosmic mind.’  Again talking about the Akashic field, Dr Lazlo states that ‘at the roots of reality there is an information-conserving and information-applying matrix’.   The feeling is that the Akashic field is not limited to humans, but it informs all living things - the entire web of life - where it also informs our consciousness.  

 

In Sanskrit, Akasha means a subtle fluid that pervades all space - that exists everywhere and in everything.  It is the vehicle of life and of sound.  The ancient Rishis and seers of the Vedic tradition referred to an atma - an infinite field of pure intelligence; pure consciousness; an ocean of pure wakefulness.  

 

Going back to Sir Isaac Newton - he believed that there was an invisible substance that permeated the entire universe, which he referred to as an ‘aether’.   More recently, the famous scientist Nikola Tesla referred to ‘a kind of original medium, a kind of force field that filled all space, and was comparable with Akasha’.   

 

So, dowsing is the human body’s tangible response to the local electromagnetic stimuli, but probably also to quantum fields as well.  This is summed up very well by Dr Jude Currivan, who described dowsing as ‘a conscious attunement to the field of consciousness, which non-locally connects each and every one of us to the cosmos as a whole.’  I feel it’s a gift that is given to us all. 

 

To summarise, we have various names for this concept, including consciousness, the unified field, the Akashic field, the universal database, the collective subconscious, the quantum hologram, nature’s mind, the divine matrix, the mind of God, the universal mind - or simply the source or the field.  Both the ancient seers and the cutting edge scientists of today seem to be talking about much the same thing - albeit coming at it from rather different directions.  One could almost say it’s the same wine, but in different bottles.  Through dowsing, we access this field with deliberate intent.

 

A more spiritual interpretation would refer to Jesus describing ‘the kingdom of God, which lies within’.  Deep meditation might also be described by another quotation, attributed to Jesus - ‘in my father’s house, there are many mansions’.  It’s a phrase that comes back to me, when I am in a meditative state myself.    

 

The ancient Rishis proposed that ‘the cosmos is locked within the human mind’, while the Buddha says that ‘a transcendent domain resides beyond the everyday world of pain and struggle’.  

 

There was a wonderful flowering of Islamic science about 1,000 years ago, when great advances were made into the study of astronomy, medicine and mathematics.  Those scientists recognised that they were doing God’s handiwork, and that there was a unity in creation.  

 

Gallileo, who had many issues with the church authorities of his time, was nonetheless very much a man of the church himself.  He tried to encourage the church to expand its view of the solar system, based on the rotation of the earth.

 

Sir Isaac Newton held that God created everything, and that it was divine intervention that held the universe together.  He wrote the seminal Principia Mathematica for what he saw to be the glory of God.

 

Coming right up to the present day, Professor Sir John Polkinghorn of Cambridge University states that ‘the wonderful order of the world that we scientists investigate is a sign that there is a divine mind behind that order’.  

 

Even the renowned dowser, Hamish Miller, referred to ‘upstairs’ and ‘the management’, when describing the state of existence beyond the present.

So, we appear to have this connection with the divine.  But we need to be cautious about the world as we have been brought up to understand it.  Children believe the world revolves around them.  To some extent the way our humanity has evolved, the way in which our religions have evolved, and how our myths have evolved implies that we also believe that the world revolves around us.  We would like to think that we are immortal, that good triumphs over evil, that a greater power watches over us, that we are here for a reason and that we live in a loving universe.  We want to believe these comforting thoughts.  

 

However, psychologists normally say that the burden of proof that people require varies with the desirability of what is being proved - and that it is our subconscious mind that is actually adjusting the dial.  It’s termed ‘motivated reasoning’.   So, if we want to reach a certain conclusion, our brains alter the way we perceive data and analyse the arguments.  Our brains do this beneath the level of our awareness.  As dowsers, we need to be very objective when we choose to believe in this very seductive worldview.  We have to think about how our minds are working, and be aware of what the universe may ‘really’ be like.  

 

So, does the diviner need the divine?  As we have seen, there are certainly many scientists who perceive some connection.  There are other scientists, who are complete atheists, who would have no truck with that at all, yet they still have a certain amount of ‘faith’ in the scientific work that they do.   For example, take the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland.  It’s one of the biggest scientific experiments ever undertaken, and it has cost billions of pounds.  Some scientists have spent a whole lifetime working up to and working on the project.  Anything on that scale requires a huge amount of faith and hope.  As human beings, we need that faith and hope.  It’s part of the intrinsic way that we work.  

 

I would like to conclude with a quote from  Is God an Illusion?  by Professor Leonid Lodonov.   In this book he has a dialogue with Deepak Chopra, the medical doctor, spiritualist and researcher into consciousness.  While they have very different views about the nature of God, the scientist, Professor Lodonov, ends up by saying ‘most people intuitively believe in a higher power, and draw solace, strength and courage from that belief.   When faith feels real to a person, and when a particular belief does not lead to conflict with what we observe in the physical world, then there is nothing in science to oppose it.   If, however, we are asked to believe in a God who created a universe a few thousand years ago, and we have convincing evidence that the universe is much older than that, then we have a conflict.  However, the demands of science do not preclude the rewards of spirituality.’

 

Even Albert Einstein, who seemed almost superhuman in his clarity of thought and his ability to reason, exalted his sense of the spiritual connection to the universe.  In his case, it was the very rationality of the universe that shaped his spiritual life.   He is quoted as saying, ‘Whoever has undergone the intense experience of the successful advances made in science, is moved by profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in existence’.  By way of understanding, he achieves a far-reaching emancipation from the shackles of personal hopes and desires.  And so it seems to me that science contributes to a religious spiritualisation of our understanding of life. 

 

So, do Diviners need the Divine ?

 

I believe that the majority of dowsers have a belief in what Hamish Miller affectionately referred to as ‘upstairs’ or ‘the Management’.  This belief in some type of a divine connection is very supportive in the working model they hold in their minds of the dowsing process

 

I believe it to be a fundamentally important aspect of our understanding of the dowsing process.  In this presentation, I have tried to focus on this, and on its relationship with consciousness and with the universal information field.

 

It is an area which needs to be more openly discussed, and better understood, amongst the dowsing community. 

 

 

Derek Woodhead is the organiser of the Essential Bury St Edmunds Dowsers, based in Suffolk, UK and a Committee Member of the British Society of Dowsers Earth Energies Group.