The Mind
The mind retreats to its last refuge,
seeing its world falling in ruins.
Its slowly built, carefully constructed world
wherein all the pieces seemed to fit
together as in a puzzle,
But now, the seeming harmony is shattered
the linked parts no longer appear to match
and must again be mated.
G.L.S.
Introduction
by Christine Stocker Gibson
Existential questions about humankind’s origins, its purpose on earth, its relationship with the divine and debates about its future have exercised curious intellects and different faiths for millennia, and continues to invite healthy debate across a variety of related philosophies: destiny versus self-determination, man’s spiritual dependence on his god(s) v his own omnipotence, Evolution versus Creationism, the ethics surrounding human biological engineering and neuroscience.
My father, scientist, psychologist, deacon, philosopher Geoffrey Luff Stocker, author of many psychology papers and of the book: The Endangered Species: How Evolution and New Age Spiritual Familes Can Save Humankind, had a lifelong fascination with human behaviour. In particular, how the widely different fields of hypnopaedia, spiritual transcendance and what is now called cognitive behavioural therapy, or positive psychology, could be used to overcome unwanted behaviours, stunted potential and fear of the world to create positive attitudes, aspirational behaviours and higher levels of understanding.
He was inevitably drawn to the world of behavioural psychology and spent many years researching ways in which the unconscious could be used to manipulate and enhance personal development, create greater equilibrium within families, groups, communities. This manifested in careers as diverse as becoming a ventriloquist and member of the Magic Circle, as a voice coach and drama teacher, as a psychoanalyst, hypnotherapist, visiting chair of Gestalt group therapy workshops at the Tavistock Centre.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the emerging social phenomenon crossing the oceans from both America and Russia: the therapeutic counselling culture provided a new, exciting trajectory for those in the field of psychology. These were heady days and, in 1984, Dad founded an international School of Psychological Salesmanship based in London. It provided him with a broad client base for continuing his research and for further writings.
During this time he qualified as a hypnotherapist to bring the benefits of therapeutic interventions to help the hundreds of people who sought him out to help them change some element of their behaviour. Particularly, he was impressed by the positive results he achieved using hypnopaedia. Driving him to develop an innovative learn-while-you-sleep programme and to co-author several publications on hypnopaedia whilst creating his own broad range of sleep-learning GCE study tapes. Thus was the Sleep Learning Foundation born: a study centre with dormitories in the rural serenity of the New Forest in Hampshire.
A deeply spiritual man, my father continued to seek his religious truths throughout his life both within and without his favoured Lutheran church environs. In the late 1990s, the last decade of the last millennium and in the autumn of his own life, he intended to author his swan song: a social commentary about mankind’s place in the universe. He wanted to share his belief that it is evolution which has brought us, all humankind, to this Midpoint, so called because he believed we are at the turning point in the history of our civilisation, the time and place at which collective intellectual and spiritual understandings can be harnessed to take humankind to its next evolutionary stage, the New Age, that of total enlightenment, absolute knowledge. Sadly, he did not live to do so and so instead, I have used his research materials and past writings to shape what is a far simpler book but one which I believe encapsulates his thesis.
My father’s concern was that this age, this Midpoint stage, is still unrecognised and our peoples are missing a last, vital chance to harness the new technologies to provide and sustain a better future for humankind. These were penned in the 1990s. He called it the Red Alert.
As the 19th century French philosopher and evolutionary scientist Pierre de Teilhard du Chardin, said
“We may perhaps imagine that Creation was finished long ago, but that would be quite wrong. It continues in still more magnificent form in the highest zones of the world. Our role is to help complete it. This is the real meaning and price of our acts.”
Today the contemporary sciences, including artificial intelligence, are excitedly embraced and are becoming an integral part of every society’s expectations for their future. We may forget that we have a choice in how it is applied.
Christine Stocker Gibson, editor of “The Endangered Species?”, 2020
Sometime – Never
In youth, when opportunities passed unseized
When mistakes were made in love and living
And what we wished, we did not have.
‘Sometimes’, we said, ‘the happy moment will not pass.
The heights of love will be won and held
And all we desire we will possess.'
But, suddenly, ‘sometimes’ has changed to ‘never’
We have seen that these, our moments, are forever gone,
That love’s heights have been won, but lost
And that what we desired will not be ours.
G.L.S.