69. The singer-songwriter who took a quantum leap – Graham Pemberton

When Graham Pemberton was 29 years old, an often crucial point in life astrologically known as the first Saturn return, he had a powerful awakening. Previously he had adhered to atheism and existentialism and had a period of left wing political activism. ”I began to feel severely depressed. I then made a decision, influenced by someone who was like my mentor, to look inside instead of outside. This inward looking triggered a spiritual awakening.” Graham experienced ”a lot of weird stuff” like vivid dreams and wild synchronistic events. ”The whole world went completely mad. The veil was lifted, if you will. I saw that things were interconnected, and I realized that consciousness has nothing to do with the brain.” One powerful dream told him that his life hitherto had been like a Monty Python movie, and now it was time to get back to normal. The dramatic character of Graham's intense six-month awakening period eventually dissipated. But his life view had changed for good. I got in touch with Graham after having read some of his many in-depth essays and articles on Medium about spirituality and modern science. Lately, he has explored just about every influential book that has been written about the connection between quantum physics and mysticism. There have been some fascinating ups and downs in the interest for this topic in the mainstream. Two books in the 1970s by Fred Alan Wolf and Fritjof Capra triggered an uptick. Ten years later Ken Wilber tried to take the hype down, and then in the 1990s the quantum–spirit connection became more prominent again. Pemberton has written a whole series of articles about Danah Zohar’s ”The Quantum Self”. Recently, Carlo Rovelli is with ”Helgoland” trying to take quantum physics back to almost materialism. Like many others who have looked seriously into this topic, Pemberton thinks David Bohm was the most spiritual among the leading quantum physicists. ”You could argue that quantum physics destroyed materialism a hundred years ago. But the question is, how much further have we come?” asks Graham Pemberton. ”All we can do is keep working. However, if history means anything, a new paradigm will eventually take over.” Stanislav Grof is another of Graham’s heroes, as is Carl Jung. We discuss whether Jung is still today as ridiculed in academia as he used to be. We conclude that Jung has had a profound significance for the spiritual growth of both of us. Graham Pemberton is also a musician. ”That is the path I should have taken in my youth.” His songs are of a singer-songwriter type. Many of the lyrics are about the same esoteric topics that he writes about. During his period of spiritual awakening, Graham Pemberton’s mentor pointed out that Graham was going through a heavy Saturn return. This information had a powerful impact on him. His growing astrological insights led him to later write a book about how this ancient knowledge might be true–from an outsider’s perspective. It has not been published, but Graham puts it out on Medium, bit by bit. ”It is to a large extent based on quantum physics. Everything is interconnected. There is no reason why any part of the universe couldn't affect us.” Graham and I also have a somewhat animated discussion about whether it is possible to raise consciousness by way of traditional politics or not. And whether democracy stops at the borders of the nation state, and if that has anything to do with spiritual awakening. Please find Graham Pemberton’s websites here and here. If you want a deeper understanding of Graham’s thoughts in this episode, he elaborates on some of them in this article.