Private Dowding

Major Wellesley Tudor Pole O.B.E. (23 April 1884 - 13 September 1968) aka TP, was an English writer, philosopher and mystic. He authored many essays and books and was a life-long spiritual truth seeker, being particularly involved with spiritualism and a movement devoted to the preserving the Chalice Well and Bride's Mound of Glastonbury, England. On a visit to Istanbul (then known as Constantinople) prior to the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, he heard of 'Abdu'l-Baha head of the Baha'i Faith. In November 1910 TP met 'Abdu'l-Baha and had the privilege of interviewing him over a nine day period in Cairo and Alexandria. The meeting must have had a profound effect on Tudor Pole, because he embraced the faith and for the following decades he would remain active in the Baha'i Faith. While a major in the British army Tudor Pole (in collaboration with Sir Winston Churchill) came up with the idea for 'The Silent Minute' which TP claimed was divinely inspired, and during World War II, all over Britain and the Commonwealth, millions of people joined together every evening at 9.00pm just before the news, to the chimes of Big Ben, to pray for peace. Tudor Pole remarked at the time; There is no power on earth that can withstand the united cooperation on spiritual levels of men and women of goodwill everywhere. It is for this reason that the continued and widespread observance of the Silent Minute is of such vital importance in the interest of human welfare. In 1917 he wrote Private Dowding: The personal story of a soldier killed in battle. In the introduction Tudor Pole explains how this encounter with the Deceased entity who called himself Private Dowding, was his first experience of clairvoyantly inspired automatic writing; On Monday, 12th March 1917, I was walking by the sea when I felt the presence of someone. I looked round, no one was in sight. All that day I felt as if someone were following me, trying to reach my thoughts. Suddenly I said to myself, 'It is a soldier. He has been killed in battle and wants to communicate.' That evening I happened to call upon a lady who possesses some degree of clairvoyant power. I had forgotten about the soldier, until she described a man dressed in khaki, sitting in a chair near me. He was gazing intently in my direction. She said he was mature, wore a small moustache, and seemed somewhat sad. Not a very intelligent character apparently, but an honest one. I came home and sat down at my writing-table. Immediately my pen moved. Did I move it? Yes, in an involuntary sort of way. The thoughts were not my own, the language was a little unusual. Ideas were mainly conveyed in short simple phrases. It would really seem as if some intelligence outside myself were speaking through my mind and my pen. Private Dowding is now considered a 'classic' in Afterlife literature. Wellesley Tudor Pole continued to author several books including, The Silent Road, A Man Seen Afar, and Writing On The Ground.