The prince makes some of his outlandish claims partly because he is ill-served by his advisers, says Holden in a commentary in the Observer. Mollycoddled by yes-men, a “feel-good foam of fawning sycophancy,” Charles often lacks the benefit of useful criticism. Restless and discontent, “his butterfly mind notoriously launches project after project, then loses interest and leaves someone else to pick up the pieces,” Holden continues. Intemperate, Charles also tends to drop anyone who ventures to disagree, Holden writes. “So his real trouble is that he tends to think, with the eager assent of those around him, that he is always in the right.”
This issue has become particularly apparent with regards to his faith. A practising Anglican and the future head of the Anglican Church, Charles has nevertheless embraced many faiths. He has made speeches praising Islam, which have been well received in the Arab world. While some find his acceptance and openness admirable, he has come under fire for comparing modern Christianity unfavourably to Islam. In contrast to his own faith, he has said, Islam teaches us how to “learn with our hearts, as well as our heads,” understands the “sanctity of the world” and has a healthy respect for the “natural order.” Another religion of which the prince seems “enamoured,” according to the Guardian, is the Greek Orthodox faith practised on Mount Athos, a region of monasteries in northern Greece. While Charles hasn’t converted, he has made a number of retreats to this atavistic order. Women are forbidden from going anywhere near the autonomous semi-state, which even bans most female animals. Much of the peninsula lacks electricity; there is no radio, television or newspapers. For a prince who has denounced economic development for Third World countries, industrialized farming and many other elements of modernity, this bastion of traditionalism must seem attractive.
Charles regularly makes news with his eccentricities, such as his habit of talking to trees, or his close relationship with his one-time guru, the late Laurens van der Post, a South African-born writer and mystic who has been criticized for lying about some of the details of his life. It was Van der Post who taught the prince about the importance of distrusting pure thought, since modern life encourages us to “use thinking for purposes for which it was never designed.” As a result, said Van der Post, we are unaware of our “living experience before and beyond our transitory knowledge.” Perhaps most bizarre is the prince’s interest in parapsychology, which advocates drawing on divine powers to summon angels. The parapsychologist studies ghosts, telepathy and precognition. (Precognition is the alleged ability to predict the future, and was the basis for the sci-fi film Minority Report.) In Prince Charles’s view, this field has not been given enough credence and deserves more in-depth study. Concerned, he even wrote to the vice-chancellor of the University of Wales, urging him to consider a chair in the field.
Prince Charles has been able to voice these eccentric beliefs partly because of his unique constitutional position. He is one of a select few who can explore issues in “unfashionable ways and yet be heard,” writes Jonathan Dimbleby in The Prince of Wales. That may change, says Kay. It’s one thing to have a meddlesome crown prince, but an interfering monarch could pose constitutional challenges. Bombarding government ministers with advice could put them in a difficult position, he says. A statement about talking to trees or the importance of studying ghosts could garner public ridicule not just from media in Britain, but the press worldwide. His “potty” outbursts could then be seen as representing the thoughts of the nation. “We’ve all become accustomed to the outlandish things that he says,” Bennett says. “But you’ve got to wonder what will it be like when he’s king.”
