Mental Health[ 13 minute read ] 2305 words
(It might have happened)
Walking into the spiritual world through a portal disguised as a wood
There is a theory that if someone falls from a great height that their whole life flashes before them in the moments before their demise. The theory has it that their brain is seeking a solution for the predicament the body is in by searching through that person’s memory of the past for a similar experience that has a solution with the prospect of survival.
I believe that, and might add that I also believe that in a fevered state, which may arise from near death, illness, or extreme stresses on the body, such as often occurs from sudden drug or alcohol withdrawal, there is an opportunity to ‘see’ or ‘perceive’ something that is ‘otherworldly’ – perhaps of the spirit world, or as I alluded to, maybe even ‘aliens’ who live in a ‘world that we humans find difficult to see (another plane of existence perhaps). In the psychiatric world this is known as psychosis. In extended periods of lack of sleep it is common for the sufferer to enter a psychotic existence until the brain is able to adequately process the experiences of the last few days and weeks, albeit in a weird and wildly ‘imaginative’ way. Who really thinks they can fly or their sibling is a horse?
If I may lead you back to the supposed existence of ‘aliens’ and the reverence we humans would have for their power to destroy nations, just as God destroyed nations in the Christian faith before the birth of Jesus; I might suggest that invisible angels guide people on earth today and are as powerful as invisible ‘aliens’ would be. While I cannot find much on the spiritual world in Buddhism I am certain that reincarnation must stem from a supreme influence which has no personality. Loosely then, I might consider ‘Karma’ to be the building of an angel by gathering some of the spiritual world into a more concentrated form that influences environments and people. Certainly, I have been lost in a totally dark wood and climbed out of a ditch with wet boots and been able to accurately find my way back to my tent with many turns without bumping into anything at all or tripping, without seeing a single thing, and stopped walking at my tent. I was 'told' I was home and to reach out my arm. I reached out my hand and felt my tent there in front of me. But not just any part of the tent; the entrance end. I think at that time, I had a good heart that was true to trying to understand and help people, otherwise I would not have been faultlessly guided to safety and would have instead been led into a thorny bush or a low branch.
There
is also a belief that Jesus visited India and brought back some
knowledge to his own place of birthplace. My own feeling is that
there are many beliefs yet only one truth. Just as Jesus in the
Christian faith is an avatar of God, or a personification of God, in
order for the non-perceptive people of Jerusalem to experience a
limited God, all the interpretations of the truth; Judaism, Buddhism,
Islamism, Hinduism, and the beliefs of the native tribes of the
world, are one and the same, yet have different avatars of gods,
angels, spirits, and evil – even invisible manifestations created
by a common belief by a group of people or a very strong individual. Dr. Suzanne Newcombe writes on page 350 in 'Buddhism in Practice' in the Open University book, 'Crossing Boundaries', 'According to the doctrine of skillful means, it is appropriate to change the appearance of teaching in order to make it more accessible.'
A crash
On the 5th May 1977 a Canberra bomber airplane, based at RAF Wyton, crashed in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, England, onto a residential area. The two pilots, and three children on the ground died. I was in an Art Class at school at the time and witnessed the crash and explosion from a window. For no apparent reason I rose my desk and went to the window and looked in the direction of the imminent crash a few seconds before the impact; five other students did the same, but they were not copying me, despite it being highly unusual for any of my classmates leaving their studies on a seemingly aimless task. We were always only attentive to our work, such was our schooling.
I might leap to a misty conclusion and say that the pilots were seeking a solution to their imminent demise which was a result of them trying to steer their ailing plane away from housing and with their ejection from the aircraft not an accepted solution. Certainly, there was at least ten seconds from when I left my art-room desk and the explosion on the housing estate.Apparently, though, one crew member did eject but still sadly met his demise. They could both have ejected earlier but they did their best to save the residents of the housing estate below them.
Another Crash
Perhaps, there is a tenuous explanation that is linked to me once being able to unerringly find my tent in a completely dark wood in 2017 without tripping or bumping into obstacles when I explain that my tent was pitched in the same tiny wood, which either was a field or bordered a field in which a badly damaged RAF Stirling bomber, also based at RAF Wyton, crashed at 04:35am on 11th April 1942, following a raid on the German city of Essen.
In that crash, in Godmanchester, Cambridgeshire, England, Squadron Leader Drummond Wilson died instantly and Sergeant Edgar Gould died from his injuries, despite being rescued from the burning plane by Sergeant Southey. Perhaps, there is even a link in that I was leading a somewhat nomadic life at the time, just as were the gypsies on the gypsy site nearby, who attended the crash.
Sgt David Southey (Co-Pilot), who died in 1999, believed that the gypsies had pulled him from the plane and he always insisted afterwards that if a gypsy knocked on the door that his household had to buy something from them, as they had saved his life. Later research now shows that it was due to the bravery of Flight Officer Clifford Reeve that he survived. Of course, gypsies were non-people and weren't allowed in pubs at the time.
Perhaps, somewhere in my spiritual record it is noted that I uselessly answered a call for help from pilots about to crash in Huntingdon, only because my unperceptive self and my mortality denied me the appropriate power to save them. Later, in Godmanchester, where other pilots had died and I needed help, I was afforded it, though not necessarily by the ghosts of the pilots. Commonly, many of us would call this ‘karma’, though most would believe that this karma manifests itself in the world that we can perceive, I think it also manifests in the same place in which it is stored; the spiritual world.
Perhaps
then, Sergeant David Southey (from the Stirling bomber crash in
1942), who believed the gypsies rescued him and he then went back to
the burning plane to rescue his colleagues, inadvertently
entered into the spiritual world
a record that a deserving
nomadic person should be assisted when in need, and I happened to be
near his Stirling bomber crash site seventy five years later. Perhaps
we need to be near a place of someone’s personal sacrifice where
they also spiritually place their gratitude and prayer, and it also
be seared into the record by their intense emotion.
Fevered fog and intense emotion
So, back to reading the spirit world through a fevered fog, perhaps it is also true that the fever of intense emotion also writes in the spiritual world.
I can't help believing that there are pockets of intense emotion that mottle the world we know. Of course, with countless battles across Europe, murder and assaults by bandits and outlaws, we would be hard pressed to find a place of peace there. Perhaps, the deserts of the world might afford us some spiritual silence, as long as they have been deserts for a long time. Yet, I also believe that we cannot know peace until we have a reference point and a contrasting situation or environment.Like dropping food colouring from a pipette into clear water the contrast of opacity and translucence is obvious. Of course, primarily, we notice this as colour (were you thinking red?). After a while, all the water is just coloured pink from red food colouring or light blue from blue colouring. So, if we were able to swim in the fresh clear water and then a giant or god dropped food colouring in, we would observe the event from afar, and when we enter the phenomenon, discover that our environment is different to the clear environment of before. Over the course of time, our whole world, in the glass or vessel holding the water, would be diffused with this original colouring event. It would be more gradual the further we are away from the initial event. Eventually, our descendants would be born into a world that to them would just be normally pink, yet is far from being natural.
Background radiation is supposedly what is left over from the 'Big Bang', the beginning of the universe. Many of us have heard this with Geiger counters in Science classes in school at about eleven or twelve years old as a series of random clicks - 'Cosmic radiation. It comes from outer space!'. we are told. Most of it apparently does.
When the United States of America started testing nuclear devices in the 1940's, they did it near to where Kodak, the camera-film people, had a camera-film manufacturing plant. Some developers of the film noticed defects that they could not explain. During the manufacture of the film some of the radiation from the tests chemically resembled some of the chemicals used to make the film, and this radiation became embedded in the film. Kodak had to change their manufacturing process to ameliorate the problem. There was also, supposedly, a large US Government cover-up. (Of course, they didn't want the Russians to know about it - and Erin Brockovich would have been straight there).
We know that radiation has, what is called a 'half-life', just as caffeine in your coffee does; twelve hours for caffeine (a cup of coffee drunk twelve hours ago affects the body the same as half a cup of coffee drunk now). For radioactive material, this means that the radiation emitted from something is half as much as it originally was after its half-life period has passed. So a half-life of one hour means that every hour there would be half as much radiation; after each hour it would go down like this (100; 50; 25; 12.5; 6.75.....) Half as much as it was a hour ago. A banana containing potassium, is radioactive with extremely, super-duper, low doses and has a half-life of billions of years.
So, if the spirit world has a half-life of hundreds, thousands, millions, or almost five billion years, we will find it particularly awkward and frustrating to find any spiritual enclave that is surrounded by, yet different to the one we know and spend our daily lives in (pink suffusion from the red food colouring of calamitous events). But, I don't think so.
Gaining respect through mutual understanding
When I was living in the woods in 2017, and guided back to my tent in the pitch blackness of unlit woodland, it could have been a ghost, a spirit, or a lost alien. I can tell you that, prior to that, during the day, in the wood, my glasses would be flicked from my face with a loud click. Every time this happened I looked around for a branch that could have snagged them, but I was never near a tree or anything. I came to realise that it was a prank, or someone, or something, didn't like me wearing glasses. I could have been scared, but I very quickly realised that invisibility and the ability to move silently provides the best surprise in any attack. If something wanted to hurt me, it could do it at any time; any time at all. It did not need to wait for me to be asleep. So, its intention was to alert me that it was there, but why?
Shortly after that understanding, I had a dream that 'it' told me that it hated me when I first pitched my tent there, but because I recognised that the wood was the rightful home to the animals and other beings, and I tried hard not to disturb their peace and security, 'it' now liked and respected me. My glasses stayed on my face from then on. My own security was important to me too, and the dog walkers, from then on, never came near to a place where they could discover my temporary home. I am certain they were gently guided away by my invisible and silent friend, even through telepathy.
What can we learn from this? If 'they' don't want us to know they are there, we will never know they are there; our perception will just be barred from their world.
Space is transparent but might become translucent if we try to go to Mars
Astronauts come back saying how much they value our world when they see it from orbit. They say that they appreciate that everything they know and value is 'down' there. Most of me believes that they are more susceptible to spiritual influence out there though. There is just less 'noise' out there.