Monday 6 August 2012

An unusual spin on ghostwriting


On many occasions when I have been meditating, or sometimes just snoozing, I have noticed that there is another person or persons in my vicinity. The interesting thing is that unless there is very obvious sensory information available, such as the sounds that person makes while moving around, it is actually quite difficult to distinguish between people who are physically nearby, and those who do not exist in my Newtonian present moment at all.

I’m sure you’ve had the experience of being partly asleep when someone else is fully awake nearby. Perhaps by the smell of their perfume, or the sound of their voice, you know immediately who it is. When thinking of someone I know, I don’t necessarily visualise their face or hear their name in my mind. I just have a loose concept of their identity, and something like an average of the feelings that they most often evoke in me. I presume other people think of their friends in a similar way.

For people I am aware of, but don’t have a great deal of background information about -- such as celebrities or politicians that do not have any direct relevance to me -- I form the same type of identity shortcut. Predictably, the information density of such profiles is much more sparse; if I have actually been physically near a person, even if I don’t speak to them, I form a more comprehensive impression of what I imagine they are like.

I would never describe myself as a spiritual medium, but I suspect that people who genuinely have such a talent are able to derive a much greater depth of detail than I about the people I am vaguely aware of sometimes. On one occasion, I was meditating in the library of a building that was constructed on an old historical site. The person in my vicinity was a young teenage boy, and although I did not have much visual information, I had the feeling that he was from the early 19th century. Either that, or he was in period costume. Even more interesting was the fact it seemed to me that there were others near him, but just beyond my ability to detect them clearly.

My decision to build this website is part of a long-term plan that occurred to me in the small hours of April 24, 2012. The concept arrived in a spectacular and slightly overwhelming flood of information to my consciousness; as with many historical lightning-strikes of inspiration, the entire expanse of strategy was cohesive and fully formed. It reached me complete with all the relevant details and specific verbiage that I struggled to type out as soon as possible, or at least remember.

For the next couple of weeks, that information continued to unpackage itself in my mind. One morning, in the no-man’s-land between sleeping and waking consciousness, I enjoyed something in the order of a conversation with an elderly gentleman who was helping me on my mission.

This person had a cheerful nature but a somewhat serious, attentive face. He had a generous, neatly kept moustache, and wore a dark brown hunting cap. Although he was sitting in a wheelchair while we talked, I also knew that he was capable of walking, although it was difficult for him. He used a cane -- or possibly two canes -- of the anodised aluminium variety, with ergonomic plastic handles and a glossy bronze finish.

We were both in an animated, even excited frame of mind, to be collaborating on this project. It was our shared conviction that it would be a very successful endeavour and significantly improve the lives of many people; this made us feel happy and enthusiastic.

In the lucid yet dreamlike state of my consciousness, it made perfect sense that we were talking about how we would approach media interviews, if the concepts we wrote about succeeded in having a far-reaching impact on the lives of people all over the world. Both of us were riding high on optimism and self-belief, and standard-issue waking consciousness did not fully establish itself for a considerable period of time.

When it did, I understood that this person I had been having such a great time chatting to, was not physically present. He probably doesn’t even exist in the Newtonian world. But I am sure he had, and I suspect he continues to have, an instrumental role in helping me articulate these thoughts to you. I am not saying this site was exclusively his idea, or I am channelling his words instead of writing my own. It was a collaborative effort: we shared ideas, refined each other’s arguments, helped one another develop sensible progressions of concepts.

I don’t know who this person is, or what he is called, but I know he is real. And it would be an act of deception -- almost tantamount to plagiarism -- if I didn’t gratefully acknowledge his contribution to what you are reading right now.

1 comment:

  1. I appreciate the visual order and imagery you shared. Your gratitude for it is so inspiring. While I am hurting so bad, while listening to music, my mind has begun opening, barely, ever so slowly, After its all but complete collapsed under the pressure of surgically induced menopause (2014) on top of incomplete healing (2007.) I am moving from a complete darkness when I try to reach for any thoughts towards a pure light. I'll take the light over the darkness, with the hope of order and familiarity of perceptions. I am reaching, through music, with love, through the expected traumas. Gratefully...

    ReplyDelete