'Maybe consciousness operates on a similar basis to steam, water and ice – three forms of one substance.' Photo: Javardh on Unsplash.
‘I had a new sort of dream – more like a vision. It felt so real.’
More than a feeling: Christine Downes-Grainger has a sense of knowing
At a recent Quaker event someone mentioned ‘alienated Quakers’ – people who have stopped attending Meeting because they feel unwelcome. The Friends in question had experienced what we might call ‘phenomena beyond the individual’.
People experience phenomena in a number of ways – scents, sounds, images or emotions, and some would also say psychometry or a sense of someone’s presence, or being given messages. My first experience of this kind came when I was an awkward young mother, recently moved onto a new estate. A kind-hearted neighbour took me to an evening at her church. It was all new to me. The eleven of us present received a raffle ticket. A strong sense of ‘knowing’ overwhelmed me – I was going to win it. And I did.
My husband Colin died suddenly in 2009. We had stuck together for forty-two years, through many difficulties. About three months later I had a new sort of dream – more like a vision. It felt so real. I was pulled out of my house and round to the shed. There I had the same sense of knowing – Colin was back. He was standing in the greenhouse, wearing a familiar coat. He gave me a warm hug and a smile. Then that world dissolved and I woke up.
I had no idea what to do with my husband’s ashes and kept them at the foot of a tree in my garden. When the tree started filling the neighbours’ gutters with needles I was forced to confront the matter, but there did not seem to be one place that reflected Colin’s unhappy, unsettled life. One morning I woke up humming a tune: ‘La Mer’ by Charles Aznavour. I realised Colin’s ashes could go in more than one place: a portion on his mother’s grave, and a portion in the sea. La mère, the mother, and la mer, the sea. But I also needed a location to represent my own connection with Colin. A week or two later I woke up singing ‘On the Street Where You Live’. Colin lived in the bedroom for many years, restricted by addictions to smoking, prescription drugs and alcohol. An experience we shared was listening to music. I realised I could ask if a portion could go in a nearby Friends Burial Ground.
A few weeks ago Carole Sutton wrote of being ground down by scientific, reductionist views of the world (4 September). I am resisting that while working on a few hypotheses of my own. If everything in the universe is composed of the same elements, and the whole system is based on recycling, why should humans be outside of that system? And if we are outside it, where have the many personalities since the world began, come from?
Maybe consciousness operates on a similar basis to steam, water and ice – three forms of one substance. We are currently in solid form. The ‘patterns of waves of energy’ Friends feel are liquid. Steam describes our spiritual existence. I find it helpful to view death as a transition, from one form to another. Let’s welcome back ‘alienated Quakers’ and have open conversations about the different ways we perceive the world.
Comments
Very moving and easy to identify with. I do like your analogy with the three phases of matter.
By javalava on 24th September 2020 - 10:36
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