World view: Anne Wade’s Thought for the week

‘I was in no doubt that what I was seeing was absolute reality.’

It was January 1968. I was twenty-seven, a Quaker for ten years. I was walking along the Dorset cliffs. Everything was grey and still: luminous pearly-grey light, flat grey sea, hard grey horizon, dead grey vegetation and mud. My mind was empty, its chatter stilled by walking.

Then, as I was staring vacantly at a clump of dead grass, it just came to life. It was on fire, and yet fire was not the right word. I was in no doubt that what I was seeing was absolute reality. This was what Moses meant with his ‘burning bush… that yet was not consumed’. I looked around and the whole universe had come to life for me. It was conscious, and communicating with me, beyond words. I saw that it was like this all the time, but that we are rarely aware of it. It was not an out-of-body experience – I was still aware of being myself, all-of-a-piece and better integrated than ordinarily – I had just become open to far more than normal. The barriers that separate us from reality had thinned. I wasn’t seeing and understanding everything – that would have been too much to survive – but more than I could understand in my mundane state.

I knew that if I was going to be able to bring any of it back with me, I had to put some salient facts into memorable words. This is what I came up with: ‘This consciousness is natural, not paranormal or supernatural’; ‘It is a power like electricity, an innate attribute, not a separate order of things’; ‘It is the lifeforce permeating everything, the missing link in the theory of everything’; ‘I am seeing more colours and dimensions than I am physically able to visualise’; ‘This consciousness knows me and loves me, as it does everything’; ‘This is how every sparrow that falls is known, every hair on our heads is numbered’; ‘I am, we are each, a little piece of the pattern, the dance, of this life of the universe’; ‘All I want is to fit into the pattern and make each step of the dance perfect’.

I came back, reluctantly.

I knew that the experience would be enough for the rest of my life. I have often had lesser openings, but the next time I see so clearly will be at my death. While I am here, I am to get on with my life. I knew that Julian of Norwich had seen much the same, which was why she felt so strongly that ‘All shall be well’. I knew that George Fox had seen something similar, and that it made him ally himself humbly with Christ – but that it also put him beyond the Christian churches, with a revolutionary understanding of continuing revelation over fixed, unchangeable scripture. It was an open secret among early Quakers. Pascal saw it in his ‘night of fire’. The Quaker scientist Arthur Eddington understood it when he said that ‘we need not turn aside from the measure of light that comes into our experience showing us a Way through the unseen world’. Mystics of all religions…

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Comments

Beautiful - thank you.

Roger

By rbabingtonhill@gmail.com on 7th December 2023 - 8:43

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Hi. I would love to subscribe and receive a paper copy of this weekly paper/ journal. Is that possible?

By karenjonesflute@me.com on 7th December 2023 - 9:13

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That’s easy Karen.  I’m sure the sales team will tell you how.

By rbabingtonhill@gmail.com on 7th December 2023 - 9:41

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