PREVIOUS THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY
July 24th to July 31st
MONDAY JULY 24
The Scole Experiment
I am reading a fascinating book called the Scole Experiment. Written by Grant and Jane Solomon, published by Piatkus, it is about a group of psychics in Norfolk. They have, apparently, been holding seances "with a difference". They turn off the lights, go into a trance and then, they don't just get messages from the other side. They get pictures and presents. Items of antique jewellery. Copies of the Daily Express from May 28, 1945. Allegedly, it even happens when skeptical scientists are in the room. This baffles me. Life of some kind, after death, I can accept. But why should some ethereal being in the glorious fourth dimension want to make a belated newspaper delivery?
TUESDAY JULY 25
Identity
None of us can be sure what happens when we leave this world. Many people though, have been to the edge of another world. Those who have briefly left their bodies during comas, operations or some state of trance, tell a similar story. It's not so much an end, more a beginning. But a beginning of what? My sense of identity is closely linked to the form that I inhabit and the relationship that it has with the rest of the physical world. Without such a form, what's to stop me being as small as an atom or as big as a galaxy? How will I know the difference between a minute, a year or a millenium? And, in such a state, what kind of dialogue will I want (or be able) to have with those who are passing through this dimension?
WEDNESDAY JULY 26
Ghosts
It's not that I don't believe in ghosts. It's more, I feel, that most ghosts don't seem to believe in themselves. They rarely show much sign of recognising their own existence. They behave, it strikes me, more like video recordings than people. Maybe that's what they are; moving, holographic images, accidentally captured by tiny crystals which lie within old bricks or rocks. Examples perhaps, of a naturally occurring "photographic technology" that lies hidden within the earth... yet which we have yet to fully understand.
THURSDAY JULY 27
Reverberations?
Traditional wisdom tell us that ghosts are spirits, trapped between realms and doomed to wander for all eternity. That's an easy concept to relate to if you have ever driven round Manchester, hunting for the M62. You would think though, that the afterlife would have better signposts. I think that ghosts are not presences but memories. Echoes, if you like. Reverberations that linger, long after the original noise has been made. If you are slightly sensitive you can hear such things. Or see them. Just as you can almost see, if you look at a pair of well worn shoes, the feet that they must once have belonged to.
FRIDAY JULY 28
Seances and haunted houses
There is, I suspect, a big difference between the type of ghosts that people see in old haunted houses... and the type that people see during a seance. In a seance, one person at least, enters a state of trance. A trance-state is a sort of psychic seashore. It's where the ocean of dreams meets the dry land of wakefulness. Deeply accurate insights dwell side by side with wild flights of fantasy. The only trouble with taking a leisurely stroll along those sands, is that while you are ambling through them, you can never be quite sure what you are actually encountering... or where it is coming from.
MONDAY JULY 31
Screen savers and psychic impressions
If you go into a modern office early in the morning or during lunch hour, you will see computer terminals full of floating words, rotating shapes or odd geometric designs being drawn and redrawn. These 'screen savers' exist because, if you just leave one static image glowing on your screen for hours at a time, it will gradually make a permanent imprint on the glass. Sometimes, people sit in one place for a very long time, day after day, brooding on the same issue - or doing the same kind of work. I wonder if, when we do, we leave a similar sort of lasting 'psychic impression' on our immediate environment?
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