Inner Legacy (9 page)

Upwards

Like many events in my experience the change was so gradual at first that it took some time to register in my consciousness. Around me it was all changing; the blackness was falling away, the very fabric of where I hung suspended in the great silence was slipping away. Again I have to emphasise although it is blackness and darkness yet there is light to see it and I know that sounds like a contradiction in terms. Maybe there was no light except in the perceptions of my brain or the manipulation of my retina? I can't answer only tell you I could see clearly.

The blackness was falling away on all sides like a curtain being withdrawn, and yet as it moved away, while I was aware of it happening, I was also very much aware that the curtain or veil was falling away to reveal the reality of my surroundings, which appeared as dark if not darker, than it had been before and yet radiated not only light but life and warmth.I could say the dropping away of the veil was to reveal nothingness and in one sense that would be true but it was like silence itself, not definable by an absence of something else but rather was there in its completeness.  I was in a true void of nothingness, no longer suspended just there in this place that was dark yet light.

It was all at a distance though and didn't seem to touch me but rather surrounded me . I was in place where it did not touch, a bubble in this fabric that seemed to be living.

The great silence was there, still, hanging on it felt by its fingertips. I could sense it was about to end, that it was like a grace note in music. The silence between the chimes of a clock. The moment before a sneeze. A sense of anticipation, of waiting.

And suddenly there was a rushing wind like nothing I have ever experienced on earth. The noise was deafening and rose to a roar that filled and vibrated through every sinew of my body. It became like the hot breath of a roaring lion. It was as though a great beast was below roaring upwards at me. Sparks of flame appeared from nowhere and danced around me. Little tongues of flame and then there was music. Such glorious music and my body moved and swayed and became part of the music no longer a grace note but an active part of the whole. I danced.

It was all-consuming and I was lost as though absorbed by the music, not a trance but like it. I was at one with the music. I closed my eyes and visions passed before me. Seen in my mind. The eye of the mind. The window of soul was opened and I saw.

Deafness fell from my ears and it was as though I had never heard before and I heard voices. Voices that were part of the music, not additional to it but an integral part of it as though human voices were instruments.

Then my nose awoke from a deep slumber and I felt the scent in my bones. It overwhelmed me and I opened my mouth to taste and was overwhelmed by sweetness.

Time was meaningless and I cannot say if this lasted for minutes or millennia for how do you measure that which doesn't exist.

I consumed and was subsumed.

Light grew then like a living thing and the darkness around me grew to an intensity of light and everything increased in intensity and I was at one with the whole. The light approached me and the bubble in which I had been was closing in on all sides and slowly it touched me, touched my body and entered into it until I was at one with all around me.

I could see yet saw nothing. I could sense but sensed nothing. I was aware but unaware. I was subsumed into that which I could not see. There was no fear yet something was not right. Something was missing. It was like being in a misted up car and looking through the windows knowing the world was out there but being unable to see it.

Hunger grew inside. The hunger of desire. It started in my heart and took over every part of my being. I needed to be fed, I needed to know.

I was swallowed up by desire for what I knew not but a longing deep in my being grew until it became my sole focus of being and existing. As it  grew so all else that I was experiencing seemed to fade away. The very light itself seemed to withdraw, the scent vanished, the visions stopped, the flames flickered into nothing, the wind died and the music stopped.

I was arched like a bow, my head turned upwards and flung back as far as it could go and I was filled with a longing, a hunger like nothing I had ever experienced.

When I thought I could no longer live with this longing it grew even more intense. My whole being every cell and atom was filled with a deep, deep need for completeness. I ached to experience joy. I fought to try and clear away this aching and longing to get control over myself. I even tried to think to make sense. It was futile as I arched and strained towards what would fulfil my longing.

I confess with shame I think that I fought this tooth and nail. I knew I couldn't resist this inexorable pull and yet for a reason I can't explain I resisted. I had been happy, if that is the right word, to go along and accept all that was happening but here in the final moments of my journey I faltered and stumbled and fell before this desire, this longing. It was as though I was being pulled apart, as though I was reluctant to submit.

I was reluctant to give in to this situation. I hung like that while I battled. A war raged inside me. I knew that I had to give up myself to this longing and become part of it and yet I resisted, I refused.

I would not go.

I would not let go.

And then suddenly I resigned from the game. I knocked over my King and admitted defeat. I wanted this with all my heart now, more than anything I had ever wanted. Whatever the cost I needed what I longed for, my hunger and need had to be satisfied.

I was at peace, one that goes beyond understanding. Conflict was over. Forever. I was the now and almost whole. My body no longer arching felt as though it began to rise through the darkness. I stretched my arm out ready to welcome and hug and absorb that which was to come.

Joy began to flood my being and tears flowed. I raised my eyes to the above and saw green.

A green stalk begin to fill my vision.

Rose

I came upon a rose. The stem of a rose and rising up I saw the rose bud. Its green casing curling at the top outward ready to burst open and flower.

It was life. A living thing that was the very source of life. Why I saw it as rose I have no idea, I do not like roses, I don't like the thorns and I like the flowers even less. Yet here before me as I circled it was a rosebud or what appeared to be a rosebud about two metres around the widest part. When I say rose that was what I thought I was looking at and yet around its base stood a ring of thorns unlike anything I had ever seen before. I became aware of movement and noticed my companion was back, not beside but curling and caressing the stalk, the ring of thorns and lovingly or so it seemed embracing the very bud itself. Stranger still the more time I had to take in fully what I was seeing I noticed that ring of thorns also moved in response to my wispy companion's movement and there was light as they danced together or so it seemed to me. Like lovers intertwining and responding to one another they danced together and then the rose itself seemed to change its nature, the stem pulsed with light and all three elements before me seemed to dance together in a strange and intertwining penetrating dance of love. A community. A community of love. They seemed oblivious to my presence and yet I felt no shame to gaze upon this thing before me for all I felt were waves of love.

And the stem and the circle of thorns and my companion seemed to grow faint before my eyes and I believe they were being caught up together in the rosebud until all that lay before me was the bud itself.

Slowly, oh so slowly the bud began to open. At first all I could see were little hints of light as the outer green protecting the bud began to fold away. I recognised the light immediately. I had seen it in the the cave. The cave where I had travelled the length of the tunnel only to be tantalised by the light beyond the rock face where I had read the words NOT YET with great frustration. I also realised at that point that although I had appeared to be travelling and journeying many kilometres through space I was always beside this light and that as far as the light was concerned I had never moved. My mind was reeling as I saw more and more revealed and in the time of revelation I came to see and understand. I knew then what I had gone through and why. I saw everything I had ever known or experienced fall into place like a jigsaw puzzle and I knew. Beyond that I cannot explain it. I knew. Oh how I knew. Knew and was known. I saw myself as I truly was meant to be. I saw how that had been the case for ever and all time and in time before time. I no longer thought, I simply was. As it unfurled before me there was no rose at all to be revealed. Instead I looked and beheld and knew. I cannot tell you what I saw then. There are two reasons for this, first and foremost that I can't even begin to recall it to mind. It is a faint knowledge just beyond my earthly mind's reach. The second reason is that even if I could recall it and, by some miracle actually describe or pass on to you what I knew and what I beheld, I would have to refrain for such things are not to be spoken of in this realm of ours.

My body was gently turned and I was looking out and up and down and saw the veil of darkness disappear before my eyes and I saw all that had been hidden from me. There was no darkness only light and I saw before me laid out the most wonderful sight I have ever seen, the most beautiful city stretching into the everness  and I saw millions of beings like me rising up towards me and I became as one with them.

And then finally even that vision peeled away, the light vanished, the rosebud of light vanished and then I truly saw all things as they are and will be and what above all else I was.

But here the tale of this journey, this trek, this vision, this experience must draw to a close for there is nothing beyond here, nothing I can describe for no language, no human idea, has ever reached or come close to what there was on the other side of otherness, in place before the beginning and beyond the end and what lies beyond our sad concept of infinity. However I can tell you it was the most wonderful thing I have ever seen and I ache and long to be there again. I will be soon. I am sure of that.

I have to be more honest I think. I saw much as I indicated. I could try and explain it to you and would gladly do so but not only do I think my time of writing is ending but also I think there are some things best left unsaid. Perhaps I might even feel a restraining hand upon my my soul preventing me from sharing it with you, I'm not sure if this is truly the case or whether or not the restraint is self imposed. I am sorry I have presented this to you almost as a riddle but if as I pray you will know the truth as I do then there will be little of a riddle in reality and you will see it for the allegory it is.

I was rolled gently back from that which is other and found myself in the blink of an eye back here in my room and in my bed and opening my eyes to greet morning. Do not take from this that I had had a dream for this was no dream or if it was it was dream beyond dreams. I came back to myself from otherness and woke to find myself trapped again in my pain filled body.

I know you will doubt but have I not already provided proof that I knew when I would die. I knew in the otherness and not in this life and I kept that knowledge when I woke. If I am in fact delusional and I expect you may think so then my proofs to you will be wrong and you can burn these notebooks please and forgive an old man his dreams. If on the other hand they prove to be true then perhaps you will treasure my writing and above all else seek out that which is not explicit but is implicit in this text. I know I have yet to provide you with the final truth or proof.

I will do so but I have more to say now than at first I thought. I have more time than I thought and I can dwell a little upon things and pass on to you others that are in mind, I want to speak to you across the void. I want to reach out and touch you.

I could have been far more explicit in my writing I know that. I could have made it all less strange and vague but some things are best hidden. If you are as I hope you are then I know you will understand and will need little help to understand what I have written. If my hopes for you on the other hand are not met or have yet to be realised by you then this will not be clear and may appear as little more than the recounting of fantasy dream induced by drugs or impending madness. If that is the case then I am sad at thought even as I write these words to you.

I have a favourite book and I think you will know the one I will mean even though you may have little memory of it. I think and hope it is also your favourite book. If so our minds have met across the divide of time and we are already united.

Proof and Reflections

It is I think having slept on it important for me to shed some thoughts on my experience. Forgive me if I am repeating myself at any point but I find my memory to be less than reliable at the moment. I think it is either due to the cancer perhaps having started to attack my brain as it spreads its insidious deadly little fingers into every part of my body or it might simply be due to a combination of pain killers and sleeping tablets. Knowing I have no time to revise anything I write I would rather make sure I have said everything that needs to be said as there will be no second chance at this attempt to share my experience. I hope I seem lucid in my writing? If I repeat myself therefore I must crave not only your understanding but your forgiveness.

Firstly I must apologise for what has not been written. Some things it seems are best left unsaid and some I felt as though a restraining hand had been placed upon my shoulder when I came to say certain things as though I was being quietly but firmly told I must not reveal what I saw to you or to anyone. I hope you will understand.

Secondly I feel that I have failed in my task of adequately describing  many of the things that are so clear in mind but so hard to convey to paper. I wish I was artistic if so I would have painted you pictures of many of the scenes, particularly those of the time I spend with crystal / diamond,

while it would have been impossible to see anything but the surface impression and a little of the inner light I would have been even as an artist unable to convey what I experienced.

I think I'll stop listing and just let my thoughts flow.

If I had been a poet perhaps it would have been possible to give you that insight that only a poet can to the mystic qualities of many of the events I experienced. But I'm not so there is little point in dwelling on such opportunities that I might have had, had I been a different person.

There are many parts of the tale that I fail to fully understand. When I think back to the Roman soldier and the railway arch I really don't think even now that I understand what it was all about or why I experienced it, the soldier himself almost in my mind's eye as I reflect on it seemed to have a comic book look to his movements that I failed to capture in my hurried description, he was more like a cartoon joke, dishevelled with dust rising from him and around him as he clanked away. What was it all for or about? If I don't know then I doubt if you will. The only thing I could take a stab at is that my experience moved from something of the concrete world that I know and slowly became something else. As to the darkness of the cave and the water I have my own ideas as to what was going on but I honestly don't feel brave enough to even begin to suggest what I think it was about and I worry I have made it sound like a toilet bowl. It wasn't. It as nothing like that although as I tried to write down that mysterious experience I kept getting the feeling I was describing a giant toilet bowl. I hope that didn't come across to you as you read it, it troubles me that I might have failed you in that respect and done a great disservice to you in relating it as I have done.

There was also an episode  in the experience that took place in wood/forest and another in a tunnel but my internal editor seemed to stop me writing about them. Were they significant or just a confused part of the memory of the experience. That may be why I left it out. Perhaps also I do not understand even now the significance of that particular part of the vision/experience. I could draw no moral or lesson or point from the experience. I also had a very strong and vivid experience of flying in that floating way I described out round Scarborough Bay which was a thrilling experience as I rose very high and learned to manoeuvre myself. My time in the birch wood was lengthy, it was similar to the woods I have seen in the cold Eastern parts of Russia where a more primitive natural life still exists, or again like those who walk with the reindeer in Northern Europe and know no boundaries. It was a fantastic time living in the woods, wandering, living, being alone and at one with nature. Then there was the room which I entered and had to step down in to. Once there, there was no way out and yet I was unafraid and felt at home. It was an old fashioned room, rather scholarly with a coal fire and over stuffed chairs and oil lamps for light. It was a warm dark room with dark aged wood dominating the atmosphere. Because these extra scenes if you like never formed part of what felt like the narrative I left them out, I only mention them in passing to indicate to you that there was much much more that I could have written but none of the above seem to me give me at least any insight into what was happening and it was almost as if they happened in a different place and yet were an integral part of the tale I have to share. Maybe I have left something very important out of the story.

My own personal theory is that they were the dreams I stated that I dreamt during the experience and I tried to indicate them in the narrative by use of the words 'I dreamt a dream' or whatever phrase I actually used as it escapes my muddled head at the moment, and I know if I pause long enough it will come back to me but time is not an asset I can claim to be on my side. I think I was right to leave them out of the narrative as they formed no part of the real experience but were my brain trying in its dreaming to make some sense out of the emotions and experiences that flooded in each day and therefore have no real substance. I don't think it is possible to dream within a dream. I am having a moment of doubt as I explore this idea in my head that perhaps the whole experience was a dream. Not that dreams need necessarily be just plain figments of our mind in REM sleep, dreams can be much more than that. If I don't die on the date stated and if my final proof to you is false then you will know I dreamt it all, I unfortunately will not  know if you verify that the experience or at least part of it anyway was real.

I would like to put a firm date stamp on when this occurred but I think I have already written about this and it would be foolish to repeat myself like an old man retelling his favourite stories over and over again. One day I knew nothing of any of this and the next it was there in its entirety and yet it was several days before the narrative formed in my mind in a shape that I thought it was possible to put  into words. Yet the timeframe of the narrative itself and as I recall it took place over as we measure it many months, perhaps even years but on this point I really would not like to commit myself.

Now I come to an even stranger thought, was this a vision of that which is to come like the Ghost of Christmas Future in Dickens' A Christmas Carol? Must it still happen to me? Will I live it again when I die? Is it the journey I will take when at last my body grows still and cold and life departs? Is that it? A future unalterable and set in stone. Or can I alter it by actions presently taken? Has writing it down altered my future beyond death? Was that the point of experience, a vision to warn me of what was to come, or have I already in some way that is not readily understandable been there and lived through it in reality. Was I lifted out of time in order to see all the scattered images of my life laid before me, did it all happen simultaneously and it is in thinking about it and writing it down that it takes on shape and form and serve out its function?

I wish I had these answers to give you but I cannot with certainty do anything other than present you with what I have seen inside my head. You must make of it more than I can. You will have time when you have transcribed it all that great luxury denied to me of being able to spend a great deal of time pondering it all and searching out and asking questions about the tale itself. It is conceivably possible that quantum physics  or cosmology or some branch of science will even provide a framework in which it is possible for such events to happen. Did I pop out of this universe to another and back in again? No, that is fanciful, I fear, not something that can be applied here, nevertheless I leave it sticking to the proverbial wall and you can dwell on the idea at leisure or tear it down from that wall and toss into the fire or file under insane ideas.

So where am I now? Is that enough reflection? I'm not sure, I keep getting this sinking feeling, a real feeling of unrest that there was something else that I have forgotten about. Something important. You know that feeling when you've left the house and you wonder did you lock the door or turn off the oven. Or like the feeling when you find yourself standing in  a room wondering why you are there and trying so hard to remember what it was or when, at least for me, you start a sentence and halfway through you realise you have forgotten what you are talking about - maybe that's just me and not a common experience at all.

I think I have it. I'm not sure if this is it or not. I will know more certainly if I write this down and the feeling goes away. All my adult life I have been troubled by the same dream which comes in many forms but nevertheless is the same dream. In essence I am in a place where I can find no way out or more accurately no way of reaching my destination or imposing order on events. I might be in a hospital and need to get to a certain room but no matter how hard I try or how many corridors I travel along or floors I go up and down I am always prevented in some way from getting to my destination. It manifests itself in many ways. Sometimes I will be trying to organise worship in a Church and nothing will work out, I have no service book or material, microphones don't work, people leave in droves and no matter how hard I try I cannot ever get any semblance of order out of chaos. In other words no matter what I try to achieve I fail, I am lost, caught in some kind of freaky loop out of which there can never be an exit. Every dream I ever remember having has been along these lines all my adult life. I am a dreamer of vivid dreams and they seem so real even when I wake up I feel as though they have been real experiences, so much so I have casually pondered if the dream world is in fact real and we live two separate existences. Now I am in kooky land I know but I want to share that with you so that I can say quite clearly to you this was a very, very, very different kind of experience and while it might read like the dream of a madman it had no hallmarks in any way of being a dream, it was something other than that something more than anything which falls in to the realm of normal experiences.

I think it is a post death experience, a journey I am in fact still to undertake. Is that too weird for you to handle? It is for me. My mind ties itself in little knots even trying to frame the question never mind trying to understand what that could possibly mean.

So Adam I have left you with this. Left you with my memoir, which was yours long before I was preparing to die. Today has been a good day, I almost feel like I am getting better but I have seen that often and more likely intimates the very brief time I have left. I know you will remember me writing these words for you are in the other room as I come to the end of my final notebook. You will have though no doubt I have been dotty, secretively scribbling away in corners, huddled over my little books preventing anyone from seeing that which is being written. You may even be angry with me as I am writing this, thinking to yourself why isn't he spending time with us when it is so short. If my proof is correct and what I saw accurate for some reason it will be many years before you ever get to read this which I don't understand as that is not my stated intention. So if you are reading this shortly after my death then nothing I am going through will be contained in this book. In fact it will be rambling cancer driven insanity served with lashings of tripe.

I wonder if that for me is a clue to timescale. Bear with me a little, if what I will end with that is my proof, is accurate perhaps when you read it it will be at exact same time that I see you doing it? Maybe I will literally be watching you from above at that very moment. Nice idea, comforting even, but not likely to be the case since I also saw my own death at exactly the same time as I saw the proof I am able to give.

Still it was a pleasant thought. I am writing to you now as though this is a letter for my tale is done and I am reluctant to bring my discourse with you to a close. I know I will weep when I write the last words in this notebook. I don't think I can bear to stop talking to you. My eyes are filling up now as I get a real sense of what I am leaving behind so soon. I don't as I write this want to go. I want to bin these notebooks and stay with you all and never have the pain of separation. Even with the powerful vision and all its wonder and promise, and that place I will reach in the end, even with all that awaiting me right now in this very moment I am overwhelmed with sadness as I hear the voices next door and hear you chatting to your Grandmother. Nevertheless I must draw to a close. I won't give you the proof just yet for those will be my very last words and you will have reached the end of all that I have written and when that moment comes all that remains is for me to place them in the secret compartment of the suitcase where you will find them one day in the future and all that will be left is for me to turn my face to the wall and wait to die.

I hear the clink of cups. I think I smell toast. I am coming now from my labours to join you, I can think of nothing better right at this moment but to come and join you both, the loves of my life, and share in a little dry toast and a cup of milky sweet tea.

Tomorrow I will return to this for the last time and share with you any last thoughts that come to me through the night and at last draw it all to a close with my offering to you of the final proof this has not been a dream. I hear your voice so young and clear and bright with vitality. I hear you Adam. You are coming to call me for supper. In a moment your face will appear in the door, your bright perhaps over bright  smile will encourage me to come and you will look into my bedroom and see your Grandfather propped up in bed closing his notebook and putting it down. I know you will offer to help me get out of bed and I will be grateful for that simple act of kindness and once up and steady on my oh so thin legs I will slide the notebook underneath the pillow and ask you to give me your arm.