Picture the scene – on a rainy night in Bath, Somerset, I enter the local launderette with a bag of washing. An hour later I emerge, with a five year old girl, her afghan-coated artist and astrologer parents, and all our washing, now clean. They invite me round to their place, make me a cup of tea, draw up my horoscope, and tell me that in about seven years time I’ll start studying to be an astrologer.
Fancying myself as a Marxist intellectual in those days, and being very dismissive of astrology (despite knowing nothing about it beyond the Sun Sign columns), this prediction shocks me. I could have laughed it off, had it not been for their preceding horoscope analysis of my character, which was uncomfortably accurate. The strangeness and inexplicability of the experience haunted me for months. Then I forgot it.
(a full account appears in Chapter 8 : Prediction)
My First Astrologer
Seven years later, I became captivated by the depth and power of astrology, compelled by curiosity and obsession which welled up – apparently from nowhere – to lead me far beyond the triviality of popular astrology into the ancient and profound art which lay behind that mask. Thus began a career which lasted eighteen years.
One of the many advantages of having survived to the stage of now being too old to die young, is that one’s view of life can broaden and deepen as one accumulates experience. A famous scientist once commented that life was not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we CAN suppose. I go along with that.
Another advantage to being older, one hopes, is the increasing ability to see advantages in very difficult situations. I spent the years from the end of 2001 in the Underworld, recovering from burnout, slowly emerging at last during the course of 2007/08. During that time I had to give up much of my former life, including a successful career. One of the riches of this period was the gift of all the time needed for reading, thinking and writing.
During the winter of 2004/05, when going through a bout of such extreme exhaustion that I could barely get off the couch, I simply lay on it with my laptop and spent weeks doing something I had wanted to do for decades: writing out a summary of all my strange experiences since the age of twenty three (when it all started) which simply did not fit with what we generally agree to be ordinary reality. At last I was turning to face my ‘other’ side, after having sidestepped it for a very long time.
There were thirty-seven incidents in all, some just fragments, others much more complete. Most can be dated to the day, month, season or year; a few, unfortunately, can only be placed in the decade in which they occurred. Two of the most significant were first recorded at the time they took place; disappearing into my archives, they only turned up decades later. The episodes which had the most powerful impact on me have remained very clear in my memory. The passage of time seems not to have eroded their vividness.
Many took place in the company or vicinity of my husband Ian; he is an inveterate – though brief – diarist, and this proved extremely valuable for exactly dating some of my paranormal episodes, and providing short quotes from the time they occurred for the following pages. It was also very useful to have Ian’s help in corroborating my own recollections. The core of what we both recalled was the same; where we differed somewhat on detail, I left those details out.
Categories were covered which most people would recognise: ghosts, poltergeist phenomena, premonitions – in dreams and breaking through in daily life – reincarnation experiences, invasive and haunting atmospheres in unfamiliar places, mediumship, telepathy. I didn’t bother to record numerous instances of thinking about people I hadn’t seen or heard of for ages, immediately after which they would appear, or phone. This is very common, although it is conventionally inexplicable. The most precious of all, though, was the mystical experience I had aged twenty-four, written down then. This has continued to inspire me, especially in dark times, ever since.
Mystical experience is common to all religious traditions, or none. Atheists are not immune ! (see Conclusion) In essence, it occurs when our ordinary sense of what reality is shifts into another register altogether, revealing without any doubt that we are all part of the One, the divine, God, or whatever name you wish to apportion.
I have always been blessed (or cursed !) with a restless, inquiring, sceptical (i) mind. As an astrology teacher, for example, I encouraged students never to take anyone’s word for it – including mine – but to test out all claims against the evidence of their own experience.
For a very long time the evidence produced by that ‘other’ side caused my rational self great difficulty; it is wispy, atmospheric, highly charged, episodic, unpredictable, descending without warning, hanging around for months then going away, sometimes for years. Intermittent paranormal intrusion into my life was definitely not appreciated. Now, however, I accept the validity of those experiences and can value their enriching effect, about which I will have more to say in the concluding chapter of this memoir.
Writing this account is partly for personal reasons, helping me to come to terms with an aspect of my being which has caused difficulty for as long as I can recall. I make no claim to be attempting to prove anything, being well aware that what is on offer belongs to the category of ‘anecdotal evidence’.
Apart from the fact that I have undoubtedly had these experiences –– and that they make interesting reading – the most striking thing is their diversity in relation to one person. Outwith those publicly claiming to be psychic from whom one would perhaps expect such reports, I have never encountered anyone else prepared to admit to such a range of ‘other’ episodes in their life or lives. No doubt I will now!
Life has a rich dimension of mystery to it, inexplicable in conventional terms. It would be good if we feared that less, and were more open about it. Why should clairvoyants, palmists, astrologers, mediums, clergy, or psychical researchers be the only people with whom we generally feel it is acceptable to discuss experiences which do not fit the frame? There are so many important aspects of living which we simply do not talk about for fear of being thought odd, or strange. Well – I have come to realise that “strange” is a very important part of normal life!
My main aspiration is that my experiences should add to the already very large and well documented body of experiential evidence confirming that this material world bounded by the five senses does not provide anything like the whole story of who we are, or what our lives are for.
I hope to generate sufficient interest via the memoir – and the broader general context in which I will try to set my experiences – for readers to be inspired to go away, read some of the books from the list provided which I found informative and inspiring, reflect on any ‘strange’ experiences they may have had – and make up their own minds, having expanded their outlook in the process. I also hope that this account may offer some support to those who, like me, are of a sceptical bent and have found paranormal phenomena intrusive, disturbing and hard to put in a context which allows them to ‘make peace’ and move on.
Here, a Buddhist perspective offers good counsel: they regard unusual experiences arising, eg in meditation practice, as epiphenomena or side effects. These should not be unduly focused on, simply allowed to rise and fade as the meditation practice unfolds. For me, living fully in the Reality offered by our five senses in the here-and-now is a tough enough challenge without deliberately seeking access to any other levels!
I would therefore like to stress my lack of desire to “do” anything more with these experiences than make peace with them, and help other readers who have had similar intrusion into their lives to do the same. I don’t wish to train in mediumship, or “develop my psychic gifts” as has often been suggested. Nor do I want to encourage anyone else to do so.
This memoir takes all my remembered paranormal episodes, presenting them in a manner which I hope will strike you as honest, open minded and by no means lacking in humour. When you have read through them, I anticipate that you will have at least one or two episodes of your own, or stories shared with you, to bring to my reflections in the Conclusion.
Where do the experiences I have related, which are not uncommon, come from? What causes them? Why do we have them? What, if anything, do they mean? Are they of any value?
I hope you will be stimulated sufficiently by this personal account to let me know what you think in due course.
Comments from open minded readers are welcome!
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Ancient Witnesses
(i) “sceptical: inclined to question the truth or soundness of accepted ideas, facts etc” [Gk skepsis inquiry, doubt f. skeptomai, consider] New Oxford English Reference Dictionary OUP Second Edition 1996
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