One World

15) Born Free

Posted 12th April 2016

6 years ago an old friend of mine, a man who I used to try to put the World to rights with over cups of coffee, and who I used to play chess with a lot as we sipped on a whisky or two, passed away. 4 days later, on Sammy's funeral day, the skies were quiet. A volcano in Iceland had recently erupted and most European planes had been grounded. Only the song of the house sparrows could be heard on that bright day. Afterwards, when Sammy's friends and family had gathered for soup and coffee, the completion of the funeral duties, I felt as if a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

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A few weeks before Sammy's passing, I woke up in my little side study, having fallen asleep on my reclining chair with my feet on a footstool. About 5 feet in front of me, just off to the left of the window, was a woman looking at me. She had long hair, and looked sad. She appeared to be quite grainy - as if I was looking at a projection on the wall of an old black and white movie. I remained calm. I slowly looked to my right at my computer screen, then slowly looked back - the woman was gone. Curiously, the woman had appeared over a poster I had recently put on the wall - it was a long column print out of my family tree.

"Mercury reaches its greatest elongation from the sun on April 8 and puts on its best show this year (2010). The first two weeks of April are the best time to see this swift little world as it lies more than 10 degrees above the horizon and shines as bright as magnitude -0.9. Many stargazers have never seen Mercury. Even the great Nicholas Copernicus never laid eyes on this planet." - From an astronomy website.

The night before Sammy's passing I left my house and turned around to see the planet Mercury above the roof of my house. I knew it was Mercury from "The Sky at Night" TV programme that month. Later that night I found myself singing "Born Free".

A few days later I had a dream. It was no ordinary dream, it felt absolutely real, and I believe it was. In the dream, Sammy paid me a visit and spoke to me briefly. Over the coming months I dreamt more about Sammy. He always looked quite sad.

Since Sammy's passing I have been on a quest to find truth. I am open to all possibilities. Like a detective, I do not dismiss anyone's beliefs as nonsense, but neither do I accept anything as absolute truth. I develop suspicions about what is going on, but these suspicions are revised constantly, and sometimes change dramatically.

A few weeks after Sammy's passing a woman came into my life. We only stayed together for a few months. She said her family thought I was good for her as her life had recently become difficult, but looking back she also comforted me during a very difficult time. Sammy's passing had left me 'shell-shocked' and feeling as if the World had changed into something unrecognisable.

A year or so later I was in my local library and a man with learning difficulties had chose to talk to me as I was reading quietly. He was talking about his parent who had recently passed away at about 4am in the morning. He told me that that is the time the angels come. Another man there looked over. I guess he thought I was humouring the troubled man. I wasn't - my mind was opened to the possibilities of what the bereaved man was telling me. Sammy had also passed away at about 4am.

By about 18 months after Sammy's passing I was all but convinced his life was continuing, and that a greater power was in control. I think because of this conclusion, I had swiftly moved past my grief. So much so, that on the second anniversary of Sammy's passing I actually almost let the day pass without realising it. However, that night I was lying back and I was drowsy, but not sleeping. Then something amazing happened. Even though I could see the room around me, that is, my eyes were open, Sammy's face suddenly whooshed before me, from about 4 feet away, to right up to my face, then over my right shoulder then he was gone, as if as a ghost. He had had a broad happy smile on his face and his hair had been a little less grey than it had been at the time of his passing.

Whilst you might think it is disrespectful to forget Sammy on only his second anniversary, I think this is the reason that it was the first time I had seen him look happy. My forgetting the anniversary was a clear sign that the grieving that had been left in the wake of his passing had ended.

A few years later, I read about a similar thing in 'Through the Mists'. In that book, an account is relayed where a guiding spirit actually explains that the grieving of loved ones remaining on Earth pains the departed and makes it emotionally difficult for them to separate themselves from the Earth. A year or so later I had a dream where a seemingly young man told me, "Through the mists is spot on".

I am an engineer with a scientific background. As a young boy I had a strong faith instilled in me, and I believed in the existence of God every bit as much as you might believe in the existence of an uncle in a far off land who you have never met but have only ever been told about. As a teenager and into my twenties I chose to be an atheist. I believed there was a scientific explanation for everything, and that the notion of an omnipotent being in the sky was ridiculous. The reason I say I 'chose' to be an atheist is because always, despite the arguments proffered by my rational mind, I have believed, known even (or felt?), that there is something more, something mysterious at play. Over the years I have frequently noticed many coincidences. None that I could prove that would satisfy a scientific board I guess. For example I'd write a word, and then someone across the room would say that word. One night I was waiting to be seated at a restaurant in a city 20 miles from my home, and I decided to step outside for a moment. I looked to my left and I saw one other person who I know very well (who is also not from that city) in the quiet street about 20 feet away, waiting to cross the road.

I'm sure my arguments would be picked apart by many. "Wouldn't it be a coincidence if there were no coincidences" as Stephen Fry once said on an episode of QI. The point is that these frequent events over the years have been sufficient for me personally to heighten my suspicions that something is 'going on'.

A young man wrote on Twitter a year or two ago that he believed in their being an afterlife because he found it too awful to contemplate that his time on Earth is all that there is for him. I only discovered the man's tweet because the writer Richard Dawkins had retweeted it with the response "Masterly logic". I knew this to be sarcasm by Professor Dawkins, and consistent with something I have heard him say a couple of times at least: that the Universe doesn't care about you.

Well, I say without irony that the young man did indeed demonstrate masterly logic. Remember my blog post last week? Where the android explained how he has "always been" as a consequence of there being an infinite amount of time preceding this moment? That is, that probabilistically intelligence has existed forever. Well, what does intelligence want? It wants to be happy and for that happiness to never end. If intelligence has been around forever it has had sufficient time to discover how to achieve its desires. All of them. This simply encapsulates what the young man in the tweet said, albeit, perhaps, from a place of feeling rather than cerebral logic.

If an infinite number of monkeys could type the complete works of Shakespeare then I strongly suspect that an infinite space inhabited by intelligence for an infinite amount of time will manage to realise their collective desire for a perfect plan to ensure eternal happiness of all sentient beings. That IS the master, overall, logic - it is philosophical logic, just not scientific logic which is limited by the scope of man's instrumentation.

(But wait a minute! Why doesn't this perfect intelligence just give everything to humans right now? Think of the awesome weapons of war man could build! It's a conundrum, I grant you.)

If I stranded you on a desert island and left you for 10 years, I suspect that upon my return I will find you have made housing, a water system, simple crop rotation etc. I have no direct evidence that I will find this, except for my understanding of the nature of intelligent life and its desire for happiness. Desires + time gives rise to realising those desires, in the same way as erosion + time can carve mighty rivers to the open sea.

And for all the above reasons and more, my fellow Earthlings, I suspect that when you undergo your own personal apocalypse and pass from this Earth, whilst it is the end of the life you have come to know, a life of uncertainty and struggle, it is not 'The End'. It is only the true beginning for you. Your birth into wisdom and freedom.

Wisdom 6: 12-16: "Wisdom is brilliant, she never fades. By those who love her, she is readily seen, by those who seek her, she is readily found."