On Mind and Messages.

I was standing by the gate that leads into the Harry Potter wood this evening. The light was low for the hour, the air was cool but calm and dry, and I stood there idly musing on the scene before me: the wide path that curves downhill to the right and out of view, the wild undergrowth beneath the nearest trees, the saplings springing up on a small clearing beyond, and the leaf-laden treetops still and silent above.

At first I felt nothing but the sweet serenity of a woodland scene, and then something richer and more vibrant swept over me. I felt a sense of something subtle but scintillating in the atmosphere, something unseen but unquestionably real. Or so it seemed at the time. A presence perhaps? An energy of a sort unknown to the physicist? I really couldn’t say, and I’m forced to concede that it might have been nothing more than the product of an overactive imagination.

But the sense was of having become aware of a more rarefied aspect of reality lying outside that to which our minds are normally attuned, rather as electromagnetic radiation produces colours beyond those which our eyes are designed to recognise. It felt like shifting sideways into a more fantastical and mysterious dimension than the one in which our human brains are conditioned to function.

*  *  *

Two days ago I had to visit the doctor to pick up some medications.  As I pulled up to the kerb a woman and a little girl of around six or seven were walking past. The girl turned to look at me through the window and smiled. I smiled back. As they walked on the girl turned around and smiled at me again, but this time she added a wave. Needless to say, I smiled and waved back. And I thought to myself: ‘Musk can keep his millions’ (if you’ll excuse the understatement.) ‘A smile and a wave from a little girl is gold dust personified. More than that even, it’s invaluable. The pecuniary principle is powerless in the face of true worth.’

*  *  *

So is this a mind attuned to higher levels of perception, or merely an aberration within a faculty ruled by an imperfect organ? Does the universe convey messages via a woodland scene and a child’s smile, or do we simply go a little off the rails occasionally? How can we know? And what are we to do with the messages if they’re really there?