The following fascinating account comes from a reader, Susan.
(Thank you, Susan. As great as all those famous "reality hiccup" stories are, nothing beats first hand accounts of direct experience.)
My name is Susan O. I am 52 years old and in reasonably good health both physically and mentally.
I experienced a recent incident that I described to my family as a sort of phasing through time. Here are all the facts, both objective and subjective that happened on May 9th, 2015 in Williamson County, highway 96, just outside of the city of Franklin Tn., traveling toward that city from the direction of Murfreesboro Tn.
It
was close to 11:30 am. The day was clear, sunny and the temperature
was around 78 Fahrenheit with low humidity. I have traveled this
highway many times in the past, to take my daughter to horse shows,
though that was ten years ago. I probably haven't driven to Franklin
on this road for several months at least.
I was driving my car about 40 mph. I was not listening to the radio or any music. I was in a very good mood, on my way to deliver flowers for a wedding. I am a wedding and event florist. I am also a photographer and I have learned to be very observant.
I was passing a large brick house with a stone front and archway leading to the front door. The yard was large and open. The house was on my right. Then suddenly, I was standing under an archway made of stone. It was cold and damp, very overcast. I could feel the cold wind blow around my ankles, so I must have been wearing a dress of some sort. I could also feel the cold wet stone of the arch underneath my right hand, I was leaning against it for support. There was a man present to my left, and a woman beside him, and a little behind me. I didn't look at them. I was looking out at a landscape of rolling hills, rocky and the vegetation looked like it was late fall, early winter. The wind was blowing, it was very overcast and gray. I felt like the building behind me was a church. there were people inside, I could hear voices faintly. I was extremely sad, it felt like grief. I think I was crying.
The next thing I knew i was back in my car, still passing the house, barely further than I was when I found myself in another place. Not much real time has elapsed. It was very unsettling. I felt like I should go back, but I didn't know how to do that. Then I finished driving to the wedding, I set up the flowers and the reception, stayed to help with the wedding, cleaned up and drove home that night along the same road about 10:45 pm. I was a little spooked, so talked on my cell phone with a friend until I got close to Murfreesboro.
This is what happened to the best of my knowledge and recollection I have spent time talking this over with my husband , my daughter, and her boyfriend. I tried to search on the internet to see if I could find any information. Finally I got directed to several sites which describe incidents of something called "time slips". Then I found your site.
Let me know what you make of this. I have always experienced deja vu since i was very young, and have had a few dreams where I saw locations of children kidnapped, but never enough to tell me where they were, mostly like I was seeing through their eyes. These happened in my teens, and I was scared of them, so I stopped watching the news for several years.
I don't know about other readers, but I find this type of event among the most interesting timespace-perception-transcending experiences. It deserves much deeper an analysis than I am going to attempt right now (but I might edit this entry in the future to add more thoughts, so stay tuned).
Based on a few other similar experiences I have heard or read about, I think what MAY have happened is that - assuming information really isn't local (as modern physics seems to suggest) - you accessed fully that reservoir of collective experience that Sheldrake (among many others) talk about, and "picked up" the full experience of someone else. Perhaps it was someone's "memory field". Perhaps it was something else entirely.
For the sake of (relative) completeness I should also mention the possibility of an image-triggered memory of a long-forgotten film scene or even a dream. (In other words, there is a possibility that many years ago you saw a film scene like the one you described, one that you identified strongly with; or perhaps you had a dream like the scene your experienced. For some reason - probably quite specific, but forgotten almost instantly after the association was made - the image of that house, which you had seen before, had become associated to that memory. Seeing it again triggered - for some reason - the memory of the film scene or dream.)
That COULD happen.
But do I really believe that happened in this case?
Well, no, not really.
As I said earlier, I may edit this entry in the future, as more thoughts come along, so check back from time to time.
P.S. If Carl Grove (see the comments section in: Have you seen this house?) happens to read this... Carl, we would appreciate your help with this one. ;)
44 comments:
I just wanted to say thank you for posting my experience online. I hope to see many comments that may help me to process the incident and understand it better.
Thank YOU, Susan.
I hope there will be comments, too, but sometimes it takes a while - sometimes it takes a LONG time - for people to comment.
However, I am sure it'll be an interesting read for many. ;)
I think my initial impression is that this is not a simple time slip. Perhaps picking up someone's memories via a stone tape effect of some kind. The other possibility is of some kind of past life recall. I wonder if there were any cues in the experience that might fix a time period for the events described? I.e. Was it long enough in the past to make reincarnation a possibility?
Thank you, Carl (and, again, apologies for the tardy approval of the comment - vacation time again ;)).
That is my personal impression too - either that or "mind reading". There are myriads of cases that seem to indicate an individual's mind can pick up other people's (alive dead, present or absent)thoughts or memories at any time.
(George William Russell, for example, while sitting in his office one day suddenly found himself observing a place and people he had never seen before. When he described the scene to the coworker sitting next to him, it turned out that coworker had been thinking about his home and family, which were exactly as Russell had seen them.)
P.S. Oh, one more thing: even if reincarnation does exist (which is not certain at all), it may not be happening in a linear fashion, but rather simultaneously (across parallel timelines. And so, some theorists suggest that the "past" lives might be more accurately called "parallel" or "simultaneous" lives.
I agree on both counts. I gather that the witness is a very sensitive person so there are many possibilities. Going further along your line of reasoning, things like this might point to The Great Soul notion of the Sufis (which they had centuries before Jung reworked the idea as the Collective Unconscious). I can understand why the conventional thinkers have no patience with these types of phenomena -- they open up far too many cans of worms!
I don't know if our comments will help Lavenderblue, but if it is any comfort to her, many people are experiencing such things these days, or perhaps are more willing to come forward and share them with others. I know that some persons react very negatively to such things. Often this is a sign of some inward fear, because challenges to one's belief system can absolutely terrify the more insecure types.
I am glad you mentioned the Sufis. They are must-read to anyone interested in the topic of time-space. (A few really good websites might be enough; no need to jump right into their treatises - even though their treatises ARE a fascinating read.)
I am firmly convinced that Western science will - eventually - confirm everything, or most, of what they claimed many centuries ago.
Let's not wait for Western science to catch up. :-)
Coincidentally, as I read your last comment,I had a copy of Shah's "Way of the Sufi" in front of me, having just quoted a remark of Rumi's to Marcelle McMillen, and I opened it to find "Sentences of the Khajagan" and the quote from Aminki, "Pass from time and place to timelessness and placelessness, to the other worlds. There is our origin."
Check out a site, The Oscillating Universe, for "Stepping out of Time."
Some of Shah's introductory documents, from the 60s and 70s, are available online (can't recall which site). Any of his 30-odd books are a good introduction to the subject.
This is the site:
http://mystical-faction.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/documents-by-and-about-sufi-idries-shah.html
Thank you so much for the link and the titles!
I remember that website (blog) from one of my visits.
There is also a book that I absolutely LOVE, a translation from French of H. Corbin's book about Ibn Arabi. It's called "Alone with the Alone" in English.
It might be a tad difficult for a "casual" reader unfamiliar with Ibn Arabi or Sufism, but there are chapters about the "Wisdom of the Heart" - a crucial concept in Sufism - that I cannot recommend enough, as they are directly relevant to what we perceive as time/space.
(N. B. There is also some discussion of "teleportation" - if you'll excuse the pedestrian term - as mentioned in the Koran/Q'uran. Most interesting. We've been thinking about doing a post about that for quite a few years now.)
I must look up that book.
In Sufi terminology teleportation is "Ilm el-Ghaibat" (the science of absence). (See Shah's Tales of the Dervishes, "The Sultan who became an exile,") I'm not sure where it appears in the Koran, though! The tale concerns a dispute over the Prophet's Night journey when, after a long visit to heavenly spheres, he was returned to his room at the same instant that he left, so it's a kind of time and dimensional slip. A Sufi demonstrates this to a Sultan, whose absence lasts 7 years. He comes back to the same time, and before he can take revenge on the Sufi, the latter teleports away.
Yes - exactly: "the SCIENCE of absence". (The term itself says a lot about their degree of intellectual and esoteric sophistication.)
Mohammed's Night Journey is, of course, the most famous cse; the book in question also discusses Solomon's "teleporting" (not really) the throne of the Queen of Sheba.
I think you'll enjoy it.
I hope so. :)
N.B. (to any potential reader): Even being a treatise ON Ibn Arabi, not by him, it does have to be read "with the Heart" (meaning the "subtle Heart") to be fully grasped. I speak from experience. :-)
I think people not familiar with Sufi materials would find our recent comments a bit puzzling. Briefly, unlike all other "mystical" and "religious" groupings, the Sufis make no efforts to convert people, gain followers, instill belief systems, or promise entry to Heaven. On the contrary, they argue that all these activities are the signs of degenerated teachings which offer in practice only brainwashing and conditioning. They are concerned only to promote higher perceptions, by whatever means is required in each individual case. Teaching materials may be written ones but require a special kind of attention for their use. Many traditional religious scriptures are teaching materials that have been taken literally by their misguided followers.
What makes them especially relevant with regard to our chief interest is that they are in my experience the ONLY people who emphasise the importance of time and seem to know how to modify or overcome it.
If anyone is interested in these ideas they would probably be wise not to start on a major treatise but on the introductory course provided by the most recent Sufi teacher, Idries Shah. This provides the concepts that are missing from our contemporary culture.
Apologies to Lavenderblue for going somewhat off topic. In my case, the relevance is that studying such teachings enables one to approach questions of time travel, space-time distortions etc. without either rejecting them as absurd or getting too excited about them.
I am sure many WILL be quite baffled. ;)
But anyone seriously interested in this topic - anyone looking for more than superficial titillation a la "ghost stories" - is likely to be quite happy to be informed about it.
As for the Sufi theology: indeed, they are (as you said), as far as I know, the only "fraction" of Islam that does not obey the mandate to proselitise and convert - and that's why they were (and are) often cruelly persecuted by other Muslims.
And it is not a gratuitous or socially/politically motivated "disobedience": the Sufis believe that God and Truth reveal themselves to each person perfectly within their own (presumably Abrahamic) culture/religious tradition (meaning the original, "pure" tenets, of course, not later distortions).
In other words, you can be a "Sufi" without ceasing to be, say, a true Christian (quite the opposite, in fact).
As for your last sentence: that's exactly it.
Well put.
Thanks.
And re Christianity, the Sufis regard Jesus as one of their own. Shah (can't recall exactly where) notes, "Jesus stands, in a sense, at the head of the Sufis." What is today regarded as "Christianity" owes more to Paul's rather weird theology than to Jesus's teachings. Indeed, the Gospel of Thomas, as you know, basically a handbook of the teachings (surely the first thing you would want in your scriptures), was actually rejected by the early Church. Everything the Sufis say about the deterioration of the teaching in our environment being inevitable is writ large in early church history.
Ah yes - that's one of the greatest riddles of history: how official Christianity became to be "Paulinity", actually. :)
It falls beyond the scope of this blog, by far, but yes, no wonder the Sufis (among others) hold Jesus Christ in such high regard. Whatever you can find in "anifestation" pop-books a la "The Secret" and so on can be found, quite clearly, in the NT.
Christ knew - and taught, very explicitly - there are no time-space boundaries "for him who believes". :)
I would still like some "scientific" conceptualisation regarding time slips and dimensional slips, but maybe, as humans, what we can take from these experiences is exactly that -- the evidence that time and space aren't the ultimate reality.
Of course! Indeed, it's something that science SHOULD be tackling, in my opinion.
But acknowledging that space/time aren't what they seem - rock solid and irreversible - is a good place to start. :)
That's one of the purposes of this humble blog.
Getting to converse with interesting minds is just a bonus. :-)
Yes, but what is difficult, as I'm sure you know, is making contact with the witnesses of these phenomena. I have had little luck on these lines -- usually people telling their stories online employ usernames and if they choose to ignore the messages you send them, there's nothing you can do. Obviously I have only made the effort with really important cases! Ironically, the anonymity granted by using these codenames is what encourages many witnesses to come forward, I suspect. If someone in the future makes a really serious effort to investigate these experiences, they will need to find a way of getting around this problem.
I know.
The irony (not really) is that, if a SINGLE report from among the hundreds of thousands were true - and it's difficult, even ridiculous, to dismiss all of them as results of faulty observation, gullibillity, overactive imagination and so on - it would and should be enough for science to investigate it throroughly, because it would likely change our knowledge about the world we live in.
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I'm sure that many of these cases are true. Some are potentially highly significant. But not many scientists have expressed interest in such things. Most conventional scientists (as opposed to the genuine, open-minded, pioneers) want to be able to fit phenomena into accepted categories, and time slips are a step too far for them. If we could reproduce these happenings in the laboratory, it might attract a little more attention. In principle it might be possible (by generating stable torsion fields) but controls would need to be very precise and the design very tight. Such an effort would not require huge funds (Reddish conducted his work using old lathes) but the experimenters would need a lot of patience for the required fine tuning of the generators. On the whole scientists are impressed not by spontaneous phenomena but by effects that can be reliably repeated. This is why Hutchison has had little success in interesting scientists -- his effects are undeniable, but they can't be repeated to order. (I suspect because of lack of shielding in his lab--at least, this is never mentioned in any of the accounts of his work.)
That's why I cannot take "science" (which, after all, means 'knowledge') as seriously as I would like to. Seeking for knowledge with blinders on is making everyone waste time and precious reources, of all kinds. (not to mention those "scientists" who KNOW that such phenomena are very real, yet stil deny their existence, for fear of losing their reputation or their funding, mostly both.)
P.S. Sorry for the typos.
I wish Blogger had a comment-editing option, but it doesn't.
As I think Pauwels and Bergier said, science is a game in which everybody cheats. Regarding reputations, I recall that 30 years ago, when I was consulting for a Canadian university, I wanted to design an experiment to test the ESP of deaf children (a remote viewing protocol). The graduate student who was asked to run the work agreed on condition that her name not be mentioned when we published the results (it never happened anyway!). When you recall that Targ and Puthoff were two of the world's top scientists when they first published the results of their RV studies, you see the difference between the real scientists and the second raters.
"you see the difference between the real scientists and the second raters"
I couldn't have said it better myself. ;)
Unfortunately, there are also cases such as Jacques Benveniste - exemplary cases in the most tragic way.
I think it all goes back to the Age of Reason, the French Encylopaedists and their counterparts elsewhere. Contrary to its French name, and despite its admirable achievements in emphasising and conceptualising human rights, this movement actually plunged humanity in a "dark age" by limiting the validity of experience to the sensorially perceptible ONLY.
The sad thing is, we seem to be a long way still from scientists (in general) acknowledging even this fact about Voltaire & Co. - let alone changing gears and pursuing different routes.
I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about it. It's just human nature (tribalism, vanity, conformism, fear of ridicule, etc.) When I was young I fell for the image of scientists as explorers and trail blazers (probably read too much science fiction)and it took a while to see how wrong it was! If there was one moment that triggered that realisation, it was this: after getting my doctorate, I was chatting to my supervisor, grumbling that it sometimes seemed "that who you knew counted more than what you knew." He looked at me with genuine astonishment, then said, "Have you only just realised THAT?"
I know. ;)
I am much like that myself. In spite of everything, I keep expecting that a "doctor" really is "doctus" - and I am constantly surprised to discover how many so-called experts are really Fachidioten (as the German expression goes).
Still, I do believe if there is one good thing about the internet, it is the pressure of actual data and experiences that go against the grain of "science", the sheer volume of which cannot be discounted or silenced as easily as it used to be.
In the case of time slips the internet has increased the data supply by an order of magnitude! And glitches in the matrix/parallel universes/whatever you call them, were not even recognised as a phenomenon until people started posting them on the net (I can recall only one or two such cases prior to ca 1990, say. Whenever someone posts details of what seems like a uniquely strange event, there are usually others responding instantly with personal experiences of the same kind. A lot of researchers, unfortunately, are still stuck in the conceptual framework of the 19th century, and don't seem to have given such phenomena the attention they deserve.
Very true (although I do remember several cases of - differently named - "time slips" - from books, obviously - and I am not counting my own ;)).
But I think the internet has had another, less desirable effect: even though dubious cases may be in the minority, the explosion of such accounts seems to provide a very welcome excuse for many scientists to pigeonhole (again) such phenomena as the domain of "cranks" and dismiss them.
That's why I - an other people who moderate this blog - are so strongly opposed to fictitious stories, as entertaining as some of them they may be. By not investigating their own experiences rigorously enough, people help devalue the realty of such phenomena.
True, some of the witnesses are short on relevant details, get confused, etc. Even so, there are still many cases that are described clearly, analysed in a sensible way by their witnesses, and come across (to me) as extremely credible. The opinions of people who use pejorative terms to refer to these people don't concern me. They are just describing themselves. People don't make brilliant witnesses, that is something that just goes with the territory. On the other hand, as Dr James McDonald pointed out many years ago (in the context of UFOs, but it applies equally here), while witnesses to a traffic accident may get speeds, directions, and other key details wrong, they aren't totally wrong -- they never claim to have seen a giraffe colliding with a balloon, for example. This is why it is vital to study all available cases, and to look for patterns, details that may not seem obviously important, but that verify that everyone is describing the same kind of phenomenon.
Very well said. ;)
I wish you'd write more on this - preferably in a book.
Or an article in a mainstream medium.
One day, maybe!
that might sound weird, it but seems more like a "fae field"
Thank you for stopping by and commenting, Anonymous!
(And sorry for the moderating delay.)
Would you care to tell some more about that?
I read through the comments...thank you to all who contributed...does anyone know if instead of a time slip this could be myself seeing the future?...the signs in the sky, and the behavior of animals coupled world economy that has shown itself in a state of collapse makes me wonder....that is all, just a thought...
I don't think we did much to explain your experience, but it has become increasingly clear that some people are natural seers, shamans, or whatever, and can somehow access other dimensions that for the rest of us are only theoretical possibilities.
If you recall our comments about Sufism, and maybe also saw some of the comments on the Vanishing Houses forum, you might consider the idea that before you can make use of such perceptions you need some kind of preliminary training to help you interpret the things that you are seeing. Our culture can't supply the necessary materials, but the teacher Idries Shah left a valuable legacy of teachings, over 30 books, that lay the necessary groundwork and are well worth checking out.
Thank you, Susan and Carl, for your comments.
I may not need to explain that I was absent again - but I will. I was absent again. ;)
(And I am the main "comment moderator", so that's why the delays.)
I don't really have much to add - only that I agree very much with Carl's very valuable comment.
I also hope you come back, Susan.
I'm currently experiencing micro time slips (one second or so) as a side effect of medication. I will be lying down and listening to music and I lose a second here a second there. I know because of the beat of the music I'm listening to it feels totally real and is affirmed by my medicos. Reply if interested.
Thank you, Daniel!
Thatis vey interesting, of course; but how do you tell it apart from, let's say, distraction?
Anyway, based on on my own experiences, I know that music can be a "portal" (horridly over- and misused term, I know, especially among "New Agers"). If you allow yourself really to "enter" it... funny things can happen.
Dear lavenderblue I have a story very similar in that I was riding in my car one night traveling a well-known Road when suddenly the Road and surroundings seemed different, Highway seemed more narrow for some reason and in much worse condition. the shoulder was very thin strip as compared to what I was used to and then the defining moment came when I rounded a curve where a house set back off the curve a little ways but had a big tree in the front yard always thought if I missed that curve I hit that tree. but this particular night that house sat much further back and the tree Sat much further back in the yard. everything was different,very different but it was the condition of the road and the width of the road that convinced me I needed to turn around and try this again so the first Crossroads I came to I turn to the right and next Crossroads to the right again back to a state highway right turn again and then at the stop-and-go lights again in the middle of the country I turned right back on the highway that I thought I was familiar with this time everything was in check Road was much much newer,was much better and that house with the big tree sat much closer to the oad I knew I was in familiar territory after that.
Dear Anonymous,
please forgive the lengthy delay in approving your comment - half of the team was on vacation, and it's not a very big team, to begin with.
(Moderation is only enabled because of spam - you wouldn't believe how much we get.)
Thank you very much for stopping by, and a double thank you for commenting!
P.S. Anonymous (as well as Lavenderblue and other readers) you may also be interested in the story The Disappearing Road (http://time-slips.blogspot.si/2013/03/the-disappearing-roads.html) and the stories hyperlinked within that post.
Not only in Sufi literature, Hindu Purana scriptures also has stories relating to dimensional travels, wormholes and travel to other realms within the Earth. KNOWLEDGE IS SAME, SOURCES ARE DIFFERENT..
Thank you (a very belated one - so sorry!), Divyanshu, for your comment.
It is true, of course, that many traditions - some seemingly unrelated to each other - appear to be conveying the same knowledge.
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