There is this grand illusion people enjoy having. They like to pretend that we understand time. Sure, it's the revolving of the earth around the sun.. time here is different 'there'.. And 'there' is completely opposite of all the way 'over there.'
For all of the understanding we have concerning the universe and the rotation of planetary bodies around a star, we understand very little.
I am coming at the subject with the lack of scientific perspective--I did not take any college course work in physics or similar fields of study.. Few do, and typically when people have such degrees, these days, they're making sure you have lettuce and tomato on your cheeseburger. That goes for many college grads with loans without forgiveness..
I alluded last night to a personal crisis developing in my family. My father has been hospitalized. While I wish to keep the rest private, I will only reiterate that it has been a uniquely stressful time for me, and all involved, just as I am sure it would be or was for you .. Life has a cycle. Or cycles. I am a paranoid type of person, perhaps, but I have contemplated a bit lately about whether a few decisions made have interacted with decisions made on a different time line. And maybe those time lines intertwined by accident...
You don't have to hear my out at this juncture. It's premature to state anything concrete--with the exception that I need some prayer if you pray or collective consciousness if you don't for the health and well being of my dad and entire family.
In the mean time, I will explain some back story on how I entered my new found appreciation of the mysteries of time.
During a morning update a few days back, I referenced the now famed "Mandela Affect" .. people worldwide remember Nelson Mandela dying. YEARS AGO. In 2009, Art Bell interviewed Starfire Tor concerning that very issue. Years prior, Bell talked on air about he how he thought Nelson Mandela was dead. When he opened phone lines, he was deluged with callers who remembered specific details of Mandela's funeral in the 1980s. From that point, the "Mandela Affect" became one of the weirder paranormal obsessions, especially for people who were dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of time--if there is such a way to unravel them..
The entire issue reared up this week. With Mandela dying, and my father being rushed to the hospital only a few days later, I had some moments of deja vu and...what can be only described as complete time shifts. Moments in which I felt the room move and I believed to be standing in a location different from where I was seconds earlier--but without me walking. Last night, while talking to my sister on my cell phone, I received a call from MY SISTER on my cell phone (while she was talking) .. My sister told me that at the same time I was getting the call, she heard dialing taking place on her phone. Strange little incidents like that perhaps be chalked up to technological anomalies or the NSA having some fun--or maybe a parallel universe colliding here, and our actions converging in some strange way moments apart..
From the moment Mandela died, I felt ..odd. Then when the personal crisis took place within the family this week, everything seemed 'off' about time. My wife told me she had a moment in which she felt the room move and her first inclination was to look at a clock to see what time it was. The strange moments of being in this situation before has been constant--for me and others within the family. And finally, my father told me sister that, while hallucinating before he was rushed to the hospital, he 'saw her' before him. My sister is very well alive. Here. But perhaps not in another realm. Or .. maybe I'm just crazy.
This week I certainly feel rushed, crazed, and stressed.
I have paid little attention to world events. But one snippet from the news caught my eye. And it had to do with none other than Nelson Mandela. Again.
I read about Thamsanqa Jantjie asking for forgiveness. Jantjie was the interpreter at Nelson Mandela's funeral ... he is also a schizophrenic. According to press reports, Jantjie interpreted the event wrong. During the funeral, Jantjie said he was hallucinating and he saw angels. This is how John Eligon and Nichalos Kulish wrote summed it up in the NEW YORK TIMES:
On Wednesday sign language experts expressed outrage that an impostor who was clearly illiterate in the linguistic skills of signing could have pulled off such a stunt. He was a constant presence on the stage of the national memorial on Tuesday, watched not only by the audience in the vast soccer stadium in Soweto but by hundreds of millions on television.“This ‘fake interpreter’ has made a mockery of South African sign language and has disgraced the South African sign language-interpreting profession,” said Bruno Druchen, the national director of DeafSA, a Johannesburg advocacy organization for the deaf. In a statement posted on the organization’s Facebook page, Mr. Druchen said, “The deaf community is in outrage.”
While the weird events of Mandela's past 'deaths' and time slips have nothing in common with the man who did the interpretation at his funeral, it certainly causes one to see a strange aura around the death of the former South African president. Such a massive world event--one of the biggest state funerals since Winston Churchill--and the interpreter sees angels and hallucinates while standing in back of the leaders of the free and unfree world. Just plain weird.
Maybe not paranormal..
But weird.
There are lots of weird events .. Strange activity.. paranormal tidbits.
For years now, there has been a strange attraction to time. Remember when we all thought there was a time traveler in a Charlie Chaplin movie? Or how about the allegation that Nic Cage was a vampire during the Civil War?
The essence of time.. time is of the essence.
There are things we will never figure out in life. Of course science attempts to tell us why Deja Vu happens. Maybe one day they will be successful in their attempts to explain away the lapses in coherence and the seemingly amazing convergence of multiple timelines. But in the mean time, we will be just zapped and slapped from time to time by visions that you've been here before.. done that before. Experienced that before.
I asked some people from various backgrounds over the past few days why they feel deja vu occurs. A medical professional told me it's simply associated with temporal-lobe epilepsy and will one day be explained by science. Someone religious told me that it is God's way of warning us. An atheist told me it's your brain playing wild tricks on you. And a pagan told me it's because reincarnation and time slips occur and we mauy have been here before, will be again, and could be doing the same thing right now a zillion different ways.
Paging Michio Kaku. Perhaps only he can tell me why I am here, now, and somewhere else potentially at the same time.
Stay tuned for more..
In the mean time.. TIME is not a magazine, people.