Chapter 1: Awakening

Not that the nature of realty concerned me too much back then! Like all kids who grew up in the 70s and 80s I was well acquainted with the amount of weirdness supposedly out there in the world, I put most of it down to imagination and our natural human desire for excitement, fantasy, magic and mystery. Harmless fun I thought! though I had heard some very frightening tales concerning Ouija boards and the like.

As I grew up, I read the usual classic kid’s stuff: Peter Pan, Robinson Crusoe, The Famous Five, Robin Hood, Tarzan, Frankenstein, Dracula, and the surprisingly dark tales of Andersen and Grimm. 

I’d been around the world in 80 days, journeyed to the centre of the earth and time travelled with HG Wells. I explored the universe on the Starship Enterprise with Arthur C. Clarke & Isaac Asimov. 

And read Stephen King from the beginning. I grew up immersed in the fantastically complex worlds of Tolkien and Lewis. Stacks of Marvel & D.C Comics filled mine and every other kid’s bedroom. 

I sat for hours in front of a small flickering TV, dressed up in my Batman costume terrified, only daring to watch through my fingers shows like Dr Who, Lost in Space, Planet of the Apes, Land of the Giants and the Twilight Zone (I didn’t mind the Daleks but the Cybermen scared the shit out of me).

Aliens, ghosts, possessed souls, haunted buildings, physic powers, astral travel, healing abilities, visions, mediums, near-death experiences. The list of supposedly super-natural events and phenomenon out there is endless...

But I personally had never had anything remotely other-worldly happen to me.

Nothing…

Nada…

Ever…

So though I was prepared to accept that some of these events may have some validity, some might be true and some not. What I was sure of was that these experiences, if they did indeed occur, happened to other people.

Not me!

Someone who was special, spiritual, exceptionally virtuous or at least extremely disciplined, dedicated or in some other way deserving of the experience. I certainly didn’t fit any of those criteria.

I wasn’t religious or even spiritual. I can’t remember if I believed in God or not back then, I knew about the idea of him of course but I cannot remember ever giving his existence or not any great thought. My family wasn’t religious, and we didn’t go to church. I’d never meditated or prayed with any seriousness. As far as I was aware I hadn’t been abducted by aliens, encountered a ghost, or been out of my body. I wasn’t superstitious. I paid no attention to my horoscope. I’d never been hypnotised or regressed or had any reason to visit a medium. I couldn’t remember any past lives and I barely remembered my dreams, lucid or otherwise.

 

Shock Tactics

Another popular route to achieving a spiritual ‘awakening’ I had a peripheral awareness of was through depravation, seemingly by denying yourself some natural human desire such as sex, food or human company for an extended periods of time (works for some!). I’d read about and watched on TV the adepts, monks, pilgrims, mystics and the ordeals they endure to reach their personal salvation.

The most difficult part of this ‘way’ I suppose is knowing how long you have to suffer for!

How long is a piece of string?

Who decides?

I suspect we do…

“Everything you can imagine is real…” ~ Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Artist 

Anyway, after you have suffered long enough, you would then be rewarded with the promised carrot, ‘Heaven’ or perhaps ‘Nirvana’ if your preferred a reward that was the dissolution of your identity into the ‘All’ or ‘The ‘Void’ as the Hindus and some Buddhists strive for. The point being that, in order to achieve this miraculous state you had to deserve it! One thing for sure is that you certainly didn’t just get it handed to you on a plate!

Another route I observed was through trauma. It seems that a good kick up the backside is a pretty effective way of getting people to sit up and pay attention. Highly traumatic events are often the catalyst that propels the experiencer into levels of reality that might otherwise be closed or invisible to them in their every day lives. These are most vividly reported by Near-Death experiencers (NDE’s) and their descriptions are well worth studying as the normal rules of reality seem to be suspended, transporting everyday people with no prior knowledge, interest, or importantly bias in these matters into realms of consciousness quite different from the one they previously regarded as ‘real!’

And some I now know, like me, just wake up one day, no seeking, no searching and no conscious effort. One day you’re in darkness and the next, well you’re not!

I must also confess that my motives for writing the following account were not altogether altruistic. I wasn’t trying to change the world, save humanity or convince anybody about anything. I was simply trying to keep myself sane. I’m not a writer or at least I wasn’t until all this began. I used the writing process as a way of dealing with the new knowledge and awareness I suddenly possessed. I knew there was a very thin line between genius and madness and that these events I was experiencing could easily overwhelm me if I wasn’t careful.

But for some as yet unknown reason I didn’t get the luxury of waking up gradually, slowly attaining higher levels of awareness through a lifetime of experience, study and contemplation. No, I woke up with a bang! 

If someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over me while I was asleep in the middle of the night, I wouldn't have been more surprised or unprepared! And this wake-up call came with no instructions or sage advice. I wasn’t told to write it down, spread the word or start a new religion. In fact, I wasn’t given any instructions at all!

I was simply given the information and left to deal with it.

This book is my attempt to deal with it…