Of Two Minds

Recently a friend took me to visit a spiritualist she knows, someone who has helped and influenced my friend’s life.  She is an older woman from the Dominican Republic, bedridden, her face the like polished walnut wood shining with an internal beauty despite her pain.  Both she and my friend claim that the Catholic Saint Michael, who fought for God against evil, enters into her and speaks through her from another plane even while she is conscious and her ‘self’ while we talk.

Yes, she was able to describe things about me, my dead mother and our relationship, my husband and our relationship, that were spot on.  As someone who thinks that both indigenous shamans and quantum physics point to the existence of other realms in which time and space boundaries don’t exist, I think that such communication and knowledge is probable.  But as someone who is the skeptic that I am, I can’t help but wonder if my friend – even unconsciously -- alerted her to this information beforehand.  Which is true?

Scientists have demonstrated that entangled particles, no longer connected to one another, still move in sync with one another.  When one changes the direction it spins, the other does at the exact same moment, even though they are separated and miles apart.  Scientists are also suggesting with String theory that there are multiple universes all existing at the same time.  So the idea that people who’s lives were entangled could still be effecting one another from a distant time, place, or multiverse does not seem far fetched.  Further, anecdotal evidence from every time and culture – including ours – suggests that there are doors and windows to other planes of existence through which people communicate all the time.

And yet, and yet.  Do I really think my mother was in that room communicating with me?  No.  The Western, rational, separatist me finds it easier to believe she spoke in generalities, got cues from my friend, says this to all of her clients who want to believe.

And so, I don’t think I’ll light a candle for 9 days and lift it higher each day for my mother.  But I may do a spiritual cleansing of my house (although it could benefit from just a really good tidy up!)  And yet, and yet.