Moyra Caldecott - Multi-Dimensional Life: A writer on the inspiration of writing

Copyright 2007, Moyra Caldecott

Moyra Caldecott has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

First published by Bladud Books in 2007.

This edition first published in 2007 by Mushroom eBooks, an imprint of Mushroom Publishing, Bath, BA1 4EB, United Kingdom
www.mushroom-ebooks.com

All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It must not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy. If you are reading this book but did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-84319-339-5

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We live in a multi-dimensional Universe subject to multi-dimensional Time, and to try to record one day of ones life comprehensively is almost impossible.

I can say I was born on 1 June 1927, but what does that mean? Not only is the date subject to question because of the arbitrary nature of our dating system and the changes it has undergone through history, but what forces and events since the beginning of the Universe went into the drawing together of that particular sperm and that particular egg to bring me to birth on that day? In writing an autobiography should I therefore start only with my most recent ancestors? But several books could be written about one event alone in the lives of my paternal grandparents. What made them leave a comfortable life in Victorian England to emigrate to the wilds of Southern Africa in 1880? What hardships did they endure landing a few months after the bloody battle with the Zulus at Rorkes Drift? But even if I could write adequately about this one event, it would only be one thread in a complex weave of events, relationships, joys, fears, loves and hates that made up their day-to-day lives, and subsequently influenced me in my own reaction to the world.

In my novel, The Tower and the Emerald (chapter 9) I tried to express something of the complexity of every given moment. The heroine, Viviane, is being guided by a Celtic monk towards enlightenment. She is sitting quietly, watching a river.

She listened to the birds... noted the sparkle of the water as it hurried over and between the rocks... the green of the bushes that hung over the far bank, some of them trailing branches in the water, continually buffeted...

Then she began to listen to the water...

She began to forget herself and hear only water sounds... complex... beautiful... a hundred different harmonies within the same song. The water spoke, liquid-tongued, lightly lilting each tale a hundred different ways...

She could have listened forever... but Brendans voice was calling her... cutting through...

What have you learned? he asked as she joined him.

I have learned that there are many ways to tell everything that is to be told, and that mans language is clumsy and inadequate. It can tell only one tale at a time, and that tale only one way at a time.

In this book I refer to the numinous incidents in my life several times, coming at them from different angles, illuminating them in different ways as I learn more through my progression as a writer.

The universe is not only made of matter, subject to the laws of physics, but is infinitely more subtle and complex, some levels of which we cannot even guess at, but which we know are in operation because we feel the effects. Consciousness is one of the most mysterious and powerful forces within it. Even if we distinguish between the three best known types of consciousness the sub-conscious psychologists are so interested in; the ordinary consciousness we use to deal with the physical universe in our day to day lives; and the Higher Consciousness that we slip into in those moments of enlightenment when we seem to know more than we possibly can we have not distinguished all the other levels and gradations of consciousness in existence... the consciousness of animals, insects, trees, plants, angels and all the denizens of the Otherworld, let alone the consciousness of the Mystery behind it all we call God.

It is not an aberration that most of the worlds teaming millions believe in some religion or other. It is a universal acknowledgement, however badly expressed, that we believe the universe is not only made of matter. Elaborate systems of gods and goddesses, angels, archangels, powers, thrones, devils and demons, saints and bodhisattvas are named and worshipped in an attempt to make sense of the feeling we have that there is more to the universe than the physical. There has to be more. Our experience tells us so. Our consciousness tells us so. But we cannot prove it with the limited criteria science has arbitrarily laid down for us. Nor can we prove it if our spiritual life hardens into dogma and from there into deceit.

We must always remember each event of our lives is not only taking place on the stage we see before us, but is part of a much greater drama we know very little about.

And Time? What makes us think there is only one type of time marching inexorably from the past, through the present, to the future, measured by reference to the relationship of earth and sun? I believe Time and reality are multi-dimensional and it is an impoverished life indeed lived only in one time and in only one reality.

Linear time is the one with which we are most familiar. Measuring this type of time has given our lives order and predictability. We mark birthdays and anniversaries. We make appointments. But it has constricted us and adds to our stresses and anxieties. Everything has to be fitted into the straight jacket of minutes and hours, weeks and months. And not everything can. Our bodies are subject to a more individual orchestration of time. Women talk of the biological clock when they realise they are getting too old to bear children, yet the menopause happens at different times to different women. One man of seventy climbs the Himalayas. Another of the same clock age can barely walk or remember. One child reaches puberty earlier or later than another.

I am told that over a period of seven years all the cells in our bodies die and are replaced. This means that as I am now, not a single physical cell in my body is the same as any I had when I left my mothers womb. Yet why am I convinced I am the same person? I feel there must be more to me than the cells in my body!

Memory is also not restricted by linear time. In memory an event that took hours or years can be re-experienced in the mind in a flash. It has a continuing dynamic, continually upgrading as new experiences occur, changing and moulding according to new understandings and new needs. It cannot be understood only as a chemical or electrical discharge in the brain because it is too creative. I feel it is other than purely physical reality.