I ask myself this question in recognition of the sense of wonder that continually emerges for me from the development of ideas in the PhD I am undertaking in Comparative Criticism.
This interpretation may clarify the majestic motions of ideas as they enter into particular orbits, mesh and undergo transformation, but can they explain the sense of an invisible personality by my side or behind me that flashes in and out of my awareness as I work?
What is the relationship between this current sense of an unseen personality and an earlier impression of an invisible figure that began to follow me everywhere after about a year of daily magical invocation and meditation in 1993?
What connection could these experiences have to the two experiences in my living room in Benin in 1996 in which as my mind went to my earlier interest, abandoned for the previous three years, in developing the cognitive potential of the Yoruba/Orisa Ifa system of knowledge and divination, I instantly sensed an invisible presence at my side, a sense of an intangible presence that recurred at various times as I carried out this work on Ifa during my MA at the University of Kent in 2003?
Can these experiences be related to a particularly striking experience in the late 1990s in which, as I reflected on a forest that awed me by the numinous presence that radiated from it, I suddenly found myself elsewhere, in a different room, in non-verbal but eloquent dialogue with a woman. Having ascertained who I was, that I was not dreaming, that I was in a strange place in which I had been welcomed, I opened my eyes to find myself back in my study?
Could these experiences of mine demonstrate interactions between personal and extra-personal fields of consciousness?
Full essay forthcoming