During an emotional period, seeking to return to writing that I had abandoned for two years, I went to an Ira Progoff* Intensive Journal Writing workshop in upstate New York where we sat in rows filling a large room. I was toward the back. Glancing up from my words, mindlessly gazing out one wall of windows, I saw my father walking across the sidewalk, not close, but near enough to recognize him. Uncomprehending, I stared until he disappeared. After the morning session ended I called to hear his reassurance that he was at home in Rhode Island. It was a duplicate of him I’d seen—although obviously not a physical one.
In an airport surrounded by people moving rapidly in my direction, I saw my aunt, who had passed over, quickly go by in the opposite direction. Without an explanation, I remembered I was born on her birthday and wondered if that had any significance.
Another time at an airport waiting to board a flight, I saw a man who looked like my friend when he was in his thirties, which I knew from seeing a photo of him that he’d pushed into the top of a window frame beside his work bench—with the same thick, dark hair, bushy eyebrows, and beard. This man was neither a look-alike nor had a brother’s resemblance, but was a duplicate. With him were a beautiful wife with long, auburn hair, a daughter, about eleven, lying across his lap, her head back against his right shoulder and her legs casually touching the floor, and a son standing by his mother. Surreptitiously I kept glancing. On board I turned to discover the man was seated on the opposite aisle four seats back—I had to force myself to stop looking.
After a number of these experiences*, I questioned why I hadn’t gone up to these duplicate people, but I didn’t. I only watched. I was seeing that reality is not what I thought.
My realization is, “What exists in the universes is far beyond my consciousness, and observation and reporting are the most I’m capable of.
*an American psychotherapist known for popularizing an intensive journal writing process that he later expanded
*see “Face in the Tree”