Cosmic Consciousness

This is my experience – here’s what happened:

I worked in London for around 18 months back in 1994/5. My marketing agency job kept me busy 12 hours a day – I saw that time an intense training course to rebuild my career. Mr X (the x-husband) and I maintained a friendly relationship and we agreed that during that time, our young son would be better off staying with him, attending the local nursery school and being close to extended family.

I journeyed a few hundred miles back and forth some weekends, staying at Mr. X’s flat to spend time with my son. This arrangement felt precarious but seemed to work, and when I visited, Mr. X would go out and catch up with friends.

To be clear, I had no romantic feelings for Mr. X. We were married within a year of meeting and legally separated three years after that (when our son was two years old). It was a short marriage, I discovered too late that Mr. X had a gambling problem which quickly destroyed the trust, hopes, and feelings I’d had.

One day, while I was staying at the flat, I was relaxing on the couch with a book. I was reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. It had recently been published, and I was eager to learn about the various bardo stages (The Tibetan word bardo literally means “intermediate state”). I wanted to discover what it revealed about life during the period of death and shortly afterward. Although I have practiced Nichiren Buddhism since I was 20, these bardo teachings are not part of our tradition.

It was afternoon and I was comfortably immersed in the book when the phone rang in the kitchen behind me. Back then, there were no mobile phones, we used landlines, and this one was plugged into the socket in the kitchen.

I got up, picked up the handset, and had a brief chat with the caller. Alison wanted to pass on details to Mr. X about a meet-up with his friends that night. I vaguely knew Alison; she had recently become engaged to Nick. I knew Nick well, as he had been a close friend of Mr. X for a long time, part of the tight-knit group of friends I was introduced to before we married. Since we broke up, I was no longer part of that friend group, but I thought Alison and Nick would be a well-matched couple.

I told Alison I’d get Mr. X to call back, returned to the couch, and settled back down with my book. As I continued to read, I very clearly heard a voice. It said, “Tell him, she called for her green shirt.”

At this point, it’s important to describe what happened in detail. Someone spoke to me—I heard it in exactly the same way you would if the person was speaking right in front of you. But it didn’t come from any direction, and I didn’t experience “hearing it” through my ears.

Science explains how sound travels through the ears to the brain, starting when the outer ear directs sound waves to the eardrum, causing it to vibrate. These vibrations move through the middle ear and into the inner ear, where signals are sent to the brain. In this case, the communication bypassed all that and went directly to my brain.

It wasn’t some kind of inner voice of intuition. It was a man’s voice speaking to me. I didn’t recognise the voice, but I can describe it. He was English, with no discernible regional accent. The voice was refined, with the richness or timbre of an older gentleman, and the message was delivered in a tone of simple, direct advice.

I lay on the couch with the book in my hands and thought, “WHAT WAS THAT?”

I waited. Nothing else happened. In the silence, my thoughts went to the lime green, cotton, button-up shirt I’d seen the day before on top of the washing basket in the bathroom. It was my size, looked new, and was made by Versace.

One of the things Mr. X and I had bonded over when we met, was our shared enjoyment of flea markets, searching, buying, and selling things we found. I had asked Mr. X about the shirt (I thought it would look pretty cool with my black work suit), but it wasn’t a market find, he said it belonged to someone he had met for a date and he’d need to return it.

Was the voice referring to that shirt? I should tell Mr X she phoned for it? You mean? Nooo! My mind started to dismiss the connection.

Then I heard the voice again: “Tell him, she phoned for her green shirt.” Exactly the same words and voice, but this time with a firmer, more insistent tone. Followed once again, by silence.

I don’t know why, but I accepted it—because it felt real. I had no doubt that somehow, in some way, it was real. I was literally reading a book that described the wisdom mind of a Tibetan Buddhist master, and I had already developed an expanded understanding of consciousness through my own Buddhist practice. But hearing a voice deliver such specific information, an instruction, was something I had never experienced—or even heard anyone talk about.

What was this voice? I tried to weigh the possibilities of the instruction. Could it be true? What would happen if I said those words, just as directed? It seemed so unlikely—bizarre, even—and the circumstances were extraordinary. But I decided to do it.

Mr. X came back about an hour later. He entered the lounge, and without looking up from my book, I said, “Alison phoned.” He asked, “Did she leave a message?” I looked at him and said, “Yes, she phoned for her green shirt.”

There was a pause—and then a waterfall of information from him confirming he’d been having sex with Alison, his close friend’s fiancée.

Delivering that message positively changed some of the dynamics of our relationship. When we were married and the extent of Mr. X’s gambling addiction came out, it was revealed in brief glimpses before it slipped back into secrecy and denial. It had been I who ended the marriage, and Mr. X had always remained the “nice guy” and victim of the breakup. We both knew this revelation was another glimpse into a harmful secret.

It also strengthened my resolve to return to my son as quickly as possible.

As mentioned earlier, I had no romantic feelings for Mr. X, and we both continued to work hard at maintaining a supportive and respectful friendship.

I still think about that voice. I believe that as I immersed myself in the book, studying the bardos and deepening my understanding of consciousness, it created the right conditions for whoever that being was to communicate with me. The experience served as proof that consciousness allows for direct communication, bypassing physical senses and transcending the workings of linear time and space. Although I don’t know what happened to Alison and Nick, I do feel that this message played a protective role in my life and in the lives of everyone involved.

I finished reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and even met Sogyal Rinpoche at a Buddhist retreat in Ireland years later. I had another surprising experience then, which I’ll write about another time.

In writing this post, I’ve struggled to convey what I think is an important experience without harming anyone involved. I’ve changed names and specifics to avoid recognition. My intention is to truthfully share the full circumstances of this phenomenon.

In case you’re interested, I wrote an earlier post, “My Experience of an Unseen Entity,” about something that happened in 1996. It can be read HERE