The French Cook

Carola and I decided to have lunch at the Chateau one fine day. We went there, found our way to the café, and sat down. As we sat there, I was aware of heat coming from a source to the left of and behind Carola. As I looked at what I thought was the wall, I began to make out what it was; the massive kitchen cook stove of the Chateau from when it was a going concern. It was painted over with the same color as the rest of the room and almost indistinguishable. It had been cold for a very long time, not used for more than 180 years. Yet, as we sat there I felt the heat of it. Not that it was unbearable, it was tolerable heat but more than warmth; it was the heat of a cook stove.

Floods of visions went through my imagination, there were spectral figures bustling about, all on a culinary mission of some sort, and this went on for some time. Carola called me back to reality but in the background there was this frenetic activity all the while we were there. I didn’t feel threatened or even uncomfortable, as it was I felt quite at home there; as if I was supposed to be there.

This feeling of belonging wasn’t new to me; I’d felt it from the day I made the right turn out of the forest and voila! There was the Chateau du Chantilly staring me in the face. It was larger than life, an apparition. After that, I made that trip frequently, it was one of a variety of ways I could get home from work in Leplessis-Belleville, but this was the only time the Chateau loomed larger than life before me.

Then I could never be without knowing my way around the ville. Although the grounds of the Chateau were strange to me, I was not a stranger in the city and felt even more at home in the older parts than on Avenue de Montmorency where we lived. In the forest and at the Grand Ecuries, there was never a time that I felt in a strange place.

There have been other familiarities for me. One that was also strongly felt was on Maui in Hawaii. I went to a little whaling museum and it was the same type of experience as was Chantilly, especially when I read some authentic log entries and heard “Thar she blows!” with the inflection that was undoubtedly authentic. Then later that night, when walking down the main street of the little tourist trap, I had the feeling that I was there 150 years before and the crowd was not modern day tourists but ships’ crews making a night of it ashore. The feeling was very strong.

I’ve been to hundreds of places throughout the world and have had these feelings only a few times. Others that I can recall as I sit here are: on the Great North Road at the Mount Pleasant Hotel near Doncaster in England, the roadside graves at a location in France on the way to St. Dizier, in Pompeii, at the Harbor in Sydney Australia, on the Newport News Point railroad dock at the foot of 23rd Street, sailing on the Chesapeake Bay off of Old Point Comfort, and generally in San Francisco to name most of them. One can see that the number is small by comparison to my travels. The Chantilly, Pompeii, and Maui experiences were the most significant, although the others were strong enough to get my attention. The question is; what’s going on?

One explanation was that these represent for me some previous existence/ lifetime but now I’m not so sure. Could it be that there are unfinished lifetimes hanging around out here waiting for a sympathetic being to allow them in for completion of a sort? I say hanging around because when I saw the roadside graveyard in France, I was aware of a group of soldiers sort of hanging around in a desultory fashion as if they had nowhere to go. I got the impression that they were lost in despair. So too could other unfinished lives be hanging around the vicinity of their untimely death and when a vulnerable or even cooperative Master chances by they can jump on and work their way to some sort of completion.

Completion for me means permanency. That is to say the Master that inhabits this brain-body works to develop himself to the point that when the brain-body dies, he moves on to another higher plane of existence in the spiritual world. I don’t know if this is a possibility for all the brain-bodies I see walking about but I firmly believe it is for this one and for numerous others.

This Master seems to have more than a modicum of strength/power over this brain-body. He is confident in what he does and it is possible that there is room in here for more than one; i.e. the Chantilly cook may have hooked on and is here for the ride. I don’t feel like the others are. Yet the Master is going about his business of becoming permanent without regard to his little French friend or maybe in spite of or even in addition to him.

In order for an inhabitation to take place there may be some prerequisites. It would seem that there have to be some sympathetic qualities existing between the one needing a ride and the Master. How many of these hitch hikers can one Master abide? At some point the hitch hiker may opt to get off and anywhere along the line another might be picked up. Yet there is a Master working on permanency who may have inhabited this brain-body early on, or who at least is the strongest to have climbed aboard thus far. I am close to concluding that inhabitation can take place at any time during the brain-body lifetime and not necessarily inspiration at first breath as I have previously thought.

The Spirits We Encounter

If you have been following the evolution of my thinking for a long time, you will know that I have had experiences that make me think that I was at a certain place in a previous lifetime. Well, it comes to me that there may a different source of these feelings.

If a being dies after having established his permanency, it could be that he remains as a disembodied spirit. As such he may be sans senses, IOW unable to see, hear, taste, smell or touch but at the same time can be aware of what is going on. Much like watching a movie, without senses he is missing the full sensation of what it “feels” like to be alive except for his memories of same that are frozen in the last lifetime he had. So, he’s out there, hanging around; I say that because there is no clue as to what he is doing in his perfected existence, and along comes a kindred being, alive and sensible, who can be used for a few moments to get the latest on how it “feels” to be in this place again.

Some of my experiences could be considered intrusions. IOW, while in the kitchen of the chateau in Chantilly when I experienced the heat of the stove even though it had been cold for more than 100 years. Was it that a spirit, who was hanging around the chateau kitchen, took the opportunity to enjoy the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings at that instance using my senses to do so? The same thing can be said for the experience on the Great North Road in Doncaster environs, or on Maui, or in Houston, or in almost every place I’ve been including old neighborhoods here in Louisville.

This is not to say that recurrence doesn’t occur, this phenomenon could be in addition to recurrence. These bodies, in which we live, may not be single purpose machines but able to be used for any and all types of activities. It’s as if a roaming spirit asks if he can drive the bus for a few moments.

Unfortunately the intrusion may possibly become inhabitation that could lead to all sorts of results, results that could be judged by current morals and ethics to be incredibly good or terribly evil. Perhaps it is the quality of the brain-body that draws to it the spirit who would inhabit and use it as his own. That would mean some sort of contest may have to be made with the currently developing being moving aside to allow the unfulfilled one to take over. There are stories about this sort of thing, where one sells his soul. Could this be an interpretation of the parable where it is said, “What good does it do a man to gain the world but lose his soul?”

It leads me to at least one conclusion, a requirement to disallow dislocation and re-inhabitation. I feel that I am a developing being, the current day product of who knows how many previous lifetimes. One who is interested in developing as far as possible in this one and then doing it again and again until the realization is achieved that it has gone as far as it can.

So much for that line of thinking; there is another thought that has been intruding on my peace of mind of late. I’ll set it up. There is a continuing round of good luck going on for me that is extraordinary. Not that we’ve won the lottery or anything big like that, but little things that make life pleasant and even fun. Things turn out beautifully so many times due to coincidences that are inexplicable. I’ll list a few later but won’t describe them in too much detail because it would be impolite but take my word for it; there have been instances where my good fortune has been a joy.

It makes me wonder if Mom isn’t somehow around us and sending good fortune our way. I know that sounds kooky but it is has been happening more and more lately and, hey, I’m not complaining. Just as the victims of terrible wrong sometimes hang around and get their vengeance, so too it may be that rewards for good come from those who benefitted from good treatment.

I remember one instance last summer when I was making my called shot on the eight ball to win the game and the match for the playoffs. The whole team was silently screaming at me not to put lower left hand English on the cue ball but I mistakenly thought that was the right thing to do. I made the eight ball, and the cue ball, as a result of the physics of billiards, naturally rolled to the near side pocket. But it stopped a quarter of an inch from the opening and remained on the table. One of my mates even said, “That was your mom.”

Maybe it was, maybe not and that’s only one small, insignificant example of the many good little things that have come my way since last August. Another, this year I drew the queen of spades for $320 at the Rotary Club meeting. Another, the favorable change in riding instructors that occurred shortly after I restarted my lessons; and just today, I said I’d like to have a deli style slicer. I wheeled around to EBay and there was one ending in 19 minutes, I bid and got it. If I sat here a while I could list more than a hundred of them, all of little consequence other than making our lives more pleasant. I can only say, “Dear Mom, stay as long as you like.”

A conclusion that doesn’t make a lot of sense, other than it fits the circumstances of the experiences described by these two disparate ramblings; it could be that spirits are tied to their location of death for a while. There is no way of telling for how long and it may be individually determined. I recall “seeing” a group of grisly veterans hanging around a roadside cemetery in France. The experiences of Chantilly, Doncaster, Maui, and the host of other places always take place at or near the location. Mom died here.