Inspired by a conversation with Laurence Platt.
I have been thinking about death.
As a context, a basis for the creation of everything that exists, language is an interesting tool. It sets us apart from animals.
Without it, existence would have a different quality. Our experience of ourselves and our awareness of our awareness would not be the same.
As an autistic adult, I have a self-conscious nature. Though, I am not sure I agree with Dr Temple Grandin, that I am like an animal.
I would say I am further from animal in my noticing, with more extranious language, while retaining a connection to my animal self. I would say I have an over awareness of my animalness. It actually detracts somewhat from human social interaction. In otherwords, most human beings don’t notice themselves.
Like other autistic people, I do some of my thinking in pictures. I am going to use *language* as a verb here to describe the process.
If I am thinking about things I will *language* images into my thought processes. Thinking “I’ll collect Gina from the station” puts images of Gina, car and station onto an internal movie screen.
I visualise the outcome. It is a very natural process I am actually self aware of. It includes still images and movies of different aspects and outcomes and the best solution is presented back to me conversationally. It makes creative visualisation and vision boards easy conceptually and almost impossible to put into practice.
And language appears to be at the root of the process. So what does language have to do with death?
I would like to create something for you based on a recent experience.
Last Saturday, I went to see spiritualist medium, Philip Kinsella. For the purposes of this blog, it does not matter if you believe in mediumship or not. For a moment however, accept there is something the medium connects to, even if it is cold reading, the following holds true.
If you are a spiritualist, you will have to excuse my non-spiritualist use of the word dead. For me the terms passed and other side hold death at arms length.
However, Philip gave the audience messages from those crossed over to the other side. Very specific and very accurate messages, with very descriptive details and accurate names.
Interestingly for me, Philip worked with pictures and feelings. He then interpreted the information he was receiving and literally *languaged* the person he was channeling into being.
What do I mean by that?
The person being *given* arrived in the room as a concept or idea in Philip’s mind. A person who is dead, no longer has a physical presence. Assuming they exist, the only way for us to have awareness of their being, is for Philip to *language* their being into existence.
The only place they continue to exist past death is our conversation about them. Their existence is in language. Nowhere else… So langauge is their being?
And is that true of us? When I stop thinking in words and think in pictures, do I cease to be?
If I do, my existence is a paradox!
See you on the other side of the looking glass,
mark ty wharton
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