Who are we

Who are we? What's reality? What's the purpose of life?

Questions like these have always fascinated me but when religion and science failed to provide me with satisfying answers, I broadened my search to include information from all sources, inner ones as well as outer ones. This new openness not only led to strange and new experiences, it led me back to earlier, unusual experiences that had remained unexamined due to their assumed lower value in the general busyness of my life.

How Crystal and Evan Got Their Names

In late June, or early July, 1969, my wife, Sandy, was almost eight months pregnant with our first child. The afternoon was warm and humid as we lay on our bed looking through three small booklets of names. We had no idea what sex our baby was so, like most parents, we had to find names we liked for both a boy and a girl. After reading through each booklet at least three times and discussing several possible names with Sandy, I put the booklet I was reading down and rested my right arm on my forehead to quietly sift through names in my mind. Suddenly, I became aware of another voice in my mind. It said, “Your daughter wants to be called Crystal.” I reacted by recalling how much I liked the name “Crystal”, and quickly rifled through all three booklets to see if it had been listed. Sure enough, there it was in two of them. Looking at the name now, I remembered what happened when I had seen it earlier. It had brought back the memory of the only two girls I had known in my life named “Crystal”. I didn't like either one of them so how could I use that name for my daughter? I dismissed the name for that reason and continued looking.

The voice in my mind spoke again, this time with insistence, “I understand how you feel but this is your daughter and this is what she wants to be called.” Giving further consideration to the idea, I thought “I really do love the name Crystal’ and ‘I guess it doesn’t really matter that I didn’t like the other two girls with that name.” With that settled, I started thinking about the beauty and value of glass crystal (people cherish it). An image of a crystal goblet appeared and I thought about the beautiful sound it makes when you run a wet finger around the rim. On a negative note, I began to think about how delicate crystal is. It shatters easily when dropped on a hard surface. Before I could continue down this path any further, the disembodied voice in my mind added, “Your daughter needs a name with symbolic significance for her personality to form around, and she wants the name, Crystal.” “Okay, okay, I do love the name so we'll forget the negatives and call her Crystal!” With that the conversation in my head came to an end and I rolled over to tell Sandy what had happened. She liked the name Crystal too but added, “If we're going to use Crystal for her first name, I want her middle name to be Ellen.” I liked “Ellen” too so it was a done deal. We didn't even question whether it was going to be a boy or not, we just accepted the reality of our experience, as unusual as it was. Sure enough, Crystal was born August 26, 1969 at 8 p.m., three years to the hour after Sandy and I were married on August 26, 1966.

Sixteen months later, in late November or early December, 1970, Sandy and I were once again lying on our bed looking through those same three little booklets of names. She was about eight months pregnant again with our second child. As in our previous experience, none of the names we read in the booklets excited us much. Setting them aside, I again rested my arm on my forehead to free associate. Once more, I was confronted by a disembodied voice in my mind. This time it said, “Unlike your daughter, your son needs a name with no symbolic significance.” Alarm bells went off as I heard this statement, its unspoken implication being that my son would spend time being lost in life. Why? Was it important for him to go through the process of finding himself? Wow, it sounded scary!

While continuing to ponder this statement, my experience with Crystal, sixteen months earlier, came back to mind and I began looking around the room for the source of the voice in my head. My attention was drawn to a spot about three feet above our heads. When I looked directly at it I couldn’t see it but when I shifted my gaze off to the side a little bit, I could. It was a soft, glowing light about two feet in diameter. Still worried about the meaning of “a name with no symbolic significance”, I unconsciously began sifting through the names of people I knew. Suddenly, a name popped into mind. It was Evan! It was the name of an optometrist I knew at March Air Force Base near Riverside, California back in the early sixties. He was a really nice guy but his name held no symbolic significance for me. It was just a nice name. When I suggested it to my inner friend, he said, “That’s fine!”, and that was that. When I told Sandy, she said she really liked the name, Evan, too and wanted his middle name to be Anthony, like mine. On December 28, 1970, Evan was born.

What strange experiences, yet, at the time, we didn’t think to examine them closer. In retrospect, I think our lack of curiosity is even stranger than the experiences themselves, and gives testimony to the powerful hypnotic effect of “official” belief systems and “waking” reality. How often do we have strange experiences like this and sweep them under the rug because we’re afraid to face the possibility of ridicule from others? And how many soon-to-be parents get help naming their babies? I suspect it happens often and in many different ways. Again, who are we and what’s reality? I think there’s a lot more to who we are and what reality is than we know. Don’t you?

Here’s one final question, was the voice in my head the voice of each child’s soul before entering its body, or was it a spiritual intermediary voicing their desire?

- Pete

To read an account of “Dreams of My Unborn Grandson”, go to: http://www.realtalkworld.com/grandson.html.

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