The oppressive Australian heat bore down as I trudged along the endless road to the small Queensland town where my friends had once lived. Car after car whizzed past without stopping for the wayward traveler. After hours of walking under the relentless sun, I finally reached my destination only to find their house abandoned – they had moved on.
Feeling lost and alone, I sank onto the front step, uncertain of my next move. That’s when the wizened old man appeared, his weathered face seeming to defy the laws of age itself. He fixed me with an inscrutable stare for a long moment before speaking.
“Your mates are gone. But you’re in luck I’m still around.”
His humble shack was a one-room timber structure that emanated an odd warmth, the air carrying the scent of freshly-hewn wood. We sat on tree stump stools as he poured our drinks. I explained that I had come to Queensland seeking inspiration to work on my thesis about the mystical poetry of William Blake. His response took me by surprise.
“Ah, Blake could perceive the hidden truths, my friend. The rest of us are blind to such mysteries.”
This peculiar old man had me rapt as he delved into the sacred geometries, the mystic language of numbers, and how words and logic obscure the greater realities. His words wove together theosophical concepts and Pythagorean numerology.
“Within these corporeal shells, we are mere observers,” he proclaimed. “Catching fleeting glimpses of the vastness through sensory keyholes.”
I could only listen in silence as he added with a sage nod, “Having nothing to say may be your salvation.”
As I bid farewell to the enigmatic stranger, stepping out into the crisp air, the world itself seemed transformed around me. The return journey, hitching rides and passing through landscapes both familiar and foreign, carried an ineffable sense that I had been granted a glimpse into something far greater than myself.
With each passing car and transient vista, I felt I was traversing the synapses of some vast cosmic mind, every experience and perception flickering like synaptic connections within the neural network of a greater consciousness. Finally arriving home, I marveled at the profound interconnectedness of it all. I could taste the words Blake had penned in “Auguries of Innocence“:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
What once seemed an impossible task no longer felt so hopeless. The thesis that had tormented me for so long now carried the promise of insight and meaning.
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The above event demonstrates for me the ideas of synchronicity and hyparxis. Below is a schematic diagram of a “MOMENT”. It shows 3 dimensions of the ‘moment in time’ – Serial Time, Spatial Time and Timeless Time. This diagram is based on J G Bennett’s ‘Dramatic Universe‘ where he explores these issues of Time. Yes, it’s my hand drawn version!
Thank you for visiting Journeys and Star Gazing. Here there's stories of my various journeys, some inner but mostly outer; photos, song lyrics, poems, astrological readings and interpretations, I Ching speculations, quotes from people I admire and some cool graphics. There are reflections and archival material on various human rights campaigns I have been involved in over the years. With these, some have a "Star Gazing" interpretive filter. 
Journeys and Star Gazing 
Greetings from Lausanne,
I read this short piece as I was having a break from my adventures. This is a Twilight Zone moment for me when the protagonist encounters the wise old man. These are the types of moments where you scratch your head after wards not sure if it is a dream or a living memory. Love it.
Thanks. We’ll, to set you straight about this story – it really did happen but I changed some of the details. It was almost as if my need to travel to Queensland by hitching & not by train to get the insight to dig into my Blake thesis was created by a Demiurge or a higher force. It was an amazing experience of synchronicity.