Time

Pando Grove

Four decades ago I associated with a channeling psychic (in the tradition of Edgar Cayce), whose control, the spirit who allegedly spoke through the psychic's body, claimed to have conscious memory of living in many life states all over the Universe throughout Time. The control, whose improbable name was Elexius, claimed to be a disembodied consciousness, free to roam through Space and Time at will. Why not? Sounded like fun to me back then.

Of the many lessons which Elexius preached (in a darkened room of people holding hands in a circle) the one in which he revealed some of his experiences in different life forms impressed me the most. And of those life states, his experience of being a tree in a primordial forest for several centuries was chilling because it rang true in my imagination. I experienced the stiff constraint of living in rooted wood as he spoke. I verged on claustrophobic panic. 

Today I heard a radio piece on the Pando Grove in Utah. One of the scientists explained that the root mass of the grove, which is essentially one tree with many trunks which span 106 acres, is both the heaviest and perhaps oldest life form on Earth. She speculated that it could be 80,000 years old, which would mean that it was born when homo sapiens was still a much smaller species confined to Africa. 

Elexiius offered his stories of timeless life, he said, to calm us down about our mortality. He also maintained that his awareness of his many experiences of different life states throughout Time and Space came to him after thousands, perhaps millions, of years of existence. He maintained he was one of a species of evolved entities like himself who had lived and still lived all over the Universe. By the way, his gender assignment, he clarified, was an arbitrary choice since his host, my friend the medium, was male. I liked Elexius, even though I seemed to annoy him with my constant skepticism. 

Pando Grove ignited my memory of Elexius. Had he been inside an aspen in Utah, I wondered. Had I? 

My daily practice is rigorous as I grow older. This is not a statement of virtue, but of reality. It is harder to stay healthy and mobile as my body does its aging thing. Since health and mobility facilitate happiness, it is also more work to be happy with life as it is. So, thinking of an 80,000-year-old tree or a disembodied consciousness with a perspective on being a tree is enlightening, in the sense of lightening my own human mind, melded with my aging body. I am not comforted by the prospect of experiencing existence for thousands or millions of years. I'll leave that to the vampires and Elexius. However, thinking of the smallness of my present existence somehow makes it feel more manageable in the greater scheme of things.