For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them. Ecclesiastes 9:12
In 1988, a friend named Brian died in my house. At the time he was staying with me after breaking up with his girlfriend.
Fourteen years later I experienced what is known as a ‘proxy sitting’ when a woman I didn’t know, who was an acquaintance of my sister, visited a medium and came back to me via my sister with a message for me from someone called Brian.
Despite the fact that the woman didn’t know me or Brian, the information she gave me about him was uncannily accurate and included the message: “Brian said it was ‘his time to go; there was nothing you could have done.” For me it was evidential because a few days before that message he had come into my mind which prompted me to write about the circumstances of his death in my journal, where I asked the question, might he have lived if I had made a different decision that day?
I often wonder about that statement, “it was his time to go.” After all, Brian had died after falling over while drunk in a bar; his skull was fractured (no one knew that at the time) and while I was out, he was lying on the floor in my living room and suffered a fatal brain hemorrhage.
So, if it really was ‘his time to go’ did he sub-consciously damage himself or was he guided by someone or something to effectively, kill himself? Sounds crazy but we often hear of people having near-death-experiences, and being told it’s not their time, but if it’s not their time, presumably, there is a time.
It reminds me of Somerset Maugham’s delightful short story The Appointment in Samara, it’s an old story and potential sources include the Talmud, Islam and a version by the Persian poet Rumi, which subsubLibrarian explores in their blog Extracts.
“A certain merchant in Baghdad sent his servant to the market to buy some provisions. A little while later, the servant returned looking white in the face. In a trembling voice he said, “Just now in the market place I was jostled by a man in the crowd, and when I turned I saw it was Mr. Death. He looked at me and made a threatening gesture. Please lend me your horse, because I want to go to Samara where Mr. Death will not be able to find me.”
The merchant agreed and lent the scared man his horse. The servant mounted the horse and rode away as fast as the animal could gallop. Later that day, the merchant went down to the market place and saw Mr. Death standing in the crowd. He approached him and said, “Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?”
“That was not a threatening gesture,” said Mr. Death. “It was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, because I have an appointment with him tonight in Samara.”
In his latest book The Next World: Extraordinary Experiences of the Afterlife, Gregory Shushan documents a near-death experience – a Mormon example, from 1923.
“A man became unconscious following surgery. During his brief NDE, he was met by his daughter who had died 23 years earlier. She told him to go back to Earth because his six-year-old son must die first, followed by his mother, and then finally his wife. The man returned to life, and within a matter of months, both his son and his mother died. His wife followed six years later (Lundahl 1993: 177-8).”
“In another Mormon example from 1913, a Canadian woman named Bertha had an NDE during an illness. When she revived she described leaving her body and seeing from above the nurse at her bedside. She felt feelings of peace and did not wish to return to her body. A woman appeared and led her to a room filled with the souls of people she had known in life; and then to another room where Bertha was shown the souls of two children. She was asked if she would like them for her own and she replied in the affirmative, saying she wished to take them back to Earth with her. The woman told Bertha that the reason for her visit to the otherworld was to meet her future daughters. Bertha returned to her body, recovered from her illness, and her next two children were the girls she had seen during her NDE (Lundahl 1993: 175).”
In Coincidence: a Matter of Chance - or Synchronicity? by Brian Inglis, the author documents a case in 1981.
“British Rail had a call from a woman who claimed to have had a vision of a fatal crash in which a freight train had been involved. So clear had it been, she said, that she not merely saw the blue diesel engine, but could read the number: 47 216. Two years later, an accident of the kind she predicted occurred, all the details matching - except one: the engine’s number was 47 299.
“That would have been that, but a train spotter, Howard Johnston, happened to have noticed that 47 299 was not the engine’s original number. It had been renumbered, a couple of years before, from 47 216. Diesels, he knew, were ordinarily renumbered only after major modifications, which this one had not undergone. When curiosity prompted him to ask why, he was told about the prediction.
Apparently British Rail officials had been sufficiently impressed (they had checked with the local police, and found that the woman who had provided it had given them some useful information from her visions) to try to ward off Fate by changing the number. The ruse had failed, and ‘they had officially logged it all as an ‘amazing coincidence.’”
So, is our death fixed? Food for thought. Maybe there’s some truth behind ‘The Appointment in Samara.’
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