Q7 JM wrote that ... reading occurs in my own time, my own space (mostly my
own bed). I t occupies a separate dimension from whatever else might be
happening in my life, or the world in general. Sometimes I read in a distanced,
detached, outsider sort of way; at other times I’m fully absorbed and transported
into another state of being.
JM, like the other respondents suffered childhood illnesses, but hers was tinged with
an esoteric element: a succession of childhood ailments, which always seemed to
occur at Christmas (i.e., the English winter) until we came to Australia when I was 9
... then I suffered a severe allergic reaction (allegedly to the new country) and was
ill for two years until “cured” by a Bush Brother, Bishop Collins, who was known for
his healing powers.
Q13 JM wrote, ... if consciousness raising occurs in the act of reading, then the
reader is participating in the writer’s creativity and therefore gaining potential
access to the Spiritus Mundi, or the beyond self experience and that there is a
nexus, I think, between the imaginative reaching out for knowledge and the leap of
faith, more often discussed in a theological context. I n other words, the nexus
between the intellectual and the spiritual is what constitutes imagination at its
highest level ... the act of reading can bring awareness of this otherness, which is
self and not-self – sometimes received as an immanence, rather than a presence.
Q16 Here, JM elaborated on her comments in question 13 by explaining that, ...
Yes, frequently, especially in dreams. I often dream extensions of or conclusions to
whatever I ’m reading. This is often followed by stabs [ sic] of ‘déjà vu’ I when I
resume the reading next day, or later, to find I ’ve already dreamt what I hadn’t yet
read. Fictional characters wander into my dreams to rub shoulders with family and
friends, living and departed. Reading into the early hours of the morning, I find
fiction dissolving into dream, dream into drowsy reality, drifting together into a
sensual, sleepy dance – until the mind’s music stops and it’s time to wake up for
work.
Q17. JM averred, ... I t’s hard to claim total objectivity when reading fact or fiction,
so a personal sub-text is virtually unavoidable.
Q18. JM’s response was significant; ... I belonged to a family that was frequently
on the move, so home was the family, not the place. I t took me nearly 50 years to
settle on a particular locality where I could consider the thought of permanence –
choice of one place meant rejection of the rest, so I gypsied about a great deal. I
carry lots of places in my head, full of significance and associations. I don’t feel I
ron
(Ron)
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