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The Christos experience – Windows of the Mind – G M Glaskin

It is extraordinary how easily and vividly one can be 'transported' from the ground to the top of the roof of one's abode- in my case from a ground-floor apartment to the flat roof of a three-storey apartment building. And when I was told to look down and around me, not only did I do so but I walked to the edges of the roof and peered over, seeing not merely what was beneath and around me but even my own feet and legs up to the hips. I even felt a touch of vertigo at first, but this soon disappeared (as it wouldn't have in real life) when I found myself fully occupied with seeing and describing everything before me--but which I still have never seen in reality from this viewpoint.

I chose the rear of the building and could immediately see the rather attractively architectured dual stairways-a pattern of geometrical lines and angles upon which most visitors invariably comment after their first encounter with them, and which amateur-photographer friends like to use as backgrounds. On either side of these were the small squares of lawn and narrow gardens of plants and shrubs. But in the centre of these lawns, occupying most of the two areas, I could not only see the square clothes-hoists which are so much a feature of Australian back gardens, but also washing drying on them.

And although it was night at the time when I was visualizing this, and a winter night at that, it was daylight in my visualization - a warm, bright summer day with, as is usual in this locality, a moderate sea-breeze wafting the clothes out from the wires to which they were pegged and making the hoists turn, as they do when they are wound up sufficiently for the larger items to be well above the ground.

Then I could see the taller apartment building which is back-to-back with the one in which I live. I could see its windows and doorways and grilled connecting balconies, the open 'car-port' of aluminium roofing and even cars in other areas provided for parking underneath the building. There were people moving around - very realistic people, but none of them recognizable, which doesn't surprise me, as even now I know very few of them in reality. Looking to the right, I could see the other buildings to the landward side, with the tall spiky spires of the many Norfolk Island pine trees which have been planted here. I shall spare you all the details of what I could see; suffice it to say that these were not only clear and vivid in colour, but also incredibly accurate when I later compared them with reality. Consequently the experience was and is, to say the least, enthralling.