Hamish Miller: A Life Divined
As you may remember, I’d reviewed a wee book written by Hamish Miller previously on these pages. Hamish also co-authored three other books about energy lines: The Sun and the Serpent with Paul Broadhurst; The Dance of the Dragon again with Paul Broadhurst; and In Search of the Southern Serpent with Barry Brailsford.
He also wrote his autobiography, It’s Not Too Late in 1998.
This latest book was written by Nigel Twinn, who interviewed Hamish during the final months of his life, and published it after Hamish’s death on 25 January 2010.
A Life Divided?
No matter how many times I’ve read the title, my mind keeps seeing ‘divided’ instead of ‘divined’. Now, I understand that Nigel was trying to get across the concept of divination with dowsing rods, but the truth is that there is a definite ‘before and after’ to Hamish’s life. The ‘dividing’ event was his Near Death Experience in 1982.
Courtesy of Penwith Press
It was May 0f 1982, when Hamish underwent abdominal surgery for acute diverticulitis.
He distinctly remembers watching the surgeon and his colleagues scrubbing down after the regrettably unsuccessful operation, and heard the main man saying ‘Pity we were too late, chaps’. Too late, TOO LATE, too late for what — lunch, the bus, Coronation Street? Gradually the reality of the situation started to sink in. His inner self floated around the operating theatre, while the medical team made their way off to fill in the paperwork, inform the body snatchers and go out into the fresh air at the end of their shift, feeling a bit disconsolate. HM too made his leave, without fear for the future, without regret for leaving his home or his loved ones behind — and without the slightest idea about where he was going.
Up the tunnel
As the ‘reality’ of the operating theatre dissolved away, a kind of virtual tunnel manifested itself, to which he was guided. He entered it and he ‘became’ what seemed to be a small tube with rounded ends within that tunnel. For what could have been a nanosecond or several hours he relocated into the tunnel and flowed with it until he reached a place like no other he had ever even thought he might experience.
When I got to the end of the tunnel, there was absolute peace. I was very curious, but I had absolutely no fear at all. I’m not making a big issue of it, I just had no fear.
When the tube stopped, there was a warm welcoming light. As I got out of the tube, it seemed as if I was a little babe. I think it must have been a representation of total innocence.
The Management
Once out of the tunnel, Hamish became aware that he was not alone. Trying to explain the nature of the other entities that were also in the place he had reached pushes the English language beyond its recognisable boundaries. As we talked, the frustration played out in his voice and his body language. It was so important to try to explain to the people that surround him what lies beyond, or within, the everyday world, yet there are no words to describe it and precious few concepts in which to convey it. If you try to crystallise the forms he encountered into common speech, you just end up sounding like a nutter — it’s so…so…you know. The best he could do was to think of a new word; a word that avoided as much as possible of the baggage and the misconceptions of other ways of expressing the non-physical, the esoteric, the divine. He came up with the idea of calling them The Management.
When you meet The Management, you can’t see them. You’re just aware of their communication. They ‘said’ “These are some of our perceptions. If you can contribute to these, or even understand them, you’re welcome to come in.” The only one that I can bring in that could give the faintest whiff of what it was about was the idea of ‘the colour of music‘. Now, it seems absolutely basic, simple, but it hadn’t occurred to me that music had a colour at all. But of course it has — with a spectrum of different frequencies. If you apply the idea of ‘the colour of music’ to every subject that you can get your mind around, that’s the kind of quantum leap of increase in perception I was exposed to. It was absolutely mind-blowing.
His impression was of somewhere that was unimaginably vast, but not disturbingly so; of being in a timeless dimension; of being somewhere all-knowing and totally benevolent. He sensed he was in the company of other entities, who might once have been ‘people’ as we know them. These entities, however, through some form of ‘personal development’, had found, been given directions to, or bought a ticket for the escalator to nirvana.
I feel everyone is gradually edging towards having a bigger part in the process of creation. It’s as simple as that. The entities I encountered seemed to have reached an advanced stage, but in essence, I think they were people like us, but at a higher level, if I can use such a simplistic concept. Maybe they’re not just at the next level up, but possibly a couple of levels beyond that. They have become ‘the receptionists in the anteroom’, if you like.
I asked Hamish if he felt they were ‘St Peter’ figures, guarding the gates and judging those who sought entry? I was clearly being a bit tongue-in-cheek, given his anathema to scriptural dogma. However, Hamish was well aware of the gravity of the concept and thought long and hard before replying in his usual irreverent style:
Well, maybe it’s something like that — but there ain’t any gates.
However, I certainly got the feeling that you have to ‘qualify’, to have raised your energy level, or to have become enlightened to some extent, to be of any use at the next stage. But I don’t think there’s any way you can define that degree of qualification; it’s an entirely intuitive self-judgement. When you are given the choice, you know if you’ve reached the required level to progress — and if not, you decide to come back and evolve further. In human terms, that can be a very long process, but in a dimension where time is of no consequence… (Pages 55-58)
Conclusion
Suzanne Thomas of Fountain International Magazine frequently refers to Higher Management when discussing her next writing project. I always presumed it was Colin Bloy she was speaking about, but now I know better.
This is a great book for helping to understand the man who came back from the dead and tried to help to change the world. I’ll end this review with what he said to Nigel Twinn about returning to life:
When I look back now to the time before the NDE, I feel it was a completely useless life, even with the Jaguar and all the paraphernalia that goes with the world of business. It was such a very, very narrow field. While you are in it, it’s the be-all and end-all of your life. I had been making quite a bit of money and that had been very satisfying in some ways, but it was a way of life that had very narrow parameters —and I knew there had to be something outside them. So, I moved to Cornwall to try to reconcile these strange feelings that something was going to happen. I had no idea what it was likely to be. I was aware that I was now open to a whole raft of ideas and activities that I hadn’t even known about before the NDE. (Page 66)
