3rd Personal Reflection Upon the Death of John Paul the Great

When John Paul II died, I was “on the road” and my daughter called me to inform me of the news.  After doing so, she asked me: “Did you know this time, Daddy?”

“No, I didn’t this time,” I told her.

John Paul II lived a heroic life and, as far as I’m concerned, entirely owned his own death.

Not like the last two times in 1978 when, psychically-engaged, I experienced the impending deaths of both Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul I in real unmediated time.

The death angel/agent sent for Paul VI actually visited me first.  It did—no matter how bizarre the existence of such a thing may seem.  No matter how deranged it all may sound.

Upon that fateful day, the invisible though distinctly-locationed  death angel/agent sent for Paul VI hovered above me as I was sleeping in my bed and startled me to terrified consciousness.  “Are you the Pope?”  Unspoken words: Its mere presence commanded an answer.  I could hardly believe it: a fucking death angel.  I hadn’t really believed before that moment that they existed, and yet there was one challenging me.  Wasting no precious time, I distinctly projected upward in response with a life-affirming psychic vibe “I am not the Pope.”

Being at the time, a virgin psychic mystic of peerless intelligence for the most part living the life of a hermit, I sensed that the death angel/agent was confused: I could have almost  been the pope—I had enough “popemarks” to confound it. 

But as I clearly refuted the misidentification, the visiting death agent moved along, invisibly gliding above me as I lay motionless in my bed. And then away.  I knew in that moment that had I actually been the pope, I would have sucked my last breath.  And then Paul VI, halfway around the world, died shortly thereafter.

The death of Pope John Paul I?  That’s even a more bizarre ‘involvement’ that shall await  later explication.

But at least here, for the first time, I’ve begun to ‘unconsign to silence’ what I once merely hinted at before: 

Just a little rhyme from my childhood to set a tone:

"It takes a dope... To kill a pope... But a dope who is true... To make fatal two. "

Actually, this little rhyme usually took the form of a taunt:

1st child (observing some stupidity on the part of 2nd child): "It takes a dope to kill a pope!"
2nd child (typical response): "Shut up!"

As a child, my invented riposte: "But it takes a real dope to kill two popes!"

Now what the heck does that mean? Possibly that the universe is basically predatorial--and only our typical culturally-consensualized perception of it seems ever so much to render matters comfortably, cognizantly numb. Moreover, that some important truths lie beyond our five senses as we experience them.

Beyond that, as Ludwig Wittgenstein, 20th century Austrian philosopher, once admonished: "Of that which we cannot speak, we must consign to silence."

Well... perhaps so... for a time being.