Have you ever had the sense of experiencing two dimensions of reality simultaneously? The sense of existing in two different worlds at once?
I once had an experience along those lines in the flat I occupied in the first floor of my house in Benin city,Nigeria.The living room of the house was a place where, at times, I sensed that invisible people were passing through the place,going about their own business,paying me no attention,as if we did not occupy the same space in terms of the possibility and relevance of interacting with each other.
This sense of multidimensionality emerged with distinctive vividness on a particular day when I settled down in the living room with all windows closed,and all curtains drawn.I understood myself to be enjoying absolute privacy.During the course of that time,however,I experienced sharply the awareness that even though I saw myself as having privacy,I might as well be out on the centre of the street for all the privacy I actually had.Recollecting the experience now,I visualise myself,in my living room,but at the same time in the centre of a busy street,in full view of people passing as they went about their business.
Writing about this experience,even perhaps up to ten years after, brings a chill to me in the face of the uncanny.It makes me want to look behind me but of course I will see nothing.
What could it mean?
Does it suggest that what existed as my living room is actually the middle of a street in another dimension? Is that why, from time to time, I would sense unseen people moving through the living room, paying me no attention? Were they people in transit,passing through that street in the other dimension the living room also existed in?
Or could the experience suggest that my lifestyle was so well known to my neighbours that they would know what I would doing even if they could not see me? After all,the range of a neighbour's activities are often known to other neighbours who have observed one's lifestyle for some time,so privacy does not equal ignorance of one's actions, theoretically speaking.
I remain puzzled.
