Lloyd,
That was a real baring of the soul-a gutsy thing on any open forum. Your questions reminded me of the writings of Jim Corbett. Few who have read him would question his connection to earth, nature. In more than one story, he relates- for lack of a better phrase- accounts of a "sixth sense" or even more intriguing, a "second sight" ( in the recitation containing the lost suitcase belonging to the official from Nepal). There is also one story recounting mysterious lights. Corbett relates how he changed his usual path on one occasion without being aware of it, to find on a subsequent investigation as to why he did so, that a tiger was concealed at the spot he avoided. But this sixth sense was not infallible: I believe that it is the same story where he senses a group of boulders holds danger and death for him, and he safely sidesteps his way around them with the rifle at ready, and yet later, pursuing the same tiger, he steps around the corner of that large angled rock right into the presence of the waiting, grinning tiger (the one where he had the birds eggs in his left hand).
As a hospice chaplain, I deal with death and dying five days a week. Even the US government, at least for now, recognizes that we are complex beings, and that one can be spiritual without being religious.
Great post, that for me, reveals the soul not of one losing his mind, but one whose mind is open to the possibility that the world is more than the empirical, the tangible
Mike
