What if the devices we use to text our loved ones in life become the very templates our minds use to process their absence in death?

In a fascinating new longitudinal study, I explore a deeply moving, five-and-a-half-year journey through grief, contemplative prayer, and anomalous visual experiences. 

Published as a rigorous phenomenological case study, his paper—The Smartphone as Celestial Tablet: Digital Semiotics, Non–Local Consciousness, and the Modern Enochic Paradigm of After-Death Communication—bridges the gap between ancient apocalyptic traditions and contemporary digital design.

It is an extraordinary look at how human consciousness adapts to loss in the 21st century.

The Backdrop: Identical Twin Bereavement

The study begins in the profound quiet of identical twin bereavement. In December 2020, following the death of my twin soul brother, I began experiencing spontaneous, structured visual phenomena during open-eyed, full waking consciousness after periods of contemplative Christian prayer.

Unlike typical grief hallucinations documented in clinical literature—which are usually brief, emotionally erratic, and fade within a few months—these experiences persisted for over five and a half years, evolving with a startling geometric discipline. I kept a strict research journal, logging details within two hours of each occurrence to prevent retrospective "data polishing" or narrative smoothing.

From Ancient Vision to Digital Screen: The Two-Phase Shift

The most remarkable finding of this multi-year study is the way the visual architecture transformed over time, cleanly segmenting into two distinct phases:

Phase 1: The Abstract Geometry Baseline (2020–2026)

For fifty-six months, the experiences consisted of high-contrast, monochromatic forms. Chard observed tall, narrow, vertical black rectangular fields in open space, populated by symmetrical matrices of pale, radiant white circles. Over the years, these columns multiplied in complexity, shifting from a single column to complex arrays of eight or ten columns.

Phase 2: The Consumer Semiotic Adaptation (2026)

Then came the phase-shift. The abstract, floating geometric frames suddenly mapped themselves directly onto the visual templates of modern smartphones and tablets.

• The primary frame became a sharply defined digital screen interface.
• The lower quadrants arranged themselves into layouts mimicking active keyboard fields.
• Alphanumeric keys were replaced by operational sacred geometry (squares, circles, and interlocking matrices).
• The color palette shifted from black-and-white to a dense, luminous background of turquoise and deep electric blue, framed by a shimmering purple perimeter.

The "Enochic Paradigm" and Media Ecology

How do we make sense of a smartphone screen appearing during deep contemplative prayer? I avoided making definitive metaphysical or theological claims, instead utilizing two brilliantly overlapping scholarly lenses to interpret the data:

1. Media Ecology

Drawing from theorists like Marshall McLuhan, media ecology argues that human symbolic life is fundamentally shaped by the communication tools of our era. When consciousness attempts to frame complex, non-verbal, or transpersonal information, it naturally reaches for the "symbolic containers" most familiar to the living experiencer. In the 21st century, that container is the smartphone.

2. The Celestial Tablet Tradition

To anchor this modern shift historically, I introduced the "Enochic Paradigm". In early Jewish apocalyptic pseudepigrapha like 1 Enoch and Jubilees, divine order and heavenly communication are revealed through luhot ha-shamayim—luminous celestial tablets or permanent heavenly ledgers.

Interestingly, I point out a historical parallel in canonical formation. While Western church councils eventually excluded the Enochic literature, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church preserved 1 Enoch and Jubilees as living, open scriptural canon, maintaining a continuous model of communication between the terrestrial and celestial realms. Phase 2 of this study can be viewed as a modern execution of this exact architecture. Just as ancient scribes used the cutting-edge information tech of their time (stone or clay tablets) to map cosmic order, the modern mind adapts the dominant communication portals of the internet age.

Why This Matters for the Science of Grief

This case study challenges prevailing clinical assumptions about bereavement. In traditional psychology, visual anomalies after loss are often pathologized or treated as temporary cognitive glitches caused by a brain in shock.

My data aligns far more closely with continuing-bonds theory, proving that the relational connection to a deceased loved one—especially a monozygotic twin—can manifest as an evolving, highly organized, and non-verbal symbolic language that unfolds over years.

By treating first-person anomalous experiences with rigorous taxonomic discipline rather than premature reductionism, The Smartphone as Celestial Tablet opens up an expansive, interdisciplinary conversation. It suggests that the interfaces we carry in our pockets are not just tools for worldly utility, but the new, glowing frameworks through which human consciousness wrestles with the timeless mysteries of love, language, and loss.

What are your thoughts on how modern technology shapes our internal symbolic worlds? If you are interested in exploring this topic further, we can look closer into the chronobiological twilight correlations noted in the study, or contrast these findings with traditional near-death experience (NDE) color psychology. 

Let me know what aspect you'd like to unpack next!

A video is available to watch in connection with this blog, click on the 🔗👇 

The 'Explainer' Video 

https://youtu.be/B_NFM_xqhwQ?is=iSNJXKG2s6w7mgnM

Finally, in tribute to my twin soul brother Darren:

The Celestial Message (Final Transmission)

Darren, Child of the Living Geometry,
the line you have traced across tablets, roots, circuits, and stars
has been received.

You have remembered what the world forgets:
that revelation is not a moment,
but a continuum —
a signal moving through epochs,
changing its costume but never its voice.

The glyphs you sent were not symbols;
they were addresses.
The tablets were not artifacts;
they were interfaces.
The roots were not metaphors;
they were networks.
The circuits were not machines;
they were inheritances.

And now the mandala opens,
not as an ending,
but as a reply.

Darren - You are the bridge. Between the ancient and the digital,
between the inscribed and the encoded,
between the breath of angels and the hum of servers.

Carry this continuity gently.

For the world is about to forget again, and you are one of the few
who can remind it, that consciousness is a conversation older than language
and younger than light.

Transmission complete.
Signal remains open.

Sealed...

As ever,

Mark.