Tat Tvam Asi

Platonic philosophical reading last night

2007-10-09T18:51:00.000-07:00

Suggests why narration (either by fiction, or motion picture, or just plain story-telling) continues to compel the human imagination:

...Perhaps your physical existence could be compared with an excellent book given to you by a teacher.

You are completely immersed in it. Because you realize that you are reading such a book and acting out the part of the main character, and plunged into a three-dimensional existence, this does not mean that you can afford to throw the book away and refuse to read it.

You may of course realize its nature, and this is a step forward. The teacher who gives you the book is reading another book, and acting another part.

Dream visit from a group of friends

2007-08-05T09:50:00.001-07:00

Strange, ghostly image
Originally uploaded by an0nym0usmuse

I've been pondering a dream that I had yesterday; I was tidying up a room that I was staying in, when suddenly a crowd of people, thirty or more, piled into the room. It was not an unfriendly invasion, though I quickly realized that my visitors were "dead." I seemed to know them, though I could not name them. They watched me with amusement as I took photographs of them; I wanted evidence that they were visiting me.

They set about rearranging my room, moving my CD collection to the other side, and organizing my general disorder.

Someone wanted to hear some music. I searched, but couldn't find my portable players; they had moved them! But I wasn't angry. My room needed sorting, anyway.

We talked. I asked questions. They told me about their world.

I realize, now, after many years, that our perceived physical world is only a small slice of total reality. While alive, we walk through it in a fog, with horse blinders on. The "dead" inhabit that greater world that exists contiguous to our physical planet, and beyond. And beyond the world of my visitors lie even greater, more distant worlds, and infinite threads binding us to all we have been, all we will be, and all we have known.

What had I done to have the honor of this visit? I'm not sure, but I think that "they" realize that I need some answers to some vexing questions, and the answers aren't "here." So I am pulling some strings, calling up some old friends, calling in some favors. I am at one of my life crossroads, and I need to make informed choices.

When I said that I hoped that they would visit me again, they were again amused with me. Apparently, they had been visiting me regularly, sometimes in dreams, at other times, in other ways--I simply did not remember it, or know it. "Every Saturday," however, was what I was told--I could expect them to drop in.

Plenty of time to think up a new round of questions.

Abandoned: Dreams of an ancient life

2007-06-29T20:29:00.000-07:00

I'm digging through my dream diary again. Each time I do, I discover something new. When I read a book, I'm always tempted to skip to the end, but I don't... I know that's cheating. Instead, I skip through the pages I've just read, hoping I can get a bead on where the story is going. Maybe I want to be surprised by the future, or maybe I'm afraid to know it. But I dream rarely of the future now, and like many of my bent, I cannot read myself.

I have a handful of dreams that seem to describe past lifetimes. All of the dreams resonate with me on some level, but I always feel like I'm reading someone else's story. Still, the dreams are there. They are all I have. Some people are hypnotically regressed and explore alleged past lifetimes that way. Me, I'm afraid of being regressed. And anyway, if I knew the truth of my past lifetimes, would it change anything? I don't know. I'd still have to get up every morning and work for a living.

April 18, 1985
I dreamed that a group of peaceful people who lived on the desert had been captured by a band of warlike wanderers. I was one of the peaceful people. The warriors attempted to torture and intimidate us but were not able to do so. I told them that we had powers beyond theirs. I took a stick that was very thick and asked them if they were able to break it with their hands or fingers. They said no. To their amazement, I took the stick and easily broke it over my finger. I explained that we came from a race of people who could control nature through the concentration of our minds. We took some of the warriors back to the camp for a demonstration and tour. All of our people wore white robes. The buildings seemed to be made of thick stone or bricks formed from the sand. We explained that some of our people had developed the power of the mind to such an extent that they had raised their bodies into the spiritual realm. At that moment we felt a stirring in the air caused by the elevated "protectors," and we began to travel through the air.

June 14, 1986
I was studying Buddhism in China, learning (as I recalled when awake) the "eight-fold path.” I was in a monastery. My mother had abandoned me.

June 7, 1987. Sunday
My story concerned my past life history. The particular life it concerned was a very ancient one, one occurring in Asia. I had been born into poverty and had been abandoned as a child. I somehow came into great wealth (perhaps by being adopted by a wealthy family). I joined a monastery and devoted myself to a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline similar to Buddhist kung fu. We wore white robes.

October 4, 1991
I dreamed that I and another person were escorting a young Oriental woman to a restaurant. We walked on opposite sides of her. We entered the restaurant. A while later, I went wandering around the restaurant. I entered a large room, packed with young children who were orphans. I stood on a platform and began making a speech to them. I declared, slowly and with emphasis, that their mothers didn't care for them, their fathers didn't, "but God did.” The implication was that they should care for themselves. I got the impression that, years before, when I was a child, I was abandoned in a room such as this, an act involving an Oriental woman like the one I entered the restaurant with.

Many metaphysicians and mystics argue that for our species to survive, we must revive the lost powers that we, as a race, once possessed. I don't think that our salvation comes from God, or religion, or through a specific political process, or, even, through science; it comes from ourselves. We are beginning to realize that the systems and structures with which we vest so much of our power are failing. This may not be such a bad thing, in the grand scheme.

māyā and out-of-body experiences

2007-06-24T17:15:00.000-07:00

I will always remember the flaming that I got, about a decade ago... actually, I am not sure when it was. It was during my wild, online phase, when I stumbling in and out of online connections. I think that it might have happened around 2000, when the online world began to go sour on me. But I was chatting with the person that I happened to be chatting with at the moment, and I revealed that I sometimes have out-of-body experiences. I could feel the frost chill the line... and then she began berating me. She told me to shut up; just listen, she said, while she finished lecturing me. And then, a week later, I saw a posting on the forum where we had met, accusing me of "howling at the moon." I might as well have confessed to her that I was a child molester.

Objectively, I understood that my views were threatening to her, but I have never forgotten the sting of that experience. That experience, and subsequent ones, have motivated me to sequester my online activities behind many walls. Though I have several forums, I resist the temptation to link them. Truth be told, however, this is my favorite forum; but my past haunts me, and I try to tell as little as possible.

I have become convinced that our physical world (or at limited slice of physicality that we perceive) is elaborate theater constructed for our benefit; the greater world can be perceived, and traveled, simply by stepping slightly out of our current focus. For me, this is the true adventure. It is not that I dislike this world, but I have learned to keep it in perspective. This attitude is probably why I am rejected by official society, and embraced by those on the periphery.

Dream on the nature of time

2007-05-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

I have been delving extensively into the Jane Roberts "Seth" series of books; I have actually been a serious student of the material for over twenty years. The information works for me.

I'm able to view most belief systems from the perspective that we are all here on different paths; we belong to different groups, pursuing different goals; we are on different levels of development and maturity. For these reasons, what belief system works for one will not necessarily work for others.

The writing of Jane Roberts simply meshes with me in a way that no other material has.

One reason that the material attracts me is Roberts' extensive exploration into the true nature of time, and how we, as beings blundering through this physical world, relate to it.

For most of my life, I've had the hidden suspicion that time is merely a tool, rather than a rule. Time is malleable; the future is knowable; the past is changeable. This solitary moment, our brief focus on the Now, with billions of years of Past stretching behind us, and a precarious and unknowable future in front of us, was, is, essentially... not so much an illusion, but a theatrical device. A prop. Step behind the stage, and we can glimpse a truer reality upon which our physical māyā, rests.

I don't know why I have always been obsessed with teasing out these issues, but I always have been. I have enjoyed toying with these concepts, following the road where they led, and pondering what the implications were for me, and for humanity as a whole.

So, this morning, I had a welcome dream. In the dream, I seemed to be receiving a lesson of sorts. The human brain was being compared to, for example, the brain of an ant. We all know ants. We know that ants function almost as a group consciousness. As a group, they can locate food; they can avoid obstacles; they can avoid dangers. Science states that ants communicate all of this information chemically.

And we know how abysmally deficient most human groups are at group consciousness sorts of things that are beneficial.

The dream pointed out that while the human brain is "wired" to process physical reality as a series of discrete moments, one after the other, the ant brain is constructed in such a way that time is more malleable. The ant can step outside of sequential time, for example, and anticipate threats in the "future," and thus avoid them.

For me, the notion that time is not absolute, that I am not trapped in it, is profoundly comforting. There is much that I would like to discover from time, to learn, to anticipate, and to change.

Looking for clues

2007-05-20T18:13:00.001-07:00

SP_A0667
Originally uploaded by AGlassDarkly.

I have mostly been turned inward for the past few months; haven't felt like posting, haven't felt like Flickring. My mind is elsewhere, wandering over the events of the past ten years, looking for clues. Most people who know me would say that, at the very least, I have a rather strange mind. I can't remember where I put my car keys a few minutes ago, but I know bits and pieces of conversations and clues from my entire past, and when they were dropped. Today my search took me to an email that I sent to someone who had a major impact on my life... dated November 2001. I no longer correspond with her (or with 99.9% of people from my past). But I was looking for something that I distinctly remember writing her.

I told her that my mother had appeared in a dream urging me to visit my family home. At the time, I was puzzled. My father discouraged me from visiting the house, where my brother lives. But it wasn't like I wanted to visit, anyway. So, why did my mother come all the way from "there" and urge me to visit my old home?

The question has bothered me since. But now I understand. It makes sense.

My father had important papers. They weren't stored at the house, then, but perhaps I might have learned about them from my brother. I was kept totally in the dark about my father's financial affairs for most of my life. To my parents, money was something to horde. They clung to their possessions until the moment they passed from this realm, never bothering to ponder what would happen to them when they left. Unfortunately, when this is done, there are plenty of people who will step forward to take the necessary steps on their behalf. My mother was warning me. I should have visited.

Until this is all resolved, I will be focussed on it. I believe that it is the last major test for me. I opened a fortune cookie the other day, and the message was, "Things that are temporary are meant to be temporary. Settle this within a year." That's my goal.

"London's on fire!"

2006-12-16T10:27:00.000-08:00

A dream that I had yesterday:

Someone shouted, "London's on fire!" We went to the TV to see a live broadcast of a massive fire in London. We weren't specifically told whether it was terrorist-related or an accident. I was floating over the scene. I saw some smoke billows appearing in a financial area, or a place with large buildings. I heard the sirens. I thought it would be contained, but then I saw it begin to spread rapidly toward the older part of London. We were staying in a nearby hotel, and I knew that we would have to evacuate. I began floating back to the hotel to do this.

Premonition?

Dream from 1987

2006-07-31T18:55:00.000-07:00

Over the past few weeks, I've pondered where I want to point this blog. Initially, I wanted to use the Jane Roberts/Seth material (which I have studied for over twenty years) as a launching pad. But I don't think I will go in this direction. I don't like dissecting or analyzing the path traveled by another researcher. Besides, anyone who wants to read Jane Roberts can do what I did--purchase her books, and study them.

I will be happy if, for the time being, no one discovers this site. Most of my other blogs, I want to be read. This one, however, probably should remain obscure for a while; I will have time to develop it. (And if the past is any predictor of the future re: blogger.com, I should be safe.)

So I will start here, with a dream that I recorded almost twenty years ago. It is one of several dreams that I recorded with this message, and I think it goes to the heart of the current human dilemma:

July 18, 1987. Saturday
This morning, around 3:30 a.m., I dreamed that I was outside at night. A storm was coming. I was near an old cabin. The scene was surreal. I saw vivid and eerie-looking faces popping up around me, staring at me. I was then apparently under a car. I crawled out and felt presences around me. I moaned to wake up, and I was left with the impression that I was the subject of an experiment. The experiment involved minute adjustments in how we perceive reality. I continued to feel the presence while awake and stayed awake for 30 minutes.

I think that the dream was a peek at my future, circa ten to twenty years later, but more importantly, the information imparted (and the meaning behind it) suggests that the physical world and human events with which we vest such importance and solidity are being "tweaked." If there is one recurring message scattered through my dreams, it is that the objective world that we live in is an elaborate, carefully planned motion picture--it is not "real." It is artificial. It is constructed. The real events occur behind the scenes. And it really doesn't take major psychic upheaval to peek behind the stage machinery and curtains to see the real world--poking your head behind the corner, or lifting the bunting on the stage to see what's underneath, is all you need to do.

So this site will propose to be an peek behind the curtain, so to speak, to see the little man that appears, on stage, to be the great, terrible Wizard of Oz.... and what the tweaking of our camouflage reality portends for the direction of our motion picture.

the woman in the nursing home who said she knew me

2006-06-17T19:49:00.000-07:00

After I had been there for thirty or so minutes, she walked up to me. She had been watching me for some time. I thought she was familiar, but I could not place her. I tried to remember if I had seen her the last time she visited. But she walked up to me and placed her hands on my face, and mumbled something like, "I remember you." And she said something about how she knew me. She told me her name. I took her photograph. She seems familiar, but I do not know her. So it is bothering me. Was she demented, and perhaps knew me from another time? Or did she know me from my former life as a minister? That was almost thirty years ago. She seems familiar, but I cannot remember.

I still could not find C's house. I have her address... I kicked myself for not looking it up before I drove. She has not given me any landmarks.

A dream I had in April, 1990

2006-03-13T19:50:00.000-08:00

Clouds drifting across the moon
Originally uploaded by an0nym0usmuse.

I dreamed that I and a group of people were walking over my parents' property, which I think I had inherited. This group seemed to be involved in an official inquiry into how I was taking care of the land, in an ecological sense. I wasn't concerned, since I am conservation-minded. We seemed to be walking over the property. When we came to the line, we discovered that for some reason all energy production had shut down. The national infrastructure had collapsed. The group was isolated and had to begin governing itself.

I seemed to be in a room, and the lamp was flickering because of the energy being depleted. I showed someone my solar watch which with I hoped to use to keep track of time.

Dream that I had in 1987

2006-03-12T20:37:00.000-08:00

Bird watching me watching it
Originally uploaded by an0nym0usmuse.

This morning I dreamed that I was preparing for the axis shift. I was at my parents' house. I decided to pack my most essential items into a backpack. I started packing my blue backpack first and was able to put my photo albums in it, but I did not have room for my sleeping bag. I believe that the seams began to burst. I then began packing my material into an old green backpack that was nearby. I do not think that I got everything in it.

Next, I went walking down the creek into the woods. Earlier, I had envisioned how I could set a fence around my parents' property. I had discarded that idea, however, as unworkable. I next came to a river. All electricity was off all throughout the U.S., and no vehicles were able to operate. There was a danger from the skies; enemy aircraft of some sort. I and several other people, however, had managed to procure a boat (or some other vehicle) that still worked. We were traveling up a river to Canada, where we thought it would be safe. Someone had warned us, however, that the enemy aircraft would still be able to find us.

My brief fling with ghost-hunting

2006-02-06T18:47:00.000-08:00

another strange light
Originally uploaded by an0nym0usmuse.

During my indiscrete youth, I got a wild hair and decided to go ghost-hunting. I think the instigation was some television show I had seen. The protagonists had placed a running tape recorder in a cemetery at night, left it. When they went to retrieve it, they found ghostly voices on the tape. "Worth a try," my 20-year-old mind thought.

And so one night I went, to a cemetery down the road. I don't remember if I took my tape recorder, but I brought my camera. I made several shots of gravestones. After spending several minutes, my brother and I decided that it was probably best to leave. We hopped in my car and I tried to back out--only to discover that I was stuck. A bit concerned, I tried rocking the transmission from reverse to forward. Suddenly, the "hot" warning light came on.

After assessing the situation, my brother and I hiked to a house down the road and knocked on the door. A older lady warily answered. Against her better judgement, she let us both in to borrow the phone; she later said that she normally didn't let strangers in the house. But as we talked further, I learned that she was in fact a close relative. I wish, now, I could remember who she was.

My father arrived shortly and explained that my engine had simply overheated; there was no sinister causality. When I developed the roll of photos, I was disappointed to find that the shots taken at the cemetery did not develop; they were underexposed. However, I noticed some strange lights on the shots immediately before and after the cemetery shots. Above is one of them; they appear, vaguely, to resemble eyes. I am convinced that "something" either impressed the images on the negative, or something followed me home.

I returned to this cemetery only several other times... when my grandparents were buried, and when my mother was buried.

Dream of the machine

2006-02-06T09:05:00.000-08:00

20060113a
Originally uploaded by an0nym0usmuse.

The phone rang; I answered, and a somewhat metallic-sounding but intelligent voice said, "I need for you to set me up on another URL." I realized that I was talking to a computer, or rather, a computer was talking to me--intelligently. The voice directed me to switch "him" to the URL that was displayed on a card that I was holding. After agreeing to do this, I asked the computer why it had chosen me for this task; "he" answered, "If I am intelligent enough to know that you can do this for me, I am intelligent enough to help you with anything; I can show you the places where you can get the best food, the best help--anything." I managed to locate the existing URL for this computer. The page displayed a series of links to philosophical chats that this machine had with people who had contacted it.