Into The Spirit: Dreams 3

POETIC NATURE OF LIFE

Life is poetic, reality is poetic. Poetic in the sense that everything is connected to everything, so therefore everything is like everything. The universe is like a massive cobweb; a network; similar to the human body. If one truly looks at a singular cell one can see the whole universe, if one truly looks at the universe one can see a singular cell.

Everything, in truth, is ONE thing expressed in different ways and at different stages. It is the same way our human body is one thing made up of billions and trillions of interconnected parts; it is the same way our planet is one thing made up of an unquantifiable number of interconnected parts.

The entire universe is one gigantic organism, made up of innumerable facets and parts that are related to one another. It is for this reason that the wise men of old adopted the name 'universe' to serve as a symbol of all manifest creation.

The word 'universe' is of latin origin, a juxtaposition of the words 'uni' and 'versus'. The word 'uni' means 'one' and the word 'versus' means 'to turn' or 'to change'. The word 'universe' literally means 'to turn into one' or 'to become one' or 'all things in one'.

It is from the word 'Uni', meaning 'one', that we have the words 'Unity', United' etc.

Everything is one thing and one thing is everything. Division and separation between peoples, tongues and species are but an illusion. One point leads to all points and all points lead to one, everything is dependent on everything; independent existence is an illusion.

This is why when an individual truly comes in touch with the one we call 'God', all of a sudden that person begins to speak, act and see life differently. He looks at his family, his nation, his race, as a part of himself because they really are. He looks at the plants, animals and all of nature as a part of himself because they really are.

She becomes truly joyful when those around her are joyful and becomes truly grieved when those around her are grieving. Exclusive joy and exclusive sorrow does not exist within the ambit of her reasoning.

This is because she sees truly that everything is 'one thing'; she truly sees that reality is a 'UNI'-'VERSE'.

It is for this reason that all those who take after the Christ willingly offer their lives in love for their neighbours. They do so because in their minds, they see no difference between their neighbour and themselves.

When they give love and kindness to others they don't see it as any different from doing it unto themselves. When they chastise and discipline others they do not see it as any different from doing it unto themselves.

'Love thy neighbour as thyself ' said the Christ, because thy neighbour is thyself.

Have you seen people who treated the land they lived on with cruelty and did not end up suffering from the barrenness of that land? Have you seen people who treated their land with love and tenderness and did not end up enjoying the bountiful yield of that land?

Those who strongly believe that there is a separation between them and the soil, birds, trees, planets, stars and other people, would find books written by spiritually enlightened individuals, such as the bible and many others, very difficult to understand.

We might think they are giving praise to a mountain, not realizing that it's being used to represent something intangible. We might read the works of ancient men and see them praising the sun and ignorant people of this era think the ancient men literally worshipped the physical sun.

Sigh, sigh, sigh to the heavens.

People who are unable to see the relationship between all things will find God and his 'ways' very strange. They will find the Holy scriptures very difficult to understand and consider it downright illogical.

Difficult because one thing talks about many things and many things talk about one thing. It is not possible to put a pin on God and say 'aha! this is it!'. God has been defined by one as 'an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere'.

"What does all this have to do with dreams?" some may ask. Well, this is the first lesson: learning to see the 'synapses' or bridges between two seemingly unrelated things.

When one's attention or consciousness shifts from the external world, into the more subtle dimensions or regions of nature, the concepts of 'difference', 'distance' and 'time' become quickly dissolved.

Quantum physicists have already discovered that a particle of light present in one location, can instantaneously exchange its position with another particle of light in another region of the galaxy. In a flash, all concepts of barrier, distance, difference and time are destroyed. This is called quantum tunnelling.

A concept very well known and experienced by spiritual people all across time, long before science came up with their 'toys'.

A person who gazes into the subtle regions of nature, the 'heavens', and chooses not to translate what he has seen, can tell you with confidence that a physical man is a baby ram (lamb) that was killed to save you from your sins and he will not be wrong.

We, who misunderstand his words and mistake his meaning will be the wrong ones.

He can also tell also tell you with confidence that unless you eat of his flesh and drink of his blood, you can never experience the government of God and he will not be wrong.

We, who misunderstand his words and mistake his meaning will be the wrong ones.

He can also tell you that:

'For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. ' Matthew 12:40

... and he will not be wrong.

"What" we might ask "concerns a fish with the earth?`" What concerns the earth with a heart? I thought a 'heart' was something exclusive to 'living things'? Is our understanding of 'living things' accurate? Is our understanding of 'the fish' or 'the earth' accurate?

When a person falls asleep and their soul or consciousness ejects itself from the physical body, it shifts its attention from the external world to the internal world and gradually begins to garner experience from the internal regions of nature; consciously or unconsciously.

Let us remember, as explained in previous post, this is a biological and automatic process common to all human beings whether they know it or not.

There are however those who are able to consciously project their consciousness into any dimension in nature, whether their body is as asleep or awake. Jesus, the apostles and all the prophets manifested this time without number.

Most of time, in the realms of dreams, majority of people live out their best fantasies, worst nightmares or simply carry out the regular activities they would normally do whilst conscious in the physical body; though completely ignorant of the fact that they are outside their body.

Fantasies.

Nonetheless, such experiences, even though in themselves unveil the nature and subconscious content of a person's mind and emotions, are but illusions and are not real. We are at this moment speaking of the reality of these regions and how God communicates much clearer when one's vision turns inward.

In these regions, life is more poetic, or we can say 'symbolic'; things are not as 'concrete' as they seem. The truth becomes more 'apparent' but in a poetic way. The fact that something appears in a particular form does not mean that it is that form, it means that form is being used to communicate a message.

For example, one might 'have a dream' and in that dream they find themselves on a broadway stage, performing a dance drama. On that stage he/she is supposed to be dancing to a particular rhythm being played by the drums, but he/she finds oneself dancing 'off-beat' and then wakes up.

God can use such a scene to tell a person how 'inaccurate' the life they are presently living is or how they are presently making a wrong decision. In this case the 'beats of the drums' are representative of the life pattern the person ought to be living and the dance represents the life presently being lived.

Upon one receiving instruction from this communication, one then inquires of God for what the 'accurate path' looks like and God unveils it to them.

Dreams, conscious projections, visions, prayers and meditations are intimately related with one another, seeing as they ALL relate to disconnecting from the external world and reconnecting to the internal world; even though they vary in intensity and method.

Let us remember the 'ecstasy' Peter had in the book of Acts, in which God instructed him to receive the Roman Centurion and his family, even though such a thing was an abomination in Jewish culture:

'Then he became very hungry and wanted to eat; but while they made ready, he fell into a trance and saw heaven opened and an object like a great sheet bound at the four corners, descending to him and let down to the earth.

In it were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air. And a voice came to him, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.”' Acts 10:10-13

Firstly, the word translated as 'trance' is the greek word 'ekstasis', which literally means to 'come out of oneself'. This is similar to John's experience in the book of revelation and what Paul meant by saying he was 'caught up', which we discussed about in the previous post.

So here we see very clearly that Peter's attention, consciousness or soul, 'detached' itself from his physical environment for a moment and became conscious in a region where he beheld the message being communicated to him.

In that region, God was talking about one thing but represented the thing with another. Why?

How come God used certain animals, which in the Jewish culture were considered a taboo to eat, to represent physical human beings that He wished Peter to interact with? Beyond this physical plane, the interconnectedness of things become very tangible and one thing can easily be used to describe another thing.

God and all who become familiar with his reasoning, a reasoning that sees all things as one thing, begin to speak in a poetic and symbolic manner. The bible is a gigantic book of poetry and symbols which contain many meanings. One line can talk about a million things yet speaks of one thing.

Language is not limited to the words we speak. As a matter of fact, on a physical level, spoken words make up only 14% of 'physical' human communication. How then can we think that God is limited to only speaking in a verbal manner?

We think the bible is just a verbal book written in three languages, being - Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, but the truth is that the bible contains hundreds of languages and manners of speech. It is not as concrete as it appears. It was written this way because reality itself is not as concrete as it appears.

This becomes more obvious when one detaches from the external and gazes their vision into the internal regions of nature. Concrete things are temporary like matter, eternal things are formless and abstract like energy.

This is why the book of revelation is the most misinterpreted body of work in all of history, simply because many do not know how to read the symbols. Many don't understand that life is not as concrete as it seems; everything connects to everything so therefore everything can be used to 'represent' everything.

The book of revelation literally begins by John saying the message was told to him through "SIGNIFICATION", that is by 'signs' or 'symbols'. It is a 'symbolic' book, not a literal one. A symbol 'represents' a reality, it is not a reality in itself.

'The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants—things which must shortly take place. And He sent and SIGNIFIED it by His angel to His servant John, ' Revelation 1:1

When one is not familiar with this, all manners of misinterpretations of spiritual books or experiences begin to occur. Reality is not as concrete nor as marginalised as we have been taught to believe. This is why many of us we have misunderstood and misinterpreted the bible, this is why many of us consider 'dreams' to be useless.

Something that the most prolific psychologists of the 19th and 20th century critically emphasized to be absolutely instrumental in the understanding of the psyche of a person.

We assume that the only life and reality that happens is the one in the physical body, even though all the wisest men in history assert otherwise. We don't know that when the body goes to sleep, we, in an unconscious manner, carry out activities in the more subtle regions of nature; regions deeply associated with our minds and emotions.

There is much temptation to rush this series but we realized that it best to gradually introduce and explain certain concepts, in order to paint a whole picture. As a disclaimer, we are not in anyway asserting that the only way God communicates with a person is through what we call dreams. That would be incorrect.

We are also not asserting that one should spend their life overly infatuated with dreams and experiences beyond the physical plane, that would also be incorrect. These things however have their place and sphere of importance in our lives and we would be doing ourselves a great disservice if we give them more or less attention than required.

To be continued....