The Dreamer

When I was doing my Gateway Voyage a couple of weeks ago, during the Focus 21 exercise wherein we were directed to "go to" a place tentatively named "The Bridge", while standing on the bridge construct I had made, a white stone arch, I felt an urge to cross the bridge and go to the other side.

This was outside of the guidance, but it seemed obvious to me that the other side was the point, and not the bridge itself.

As I crossed I noted a couple of things.

The first thing I noticed was that I had no solid form. If I chose to look at my feet I got a sense of having feet, although my feet looked more like lizard feet than human feet, another theme and another story. But if I was not thinking about feet there were no feet. I had no sense of standing on or in a body at all unless I thought about some aspect or function of a body. Also, of course, there was the implication of having eyes with which to look, and the implication of a thing called "looking".

The second thing I noticed was that my assumptions determined my experience, and that everything was fluid, indeterminate.

My bridge was not attached to anything. It more or less floated in a sea of black light. I got the feeling of a milky haze of light that was more or less localized around my point of reference. The haze faded away into the distance, into the featureless darkness.

On the other side of the bridge, as I stood on the far edge of it, appeared a horizontal circle of light like a stepping stone perhaps the equivalent of ten or twelve feet across. At one moment the circle floated and at another moment it became the top surface of a pillar that went down into the infinite darkness below.

I stepped onto the circle. When I turned around to look back at the bridge I noticed it was not where I had left it. Rather, it was far away and below me, barely visible.

As I stood on the circle I noted the appearance of other similar circles around me at various heights. I could see the supporting pillars of light. I was the only "person" present. None of the other circles were occupied.

At once there came to me a thought in the form of a visual representation of a single word, "LIFTOFF." The word appeared as block letters in front of me. I saw actual capital letters forming the word at the same time I sort of heard the word in the way a person may hear a word when he speaks it silently to himself.

I had a moment to consider what "LIFTOFF" might mean. It came to me that it implied a rocket, and a vertical ascension at high speed. When this thought formed itself in my mind I was instantly traveling "upward" at a high rate of speed through the darkness.

The travel was brief but I got the sense that I had traversed a great distance. One must understand, things like time and distance and speed are metaphorical in this realm. They are ideas more than physical realities. One gets a "sense" of them more than a direct perception, sort of the way one feels when travelling in a car with eyes closed, or perhaps laying down on the floor in the back seat.

When I came to a stop I got the sense, and a brief, tentative "visual" representation, that I had risen up from underneath a lawn of grass. I had a brief "memory" of having seen the underlying dirt, the roots, and a dark space beneath the dirt. I felt very much like I had come up from a place below.

I found myself standing on a lawn in what felt like the middle of a large public square, although I got the sense it was a rectangle. It must be said that I "saw" very little. If one thinks of a scene in ones mind, a memory of having been in a particular place, and tries to recall the visual, to "see" a beach, for example, in ones mind, one may approximate the visual "sense" of what it was like for me. It was very much like visual memory, but in real time. Everything I will say that I "saw" is in that type of vision, memory-vision.

I felt I was standing on a lawn. But I also felt that I was totally blind. I felt very much that there was much detailed scenery around me, but that I could not see it. I imagined an infants vision, or that of a small puppy whose eyes have just opened. If you look at the face of an infant with new eyes, and see how they sort of "try" and see, the focused intent mixed with confusion on their face, you may get an idea of how I felt.

Standing on the lawn, blind, in a strange place, I also felt the presence of someone standing next to me, and perhaps with their hands on my shoulders to steady and guide me. Recall that all suggestions of bodily senses or impulses are fluid. I felt no definite body the way I feel it at this moment. What was happening was that as I thought about a body or a body part or function, the thing would more or less "appear" and function in an approximate manner as the way it normally functions. But as soon as the function or part fell from my awareness the thing itself more or less disappeared.

Confused but unafraid, and aware of having a helper, I thought it might be beneficial to be standing in some water, perhaps a small pool or stream. I thought it might help to "ground" me, to provide some sensation to make me more aware of the environment and of myself. At once I was standing in the edge of a small stream. I could see the water and the smooth, bronze stones. I looked down to where my feet should be, but I saw no feet. But I knew I was standing in a stream and it "felt" nice.

But the stream did not provide the hoped-for sensation and increase in sensory awareness I wanted. And I thought that it might be helpful to look up at the sun, to see and feel the rays shining into my eyes and warming my face. I thought this because it is my habit in meditation to do that, to sit in the sun, closed eyes raised to the sky, and enjoy the reddish light coming through my lids and the heat on my face. It always makes me feel energetic and connected to my environment.

Again I was immediately transported, with no intervening sense of motion, to a broad green field of rolling hills populated generously with colorful wild flowers. I felt I was standing alone and far from anything or anyone in a perfect, peaceful place. I turned my ersatz head upward to where I thought the sun might be. Recall, I was essentially blind and helpless, and the motions and movements I describe are the ideations of motions and movements, and all bodily references are metaphorical, although, again, when I thought of them, the function associated with the body part was performed, sometimes with an apparition of that part, sometimes without. As I turned my eyes upward I found the sun, but it was not the familiar bright yellow disc. Rather, it was black. The sun was black and yet I got the sense the scene was well lit with a "normal" daylight. The grass was green. The flowers were blue and red and yellow. The hills rolled easily and faded into the distance under a blue sky. But the sun itself was black as space.

Sort of disappointed, realizing I was not going to get the help I had sought, I found myself back at the lawn in the square.

At this moment I became disoriented and felt I would benefit from having something more solid beneath my feet. I desired something, anything, to hang onto, some familiar touchstone, a reference for myself. reflexively I looked down to where the ground should be and found the grass and representations of my now-familiar saurian "feet". This time however I noted directly in front of me the lower step of a set of stone stairs such as one might find on a capital building. The steps were broad and smooth and either cement or stone. They were of a creamy white color.

I stepped onto the first step and felt the texture underfoot and heard the soft scritching of my feet on the stone. The familiar sensations provided me with some comfort as I stepped up perhaps half a dozen steps to a wide landing. I found myself directly in front of a large scalloped stone column. I fell to my knees and extended my arms to the column. I wrapped my arms perhaps a quarter of the way around the column and hugged it like it was an old friend. The solidity was perfectly real and it helped me to settle myself down.

As I knelt before the column I heard the voice of my guide, the voice of Bob Monroe, calling me back. It was time for me to return from the bridge, where I had supposed to have been waiting, to the lower reaches, to Focus 15, in preparation for the end of the exercise.

I did not want to return, and I thought immediately that I might like to come back to this place in the future, but I did not know how I had got here. The idea came to me to leave a marker, a beacon to which I could return. I needed something to leave here at the foot of this column so that later on I might be able to come back to it by thinking of the marker even if I did not know the intervening path.

The image of a sunflower came to mind, and immediately I found myself holding in my right hand a three-foot-tall sunflower in perfect bloom. I stabbed the stalk of the sunflower into the stone floor in front of the column. It settled-in perfectly, standing as if it had grown there. I placed its image in my mind and made a mental note of it as a marker. I then turned my attention to the task of returning.

Immediately I found I could not recall how I had got here, and I had no idea how to return to where I had come from. And I noted that I was forgetting, even as I thought about it, who or what "I" was, where I had come from, or anything at all other than this place.

It is my opinion that were it not for the voice of my guide in the headphones I was wearing on my body "back there", I would not have been able to return. I simply did not know where I was supposed to go or how to get there.

I recalled that I had come "up" through the lawn, and so the idea of "down there" came to me. I then remembered the bridge and the steps leading down from that bridge to a lower level, although what was on the lower level I could not imagine.

At this, I found my attention drawn "down" and with it I found my sense of location, my point of awareness moving "down" toward the bridge. But this also occurred: I could not release my attention from my place on the stone landing. I was "moving" down toward the bridge, but I was also staying on the landing next to the column.

My guide was calling to me, telling me to move from the bridge downward, and I became aware that I was late and falling behind the programmed return. I grew a bit anxious.

With a great mental effort I focused my attention on the bridge, on my feet, and on the idea of walking back toward the steps. I felt my point of awareness stretched across a vast empty distance between the now clearly "upper" realm of the lawn, the stream, the field and the steps, and the "lower" realm of the bridge. It was as if I was actually "at" all the points along a taught rubber band stretched over countless miles between two entirely unrelated places of being, two different realms of existence.

I was stuck and I did not know what to do. I felt a mild panic and all I could think to do was to force my feet, the ones on the bridge, to begin the descent down the steps to the lower level, to Focus 15. As I went down the first couple of steps I felt myself "snap" away from the upper level and my awareness returned to its usual "point" sense.

The remainder of the return was easy and without event.

As I finished the exercise, laying there on the hotel room bed with the echoes of Bob's voice counting me down to "One" I thought about standing there on those steps, about the forgetting that was happening. I thought how easy it would heave been to become stuck there in that place, and how quickly and easily I would have forgotten everything about the "real" me here in my body.

The sensation was precisely the same as waking from a dream. The way one feels the memories of the dream slipping away even as one struggles to recall them is exactly what it felt like as I tried to remember how to get "home" and back into my body, into my "real" life.

I was certain that if Bob had not called me back, and that if I was not tied to this body, that I would have simply been there in that place that I now think of as the Focus 27 "Park" with no way at all to return to this earth life. Not only that, but I would have felt no reason to return, having no memory. I would have simply been there, a whole new creature without form or identity. I still felt like "me" but that "me" was not the same "me" who is typing these words.  There was no gap of the sense of being, of self. But there would have been nothing in my awareness to which to return. There would have been no "call" and so I would have simply continued there as if it were the only thing to do and have known nothing of having left anything behind.

Now, just like Glinda told Dorothy, "You've always had the power to go back to Kansas" I suppose I would have retained the ability to return. But the thing is this - unless one knows they have the power, and unless one knows the technique of its use, and unless one is aware of another place or of another identity to which one must return, having the power doesn't really help. I may have a diamond the size of a baseball in my closet, but unless I know it's there it doesn't really help me.

The Park at Focus 27 is, according to Bob Monroe, a place of welcome and transition that many people find themselves in shortly after they die here. In the movie Nosso Lar, which depicts this same place, the arrivals at the Park are disoriented and immediately taken to a sort of medical facility where they are tended while they get their bearings. They are gently introduced to the place and its reality. When I had first seen the movie I wondered about the medical treatment aspect. I wondered why people had to be cared for in this way. Now I know.

When I found myself suddenly standing in a realm that was completely different from the one I had just left, a realm with a different physics, different rules, a totally new environment, I was helpless as a newborn. My senses were almost useless to me. I had to be led around and held up just as an infant must be when they are first introduced into the earth environment and until their new senses begin to function. It is this sudden transition, and perhaps some residual trauma as a function of the mode of the recent "death", that requires the "medical" assistance of those who are familiar with the environment of the Park.

To proceed further I have to change the subject for a moment from the trip to the Park back to "normal" dreams.

Recently I have been dreaming in a sort of new way for me. My dreams for the last half a year or so have been especially violent. I have been fighting in the dreams against hordes of various characters, mostly human figures. In these dreams I am almost always fighting with knives, almost always with a knife of some sort in each hand. Much like in popular video games, I find myself slashing my way through groups of attackers, always defending, never "losing" but never "winning" either. By winning I mean that the fight ends with the opponent either dead or gone. Always there are more. I always prevail, but the fight is never over until I awaken.

Sometimes the scenes are insane carnival scenes with hive-like structures of industrial shapes and buildings, machines, pipes, dark hallways. Sometimes the scenes have vertical aspects with hills down which I slide endlessly, fighting my way among various opponents with cartoon-like features. Once I found myself faced with a "Sand Man" about nine feet tall. I sliced off his head with the knife in my hand but it immediately grew back as he laughed at me.

Often I awaken from these dreams exhausted and emotionally disturbed. I have been driven to tears in the morning as I ask the putative gods "Why?!?" I have not been able to figure out the lesson of these dreams, the point of them. I do not consider myself a fighter. I am not violent or controlling. I do not want anything I would have to fight for like that nor do I fear for my life in any way that I might be acting out in the dream state. I am actually quite a calm, almost Zen person. In fact, and this may make the psychologist's whiskers twitch, I have been working on being a more peaceful and loving person. It is an actual purposeful pursuit with me.

The persistence of these dreams had been a point of some concern. I have been trying to determine what these dreams have been trying to tell me.

I have learned this about those dreams - If I could take my rational, waking mind with me into those dreams I would be able to stop the fighting by employing the one trick I am certain would work to stop them. I know that the only way to "win" these fight is to not fight. Since I never lose, since I am never hurt, I could simply choose not to fight, not to engage in any combat or in a any interaction with these dream characters, and there would just be no fighting. I suppose the solution, could I pull it off, would require me to perform what they call a Lucid Dream.

But I cannot do that.

And so the fighting continues and I continue to think about these dreams. And the other night I had an epiphany: in these dreams it feels as if I am not the one in charge. It feels as if I am only responding to a scene presented to me by someone else. It feels very much like I am a character in someone else's drama and that I am only acting out a script. The specific details of my acts may be up to me, the in-dream character, but the overall "play" is scripted and I must stick to the script. So each night "I" fight in someone else's dream play.

Immediately the idea comes to me that there is a trick here. The trick is one of identity. When I say "I" fight, who is the "I" to which I refer?

Who is the Dreamer and who is the character in the dream? These are not the same people. That is why it feels as if I am not writing these things, why I cannot choose not to fight, and why I feel like I am an actor, a character, in someone else's play. There is more than one "I" involved in this whole thing.

Of course, the answer to this riddle is obvious. There is really only one "I" and it is I. It is me. Nothing else can be the case. My confusion comes from a misidentification of who "I" am.

When I am fighting and when I awaken and am upset from having fought, I am identifying with the "character" and not the "Dreamer".

Note that I said "and when I awaken".

This is the key.

Last night I had a dream in which there had been an aircraft accident. The theme was a military one. The aircraft was a military jet that had been shot down. I was involved in the post-action investigation. There were in the dream military officers and scientists who had assembled a re-creation of the aircraft and were creating a simulation of the events from the recorded data. There was to be an inquiry and the crew and pilot were to be examined and perhaps disciplined.

As the dream evolved I noticed that there was something odd. I had pointed out some problem in a detail of the recreation to an officer. When I pointed it out I noticed that he simply altered the recreation to remove the anomaly I had noticed. That seemed odd to me. And so I examined the scene more closely and found other anomalies. As I noticed each one it seemed to shift right there before me to remove the detail I had found out of place. I became aware that the scene was fluid and it began to seem to me to be very "unreal". It seemed to me that the entire thing was fake, like it was a hoax. Now, I was not aware of dreaming. I was not "lucid" in this dream. Rather, inside of the dream I was aware that there was a fraud being performed, a show. The awareness was integrated into the dream such that the theme became one of fakery that was a part of the dream rather than of the dream itself being something unreal.

When the pilot showed up in one dream "scene" I pulled him aside and, sotto voce, told him that the officers and scientists were creating a charade, a fraud. I tried to make him aware that we were all being tricked somehow, and that he should assert himself and uncover the fraud.

When I had said this to him an officer came over to me and indicated he had overheard my revelation, and that I was to be arrested and imprisoned for having broken some rule, for having revealed the fraud.

I was escorted by a small cadre of military police to an interrogation room.

I was informed that I was to be jailed.

When the jailer came to put hands on me to lead me to what I knew was some sort of small cage, I became angry and frightened and chose to resist. It felt futile, but I was going to resist any way.

I reached out to strike the jailer, expecting to be subdued by the other men around us. But instead, the jailer fell over and folded up like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

This surprised me enough to start a realization in my dream mind.

As others rushed over to engage me in the familiar dream fight, this time I had no weapons, I found that each one in turn was easily defeated and as I struck at them and grappled with them they simply folded up like puppets.

I defeated a handful of officers and soldiers and then woke up in my bed.

As I lay in bed in the dark I pondered what had just happened, the memory fresh in my mind. As I thought about it I recalled the trip back from the Park in Focus 27 from my recent Gateway Voyage. The senses of the fading dream memory and the fading memory of my earth life while leaving the Park at Focus 27 overlaid each other and I could tell how they were exactly the same thing. There was no difference in how I perceived the two events.

And as I considered who I had been in the dream, and who I had been in Focus 27, and who I had been while laying on the bed in that hotel room, it came to me: these are all characters and these are all dreams and the "I" who experiences all of these is the same "I" and that "I" is only a character.

Therefore there is still another "I" who is the Dreamer of all of these things.

My "waking life" is to Focus 27 as my dreams are to my waking life. The relationship feels subjectively identical. It is as if my waking life is in the middle between my dreams and the Park. Moving from one to another is the same movement.

There seems to be something slightly different about the "waking life" layer and to my mind that difference is a function of the physical body. The presence of the physical body seems to anchor my awareness in this level of the dream. It seems to be a sort of calibration marker that makes this "level" the Home Level or the default state.

Now, it is becoming clear to me that the physical body is not really any different from the dream body or the Park body. It is just that I am in this level while I write this page and that this writing happens to be the content of the "dream" of this level and the physical body is only the form I am taking in this level.

The apparent solidity of this level is only a feature of this level. In the same way that the dream level is fluid and garish, and that fluidity is a feature of the dream level, this waking level is solid and slow. But that which we call solid is no more "real" than the incongruous fluidity of the dream or the thought-responsiveness of the Park. It is only that physical solidity is a feature of this level.

And if this waking level is only a level, one of several and perhaps one of many, then the character who is writing this page is no more "real" than the character who fights in dreams or who visited the Park. That can mean only one thing - the only "real" identity in this whole multi-layered game is the Dreamer.

There is, behind all of this, a Dreamer who is the "real" identity.

This I know now.

I also know that there is no "real" level, perhaps anywhere. I suspect that the Park is only one more dreamscape, and that behind or above the Park there are more levels, perhaps an unlimited number of levels. Each level will have its own features and each level will have its own flavor of "reality" and will relate to nearby levels in the way dreams relate to waking and the way earth life relates to the Park at Focus 27.

And as each level has its own features and nature, each level will have its own character identity.

In each level "I" will have a character identity with certain characteristics and a certain sense of self.

And each of these characteristics and senses will be only aspects of the dream character and never anything like a "true" identity.

They will always be subsets or aspects of the Dreamer, each subset expressed for purposes of the dream, and each subset will feel itself as an identity, a self. And that feeling will always be false, in a way, in that it is not the "true" identity, not the Dreamer.

And this occurs to me: if each "self", each dream identity, is a subset and a "false" or assumed identity, then it must be the case that there is only one Dreamer, and that every identity, every character in every dream on every level, is only the Dreamer having a dream.

And if I am only a character, so is everyone else.

And all of the scenes and all of the props and all of the scripts are in their own way false the same as the military investigation. Each level is a scene in a large drama played out in the mind of the Dreamer, and we are all of us that same Dreamer.

All of it is a show, a play, and we all are playing parts in the dream. And when this part is over we will play another part in another scene until all the parts are played and the Dreamer awakens.

There is only the Dreamer.