Phoenix
by Dale J. Sprague
Reveries
4.1997 Dreaming, experiences of consciousness. Any kind of dreaming is a remarkable experience. I remember at fourteen, looking at my light bulb in the ceiling of my room, a’wondering what the light source is when I am dreaming. Up until then, I just assumed I went to another world with its own sun while my body was rejuvenating itself in this one. I wondered if I had eyes inside my brain. I saw brilliant color, but less sound, more like telepathy, acting and reacting in thought reception and projection. But even with eyes inside my head...what is the source of light? Through what space is it transmitted? Where are the photo receptors, the eye within that receives the light? Through our senses we experience light or consciousness. What senses are used when we dream?..if we are not sharing someone else's in this world, or in some other.
Whether fleeting, lucid, astral, or not, to dream is to be conscious. I become conscious at its onset; that is, I do not recall while sleeping, waiting in some dark chamber for a projector to turn on, or for some light outside to appear, its rays bouncing of objects every which way around me. I do not recall this at all. Rather, my consciousness and dreaming arise together, and in transition, the dream events unfold usually without my control. When I think of dreaming, whether ordinary, lucid, or astral...this idea often conveys a reality something less than the awakened incarnate day..but can one's experience of consciousness, without regard to degree, really be regarded as less real than any other?..that is, its effect may be more or less, but as a conscious experience, a fleeting dream has equal station with an intense dream. One is either conscious or not. One is past a threshold or not. One's sense of self is an experience, even if it is restricted only to one sense.
Like my waking time during the day, I am no less conscious than when I am dreaming. I think of the hiatus sometimes, where I am apparently shut’down, or cease to be, and remain so...until my cells re’charge!? I am not especially comfortable with this idea, that is..between awake and a dream, I am in non’darkness, and there is no light. Nowhere, or somewhere? Between awake and a dream, I do not perceive something, nor nothing. In this death we call rest, do we experience everything? Is this what it is like to experience all and everything at once?...like the mixing of substances until all light is absorbed, and it turns black, not giving back any light to live. Between awake and a dream, like some machine am I?...shut off from all. I am non’being. I have ceased to exist. But how is this possible?
These matters and queries about dreaming may be as fleetingly passing as most dreams are, if it were not for the experience of some dreams, so dramatic in effect that they cause the body to sweat, hyperventilate, or even spurn the heart to near fibrillation. And there are probably several functions that dreams perform, but I recall rather, several different degrees of conscious experiences. All occur perhaps in the alpha state of mind, and many of them..fast, two’dimensional and fleeting. Others are more dramatic and memorable..engaging and interacting, which are lucid and easily recalled years later.
I recall a lucid dream I had many years ago. I remember a burning mountain. I gazed, and something odd struck me about it. I went closer to see it. From the mountain, which was located in an arid savanna, a fire was coming out of an opening at its base, and I noticed that the opening was getting wider. I became alarmed after it was apparent that what was burning was the rock itself. Inorganic matter was burning! Imagining to what it would spread, I became alarmed and thought 'The Earth was seriously a’fire! This obviously was no ordinary fire. The earth was in danger.' I left to warn everyone about the all’consuming fire. This experience of consciousness was lucid. It did not inspire any mission, but it did set a general sense of urgency to understand something about matter itself...that it is made of light. And if light is consciousness...
There is another type of experience in which I feel that I am on a different planet; not part of the action, just tagging along somehow. Some of these are memorable because the mood they convey is so strong. Sometimes I will recall this mood for a long time. This experience of consciousness, feeling like an alien, watching on, causes me to wonder, beyond what its symbolic meaning might be as it may relate to my every day life, about multi’dimensional realities. Perhaps I am just one focus of reality of a larger soul, who may have many aspects of itself incarnate throughout various inhabited planets in the universe. Rather than draw any conclusions, I preferred to let this kind of dream keep my mind open to possible greater realities..or one perhaps, that regards Earth as one nursery among many.
Apart from apparent space travel or lucid experiences of consciousness, there are experiences of dream consciousness whose effect is so dramatic, that they are not only unforgettable, but life’course changing. When I was seventeen, I was a serious skeptic, especially about the spirit world..ghosts and all that. I scoffed and with scorned eyes and knitted brow, I dismissed anything that cannot be sensed and measured. One evening, after attacking the belief in something that cannot be physically experienced..specifically "ghosts," I went to bed. My head rested comfortably, and in the next instant, I saw a hooded figure just in front of me. I was astonished. It had intense color. It was three dimensional and moved subtlely. It was real because I felt as focused as wide'awake in any day! All was black except it and me; me staring at it. The figure remained motionless, heavy gravity, deep space..I stared, feeling its deep weight. I was tense and guarded, and suddenly an undulating rope emerged from the area of its solar plexus. It slowly extended towards me. I peered into the figure’s face. It became even darker. "Identity is not important, here," I thought. The undulating rope now mid way towards me, I reached out before it reached me. I firmly grasped its end when a great charge of energy passed through..to me. And in that instant, I awoke once again..but in the dark of my attic room, chanting, "I believe, I believe!! I believe, I believe!"
This happened a long time ago. It was the kind of experience that was more real than my ordinary awakened day. This experience of consciousness that may be called "astral," is extraordinarily real, and I rank it equally with any memory from the light of the day. When I think of this experience now, I recall that I was sweaty, and momentarily transfixed. I was transfigured. I hungered to know because what manifests within me, the same creates outside me. As within, so without, I hungered to know. I was ready. It was time to seek..time to know what is hidden, forbidden. What was given, but driven away. What was forgiven, what was not. What had been forsaken, what is my lot. I was invited. I was given a calling, and I accepted.