Padre Pio, the great modern day saint, once recalled that as a crib-bound infant he was terrified by evil presences that circled around him at night, so you’re not in terrible company. My take is that children, particularly those who’s best destiny is to spiritually open up and flower, are still very much connected to the subtle planes from which they recently descended, and thus have all kinds of visionary experiences, for better and worse. Of course, most children began to lose sense of that connection around age 9-10 or so. I think that’s why younger children seem to never be bored by anything, but older children often get bored - their former sense of wonder and awe dissipates in the dry winds of mundane reality.
One thing I’ve noticed about dreams that are exceptionally vivid - they’re either extremely blissful or extremely horrific, which of course sync with our notions of a higher astral (or mental) plane and the lower astral. (btw, I agree that the astral is full of ugly goo, but I think it’s the *lower* astral specifically that harbors the creeps - the higher astral levels are still there, but the divine light emanating from them them and ideally reaching us earthly beings surely can be stifled by the lower astral creeps). This brings up a simple aspect of dreaming that writer Jorge Luis Borges underscored in one of his lectures, one that fascinated me because I’d never encountered it in my readings on dream psychology - in dreams, we experience states of heightened consciousness that we never experience in waking life, save for psychedelic or truly visionary occurrences. The sense of horror we feel in a nightmare has a unique quality to it, what some would term “supernatural”. Same with blissful dreams, and again, this emphasizes that we really can touch the higher and lower worlds in dreams.
You’ve seen movies that depict an after-life hell or purgatory in some way? To me, no matter how much reddish backgrounding, depictions of caverns and devils and the like, they actually make hell looking kind of fun, at least adventurously endurable. No. Not even. The real hell is a state of consciousness that no film can really capture, (though some Werner Herzog films come close).
To be honest, I think encounters with actual demonic entities, in dreams or in our mundane life are fairly rare, not that it can’t happen. There is, I think, a sort of generalized dark “resistance” that the mundane world conjures up to fling in the face of anybody who genuinely attempts to spiritually elevate themselves. That resistance, to be sure, can be harsh, and can get positively metaphysical the more one spiritually advances. The closer we get to the sacred, the closer we get to the profane, as is said.
I’m not sure if the astral plane is “material”. It surely is substantial, that is, it’s composed of a substance, but I don’t think it’s material in the sense we usually use the word.
I’ve never had the mall dream, though I’ve got about 15 years on you, and as a child there weren’t malls blooming like malevolent flowers all around me. I do have the high-school one, so yeah, could be a collectively agreed upon dream environment. I’m given to understand that in the higher astral realms, there are towns, cities, perhaps imaged into being by angels, in which the discarnate can dwell for a time.
I’m fascinated by the malleable sense of distance we can experience in dreams; I find it enchanting when I dream of compressed distance. I used to live in Chicago, and from that I drew the following recurring dream - I’m downtown and I go down to the subway level, and beneath that is another level, a large tiled room with tunnels leading in every direction. Just walk into a tunnel and 5 minutes later I’m in NYC or Panama City! I’d have to think these dreams are reflections, however dim, of the reality of the higher planes in which the unfathomable, material distances between earth and, say, Mars, are reduced to almost nothing.
Again, fun essay, thx! Looking forward to reading more -
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
dreams
Date: 2020-06-24 02:19 am (UTC)Padre Pio, the great modern day saint, once recalled that as a crib-bound infant he was terrified by evil presences that circled around him at night, so you’re not in terrible company. My take is that children, particularly those who’s best destiny is to spiritually open up and flower, are still very much connected to the subtle planes from which they recently descended, and thus have all kinds of visionary experiences, for better and worse. Of course, most children began to lose sense of that connection around age 9-10 or so. I think that’s why younger children seem to never be bored by anything, but older children often get bored - their former sense of wonder and awe dissipates in the dry winds of mundane reality.
One thing I’ve noticed about dreams that are exceptionally vivid - they’re either extremely blissful or extremely horrific, which of course sync with our notions of a higher astral (or mental) plane and the lower astral. (btw, I agree that the astral is full of ugly goo, but I think it’s the *lower* astral specifically that harbors the creeps - the higher astral levels are still there, but the divine light emanating from them them and ideally reaching us earthly beings surely can be stifled by the lower astral creeps). This brings up a simple aspect of dreaming that writer Jorge Luis Borges underscored in one of his lectures, one that fascinated me because I’d never encountered it in my readings on dream psychology - in dreams, we experience states of heightened consciousness that we never experience in waking life, save for psychedelic or truly visionary occurrences. The sense of horror we feel in a nightmare has a unique quality to it, what some would term “supernatural”. Same with blissful dreams, and again, this emphasizes that we really can touch the higher and lower worlds in dreams.
You’ve seen movies that depict an after-life hell or purgatory in some way? To me, no matter how much reddish backgrounding, depictions of caverns and devils and the like, they actually make hell looking kind of fun, at least adventurously endurable. No. Not even. The real hell is a state of consciousness that no film can really capture, (though some Werner Herzog films come close).
To be honest, I think encounters with actual demonic entities, in dreams or in our mundane life are fairly rare, not that it can’t happen. There is, I think, a sort of generalized dark “resistance” that the mundane world conjures up to fling in the face of anybody who genuinely attempts to spiritually elevate themselves. That resistance, to be sure, can be harsh, and can get positively metaphysical the more one spiritually advances. The closer we get to the sacred, the closer we get to the profane, as is said.
I’m not sure if the astral plane is “material”. It surely is substantial, that is, it’s composed of a substance, but I don’t think it’s material in the sense we usually use the word.
I’ve never had the mall dream, though I’ve got about 15 years on you, and as a child there weren’t malls blooming like malevolent flowers all around me. I do have the high-school one, so yeah, could be a collectively agreed upon dream environment. I’m given to understand that in the higher astral realms, there are towns, cities, perhaps imaged into being by angels, in which the discarnate can dwell for a time.
I’m fascinated by the malleable sense of distance we can experience in dreams; I find it enchanting when I dream of compressed distance. I used to live in Chicago, and from that I drew the following recurring dream - I’m downtown and I go down to the subway level, and beneath that is another level, a large tiled room with tunnels leading in every direction. Just walk into a tunnel and 5 minutes later I’m in NYC or Panama City! I’d have to think these dreams are reflections, however dim, of the reality of the higher planes in which the unfathomable, material distances between earth and, say, Mars, are reduced to almost nothing.
Again, fun essay, thx! Looking forward to reading more -
Will