Seven months before my
husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I
was plagued by a series of unsettling dreams;
some pointed unequivocally to his subsequent
death; others spoke as oracles did with
forked tongues. However, there was one dream
in particular that convinced me not only of
life beyond life as we know it, but also of
life beyond death.
I was awakened by my
husband’s voice: ”Who’s coming up the
stairs?” And I remembered seeing in my
dream two translucent shadows ( like wings)
coming up the stairs and standing before us
at the foot of our bed. These were strange
beings without human features, shapeless,
giving the impression of wings—translucent,
elusive wings. Yet I knew somehow they were
wise and sentient beings, deep with a knowing
beyond this world. They were coming for my
husband. I placed my hand over his body. Not
now, not yet, I said.
In retrospect, I see
these dreams as shifts in alignment, much
like the moving and sliding of plates on the
outer earth surface when a stressed fault
ruptures. Our sensory apparatus, responding
to our own psychic and emotional fault lines,
tilt and move to match the incline of new
perceptual fields. When that happens, we open
floodgates to new images and metaphors, new
ways of seeing.
If we are indeed
matter evolving towards consciousness, then
dreams have a large role in bringing us to
consciousness. The inner realm parallels the
outer realm in ways that defy logic. And the
outer world, far from being random,
reverberates with echoes of its own inner
state. In the few months preceding the
diagnosis of my husband’s illness, our
outer world was shaking with signs of our
dismantling: our youngest son developed
problems at school, appliances in the house
kept breaking down one after the other—the
fridge, washing-machine, garage door,
furnace. It seemed a major upheaval in our
lives was being announced on every level of
consciousness.
Strange as this
situation may seem to those who firmly
believe in a solid- matter world ( as I once
did), the possibility of dreams being
precognitive or prophetic is not really so
far-fetched if one considers recent
developments in the field of physics. Here
the search for solid matter has uncovered a
paradox—that things are in reality “no-thing.”
The search for what actually makes up matter
has brought the physicist face to face with
empty space or vacuum. But this vacuum is not
really empty at all; it is a bubbling sea of
wave potential—un-manifested electrons,
virtual (but not fictional) electrons that
can materialize, that is, become positive
particles when sufficient energy is made
available to them. If enough energy is added
to the zero-point field of quantum vacuum,
this empty space is capable of spontaneously
giving birth to bits of real, tangible ”stuff.”
Such is the theory behind Big Bang—the
birth of the Universe.
In effect then,
according to quantum theory, something can
come out of nothing. Yet this something is
temporary at best, for the Universe is
overwhelmingly nothing. We are nothing. We,
like matter, spontaneously bubble up and
disappear; we, like the particles,
erratically dissolve into wave functions. We
are temporary states, insubstantial as
dreams.
Humbling as this
notion may be, it is the only way we can
access infinity, the only way we can
understand that we are more than our physical
bodies. Might dreams be the avenue through
which we connect to the field of global
consciousness? Might dreams be part of the
brain’s ability to access a realm beyond
space and time that embraces not only the
present, but past and future as well?
It is this ability
that Joseph Chilton Pearce so passionately
argues for in “Evolution’s End” (
Harper San Francisco : 1992) where he points
to our innate ability to move beyond space
and time. This is the same ability he sees in
the idiot-savant ( so popularly characterized
in “Rain Man”). Pearce gives as examples
the “calendrical twins,” who have both
been institutionalized since age 7. The twins
cannot fend for themselves or add up simple
numbers; yet, they have demonstrated the most
remarkable mathematical ability. They can,
for example, give instantaneous responses to
questions like these: Which date will Easter
fall on 10,000 years from now? Assuming that
there is one grain of rice on the first of 64
squares and assuming that the grain is
doubled on each subsequent square, how many
grains of rice will there be on the final
square?
How is it that these
“savants” who can neither read nor write
be capable of such highly complex
mathematical skills? asks Pearce. His
suggestion is that somehow their brains have
been able to resonate with a narrow spectrum
of field knowledge. Intelligence exists as
separate fields of capacity and the twins
have been able to access a spectrum of these
fields.
So can we - if we
allow ourselves this capacity by cultivating
the wave-form potential within us. The choice
is ours to develop this potential by
nurturing our power of connection through
dream work, meditation, brain entrainment,
prayer, through ways that allow us to be in
touch with the field beyond space and time.
This we can do by making time for Spiritwork
- silence, solitude, inwardness. Spiritwork
asks that we listen to ourselves, our bodies
and know what speaks within.
Most of all, it asks
that we surrender the self in order to find
it. And this is why the path is most fruitful
because the self that surfaces eventually is
shapeless, translucent, elusive like dreams,
yet deep with a sense that surpasses all
understanding.
Mary Desaulniers is a retired
schoolteacher and writer. You can visit her
website at http://www.greatbodyat50.com/SpiritWorks.php
