Almost forty years ago now, I had a ‘waking dream/experience’. This experience, unlike any other before it, carried its own ‘veracity’, needing nothing outside of it to confirm its authenticity. So obvious were its antecedents that one was left in no-doubt as to its truth. It began a lifelong change of direction and introduced a new ‘purposiveness’ to life itself. There was a before and; there was an after.
Such life-changing ‘dreams/experiences’ I prefer to refer to (after the late Professor Henri Corbin) as ‘Imaginal-realm’ events, not in the usually understood meaning given today to the work of the imagination, implying not-real or fantasy, but, indeed, just the opposite: that of the ultimately Real. Given this proviso, then, these kinds of ‘happenings’ form part of an Intermediate realm whereby the divine, through the aegis of the human ‘imaginative faculty’, speaks to us, to our ‘consciousness’, through symbols and stories that convey something to our lives that we cannot do without. These symbols and stories may be very clear in and of themselves, but may still take years, even decades to work their way through to our day-to-day conscious awareness, if they ever do. However, for the most part, the changes that follow, or flow-on from these gifts from the divine being, have already changed us such that we can never go back to a ‘pre’ state, but must forever find ways and means to accommodate ourselves to this changed inner ‘landscape’. The impacts of some of these ‘experiences’ are similar to what are known today as ‘NDE’s’ (‘near-death experiences’) although they do not require us to be, in some fashion, traumatically thrown into beyond-consciousness states to comprehend this ‘otherness’ that I am speaking of here. We can reach them through altered states of consciousness within the here-and-now.
Recently I read the following in relation to ‘spiritual dreams’ and their interpretation, by the late American Les Hixon, Nur al Jerrahi:
‘…The imagery of spiritual dreams can be disturbing, shocking, confusing, unclear, or even totally obscure. The inspired interpretation must fit the dream as a key fits the lock for which it was designed. The door of awareness of the dervish dreamer opens when that key is turned by the careful hand that pours the Wine of Love into the empty glass of the surrendered heart, filling it to the brim, or even over the brim…’
Nur al Jerrahi meant by ‘the hand that pours the Wine of Love’ a Sheikh, or teacher in a Sufi order. Nur al Jerrahi continues on to say:
‘…The dream and its interpretation are then experienced as one reality, not as two separate events that happen to come into conjunction…the dream by itself [my italics] is simply a lock without a key…’.
(from An Atom from the Sun of Knowledge, ‘Spiritual Dream’ in Ch Islamic Meditations, pp142-144, Pir Publications, Westport, USA, 1993).
However, one may legitimately ask the questions, what if one is not a Muslim? Not a member of a Sufi order? Not a Sufi? Or – even more shocking for such a claim – not even a believer in God, or the ‘Divine Realm’ [for such was my state then]? What then? Does God, the One, or the Divine Reality not still speak to us? And, if ‘It’, ‘S/He’ does, then who is there to turn to, to interpret such dreams for us? Are such dreams doomed thus to for ever remain ‘Locks without keys’. I don’t personally believe that the ‘Divine’ makes such mistakes. Whilst Nur al Jerrahi’s remarks are extremely pertinent within the realm of an Islamicised Sufi context, they do not so clearly remain so beyond. God, Allah, is both ‘Merciful’ and ‘Compassionate’, and does not leave-outside of His Mercy and Compassion anyone or anything because it hasn’t joined this group or that (I am equally sure that Nur al Jerrahi would never have meant to exclude other such situations wherein God may teach individuals on other ‘paths’ differently, although others who may come after him may choose to do so).
With these thoughts in mind, let’s return to these dreams thus spoken of above. What then is one to do given this claimed ‘lock and key’ conundrum?
Although, in truth, and it took me more than half (my current) lifetime to discover this fact, such ‘locked dreams’ seem always to come complete with the necessary ‘keys’ to unlock them. Indeed this ‘unlocking’ is part and parcel of the changes that have already occurred on our inner-plane and it only really awaits for us to ‘see’ this fact at the level of our everyday consciousness. For some, this may take a very, very, long time! However these ‘dreams’ are purposeful by their very nature, not some mere random event, but given to help us travel on our own unique ‘path of return’. It behoves us then to work on and with them.
To the ‘dream’ then:
Dream – early 1980
“In the beginning…”
I was lying on a bed, flat on my back. My (then) wife lay next to me to my right. We were staying overnight in my eldest brother’s house in Adelaide. I found myself to be awake and, as was my then habit, I was alert and watching my mind. Suddenly I found myself, my conscious mind, to be outside the physical body, observing it lying flat on the bed. As I watched this body I was suddenly aware that another body – this one seemingly composed of light – was beginning to lift out of the physical body. It appeared to be an exact replica of the physical one, however, as this change occurred the observing mind/consciousness was now back inside this new body of light. It felt ‘light’ in every sense of the word, in the sense of illumination and in the sense of lightness and (perhaps most of all) in the sense of freedom this transmitted to the conscious awareness that was now part of it. I was now only aware of this transfer of ‘consciousness’ from the one dense physical body to its counterpart light body just prior to this moving away from the one in the other. The next thing that I can recall becoming aware of was that there was an understanding being transmitted to me that everything in creation was linked to everything else, and that nothing was left out of this ‘connectedness’. Simultaneously I was given a word that described this connectedness. Indeed, was this connectedness. The word and that described by or through it were one and the same thing. At this point (what I later described as) the ego-consciousness (re)entered the picture, excitedly ‘saying’: this is new knowledge! Nobody knows this. The Indians are wrong in their assertions that the Universe is based on ‘Vibration’! That’s not it! I must tell people this! …etc., etc., etc..! Instantly the mind, by now very excited, ‘fell’ back into the physical body. On this re-entry, however, this ‘falling’ from the beautiful ‘body of light’, with its sense of lightness, illumination, and – perhaps above all – freedom, all were exchanged for the immediately increasing ‘darkness’ and the sense of heaviness of the physical body. But – over and above this feeling of being dropped back into the dark prison of the physical body/mind was the need to stabilise this mind which was by this stage spinning wildly out of control. I recalled later that this felt like a stage show I had once seen whereby a Chinese conjurer had kept a number of plates spinning at the same time on top of bamboo poles. Such was the stater of my returning mind!
Of course, once this had settled down somewhat, through the excitement that was (as noted above) also present, there began the desperate efforts to reclaim the word that I knew with total certainty I had known. Nothing else concerning the remembrance of the whole experience had disappeared from my consciousness, only this, and this made all the difference! I knew it wasn’t ‘vibration,’ that was now clear. I attempted to look up in Webster’s the semantic origins, those subtle nuances of meaning between ‘Vibration’ and ‘oscillation’ (which I now felt was closer in meaning) but in reality I knew this wasn’t ‘it’ either. Soon, however, came the vague recollection of the words of a Gospel from my childhood exposure to ‘Religious Knowledge’ (“‘Molly’ , I would like to belatedly thank you for your perseverance”!). It was: “In the beginning was the Word…”.
Although I did not at that time posses a Bible I quickly acquired one and almost as quickly found John (the Fourth Gospel):
Indeed, his opening salvo: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…’ [best read in the King James version, not the revised editions which replace Word with ‘Logos’].
This ‘dream’ of mine, occurring as it did in this ‘Imaginal Realm,’ where events unfold in Truth without so many ‘earth-bound’ impediments and the constraints of time and space, came at a time when I had been a meditator for just a few short years. Practicing Yoga each day and spending long hours alone and in silence, I had already moved on from ‘Transcendental Meditation,’ begun when I first entered into this dialogue with the inner world, and other flirtations with the likes of Yogananda, Muktananda, and (God help me) Rajneesh, and had started on what I considered the more mature phase of my own personal journey, al la ‘watching the mind’ with the help of the great Indian teacher (he would have denied such a claim) Jiddu Krishnamurti. I didn’t believe in gurus or ‘spiritual’ teachers, well…I was no longer convinced that there was anyone ‘out-there’ (apart from this ‘philosophy’/philosopher) that could fix me…that this particular ‘journey’ was one on which the real enemy was one’s own ‘conditioned mind’ which one must ‘watch like a hawk!’ In response to this ‘revolution in consciousness’ that Krishnamurti called his (non) followers to enact within themselves, I had moved myself and my family to an 80 acre property out in the country on the edge of the Adelaide Hills, (a quiet and isolated spot), a sort of semi-permanent alternative ‘retreat centre,’ where I/we could live a quieter and more ‘meditative’ and ‘mindful’ life and lifestyle, getting chooks and becoming a (non-Vegan) ‘Vegetarian!’ I walked for hours alone in the countryside, just walking and watching the mind, not using any techniques other than this ‘watching’, slowing everything down. I didn’t watch television (in fact we didn’t even own one at this stage of my life). I had virtually stopped reading books, except of course Krishnamurti’s, certainly not newspapers, and I made no effort to keep up with current affairs or what was happening in the world at large. Anyone with any knowledge of the ‘teachings’ of JK, as he was styled, knows that the concept of gods and gurus were the very targets of his ‘reflections’ on the ‘conditioning of the human mind’. So, to have a ‘Dream’ of the nature of that outlined above, and to find it coming ‘coupled’, as it seemed to be, with perhaps one of the most quoted opening lines in the whole of the New Testament, was a shock indeed.
Years were to pass, however, before this inspirational and life-changing ‘experience’ was to really start to unwind the years of ‘counter-culture’ ‘(re) conditioning’ (of the mind/heart) that constituted the ‘me’ during this period of my life, as I attempted to continue to walk a path of the spirit amidst all this cross-current of stories unfolding both around and within my ‘self’.
My first family, perhaps not unsurprisingly, dissolved during this time, and I moved on to university, changed houses many times, went to India to hear Krishnamurti in person (the last talks he ever gave – he died just 6 weeks later), moved on from Krishnamurti (if not his ‘what-is’nesses’), was initiated into Sufism, became a school teacher, then a school principal in the remote Aboriginal regions of the Northern Territory, then – again later – a sideways move into school counselling on the Mid-North Coast of NSW, before moving on, yet again, to psychology and private practice in New England, all the while having a second marriage, more children, and so on and so forth.
Unfolding the Enfolded Order (and its many twists and turns)
Many twists and turns were to occur, many more ‘experiences’ and much ‘water under the bridge’ before the next steps were made in this ‘unfolding’ of the event described in a form that could be recognised by myself beyond this initial ‘awakening’. This gradual unfolding continued often bubbling just below the surface of things over all the ensuing years. What David Bohm (the physicist and friend of Jiddu Krishnamurti) has described as ‘the enfolded’ or ‘the implicate order’, would reappear again and again and again, ‘unfolding’ throughout the nearly forty intervening years of my life, each time showing its skirts in new and sometimes exciting ways, some simple, others much more complex. One of these unfolding ‘precipitating events,’ as an example, came to me in the form of a story I came across, that of a tale told to the young Laurens Van de Post. Because of the power of its invocation, and its effect on me it is worth presenting in full (though its full implications for me I will leave for the reader to ‘open’ for themselves). It goes like this:
“Once upon a time…a hunter of the first people went to a place of reeds and flowers and birds singing by deep water. He knelt down to fill his calabash with drinking water, and as he did so was startled to see, in the still glass of the shining surface before him, the reflection of an enormous white bird that he had never seen before. Astonished, he looked up, but the bird had already vanished over the black tops of a dense forest – ‘the forest of the night’. From that moment his heart was filled with a restless longing to capture the bird.
Leaving his cattle, his wife, his children and his people, he went deep into the forest looking for the bird, and out into the great world beyond. Yet everywhere he found nothing but rumour of the bird. At last, when he was a very old man and near his end, he was told that he would find the bird on a great white mountain in the heart of Africa, far north of his own home. He found the mountain and started climbing it. He climbed for days, until, one night-fall, he found himself on the edge of the white cap of the mountain. And still there was no sign of the bird. He realised his end was near. Feeling he had failed, he threw himself down like a little child, crying: ‘Oh! My mother! Oh!’ Then a voice answered him and said: ‘Look! Oh! Look!’ He looked up and saw, in the red sky of a dying African day, a white feather falling slowly down towards him. He held out his hand and grasped it. With the feather in his hand, he died content as night fell.
‘But what sort of bird was it, old father?’ we asked the shepherd. We often asked it; but always he would shake his head and say: ‘I do not know its name; no-one knows its name. It was a great white bird, and one feather of it in the hand of a man was enough; one feather of it on the head of a chief brought happiness to all his people.’…”
(From a story told to Laurens Van de Post in childhood by an old Hottentot servant; from his book: The Heart of the Hunter, Hogarth Press, 1961, pp199-200)
This is also the story of my own personal journey, my story, the one I am telling now. Although I, of course, recognised some of this at the time I came across Van de Post’s beautiful rendition of this archetypal portrayal of what the Sufi likes to style ‘the Journey of Return’, much more of this lay in the future and was not available to me in its fullness at the time of its initial presentation.
The Coorong Dream
In 2009, almost 30years after the first dream quoted above, I had another significant dream/experience that I have only, in the last few days, recognised was/is deeply and profoundly connected to the first. Because it, too, had a profound impact on the subsequent shape my life was to take over the following years, it needs to be retold here for the subsequent sections to begin to tie all these disparate threads together.
I was travelling from NSW, where my second wife and I were living in New England to South Australia, where one of my sons, his wife, and some of our grandchildren lived. For this trip I was travelling alone ( my wife, being unable to get the time-off to go with me). I decided on impulse to drive via the South Australian coastal dunes area known as ‘The Coorong’, and – although this involved quite a detour from my normal route, and was some 150 or so kilometres South-East of Adelaide – it was one of my special places, a place I had loved ever since visiting it some 30 or so years previously when I had first arrived in Australia from England in the mid-1970’s. A lonely and wind-swept coastal dunes and wetlands National Park that fringes the Great Southern Ocean for more than 150 kilometres, it’s appeal to me lay precisely in this ‘aloneness’, in the potential for the solitude and silence that it proffered. The evening that I arrived there, after putting up my tent, lighting a fire and cooking my dinner, I sat alone in the flickering darkness, next to the fire, drinking a bottle of red wine, and watching as the constellations and blanket of stars that constitute the Milky Way sparkled into view in the great velvety blackness overhead. From a distance out across the great dunes, one could hear the faint thunder of the waves of the Southern Ocean as they ended their own long journey from the deep cold southland of Antarctica, breaking on the long stretches of the Coorong’s beach. A fine evening indeed, I retired early and slept well. At some point I ‘awoke’ into an incredible ‘dream state,’ sometime prior to the early light of dawn. This is that ‘dream’:
I and a companion were standing in the desert looking at a yellow sandstone castle or temple. Large wide stone steps led up to the large entrance. To the left, a cobbled ramp led up to one side of this building. In front of me to my right side strode one of the most beautiful human beings I have ever seen; a black Nubian dressed in a flowing dark green silk robe was also walking towards this structure. He looked at me and inclined his head slightly to me, smiling slightly as he did so, and pointing, waving slightly his right index finger towards the structure. I moved forward, and – as I did so – I noticed a woman on all fours crawling up the stone ramp to my left. The thought crossed my mind that she was practicing some sort of asceticism, and I said to myself something to the effect of, “thank God, I’ve done all that and I don’t have to go through that anymore!” I moved forward and upwards on the wide stone staircase. At the top, just inside the entrance to this grand stone edifice there was a rectangular stone ‘tablet’ on which was an inscription in English. Around the inside walls of the courtyard of this fine building were a series of large oval stone tablets high up on all the walls of the quadrangle, each with an identical inscription in dark green Arabic script. I proceeded to read the rectangular stone tablet in front of me and was shocked to glean from it that, “ …the English Church was an abomination…”. I moved into the courtyard to accost a young woman also dressed in a green silk gown, this one of a slightly lighter shade than that worn by the man seen previously. There were other men and women nearby, similarly dressed. I was moved to speak with her and said that I was outraged to read the inscription on the first of the tablets (the rectangular one at the entrance) which was there for all to see and was, in my view, a lie. I said so and also something to the effect that I bet the other tablets with the Arabic inscription on them were not negative! She conveyed to me that I should watch her closely, and then proceeded to bare her left breast (right from my perspective) and begin to rub and tap on it. I must confess to some slight feelings of lust initially. However, as I watched as asked, I could see through the breast as it were, to its inside, where a creamy white substance appeared. As I watched in fascinated attention now, there began to manifest, to appear on her flesh in green Arabic script, an embossed replica of the inscription present on all the oval stone tablets adorning the walls, also in green. Finished she asked me to touch the flesh, her flesh, to feel the word thus embossed there. Then she asked me what it (the inscription/demonstration) meant, or reminded me of. Thinking for a moment only (all the others standing around were clearly also fixated too, listing for my response) I responded. It reminded me, I said, of something an old man in India had said to me [in relation to what a clairvoyant had told me during an impromptu reading (prior to that trip), that the name of the person I must travel to India to see (J Krishnamurti) was written on my forehead in neon letters (I had not told her anything that could have led her to this conclusion, nor had I ever met her before this event). This old Indian man, a devotee of Shri Ramakrishna, on hearing from me this same story, had said,] “In India we have a saying. That which is written on your forehead can never be removed”. It was as if I had failed the most elementary of tests and all the bystanders turned away.
The Dream is over.
I am now wide awake and clearly stunned (blissed-out would perhaps describe it better) by the dream and its contents, which I proceeded to write down almost as soon as I was up and about my day. I wrote and wrote, long into the morning, and only stopped when, taking a mobile-phone call from my son, he asked me when I would be arriving in Adelaide! I quickly packed up my tent and all the accoutrements that go with camping in the Bush, and, reluctantly now, headed for Adelaide, the spell broken.
Who was the man in dark green silk robe that I had seen first of all? I felt immediately that this was Dul Nun, the Nubian, often considered one of the first Sufis whom many consider to be identical with the Green man spoken of in the Qur’an who is also often conflated with Khidr, the so-called guide of the Sufis, and the protagonist of Moses in the Qur’an. What of those ‘others’ that attended to my meeting with the young women, indeed, the young woman herself, who were they? The “Inhabitants of Heaven” are often spoken of in the Qur’an as being “dressed in green silk robes”. Were these people, then, “Inhabitants of Heaven”? What of the oval stone tablets? What was the Arabic word thus inscribed on them? And who or what did the oblong stone tablet refer to as “an abomination”? Why was the building incomplete, without its roof?
All these questions and more would haunt me for many years to come. Like the first dream, however, it was always clear that this dream too was both important and specifically crafted for me. The ‘unlocking’, such as it has been, has taken a further almost 10 years. Is it now complete, and how does this dream help in solving the outstanding ‘mysteries’ left in my heart/consciousness by the first one? Where is the key?
Eighteen months or so after this dream I attended a workshop given by a psychologist, who was also a Sufi. After the event I spoke with the convenor, who also happened to be a Sufi. Of Middle Eastern origin, he had run this small group newsletter for a number of years and wanted to hand over to someone else. Almost immediately after I began to speak with him, he offered me the position of chairperson/convenor of this group and newsletter. At some stage I must have agreed and for the next two or so years the ball was in my court. However, he also indicated that I might like to join his Sufi group, the only condition being I must convert to Islam…become a Muslim!
The Lyche-gate
Sometime between this ‘dream experience’ quoted above and the meeting/conversion question touched on above, something else of importance occurred for this whole ‘story’ and its unfolding. With the help of my youngest son, I built a lyche-gate outside the front of a church we owned. This in itself is not the main issue. However, because lyche-gates have Gothic arches I decided that I needed the help of an expert carpenter, someone that could make them for me to give the whole structure ‘authenticity’.
No problem. Except one. No one but myself and my son who had helped me to build this ‘structure’ knew that it was not perfectly square! Should I call in an expert carpenter, he would see immediately that the structure wasn’t exactly ‘right’! Shortly after this ‘realisation’ I saw too the connection between this knowing in relation to the well-intentioned building project, and my own religious-spiritual pretentions! Any ‘worthwhile’ spiritual teacher, likewise, would be able to look at me and see that I too was a flawed ‘work’! Coming back from calling in the expert carpenter with my son in the car with me I was pondering all this when suddenly I began to cry. He asked me what was wrong, and I explained about the faulty nature of the lyche-gate, and the deep sense of shame I felt within myself because of the soon to be exposed inadequacy of its builder. “It’s not that bad, dad” said my beautiful son. No, indeed it wasn’t. But, in truth, it wasn’t the lyche-gate that was on my mind, but my own inadequacies as a supposed ‘spiritual being,’ someone who had been raised by his own teacher/initiator, to the rank of ‘teacher’ and (supposedly) a ‘knower of the path of return’. I felt deeply ashamed and humiliated by my own shortcomings and the knowledge that, in many ways I had failed at the task I had been set by my beloved teacher. It was in response to these feelings of inadequacy, shame, and humiliation that I was gifted the knowledge of the inner meaning of the word ‘humility’. And it was this that was making me weep. Far from any ego-centred limited understandings of this word, I had been gifted with a deep knowledge of it, a knowing, so intimately connected to the meaning of the word itself that I had fallen into this net of grace, and – yes – it was good. Better than good. It was wonderful, full of that deep sense of knowledge and understanding that would perhaps never allow me again to think of such words merely in some kind of Dictionary or semantic manner. This word had – through an act of divine grace – been opened from the inside as-it-were, it was alive. It burnt with power and bestowed its grace in so-doing. I knew then that there were many more words that I had used and never really understood in their completeness before this day, and that these words died in the hands of the charlatans of this world, of which I was (and perhaps, to some extent, still am) a paid-up member. The ‘word’ and that state of being to which it referred, were not two things but one and the same thing. Still, for me, the ‘penny didn’t drop’ fully such as to allow me to connect these experiences at this time, something that was to have significant repercussions for me over the coming few years
We will return to the story of the lyche-gate for a moment. The difficulty with the building lay not in the willingness of the workers involved so much as the micro skills that are required…the knowledge base…which allows one to proceed with a cautious haste in such circumstances. In this case it was how to square the base of the building in relationship to the church which it was meant to enhance. It stood at a distance of twenty or so metres to its North Western aspect, and close to the fence that bordered the grounds and fronted the main highway. This fence had a gate already in it to which the lyche-gate also had to relate, at least temporarily. We really had not much idea of how to proceed but did so after much umming and ahhing. Initially there was – or at least seemed to be – no problem. The support posts went up, the rafters went in and all appeared to be reasonably ok. There were of course small discrepancies in some of the timber measurements such that we were aware that something wasn’t quite right with the structure, but I didn’t expect these to have much effect over the whole build. However, once we started to try to position the roof iron, it was clear that – not only would they not sit quite as neatly as we would have hoped – but it became increasingly obvious that the timber structure was not quite ‘in-line’ with the metal roofing (it being so damn straight!). What happens with such basic failures to get the foundations right is that any ‘error’ present within the earlier stages begins to cascade through the whole structure. Thus the noose tightens! The metaphoric connections with life more generally, and with my life, and particularly with my spiritual efforts and my pretentions to be of help to others, now becomes obvious. Such it was for me on that fateful day
Seeing the ‘error of my ways’, when I first met with the Sufi teacher spoken of earlier, I told him of this conundrum. What did all of this ultimately mean for me (for it clearly meant something)? What was the necessary corrective for all of this? I certainly, at the time, didn’t know the answer to these questions, but realised that it must mean something of great importance to my own journey, thus the experience of the meaning of humility. He on the other-hand, however, claimed he did know, and expressed surprise that I ‘didn’t get it’! As much as anything else I believe in hindsight that it was this ‘claim to knowledge’ on his part that led me to join his group, even though this involved considerable hardship for me and, to some extent, for my family as well, with my absence for two days out of every fourteen and the cost of the travel (some 1000 kilometres every second week). The ‘conversion to Islam’ that was insisted on as his condition for taking me on as his student, only part of that difficulty (ironically though, it was ultimately the access to the Islamic prayer life that I found most helpful, not his ‘guidance’ such as was made available to me). Although he never was to spell out the obvious understanding that he claimed to have in relation to my lyche-gate insight/experience, it seems to me now to be in relation to this ‘squaring of the base’ aka becoming a Muslim with its various prescriptions and self-imposed disciplines. I think possibly he genuinely believed that this was the understanding I lacked at the time, and that this was what I was being shown. Was he right? I’ll never know for certain, I guess, as I left his group after 9 months (long enough to grow a baby, long enough to straighten me I reasoned at the time). However, I kept practicing the Islamic prayers for a further 5 years never missing one in all that time. Indeed, it was not until after a ‘fall’ in hospital following knee-replacement surgery in 2016 that I ceased to regularly pray the 5 daily prayers.
Beyond and Connections Finally Made
Not long after this ‘fall’, I was moved from the hospital where the surgery was done, to a Rehabilitation Hospital. The room I was given was tucked away at the back of the building, and had one small window which faced onto an alleyway with a brick wall opposite the window. The passage seemed to go only to some service area and was rarely used. No plants or any attempt at ‘beautification’ of any kind alleviated the drabness of the scene. My bed faced a plain wall devoid of any features except for a large, flat, black TV screen, and – suspended underneath it – a black digital clock, to mark the passage of the minutes and the hours spent there, in case I missed them. Very few visitors frequented my room, or passed along the corridor outside. Almost all the other rooms were inhabited it seemed by geriatric patients in various stages of decrepitude. I was deposited there on a Saturday morning. No therapy would begin before Monday morning. For two days I was left to face this wall in front of me, the black empty eye of the TV screen only made worse by that of that black digital clock marking the slow passage of time. I suppose I could have switched the screen on, tried to remove myself into the reality that perhaps still existed beyond that wall. I didn’t and I nearly lost my sanity. By the Saturday afternoon I had developed a severe neuralgic headache involving the entire left side of my head (I suffer from ‘Occipital Neuralgia’). The medication I used to control such attacks barely touched it. The pain continued all through the Saturday night, and Sunday. The on-call doctor spoke to me, and advised me of the consequences of leaving prior to the rehabilitation being complete. However, if I would accept responsibility for it, she would sign me out. That evening I contacted my wife and daughter to organise a rescue, which had to be affected on the Monday morning, prior to any physio-therapeutic encounters that would then be attempted. I was done! All I wanted was out, and once my daughter turned up to collect me and I was on my way home, I must say, I started to feel significantly better. I tell this story here because soon it will have its counterpart that now forms part of the circle that seems to have been completed after so many years have passed.
First, though, the next two years had to be ‘negotiated’, and these were marked by a singular distress in relation to my lack of regular ‘prayer life’, and a deep sense of loneliness and isolation (including a feeling that half of me had ‘died’ post ‘the fall’ experience). There were, however, also moments of significant clarity and an occasional ‘lifting’ of the gloom to enliven my inner life somewhat.
More Medical Intervention
Much more recently I have developed an uncomfortable pressure and distress in the region of my chest (left side). Although I have had an ‘ectopic’ beat for a number of years this seemed a little different, so I consulted a GP who organised a halter-monitor for 24 hrs, and, if necessary, a non-urgent appointment with a cardiac specialist thereafter. When the results were in a non-urgent appointment was organised and I proceeded to the specialist consultation last Wednesday week. The appointment, arranged at his rooms, turned out to be quite interesting. The cardiologist was somewhat displeased that he had been called in to consult because – he insisted – the difficulty displayed on the print-out from the halter-monitoring was one for the ‘electrician’ cardiologist, whereas he was on the ‘plumbing side’ (so unable to help me). I was, he informed me, having frequent high speed runs of extra beats, what he termed ‘ventricular tachycardia’. However, he insisted that the results of the monitoring were of such a serious nature that I should have (and would now be) admitted to hospital immediately. Thus was I to be taken immediately to gaol, not to pass go, nor to collect $200! Eventually that same day I found myself once more in hospital, after a 2 year or so gap. This time, however, the room I was given in the cardiac ward of the new hospital was lovely. My bed faced a wall on which was hung a beautiful picture of Anna Creek Station, in the Flinders Ranges, taken from the air. It was a sunset shot, looking back up a wide dry creek bed towards the red ranges of mountains. I had walked those same tracks, many years ago (30?) with my wife and my step-son, and a group of fellow bush-walkers from the a bush-walking club.
A panacea perhaps – to soothe the soul still troubled by the loss of prayer following the “Fall” and the subsequent aborted stay in the rehab hospital (where the bed faced a black TV screen on the wall opposite with a digital clock hanging beneath it: a warning)? Still, more than two years later, I wondered what happened back then? What was the point of it all? Where was this path [of mine] leading me? Still regular prayer life has not re-appeared for me. Was this removal of ‘the consolation of prayer’ done for a purpose? Was it intended as a test? Was it just another door that opened and closed behind me? Even today I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, and still more occur as time passes. Why, for instance, is prayer so easy when it is done, yet the need to keep repeating it doesn’t follow? Has it served its purpose in my life? Have I ‘failed’ some kind of test? And so on.
After a difficult night, with little sleep, I was told – if I passed the “Stress Test Machine”, I could go home again. The heart specialist – a lovely man in his forties – said so! My heart had developed all sorts of odd (and extra) beats. Apparently of themselves they would probably not kill me. Good oh! I looked and felt better because of this news. Those close to me were relieved. We could all continue on with our lives.
But this “Picture on the Wall” intrigued me, reminding me of days long gone, if not forgotten. Not all memories of that trip were “happy” ones, but – in the main – there were enough to make the revived memories aroused through the picture, pleasant. I, we, were all a lot younger, and certainly more “idealistic”, and perhaps more hopeful, back then: that we could change the world perhaps, make a difference, live lives different from the herd? Who knows? The scenery – the mountains, dry river beds, and endless sky, all so ageless, have changed not at all, or – if they have – infinitesimally so. How different from us humans. We live for such a speck of time compared to this world, and its time frames. What does this mean for us? Must we not use the time that we are allotted (and not otherwise engaged) wisely? Time to reflect, to attempt to come to grips with the questions that matter to ourselves, and how the lives we live affect others?
The appointment that led to me being here was only a few doors away from the building where we used to meet with those others, out to change the world (and ourselves) through the aegis of “Transcendental Meditation” (al la the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi). So long ago for us, for me. Such an insignificant blip-in-time on the geological scale of things.
What’s the hurry, these mountain ranges seemed to say, as they watch the sunrises and sunsets of this world’s turnings come and go. As old age and increasing infirmity begin to take their toll on this frail oh so human body I begin to understand this haste, even as I look upon their ancient face before me.
Time is not the friend of the human heart, so briefly awake in this passing world. Age tells us this. Yet this other face – that of the picture on the wall – has a different light to cast on this subject: it reminds us of continuity, of peace, and a timeless quality where everything – eventually – finds its place.
These “messages” that I was getting, over these past days, weeks, months and years, are those connecting threads, that – were we to pause long enough – would surely take us beyond this haste, to a gentler place, that of acceptance, for time will bring us to our “resting” place, if we only allow it to run its course. The rain will come. The river will fill, the sun will rise again, and the mountains turn green. All is as it should be – now, and now, and now – again.
This is the message of these symbols: returning, renewal.
Do we look? Do we pause to consider? Or do we hasten on to the next sunrise; the next sunset; and in so doing miss the opportunities thus offered to us?
Resolutions
So, how, after all these years, does the foregoing bring me closer to answering the questions raised in relation to the ‘Dream/Experiences’ that I believe have changed my life? And in what way do these experiences (where we do not have access to some ‘other’ who will unlock the meaning inherent in these states of being) present us with the keys to do so?
Recall the first dream aftermath. The giving of words of the Gospel of John’s, thus: ‘In the beginning was the Word…’
Recall also that – in the second dream – the oval Stone Tablets contained an inscription, each the same as the other, each the same as that which the young woman in green silk robes had shown me, as she tapped and rubbed her bare breast, showing how the ‘Word’ emerged from within her heart embossed on her flesh… urging me to “See it, touch it! Of what does it remind you?”
What of this looking, this tapping and rubbing then?
Recall: “Knock, and the door [of the heart – the inner] will open unto you…”, and the task of the Sufi: The Sufi must cleanse the rust from the mirror of the heart (rubbing) if they are to know, to see, to come in touch with, that which is reflected/written thereupon.
And recall also: ‘…And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…
And the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not…
[I apologise to those committed Christians for my paraphrasing of some of John’s words]
And what of the rectangular stone tablet that I took such offence at, positioned as it was so prominently at the head of the steps inside the entrance of the Stone building/be it a castle or a temple? What of it, and why such offence? It, like the Lyche-Gate before it, appears to me now, in this newly revealed light, to represent all that I now know myself to be in my more reflective moments. All my pretentions. All my failings. All my errors of omission, the commissions, the faults that one tries to hide from another in this world…there for all to see, writ large, with nowhere to hide from them! Me! The ‘English Church” – this abomination is …ME. Yes. The truth of the matter is that all of it is me, the good, the bad, and – of course – the ugly. It is this that I wished to put the lie to, to have hidden from view. But, in the long run, all will be seen. Just as surely as the young woman had ‘manifested’ on her breast that which was inscribed on the oval stone tablets, that which was truly her, I was the one ‘responsible’ for what had appeared to me in the dream experience as ‘a lie’ on the rectangular stone tablet. Positioned for all to see (as indeed at the end of our own journeys all will be exposed to the gaze of the One who knows all). Nothing derivative will be permitted to obfuscate the truth from view. Only that which is truly us, that which is written on our hearts, truly lasts, and is worth all the effort. That is always how it has been. And, in the long run, it is right that it be so. Better to know this before we die, whilst we still have the chance to do something about it all. Nothing derivative will be allowed at the end of things, when we stand naked before the One who knows all.
Thus the wheel has turned full circle. The knowledge thus given through living, through the dreams playing out in everyday life has been shown to be worth the journeying, the time it has taken to find all this out. And I am happy that I have been given the chance to – to some extent –make amends for the mistakes, the follies, the deliberate subterfuges, that have also been part of all this journeying, for – in the final analysis – who can ask for more than this?
As the final picture showed me, in time all will find their place in the grand scheme of things and there is a place for all, for everything, no-one and nothing is left out, as the first “dream” made clear.
Epilogue
A few months ago, I went with my wife to a specialist appointment. We were running early, something very unusual for us as my wife had misread the time of her appointment and – by the time we found out – we were already on our way! Taking the opportunity to enjoy the extra time we had we dropped in to a coffee shop, and then a 2nd hand bookshop nearby. Not sure that I wanted anything and having little money to spend, I picked up a yellow jacketed hardback book written by Laurens Van Der Post in his later years, ‘About Blady’, a late autobiographical piece. Whilst purchasing the book, I talked to the bookseller about the story of the white feather and the hunter. Later I found my way to the Parklands where I found a lovely place to sit and read in the sun. The story was fascinating and opened many questions about life and its meanderings. At one point, looking up from reading a particularly poignant piece with tears in my eyes (really gratitude for the book, the day, and life more generally) I spotted something on the grass just 10 or 15 meters away. I got up and walked over, bent down and retrieved … a large white feather. After collecting my wife we headed back to the coffee shop to wait for our daughter and have some lunch with her. I decided to drop in to the bookshop, and speak to the bookseller I had spoken to earlier. I asked her if she recalled our earlier conversation. She assured me she did. I then told her the story of what had happened since I had seen her a couple of hours before. Then I produced the book and drew out the feather. She hugged herself and said she had “gone all goose-bumpy”.
A fitting end to this story? Almost.
What of the roof of the building in the ‘Coorong Dream/experience’? Why was it missing?
Some things are best left unsaid, perhaps, and, like all good stories, the end sometimes cannot happen until all the participants have been fully dealt with. My end is not yet, so the building is not complete. How will it end? Like the old shepherd said to Laurens Van Der Post when they pressed him further in relation to his story with:
‘But what sort of bird was it, old father?’ we asked the shepherd. We often asked it; but always he would shake his head and say: ‘I do not know its name; no-one knows its name. It was a great white bird, and one feather of it in the hand of a man was enough; one feather of it on the head of a chief brought happiness to all his people.’…”
I conclude that my story is not yet over, my building work not yet complete.
Tracks in a Pathless Land 