The Way of Power, L. Adams Beck [beach books txt] 📗

yet with all the memories and experiences of old age. You may drift composedly down the street never touching it with a footfall. You may melt through walls and doors like Christ after the Resurrection. You may talk fearless and unamazed with friends who cross the river of death to meet you, and know they never died. You may easily meet two personalities of people you know, fused into one, and find it quite comprehensible and natural until you wake and it blurs as the darkness of the prison-gates closes on you; you may be in two places at the same moment. Things can be absolutely simultaneous which in ordinary life are consecutive. One great thinker has suggested that death itself may be a passage from the consecutive to the simultaneous. This is very likely. He had had in dreams a glimpse into the World behind the Looking Glass.

Profoundly beautiful subconscious revelations sometimes take place in dreams. Here is one which carries a meaning not negligible.

I knew two men who had once been close friends. The one had done the other a terrible injury and its consequences had completely estranged them. People did not even speak of either in the other’s presence. All was ended. But one day the injured man suddenly said to me: “It’s a strange thing. I hate the man. Heaven knows I have reason to. But I dream of him constantly—can’t get away from him; and always in my dreams the old friendship is there and to be together is good right through. Those are the happiest dreams I have. And yet waking, I would run the country sooner than meet the fellow. I could kick myself for being such an ass in my sleep.”

As you will see, the submerged self he met in dreams knew best. It knew that love is in its nature real and eternal and hatred a darkness, a nothingness, which dissolves in the light of truth. I would give much to know the dreams of the other man. Would they complete the story? I have often wondered that. The first was, at all events, compelled in the dream-world to Reality. Such a case is well understood in Indian teaching. India asserts that the infinite tide of perfection behind all of us flows in by such inlets as the different planes of consciousness in sleep.

“For in the animal lay hidden and possible the man, and when the door of consciousness was opened, man rushed out. And in man lies hidden perfection barred and locked away by ignorance. With Realization he comes in touch with the Hidden Treasure.”

Milton was right in his almost miraculously perceptive assertion that high revelations are made “in clear dream and solemn vision.”

For in sleep we move on much more subtle and permeative planes of action than in waking, and the more we are daily disciplined in opening up the channel of communication with the untrodden continent of our submerged self—the lost Atlantis hidden in us all—the more wonderful and illuminating are our dreams. This may be seen in the dreams recorded in the Scriptures of the great Faiths. They would form a book of profound psychological interest if analyzed and compared.

Yet, striking through apparently very commonplace personalities come sometimes singularly revealing dreams, thus proving that in truth no one is commonplace, that it is only the commonplace of ignorance in ourselves which so sees it. For below the dwarfed nature of which our senses make report lies the submerged and marvelous self of which the man himself is wholly unconscious except in the strange visitings of dreams which he is unlikely to reveal to any human being except in most unusual circumstances. Very often also, his everyday self entirely fails to interpret them. He will say in bewilderment, “I knew when I was asleep, but now it all seems nonsense.” And I fancy most of us have had the experience of dreams extraordinarily lovely and revealing which the awaking sense clutched at for a moment and then let go helplessly, drifting away shapelessly as mists at dawn. One may see the dream-flowers wither in the hot clasp of our sense-perceptions, see the dream-pageant fade and dissolve like sunset clouds, leaving nothing behind but the gathering gray of loss.

That dream of being in two places at once—places that melt into each other and are absolutely one—I have had often. Each is each, yet there is no overlapping. I walk through the one and know no surprise. Waking, I remember it perfectly but cannot intellectually understand how it was possible, though I know well that is how things are in the real world behind the Looking Glass, where the logic and rules of the game are entirely different from those we know in front of it. Because, as I learned in a dream already quoted, places there are not solidarities but states of mind.

I have heard many people express the wish that they could control their dreams and enjoy what they most desire in sleep. But that is a foolish wish, for dreams would lose all significance if our everyday selves took charge. It is precisely because they are off duty that the unexpected, the illuminative, come through. This is the flaw in Du Maurier’s beautiful book, “Peter Ibbetson.” The hero and heroine, divided in life, meet nightly in dreams. The dream is a duet—but of the senses exalted to the highest pitch. They dream together of exquisite jewels and toilettes, of dinners at the choicest restaurants and wines of the costliest vintages, operas, plays, by the most celebrated performers, and so forth,—opiates for the sorrow of parting. Such dreams are earth-bubbles. The senses are awake and guardant though the body sleeps. They are a fairy story of the reasoning, clutching mind.

No. Let us rejoice that in the true dream the close guard of the senses is off duty and we go out free in the dark to revelation. Very different is the wish that we could unfailingly meet the hidden self and, joining hands, walk straight into the Real World, and that wish can be gratified by patient discipline. And there the disciplined body may receive its share, for it may be said with truth that there is no sleep so deep, tranquilizing and profound as that which is called “The Opener of the Gates.”

The Greeks and Romans both believed in the healing power of dreams, and in ancient Rome the College of the Inspired Dreams was a place of gathering for those who were sick or sad. It was dedicated to �sculapius the Healer, and it was believed he was the inspirer of these dreams. Those needing help slept in the quiet of the sacred cloisters and seldom without result. One sees exactly why that should be and wishes such help could be given now, and without human intervention, to those who need it. But it is a true saying that we can participate in heaven and its gifts only in so far as heaven is within ourselves. How can people empty of heaven realize the possibilities of dreams or the meaning of that little known saying of Christ’s, “When the outside becomes the inside then the Kingdom of Heaven is come.” It means that when for any man the deceptions and distortions of the outer world are swallowed up in realization of the inner, the hidden world,—when the outer and the submerged selves have joined hands and are one,—then he has touched on immortality and has drunk of the wine of eternal joy.

It is a strange thought that all round us, hidden in every recurring night, lie these silent fields of harvest in which so few are reapers. Yet they lie, ripening in sunshine. In the words of Professor James:

“One conclusion was forced upon my mind, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there are potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence, but apply the requisite stimulus and at a touch they are there in all their completeness.”

With the last four words I disagree, for it is impossible for the uninitiated to say what their completeness is when we know of cases ranging from the mere glimmer to the conflagration of revelation. But the statement is true and striking and it is gladdening to see the distinguished thinkers of the West gradually awaking to facts known and taught for millenniums in the Orient. Professor James added:

“The whole drift of my experience goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness which exist, and that these other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our lives also.”

That statement is clear and concise, but how far does it fall behind the statement of St. Paul (with direct experience to back it) struggling with the futilities of words to express what eye has not seen nor ear heard, but nevertheless what he had known for truth in ways far beyond mortal senses. (I condense.)

“I knew a man above fourteen years ago (whether in the body I cannot tell; God knoweth!)—such a one caught up into the third heaven; How that he was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words which it is not possible for a man to utter.”

In our version “possible” is translated “lawful,” but the former is said to represent the meaning more closely. And again he says, using the very illustration of the Looking Glass which I have used so often, “For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.”

Yes, there are indeed many states of consciousness and such a man could have taught, can teach, modern investigators much about the varying degrees of consciousness in dream and trance.

In India is the well-spring of knowledge of these states and their powers and it is clearly stated by those who know that there are dangers. In the World behind the Looking Glass are no guides. There a man must depend upon the essential in himself and on nothing else. I have written a story about that side of the world of dreams which came to me so actually as a dream that though my hand wrote it I could never say my objective self created it. It sums up more than I knew of the subject at the time, but I have since learned its truth.

One of the characters says:

“We recognize a strange force, a very powerful dynamic. We consider it a manifestation of the primal energy. It lies all round us for the taking and in itself is neither had nor good. The result depends on the person who uses it. The rules we call The Rules of Detachment. Certainly this force may be used for a very high kind of spiritual adventure, but in itself it is neutral. It is a sword. Now a sword may be used by a god or a devil or any of the grades between.” The Rules of Detachment are given.

This force is of course related to the world of dreams, and the hero persists in projecting himself into this state of consciousness without knowledge of where safety lies. The story is concerned with his neglect of the Rules of Safety and the terrible consequences and final extrication. The point is that what you will meet in that world is what you deserve to meet and what your own thoughts and life have invited.

“With a thought you may be in the horror of the Desolate Country, with another in the Shining Land, for every man creates his own universe until he can perceive it as it is in truth.”

Indeed