Saturday, May 3, 2025
7:40 a.m. Not sure how to proceed, so over to you. I think we ought to be continuing something begun or touched upon, but I don’t remember what it is.
Would you like to revisit that experience?
[I knew immediately what they were referring to.]
As a matter of fact, I would. I can’t remember the details around how it happened, though. I’m not sure I could even place it within any given decade, except that of course it had to have been within the past 30 years. Gateway was December, 1992; obviously it was after that.
In general, one remembers the aspect of a thing that is important. Important to the one remembering, that is. There is no other meaningful relationship.
In other words, no one can impose a meaning on anyone else’s memories or experience.
That’s right, and no one can establish any rules about it, either. Just as the same elements in two different dreams may “mean” different things, and even more so the same elements in different people’s dreams – so in the dream you are living. You all necessarily pull your metaphors from your life, and no two people will find the same meaning in a given symbol, nor will the same individual necessarily find the same meaning at different times.
Sometimes we can see things that the person telling us his dream cannot.
Yes, of course, and as we have said, this is one way one’s Upstairs (non-3D) component can assist someone else, by passing on in speech what the other person may not notice or may undervalue when heard only from within. But this is not to say that you know each other’s inner reality. You don’t. You can’t. You get glimpses of certain aspects, and if you are minded to be helpful you can use those glimpses to suggest connections – but even at your most helpful you will be swinging blindly, never knowing if your insight is accurate or helpful. However, this aside is a diversion. Relate your experience as you remember it. Only, do it this way: Note the overall plot, so to speak, then return and fill in texture and detail. You may get a surprise.
Okay. Well, it was an important experience to me. I haven’t forgotten it and I’m not likely to forget it. But what I remember may be hard to set forth.
As we said. Perhaps begin with a one-paragraph summary and then resort to bullet-points.
It was an altered-state experience, perhaps in the context of a Monroe program, but perhaps not. I suddenly appeared in a room that seemed like a council room – a big table, with people around it, all on one side of it, and I on the other side, where “the public” might be. They were surprised to see me appear, but not astonished: Appearances apparently were rare but not unheard of. I spoke to them briefly, then said, “I can’t hold it,” something like that, and dropped back into the reality I was accustomed to, the reality I am writing this from.
Bear in mind the main advantage of resorting to bullets: You need not concern yourself with sequential exposition or logic. You can follow what appears as it appears. This sometimes alters the sequence, and hence the connections made peripherally, hence in effect deepens and alters the context.
All right. So, as they occur to me:
- It was a deliberate act on my part, an exercise of some kind, but I didn’t set out to have that particular experience. How could I have done so? I didn’t know it was possible.
- I think this was a second stage of whatever I was doing. It built my energy somehow, or perhaps tightened my focus. The irruption into that room was entirely unsought at any conscious level. It was a surprise.
- Surprised them, too. It was as if a board of directors were having a meeting and suddenly an outsider popped up from beneath the flooring. Two elements: (a) outsider. (b) suddenly appeared.
- They knew that such things sometimes happened, though whether they or any of them had had such an experience, I have no way to know. They were surprised but not astonished.
- They were curious, too, come to think of it. One of them (if the idea of “one of them” rather than all of them together is appropriate) asked how long I had been in 3D. When I told them X years, however long it was then, they were impressed, apparently considering living in 3D as quite a feat of endurance.
- Did I ask them anything? You’d think I would, but I don’t know, I was entirely unprepared for this, and maybe I didn’t. It was all I could do to hold on.
- Yes, that’s an important part of it. I knew while it was happening that merely maintaining myself in that space was taking all I had. It was a great effort even to do nothing more than remain there.
- And I told them – after not very long – “I can’t hold it, it takes too much,” or something like that, and it was as if I had been doing a chin-up and let myself fall back.
- Then and afterward I had no doubt of what I had so briefly experienced. It was real. Where I had been, was realer than where I am now. I doubt it was people around a table; that was my mind providing a context, I think. But the reality of a space realer than this one was evident, convincing, and left a permanent certainty.
- Could I provide evidence for anybody, or even for myself? Yes, but what it is worth, each will have to decide for himself, The evidence is that the experience changed me, and I stayed changed. What it meant may be entirely different from what I conjecture, but it happened and was not an illusion. Christopher Columbus may have been on Watling Island when he thought he was in the Orient, but even though his interpretation was wrong, his experience was real.
You have forgotten or never noticed your impression of wood.
That’s true, and I never thought it was important, because I assumed that the shape of what I experienced had been provided by my mind creating an interpretation. But I did experience the room as being paneled in some dark wood. Certainly the floor that I seemed to come through was wood. Does this mean anything?.
Everything in a dream contributes to meaning, you know, and conscious life is not any different, except that one tends to pay less attention to it. [That is, to all the elements in a given situation as contributing to the overall meaning.] And you might give more emphasis to the collegial nature of the meeting.
That’s true, it felt like deliberations conducted in harmony and in a spirit of helpfulness. I seem to remember – now that you remind me of it – that at some point then or later I wondered if this was not a representation of my own guys upstirs, or perhaps my own past lives (as I thought of it then) or some similar council whose task was to guide me. But I never decided, and how could I have done?
Now you wonder – in part of your mind – whether you were experiencing the non-3D as we do. And merely reminding you of the question is enough to indicate the answer.
Yes it is: No. We experience the non-3D every day. It is – as you have maintained repeatedly – integrally related to our 3D life. This was something entirely different in feel. It had to have a connection to me, or how could I have experienced it? But what it was may or may not go on all the time, without my knowing it. All I know for sure is that it is not a level of reality I had ever experienced consciously. And I have yet to experience it again.
Which leaves only the question, Why? You can’t know the “how” of it, but you can at least speculate on why you had this brief, significant, non-repeated glimpse into another layer of the reality of which your – our – common reality is only a subset. Your answer may or may not be correct, but the very asking will be important. So – why?
The answer that comes to mind is, after than I could never be in doubt that reality is more than we commonly think it. I came to all this with great belief, great doubt, great determination. Maybe that glimpse – if planned by anybody – was merely or mainly to reinforce the “great faith” part, against the pull of “great doubt.”
And that is enough for the moment. Call this, “An experience,” perhaps.
Cryptic enough. All right, and thanks as always for this.