A few months ago, I had the idea that in sleep, in dreams, we connect with other dimensions. My belief, as far as other dimensions, is that there are infinite dimensions, infinite universes, in which infinite permutations of events can happen. We are actually connected the whole time we are asleep, but dreams only occur during specific periods of the cycle. We remember them only when our minds are at a point or state of being sensitive enough to apprehend and remember the occurrence. In short, when we sleep we are connected with infinite mind.
So today, reading Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger, another insight came to me. I was going to say, “I had another insight”, but that isn’t my understanding of how these things transpire. It isn’t a thought that BELONGS to me somehow, just one that is “out there” and my own state of being at the time is such that I am ready to receive it. At times in the past I have had similar insights, but was dismissive of them. Either because it seemed too crazy, or usually having more to do with the old bugaboo “But what will OTHER people think if I tell them this?” The two are connected, of course. Now, I believe that I just wasn’t, at the time, at a point in the journey of discovery, partially described in my previous post, where I was really “ready” for it.
So on to the insight (I ramble, I digress, similar to the way my spiritual journey has transpired, but I am just not judgmental of myself for it any more, usually). In sleep, we are in contact with the multiverse, and a process of growth occurs. A growth important for us as individuals, and also for our little piece of the multiverse, if we pay attention. It isn’t a matter where rational thought, such as dream analysis, holds very much sway. It’s more intuitive knowledge, for lack of a better word, which seeps into our psyches like water does into the ground to nourish plants. It is the universe’s, or more accurately multiverse’s, way of imparting to us the information which allows and encourages us to psychically advance as a species and become more responsible citizens of the wonder we inhabit.
I am on my third (or maybe fourth) read-through of Cosmic Trigger. In my previous post, in listing the various schools of thought I have studied at varying levels, I neglected to say much about the Sufis. I did spend some time investigating Sufi wisdom, the dervishes, the Mullah Nasruddin stories, the hashishin connection. As with many other things, I moved on, mostly because of the monotheistic nature of Islam, a way of thinking that just doesn’t resonate with my experience. The Sufis, however, are different; more like an entirely separate religion than orthodox Islam. That is, if mysticism in general has any connection with established religion, which I don’t believe it does. A variety of mysticism seems to be common to just about all the schools of thought I have spent any time considering or studying. It “comes out differently” from all of them simply due to the perceptive, conditioned apparatus of the individual receiving the insights and the cultural milieu he or she has been steeped in. Far more similarities than differences, in other words. In Cosmic Trigger, on page 89 of the Falcon Books edition I am reading, “Many people have had the experience of not knowing who they are or where they are; it usually occurs in the first moments after awakening in the morning. The Sufis say that you are closer to Illumination in that instant of micro-amnesia than at any other time.”
For what it’s worth, the insight which came to me about the nature of sleep came to me a few minutes before I re-encountered this passage in Cosmic Trigger. As a (possibly) tangential bit of information, I was reading, as I always do, as I relaxed before I took a nap for a little while this morning. On this read-through of Cosmic Trigger, I have become more aware of the mind-bombs implanted in me at my first encounter with this book. Just a series of words arranged in a certain way, but seemingly a lot more than that, at least in my experience.