Death of Everything

[8StringMelody]

I recently had a dream that the world ended, and that I and everyone else died, along with the planet that our earthly bodies share. 

I was sitting in my music studio with a handful of friends.  The details were all correct... nothing out of the ordinary, no reason to suspect it was a dream.  In this room, in the dream as in waking life, a wall of glass looks out upon stunning, glacial rock formations.  As I looked out, I found myself watching the cliffs separate from the Earth and rushing away into space.  At the same time, the ground fell away.  My last sights were of light where ground had been, flame where rock had been, empty, dark space where blue sky had been.  I still did not suspect it was a dream.  Sound had ceased.  Light had ceased.  All awareness of my body was gone, only my consciousness remained.  My thoughts were "Well, we were warned that this would happen, that this planet wouldn't last.  I just didn't think it would be so soon.", and "I wonder how much longer my consciousness will linger?".  As I felt it fading, I was aware that I was having my last thought.  It was "Here it comes... this is where I find out what comes next."  I felt myself cross over.... and immediately felt a cool breeze on my skin, heard birds singing, and opened my eyes to find myself awake in my bed on a the most beautify summer morning imaginable.

I understand death dreams and apocalypse dreams, and the analysis makes perfect sense in the context of my life and the profound life changes I'm currently facing.  No surprises there.  It's the ending of the dream that leaves me pondering. 

As a lucid dreamer, I know that dreams, when I'm in them, are every bit as real as life.  I remember once, in normal conversation, joking with my son, laughing at the thought that maybe we were actually dreaming the moment.  My typical test of lucid dreaming is to fly, so we both took little leaps into the air, and sure enough, instead of laughing about it as gravity prevailed, we were both up and flying.  I was stunned.  Even once I knew it was a dream, I had a hard time finding anything absurd around me, anything to indicate a dream, other than flying.  It was as real as typing this.  Dreams have been like that for me quite often.  Normal life.

So when I was faced with the discovery of what comes after death and learned that it was followed by an awakening to another consciousness, in this case the one we call "waking", not surprisingly, it left me pondering life and death and consciousness and reality... and the universe... and everything, to the point of wondering which consciousness is the "real" one.

I haven't been able to find reference to anyone else having a dream quite like this one, and I'm profoundly curious.  Also if others, especially lucid dreamers, have trouble distinguishing dream from life.  Or at least find themselves questioning which is real.

[Tony Crisp]

8StringMelody - Wow, you describe the realisations of the different levels of us so well, but all in symbols. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/the-magical-dream-machine/ and http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/levels-of-awareness-in-waking-and-dreaming/ 

You usually in exploring the whole realm of who we are end up with bodiless consciousness. But there is another level beyond that. Here is someone's description of it.

“I had been exploring lucidity and had found that I could witness the processes of the body as it healed a chest infection. It felt like flows of fluid and energy in a plant. Then I wondered whether there was anything beyond this and was immediately in an experience of being in darkness as a huge consciousness that was both me and everything. The me was so blended with everything I didn’t have any boundaries. Then a bodiless voice told me there was a level beyond that. It was that I was all things at once - the huge unfocused me, and the person living in a body with a defined personality.”

I quote from my book Lucid Dreaming, “For many hundreds of years in the Far East, a culture developed that had as its vital centre, the exploration of consciousness. Human beings rose from their birth in jungle surroundings to become giants in their ability to live beyond the frontier of sleep and death. Life and death became for them a single territory. Even before their body aged and died they had entered the bodiless state and knew it as home. Some of those early explorers became permanently lucid. While sitting quietly they demonstrated constant awareness of what people were doing at great distances. When we ourselves enter lucidity we cannot help at some point meeting one or more of these giants. If you are lucky or worthy, you will find yourself taught or sustained by such a being. Even masters of lucidity in recent times, such as Aurobindo, worked with people in their dreams.

Here is an example of going beyond the symbols of the afterlife in which you are still in which you “immediately felt a cool breeze on my skin, heard birds singing, and opened my eyes to find myself awake in my bed on a the most beautify summer morning imaginable”.  - Suddenly, toward the end of exploring my dream, I leaped beyond anything I had ever experienced before. I knew just as clearly as in ordinary life I know my name, that instead of being someone separated from everybody else living a certain day in time, m real self was a river that flowed through all time. I had always existed and was involved in all history. With an amazing heightened awareness I could see the influence from this timeless self flowing through all my present life, subtly shaping it. The things I had chosen to do or work at were all connected as a working out of ancient influences, or an attempt to change them.

But here is an even better description of consciousness.

When I am going into trance, I breathe in the Yoga method shown me by Dr. Letari. Immediately I get a sensation as though I am falling, or being pulled backwards. As this sensation comes to a climax, I seem to be travelling through space at terrific speed.

I have opened my eyes many times at this point, but the only vision I have is of passing through a dense fog. Then, quite suddenly, the fog clears and I am at a stile. I climb over this stile and immediately there is a voice speaking to me over my shoulder. This voice is always with me, explaining everything I see and everyone I meet. The stile seems to be on the edge of a large field, which rises gradually to the form of a hill. I walk up the hill, and beyond it I visit many places.

I have been to the Children's Land many times and have spoken to children with whom I used to go to school, many of whom I did not know had died until I met them. I have paid visits too, to the Halls of Learning, which seem to me more like the Acropolis at Athens.

It is always the same stile, the same hill, the same voice, and it just seems like a large country with so many different towns to visit.

The most remarkable experience I ever had during these visits into the Spirit, happened before I went into trance. Several people had been speaking of consciousness. They had asked me to describe the Spirit. Was it solid? Did I appear solid? I promised them that if I could, I would find out.
I arrived at my stile, the voice came to me, and it evidently knew my desire, because it said "Feel the earth!" I did. It was solid. "Feel the grass beneath your feet!" I did. That was solid too, and even had dew on it. "Smell these flowers!" They were perfectly natural and had the usual perfume. In fact, everything around was natural. Then I was told, "Feel your body". I did so. It was as solid as I am materially.
'The voice then said, "Close your eyes; make your consciousness passive", or as you would do when preparing for a trance state. "Now feel the earth beneath your feet!" There was nothing. "Open your eyes". It wasn't dark, it wasn't light. "Feel at your body". It wasn't there. "Such is Spirit" said the voice. "Just a consciousness holding within it all experiences of your lifetime, all the joys and sorrows, your desires, achievements and failures, whence comes spiritual evolution. In your world of the material, you are able to examine matter; everything is matter. When you think of the spiritual, naturally you build in your consciousness another material world."

Tony