We tend to think in terms of two types of awareness: Either
we’re asleep or we’re awake. In fact, there are many states in between, and
there is far less difference among them all than we imagine. That is illustrated
by the following vision that a “dreamer” had while she was wide awake during a
road trip. It’s helpful to know that the dreamer is Caucasian:
The vision
I was returning home
after attending a weekend conference on metaphysics. The trip takes about 4
hours by car, and I noticed that I was getting sleepy. I was near a town that
has a Chinese restaurant that I occasionally enjoy visiting, so I decided to
stop there and get some lunch and a cup of coffee. They have a buffet with lots
of delicious dishes. I was standing at the buffet counter looking at the
various offerings, and my mind must have started to drift, because I suddenly
saw someone on the other side filling a plate high with huge amounts of food—a real
mountain all piled up. Somehow I knew this was for me and I wanted to tell the
man to stop because I couldn’t possibly eat so much. Then I snapped out of it
and saw that there was no one there; I had imagined the whole thing.
An initial assessment
People get excited when unusual phenomena like this happen
to them. We have been so conditioned to think in terms of only two ways of
experiencing consciousness. Either we’re off in our nighttime dream world, or we’re
awake and fully engaged. We tend to imagine a distinct separation between those
two states. But really, the line separating those extremes is far less solid
than we are taught to believe. And these states often cross over part way from
one to the other.
Is a vision different than dreaming? Do we take these
experiences and mentally place them in their own category, to be treated with
special rules and extra care? I would say not. In fact, it is the reverence in
which we hold these kinds of phenomena that usually gets us into trouble. One of
the biggest offenders is prophetic experiences. Whether they occur in the dream
state or as a vision, prophesies are held in such high esteem that we treat
them with kid gloves. There’s a kind of awe that descends over the experience,
and also over the person who had it. Often that diverts attention away from
what is really going on: With prophesies as with all experiences of
consciousness—no matter what form they take—life is attempting to communicate
with us through the language of metaphor.
In the case of the above woman at a Chinese restaurant, she
too, found herself wondering reverently about her “prophetic” vision. “Is this
trying to tell me that I am about to overeat?” I replied that it probably had a
different kind of message in mind for her, one that we’ll examine on Wednesday.
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