The proposition that the world is made of our dreams and hard work may seem like a metaphor to some people, but there is a sense in which this is strictly true. Time has a rigorous structure only in a narrow sense. There is another equally valid sense in which time and energy are perfectly fluid. Our attachment to the narrow sense may benefit the pursuit of social and economic goals in life, but a recognition of the broader sense may benefit our chances for survival on this planet at a time of such incremental adversity.
A recognition of the broader sense requires an adoption of the view that the self is a timeless being which has always been here on Earth, appearing at odd times to work and play, and at others dissolving into the cosmic dreaming. An adoption of this view allows that certain dreamers here on Earth are much older than common sense would otherwise give them credit for, in spite of them being only vaguely aware of how long they've been dreaming.
In terms of my own experience of such things I suspect that memories from the fringes of my consciousness, from both my early childhood dreaming and what I must assume to be my afterlife, are quite extensive. And in my case there appears to be some fairly concrete evidence that my dreaming spans several generations of my family's history.
If you've read my Time Exchange story then you will already be acquainted with the pattern occurring among the names and birthdays of members of my immediate family, but for those of you who are not acquainted with this pattern I will draw it for you now in fairly broad brush strokes.
My birthday falls on the 7th of April which is curious because it is directly opposite my father's birthday on the 6th of October. My sister and my younger brother's birthdays are nearly equidistant from mine, 67 days in the case of my sister's birthday on the 13th of June, and 71 in the case of my younger brother's birthday on the 26th of January. When viewed as points on the circumference of an Earthly orbit the four dates form a very nearly formal right angled crucifix.
Not only is there a pattern among our birthdays but there is also a corresponding pattern among our birth names. My father's initials were JC which he shared with Jesus Christ, and my elder brother's name is James who was the brother of Christ in New Testament scripture. My younger brother's name is Peter who was the rock upon which the early church was built, and I share my name with Michael who was the archangel going back to the time of Daniel in Old Testament scripture.
As if this wasn't enough to make an impression on me when I first put the pieces together in my mind back in October of 1997, there is one more curiosity about the timing of our birthdays. The calculation of the day on which Easter Sunday falls is made on the basis of lunar phenomena, and is defined as the first Sunday following the first full moon, following the vernal equinox traditionally defined as March 21. It follows that the range of possible dates on which Easter Sunday may fall extends from March 22nd through to April 25th, an interval of some thirty four days.
Since the day on which Easter Sunday falls over the course of ages is virtually random, the median date within the range becomes a valid summary of the likely day. This date is midnight on the 8th of April which makes midnight on the 6th of April the median date for Good Friday, the day on which Jesus was crucified, and is thus directly opposite my father's birthday, and exactly the day on which I celebrate my birthday.
My father was born in 1922 some thirty three and a half years before I was born, and yet, even at this tender age, there was purpose to his life, just as there was to mine. While you could argue that my mother was fully aware of the pattern she and my father created with their reproductive behaviour, it is doubtful that my grandmother was similarly involved. Your best bet would be to argue that my mother seized upon the otherwise random combination of my father's initials and his birthday to stir up some passionately religious sentiments lurking in her soul, but I suspect that this assessment barely scratches the surface of what else may have been involved.
Contrary to the passion which such an artful adaptation of their reproductive behaviour must have required, nothing was said to me about the pattern by either of my parents before they died, so I am left to dig a little deeper into the curious circumstances surrounding my birth. I'm unable to doubt that my parents were involved in the creation of this pattern but I doubt that it was much more than a light hearted entertainment for them, contrary to my own feelings in the matter which were very serious indeed.
My father was an only child, but he wasn't given any special treatment by my grandparents, and I doubt that they orchestrated their reproductive behaviour so that his birthday would be opposite the median date for Good Friday in the cycling of the Christian Church year. It would have taken them considerable determination, and some carefully managed coital precision to produce an effect such as this, unlike my parents of course, who were industrious with their reproductive creativity. In view of the strangeness of my predicament in October of 1997 I had to entertain the possibility that I had myself selected my father's genetic lineage long before I was even born, because of the magnitude of meaning which their behaviour would ultimately inflict on me.
You could say that I was drawn to this meaning in a way not unlike the way in which a moth is drawn to illumination. Since the soul is eternal and one's dreaming is perfectly timeless, I had to suspect that my own cosmic dreaming was there in the formative stages of the pattern among our birthdays. In terms of my parent's behaviour all that was required was the development of an intimacy eliciting the dream my mother may have had which guided their peculiar family intentions.
It was like a message to myself, one which only I could understand in spite of my parents' knowledge of it, and one which no one else would ever give any credence to. And yet I write to you now with the intention of making this message clear to you.
Now, let's not be silly here. It has never been my intention to be Christ on this planet, which is about as much as anyone would want me to be. On the contrary I've spent most of my life as a diligent agnostic, and it has only been in the last 15 years or so that I have had to amend my prior views and believe in a manifest God. And so an important question follows: what caused this unexpected transformation?
If you've read either of my Host Model or Time Exchange stories then you'll have a pretty good idea of what the cause will have been. Developing the host model theory and its many devastating implications took a toll on my belief system, but none more seriously than the further implication that the shapes of Italy and Britain were deliberately modelled by a purposeful planetary dreaming.
I'm not going to go into a proof of the validity of this proposition because I've covered it well enough in my previous work, but there is one crucial inference I would like to point out to you. It concerns the inference that Britain and Italy constitute islands of dreaming in spite of one of them not being an island at all. They are both very old from our point of view, they have been dreaming for a very long time, and are both metaphors for dreaming in more general terms in so far as they are discrete bodies surrounded by a sea of feeling.
In spite of it being subjective in nature this sea of feeling is the medium by which a body is given form, whatever that may be depending on the feeling in question. In the case of the shape of Italy the curious thing to note is that the visionary seed of what it would ultimately become existed several million years ago. The implication which follows is that the dreamer responsible for defining the shape of Italy has existed for several million years or more, during which time the geological work was undertaken, and remains among us now so many years later. The individual responsible for the shape of Italy remains an island of dreaming, surrounded by a sea of feeling, in spite of the mortality which seems to limit the boundaries of his or her existence.
The relationship between this dreamer and the rest of society is like that between the tip of a pyramid and its body. But this is multiplied countless times because we are all dreamers of one sort or another, and we all occupy the tip of our respective pyramids. In terms of the constitution of society the relationship holds true for anyone's destiny and dreaming because everyone's dreaming is of a cosmic nature which transcends the reality defined so peevishly by our wakefulness.
Before I go any further with this discussion let me clarify my somewhat coarse use of this vocabulary. Without wishing to diminish the significance of those who perform less conspicuous roles in society, it is easier to establish the relationship between the dreamer and the dreamed in terms of more prominent social actors, so let me begin with the individual located at the apex of the Catholic Church.
This individual will probably have come from a fairly modest social background making him all the more relatable when eventually he ascends to the head of the church, but he may well have an extensive memory of his infant dreaming. These memories will be of the timeless soul which we all share, and which bears a close resemblance to anyone's vision of eternity. These are nevertheless memories of the actual dreamer, and by dreamer I mean that dream body, that other part of ourselves we experience when we are asleep and dreaming, or that sea of feeling which surrounds us, and which lends itself so well to metaphor.
The individual who performs behaviours exemplary of the church and who is selected into the role of pontiff is not the dreamer so much as the dreamed, and there are thus two voices here which need to be distinguished. The dream body is different from the dreamer's mortal body in so far as its temporal dimensions are entirely fluid. It could be dreaming of anywhere in time while the dreamer's mortal body remains fixed to a particular point in time. The two voices are integral to the life of the individual and appear to negotiate the construction of a reality which may seem immutable in a limited sense of this identity, but which disguises the true nature of a dreamed reality.
The twists and turns of life, which shape an individual's struggle with destiny, depict the way in which the dreamer and the dreamed assemble their relationship, and are consistent with the way in which the shape of Italy was modelled over the course of ages. Each of these bodies is surrounded by a sea of dreaming which permeates their thinking in devious ways, and where the heart yearns for satisfaction. It is in this sense that the terms feeling and dreaming are interchangeable. All of this comes to fruition in old age where one's destiny is fulfilled and where, in death, the dreamed again becomes the dreamer.
I have already discussed the radiance and electromagnetic reception of our bodies in my previous work, so I'll simply mention them here in the context of the warm bath of feeling we enjoy as dreamers. It is this electromagnetic resonance that is the "feeling" I've been talking about. And in case you want to dismiss feeling as an intangible and unreliable sense, I'm sure there must be something you feel strongly about in which case any objection to the reliability of feeling is just ironic.
In spite of such ironies there is evidently no sense of time in our dreaming; for better or for worse our dreams are virtually timeless. There is a sense of duration as a scene unfolds, but getting to and from the scene's location is instantaneous. There is, however, a drama and purpose to our dreams which may seem obscure in most cases but has a dramatic significance in the case of Italy, Britain, or any number of other locations around the world.
Indeed, the shape of Italy suggests that our dreaming is able to span the ages, and is quite unique in this regard. It is as if the topographical formation of Italy occurred within reach of our present day dreaming in spite of how much this may offend your logical faculties. The shape of Italy is not just a senseless foot kicking a stone down the road, but the representation of an ancient religious institution threatening a chronic offender, and portrayed in terms of a relatively modern invention, adorned no less with a horseman's spur and high heels.
In spite of the obscure physics which may be involved in the production of an effect such as this, it is clear that our punitive sentiments resonate on a cosmic scale. It is as if the identities negotiating the struggle between good and evil here on Earth have cosmic dimensions, and may as well be portrayed by the behaviour of the planets and asteroids. In this case we must expect that our thinking, and our social institutions, are much older than we have previously given them credit for.
But more than anything the shape of Italy requires a rethink of our concept of time. Whatever this may be may remain elusive for quite some time, but whatever it may be it has to accommodate the view that disparate segments of time exist in close proximity to each other. In terms of my own experience of such things it appears to involve a definition of reality which has been negotiated between one of many cosmic dreamers and all of us here on Earth who are the Earthly dreamed.
