Traipsing Through The Afterlife (lucid dream)

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Traipsing Through The Afterlife (lucid dream)
I am driving to a nearby city to meet a friend of my wife’s, on an errand. It’s a clear, sunny day. I approach the apartment complex that she lives in. I have never been here before. It is very large, much larger than I’d anticipated. It also has more the look of a professional building to it, or perhaps a hospital. There are several large main buildings; I approach the one given in the directions. I park my car and enter the building.

I walk down long corridors. There are people everywhere. It’s filled with people. It’s definitely more of a hospital, but somehow that doesn’t disturb me. I’m here to find room number 6N.

I ask directions of a passer-by; he doesn't seem to know, or really that interested in answering me. He seemed a bit "out of it."

Perhaps it’s a mental hospital combined with geriatric care? So it would seem, except for the ridiculous number of visitors. Every hall is crowded, every room filled, every space bustling.

I finally find someone, an employee, who guides me to the correct room. I had been on the wrong floor apparently. The elevator was very crowded, and we had to wait in queue for several minutes just to get one. We rode up several floors.

The room was off a narrow hallway with a great room nearby, perhaps a nurse’s station and recreation area combined. The door is open, but there is no-one inside that would fit the description of my wife’s friend. What was her name again? I look at the slip of paper that my wife had written the room number down on, but she had neglected to write her name. I should remember it, but I don’t.

The room is not any kind of an apartment. It’s more like a hospital room. One patient in a bed, several people visiting her. So this cannot be the right room.

Suddenly a maintenance worker, perhaps a janitor, hails me by name. “Brian!” An elderly black man in janitor’s clothing is calling to me. He is standing in the hall a short way behind me, near a public telephone on the wall. He hails me again, so I approach him. I’d never seen him before in my life.

“Brian! Good to see you!”

“Hello. Um, where do I know you from?”

“I remember you from that book that you wrote!” He mentions a title but I didn’t catch it, and it didn’t sound familiar anyhow.

(I have never written a book. Even if I had, why would he remember me personally from reading it?)

We chatted for a short while, but he never revealed anything more about said book or our supposed previous acquaintance. I eventually asked him if he knew where room 6N was, and he informed me that I was in the wrong building.

I said to myself “Well, that makes sense, because there’s nothing residential about this one!”

We said goodbye, and I walked back toward the elevators. When I got back to them, I was dismayed by the long lines of people waiting to use them. I said ‘to hell with this’ and found a stairwell.

I walked back down the four floors (or so) to ground level down a crowded stairwell. I had the thought that I should call my wife to ask her the name of her friend and anything else more that she could tell me, but when I took out my cell phone, it was not mine. It was an unfamiliar model, not a smartphone, with few buttons, and no clear indication how to dial out. I was dismayed that I’d apparently somehow dropped my phone and picked up someone else’s.

Still searching for my phone, I find two others on my person, neither one mine, and both with no apparent way to actually dial a number. Too few buttons, and concealed keyboard on one that meant little to me. I tried a couple of buttons, tried to enter my wife’s phone number, but nothing happened.

I continued walking, somewhat disturbed by all these developments.

I eventually found someone that informed me that the building that I was seeking was accessed through the back exit, so I left out the rear.

The view from out the rear entrance was a collection of buildings, large and small, leading down perhaps a quarter-mile to a waterfront with massive barges anchored in place to extend the useable surface area of the shoreline, and collections of stores and restaurants and other large edifices, with a railway and transit station or something similar. There was even an entire fenced-in abandoned carnival with Ferris wheel, in a sad state of disrepair. There were people everywhere, except in the carnival apparently.

Seeing no building such as was described to me, I try to walk around the building that I just exited to its front, but the walk seemed to just go on and on, past the railway with railway workers busy doing whatever it is that they do, past many more large open spaces crowded with people and more buildings and roads and even vehicles. Busses. My walk just kept revealing even more large vistas with more complex buildings and of course, more people *everywhere.* I was constantly threading my way through crowds.

Strangely, the people all seemed incredibly apathetic, dazed even. Sad. Wistful.

There seemed to be no clear path to the front of the original building; in fact I could not even be sure that the building that I was walking around *was* the original building at that point. I felt as if I could walk forever and never get anywhere at all.

People were everywhere. Walking, sitting, talking, going about various tasks in a mechanical fashion. Many were just sitting around doing nothing at all.

I began to realize that I could not get back to my car. That indeed, I could not find any indication of any parking area anywhere. A slight panic began to set in.

I reversed direction and went back to the back area, the waterfront with the barges. It was a very long walk, but I eventually made my way back there.

There was a large open area there that I'd seen before, unpaved, with picnic tables in rows, crowded with people. I began to walk down the center of that area toward the waterfront.

“BRIAN!”

I turned at the sound of my name being called out. A young woman approached me, having been seated at one of the tables. “Brian?”

I did not recognize her. I’d never seen her before in my life.

“Brian! How are you?”

“Hello. I’m fine. I’m afraid that I do not know who you are though. Have we met?”

“You don’t remember me? We worked on that political campaign together!”

(I had never worked on any political campaign in my life)

“Um, no. I can’t seem to remember you. Sorry.”

We began to talk.

“What is this place?” I asked her.
“-I don’t know.” (she seemed confused)
“How long have you been here?”
A slightly panicked look crosses her face, then confusion.
“-How long? Why, I don’t know. I don’t know…” (Seems very confused now)
“-…I don’t know how long I’ve been here. It could have been years.”

It could have been years. It could have been years?

Then it began to sink into me. I started to put it all together in my mind. It all clicked.

I was dead. She was dead. This is where dead people go, at least at first. Some sort of waiting area perhaps. Everybody here, was dead. Unaware of it, but dead.

“I think we’re dead” I informed her. "I think this is some sort of afterlife. We're all dead..."
-"Oh, really?"
She seemed accepting of this, strangely. No arguments. No sign of fear or apprehension. Complacent, even.

We walked around some more together, conversing a bit, and as I looked around at the crowds, and at her, I began to realize that it wasn’t so much apathy that I was seeing, but people living totally in-the-moment, with no recollection of the past unless someone like me happened along and questioned them about it or otherwise jostle their memories. It would for instance not occur to any of them to eat, since they felt no hunger. It would not occur to any of them to question their present circumstances either, since they were existing in the present, with no thoughts of past or future. This is what I was seeing. Semi-amnesiac people with no thoughts of the past or future, just *being* in the present moment at all times, doing whatever felt right in those circumstances in that moment, and nothing more. No panic, no happiness, no sadness, just being there, in a daze.

I thought of my wife, whom I would apparently not be driving home to now. Did I crash the car on my way to meet her friend, and wind up here in some strange apathetic vestibule of the afterlife? Perhaps.

I can’t find my car. Why is that so familiar to me? What does that mean to me?

I CAN'T FIND MY CAR!

Suddenly it hit me. I’ve been in this place before, or at least in many places like it. I often dream of a strange place full of apathetic people where I cannot leave, cannot find my car, or bicycle, or whatever mode of transportation brought me there; and cannot find any way out. In my recurring dreams, I come here often.

Having had dreams like this before, I had taken the time to condition myself to take special notice of the concept “I cannot find my car.” To realize, whenever that happens and I am lost and can’t find my way home, that it is a dream that I am in. A dream, but one that happens to me over and over, with variations on the plot, but the basic concept the same. One that happens to me so often, that I installed precautionary measures.

“I cannot find my car”

This is a dream.

I became fully aware at that moment.

From that point onward, it was a lucid dream.

But, what a dream! I looked around again with new eyes. This was no dream, surely! It was just as detailed as my waking consciousness, just as realistic. The sun shone overhead, the buildings, the water, the people all so clear, so real. All the details were there, even a slight breeze. I actually began to doubt that I was right. Surely this was not a dream, could not be a dream… It was as real as what I call my reality. Just as real, even knowing that it was not. I took my time to look around, at all the activity, all the people, all the details. Wow. Maybe the other dreams were premonitions of this, and this one was real? Maybe I am dead?

Then and there, taking no more notice of my companion, I knelt there on the dirt and closed my eyes and began to meditate. To meditate within a dream, to awaken from the dream.

I closed my eyes and willed myself to awaken. I knelt there for a while, concentrating on awakening. Or perhaps more accurately on remembering my reality, my life, which is how I awaken from a dream, or from a salvia vision for that matter.

There. That's it.

I felt no transition at that point. I merely opened my eyes, and got out of bed.

You see, while I don’t have visions of the afterlife on salvia divinorum, I do have them in my regular dreams ever since starting to take salvia divinorum. Recurring dreams of a limbo-like afterlife heavily populated by the recently departed, and perhaps also by those yet alive but asleep and dreaming, all willing to wait forever in their state of ‘life-in-the-moment’ with no sense of anything but their present millisecond of being, of doing whatever they're doing, hence no panic, no fear, no regrets, just sitting around waiting for something while not being aware that they are.

This one was by far the clearest and most detailed of all such dreams that I have experienced, and so convincing that I almost bought into it myself. Almost.*

So was it merely a dream? Maybe. Then again, maybe this reality is one, too. It certainly seemed no different in kind from my waking life except for unlikely details that seemed to fit in there but would not here.

Why did I meet people that knew me from events that had never occurred to me? Another good question.

Maybe none of this matters. Maybe it matters more than almost anything else. No way to tell, till I finally die and see for myself.

Ironically, if it’s really where we go after we die, I doubt I’ll notice then, either. I’ll be too busy being in-the-moment.




*As to the detail of this dream, upon reading what I've written above, I realize that I provided a noticeable lack thereof. Not so in the actual dream, I assure you. All details were filled in; where they are omitted is where I cannot remember them. I do however remember that they were all there, because I recalled most of them immediately upon awakening, and in those few minutes that I had before they slipped away, I made the effort to at least force myself to remember the fact that those details were definitely all there. I conversed with a few more people in passing, I saw many more details of the buildings, the waterfront, the inside of the Hospital, and the crowds. Even surrounding forests in the distance, if I recall correctly. It was all very coherent and clear as glass. So clear that in point of fact, upon awakening from it I experienced as severe a shock as if you, reading this, were to awaken right now at this moment, awaken from this reality, or rather this dream of a reality, awaken in some other reality, a familiar one that had merely slipped your mind, and realize that this reality here where you are reading this now, was just a dream, too. That level of shock.

How would that feel to you?