I have been busy on another project for a few weeks but will try to catch up to posting on this SubStack. To start things off, I’m going to share a dream that I have had good reason to think of often over the past nineteen years.
From the Journal, 12/6/2004:
>>An overweight, slovenly, crass looking man, a young girl, and a woman occupy an elevator as it falls rapidly a great distance. The man and girl are frightened. The man uses some profanity in his fright and immediately, a large, strange looking thing like a giant womb drops low from the ceiling, swallows the man up in one gulp, and then retreats into the shadows above us.
Moments later, when we arrive at the bottom of the trip and the doors open, the womb-thing reappears and disgorges the man onto the floor of the elevator as if he is a newborn baby. The girl looks on, terrified, but silent.
I get out of the car with the woman, who I now notice possesses poise to a degree I have never seen before. She makes me think of an angel, that she might be one. She warns me against taking the Lord's name in vain as the other man did, because the creature that took the man and caused him to be born in this place is but one of many who will instantly grab up anyone who abuses the name of the Lord. She then warns me to keep my thoughts calm and serene. Other types of adverse consequences are to be feared if we fail in this charge.
The environment we are in, a place we descended a great distance to arrive at, is monstrous. That is to say, if the ground upon which we walked could be sinister, it was. The creatures we see are horrible to behold, and I am frightened by their nearness. Luckily, they pay no attention to us.
I follow the woman around a bit, remarking to myself a kind of awe at her constant poise in the face of an entirely adverse environment. There are a few times a despicable thing is carried out before our eyes and I fear she will become angry or fearful, but she never does. Then, a man comes out to tempt her. Unlike the other inhabitants, this man appears to be normal in a pleasant sort of way. He wants this woman, or angel, to lose her temper or give way to fear. If she does either, she will give herself over to this man, who I now see is in charge of this place. He is Satan.
Satan’s argument to the angel is simple. He says, "Listen to me, I know it is an effort and a strain to maintain your temper in these circumstances. Relax, give in to your desires to express yourself, to be yourself. Sure, doing so will give me some power over you, but only in the sense that I can make some difficult choices for you and in so doing relieve you of a great burden. Self-control isn't easy. I know that and am sympathetic. It is true there is another price to pay besides my dominion of you, and that is that you will become ugly. If you go forward though, it can be up to you in what way you become ugly and I can help you in those choices also. Most people have already made this bargain with me, so you won't be any different from them and your ugliness may not even be noticeable to those around you."
As soon as I've heard this, I realize that I am seeing Earth as it really is. The monsters around me are people who have given themselves to Satan. The land is broken, twisted, and ugly only because he controls it.
At the same time I can perceive an illusion behind these things that looks very much like the Earth I am familiar with when I am awake. The ugliness I see is the spiritual reality behind the more normal looking physical reality I see when awake. Some people are physically beautiful but spiritually horrifying, and vice versa. Some are about the same in both places. The true beauty belongs to those who have followed the angel’s advice.
The angel, and I know she is an angel now, resists Satan's entreaties steadfastly, but it is an effort. At moments I thought I saw her features deform slightly when Satan said certain things and she listened to them. When he is done, her face snaps back to normal and she shines in her grace and beauty. She ignores Satan and takes me away with her. She has a mission to fulfill here and will see it done. Somehow I think her mission had to do with me, that she came here with me to teach me an important thing.
Satan was perfect in form and countenance, and spoke the truth but only to the extent truth can be spoken without God. In other words, his words were lies because God wasn't a part of them to give them the life of truth. His subjects also try to tempt the angel, but are wholly unsuccessful. Again she reminds me to take care with my thoughts and then I wake.
Comment
It is strange to me that I have had a total of seven dreams featuring Satan. The earliest of these was so real that I thought I was wide awake. It happened when I was at a summer camp for poor children in about the year 1975. The reason I am surprised to have these dreams is that, as with my dreams of Jesus, God, and angels, religion and spirituality were far from my waking thoughts and interests until I was almost forty years old.
I was raised an atheist by an agnostic mother. My school environment encouraged the prejudice that an intelligent person is an atheist. At the same time, I was praised for my intelligence and good judgment. This had the effect of reinforcing pride in my intellectual abilities simultaneous with associating those abilities with atheism.
I didn’t have any religious education and was persuaded from an early age to have no interest in the subject. My environment was bereft of religious influence through any cultural medium, such as religious themed television, movies, books, or journalism. I had no friends who tried to discuss the subject with me.
The dreams emerged whole from nothing. That is, there were no clearly identifiable reference points within my life to inspire them. It was these dreams that eventually inspired me to become curious about spirituality and religion. The first spiritual dream that I remember dates to about 1975 but they have continued to this day. I didn’t start paying attention until a cluster of particularly powerful dreams in 2004. This was one of those dreams.
My wife took this dream of the angel and Satan seriously from the moment she heard it. I later discovered that others around me had taken it to heart and had made an effort to master their own thoughts. For myself, I recognize the value of the message and try to keep it in mind, though as the dream says, it is a strain.
To be ever vigilant of one’s thoughts is made complicated by the stimuli in our environment, much of which encourages us to relax our mind and allow the stimulus to take over. What is a dramatic television show but an invitation to become angry, or sad, or frightened, by the events on screen? The events of our lives are the same. For instance, inheritances taken by greedy relatives, a job lost due to an injustice, or even a slow driver on a country road. How easy it is to react!
As I experience the world around me, particularly in recent years, it increasingly resembles the hellish environment from the dream. In some ways, it looks no different. The sun might shine but the collective light of our spirits dims to the extent we allow our thoughts and emotions to be controlled by our surroundings. If this dream is any guide, it is up to each one of us to master our own thoughts if we are to ever fix the problems we see around us.
There is no "Christian interpretation" here. As I wrote in my very long paper on spiritual dreams, I make an effort to report dreams as I recall them, without any kind of interpretation to corrupt the record. After making the record, I feel free to comment in any way I like but the comments here are not a "Christian interpretation".
In all seven dreams I've had in which "Satan" makes an appearance, there is no doubt in my mind during the dream that is his identity. It is not based on behavior or appearance but innate knowledge of who he is. It may be a mistake to have that impression but it is the impression I have. Interestingly, he has the same appearance and demeanor in all seven dreams, despite taking place over a considerable span of time.
I don't get why you think I've "literalized" this dream. I had a reviewer write something like that about my paper on spiritual dreams but I think he was wrong. I record what I remember, and that's it. I don't control the content and in many of these, had no prior acquaintance with the subject matter, leaving me with little to no basis for either a Christian interpretation or a literal transformation of the content.
You are one of the few people I've met who is capable of discussing this type of subject, so maybe we can hash it out later.
Until then, I recognize that certain content looks like what might be expected on the basis of religious culture but my life was largely free of those influences, to a degree that would be unbelievable to almost anyone who grew up in the sixties and seventies as I did.
An alternative explanation that I find more satisfying is that this dream and some others like it have content that apparently mirrors Christian, Jewish, or other theology because there is a common spiritual source for the theology and the dreams I've had.
So, I do not see any reason to bring Zoroastrianism into the conversation, except to compare what similarities or dissimilarities exist. The implication, it seems, is that the influence of Zoroastrianism (I wonder if there will be karma associated with making me type that word to respond) reduces the credibility of Torah-inspired representations of Satan. From my perspective that is similar to saying that all examples of psi are magic tricks because the Amazing Randi performs magic tricks, so everyone else must be doing the same thing.
I find this subject matter very frustrating because very few people can be objective about it. I find there are three easily identified groups that have vested interests here. They are: theologians, atheists, and scientists.
The theologians generally find it difficult to review evidence that conflicts with their theology, such as Dr. Ian Stevenson's reincarnation studies. Atheists find it difficult to review anything that conflicts with their assumption that an atheist worldview is correct, such as NDE research. Scientists try to be neutral but tend to side with atheists to prevent the appearance of harboring a bias toward supernatural explanations. They care perfectly happy to discuss tiny PK effects with enthusiasm but hesitate to engage with, for instance, mass supernatural sightings, like the Marian apparations of Zeitoun.
From my own experience, though I don't like to admit it (hence this SubStack), I have had so many dreams and waking experiences that are consistent with religious teachings, particularly Jewish but also some items from other religions, that I cannot deny without embracing dishonesty that there is some evidence that at least some core theological teachings are true.
Which ones are true and to what degree is a different subject. Some of the discussion I see on these issues strike me as ridiculously attached to irrelevant details. For instance, what does God look like? In the 14 or so dreams I've had where he appears right in front of me and I can see him clearly, he looks like an incredibly ancient but vigorous giant human caucasian male. I estimate he looked about twelve feet tall relative to my size. His skin was thick and heavily lined but every cell of it filled with strength and power. Light powerfully emanates from him in every direction.
That visual image matches western representations of God in art (apart from his size). This is one of the few things I was exposed to fairly early in life thanks to the Sistine Chapel and Michaelangelo Buonorotti, meaning I cannot discount an external source. However, I also cannot change it into something else because someone thinks God might be a woman, or has African features, is an alien, or an amorphous cloud, or an idea. I report on my own dreams, not what I think other people think my dreams should look like to match their expectations.
When I first wrote my book "Dreamer", it was full of disclaimers because I tried to take into account all the differing views on the subjects it raised. It made the text unreadable, so I threw the whole thing away and started over from scratch. The rule I observed for the book I published was that everything had to accurately reflect my data. That is my attitude here also.
Therefore, whatever experience someone else has, or whatever related data is uncovered elsewhere, to the extent the sources disagree it might be worth discussing to understand why but discounting agreement between two sources due to supposed illegitimacy of one doesn't work as an argument for me. In another context, that could be a strong argument but that depends on the relationship of the elements. For instance, two people can see the same thing independently at different times and describe it similarly. If one of those people is untrustworthy for some other reason, it doesn't mean the other person is wrong or even that the untrustworthy person is wrong on that point.
Anyway, I foresee a phone call in the future...
Thanks for another great dream write-up, Andy. the illustrations on this one were particularly terrific.
BUT a literal interpretation of this Christian-Centric dream is really hard to hold together. for example, from a Biblical perspective it's interesting to note that "Satan" is a late arriver to the Yahweh Thunder God party. reference my interview with Richard Smoley and his book "how God became God." the evidence suggests that "Satan" was a zoroastrian influence on the Torah as we have evidence of stories before and after.
I'm totally down with the overall gist of the dream and the idea that God wants us to do the right thing and wants us to think right thoughts and offers a pretty tough school/playground for Straying From the Path.
but I would suggest that history teaches us the importance of not literalizing mystical experiences.