I knew I would someday have use for this picture from the anime Please Teacher.

We had yesterday off from work because of the Pentecost. These three days, when I have been at home or walking in the neighborhood, I have barely had any of the imaginary breathing problems at all. On the other hand, this morning I had unpleasant dreams again. Dreams of darkness and fear. Not the overwhelming, paralyzing fear like those extremely realistic dreams I had after I began using brainwave entrainment (and overdid it a bit). This was a fear I could kind of live with, although highly unpleasant.

In one of the dreams, I was wandering a half familiar countryside alone. I don’t think the landscape is familiar to my waking self, but because I had recently dreamed of it. But now it was darker, not the pitch black of night but a deep twilight or like a night with bright moon, where you can walk. The landscape was familiar, but not quite. It was as if some things were inexplicably changed, or I was not sure I was in the right place and going in the right direction. And there was this fear, not of any particular thing but of Something.

Alone and scared in the deep twilight, I vaguely remembered Ryuho Okawa’s words: “Pay attention to your dreams, and you will have an idea of where your soul is destined” and “If you should find yourself in Hell, your only hope is that you have learned Buddha’s truth while you were alive.” (Well, those may not be his exact words, but pretty close. He is generally more wordy than I.) When I realized that I was dreaming, I made an effort to break out of it. I did not manage to wake up to the 3-dimensional world, but I managed to get out of the dream and stay for a brief while in a state of self-awareness, in a place outside the dreamworlds, where I have sometimes also been before. In that place, the dreamworlds pass by like a giant, slow rolling wheel of doors. If I wait, the door to the current dream will close and another will open where I can enter. So also now.

I don’t remember what happened next. I think some time passed before the next unpleasant dream. In it, I was again in the half familiar landscape, quite possibly the same as last time, but it was less dark. I was no longer alone, but together with a young goddess. Unfortunately it was an unreliable, if not outright treacherous goddess. I knew that she did not intend to help me should I need it. I honestly have no idea who she was, as I did not really reflect on it in my dream. My impression is that she was a descendant of the Norse pantheon, born long after they faded from power. Be that as it may, her company was not really better than nothing, but I would be wise to not say as much to her face. What scared me, except for the treacherous company, was that it was now bright enough to say for sure that things had changed. Things that should be there were not there, or the other way around, as if months or years had passed while I turned my back.

Back in the waking world, I still doubt that you will get out of Hell by means of Buddha’s truth, or even Christ’s truth. If you go to the Biblical Gehenna, it will presumably be too late for self-reflection. Catholicism has the concept of Purgatory, which is so eerily similar to the Buddhist hells that I find it hard to believe they did not pick it up somewhere on the Silk Road. But there is no mention of this in the Bible, only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. (Why yes, I quote Hebrews 10, right after the most disturbing words in the New Testament. Lo, I have warned ye.) If we want to reflect on ourselves, we better do it in this life.

In other news, I finished reading Okawa’s book The Challenge of the Mind last week, and am now starting on Bishop Kallistos Ware’s The Inner Kingdom. I expect it to be much heavier reading.