FROM ROBERT'S MAILBAG
Sea of Faces
Sally writes:
I want to ask about how people receive their images as they close their eyes and allow the mind to empty so that spontaneous pictures and sensory impressions can be received.
About a year and a half ago I first began seeing very vivid visions on the screen behind my closed eyes. They have a holographic quality in that they are three dimensional and completely realistic. They present themselves by emerging from a deep place of darkness. The design patterns are intensely creative as the human faces grow, recede, morph into new ones. There is energy and expressiveness, especially in the eyes, very soulful eyes. In one sighting of a large group of brown-eyed people there was a face that bore a striking likeness to Coretta Scott King. Recently, early in the morning before rising. In fact, I can summon this sea of faces, if I am very relaxed.
Have you ever had anyone speak to you of something similar to my experience? Do you have any thoughts on how I might chart my way through this sea of humanity that insists upon showing up?
Robert responds
Your "sea of faces" experience is familiar to me, and to others who hang out in relaxed states, especially the "twilight zone" of hypnagogia, between waking and sleep, or between sleep and waking.
I find the cast is constantly shifting. Sometimes I seem to be looking through the veil (of ordinary perception) into activity on a level of reality fairly close to the physical. This may broaden out into perceptions of vast numbers of human or humanoid characters, mostly quite unfamiliar. It may turn to scanning of passing parades in the ordinary world (or a counterpart reality so close to it as to be indistinguishable) or branch out into explorations on other planes altogether.
It's often startling when someone in the parade of faces proves to be looking at me. Such experiences can be the prelude to conscious dream adventures and conversations. I don't often seek to talk to strangers that I perceive in this way, but if I thought I could communicate with Coretta Scott King I might have a go at that.
Flashbacks to Old Dreams
Victoria B. writes:
In my waking life I seem to get 'flashbacks' of dreams that I have had previously, sometimes from when I was a child. Just snippets of dreams that I know were from a long time ago. Is this a common thing and what does it mean?
Robert responds:
I am always intrigued by the surfacing of those "old" dreams. Sometimes our waking lives are catching up with events and situations we dreamed long before. Sometimes the "flashbacks" are invitations and opportunities to reclaim a connection with a younger self, with her energy and her gifts. Sometimes we are becoming aware of an ongoing story that has been playing out in another order of reality, maybe over all of our present life.
The individuals in my own sea of faces who intrigue me are often visually "off" by normal human standards, maybe an over-long flexible nose that can be tied into a knot, a face like plastic that morphs repeatedly into other characters like a skilled actor, or someone with a strange mouth shaped like a square port or another open mouth emitting rapid electronic sounds. The eyes of those looking at me are often almost too intense. I usually wonder if this is showing me skills I myself have, but have forgotten, or that anyone would be capable of if they just reached for it.
ReplyDeleteRegarding flashbacks, I frequently dream of several familiar landscapes I have never been to in ordinary reality, as if that world is passing close by in its circuit/orbit & so more accessible to me at the time.
Keep exercising our imagination muscles, Robert!
Nancy
I have had both of these experiences as well. Usually, if someone in the sea of faces and images looks at me, it startles me out of the hypnogogic state. Dream memories come to me often, as clear as memories from waking life. I often think this contributes to older people's confusion as they draw closer to the veil, no longer differentiating between waking and dreaming life.
ReplyDeleteI get a lot of dream memories as I'm falling asleep.
Nancy:
ReplyDeleteI just read about your sea of faces and oddly enough I had a similar experience the day this was posted. This is from my dream journal:
"I had just closed my eyes and was drifting off when I saw a large group of African American men wearing tattered old clothes come out of a fog and into an open field. They were singing together in a very rhythmic way "Hi...hi...bye," over and over again. When I take a closer look at the men again I notice that they are translucent and then I hear a little voice say, "They are spirits." I awoke and told my husband about what I saw. I told him I thought they were slaves and by their dress and song I thought from the 1800's."
When I woke up I told my husband about this. He said when he went to see Robert Moss earlier this month, he mentioned that he sometimes sees faces before he falls asleep. I googled Robert's name and the words falling asleep. The first result popped up was a writing Robert had done about Harriet Tubman and the Undergroud Railroad.
My husband said he started a disturbing dream before he went to sleep, then continued it asleep. He ran over some people w/ his truck and my clothes were in back & flew out. He did not stop. It really upset him. Anyone else have anything like this? He's never had anything like this happen before.
ReplyDelete