Ringmasters of Time's Circus

In the House of Time

Here is a place where I can slip between parallel lives.
    I step through the door of an elevator, to find that the space within is vastly greater than seems possible from the outside and the box is not much like an elevator car. There are sliding glass doors on the far side, one set after another after another.
    Only intention is required to open them. With intention, they slide apart so quickly and totally that they seem to melt away. I have come this way before, to observe parallel selves who made different choices and are leading different lives from my present self. I always find these excursions instructive. I may take comfort from the fact that I have avoided worse mistakes in my present life than in others. I may be able to borrow a gift, a lesson or a skill from a parallel self. I can remain an observer, or I can try to enter the mind and body of another self, as we often do in dreams of the night.
    Doors fly open. I consider joining the Robert who is lazing by a warm beach in the South Pacific after a long swim.  
    But wait. There are other beings around. They seem to exist in the spaces between parallel lives. How could I have failed to see them on previous visits to the Elevators of Time?
    They are in rich apparel, from different times. They could be a caravan of performers, yet each has the quality of a ringmaster, ready to preside over the entertainments. There is a huge bearded black man dressed like a grandee of the Renaissance, maybe for a production of Othello. There is a prince who has real ram's horns in his curling hair. There is a tall beauty in a bustier and glittering gauzy gown dusted with stars. There is a magician in a tall top hat and a tail coat. And others whose likenesses I fail to capture.
    Ringmasters. Yes, that is the right word for the way they preen themselves. I wonder if they are also producers, helping to shape dreams of many lives.
    I have often felt that a certain kind of dream is probably a dramatic production, arranged by an unseen set of scriptwriters, directors and special effects people. The dead are sometimes employed in making dream movies for the living.
    Those of us who are frequent fliers in the multiverse, embarking on conscious journeys into other realities are sometimes aware that roads we follow and environments we visit are products of imagination. This does not mean that they are anything less than we real. Indeed, they may be more real than much of our ordinary reality. Perhaps I shall try to interview the Ringmasters of Time's Circus.

- Report from a recent group journey I led to various locales in the House of Time.

Postscript

Now I am looking at an image of Hermes Crioforos, Hermes "Who Takes the Lamb". Hmm, I wonder whether the fellow with ram's horns in his curling hair has an ancient and interesting pedigree. 



Journal drawing (c) Robert Moss