Introducing Bardo Robert: If the Many Worlds hypothesis in physics is correct - and our universe is constantly splitting into countless parallel versions - then we have many alternate lives in which we are already dead in this world. For quite a few years I have been looking on on one of my possible alternate selves who has established a comfortable residence in the afterlife. Here's a sample of what I learn and test with him. I now call him Bardo Robert. I give some thought to the pas de deux we may be performing. When I am dead like him, is he alive as me?
For Democritus, the air is full of images. Everything sends
out a film of itself. These images, or eidola, enter human bodies
through the pores of the skin, generating dreams and visions and shaping
perceptions of the world. The idea continues to prosper over centuries.
In Latin, as in Lucretius, the Greek eidola become
simulacra. In his important treatise De insomniis (On
Dreams), composed around 405, Synesius says that we engage with the realm
of living images in our phantastikon pneuma, a term the scholars
have a hard time translating. Pneuma, for the bishop of dreams, is “the first
body of soul”, one of several vehicles of soul/spirit alive in a human and
active after death. Phantastikon means “of the imagination”
(for which the Greek word is phantasia, not to be confused with
fantasy in a trivial sense). Hence we might think of the imaginal spirit, or
imagining spirit. When I was using only the old Augustine FitzGerald
translation of Synesius [1], I did not fully appreciate the importance of this
term – and the operations of the vehicle of consciousness and energy it
describes. His language is explored in depth in the excellent academic
commentaries that accompany a new bilingual edition of De insomniis with
translation by Donald E. Russell.[2]
Back to the eidola and the realm of living
images. In modern language, we might say that we live among shifting
holograms, emanated by everything around us and also from within us.
I know a way of projecting a dream reality from within and
floating within it, inside a 360-degree bubble that can expand until it is as
big as a world. Truly, work for an imagining spirit.
I have an excellent teacher. He is an alternate Robert who has
been at home on the Other Side for years of tick-tock time. I
first became aware of him in a lucid dream in which I flew to an amazing
scholar-city I sometimes call the School of Soul. The excursion began, like
many of my adventures in lucid dreaming, with lying flat on my back in bed and allowing
myself to drift in a state of relaxed attention or attentive relaxation. Then I
formulated my intention for destination dream travel: I want to visit the
School of Soul and learn more about the advanced courses on offer.
As I approached the great scholar city with its many towers
and spires, I was nudged by a knowing inner voice: Higher. I soared up
to the roof terrace of an apartment building dozens of stories high. I felt entirely at
home here. I swam in an infinity pool and explored a magnificent private
library. I found it contained books by me that I have not written and may never
publish on Earth. This confirmed the identity of the occupant of this penthouse
in another world.
He did not seem to be at home that
day – unless, of course, he was me. Was I already dead, and dreaming of a
continuing life on Earth? Had I slipped into a life on the Other Side? If so,
had my double on the Other Side taken over my body on Earth? Or was I checking out
a parallel life option for size and fit?
Returning to my physical body left many questions unanswered. I was happy to have discovered a
possible afterlife residence that I found highly attractive. The silence and
neatness of the place were striking. So was its solitary nature. There was no
sign of other people, even though the building could accommodate many hundreds,
and the city millions.
Maybe, on a return visit, I could
sit down with the Robert who is at home in the afterlife and learn from him in
direct conversation. I managed this a few times. He received me cordially,
though I sometimes had the impression that I was intruding on his main
activity, which I am pretty sure is similar to my own, to judge from all the
books and research materials laid out on a vast desk far neater than any I have
used.
After a few visits. I realized that I had seen only part of his
apartment. I had never visited his bedroom. Does he even have one? After
all, he presumably has no need of sleep in this reality. He obliged me by
showing me a bed in a pleasant room, with French doors opening onto a balcony with
flowering vines. So what goes on here?
He invited me to lie down and dream as he does. I found that
thoughts and images from inside me instantly took form around me, quickly
composing a complete hologram that seemed entirely real, vibrantly alive. I floated in the waters of a wonderful sea cave, enjoying the scene with
all the senses of my subtle body. I cruised in the pulsing night life of a great city. I sat in the royal box at an opera and took flowers to the leading soprano. I watched movies on eight screens in an octagonal viewing room, without confusion, then stepped through a screen into a director's chair. Mere fantasy, or reality creation? Either way, great fun.
I am not uneasy about my double in the afterlife. I am delighted to think he has created a comfortable pied-à-terre in the next world that I might occupy, or at least a showroom where I can select the design for my own version.
I was about to call him Dead Robert, but he won't stand for that. He would like me to call him Ever-Living Robert but that seems too grand. I'll call him Bardo Robert, aka imagining spirit, for now.
Will Bardo Robert and I become one when I leave Earth? Step up to non-duality, and no doubt we find we are already one. A guide from a
higher realm who proved to be no stranger once told me: We are one, but may talk
as two. Is that what Bardo Robert and I have been doing?
Right now, it feels more like a pas de deux, a soul duet. Watch the footwork. When I am dead like him, he is
alive as me.
1. Augustine FitzGerald (ed) The Essays and
Hymns of Synesius of Cyrene. 2 vols.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930)
2. Donald A. Russell and Heinz-Günther
Nesselrath, On Prophecy, Dreams and Human Imagination: Synesius, De
insommniis (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. 2014)
Drawing: "Traveler" by Robert Moss
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