Not of this World

I’ve struggled for years. I fought, rebelled, wouldn’t let go. Finally, I remembered. “Be in this world but not of this world”. How did Yeshûa know even then? In the meantime I fought, tried to persuade, point out that the reality we take as real—isn’t. It just isn’t real.

Never mind that we are essentially empty space.

If one lives, say, in England, and visits France, Spain, Italy etc, for a short while, one shall be ‘in’ those countries by not ‘of’ those countries. One shall be a passerby. I thought I was convincing. My friends called it mumbo-jumbo.

And then I had a dream.

Each day, around five in the afternoon, I lie down in my bedroom for a moment of quiet. I relax my body using self-induced hypnosis, then wait to see what, if anything might happen. Sometimes I try to induce some effects, but, well, more often then not, I fall asleep for about 10 to 15 minutes. Sometimes I dream.

This time I dreamed, with a difference.

I dreamed that I am lying down on my deckchair at my tiny terrace outside. Suddenly, without any warning, I was floating some 10 feet above the deckchair. Nice dream, thought. I looked over my shoulder and saw the land descending gently towards a lustrous expanse of water. In spite of its mirror surface, I knew it was flowing languidly from left to right. The next instant I was suspended the same 10 feet over its surface.

“Fantastic!” I thought. “I wander how it feels…”

Even as the thought was formulating in my mind, I found myself under its surface, floating, hardly feeling the caress of the tepid water, watching in utter amazement the individual grains of sand at the bottom. Towards the shore, multi-hued pebbles drew my attention. Then I became aware of the sunrays splitting its light into an iridescent kaleidoscope of colours caressing the liquid crystal around me.

It was then that I became aware that people like me couldn’t breathe under the water. The next instant I was hovering the same 10 feet over the deckchair, on my terrace.

“If I fall down from this height, I’m bound to break something”, I mused.

Even as a touch of fear set in, I opened my eyes to see the familiar ceiling and wall of my bedroom. I was lying, peacefully, on my bed.

In this world but not of this world…

Which was real, I wondered. Which is where I have my real being, and which is just a transient instant on my eternal journey. In my heart I knew the answer.

I learned another thing. I learned that heaven is not for the fearful. It is designed for the brave at heart. This fact is, perhaps, best exemplified by the courage of the two protagonists in my forthcoming historical novel Peter and Paul. They, too, searched for the true reality. The book tells you how they found it.