Dreams are of many orders.
Some are purely the invention of the human brain.
They may
be little more than the thoughts of the day worked
over and redigested by the brain at night or they may
be pure fiction similar to the stories children
tell themselves for amusement.
The very materialistic have dreams of these two orders.
Most have some of these, but many enter the Astral plane
in what they think are dreams. Very few enter
the spirit plane.
Experiences on the spirit plane
seem to remain attached to the spirit
and are more vivid than those of the Astral Plane, which—being more akin to Earth life—become distorted as the astral
reunites with the physical.
It is as if the physical brain
attempted to explain astral phenomena by physical laws
and failed, but recognised the
hopelessness of trying to do so with the spiritual.
Far more people get on to the astral planes in their sleep.
They come wandering along its fringe often half-dazed
and as if their connection with their bodies
had rendered them only partly conscious of the astral world in which
they moved.
The astral body is often unable to leave
the physical body owing to the gross and
material life that such people live, and even
when it can get out of the physical, it cannot—or dare not—go any
distance from it.
This is a land of change—
A halfway house between the physical and the spiritual plane.
It seems unreal and changing to denizens of either plane.
The elements which
form it are ever-changing and often assume
forms in consonance with the wills of those who pass
through them even when they are sleepers dreaming.
Eternal form goes to the spirit plane;
Form here is not stable except where it is the living astral form.
Elemental forms have no stable form of their own.
Here come a few of the visitors from earth to us.
I
noticed that large bands of spirits were floating toward us.
Sometimes, a real denizen of the astral plane would float across
this stream of dreamers.
One noticeable difference between them
was that those still living on earth trailed away
behind them with a thread of light.
These threads seemed able to pass through any other cord without severing it.
Some had their eyes wide open and seemed to be hunting for someone.
A few
seemed to be idly wandering through a strange landscape, stopping
sometimes to gaze at it.
Now, look at the dreams these people are dreaming of and the friends they are seeking.
I
noticed a woman.
A thought visualisation of a little child
seemed to float away from her.
She kept
following, crying bitterly.
Suddenly, the real astral form of the child
came running up and the thought-child
was shattered instantly.
The mother gave a glad cry, flung out her arms towards
the astral child and took it in her arms.
She sat down,
hugged the child and talked to it just as she would
have done on earth.
The child appeared to be about
six years old.
I saw a man about thirty who evidently expected to find someone.
In a few moments, he was met by a young woman.
Who are these? I asked. I can see that they are both alive on earth.
The man is the girl’s twin soul.
He has not yet met her on earth.
I
saw a man and woman approach each other with delight, but floating near the woman was a thought-form of an
elderly man.
I knew that this was the woman’s husband whom
she had married, while the younger man with whom she was now speaking
was the man she really loved.
I
heard an agonised shriek and saw a man pursued by another
who had a knife in his hand.
The hunted man kept looking
over his shoulder.
His face was livid and his whole
attitude betokened abject fear.
What does this mean?
The
dark man considers he has been done a great wrong
by the fair man, and when they meet on the astral plane,
he acts as he would like to act on earth.
Will they remember this experience when they awake on earth?
I think each will retain some memory, but it will be a distorted one.
Does place exist on the astral plane in the same way as it does on earth?
We can rush from one part of the earth to another in [less than] no time.
Nor do the astral landscapes
exactly correspond to landscapes on earth
for there are many layers of astral landscape, for
example, the site of London has not
only held prehistoric forest, but has been covered by the ocean itself.
To most astrals still living on earth, the change back from the astral to physical conditions seems like falling asleep.
A large number of people come night after night to the astral plane.
Some have a regular and continuous
life here, just as they have on
earth, only when they awake, they
do not remember, and it is seldom that a very clear recollection of either
state is carried into the other.
Some astrals do not realise they are dead.
Most keep some memory of their earth life and
come here with fixed recollections of some
earth friend whom they desire to find.
Some remember distorted fragments of their experiences here.
There are also some who seldom, if ever, come here until death.
They are so materialistic, for
example, gross feeders and heavy
drinkers who chain their astral bodies to their physical, that the astral
cannot escape from the physical.
