Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on: and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
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Every so often, during the twilight hours, a certain image is presented to the dreamer that reverberates into their waking hours. A fantasy is conjured that strikes so deeply at the bedrock of the soul that it forever alters the way one conducts their life.
“A vision I had in my sleep last night. As distinguished from a dream which is mere sorting and cataloging of the day's events by the subconscious. This was a vision – fresh and clear as a mountain stream – the mind revealing itself to itself.”
So says Major Briggs to his son in David Lynch’s surreal television odyssey Twin Peaks.
I have had dreams so potent that they managed to transform my very ambitions and anxieties. As a child, I never feared snakes. And yet, one evening a nightmare possessed me, so horrid and grotesque, that I have feared the very thought of serpents ever since. How a simple midnight flight can have such a powerful effect on the psyche is puzzling to me. But there was a different dream, so ghastly in its contents, that the memory of it still occupies my thoughts on a weekly basis. A memory so awful, and yet so sublime, that it assisted in completely changing the course of my life. Today I will recount it for you.
It occurred around four years ago. Before I had even considered turning back to faith, so any standard theory of the subconscious cannot account for why my mind revealed such a horror to me.
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The dream began with me waking. All truly transcendent visions tend to start in such a manner.
I found myself in my childhood home, in the bed I was raised in. As I rose from the covers I noticed something imprinted upon my leg. Upon my calf and thigh were hundreds of tiny hand prints, each with an inhuman quantity of fingers. The handprints were an ethereal shade of blue, a shade resembling the woad dye that adorned the painted Picts of old. A sense of dread gutted my bowels, my fists clenched, my skin went clammy. I experienced a distinct sensation of violation. That some otherworldly host of creatures had marked me as I slept.
I went off to the living room. My family was circled around a pile of board games. I stood looking at them. It was then it happened. I heard the cry of Trumpets. Like a gale of wind, a tempest of sound, reverberating throughout the house, shattering my soul. An immediacy, a fear, I fell to my knees. I looked outside the window as it shattered and I saw movement in the night sky. The word “fear” does not do the sensation justice. I turned to my father and asked what was happening. With hollow eyes, he told me. “Time is up. The final destination approaches. The final Judgement.”
I felt the universe begin to end. And I knew that I was damned.
I got down on my knees and prayed, “Just give me more time God, I never believed, but please, please I will do anything, devote my life to you, please don’t end it now.” And upon my pupils flickered unimaginable horror.
And then I woke up.
For several minutes I sat cloaked in sweat, trying to make sense of what I had just experienced. Such a fear was so utterly alien to me. In fact, never in my life had such a theological anxiety manifested in my mind. For a brief moment, I began to question my entire life.
I quickly shed all thoughts of the event. I rationalized it away. It would be another year or two after the nightmare that I would begin to consciously reflect upon it, but the vision undoubtedly changed something in my soul. And the more I think about it, the more sure I become that it was this vision that truly began my journey back to the Church.
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Dreams have been associated with the supernatural since time immemorial. Nocturnal visions have been the domain of omens and spirits in all superstitious societies with a flair for divination. For this reason, many protestant sects of Christianity have treated dreams with suspicion, associating them with the pagan. But throughout the history of Christianity, dreams have served as providential nudges toward Christ.