What is your dreamland?

I have not been to see you for some time for I have been trying an experiment. Since coming to this country, I have so often seen men and women lying in a state of subjective enjoyment that I have long wanted to spend a few days alone with my interior self in that same state. My reason for hesitating was that I feared to dream too long and thus to lose valuable time, both yours and mine. But when I expressed to the Teacher one day my desire to visit the greater dreamland lying within my own brain, also my fear that I might be slow in waking, he promised that he would come and wake me in exactly seven days of earthly time if I had not already aroused myself. For, he said, you can set an alarm clock in your own brain, which can always be relied upon. This I know from old experience, but I had feared that the psychic sleep might be deeper than the ordinary sleep and that the alarm clock might not go off at the appointed time.

Now most souls when they have been out some time fall into that state of reverie or dream, which I had so long desired to experience for myself.

Some souls awake at intervals and show an occasional interest in the things and people of the earth, but if the sleep is deep and the soul is willing or desirous to leave things of the earth behind, the subconscious state may last uninterruptedly for years—or even for centuries. But a soul that could stay asleep for centuries would probably be one that was living according to long rhythm—the normal rhythm of humanity.

So when I went into the deep sleep, I went into it with a spell upon myself not to remain too long.

Oh—it was wonderful that dream country in my own self! Theosophists would perhaps say that I had taken a rest in the bliss of devachan. 

No matter what one calls it. It was an experience worth remembering.

I closed my eyes and went in, deeper than thought where the restless waves of life are still and the soul is face-to-face with itself and with all the wonders of its own past. 

There is nothing, but loveliness in that sleep. If one can bring back the dreams, the sojourn there is an adventure beyond comparison.

I went in to enjoy, and I enjoyed. I found there the simulacrum of everyone whom I had ever loved. They smiled at me, and I understood the mystery of them, and why we had been drawn together. I refound too my old dreams of ambition and enjoyed the fruit of all my labour on earth.

It is a rosy world that inner world of the soul, and the heart’s desire is always found there.

No wonder that the strenuous life of earth is oftener than not a pain and a travail, for the dreamlife, which follows is so beautiful that the balance must be preserved.

Rest! On earth, you know not the meaning of the word.

I rested only seven days, but so refreshed was I that had I not other worlds to conquer, I should almost have had the courage to return to earth.

Do not neglect rest—you who still live the toilsome life in the sunshine.For every added hour of true rest, your working capacity is increased.

Have no fear. You are not wasting time when you lie down and dream. As I have said before, eternity is long. 

There is room for rest in the wayside inns, which dot the path, which the cycles tread. If you want to take a long and devachanic rest—why, take it. Take it even on earth if it seems desirable.

Do not be always grubbing—go out and play with the squirrels—or lie by the fire and dream with the household cat. The cat that enjoys the drowsy fireside also enjoys catching mice when the mood is on her. She cannot be always hunting, neither can you.

Just take a dip in devachan someday and see how refreshed you will be when you come out.

Perhaps I am misusing that word devachan, for I was never very deeply learned in the lore of Theosophy. I have even heard Nirvana described as a state of intense motion, so rapid that it seems motionless, like a spinning top or the wing of a hummingbird. 

But nirvana is not for all men—not yet.

I have hinted at the wonders of my seven days of blissful rest, but I have not described them. How can I? A great poet once declared that there was no thought or feeling, which could not be expressed in words. Perhaps he has changed his mind by this time after being out here some sixty years.

As I went to rest, I commanded my soul to bring back every dream.

Of course, I cannot say whether some may not have escaped any more than you can say on waking that you have or have not forgotten the deeper experiences of the night.

But when I came back into the normal life of this plane that is called Astral, I felt like an explorer who returns from a strange journey with wonder tales to tell. 

Only I did not tell them. To whom should I relate those dreams and visions? I would not be a bore even to disembodied associates.

I found in my own dreamland a fair, fair face.

No—I am not going to tell you about that—it is my little secret. Of course, I found many faces, but one was lovelier than all the others, and it was not the face of the Beautiful Being either. The Beautiful Being I meet when I am wide awake.

I did not encounter her as an actual presence in sleep, only the simulacrum of her. In the deeper dreamland, we see only what is in our brains. Things do not exist there, only the memories of things and the imagination of them.

Imagination creates in this world, as in yours—it actually moulds the tenuous substance, but in the greater dreamland, I do not think that we mould in substance. It is a world of light and shadow pictures too subtle to be described. Even before this experience, I had gone into the memories of my own past, but I had not revelled in them—had not indulged myself to the extent of conjuring with light and shade.

There are no words to describe it.

Can you describe the perfume of a rose? Can you tell how a kiss feels? Could you even describe the emotion of fear, so that one who had not felt it by former experience in this life or some other would know what you meant? No more can I describe the process of spiritual dreaming.

Revel to your heart’s content in fancy, in memory, while you are still in the body, and yet I think that you will have only the shadow of a shadow of what I experienced in those seven days—the recollection of a reflection of the real dream.

The reflection of a reflection! I like that phrase. It suggests a clear picture though not a direct impression. Try dreaming then even on earth and maybe you will get a reflection of a reflection of the pictured joys of the spiritual dreamland.