Seeing

George Gillespie

Description

After years of lucid dreaming, the author spontaneously experiences a series of religious encounters with intense light which bring an awareness of the presence of God. He describes a number of these encounters in detail. The greater part of the book then presents an analysis of these experiences. Perhaps the most unique part of the analysis, based on the author's study of his hypnopompic lattice imagery, is the description of how the internal visual image is constructed and seen three-dimensionally. In fact, the visual image is shown to be identified with the part of oneself that sees the image. Every part of the visual field is a nonduality of seer and seen. Finally he analyzes the imagery of dreams (out of which the experiences of light arise), light (as visual image and as spiritual event), and the awareness of the presence of God. His religious experiences of light are shown not to be dreams, but to lie, in a sense, beyond dream imagery and dreaming.

Sujets

• Christian mysticism

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 14 novembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781788360210
• Langue: English

Extrait

SEEING
Beyond Dreaming to Religious Experiences of Light
George Gillespie


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First published in 2019 by
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Copyright © 2019 George Gillespie
The right of George Gillespie to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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The views and opinions expressed herein belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Imprint Academic or Andrews UK Limited.




To Charlotte, who encouraged me, spoiled me, and made it possible for me to do this work.



Preface
I grew up trying to follow Jesus and to love God and neighbor. I knew next to nothing about mysticism, and as far as I remember, even in seminary, Berkeley Baptist Divinity School (now the American Baptist Seminary of the West), knowing the mystics was not a part of the curriculum. Technically, somehow I became what they call a “mystic,” I think it is fair to say, but I’m actually hesitant to say that. I remember reading that Robert Frost was always hesitant to call himself a poet. He felt that “poet” was a complimentary word to call someone, and it was up to someone else to call you that. That is how I really feel about the word “mystic.”
In preparation for the unexpected experiences that I think of as mystical, I had no teacher, guru, or spiritual director. I was in no monastic tradition. I was (and am still) a Baptist. I had no theories about mystical experience, and knew closely only the examples from the Bible – the stories of Saul on the road to Damascus, of John being in the spirit on the Lord’s day, Jacob and his dream of the ladder to heaven, the visions of the prophets, and the transfiguration of Jesus seen by a few disciples. When things began to happen to me, I was on my own.
After rewriting this story again and again – after trying to be clearer and clearer in expressing myself – more clear than it seems possible to be – this small book is the testimony that I end up with. I thank God that I have reached an old age and have been able to endlessly rewrite. But I must stop sometime.
Chapters I and II present the bare bones of the narrative, if I can call it that. Chapter I tells the beginnings of my lucid dreaming (knowing that I am dreaming while still dreaming) and then the religious experiences of God in the fullness of light. Chapter II describes a point in which a “near-death” experience becomes my last encounter with the fullness of light.
Chapter III tells about many later experiences of hypnopompic lattice imagery, in which I was able to study the imagery and learn how the lattice image, and thus visual imagery in general, is constructed internally, seen, and scanned. I’ve discovered also how, with my perceptual mindset, I see the image three-dimensionally. Chapter III was not easy to write and it is, I have heard, not easy to understand the concepts that I hope to describe. Please do not get stuck trying to get through Chapter III. If need be, skip it and go on to Chapter IV. You can go back to Chapter III later. I wish to keep Chapter III there because it helps to explain the experiences of the fullness of light, which I go on to analyze after that.
Chapters IV, V, and VI then finish the study of the fullness of light. Chapter IV covers dreaming, for the light experience grows out of the context of dreams, even though the light itself is not a dream image. Dreamed body imagery may continue for some time into the experience of God in the light. In Chapter V, we study light itself, which has a special place in this story, and in Chapter VI we study what I mean when I talk about the presence of God.
I don’t know why I have been blessed with lucid dreams, the experiences of the fullness of light, and then later lattice hypnopompic imagery, along with a lot of other forms of visual imagery that do not fit into this story. However, I feel responsible for telling what I have learned from all this, and I hope that I have been able to make somewhat clear all the difficult parts.
My thanks to Fred Smith, David Scott, Scott Sparrow, and Charlotte Gillespie for reading earlier versions of this manuscript and making helpful comments. I want to especially thank Dr. Harry T. Hunt, who often offered advice, encouragement, and serious challenges throughout the writing of this work and many previous writings. I feel that I have been able to make major improvements in concepts and wording during these years due to his responses to what I showed him. We did not get to see each other much, but what he said to me was important. Thank you, Harry.



I: Sleep
1. Amazing Grace
I dreamed I was back in India looking for something. I came to the door of a room. This was the place I was looking for. As I went in, I faced a wall, which I knew to be part of a large cube reaching from floor to ceiling. The cube was part of the construction of the building. I had to walk around it to get to the inner room. The passageway around was fairly dark. The situation seemed odd and I realized I was dreaming. I walked around the left side of the cube, past corrugated iron roofing sheets (as commonly used in India), which were stored there, and piles of sawdust, and came to the inner room.
I found in the inner room a group of poor Christian laborers from the tea plantations. They were people that I was familiar with from years of work in Assam, in the northeast corner of India, where many Christians in the Brahmaputra Valley pick tea leaves for a living. We were glad to see each other. I still knew I was dreaming and felt, therefore, that I should do something. I suggested that we sing “Amazing Grace.” We all then slowly and heartily sang the hymn in English, while I directed the singing with my hand. I knew it didn’t matter how well I directed, since this was a dream.
We began to sing, “Amazing grace – how sweet the sound – that saved a wretch like me.” I had no trouble remembering the words of the first verse, which is all we sang. I watched to see how well the movement of the mouths of the people was coordinated with the sounds of the words (this being a dream). Their mouths moved somewhat with the music, but not precisely. I saw that Charlotte, my wife, was also singing next to me. We sang on loudly and grandly, “I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.” The experience was intensely devotional.
When the verse was over, I tried to think of what to do next. I considered leading the group in the Lord’s Prayer, but thought it might take too long, and I would probably wake up before we finished. As I thought about what to do, I saw that a light was shining high in front of me like a brilliant sun. I recognized this kind of light from previous experiences. Then, while the sun itself remained in view, intense light spread throughout the entire visual field. All other visual imagery disappeared. I was aware that God was present and began shouting, “God is love.” My devotion was spontaneous, joyful, and profound. Barely had I called out “God is love” a couple of times, I decided to think the phrase calmly to myself instead. While I then silently repeated within myself “God is love” over and over, I felt myself gradually rise up into the air. The light surrounding me remained intense, and I worshiped in this way for some time before I woke up.
The experience of knowing I am dreaming is commonly called “lucid dreaming.” I had been having lucid dreams off and on frequently for about seven years at the time of this experience. However, experiences of the presence of God in light were a more recent development and uncommon for me. This one came to me July 18, 1982, while I was living in Moorestown, New Jersey. This was my fourth experience of what I came to call “the fullness of light.” When I woke up and reflected on what had happened, I thought of the experience, as I usually did at that time, not as a truly mystical experience, although I knew it was like one, but as the concluding part of the dream.
Many unusual things have happened in my lucid dreams, and I was used to looking at my dreams analytically after I woke up. Perhaps if I had had no previous experience with lucid dreams and had simply settled into prayer while awake, and, in the midst of prayer, the light had suddenly overwhelmed me and I came to feel the presence of God, I would have accepted immediately that the experience was self-evident – that it was the kind of spiritual event that people call “mystical.” But the light did not come while I was awake or during prayer. During the experience, I believed that I was in the presence of God. After I woke up, I believed, as usual, that I had dreamed it, because I had been asleep.
In time I came to struggle between my waking rational view that such experiences of mine were simply dreamed and my less rational wish to acknowledge my unquestioning acceptance of the experiences while they were happening as authentically knowing the presence of God. In time, I began to see evidence that the image of light during the fullness is