As I reflect upon the lines by Milton ( thanks for the full quotation, Ed!) and tune into the Gnostic Voice of the Fallen Angel, I feel the forces that we are unleashing and wonder if any of the expenditure of energy I make, or that any of us makes, in order to make sense of our current civilization in crisis, is at all worth it. Let it die.
Milton’s poem came out of the great clash of Cromwell and the Crown, a tremendous upheaval, in which both men lost their heads. After Charles was executed and the Restoration happened, Cromwell’s body was exhumed and his head stuck on a pike and put upon the Tower of London. Can a man’s body die twice? It is a great symbolic gesture, made by the State that we can find you and crush you. And Milton puts all of this sound and fury into verse. The Poetry is grand but the History is so ugly.
With all of these doubts and dilemmas, before bed, reflecting upon the futility of it all, I relax and do my dream yoga practice and re-enter the liminal zone. I reenter a place I know well and want to return to as Satan recalls from the bowels of hell, the joys of heaven. Here is a report from the liminal zones.
I do my yoga nidra and lift out of the physical into a vaster space and I make contact with a voice. It is a male voice and it is located above and yet is close and far at the same time. There is no visual but a strong sense of the interiors are shared, a kind of music without sound.
I say," So there is life after death."
And he says, " Yes there is. We are in the after-death state but you are still in the physical body." He telepathically conveys the where and the how of his last death( it happened in Japan) and I get a sense that he is waiting for an opportune moment to re-enter the physical world and I find I have no questions to ask for I have come to the end of questions and answers. It is enough just to commune with this person in a vast void that is full of other shimmering intelligences.
Then I have beautiful visions with Beatrice, my dear old lady, that passed away last Spring. We are in a beautiful landscape and there is a house and a village nearby and we are together in a smooth, seamless way. She is communicative and is touchingly sweet and full of great dignity. She talks little but what she says is clear. We find an old abandoned vehicle in the woods and climb into it and take a nap. Next to me, her body on my left sided we nap, her head on my shoulder. After the rest we continue to walk and there are moments when we silently commune. I feel the soft and gentle love pouring through my body touch her body. And I sense a clear resonance and I know that this silent flow of goodness between us, is enough. I have nothing else to give, and nothing else to receive.
There are other places to explore in this landscape and I have a dollar and with that I am told that we can go to the village on top of a steep hill and buy anything we want. This would please Beatrice, as she delights in trinkets and costume jewelry, and so I look for a passage so that together we can climb the high hill. The light is subtle and the landscape is green and the atmosphere serene and I take the old lady, now a shimmering Goddess by the hand. Total bliss.
I could never make this stuff up. This is not my imagination for my imagination is just not good enough. No this is the Real World.
I can wake up in my physical bed and remember what happened. Memory moves backwards and the Future( s) move forwards and it all is happening at the same time. This is the Marriage of Heaven and Hell as Beatrice returns in a vision once again, like Alcestis from the Grave…