Death Dreams
You’d think a suicidal depressive would have a lot of death dreams, but no, at least for me they’re few and far between. I’m one of those people who doesn’t wake up when they hit the ground, however high the fall. I suppose it’s a coping mechanism of some sort, if you want it too much you won’t get it because if you do, you might find a way to turn dreams into reality.
No, death is off the menu as far as my dreams go, but I do talk a lot about it with the dead. I even ask how dead people I knew are doing, but rarely ever hear any answers. I have more luck seeing dead relatives when I’m awake than asleep. It seems that on the other side there’s not much of a grapevine, no internet for the non-corporeal. All I ever meet in my sleep are strangers, or strangers pretending to be people I know. The Jinn, for instance, I’ve mentioned them before, dark, shadowy figures with a talent for impersonation, who’ll lead you up the garden path and back again.
They can be pretty convincing, as long as you don’t throw them with existential questions on the meaning of life. I’m sure they know something, it can’t all be cold reading, for a start they won’t even tell me what I want to hear, or maybe that’s part of the illusion. To appear more real, to pass oneself off as a human, they veer towards the negative and keep the conversation as general as possible. Yet even when I’ve managed to unmask a Jinn, I invariably pity their situation. I’ve asked why they do what they do, and say it’s nothing personal, but they have to feed somehow.
The Jinn usually give me a wide berth these days. Apparently, I’m far too bitter for their tastes. They prefer the gullible souls who believe in the nature of reality that they barely grasped at school. That’s the thing about death. You have all the answers but no compulsion to ask any questions. For many, it’s an unbearable situation, and a majority of human souls can’t wait to get back in the queue and take another ride.
It’s the people like me that have made their most profound enquiries during their stay on Earth that have the least to say in the afterlife. The dead who know too well the delicate balance of the human mind and its precarious state of sanity. They daren’t tell too many tales, should somebody with hope and blind faith in the future learns their ultimate fate. I, on the other hand, have no qualms about such things, I’m more than glad to hear the dead speculate on my untimely end. I’ve had a few conversations of this nature in my time. In those deepest of death dreams, where the narrative comes to an abrupt stop, one comes face-to-face with the prospect of one’s own mortality.
Circumstances change, people’s lives take unexpected turns, and so many little things can screw around with the forecasts. Early on in life, I’d be offered all kinds of scenarios, some rather exotic, whilst others are more mundane. It seems that despite their enthusiasm, those who have taken a punt have so far got it wrong because here I am, still alive, still droning on.
One wise old soul who used to visit me, who I suspect might’ve been a dead friend or relative from many lifetimes back, told me that the reason people like me can never know when they will die, is because we’re obsessives, we’d do nothing but count the days until we can leave. They make a good point; I’d go even further. If I knew I’d fall from a great height, I might spend far more time walking around Beachy Head. If it was choking, nuts should do the trick, and if it were my liver, I’d dive headlong into alcoholism.
But the most interesting conversation I’ve had recently, deep in sleep and engrossed by the dead, was the notion that I might be scared, that I’ve tried several times to do myself in, but now I just don’t have it in me. I’ve explained on several occasions that there’s a little more to it than that. I’m not a religious man, far from it, but I do have my own innate knowledge and understanding of realms beyond this one. It’s a lot of grief, for you and your loved ones, and most suicides spend years wandering around confused and bewildered. The older you get, the less troublesome death becomes, but try to game the system, don’t outright cheat. You’ll realise when you’re dead, precisely what I mean.
What I have learned is that not all are equal in life nor death, for there are beings, of a sort, who have existed in the same form at the very limits of our world, who possess far more knowledge than most would care to know. They have seen the beginning and the end of everything and then witnessed it all start up again. They have no body to kill, and they cannot cease to be, for they cannot destroy themselves,
These characters are far and few between, and should you meet one in your dreams, then you are surely in for a treat. Sit with the giants, the elders of time, the beings who were born outside of life, and eventually you will learn a thing or two. You may even be pleasantly surprised by what they say. They’ll tell you many things about life and death, darkness and light, but if you’re lucky they’ll give you a clue to the nature of existence upon the Earth.
Imagine if individually, each of us, no matter the lifeforms or species, represented a single thought in a gigantic mind. Now imagine the behaviour of such a creature that would possess thoughts like ours, and you’ll find that if there is a God, then they have turned insane. They are persistently torn apart by so many conflicting views, that they’ll do anything to find a cure. Right here and now, millions of humans lead by social engineers and billionaire-funded think tanks, are desperately trying to converge and behave as one mind, one body, one soul.
The death of individuality marks the rise of the compromise, the reign of the colluder, the collision of thought and matter into the holy grey sea of conformity. Soon there will be a new creature here, not a god as such but a giant of such vast proportions. No survivors can remain to witness its existence, for its appearance is that of billions of humans. People who look to their phones for sage advice, to steer their opinions, to help their actions coincide with the perfunctory motions of the monstrous body of the masses.
These cells, the living, breathing, atoms forming into one vast creature, are already dead inside. Yet they serve a higher purpose, to resurrect a lie, one that has not roamed this world since the fall of Babylon. They are legion, yet they have no name, for they only exist in the minds of the insane. The broken souls who slumber at night, the bodies that lay strewn across the field of dreams. The people who call themselves ‘woke’ yet remain asleep all the time. These are the foot-soldiers of the army of the blind, leading each other into the final oblivion. Here’s where it gets tricky, for many of them believe their goal to be a just reward. They will co-exist in perpetual harmony, conquer death and live forever, for here on Earth is where they will envision a new nirvana.
Good luck to them, I say, they’re welcome to it, and when the gates shut behind the few of us who have escaped, we can turn our backs on this prison forever. When I am dead, I don’t want to hear any complaints from the eternal living. They made their bed, and now they can lie in it, no more death, no more sleep, no more dreams, no more hope, all in agreement, total consensus. For me, that is hell, but who am I to judge. I never was a ‘people person’. I prefer landscape to portrait, animal spirit to human endeavour. I don’t belong here living on the never-never.
I wish you well, should you decide that this is your grand adventure, but remember that greater is not necessarily better, and less is sometimes more. An absolute and total agreement can become tiring, and even oppressive, if rules turn to laws, even love can make tyrants of us all. Binding others with one’s singular belief might just come back to haunt you. In the distant future, there’ll be a day when you might not agree with the tacit consensus of a subconscious majority. No matter how ridiculous the argument, or nonsensical the solution, if you can no longer freely ask and answer your own mind, then you no longer possess your own destiny.
It may seem far-fetched, but I’ve witnessed it before, many lifetimes ago. When this place was almost a paradise, even then I can recall gathering numbers, forming collectives and initiatives of the malcontent. The desperate actions of the dispossessed, eager to topple some invisible enemy, which it turns out was inside us all the time. The control freak that we created, the fire and brimstone God of discipline, the righteous reign of abstraction over nature that will lead us down the same path once again.
Go play, go fight, go tear down all of history, for when you die you will see that time doesn’t follow a straight line. All times and places exist in the same spaces, for you’re living in a second-hand body. This world a graveyard of dead ideas and broken truces, what’s one more between old friends, one more death amongst millions? Have fun while you can, but try not to reproach the actions of others, for without them you may find that none of this can exist. It’s all Yin and Yang, darkness and light, without polarity there is no relativity, without friction no fire.
Heaven may be colder than you think, less loving than you desire, living in a world where all fear the consequences of showing true feelings for the sake of higher principles. It’s a shame; I used to love this world, long before the human race was shattered into billions of pieces of flotsam and jetsam, connected by light and fed lies every day. It’s sad but true, our best days are behind us, and when I die, of whatever cause I’d chosen before I arrived here, I won’t visit human dreams, I won’t meddle. This is your world now, your civilisation, your cradle.
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