Paul,

I have no problem with this whatsoever.  What a wonderful experience.  May
it be sweet in your memory.

Vicki

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ariel" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2004 11:43 AM
Subject: TRANSCENDANCE


> This message isn't probably going to make much sense to anyone.  Maybe I'm
> talking more to myself than anyone else, but just in case I just wanted to
> share it.
>
> Ever since I went into a coma or whatever for three days last year I've
been
> trying to find the words to describe what I experienced in what seemed to
be
> dreams.  And the word just came to me as I was watching one of my favorite
> movies, "Brainstorm" (with Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood, the last
> movie Natalie Wood made before drowning).  In this movie, a team of
> scientists discovers a way to put thoughts, sensations and emotions on a
> sort of videotape (a new technology at the time the movie was made) so
that
> whomever played back the tape with a headset could experience all of the
> physical, mental and emotional experiences the person experienced while
> recording the tape through their headset.  One of the team members dies of
a
> heart attack and as she is dying, she starts the machine in the lab and
> tapes her experience of death, so that this tape contains a recording of
> what it feels like to die, as well as her thoughts and experiences in
death.
> One of the other team members spends the rest of the movie trying to get
> that tape and experience it (with the physical pain of a heart attack
> removed) to see what death is like. When he finally plays it back, she
> raises out of her body, floats through spheres of past experiences, and
> bizarre scenes, finally floating out into the stars, past the
constellations
> to angel-like stars with wings flapping, then the man experiencing all of
> this gets sucked back into his body at the calling of his wife.
>
> Anyway, the movie made me think back to my dreams.  Most of them seem to
be
> a filtering of what was going on around me which seemed very real at the
> time but when I woke up I realize couldn't have happened.  One part was my
> MP friend wearing a Korean hat and telling me fortune cookie like sayings
> that were very wise yet the funniest things I'd ever heard and just had me
> laughing hysterically.  I still can't remember any of them, but realize
now
> that they were so funny because my own mind was telling me what I thought
> was funny.  Couldn't ask for a better audience than that.  Smile.
>
> But the core of the experience that I still think about from time to time,
> and frankly am nervous about thinking about too much or I'll re-experience
> it because it seemed so real, was of my soul being a bi-plane, you know
one
> of those old-fashioned airplaines with two sets of wings?  If you were
> sighted as a child you might remember cartoons of them with little faces
on
> the front.  It was like I was one of these planes out among the stars and
> parking in a sort of space station with many other little planes like
> myself.  Once inside, I saw there was a sort of mission board, a
chalkboard
> with my name on it (not the name I have in real life) as well as all of
the
> others.  And there was a time clock, the kind that you punch in and punch
> out of work with in the old days.  This is the most memorable part,
because
> the clock changed.  It went from an old fashioned clock and morphed into
> later and later models of clocks, and there were wooden numbers, and roman
> numerals which went into the clock and turned to sawdust.  Time was
passing,
> eons of time, time upon time, age upon age past all of the civilizations
of
> little planes that I'd known beyond generations and then beyond time
itself.
> Ages upon ages into agelessness.  Then I slowly drifted back into scenes
of
> the hospital (or what I thought was the hospital) on a trolley car and
> slowly came around to consciousness.  Never anything scary or painful,
> really.
>
> But now I realize the word I was looking for that I was experiencing
during
> these dreams, especially the one about the clock, is transcendance.  We've
> all probably heard of Transcendental Meditation, a program the Mahareshi
> Mahesh Yogi cooked up years ago to experience a fuller life, more energy,
> etc. by getting beyond the mind and body.  Just a way to market a form of
> Buddhism, really.  (TM is now trademarked and costs money to learn.)  But
> like all of the tricks of the enemy, this is a twisted form of the truth.
> Transcendant Life is just what JESUS promises us.  That's what He means by
> having Life and having it more abundantly.  But it's not the "Live stress
> free and lower your blood pressure" guru garbage.  This is Life beyond
time
> and space, and JESUS is the only way to it because of what He has done for
> us in overcoming death for us.  THat is why He is the Door, the portal,
the
> tunnel, the Way, the Truth and the Life.
>
> Well, as I said, I didn't expect to make sense here.  Smile.  Especially
> within the limits of an e-mail.  But I just wanted to say that JESUS
offers
> us transcendant life beyond all limits, all time, and all circumstances
you
> are experiencing now.  No matter how confusing Life gets, follow Him and
He
> will bring you through this life into True Life and Eternity.
>
> Paul
>