That all makes sense to me, Paul, so I must be as crazy as you are.  What an
unusual experience.  Eternity is reality but it looks as if you got an
inside look at it in advance.  Pretty cool.

Phil.

----- 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
>