Beyond the Veil

Suddenly I’m standing on a barren shore, sheets of ice fanned out behind me, an ice-choked sea before me. I’ve learned not to ask myself where I am or even when I am. I just know that I’ve stepped out of my reality and into some transition space between my reality and that of, for want of a better term, my spirit or soul.
He or me or we is suddenly next to me, vague and translucent, like a projected image, a hologram. I’ve learned not to ask where we are, so I say, “What is this place; what does it mean?”
The answer, spoken aloud or maybe only in my head: “An ice age scene, unusual.”
“It seems deserted,” I say. “Is anyone around?”
“No other human life.”
And then I fall back on an old familiar question. “Is this before the age of man?”
There’s a slow shaking of the head. “That term, ‘before’ has no meaning in this situation.”
“Ah, yes,” I say. Just like the idea of some specific place. I can’t get used to thinking without the conventions of time and place. But, does this,” And I wave my arm in a semicircle, have any significance, any meaning?”
“Cold and barren,” he, me muses. “Could be that we have muted our curiosity about these sessions, perhaps have too much on our agenda want to turn away from these difficult explorations.”
“I couldn’t be too turned off. I am, after all here, and as you’ve said, it is a shared agreement.” In spite of my continuing discomfort, my difficulty with the strange concepts, I realized I’m drawn to these events.
These meetings do not normally happen to people. The veil between the material world and the spiritual — I suppose one can call it that – world rarely lifts, and when it does, well, you read a distorted account of it in religious texts or hear about it in the ravings of a lunatic. I don’t consider myself religious, and I hope I’m not a lunatic.
It all started maybe two years ago. I’d had some minor surgery and was taking strong pain medication. During recovery, I got the flu and a high temperature. The combination of the pills and fever made me rather delirious. Mostly senseless images rolled through my mind, but then suddenly I thought I heard a voice. It seemed to say. “The veil is thinner. A conversation could be possible.” It seemed a familiar voice, and it made me want to agree, so I said, actually thought, “Yes, I would love a conversation.”
And then the confusion and delirium of my sick bed was gone, replaced by a lush jungle, the air rich and so heavy it made me dizzy. Insects the size of crows flew just above my head, and worms ten feet long slithered in the mud. Beside me was that translucent figure, that vague image of a man about my size.
“What? Who are you? Where are we?”
The voice perhaps speaking out loud, perhaps only as thought, answered. “This is not your material world, so ‘where’ is a meaningless term. Who I am isn’t too clear either. I guess I am you, but you in a different state of being.”
A couple terms jumped out at me. “Not the material world, and you are me? Are you trying to say you’re some kind of a spirit, my spirit?”
“That would be one way of putting it.”
“So, are you saying I’m having a conversation with my soul? I don’t even believe in a soul.”
He turned toward me, even as a centipede the size of a Komodo Dragon rushed past us, giving me a start. “Believe or not believe. It seems beliefs have neither wings or legs. We’re only saying what we observe from this point of view, this state.”
This was sounding like double talk nonsense, and I was getting frustrated. “You’re being very ambiguous and deliberately obtuse.”
I could almost detect a smile in his glowing outline. “Not really. You see the material level, the material world, is composed of discrete thing and events in discrete moments of time, what you call space-time. On non-material levels, none of that applies.”
“I think you’re screwing with me, if you’re even real. I mean, look around. This looks like a scene out of the Carboniferous Era, which is obviously hundreds of millions of years in the past. So this is an illusion, perhaps an hallucination.”
“This is hard to address,” he said, slowly and deliberately. “If you are real, I must be, as we are the same. You exist in the material world on several levels, the physical, mental and emotional for example. Now, once you cross the barrier from the material to the nonmaterial, you also exist on several levels, which we won’t get into in this encounter. I think the term we use is too much information. If you have any interest, this conversation will continue at what you would call a different time.”
Figuring that I’m delirious, but finding this conversation hyper real, I couldn’t resist going along with it further. “So, I like to recap. What you are saying is that an individual exists at many levels, some in the material world, some in the, nonmaterial world, some sort of spiritual world?”
“Roughly put, but pretty much the case.”
“And you’re saying that you and I are the same person on different levels of existence?”
“Again a rough approximation.”
“Sounds like old fashion Cartesian dualism to me.”
“No, it’s much more complicated than that. We can explore that idea as we continue our conversation. However, you need to refocus on your material life, illness and recovery. Think on what we’ve said, and if your curiosity overwhelms your skepticism, we will continue our discussion.”