And Now: A Dream!

The Atheist Experience 24.34

Posted Aug 27, 2020

 

I had a Dream…

Therefore; the Supernatural is real.

 

Caller to the show insists that the dream (retold below) is evidence of the supernatural.

 

“The Dream started off; I appeared on this earth – which the Bible says is perishable.

I appeared on this earth and I started turning to my side and I made a 360 turn.

When I made my way back to where I started, I appeared in a very beautiful place. There were a bunch of giant trees.

(Now, this is this dream. I don’t think of my dreams as something greater than ‘just a dream’…. But…

I ran when I arrived to this new place. I ran directly in a straight… line… And on my left there was a trench. And across that trench, it was blurry. I could not see what was there.

So, I ran in a straight line which was parallel with this trench. (It was a very deep trench.) And when I turned back round to where I started, I saw a man. At my left. Who had a… A man dressed in a black suit. And he had (a) very specific face, I was like focused in on his face… for a brief few seconds.

Then there was a black horse in front of him. Now, this man…um… and the horse were matched in colors; they had black colors.

He ducked down and he pointed his finger up in the air and he started spinning his hand in a circle. As he spun his hand in a circle, the horse began to follow the movements of his hand and obey his every little tricks that he would do… Then…uh… when the man stood up, the horse stood up and kept spinning as the man kept signaling.

And when the man ducked back down, the horse kept spinning while being ducked down close to the ground.

When the man stuck his palm out, the horse stopped. 

Now… this… this needs to be heard in entirely and in detail for you to understand why I find it compelling.”

 

[Interruption by Host]

 

“The… When I saw what I was looking at, something caught my eye.

Deep in the forest of these trees, there was a white horse running in the distance from the left to the right and he kept… he was running very fast. And I was like “Where is this horse going; what is this horse doing?” He stopped. The horse ran to my right and stopped exactly where I appeared in that place. Then he ran directly towards me and I stuck my hand out and he stopped.”

 

[Host interrupts]

 

Dreamer: “The dream needs to speak for itself…”

 

Host: “No, it doesn’t.” (terminates call)

 

Of course, it’s not only the Faithful in Christianity who have ‘personal revelation’. In Hinduism, the feeling that one has encountered the ‘true self’ is expressed in the idea that ātman (the individual self) and Brahman (the cosmic self: literally, the breath [brah] of the universe) are one and the same. This should be considered as tantamount to a Christian Believer being filled with the ‘Holy Spirit’.

 

Am I asserting that no such thing as the supernatural exists? No. I’m not. (I am but I’m not willing to argue that point here…) Such ‘experiences’ might well be rooted in the supernatural, however unlikely. I only assert that such visions, hallucinations or ‘revelations’ are experienced when one is under the influence of mind-altering chemicals as well as under emotional duress and physical stress willingly undergone by the ascetics and many saints. The studies at Johns-Hopkins referenced above provide a step to understanding and quantifying experiences such as this.

 

Pardon if I have rambled on a bit long on this. In part, it is to rationalize and understand my own psychedelic experiences but it is also, more importantly, to address the fervency with which ‘Believers’ place value in their ‘personal revelations’. As stated before, ‘Believers’ invariably fall back on citing their revelations (godly epiphanies) when justifying their adherence to their Faith; faith based on a vague, warm-and-cuddly, totally awesome feeling. It is akin to building their heavenly condo over a sink hole.

 

IMHO