Fahrusha's Weblog

I often wake in the wee hours and then go back to sleep after an hour or two. Sometimes I catch up on my favorite podcasts during that awake time. So during the early morning  hours of July 28 when that happened I decided to listen to the new episode of Skeptiko, an excellent podcast hosted by Alex Tsakiris. I have heard several of Skeptiko’s Andy Paquette episodes and I am a long time fan of Stanley Krippner, so listening to the latest episode featuring Andy and mentioning Dr. Krippner, I was a happy camper.

I am very envious of Andy’s prolific dreaming and have been thinking recently of working on boosting my dream recall because lately I haven’t remembered much of my dreams. Several mornings it seemed as though something very happy was going on and I wish I could have remained in the dream state/place. It occurred to me that some of my dreams were not clearly rememorable (have I just invented a word?) because I was not in a place with humans or like  Earth, so there is nothing in the dream to tie it into my human 3D experience. For instance, last week, there was a dream in which (as nearly as I can describe) I was rolling happily with some shiny wet globes almost like down a stream.

When Alex Tsakiris asked listeners at the end of the show to send examples of death dreams, I decided to relate this one from when I was about 5 years old. I believe it happened a month or two before I started kindergarten. I had a dream that there was an old lady who I did not know walking on our block looking for my grandmother. I saw her out the window and was slightly frightened of her as she seemed grayer than her surroundings. She rang both my doorbell and my grandparents’ doorbell, but I hid and would not answer it, nor did anyone come out to answer it. I do not think that my parents were home in the dream. When I awoke, I told my mother about it and she got a funny look on her face. She told me to tell my grandmother. I ran upstairs to my grandparents’ separate apartment. My grandmother was at her sewing machine. I told her and she asked me to describe the woman. My grandmother indicated that she thought the woman was her aunt who I’d never met. I recall my grandmother then showing me an old photograph with three women in it and me pointing to the one who was in my dream. Later that day or the next my mother received a phone call for my grandmother, who had no phone of her own, saying that this woman had died. This was one of my first experiences of psi (apart from seeing and playing with small metallic beings that no one else could see).

In the early morning after listening to the Skeptiko podcast, I wished for a religious or spiritual dream as described by Andy. Andy Paquette has had numerous dreams with religious figures in them. He thought that devout adherents of faiths probably had frequent religious dreams featuring the icons of their religions, but through research discovered that this was not the case at all. After setting my intention I fell back to sleep.

Later I awoke in the midst of a dream in which I was with an older man who was an avowed atheist and probably of Jewish background. He was bigger than me. He may have been an amalgam of several men I know. He had some facial hair and a prominent nose. I had insisted that he come with me to see the pope, the actual current pope, who was visiting a shrine which seems to have been in South America where we inexplicably were. We were at the location of the shrine with mobs of people and we were buoyed forward in the crowd and somehow we went through with the papal entourage into the shrine which was made of a white material (plaster?) and had a white marble altar. As we were entering unseen with the entourage there was a group of about 20 small children dressed in white short smocks like altar boys or a choir and they were sitting to one side inside the wrought iron gate to the shrine but outside the sanctuary. The papal entourage consisted mostly of monks who were wearing brown cassocks and a couple of white suited soldier types and of course the pope. How lucky we were, I remember thinking, that we got in and so close to the pope. The man and I were in the cool shadowy but white-walled sanctuary of the shrine behind the pope and his group who were doing something by the white marble altar. Suddenly I got frightened that we would be discovered and it also seemed that the entourage was about to leave. I pulled the man outside and went behind or near the children who now had their heads covered in white as well. I pulled this relatively large man down to the ground in a way that he was sitting on my legs near these kids. The entourage passed us by. I hoped to get a full facial view of the pope but only saw the side of his head. But one of the hooded cassock wearing monks looked directly into my eyes with huge light brown eyes. He had tan skin with reddish undertones like a healthy peasant farmer. The look was deep and though not hostile seemed to ask, “What are you doing here?” In retrospect, it would seem as though he was the only one who could see us. His look deeply affected me and I woke up suddenly.

I am generally not the type to go out of my way to see famous people and I am not now, nor have I ever been a Roman Catholic, though I rather like this pope because he believes in the sacred duty of good stewardship toward Earth and some other good things. I can’t recall offhand any other religious dreams. I never knew that I was so susceptible to suggestion!

Andy Paquette has written a book Dreamer that I am planning to read. He also has compiled the largest collection of dreams ever according to Dr. Krippner. His personal database of 12,000 dreams is monumental in the field of dream studies. Alex Tsakiris, the host of Skeptiko, has been a guest on Shattered Reality Podcast hosted by Kate Valentine and Fahrusha.