Notes on Heavens
Camus tells us that there is one serious question in philosophy, and that is the reason for not committing suicide.
Il n’y a qu’un problème philosophique vraiment sérieux : c’est le suicide. Juger que la vie vaut ou ne vaut pas la peine d’être vécue, c’est répondre à la question fondamentale de la philosophie.
Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942)
Similarly, there is one serious question in psychology, and that is, why does one ever dream of anything other than Heaven? If you are free to dream anything, why dream of anything else?
For about 18 months between 2020 and 2021, I dreamt of heavens. I do not mean any religious heaven. I believe in no such thing. I mean, a virtuous circle of awareness, which, in a dream, is a place. It is a psychedelic phenomenon with many appearances and manifestations.
I had never thought to imagine what a virtuous circle of awareness could or should be. I never thought to imagine what a heaven logically can be. I never thought to imagine what the social order of a heaven could or should be. These are the fundamental questions, precisely because we are so busy with every other question. There is only the question of heaven.
The following articles are a haphazard collection of essays about this topic. I realise that it deserves a book, but I am an unworthy author. I did not reason anything out consciously. Everything was presented to me as a lesson, either implicitly or explicitly, in dreams. Because I have lost the dreaming awareness necessary to get back to heavens, I have only my notes.
It is possible for people like me to stumble into a heaven. But it is hard for them to stay.
There is no English word for the opposite of a nightmare. I call them dreambliths.
Heaven is no reward for a life well-led; it is the act of leading a life well.
In the dreaming world, the decisions you make are less important than the perspective you take.
The principles of similarity are at work in Heaven as they are on Earth.
A society based on overlapping pair-wise relationships in networks of pairs
One gets into Heaven by being good at it, and that means practice. How Shaker society was so opposite to ours, and in this most zen way!
and men will not see it
Heaven has its own humour. The joke is on us.
Hell exists. And you are closer to one than you think.