As I slipped into sleep, on Friday, July 9, 1993, the Moon transited both Pisces and my tenth house – though not the least bit focussed on Merlin prior to sleep – the dream shaman would manifest and weave the most sublime magic yet.  As will become fast evident, the first three dreams that day were about process.  I was during those dreams, divesting myself of the baggage that affects one’s waking consciousness/persona.  These are waking state survival mechanisms which would be disposed of, in each successive dream, so that I could be elevated enough in spirit to have moved on to the truly noble experiences of the later dreams.  

Whilst yet another stood beside me, I was looking into a full-length mirror.  At the time, I was with Sjaak van der Velde – friend, current lover and Manhattan cabaret singer.  As I stood there, in the near-darkened bathroom getting cleansed, I keenly looked at my face.  On looking down, I noticed that my entire body was nude; it was completely depilated.  This, of course, presented a big challenge because I am so vain – big hair and all.  I was mildly horrified that my gorgeous pencil-thin moustache was no more.

To say the least, as intended, the moustache and big hair do nothing but scream vain solipsism.  As I try warping self to stay with the ageist, lookist gang, vanity ends up making things that much more superficial.  I spent a great deal of time really scrutinising the lack of facial hair.  After assessing things, I finally came to like the naked look of my exposed upper lip.  ‘What the hell,’ I thought.  I began laughing aloud by grinning down my self-consciousness and vanity.  Soon, I grew to like my smile a lot.  It was truly wonderful.

Then who should appear in the mirror to my left, though never next to me in the dreamtime, but Len Morse.  He, too, had recently shaved his moustache in the waking state.  I was surprised to see him.  I guess that there is some soul connection that we share which was clearly being alluded to.  He has been present in a few dreams of late.  He was warmly looking out at me as if to say,  “Oh really now?  It’s nothing to be ashamed of.  Nothing to be self-conscious of…”

Frankly, I rather liked the nudeness of my face and head minus the moustache and big hair.  The whole thing was a true revelation.  I genuinely looked handsome because I wasn’t trying to run from or hide behind anything.  It was truly uplifting.  What was so empowering about the revelation, too, was the fact that the moment at which I became relaxed with myself – unconditionally accepting myself – my eyes awakened more completely.  It was as though they had never shone so brilliantly, indeed, shone so beautifully before – absolutely revolutionary!

All this maya only caused me to hysterically laugh enjoying the absurdity of trying to get caught up and lost in lookism.  ‘Who frigging cares?’  That was the essence of the wisdom being disseminated here by my higher self.  This new perspective was truly a rare and treasured gift.  It was quite the uplifting experience and one not soon forgotten.  

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Next, in the second dream, I was outdoors in the daytime.  I was in this heavily trafficked, overpopulated metropolis.  It did feel as though I was at Seventh Avenue and 23^rd Street.  Whilst, crossing 23^rd Street, I was on the west side of Seventh Avenue going north in Manhattan.  I wore a knapsack which was much like the one in the waking state.  Close to my chest, my arms were crossed and folded.  They clutched a book that I was currently reading.  As I passed a young, White couple, they made socially aggressive, racist remarks about me.

‘I don’t want this kind of energy, at all, in the dream state,’ I thought impatiently deflecting their ignorance.  When I got to the other side of the road, I felt unresolved about the whole thing.  So, with that, I turned to look after them.  They veered off, on seeing me eyeing them but I knew that they had wanted to cross Seventh Avenue – on the north side of 23^rd Street.  They headed off going east, to the right, on the north side of 23^rd Street.

Impatiently I purposefully and heavily strode on my heels, back towards them, soon overtaking them.  On catching up to them, I walked alongside.  The woman was closer to me and him closer to the traffic.  He was considerably taller than her.  They were a very waking-state-focussed, hard-edged, racially aggressive, pinched couple.  Big-boned and Yuppified – they were the epitome of North American, aggressive, merchant class greed.  In a rapid-fire, ballistic staccato, I began aggressively repaying their racist bile bit for bit.  I repaid their aggressive verbal abuse bit for bit.

They were stunned by my response.  As with the codified behaviours of the racist paradigms in the waking state, which keep racially preyed on Blacks fearful of defending themselves against such actions, I was not expected to retaliate.  I had no intentions of sublimating any aspect of self, either here or elsewhere, to suffer anyone and their bullshit.  Yet what could they have done?

They simply turned glacial and remained petrified acting as though one were, all of a sudden, not there.  I had no intentions of having them dump this kind of psychic garbage onto me.  I slapped the racial animus back in their direction and was able to divest myself of such negative energies.  Perhaps, though likely not, my response gave them pause for thought.  

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The third dream then found me going down into the belly of the underground.  I proceeded to take, what would prove, an extensive series of train rides.  I had been down in this particular sprawling subway station.  There were no pillars in between the tracks.  The station was not unlike London’s Liverpool Station and though similarly dimensioned, however, it was completely below-ground.  Whilst waiting for the train to arrive, I had gone and stood close to one of the ends of the platform.  Raising my leg, I had placed my right foot on an orange-coloured railing whilst waiting.  Close by were two White women standing and speaking.

Long, flowing, drop-waisted dresses, that were light summer fare, they both wore.  For being close to them, they fell silent and projected that cool steely edge that was informed by their racist perceptions.  This was not the kind of energy that I wanted to be around.  I strongly resented having this hideous grey light, of waking state racially-tinged maya, flooding and destabilising the Chi of the dreamtime.  Since this was not my scene, I chose to tune out their invasive, racially predatory, psychic aggression altogether.  Pretty soon, they came to realise how utterly ridiculous what they were doing was.

Immediately, they stopped their bullshit and resumed being human.  The WST (waking state transference), in which they indulged, towards me evaporated.  The air became noticeably clear… less dense-energied.  Soon thereafter, the train rolled into the station and we boarded together.  Unusually large, most impressively, there was also a dizzying amount of persons on board this train.  It took the longest while, for us to get on board, as throngs flooded out from the train at our station.  Even when finally we boarded, the bloody thing was still overgrown with humanity.

I eventually arrived at this particular stop where, again, it was densely populated.  Wherever you looked, it was lushly overgrown here with incredibly large arboreal giants.  

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Not surprisingly, in this the fourth dream, it was impressively landscaped here.  There was a dizzying array of flora and most of them were not readily familiar.  I was up on a winding road that rose up a high hilltop.  Along the way, I encountered an old Black woman.  Goodness was she ever ancient.  Hers was a face that was on the plus side of ten millennia.  To match every lifetime-filled millennium that she had outlived, boy did she have a lot of life and personality.  This was clearly her astral body, which I was encountering, whoever this well-travelled, marvellous old soul was.  This sprawling metropolis was distinctly French.

This place did remind me of being at Montmartre when looking down into Paris.  This metropolis, however, was several times larger than Paris.  So many eons older than Paris, was this metropolis, it even seemed vastly older than the old woman.  Her lovely dark-complected body, reminding me so of some West Indian women’s, she was so readily familiar.  This metropolis was easily twenty millennia older than Paris.  A truly august-souled metropolis this was.

The woman, along the road on the side of the hill, much reminded me of Clarice Jack who lived in The Alley, Sandy Point, St. Kitts.  Of course, Clarice lived next-door to the church that Harella built.  She was a big-boned, large-bosomed, full-figured lively gal.  She was turning about, busying herself, doing some landscaping repairs along the side of the road.  On approaching her, I asked how to get to a concert hall.  I had been en route to some destination which, presently, I could scarcely recall.  

“Oh no, no, no, my dear…  You have to go all de way back down into town.  It’s not at Palais Royale, in fact.  Don’t even think of there.  You have to go and get some other trains, to get you someplace else…”  Her tongue darted back and forth, over her ever-moist lips, as her lively rapid-fire French gave directions. 

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She had pointed, off in the distance, to what seemed like Grand Palais.  It, too, had a companion like Petit Palais in Paris.  Here, however, these stately buildings were easily four times more colossal than their waking state counterparts.  To anything in the waking state, the scale of architecture here was beyond compare.  Gargantuan doesn’t, even remotely, convey the towering scales of the proportions here.  Everything here was grown over.  The metropolis, centred in this fantastic locale, was layered with each rise and fall of the civilisation readily discernible.  In that sense, this metropolis was much like Rome is.

Everywhere, there were visible signs of crumbling architectural masterpieces.  Still, other long-abandoned structures became the outer shell for more recent revivals of themselves.  The latest additions, to an old ruin, could have occurred four millennia later and still have been easily a dozen millennia old – truly ancient.  There were so many different strata of architectural styles layered one atop the other.  This truly was a living museum of architectural giants.  It was impressive, to say the least.  One felt so utterly nouveau, for being of waking state Earth, as none of Earth’s civilisations can architecturally boast any such richness of character.

Great epochs of civilisations grew on top, through, about and around themselves in this impressive astral plane metropolis.  This place was quite beautifully landscaped.  Everywhere there were mound-like hills, like the one that I was on, which were forested areas of lush growth.  They looked like some of the better-gardened neighbourhoods of Naples.

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Next, the fifth dream had me taking my leave of her.  I went down the hill, into the metropolis, where I entered one of the city’s many termini.  This one much reminded of Gare d’Austerlitz in Paris.  Here, too, this terminus was easily seven times more colossal.  I began my marvellous adventure by taking a number of trains.  There would be a few transfers at other, just as massive, termini along the journey.  Here, at all times, I travelled with a silent astral guide who remained just to my rear.  He seemed to be younger and was definitely White.  

There was a staggering amount of people in transit here.  People here were also very quiet.  The majority of communication was telepathically engaged.  There were so many tracks all of which were being used by trains.  This was clearly a metropolis on a planet whose population easily soared beyond 17 billion (I meant to say 70 billion).  With lots of transfer points converging all at the same terminus, this particular station was a major hub.  This travel that I was doing, the vehicular transports I was using, merely proved secondary to what was really at play here.

I was going through different planes, travelling through different dimensions, and realities.  I was in transit – for the ease of waking consciousness, much of this has been perceptually transliterated as being modes of travel comparable to waking state paradigms.  The trains were capable of transporting one, to various locales, at protected faster-than-usual speeds.  However, the travel was definitely destined.  We travelled along a set, guided course.  It was, if you like, a willed form of travel.  It was not as though one were aimlessly wandering about a wilderness or city.

For being buried below-ground, it suggested that this was travel that was deeply rooted in the domains of the soul itself.  There was a definite route, a purposeful intent, and a clear objective for undertaking the journey.  Although for much of the time, especially when I was on the terraced hilltop with the old Black woman, I couldn’t quite recall why I was trying to make a definite rendezvous.  All that I knew was that I simply had to get there.  As it were, I had a destined appointment.  For following along certain experientially mapped out routes, one could interdimensionally travel whilst on board these trains.  

Whilst I was on one of the trains, when in transit, I sensed that I was not alone.  Looking around, in search of someone’s familiar energetic signature, there on this utterly crowded train I found Merlin!  I was so blown away.  So that the dream wouldn’t be aborted, by my whiting out and prematurely awakening, I had to contain myself.  I can’t say here how utterly arresting it was to have seen him.  

Not since he had walked into the salon, in that dream on Saturday, July 25, 1992, had Merlin’s beauty so moved me.  Merlin here was as real and as focussed as ever he was, the seven years that I had known him, on the other side of the dreamtime’s pandimensionality.  I was so thrilled.  I became overwhelmed with genuine happiness.  I simply couldn’t believe that this was happening.  I was acutely aware that I was dreaming.  Oh my goodness – this was enlightenment and then some.  Seeing him was akin, to having been away and upon my return opening the door, to have Whoopi come rushing towards me – her familiar pigeon-toed sweetness being the most treasured gift in my life at present.

One glimpse and you fall in love all over again.  Seeing him, I felt all the quiet rapture that I felt – on Friday, October 1, 1982 – when he ambled into my life.  On slipping in through the glass-paned door of a Hell’s Kitchen walkup, Merlin began weaving the most sustained, sublimed magic.  Merlin, to look at him, was such an encapsulation of health and inner beauty.  Goodness, I was completely blown away.  Merlin wore a light, gauze-fabricked shirt that was very much so from the Indian Subcontinent.  Caramel-coloured and ancient-looking, it was reminiscent of many of the ones he so favoured – ones which were perpetually sillaged with patchouli’s grounding signature.

The shirt was covered throughout with tiny rosebuds and other petals – exquisite.  This was so Merlin in every refreshing detail.  A long-sleeved shirt that was buttoned at the wrists, he wore, but with a bit of ballooning just aft the wrists.  So thin and loose a fabric was it that it seemed diaphanous.  Merlin was the picture of health, so much so that, his skin actually glowed near-imperceptibly.  The light was the faint glow, which was the subtle undulating glow, of his aura.  

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This was much the effect that one would observe, if photographing someone, through a soft-focussed lens.  Yet it was more than that, there was a definite hum to his aura’s vibration.  There was so much flesh and vitality to his face and the rest of his still-rakish body that I was left overjoyed at the sight of him.  His mane was beautifully coiffed in a long, leonine, gentle fall.  Interestingly, it was not at all grey or greying.  For that matter, Merlin’s hair was not greying as it was at the time of his passing.

Additionally, Merlin’s beard was not white.  He looked like a much healthier version of himself, as he was at age thirty-five, when we met.  It was so fuck-all fabulous to have seen him.  It was great to have experienced him.  Seated there, languorously looking into the forever of his familiar eyes, my spirit simply danced for joy.  I vibrationally zinged at a higher frequency, on seeing him, to have experienced him yet again.  To have drunk of his familiar spirit was that longed for elixir that my wandering soul so quenched.

Merlin silently looked over, validating that he recognised me, with the most intimate of smiles.  A smile it was by which, for too long now, I had not been warmed.  We communed, though our communication was telepathic, at the level of spirit.  Our communication was not only mentally accomplished but it was emotionally complex and thorough.  We immediately connected, more to the point, we did intimately connect.  There was no getting around the fact of this having been why I had felt so compelled to quest, to journey, in search of this concert.  

On finally having a rendez-vous with Merlin, what stellar music of souls this was.  I knew, there and then, why I had been in transit making all these connections and travelling at such great speeds.  I was in an astral plane metropolis, one which clearly served as a resting and inspirational space, for souls in transit – quite wonderful indeed.  There I sat, on the fast-moving train, flying without moving.  How utterly rapturous a living dream postcard this dream was – especially after our last profound encounter, a year ago.  Sure, there had been other dream encounters during that interval.

This, however, was a dream of high order.  This was a dream which existed at the same heights of spirit as that, on Saturday, July 25, 1992.  Merlin’s eyes were so large, clear and focussed.  Merlin here was so serene.  He was transcendent.  It blew my mind just to look at him.  For resonating with him, I felt myself quivering with rapture.  To feel the quiet purr of his spirit so close, and so familiar a spirit, was more than even I could have hoped for during pre-sleep meditations.

There was no getting around the fact that Merlin was now considerably more elevated than, when we last kissed in that dream, on Saturday, July 25, 1992.  Merlin was now more in control.  He had greater mastered his astral body since then.  Back then, he wore a cloak that had a cowl.  Merlin looked every bit the magus that he was.  It was just like the cowled cloak that he had worn in our initial dream encounter, July 1978, four years before finally meeting on the physical plane.

Merlin here was so much more elevated than ever he had been in life or since his passing.  Now, he was casually dressed but still looked every bit the magus.  Indeed, Merlin here was the dream magus ascended.  This dream was so very healing for my spirit.  Then, on Saturday, July 25, 1992, Merlin was tying up loose – as he was experienced in that sublime dream.  In that dream, Merlin thanked me for having served him nobly and in a healing capacity.

Thanks to his life task, Merlin had awakened the magus within me as I served him during his illness.  This shared task of ours enabled me to become more spiritually focussed.  As a result, as mentor to me, Merlin initiated my accelerated spiritual growth.  In this dream, Merlin was simply saying hello.  No postcard, across the seas of time and dimensions, could have been more beautiful a gift received.  I could not believe that I was seeing Merlin.  He did not, after having set out and sent me that one momentous dream on Saturday, July 25, 1992, have to send me yet another momentous dream.  Yet here he was, by express transit no less, sending me a most magus, evolved and uplifting dream postcard.

Thank goodness my mind was fully aligned with spirit and the soul, as validated by my Venus-Uranus conjunction, enabling me to assimilate the potency and depth of this most sublime of gifts from Merlin.  At that moment, when I found Merlin, the train was speedily travelling above-ground.  The glow of his aura was further highlighted by the swells of sunlight, whose crests broke and oceanically flooded into the train, from the sunny outdoors.  The merry sunlight added to the intensity of the encounter’s sensuality.  I was so captivated by Merlin’s sublime beauty that I had not caught the conductor’s announcement.

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A little dark-haired boy then announced that we would have to change trains.  The boy had stepped up to a round circle, in the middle of the aisle, before the doors.  In a vertical shaft of light, there the young, male astral guide stood perfectly still.  He then announced to us the different transfer points – all of which he telepathically did.  

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Next, the sixth dream found all three of us – Merlin, the youthful astral guide and me – seated on a bunk in a rustic, near-dark, high-ceilinged bedroom.  There were marvellous, dark wooden beams, high overhead in the ceiling, which created that familiar astral plane look.  Whilst seated on the edge of the bunk, our legs dangled over the side.  Merlin was on my immediate right as we visited side-by-side.  His energies were so very warm and familiar.  The house was unmistakably large, like everything else in this dimension.  Incidentally, the ceilings here were vaulted.  There was no mistaking that this dream was set on the astral plane.

*The key signature of the astral plane is its phenomenal architecture.  The astral plane seems to serve as incubator and one from which great thinkers and movers, from time to time, come along and manifest their impressions thereof into the waking state.  These great thinkers being architects such as: Antoni Gaudí, Frank Lloyd Wright and others.  In these dreams, set on the astral plane, architecture is marked by the rustic, the aged, the organic – the fully concretised and usually in proportions that are not of this world.  Everything seems much larger and more solid than even in the waking state.

There is nothing ephemeral about the architecture of the astral plane.  The most impressive thing, about architecture on the astral plane, is the staggering amount of details that are worked into these true works of art.  Structured and sound, one always immediately feels secure, is architecture on the astral plane.  END.

The young, astral guide was on my left, silently holding the large book of photographs, as Merlin guided me through its pages.  One series of photographs was of a guy who was water-skiing.  The guy reminded me, as a matter of fact, of Maddox Pool.  We looked at the photos which were taken, from the perspective of someone, at the rear of the boat to which he was tethered whilst skiing.  

In one of the photos he had taken away his right hand, from the grip, to energetically grin and wave.  The photos in the book were not static.  They were holographic yet, somehow, they never extended beyond the page.  They were three-dimensional but you were not looking at a film.  Instead, you were looking down into a three-dimensional holographic image which was within the borders of each photo.  It was in these shots that the waterskiing young man looked so much like Maddox.

He was dark-haired and the picture of health.  The water was crystalline and eye-scorching blue.  He was about twenty-two to twenty-three years of age – exactly the same age that I was when Merlin and I met in New York City.  Merlin telepathically explained to me, as we looked at the photographs, that this photo was representative of himself after his first bout of pneumocystis with full-blown AIDS.  Merlin told me that this was the nature of the work that he was presently doing.

Astral plane habitués, such as Merlin, after they had done work on themselves could elect to assist persons still incarnate and moving through the illness.  The crisis of AIDS was so impactful, on humanity at this point, that those who were discarnate had to direct a great deal of energy planetside to those incarnates who were moving through the experience.  When persons went from being advanced with HIV, all the way to being sick with full-blown AIDS, then they on the astral plane would work with them after their first bout of major illness.  

Merlin explained that they were seen to have a resurgence of vitality because of the energy work, being directed to the incarnate full-blown persons, by astral plane habitués in his position.  This is precisely as had been the case with Merlin, in the spring, summer and early autumn of 1988, after his first bout of pneumocystis – all of which abruptly atrophied when he was betrayed by that stupid drunken woman, Morag O’Hoare.

Merlin also intimated that the energy work came not only from persons such as him, between lives on the astral plane, as well as from souls above and beyond the astral plane.  This was energy that they were sharing, with afflicted physical plane habitués, which they could then use to sustain their lives for a year or two or even a decade plus.  Merlin further shared that they could indefinitely live on, to the full course of their lives, if they so chose.

Though they were fully capable of surviving long-term with the virus, which allegedly led to AIDS, people planetside had not yet made the realisation that they did not have to atrophy and die because they had tested positive for the HIV virus or for going full-blown with AIDS.  This ability, of afflicted incarnates, to live on had to do with willpower.  Choice was the issue in this situation.  They must have wanted to remain incarnate.

They must have wanted to live and to accomplish certain tasks.  The nature of the support system, that one surrounded oneself with, was crucial to being able to become long-term survivors.  Persons really did not have to pass on so soon, Merlin intimated, after discovering that they were HIV positive or full-blown with AIDS.  Humanity presently had such stultifying fear of death that afflicted persons ended up, literally, terrifying themselves to death.  It did not help much that there were so many stigmas associated with AIDS.  At present humanity, for the most part, did not yet realise that death was merely but a refocussing of one’s energies.

“Death…” said Merlin “…was no big deal.  Come on, look at me.  I’m here, aren’t I?  How different am I?” he intoned in a quiet whisper rather than telepathically.  ‘Can’t argue that one,’ I thought.

Merlin was as human and as real as, he had ever been every day of our being together, during our glorious seven-year relationship.  Even though I could see him, and indeed touch him, he was so much more evolved and frankly better off for being in that dimension of purified vibration.  This was definitely not the normal domains of the dreamtime.  From the regular confines of the dreamtime, I had travelled – to this conduit space within the astral plane – to be able to experience Merlin from his regions of the astral plane which are exclusively inhabited by the discarnate.  

We met in a dimension wherein persons, both discarnate and incarnate, could meet and interact.  It was quite solid here and rarefied too.  To be able to have experienced Merlin left me so immensely happy.  Merlin further explained that people tended to die so soon, after having become full-blown with AIDS, because the spectre of dying became a vortex of fears – enervating energies – that literally depleted their reserves of willpower and caused them to die sooner rather than later.

By becoming so obsessed, with fear of death and the stigma of dying of AIDS, those subjects simply became victims of their own fears.  Merlin said that they had to turn that vortex into a white hole rather than an imploding, enervating, gnawing black hole of fear.  Such a vortex proved a vacuum that sucked the very life out of the afflicted and caused them to die what was clearly a premature death.  Once transmuted, this vortex could be used to assist one to go on to live a very productive life.

This energy could simply be used to fuel oneself and serve as a conduit to channel pure, life-sustaining energies from discarnate souls, such as him, on the astral plane.  This would ultimately enable one to stay focussed, in the afflicted life, for considerably longer.  The thing to remember was that the mind did not have to become afflicted with fears because the body had become impaired by disease.  All over the world, Merlin assured me, the afflicted could choose to triumph over fear of imminent death and it was being done with increasing success.

This vortex of transformed fears could, according to Merlin, become a catalyst for undertaking a great deal of spiritual work.  The amount of growth that could be pulled off for becoming thus focussed, Merlin assured me, was no light matter.  As Merlin imparted this wisdom, I was being illumined to this revolutionary approach to life and death which heretofore, I had not before thought of the paradigm in this manner.  It, however, made perfect sense.  

What was really impressive, about all this, was having Merlin return now as a teacher.  He was so wise and magus.  I felt absolutely proud of him.  He was a guide to me, sharing of the wisdom that he has gained in his trans-dimensional sojourn thus far, as the realised dream magus who had long set out ahead of his much-loved adept and companion magus.  I can’t say enough how very pleased that I was to have seen him.  I was so moved by Merlin.  It was simply profound.

I was so incredibly happy to see Merlin.  The windows to the large hall, in which we visited, were all closed.  This caused the place to be dimly and intimately lit.  Here, it was very womb-like and nurturing.  

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After that intimate visit together, followed by journeying on some more, we arrived at this the seventh dream.  On returning to the large terminus, we had to take yet another series of trains.  We arrived after much high-speed travel at another terminus.  This one was far larger than any before which I had visited.  Here, the terminus was above-ground and wide-open at both ends.  Multiple tracks were everywhere and veered off in all directions.  After we got on board the train, as before he had, the little dark-haired boy who served as astral guide came up and stood in the centre of the aisle.

Here, there were many people with kids and several persons were travelling with a ton of baggage.  They were carting around all this baggage which they really did not need.  This baggage merely served to weigh them down and impeded their forward advancement.  They did not yet realise that they did not need it.  Neither Merlin nor I had any baggage.  Similarly, the young astral guide had no baggage.  Somehow, because of the travelling requirements here, I couldn’t ride in the same car as Merlin.  Instead I rode one car behind him on the same train.

On pulling up into the large station, there was a PA notice that indicated that the train we were on would not go any further.  We would apparently have to transfer at the next station on disembarking.  The announcer said that one would be able to find one’s appropriate ride by following the colour-coded lines on the platform.  When I got off onto the platform, I began running ahead to the front of the platform in search of Merlin.  Not for anything did I want to lose him now.

A couple had impeded my progress as they wobbled along with a ridiculous amount of baggage.  The luggage was so much dream symbolism – inasmuch as there is such a thing.  These persons represented newcomers to the astral plane.  More importantly, they represented persons who had recently died and returned to the astral plane but who also happened to be fairly young-souled.  They were dead yet not already fully aware.  Just as they were spiritually blind, when incarnate, they now progressed.  They were now hobbling about, carting around all this baggage, as if they could truly ‘take it’ with them.  

With them was all this Maya, the baggage of their perceptions and the worldviews, which had held them hostage whilst incarnate.  Here they were, on the astral plane, arrivés habitués carting around mindsets that were totally redundant.  What I found unique here was that no one interfered with anyone.  No one came to their aid telling them that it was not necessary for them to be carting around all this baggage.  Furthermore, they were repressed such that they appeared these Boteroesque persons – bloated in the style of Fernando Botero sculptures.

Their little merchant class worldviews had had them well-preserved, and puffed up, with pompous self-aggrandising notions of their greatness.  They did look truly South American in that pretentious sense.  They looked not unlike some of the parvenu-looking subjects of Fernando Botero’s paintings and sculptures.  They were truly lost souls both here and when previously incarnate.

I, on the other hand, was nimbly walking whilst bounding down the platform.  I had hoped to reconnect with Merlin whom I knew had also gotten off at the same stop.  Here, too, in this station all the railings were orange and sturdy-looking.  Rushing ahead of the Boteroesque couple, who vibrationally felt as if made of the heaviest metals in the universe, I noticed something truly spectacular.

High up in the walls of this terminus the wall would simply open up, much as a camera lens’s aperture would, then from the gaping hole would stream out a train at full speeds.  The train was, as it were, intersecting dimensions.  This fantastical train was, along with several others that I had noticed, simply splicing through our pocket of the astral plane en route to heaven-only-knows-where.  At the far side of the terminus another aperture-like portal would gapingly open to accommodate the approaching airborne train.

Soon after, the train would be lost into the black void which moments earlier had opened up.  Those trains, like the others, were massive and looked as though the stateliest trains from the late nineteenth-to-early twentieth centuries.  More than that, they barrelled through the air without travelling on any overhead tracks.  What’s more, they progressed as if along well-mapped out routes.

Some were higher than others.  Others intersected our little cul-de-sac of the astral plane, in a diagonal manner, cutting perfectly across the immense width of the terminus.  These trains, just like all the others, seemed so imposing for being as massive and as multi-carriaged as they were.  Despite the fantastical spectre of these trains, the matter of Merlin’s whereabouts was of paramount concern.  On noticing the initial train, I peripherally recalled that there had been a similar such train piercing through the earlier terminus.  However, its outréness had remained peripheral or not readily assimilated.

Just as described over the PA system, there was a series of colour-coded lines on the platform.  These colour-coded lines indicated where one had to venture, in order to make the appropriate connections, back to one’s final destination.  As could be expected, the trains were all very massive.  What’s more, they were distinctively leaden and stylistically looked as if straight out of the 1930s.  They were very art deco trains indeed.  

One of the trains was silver and black.  It was a tone of black that was truly austere.  The silver was used for most of the detailing.  Its silverwork was so opulent that, by comparison, it made Erté’s deco sensibilities seem bland.  Somehow, I knew that it was the one that I was expected to take.  In all, there were two trains that I was supposed to have transferred to.  This black and silver train was energetically the densest-feeling one of all the trains that I had seen.

This, I think, was the case because it travelled between this locale and the density of the physical plane – the waking state.  Nonetheless, all that I could think of was Merlin.  I did not want to lose contact with him.  As ever, he had done in the waking state, I had initially seen him leaving the train then gone energetically bounding down the platform.  With so many people everywhere, and for having been impeded by the Boteroesque couple, I had lost sight of him.  My mind busily raced as I thought of the horror of possibly having to lose him here.  

I did not want our encounter to end just like that.  Besides, we were supposed to have gone off somewhere.  I came down off the platform, desperate to find him again, by using a narrow flight of stone stairs.  From there, I crossed the tracks ahead of the austere-looking train that I was supposed to have taken.  No sooner than had I crossed its track that I saw, off in the far end of the terminus, an unusual-looking train.

It was stationed beneath a sunlight-flooded awning.  It was a most unique mode of transportation.  A series of long horizontal slabs, hovering off the ground, they lined one after the other.  They were, basically, the floors of boxcars that had no wheels, no sidings and no roofs to them.  They were, if you like, just a series of hovering rectangular slabs à la magic carpets.  The awning, beneath which it was stationed, gave a sense of how truly massive this hangar-like terminus was.  It was then, too, that I saw Merlin.

I had recognised him by the brown tweed cap that he always wore in the waking state.  To look at his body, he was the sexiest human imaginable.  Merlin still could work his magic on me.  Merlin wore a faded pair of blue bell-bottomed cotton slacks.  A pair of well-worn, doe-skinned shoes was familiarly upturned at the toes.

He was so true to form – realistic.  This was so very Merlin and so like the Merlin, whom I had known so very intimately, but for the fact that he was not smoking a ganja joint.  Also unlike the sublime dream encounter, on Saturday, July 25, 1992, he was not wearing his gold-rimmed round glasses.  Naturally, he did not need those things anymore.  It was so very good to see Merlin.  Here, he was my astral guru – indeed, the transcendent dream magus had returned to impart his magical wisdom.

Merlin was so phenomenally alive and real.  I was moved beyond belief to see him.  So excited was I, to have found him again, that I went rushing up to greet him where he hung out on one of the slabs.  Thrilled and delighted, I let out an excited squeal.  Soon enough, I grew immediately self-conscious of the fact that no one here verbally communicated.  In one graceful balletic leap, I went rushing up onto the platform broadly grinning.  My love for him welled up from the very bosom of my soul.  As soon as I got there, I realised that everyone else was seated in these circular groupings.  

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They sat in lotus position and faced inwards towards each other.  Merlin was part of a circle of men, seven deeply meditative men, all of whom looked just as transcendent and centred as did he.  They seemed to be so deeply engaged, at the level of spirit, as if a part of a coven of magi who were engaged in group energy work.  Their silence was impactful – there was so much being said and done in its weighty stillness.

Merlin’s eyes were so brilliant and clear yet there was a fecund agedness to them.  The clarity came from the intense focus of his energies, where he presently is, in his transition through the discarnate progression.  They were older-souled eyes; there was no way to get around that fact.  I realised, there and then, that I wasn’t supposed to have been there at all.  So pleased was I to be with him, too eager to telepathically communicate, I began chatting aloud.  It was a way to wrestle his full attention as there was no way that I could have competed with the union of spirits and minds that they shared.

They were simply too deeply telepathic,  “Look Merlin, why can’t you come on this train with me?  I don’t want to be here on this one.  When we start moving, it’s only going to aggravate my allergies which are acute right now in the waking state.  It’ll be too much wind, too much exposure to pollen.  It’s just going to affect my allergies too much.  There’ll be too much wind blowing in my face.  Look, I really don’t know if I want to do this.  Why can’t we go on the other one?”

The moment at which I paused, after having posed my questions, Merlin seized control of the dynamic.  Very firmly, he entered my mind and said, “Be still.  Be quiet.  Don’t rush.  Don’t you understand?  I don’t care to go there.  I don’t care what you want… what you desire.  I’m going to stay on this one.  Besides, it’s what I have to do.  I’m going this way…”

When he intoned that last phrase, from the inflection and weight he telepathically used, I realised that there was no way that I could leave this place but on board that austere-looking silver and black deco train.  Merlin implied, by his intonation, that the conventional old train was the one that I had to use to safely ferry me back to the waking state.  Clearly, he couldn’t take that train because it was too mechanical.

It represented the past and the density, when incarnate, of his former physically ensouled state.  He was now in a dimension of existence which was vibrationally infinitely less dense.  Even the mode of transportation, for his dimension, was more advanced.  There was no denying that these levitating slabs were being kept aloft by their focussed, united wills – Merlin and his kindred spirits’.

To have entered their midst, the air and the Chi were intensely purified.  On entering the vibrational sphere of their midst, I instantaneously felt lighter in my body.  Their seating formations only intensified their energies and focussed their thoughts and wills.  It is safe to say that in these formations, they became a unit.  They were a shared consciousness of sorts.  They did though each still possess a will of their own.  This was clearly the case with Merlin who was able, independent of his circle mates, to exert his own will when asking me not to be an intrusive presence.

He was never hostile but he simply asked that I not be so inconsiderate of their need for privacy.  Meanwhile, the six others patiently waited for him.  You cannot imagine how mentally powerful these seven men were – individually and as a shared consciousness.  They patiently waited for me to either calm down or simply take my leave of them.  What was really intriguing, in all of this, was the fact that they did not have a preference whether I should stay or leave.  That choice was exclusively up to me.

It was truly insightful – they simply had no emotional engagement and were totally objective.  This was so much like the Merlin I had always known.  It was so good to see him that I really did not want to leave.  There was no way that I would pass up on this most rare of treasures found.  On calming my nerves, I directly looked Merlin in the eye and said, “Okay, I accept…  I accept….  I accept.  I realise that I was being so selfish.  Do forgive me.  I know how selfish I can get at times.”

Yet there sat Merlin supremely long-suffering and patient.  I would not, nor could I, deny myself the elixir of those eyes.  Impishly, I added, “Okay, please, let me come some of the way with you, at least.  I don’t know.  I don’t care…”  For breaking protocol and wanting to leave this place by going in his direction, I was more or less quieting my own fears.  I would gladly have given up the ghost, as it were, just to go on journeying with him.

As his eyes warmly smiled into me, a discernible smile drifted across his large, lucidly focussed face.  I was thrilled.  He telepathically suggested that I take a seat, which I did, just outside of the circle.  Two of them shifted their positions signalling that I join the circle rather than not.  The moment that I entered the circle of beings, which included Merlin, the procession of levitating greyish slabs began moving.  They had been hovering, just above a groove that sat, between two knolls.  These rolling mounds were covered by the most verdant cropped grass that zinged with a whisper of misty dew.  

Instantaneously, we were moving at faster-than-sound through to faster-than-light speeds.  It was immensely thrilling an experience for me.  Merlin sat with his back always to the front of the procession of slabs.  In that sense, he was in a powerful position.  We were seated towards the end of the third or fourth platform.  Each platform-like slab contained several clusters of seven asexual-looking men – even Merlin looked asexual.

Even more interesting, along the lines of the Michael Teachings, was that there were six or seven clusters of six to eight individuals in the tight circular formations.  Here everyone was in lotus position.  There were never any doubts in my mind that Merlin and every last one of these discarnate individuals were the ones whose focussed wills were directing the travel of this light trip.  This was so right up Merlin’s alley – unabashed magic.

Each levitating slab measured roughly ten feet across by close to fifty feet at least.  They were linear and, though wafer-thin, had the most softly plush comfortable surface.  They were just as soft as if we were seated on satin throw cushions.  The speeds with which we travelled were phenomenal.  I did not experience any discomfiture for moving at such great speeds.  There was simply a whizzing blur of everything, outside the confines of our progressing procession of levitating slabs.

We travelled some four feet off the ground as we jetted away from the hub terminus.  The winds never affected us, nor did my body experience the increased G-forces, for travelling at such great speeds.  The landscape sped past, even more rapidly than when on board the trains.  Of course, when on board the trains, we were then in an enclosed environment.  Yet here, as there, we were not at all affected by the winds.  As a matter of fact, this proved an infinitely smoother ride than when travelling on the conventional trains.

There weren’t any of the chattering minds, for one, as experienced when on the conventional trains.  So deeply internalised was this place that there was nothing but Zen order.  No wonder Merlin so loved Johann Sebastian Bach’s artistry because it was so wonderfully suited to the ambience of this place.  

*It was as though, this place was the grove to which he gravitated between lives.  It gave him the sense of serenity, of order and of peace, which was so readily discerned to the core of his being.  At such times, Merlin would become lost – grow intimate and private with his very spirit – for listening to Glenn Gould’s mastery of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations.  Merlin’s intellect, at such times, would become expansive.  Each time, his spirit and intellect were sensed, he would be spatially experienced.  Quite simply, for experiencing him at such times, there is no other way to articulate how one would feel.  END.

All around us were wonderful, rolling green plains situated in a vast expansive vista.  Everything was so thrillingly filled with life.  For travelling at such intense speeds, we were left in a heightened state of sensitivity – or at least I definitely was.  Perhaps, this was par for the course with Merlin and his kindred spirits.  I, on the other hand, found this so new and exciting for my dreamer self.  Everything zinged with more abundant negative ions, at concentrations that were more pronounced, than in the waking state.

This dimension was a harmonious mélange of pure thought and pure emotion.  It was so invigorating and completely centring.  Pure emotion, minus the trappings of ego, it gave the sense of Merlin and his kindred spirits’ transcendent nature.  There was an audible drone discerned here, to our splicing progress through space, which seemed as if their combined breaths held in a sustained meditative hum.  Truly serene a spiritually uplifting experience this was.  How transcendent they each were, too.

This sound was so intense and pure that it can best be described as being audible light.  The sensations and emotions I experienced were so thrilling that I couldn’t believe such intensity of joy could be experienced whilst incarnate.  At that moment, the experience was heightened when Merlin and I both directly looked into each other’s eyes.  In that moment of connectivity, mere words could never do justice to what I experienced.  We were truly intimate soul-to-soul.  

Looking off to his right, impregnating me with this most beauteous gift, Merlin oceanically poured his very soul into me.  This was the most sublime postcard yet, that he had sent across the seas of time, from his journey up ahead.  I couldn’t ever have imagined that any gift could be so profound, beautiful and cherished.  Looking to the left, I had done so as he had telepathically entered my mind, saying a warm and intimately familiar hello.

Slipping into my moist, expanded intellect, I felt the familiar purr of Merlin’s soul as he edged closer and squinged up next to me soul-to-soul.  How many nights had we gotten this close when he was incarnate…  Yet none of that – physical intimacy – could have compared to the exquisite ticklish touch of his soul deep within me.  This was such a massiveness of spirit that I experienced.  I couldn’t believe that I was feeling the intensity of sensations and insights as I was experiencing.  This was such a massive experience that to look at Merlin the giddy ecstasy that I felt caused me to whiteout.  

This had been fostered, too, by the enriching stimuli that bombarded my totality as the levitating slabs sped on.  The feel of experiencing nature, as we so rapidly sped by, only made the vibrations of everything that much more pronounced.  As I moved without moving, my body quivered throughout.  Looking to my left into the most intimate pair of eyes that I have known thus far in this lifetime, I thrillingly flew whilst seated there in lotus position.  Merlin’s eyes being the pair that has been more intimate than any other…  This moment of Zen bliss caused me to quickly draw on a sharp breath.

As though I were nodding off, my body had bobbed a tad.  With that I lucidly awoke – my body quivered as I remained in bed on my back looking up into and beyond the off-white ceiling.  Merlin alas quite cleverly had hypnotised me, back into wakefulness, with one sensual look.  

By far, those dreams were among the most truly uplifting dreams of this incarnation.  There is not a year that passes since then that I don’t recall these dreams with the greatest fondness and humility.  So, alas, dream your dreams of wonder – for having been so richly inspired by mine.  Sweet dreams, you!

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