See You Soon… 30 Years On, Merlin’s Magical Departure.

16.11.201909.12.2024 Arvin da BrghaLeave a comment

Almost instantaneously, as the Moon transited Leo in my third house, my lungs besottedly drank the warm and dank, dark air. Thus I effortlessly drowned into sleep. Whilst wintry winds howled outside the window, this cold early Saturday morning – November 18, 1989 – my lucid focus seamlessly shifted into the dreamtime.

I readily knew that I was dreaming.

Here, just as moments earlier whilst awake and meditating, Merlin was uppermost in my thoughts. I could sense his presence. The shift from one dimension to the other was seamless. Lucidly self-aware, I was immediately come to in a dream that was set in the bedroom where I slept.

I was in bed with the artist Olaf Nordstrom – a source of loving support at present in the waking state. I was lying in bed, leaning on his bony chest, as he sat up in bed. It was obvious from his body language that he did not want to be in bed with me. I felt a still and quiet vibration to this dream. The moment was truly serene and peaceful. This was not a sexual or post-sexual interlude. We were both reflective. It was obvious that we were on the cusp of something momentous. It was the sort of vibration that signalled that something extraordinary was about to unfold.

Olaf behaved as if he was uncomfortable being there – it was a grave moment. He wanted to be there, however, to merely lend his support. It was obvious that he was wary of my clinging. Clinging, however, was not my intention. The moment together was brief – just a preparation for things to come. With that we parted. It was time to get up and participate in the events of whatever was to unfold.

This dream was possessed of inordinate lucidity; its every detail and nuance my faculties absorbed with acuity beyond the norm.

In the second dream, this cold Saturday morning, I found myself in the familiar territory of the Cabbagetown streets where we lived. I went into a store which does not exist in the waking state. It sat just south of the Pet Menagerie store, on the east side of Parliament Street, between Amelia and Winchester Streets.

It was a tailor’s shop that carried rather high-end fabrics. I was there to pick out some fabric because I had a definite idea of what I wanted to wear to Merlin’s funeral. I knew that the only way, to get the look that I wanted, was to make the outfit myself. The kindly, gracious salesman was trying to get me interested in a rather conservative plaid fabric but it simply was not to my liking. My aversion was not because it was plaid; rather, the tone was too sombre.

He was not insistent but let me know that it was appropriate. However, I would have none of it; I simply did not like the fabric or the colours. I simply was not going to have it. Unable to make up my mind and not wanting to make a decision about fabric, as there were so many ramifications to what it all meant, I left the store stepping into the light of day. It had been a very dimly lit, nicely wood-panelled, stately shop.

Once outside, I became acutely aware of Merlin. I was now returned to the yard of Cabbagetown’s 20 Amelia Street, where we lived, and Merlin was present with me. Thoughts of Merlin, on leaving the store, had me immediately posited in the front yard of 20 Amelia Street where I happily joined him. We were watering the lawn even though it was wintertime. Next door at 18 Amelia Street, where at this point Club Monaco designer Alfred Sung no longer lived, there were lots of potted plants hanging from the lone, purple-leaved, sugar maple tree.

Merlin was telling me to water the plants. He then began telling me, rather matter-of-factly, that I had to start taking care of the apartment – I had to make it a home again. Merlin asked me to start preparing things. He meant that this was not the time for procrastination. Of course, moments earlier in the prior dream, I had been procrastinating when down on Parliament Street to pick out fabrics to wear to his funeral. By avoiding the matter altogether, I had chosen instead to forego the purchase. As Merlin spoke to me, I became so aware of him that I completely became self-aware – both in the dream and in my sleep whilst in bed at 20 Amelia Street.

I was standing there very intently looking at Merlin. He, too, was very intently looking at me. Whilst we were unflinchingly looking into each other, I thought aloud with quiet resignation, ‘Merlin has died.’

I knew, too, that Merlin had heard my thoughts in the dream.

At that moment my sister Pandora da Braga, with whom Merlin enjoyed the best relations of anyone else in my life, suddenly became a presence in the dream. She never fully became physically manifested but her energies became overwhelmingly strong. Her energies were just to my rear as she played a loving and supportive role.

Suddenly, introspectively, I recalled a dream which I had had earlier in the week. With everything moving so quickly, in the waking state – with little time to collect my thoughts, let alone overlong time to record any dreams- it had slipped by unrecalled on awakening. However, now it was not merely being recalled, it was being relived in its entirety. I stood there and as I recalled the dream, rather seamlessly, I actually entered the dream which was being reanimated as it was being holographically recalled.

Within the reanimated dream being recalled and relived, I was again on the lawn at 20 Amelia Street in the warmth of the Sun’s rays. Just as in today’s dream, I was on the front lawn facing due north and the house with 18 Amelia Street on the left to the west. As Merlin and I were visiting in the outer dream of today, I had turned my body. Being in the same physical position had triggered the recall and reanimation of the dream from the past week.

To my left, I saw an incredibly ancient-looking, wise being who progressed across the lawn. The slowness of his progression was so measured that one’s experience of time, in the reanimated and recalled dream, progressed outside of time itself. It was simply magical to experience the progression of the very ancient and mystical being. The millennia-ancient figure progressed across the lawn, of 18 Amelia Street, heading towards our home at 20 Amelia Street. The being was male and small in stature; he was hobbit-like. His head was large, disproportionately large, compared to his tiny, frail-bodied frame.

He could not have been more than four feet tall. His head was absolutely massive. His forehead arched up and was high like an African’s. Too, his head was elongated in the back, reminiscent of Pharaoh Akhenaten’s skull. More striking than the majesty with which the august being progressed outdoors, towards our home at 20 Amelia Street, was the look of his face.

It was simply magical. From beneath the translucent skin, soft yellow-white light escaped revealing his very visible aura. Nothing but pure love, along with the same nonjudgmental look that ever peered back from Merlin’s eyes to mine, radiated from this being. The love radiating from the being towards me was awesome, immense – intense. The great being’s progress was purposeful. He was on a mission; he was unstoppable. The process had begun.

I was struck by the uncanny resemblance, which the face of this being bore, to the planet-being in the skies of Sandy Point, St. Kitts in a momentous dream during September 1983. It was a dream whose potency and beauty would lay unfathomable for years to come. The being progressed as though levitating mere millimetres above the rather zingy, extra-green grass of the lawns at both 18 and 20 Amelia Street. Though he did not pause as he progressed, the radiant being did turn and look at me. As though he was familiar with me, he acknowledged me by slightly nodding. However, he continued on towards our home.

He moved past me as I stood there, still and silent, drinking in the majesty of the experience. At soul-centre we were familiar to each other. I knew him. He knew me. I stood, alone and awestruck, in the front yard being refamiliarised by the vibration of his beauty as the effect of his potent powers spatially affected the dream. As he moved past, I was reminded of the film The Dark Crystal, by Jim Henson – with whom Merlin had worked, directing two episodes of the Fraggle Rock television series in its inaugural season. This movie would for several months, after we saw it together in New York City, be our favourite film.

Thereafter for several weeks, whenever we looked at each other – even when not being intimate, we had hummed at each other as the rival beings in the film did when communicating. The being here was much like the good beings in the Jim Henson film The Dark Crystal. The being progressed up the few stone steps, to the wooden veranda at 20 Amelia Street, and began making his way inside the house. As I watched him ascend, from the lawn to the veranda, it was clear to me that he was levitating. Though it was a dream and I too could have levitated and flown, he though had a power which surpassed mine.

This august-souled, mystical being clearly originated from a dimension which vibrationally and spiritually was of a higher plane than the astral, where the dream occurred, and the physical in which I am incarnate. Indeed, the same physical plane from which Merlin was rapidly taking his leave – it was that discernible. The moment the mystical being entered our home, being lost to view, I came to from the inner holographic dream which was a recall and reanimation of a dream that I had experienced within the last week. As I came to, I was about to go indoors to see what had become of the being that had clearly entered our home.

It was then, having returned to being fully focussed in the outer ‘shell’ dream of today November 18, 1989, that I saw Merlin anew. He was standing at the front door looking out at me. I stood there, in the front yard, transfixed whilst the bright daylight bathed my body throughout. The look on Merlin’s face was purely transcendent. He was perfectly still and perfectly radiant. Merlin stood in the midst of a nimbus of dazzling, blue-white light. As he lovingly glowed out at me, this splendid light only intensified.

Merlin was transformed and as his face lovingly lit up, at me, the light grew to more completely envelop his body. Whilst lovingly glowing at me with the warmest, most familiar knowing smile, Merlin slowly brought his right hand up with the palm facing me and more completely smiled. The radiance of his smile soon became lost in the glow of his aura’s light. The nimbus, enveloping his transformed body, radiated even more intensely at that point.

I was blown away. Arrested, I readily knew what I was experiencing; I could feel it. I knew that across dimensions, in the waking state, Merlin had just died.

However, as is my wont, I protested. I dropped the hose which was still bleeding its nurturing water onto the frozen, wintry lawn at my feet. I stood – paralysed. Determinedly, I then bolted for Merlin. I headed up to the veranda as my lover, as my mentor, as my friend stood transcendent in the doorway to what had been the most beautiful sense of home ever experienced. “Merlin!” shrieking in protest, I yelled out his name.

(Detail of oil on canvas by my sister Pandora of Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery where Merlin is buried.)

Suddenly, the thunder of my protesting breath abruptly drew me from sleep. I sat upright in bed, my arms outstretched and beyond, after having crashed back into my body and no longer astral-projected. From the foot of the bed both cats – Zora and Whoopi – knowingly, silently looked up. I was arrested by the frozen horror-struck face staring at me from the mirrored closet doors across the room.

In the near-darkness of the bedroom, a few rays of early morning light made it past the blood-red, velvet drapes heavily hung at the windows. Those rays starkly cast light on how horribly desolate my life now was. Merlin was gone. His spirit had taken leave from this world. It was that discernible as my world, my very universe, had experienced a massive vibrational shift.

I had been abruptly displaced from the astral plane. I had been lucidly dreaming a dream within a dream. I was being told so long as Merlin, transitioned from incarnate to astral plane habitué, bade farewell to our magically glorious union on the physical plane. I was heartened by the peace and knowingness in his transcendent face because I knew that it was a, “See you soon…” parting, for now.

I knew that there would be dreams aplenty up ahead. Just as he had pledged, he would magically weave in his indelible promise to me, before departing from the physical plane. There was such a cold silence, a stinging finality to the moment, as I sat there in bed. After having looked back at myself, silently waiting, I placed a call to the eighth storey nursing station at Wellesley Hospital.

I was immediately aware that the tone of the nurses, with whom I was by now long-familiar, had changed. In very little time, it was official… Merlin had indeed passed. Truth be told, it was not a surprise; I could sense it on awaking. He simply was not there. As always, I had reached out to sense him on awaking – his energies – just blocks away at Wellesley Hospital. Now, there was nothing.

Then, as if needing further proof, I thought about Merlin calling each morning. He would do so, to lovingly say hello and thereby, to lovingly wake me up. Merlin would then lovingly ask for a call-back, after I had audio-recorded the dreams. Merlin had, thus far, not called. Once again, I saw the stillness of my reflection across the room. I knew then, really knew… Merlin was gone.

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As ever, thanks for your ongoing support but if you really want to make me levitate then do buy my books!

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Dropping In On An Old Favourite of Many Lives Ago.

16.02.201310.10.2024 Arvin da Brgha2 Comments

Whilst the Moon transited both Gemini and my first house, during the fourth and fifth dreams, I would experience the most rhapsodic sojourns to a past life. It was lucidly experienced, on Sunday, April 25, 1993. Rather than a past life of Merlin’s, it was a past life of mine.

It should be noted that these dreams occurred in the ‘A’ or first sleep cycle that day. There obviously was a ‘B’ or second sleep cycle of dreams that day and they are subsequently shared herein.

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On my arrival to this strange locale, the fourth dream was begun. I intuitively knew that this was the scene of a past life experience. Initially, I thought that I was in Sandy Point, St. Kitts as I had assumed that I was up at Brimstone Hill Fort.

It proved not to be. I experienced it as it was way back when. This structure had lots of canons and guns set up. The artillery was, of course, fully functional.

The place was very sloped; it seemed to have definitely been on an island and preferably in the Caribbean. The hill was very steep leaving part of the fort steeply graded.

It was intensely sunny out. On looking down at the landscape below, I realised that this was not Sandy Point, St. Kitts at any time in history. One section of the complex was a burial field for soldiers who had died during combat at the fort.

A large rose tree and some other trees had, over time, grown tall. One tree presently was in bloom with a large red flower. Its beauty was captivating. Subsequently, this tree grabbed my attention for a long while.

Whilst looking down at the splendour of the grounds, I thought that there was nothing in the world that I would rather do than to work the grounds of a cemetery like this.

For one, it was an historical site worthy of much care. In addition, it was very ancient – almost old-souled in nature.

‘There could be no job more rewarding and uplifting than this,’ I thought at the time.

Whilst on the grounds of the cemetery, I looked up to a higher level of the fort complex. Beyond it was the most spectacular vista imaginable; it was a mighty, lush, forested peak.

The fort was definitely itself on a hill. However, the fort was not situated on a mountainous area. In that sense, it was much like Brimstone Hill Fort which does sit on a peak. Just as the arrangement with Brimstone Hill Fort, this peak was to the east.

As a matter of fact, this was quite the imposing peak. Every available square inch of it sported the most densely planted, lush tropical trees. These arboreal giants imposingly towered into the tropical sky.

From where I stood, a long procession of brown legal-sized envelopes littered the ground. They proceeded high up into the slope. With me at the time was Milton Bloomfield except that he did not seem his usual self.

Though he looked as he presently does, I had the sense that there was an amalgam of him and a former aspect of self as he looked in a past life. Perhaps, the resonances to a former life that bled through reflected a time in the past when we knew each other.

No doubt that would have been a past life which directly related to the one that I was presently revisiting. I suggested that we go for a hike as I know that he likes outdoor activities and events.

We could get some backpacks and head out on a trek and go all the way to the top. I pointed out to him, where there was much activity, a region to the right on the peak.

I suggested that we go there because it would be nice to go and study the colony of wild monkeys at play there. He said that he could get into it. He then joked, with a screwed up look on his face, just as long as I had no ulterior motives.

He snickered and I returned a deadpan blank expression to his denial. There was no need for him to think like that. I wanted to be with him – his spirit. He was great company to be around… nothing more.

Whilst he went off, to possibly get ready for the trek or take off altogether, I began looking down into the town below. In a sense, I suppose that Sandy Point could have looked this way back in the seventeenth through eighteenth centuries.

For the most part, the buildings were no more than two storeys; just as in Old Sandy Point, many of them were chimneyed. This, however, distinctively was a Caribbean place if not in St. Kitts.

It could not have been Brimstone Hill Fort, however, as it was a very long sprawling fort. Much of the fort here was built on the side of a steeply graded slope.

To the west was the sea; nonetheless, I never did look out to sea. Strangely enough, from these altitudes, it was fairly cool out. For the life of me, I could not quite figure out what churches these were.

They were off to the south and away from what would have been Sandy Point – if these were, in fact, the structures of Brimstone Hill Fort. Certainly, in the case of the latter, there were no established sixteenth and seventeenth century stone dwellings to the immediate south of Brimstone Hill.

There was a round château-like structure which was being built way down the slope. Here, there were several Blacks working on the construction site. The whitewashed walls were exceptionally thick as one would expect to find in a European palace.

Rather than where I was, this was being built as part of the fort but close to the base of the slope. The architecture was distinctly French and the roof was a steeple-like affair.

The round lines were reminiscent of Château de Chenonceau. The roof was partially constructed and was black in colour. There were easily, in excess of, seven hundred persons labouring away at the construction site.

A very driven group of workers they were. The design of this structure was familiar to me. An intensely close-cropped town, it was down at the base of the fort.

From the distinctive look of the architecture, I decided that this was probably on one of the French islands here in the Caribbean. The mountainous terrain had me wondering if this were not, in fact, Haïti rather than Guadeloupe or Martinique.

Finally, I decided that I couldn’t resist the attraction so headed down to explore the town. Moving down the slope, I came to a clearing. There I discovered that, within the walls of the fort itself, there were a great many structures.

Apart from the town below, it was a complex administrative entity onto itself. Everywhere, the fort was constructed using massive black stone. The walls of the fort, as well as the many buildings on its grounds, were all made of the same stone.

This complex was quite well-fortified plus, on the grounds of which, they grew every possible foodstuff that they needed. There were orchards. Also, there were areas where livestock were reared on the grounds. This was in addition to the vast holdings beyond the walls and on the outskirts of the town.

The streets, inside and outside the fort, were narrow cobblestone affairs in that decidedly European fashion. When I got to the clearing, I happened on these two people who were aides to a very ancient man.

He wore a suit. This man was clearly a shaman and of Amerindian descent rather than African. Instantaneously, I identified with him and recognised that he was me. This was a past life of mine that I had returned to visit.

Not only was he long-lived but he was deeply occult. He was an accomplished master. His task involved laying his hands on the injured soldiers.

Even though these people were there to overrun his civilisation, he chose to ignore the politics of the situation. Since his people were already overtaken, he chose to go into service of the Europeans.

It was not so much that he had sold out. However, he had to fulfill himself with regards to the community at large. Stranger still, was the fact that he was being allowed to practice his shamanism.

Obviously, this was a very unconventional approach to healing/medicine. It was remarkable that within a European Catholic institution he was welcome into their midst.

This man really couldn’t have cared less that his own traditions had been annihilated by this foreign culture. They were human, as was he, and were in need.

Gladly, he used his powers to serve humanity in this capacity. He was a man with a strong warrior-like face that was generously flared-nostriled. Much as Pablo Picasso’s was, his was an intensely martial-energied face.

He was strong, warrior-energied and intensely, sexually magnetic. The shaman wore a bodysuit that was made of thick fabric. It was to protect him from being stung by insects and hurt by dangerous plants, when beyond the walls of the fort, moving through the wooded areas.

I think that part of his life he spent as a bit of a reclusive ‘wild man’, up in the mountains, beyond the heights of the fort. At this age, he walked with a long staff. He was a wrinkled, dear old soul.

When he got up to leave, I stood there being blown away by the sight of him. In any event, in that lifetime, I was a much-revered elder in the community.

This man held a position in the community which was totally unique and unrivalled. This past life of mine was one in which I was a spiritual leader within the community.

A short, hobbit of a man, he was incredibly dark-skinned. Though not a tall man, he was robust. There was nothing frail about him. He had a great constitution in that lifetime.

In his youth, it was plain to see that this man had wandered far and wide. He had worn his years well on that body of his. As he got up and walked away, I was so blown away to have seen what I looked like in this particular past life, I sat down and started laughing for joy.

To say the least, the great pride that I felt in self was uplifting.

The canons all had balls piled up in pyramid formations besides them. Everything was very current and clearly in use.

Some of the canons were rather tiny and had to be placed on stands to best reach up to their perches. One of them was green as though made of long-ago oxidised copper. There was clearly no war at the time.

Throughout this entire experience, I was always removed from everyone and generally hovering in the air. Clearly, I had astral-projected to this place. The only person who could have seen me was Milton Bloomfield.

I did though have the distinct impression that the old man had asked to get going because he had sensed me. I think that he thought that my presence meant his imminent passing which was obviously not the case.

Also, there were very few persons here at the time and the ones whom I did see were not the least bit familiar to me. Perhaps, in a former life, I was buried at that cemetery because it certainly was a place of great solace whilst I visited it.

It felt like a coming home of sorts.

There were no upright markers for the gravesites. Instead, there were long slabs that outlined each burial plot. It was a very Catholic-looking affair with most of the graves long-ago sealed.

Next, this being the fifth dream, I was in a house and thought about the mindset of the Europeans whom I encountered. They were discussing the fact that their children kept domesticated monkeys from the mountains as children of their own.

Their attitude towards these animals was not only proprietary but there was an element of racism involved, too. They saw the domesticated monkeys as their own special breed of ‘Negroes’ that were not wild and potentially dangerous.

*How utterly evolved! END.

They had gotten attached to the animals because the old Amerindian shaman also cared for animals. Part of his reason for going off into the mountains was so that he could care for the animals. He took it upon himself to heal and nurse back to health, any unhealthy infant monkeys from the colony that had been abandoned to die by their mothers.

He had a deep loving rapport with these animals which the transplanted Europeans admired. Naturally, their children desired having some of the cared for animals for themselves as pets. Since he couldn’t exactly deny them the request either, he gladly indulged them.

For one, it was his nature to be caring and of service to all life. For another, he was in no position to deny the demands of persons who ultimately did not see him as an equal.

Two of the monkeys, which he had nurtured back to health, were now the favourite playthings of this particular family’s children. What struck me about these two creatures was the fact that they looked more like two-toed sloths rather than monkeys.

These creatures were so old-souled-looking with their slow-moving demeanour. Their black-within-black soulful eyes were placed low on their sloped foreheads.

Interestingly, I was concerned at how small their heads were. To me it suggested that their brains were too small, without the requisite capabilities, for ensoulment to have occurred. Even in comparison to the rest of their bodies, their heads were exceptionally small.

Their arms, on the other hand, were entirely another matter. Ridiculously long, they were also phenomenally strong. Clearly, this was somewhere in Central to South America as the sloths are native to that part of the world.

*I would rather not corrupt the experience by attempting to describe the details of the encounter. Since it is not good work to fabricate, especially with regards to the dream material, I would like to leave it at that.

I would also like to add here that a most magnetic electrical storm greatly inspired me before going to sleep. I had gathered a couple of blankets and gone onto the balcony, 16 storeys up, facing due west.

There I looked at a gathering storm system. With crystals in hand, I began taking long even breaths when the lightning show started. It was so intense. There was a microburst and Whoopi leapt onto my lap, high as a kite, looking at the storm transfixed.

I had never felt so connected with nature in long ages. Directly pointing the crystals into the aperture of the break in the clouds, I took seven long, deep breaths whilst chanting ‘Om’. At the end of the sixth breath, the skies broke open and the most powerful downpour started.

This was such a moving experience that, with Whoopi trembling and purring away next to me on the chair – she had leapt from my lap during one of the thunder claps but returned on my invitation – I began uncontrollably weeping. It was so immensely beautiful.

So I thought then about my life and what a greatly enriching experience it has been. Thought, too, of how marvellous it has been to have met and known Merlin and everyone else along the way who has added so much learning to my journey.

Naturally, I thought a great deal of Gustavo Vadim and me. At the end of it all, I felt truly weary and looked forward to nothing more glorious than slipping into the dreamtime.

These dream experiences were inspired by the expansiveness of spirit that I experienced during the storm. For having blissed out, on the energies of that incredible electrical storm, I was able to move into the lusciousness of the greenhouse and connect with the magus within.

For feeling oneness with nature, during the electrical storm, it affected resonance to the deeply spiritual life of the Amerindian shaman. For being inspired during the storm, I readily astral-projected on slipping into sleep.

Like an eagle, I spanned spiral arms of time and was able to drink of the noble spirit of self in a former life. The gift for having taken the time to commune with nature, during the storm, had me travel across time. There I would just as marvellously bliss out when re-experiencing aspects of that past life as an Amerindian shaman.

However, I found it really strange to have encountered this distinctively French architecture. I am convinced that the life was lived in what was clearly not the Caribbean but Central or South America which was only ever Spanish.

After all, there were never sloths in the Caribbean. For that matter, was that particular Amerindian look ever native to the Caribs or Arawaks. Perhaps, there was some person who favoured the French school of architecture and had his or her designs executed.

Certainly, there could be signs of French architecture in several of the Caribbean islands but hardly in the Americas – Central and South.

However, all of this leaves one to assume that perhaps it was in French Guyana. Exceptionally, it is the only French-speaking country with French architectural influences in either Central or South America where sloths are exclusively to be found. END.

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Photo: Big Head

c. 1905 Edward S. Curtis

Provenance: Library of Congress. U. S. A.

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Dreams are the poetic expression of the soul.

Tag: Hobbit

See You Soon… 30 Years On, Merlin’s Magical Departure.

Dropping In On An Old Favourite of Many Lives Ago.