I am high above the silent Earth, floating freely, looking down calmly and serenely at my home planet. I know that there is no such thing as time.

I am here because I am waiting, timelessly, for what I know must come.
This is a strange yet unthreatening place. All around me is the mute and impenetrable blackness that beckons us all forth from the day we are born until the day we become an infinitesimal and eternal part of it.

If I turn towards Earth, though, there is light. Light in the shape and gleaming luminescence of the reflected rays which come from a sun that I cannot see. I have no idea of how high up I am. All I know is that the whole planet can, just, be hidden from my sight if I raise an outstretched hand.

There is a tiny hand, not mine, in front of my eyes. It is picking up a small and shiny six-inch high red figurine that is lying on something invisible. I cannot make out what the figurine represents because it seems to change shape as it twists and turns upon itself slowly and constantly, and it glistens or glows, depending on each new form it takes on. The more I look at it, the more it changes.

It appears to be made of some kind of varnished and delicate porcelain. I can hear a gentle and soothing breeze although I cannot feel it. There is an Earth behind the transparent hand, and there is blackness behind the transparent Earth. And behind the transparent blackness is more blackness, forever.

These images fade slowly away, the soft whisper of the breeze subsides, and the silent planet Earth returns to take their place.

I have a sudden and inexplicable urge to look down more closely and see which part of the Earth is below me. Wherever it is, I know that I must go there.

I am above Central Africa.

My eyes zoom me down and I find myself hovering a few hundred yards above a flat and endless desert. The sand is of a somber and darkly brooding color, something between ochre and red. The sun is setting. I am surrounded by total silence although I can hear the inner sound of my existence. It is neither warm nor cold. There is no temperature. I cannot sense or see my physical self but my sense of sight is functioning. To my right, I can just make out a tiny black dot, about half a mile away.

A tiny black dot.

I zoom in on it, and it becomes a small girl of about six years of age. There are no footprints in the smooth sand around her to show from which direction she has come, and she is totally alone, alone in this desert, just squatting there, unmoving, staring into the distance. She is frail, and delicately formed, with darkish skin, long and tangled black hair, deep black eyes and very thin arms.

She is manifestly undernourished. She is wearing a simple robe made of sackcloth, and she has a sackcloth belt around her waist, with a crudely-fashioned leather pouch attached to it. It has small drawings on it. They are white outlines. They are outlines of animals. Animals drawn by the wavering and concentrating hand of a child.

There is a small and sunbleached stick lying on the sand next to her, and I know somehow that it has never been touched by human hand. She picks it up in a solemn and ritualised fashion and holds it up horizontally as if she wants the glowering, reddening and darkening sun to see it.

After a few seconds she nods her head respectfully in the direction of the sun as if the sun has said words to her that I cannot hear. Then she begins to trace lines in the sand. She traces the lines using slow and careful gestures. She draws two horizontal lines crossed by two vertical lines. It is a noughts-and-crosses grid. It is approximately one and a half feet square.

Then, putting down the stick, she reaches into her pouch and very carefully takes out a small ring. The ring is not made of matter. It is made of light. It is the fragile light of a bright blue sky. She slowly and deliberately places it in the centre of the bottom left hand square.

After a pause, she reaches back into the pouch and takes out a small cross from it. The arms of the cross are all the same length. The cross is not made of matter. It is made of shimmering yellow fire, but it does not burn her fingers as she lays it gently into the center of the bottom right hand square.

She contemplates her redochre grid and her ring of blue light and her cross of yellow fire.

As she does so, a dozen or so small and brightly-colored figurines materialize slowly out of the sand. They are about six inches high and they gradually form a circle around the grid. They are each of a different color. Blue, red, green, yellow, and many others, and they shine with a new and incongruous brilliance against the dull and ancient sand. They appear to be made of some kind of varnished and delicate porcelain.

I cannot see what they represent, because each time I try to focus my eyes on one of them it twists and changes shape and turns upon itself, slowly and unceasingly. As soon as I begin to shift my eyes towards another one, I see that the one I was watching begins to stabilise itself. But even If I try to look back at it again, quickly, it begins to turn and change again. Instantly.

I understand that I am not destined to know what they mean.

The girl considers the figurines gravely.

She is thinking.

She is deciding which shall be the chosen one.

She chooses the red one, which she picks up, oh so very gently, with both hands, while the other figurines continue their undulating form dance. She then moves the object, and her reason for choosing it, towards the center square. She moves her hand with infinite deliberation and, this time, a little hesitation.

She places the figurine in the exact center of the center square, along with her reason.

_______________________

As soon as the figurine touches the sand I hear a searing wind in the distance. It is approaching fast. I look down and there is an imperceptible movement in the sand that I do not quite understand at first. The stick, the ring, the cross, the figurines, the grid itself, are all moving towards each other and circling around each other and interacting somehow. Suddenly, as at a signal, they begin to absorb themselves into each other, to melt into each other, to welcome each other, to be a part of each other, to coalesce in glimmering color.

The wind hits hard and the girl shivers and sighs silently just once and her hair is blowing wildly around her and her robe is ruffling flapping and she clasps her hands tightly pleading together in front of her and closes her eyes and doesn’t move or even want to breath as the continuing coloring coalescence begins to flow gently and slowly into her and it is now becoming a part of her and she is willfully becoming a part of it too and now flowing into it and everything blends and molds and harmonizes and wants to be one together as the wind begins to howl around the One in the Making and the sand begins to obscure things and the girl and everything else are forming one and becoming a shimmering and fusioned mass of color and one which begins to spread out from itself and the colors and fusion begin to form the unsteady outline of something a contour and the sandstorm is screeching and the desert and the Earth are receding.

I am in the center of a vortex and the blinding one of being and color is taking shape I can see it clearly in the eye of the receding vortex and the deafening and orchestral noise of forever and the colored one has become something definable I think maybe and yes it is now a butterfly the girl stick figurines grid ring cross everything is now a beautiful colorful Butterfly wings moving fitfully like the arms of a newborn baby and I remember the pouch and I remember now the same Butterfly sketched upon it by a child wings moving now and the beautiful colorful Butterfly is no longer on the ground there is no more ground beneath it...

There is no more sand or vortex there is just the blessed Butterfly in the center of the blackness blotting it out with its sublime and blissful life a bright being with white and gossamer wings moving and the intemporal and everlasting bright and living Butterfly fluttering gossamer wings and taking off unsteadily and flying and it is climbing higher the cataclysmic roar of the universal wind is everywhere and life’s Butterfly is flying and wings beating faster and faster and eagerly and heaven’s Butterfly is flying instinctively and striving and struggling towards that which is good and true and all there is and was and ever will be...

And the beautifully colored glittery-gossamer-winged Butterfly becomes a part of everything that ever existed in the past and it is a part of everything that exists now and it shall become a part of everything that shall exist in the future and it is all that is eternal.

...I am high above the silent Earth, floating freely, looking down calmly and serenely at my home planet. I know that there is no such thing as time...

Michael C

(I dreamt this (dreamed if you prefer, both are correct) on a ship off the Brazilian coast a long long time ago. It is no longer mine. I am placing it, and the words which express it, in Shahwar k’s hands as a token of my deep respect for her intellectual honesty and moral courage. I am sure however that she will not mind me sharing it myself, one last time, with all my friends on this site, and those who administer it. Hassan Rizvi’s prayer is with me now and shall remain so.

The only changes vis-a-vis the dream as it was dreamt are minor and they occur in the last four paragraphes only. They do not change the meaning or the end in any way).

(Photo - sciencedaily.com)