Introduction: Dreams!

Is there anyone reading this who hasn't had them? Do you remember the very first dream you ever had? I don't! But I do remember dreaming as a very young child. Much like Chuang Tze, early on I became aware of the fact that there was a part of me that apparently lived not in one, but in two worlds. Still later on I came to understand that not only could I move between one and the other, but that I could actually live between the two, as well.

In time I came to realize that existing in such a state was not a blessing at all, but rather a kind of curse that accompanied special people, whom Colin Wilson would one day write about, calling them "outsiders."

And with this understanding also came the realization that if I had a religion at all, it was not the Methodism of my youth, but rather that I was a "mystic," the roots of which word originally meant "to be silent," no doubt referring to the inability of man to put into words his experience of the ineffable.

You see, it is not as the ancient Hebrews would have us believe, that it is a blasphemy to utter the name of Yahweh. But rather, that to do so is an impossibility...for the moment one speaks the name of God, he is no longer that which is being spoken of. Hence, the Taoists would write, "The Tao which can be spoken of is not the real Tao!" It is this very idea that led the mystic Joel S. Goldsmith to coin the phrase "The Infinite Invisible" to describe that deity which he perceived.

So you see, it is only in the dream state that we as mortals ever begin to come close to even the remotest comprehension of who and what our gods may very well be. This truth was well known in ancient times and led to the creation of "sleep te