...back in my bed, I quickly catch the false awakening and head out into the street once more, now thinking of the other basic TotM. I fly over the rooves of the nearest houses and find that I can see right through them into some of the rooms. Most are empty, unusually decorated bedrooms. Eventually I come to a house where three guys are in a room with a bed, sofa, small TV – basic, plain furniture which reminds me of a hotel room. When I enter, they act aware of my presence but don’t seem to mind it at all. I ask the guy nearest to me if he has a potion that will reveal to me the Ultimate Truth. He hands me a tiny little bottle of pale liquid, almost a bottlecap. I turn away from all of the others and prepare to drink from the bottle. I quickly down it like a shot – I don’t remember any particular taste, except perhaps a very very faint flowery taste. And then…
Blankness. I think I must black out in the dream, or something, because the next thing I know is that I’m turning back towards the guy who gave me the potion, and I have a distinct sense that something happened, something changed, yet when I look around the room I can’t see any particular difference in it. I think for a few moments, then decide it would be better to try it again for the task. I ask the same guy – “Do you have another? Perhaps something more…spiritual?” …as though there’s a great range of Ultimate Truths to choose from, of all different flavours. Without hesitation, he places a little white pill into my outstretched hand. And then a slightly larger pink pill. A purple pill, a blue pill, another pink pill…within moments my hand is full of pills. I stare at them. “Should I swallow all of these at once?”
This time it’s one of the other guys who replies, one who had been sitting on the bed occupied with something else, watching TV. He turns to look at me with a slight knowing smile. “Oh, please do,” he says. “I’d like to see this.”
I have no idea of what’s going to happen, but apparently these dream characters do. I start swallowing the pills. At first it feels like there are far too many in my mouth all at once and I might choke but I reassure myself – it’s a dream, I can swallow them with utmost ease, and there’s no way I’ll choke if I don’t want to. Then I manage to get them all down. And a moment later I’m in another scene entirely.
It’s a lush green place, a mix of forests and valleys and glades and streams, with a stone arch built over it, through it, ivy climbing up its walls. The arch is very precise, very tall, patterned perfectly with smaller stones. I wonder who would build such a thing here; whether there is a place just like this in waking life. My view of the place is bodiless, but from a perfect vantage point. The scene shifts, and then shifts again.
Sometimes I’m back in the room with the two guys, and they are showing me large pictures and directing me to look at particular places. Sometimes I’m actually within the pictures, in the places they are showing me, but without a body. In the room, looking at the original green place, one of the men asks me—“Can you find Jesus here?” Sometimes in the scene, sometimes in the room, I look. I come across a picture/place in which there are people, a hill of sorts where there is a gathering, but all the people look like they are painted. One of the guys next to me says—“Jesus is actually a woman, you know.” I find a painted traditional image of Jesus of the kind I’ve seen around many times before, but it’s extremely small. Once I point it out to the guys, it begins to zoom in, further and further, and I see that it truly is a woman’s face, and it has a rather eerie smile painted upon it. The others standing around also have eerie expressions; I think some of them may be holding knives, and “Jesus” is holding a small child. I have the idea of sacrifice. Then I’m within the image again, looking more and more closely at that eerie face, straight into its eyes – then things become extremely confused; I am outside on the street in a storm, and I am back within the room, and there is an implication that something bad happens to whoever has seen whatever it even was that I just saw. It’s all very creepy, like something out of a horror movie – something like The Ring – but I don’t really become much more unsettled by it. I simply consider the task done, and move on.
