The Dream about Time and Fear

Many years ago, I had a dream in which I was shown how the nature of time and fear work. I know it had to do with the moment of physical death even before my friend Malcolm’s voice begins to speak to me in my head, as though walking me through an event that’s about to take place but that has already occurred.

I enter a waiting room of sorts, empty chairs line the walls, magazines piled on the coffee table in the middle. In my head, my friend Malcolm’s voice says:

“ Then you’re in this waiting room, and you’re about to go in to see the Psychologist. You go to the back of the room...”

I go to the back of the room. “..and go through the velvet curtains,”

I push the heavy wine-red curtain and go in, it’s very dark on the other side. Malcolm’s voice continues:

“Now you’re about to meet the Psychologist, but this is where it gets tricky...you’ll meet his assistant first and---”

At that moment, I know that “you’ll see a large man in a suit who will greet you,” at the same time that “you’ll hear a great loud bell ----BONG!!!--- sound and you’ll feel-”

Fear. My stomach plummets. I’m terrified beyond words.

The curtains part, I see a huge man, who looks a lot like Andre the Giant dressed in a suit slightly too small for him, pop out from behind and say ‘No,’ just as a great big bell sounds. In that very same instant, behind the giant is the Psychologist, a skinny man sitting cross-legged on the edge of his desk; he shouts: “Yes!”, and instantly I am consumed with fear and instantly-

“ you felt fear,” Malcolm’s voice-over continues, “ so you had to go right back to the beginning...”

And I see myself outside again, my whole life flashes before my eyes, I re-experience every emotion, positive or negative, up until the moment I am in the waiting room again, walking toward the heavy wine-red curtains. I’m weary, tired, I’ve done this before, so many times, how many times more? I reach out to the curtains, my hand a pearly white against the deep red; the curtain is so heavy, and I feel I barely have the strength to lift it. I must get this right, I tell myself, and I already feel the fear creep up at the prospect of failing.

And I’m back again. Every joy, every pain, every moment of beauty beheld, every loss, rushes through me. Again I’m in the waiting room, at the heavy curtains. My heart is pounding in my chest. I must stay calm. I part them and go through, again the bell sounds at the same time that Andre the Giant greets me and ushers me in. “ But you know he’s not the real Psychologist, but just his assistant.”

Now I’m standing inside the dark office and the Psychologist, who looks like John Cleese, is sitting primly, cross-legged, on the edge of his desk.

“The real psychologist,” says Malcolm’s voice-over, “ is sitting on the desk. Pay close attention to what he says because he’ll tell you what you’ve always wanted to know. The most important thing is not to feel fear in that moment or else-”

Here John Cleese the Psychologist speaks to me and tells me what I’ve always wanted to know and I listen and I am keenly aware of every cell in my being wanting to remember his words precisely. It feels inconceivable that I would not upon waking; what he’s saying is what I’ve always known deep inside me so how could I possibly forget? It’s so huge, what he has to say, how could I have possibly forgotten? But forget I did.

Suddenly I’m aware of a different sort of lighting inside the office, it’s coming from the left. I look and it’s my ex-colleague Louise sitting at her animation desk with her desk lamp on like it usually is whenever we worked late-shifts. She’s talking to me in her ordinary jovial manner when she suddenly stops and fixes me with the most penetrating stare. Behind her an indigo blue nimbus forms in the silhouette shape of a Buddha figure. Louise is perfectly still in that impossible way that a film is stopped at a single frame, yet she’s still alive. This silhouette intensifies in luminosity and blue-ness; then superimposed over Louise, the silhouette’s eyes begin to open, first as mere slits, then as almond-shaped windows through which an brilliant light is streaming through.

And I understand.

“This is what the moment of your death was like.” says Malcolm’s voice, “ if you had reacted with fear, no matter how small, you’ll go right back into the human life cycles and be born again. To be living it all again, but differently, until that moment arrived again and you leapt into the true..”

The light streaming through Louise’s Buddha eyes intensifies and I shield my eyes with my hands.

“but whatever you do, you must not let the fear take you over.”

That was when I woke up.

-Serene Daoud (c) 2017

a dream from 2004