THE WEB

Lately, I have been dreaming in webs and tangles; dreams of the sea, of staircases leading to nowhere and beyond, of palaces of the dead with paint chipping off the walls.

Note: I don’t seem to be in a frenzy in any of these. I feel rather calm. For most of the dream, I seem to be an actor in a movie or a video game player. But then again, is this not a movie? Is this not a video game? I cannot say for certain. 

Every time I am at the sea, I watch the water slip under my feet and make its way back to where it belongs - rushing back to the sand on the ocean floor and ushering towards the schools of silverfish and eels. I sit silently by the shore and catch the breeze with my hair. Sometimes, I even read the book I got with me; the pages glimmering under the harsh desert sun. 

Perhaps I feel at ease, for this is where I have grown up. I live five minutes from the beach - that is if I take the chopper (Dubai’s traffic has become relentless as of late). I revisit these places quite often nowadays, yet somehow, I am constantly torn between feeling a sense of belonging and being thrown away into an endless state of limbo. This is the town that I grew up in, but it is entirely different from what I knew way back when. 

Anyway, back to my dreams. 

The sight of broken cliffs surrounded by deep waters or endless staircases spiraling upwards and downwards is not new to me. I consider them encrypted messages sent to me by ships in a bottle from the future. Except they are not meant to be remembered, only felt. The pattern usually emerges when I am in the midst of a deep transformation, with the world and with myself. 

The other day, as I was lying in bed, I heard a song that seemed so familiar to my ears. I spoke out loud, “Holy shit, I haven’t heard this music in so long!” But as it progressed, it dawned upon me that I had never listened to this song in my entire life. It shifted something within me. As I fell asleep, I dreamt of a knot of strings that connected me to my current reality. They were bleak and seemed to change with every small decision I made. One moment I was here, and in another, I was nowhere at all. 

Blank. 

Perpetual void. 

And then a light. 

I wondered then, I must have heard this in another reality - one in which I wasn’t from this land at all, or any other for that matter. I could never really know. I remind myself to be where my feet are, but sometimes I like to give in to a slice of solipsism. Let’s say that I am here, but where is the rest? Is the external world an elaborate relay of my mind? 

Why, yes, it is! The world is as I am. 

(But perhaps not to the extreme extent of a solipsist)

I suppose the connection I am trying to make here is that of time. One of the many things that remains outside the control of the human limit. We have reduced this insurmountable concept to merely three aspects: the past, the present, and the future. 

Back when I was in college, I studied several streams of consciousness from Indian philosophy, and since there are virtually no answers to a philosophy student’s questions, I decided to mix and match a few to match my understanding of the world. It’s funny because it is the same message, just in various forms from different timelines of human history. However, to summarise my take on ideas borrowed from Buddhist, Jain, Vedanta, and Nyaya texts - here are the common underlying threads that tie them together. 

One: The idea that there exists a past, present, or future is a watered-down consolation to the fact that time is entirely incomprehensible to the human brain. It is, however, comprehensible to the soul. Dying brings with it the greatest DMT trip, but also a sense of stillness that reverts you to the initial essence, the one that resides within us all as a creator, as a force, and as a reminder. You may call this whatever you please. 

Two: If there exists no past, present, or future, what is the state of matter we exist in? It is one. It is all-consuming. It is now. I like to think of it this way: every decision that I have ever made has brought me to this very moment, clicking away at a keyboard. But this very well could’ve been a typewriter, a feathered ink-pen scrawling on a piece of paper, or a chiseled stone carving on a tablet. It has been all of it, all at once. For every moment that I have ever lived, there have been a million other moments that have played out simultaneously. 

The human brain shrinks this down to the idea of ‘back then’ or ‘somewhere in the future.’ But I have written this thought before. Perhaps not on the Hamurabi code, but in some hidden corner of my soul’s conscience. It is not so much that I have been here before, but more so that I am experiencing everything in complete oneness. This goes to serve that our comprehension of time is incorrect; you exist in the same timeline as dinosaurs. You exist in a timeless web of possibilities. You exist only in the ‘now.’

Three: The question of the essence. From my understanding, this is an experience my soul chose to have. It is not a question of destiny or fate, but rather the question of how far I am willing to push my limits. If there is no before or after, only the now, it means that everything this soul has ever desired is already mine to experience. Every desire, thought, or idea completed to its fruition is just me catching up to a reality that has already long existed. I am only just reaching the ‘now.’

Finally, when this illusion of the Maya finally crumbles apart and I see my existence for what it really is - an experience, a test, a path, I center myself in my life’s force and feel a presence that is not only humbling but possibly the only thing that can stand to understand time. This is the essence that we are destined to eventually return to. 

Which is why, when it comes to my dreams, I tend to take them not only as reflections of the subconscious but as lessons from realities that I have not encountered in this body. They serve to teach me what I cannot see: messages from the beyond, ringing through astral planes, and reaching my ears when I find a certain sense of stillness. 

It is this stillness that inevitably moves me. 

For it is here that I find myself. 

I find God.