by Michael Reed
The first time I had seen the book of life I was very young. I was maybe five years old, and this is a rough guess. At this time I used to get severe earaches that would be so intense it felt like no other pain I’ve experienced. A loud ringing would grow and intensify with every heart beat until it was so intense that I would pass out. I had extreme temperatures and would be in and out of consciousness for hours on end. The intense ringing with the heart beating almost sounded like the drumming of a drum line. Thinking about the beating, it’s very rhythmic like a trance. This beat I have later heard when listening to Native American rituals. When I was passed out I would remember flying through clouds and diving towards the ground when I got close enough to see the ground it was a giant black and white checkerboard. I could see the black and white in every direction was infinite. I fly further it would feel like I was getting farther away. I would start to get confused as a cloud surrounded me. In the cloud it was cold and uninviting; it would make my hairs stand on end. I would push through the clouds until again it was black and white for as far as the eyes could see. This dream has recurred throughout my life, always with the same results. I’ve tried many various techniques for controlling my dreams throughout my life. At a point I was able to consciously control my dreams and did amazing things, but in this dream it does not matter what I do the results are always the same. I now believe this is the journey one must take to get to the fourth dimension or the spiritual world. Or it is the journey in the spirit world to get to the book.
After going in and out of consciousness and having this dream over and over, I had a dream I was laying on the couch. When I was sick I would lay on the couch so as to not keep my siblings awake. In this dream it was very calm and soothing; I got up off the couch and walked into the kitchen. I unlocked the door and walked outside; I walked to the table in the yard and looked on the table.
On the table was a book that looked very old. It wasn’t made from gold or glowed with some ominous light. There were no horns playing some angelic music. It was very big like an oversized bible you would see in a church. I knew it was old because it’s aged showed on it’s brown leather cover. It was open with it’s yellow ribbon to keep its page. It was always open with a yellow ribbon for a book mark. It seemed like there were thousands of pages. I always started on the same page. It always started me on that same page.
When I looked into the book it looked like a giant photo album. The pages looked like pictures that were taken with a digital camera. The pictures were so clear, they looked real. After looking at one page of pictures I turned to go back inside. This is when I was awakened by my parents who found me outside in the yard. I had been sleepwalking while I was dreaming. After that dream my fever broke and I began feeling better. I gave the dream no thought and soon forgot what I had seen.
About two weeks later I was riding my bicycle in the neighborhood with my friends. Like a bolt of lightning I froze in time, everything around me stopped into one split second. Just as I had seen it in the book everything around me was exactly the same. It was what I thought déjà vu is. I could not move but I still was able to observe everything around me without moving. I could still hear although it was dead quiet. I could smell everything at once. Time was frozen and so was I, but I could still think. When time stops, how can you tell how much time has passed? It could have been one second or three years. It felt like only a few seconds had passed. Then I snapped back to time like I had stayed to long in that frozen second. It snaps like a slingshot trying to put you back to the right time. The second passed, but it scared the living daylights out of me I thought something bad was going to happen. As a matter of fact I always get that same bad feeling whenever I get déjà vu. The hairs stand up on the back of my neck, the adrenaline starts flowing. My heart was beating fast and my brain was screaming at me that something was wrong. Nothing bad happened that day; although I did make the connection that I had seen it two weeks ago in a dream.
That’s something you don’t go telling people because you think something is wrong with you, and if you say something people are going to think something is very wrong with you. It seems that it could not be real that when I was awake seeing this, it felt like it was a dream. Your sanity will be called into question, at this time it was very confusing for my mind to comprehend. At a younger age it might be easier to accept this sort of reality shock.
Another thing I noticed on that day that even though I saw it in advance I could not remember it until it happened. Somehow I can see pictures in the book but I cannot retain the images until they happen, or just a split second before they happen. It is somehow stored in my brain at an inaccessible point. In my dream I can remember how I get to the book and looking through it and my thoughts of what I’m thinking to what I’m seeing, I can remember everything around me in this dream but the pictures are blurred out, censored out of my memory. When I awake from these dreams the details start to fade from my memory. It is very difficult to deal with the fact that you can see something before it happens but cannot do anything about it.
Seeing the future is a difficult concept to deal with in itself. If I can see it before it happens then I can do something about it? That is exactly what I thought, but this is not how it is. When you’re looking into the book not only do you see, but you can feel it. You can smell the air and feel the breeze. The warm sun on your face, all the noises in the background, it’s like experiencing it actually happening. Your feelings about what you are experiencing are clear. Sometimes it is a negative feeling about what you’re seeing or doing. Those feelings like something is wrong or that something is going to happen. They are the most difficult to deal with. To know something bad will happen before it has happened. To not know when it will happen, looking for it at every second becomes unbearable.
Sometimes the images are so strong that I can remember what they were about almost like a reflection or a shadow but I cannot change the outcome of these images. It’s almost like remembering a dream throughout the day. You remember the beginning of your dream when you wake up. During the middle of the day you remember the end of your dream, and now it starts to really eat at you what your dream was. You strain to remember the middle part all afternoon until it hits you like a brick. The whole dream comes into focus. I remember the images in the book but not in the order I had seen them, it’s very disorienting. The blurred out images must not be written in stone in the book, like a choice I make could change it. The reflections are different because they cannot be changed. Often it seems that reflections push you to it no matter what you do. I am aware that sometimes that images that were vague get filled in next time you go back, and sometimes images fade away like they never existed, but there still there in the book. It is really weird because it seems like no matter what you do it’s all there laid out for you ahead of time. Every step no matter how small and insignificant, is required to progress to your future. No matter what you do it is not really of free will, maybe it’s more like right and wrong choices, or more like different shades of grey between right and wrong.
Having seen into the future of some event with negative consequences should be compared to being brutally tortured. Not knowing exactly what is going to happen or when it will happen or who it will happen to is unimaginable. Every instinct in your body tells you to act in some way to alter the events that will take place in order to change what will happen. So I did, I altered what I did consciously every second for everyday, thinking that through my randomness it would somehow change something. At the same time I was thinking if I move one foot to the right or wait one more second, maybe it would change things. It doesn’t change anything, no matter how clear or blurry the image was it doesn’t seem like changing anything bears any weight on the future. If anything it feels like all those choices were planned for in order for it to happen. Everything I did to alter my choices to change the future was already laid out and still pushed me towards what I was trying to change. It feels like your acting to change it only pushes every
thing together for it to happen. It feels like you’re responsible for it happening, it feels like it’s all your fault.
The dark reality is a heavy weight to bear as child. It’s hard to deal with something that has happened in your life after it has happened. It’s even harder to deal with something before during and after it has happened. It feels like a punishment or a curse that you can only watch. Your actions have no consequences at all. Your free will has been taken away from you. The responsibility of not being able to change it and the responsibility of feeling like you caused it, is a very hard form of mental anguish. The only way not to fall into a spiral of self loathing was to realize that in some way that it will help someone. That one day there will be a way to prevent something from hurting someone somewhere. Just one time it will help change the world for the better of mankind.
I also realize, that as I was younger, I would be allowed more access to the book. As I grew older it seemed like access would be more limited, more interruptions, less clear. I also do not have access to anyone else’s information. As I tried to have more control over my dreams, trying to consciously access my subconscious, I noticed that I was granted no access at all to the book. I could dream flying over the checker board but could not navigate how to get there. Other dreams it would be guarded and no matter what I did it would not get me access to the book or my subconscious. During stressful parts in my life I’ve had access to the book and soon after my life had calmed down.
Every time I see a picture from the book it really feels like time slows down everything to show me that exact picture. I was meant to see this exact moment and while all my senses go into overdrive and my mind races to figure out why this second is so important. I have come to realize that this split second, no matter how small and insignificant, through all the chaos and disorder was planned in advance and was performed perfectly to be all put in motion to all converge to this second.
The very concept of what happens in the future or the past is very blurry for me. I truly understand the concept of the now, future, and past but the lines of the past and the future cross each other. For me it’s not a straight timeline starting at birth to death. To me it would look like a roller coaster ride with many twist and turns. If you experience something twice at the same moment in time which was first, and which was real? They both felt real but the dream happened first. The way I distinguish between these dreams and my real world is the before and after of how I got there. While looking in the book I cannot always see events before and after an event. It’s very fuzzy between the pictures. In real life I can remember everything in sequence since I woke up that day. It makes for very difficult memories to comprehend. How could the same moment be possible at two different times?
After reading about the book of life, and hearing the stories about it I still didn’t make the connection to it. I thought it was just a picture book that showed the future. I’ve seen it many different places but always in the spirit world. It wasn’t until one day after finishing looking at the book I closed it and the title was ‘The Book of Life’ or maybe it was ‘The Book of Light’. I’m pretty sure it was ‘The Book of Life’ as this is what I see in it, my life. This is when I started to put things together, and began my spiritually awakening. During my spiritually quest I realized there are different levels of the spirit world, just like there are stages of life. The Buddhist believes in different levels of consciousness that can be obtained through deep meditation and wisdom. The spirit or soul must go through different stages as well. The soul is much older than the current life and will be reincarnated until it becomes fully aware and fully conscious, only then it will be free of the physical world.
In other words if in this life time you fail you will be reincarnated to do it again until you get it right. Someone who commits murder will after death go through a purgatory period before being reincarnated into a life that will have to not murder in order to advance to the next level at the next life. After perfecting this and becoming someone like Gandhi your penance in the physical is paid and you life in the spirit world is secured. After perfecting your soul through the trials and tribulations called life, can you truly rest in peace in the afterworld?
Our life on earth in this lifetime only feels like a day in the spirit world. Every time we lay down to sleep is merely the blink of an eye for our souls. Our subconscious becomes conscious in the spirit world, our conscious becomes subconscious. Between lives our physical memory is wiped clean and we are sent back to learn everything over again. The little voice in your head saying “don’t do that” is you 4th dimension self telling your physical self what’s right or wrong. As were are younger we are shown what to except out of this life so we have a guideline as to what we are and are not supposed to be doing. You’re pointed in the right direction and all the wrong turns are purposely laid out in front of you in order to test you every step along the way. If you take a wrong step its already accounted for and expected out of you. It’s laid out that you do trip and fall, it’s mapped out so you lose your way and every step along the way is always a test for the purity of your soul.
The book shows all this and after your death, when your life flashes before your eyes it’s this book that’s used to judge your souls fate in the afterlife. Your path of choices are mapped and plotted, for you to see. When you make it to the next dimension because you performed the perfect life then your granted peace to your soul, does the next cycle begin to the 5th dimension?
In my younger days my thoughts on seeing into my own future was a very scary concept. I used it to drive and motivate me to my ‘Destiny’. It made me strive for knowledge and wisdom, it helped me make good choices. My knowledge always leads me back to a few questions that I cannot answer. I guess this is my philosophy.
The first question is the easiest and probably most obvious, “Why me?” People ask themselves this everyday about everything, from a string of bad luck or a flat tire on an important day. So I will elaborate on my question for you.
Chapter 4
Questions