Tag Archives: A Dream

Journal Entry, August 30, 2008

Journal Entry, August 30, 2008

Last night I awoke around 3:00 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep. It then occurred to me, hitting me like the proverbial bolt of lightning, “This is the structure, this is the theme.” THE ARGUMENT is the form of The Parliament of Poets. I’ve always thought of it as the theme as well, never even thinking it might be different. Reading most of Huston Smith’s books since seeing his Forgotten Truth at the East West Bookstore in Mountainview, California, in June, and now Arnold Toynbee’s A Historian’s Approach to Religion, his Gifford Lecture, I realize they both had worked their way to essentially the same vision as Baha’u’llah–the oneness of humanity and all religions.

Reading Toynbee again after more than two decades, and weeks of Huston Smith and Joseph Campbell this summer, I realize Toynbee has an amazingly clear and succinct understanding of the universal religious call to the soul: Sacrifice thyself for the good of others. Serve them. Lead them to the Light. Accept and bear they load of suffering and pain for their sake, for the sake of God, the Absolute Reality.

“This is the structure, this is the theme.” A complete metaphysics with the structure to support it–all of human history and experience.

Frederick Glaysher

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Michigan from a Great Height

Michigan

Michigan from a Great Height

Michigan from a Great Height

March 31, 2011

I was climbing with someone up a great hill that became nearly a mountain. It was a beautiful Michigan day, in the afternoon, as we walked through green and open spaces, rising above the trees and forest. I sensed I was in the Upper Peninsula or the northern part of the lower peninsula, looking south.

I reached and stood on a very high hillock at the top of the gentle, sloping mountain, overlooking the land, my companion standing below. All was spread out before me, beautiful and green, blue lakes scattered in the countryside of Michigan.

I awoke recalling that I have had this dream before, perhaps many times, recognizing it as so. It was a very pleasant dream. I felt happy and content, as I was led up toward the top of the rising land. The import was that my guide was showing me something of great moment and beauty, and there it was, spread out and lying below. A glorious land as far as I could see.

Frederick Glaysher

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