first dream

Howdy. Welcome to my TheseAreDreams blog. My name is Phil Ristaino.

In 1995, I believe, I was visiting a doctor's office in San Francisco, CA, and after a series of extremely uncomfortable procedures, I began to feel blackness close in around me. "I'm going to pass out," I told the doctor, and did, my body falling (luckily) onto the examination table and going into a seizure. I don't remember the seizure. What I do remember....

My body did not exist. I simply was. I was aware. Before me I witnessed what appeared to be a gigantic whirlpool of white light, like a tornado full of stars, churning in a counter-clockwise direction. I was staring straight into the mouth of a tremendous vortex of energy, as if you were looking down at a condensed spiral galaxy. Tiny stars joined the whirlpool of light on its outskirts. The thing was alive, and was composed of an unknown number of these stars. (You can find an etching created by Gustav Dore, from his masterwork on Dante's divine trilogy, that depicts just such a tunnel, composed of angels--I believe that that's what each one of these stars was, an angel)

As I watched the white light vortex churn, 2 dimensional rectangles spun around me and into the center of the tornado, like leaves down a drain. They appeared to be windows or doorways into other dimensions. A voice spoke to me, coming from nowhere or everywhere, I don't know. It said: "These Are Dreams." I assumed it was speaking about the rectangles. And, if I remembered correctly, I thought it was the vortex that was speaking to me.

Soon I began to hear the noise. It was a machine like sound, but breathing. The sound was that of the unseen engine that caused this spout to spin, constant, adamant. The sound was a million machines running backwards underwater. The sound was an ocean talking with a freight train. The sound was never ending and always being; churning, churning, breathing, breathing. The sound grew louder and louder and louder and I became afraid....

I soon woke up in my body, surrounded by bewildered doctors. They told me I had passed out and had a seizure, something I've never done before or since, to my knowledge. They sent me to the hospital and I was released a few hours later, none the worse for wear.

What was it? Had I somehow torn away our flimsy 3rd dimensional cloak to find the true reality that creates it? What would I have found had I flown into the center of the vortex? Did I actually go in and not remember it? Had I been shown the face of God itself? The tunnel to heaven? What was it?

Much has changed since my initiation into the spirit world that day, but the experience will hopefully stay with me for the rest of my life. So here I sit, remembering and sharing with you, in hopes of creating a diving board into the greater mysteries, the questions of creation, reality, and self. Consider this a vortex into dreams, a portal to the infinite.

And consider this the first dream.