We live within a deep dream, dreaming the dream, asleep and unaware that we see it through a glass darkly, and the so-called fall of mankind was nothing more than a falling into the dream now we know mistakenly as life, if we dream a different dream the world would change overnight, yet could we imagine a state of being where we actually woke-up the next morning?? for the first time collectively in human history, perhaps? Just "imagine" such a world, my friend.... From conversations with a Russian prophet, Recollections of the Motherland, 2010. (J Henry)I remember vividly standing upon the railway platform of a remote Ukrainian station late in October some years back, and just standing there, waiting, under the steely gray skies, waiting under the arctic breeze breaking without interpretation upon the flat, endless, monotonous plains of this region. Waiting for the relative, warm, comfort of that train, as I just watched, almost transfixed by the flakes gently swirling and dancing about the numerous openings through the old wooden platform sides, and, here and there, the stooped black figures of old women and men would appear, generally lugging parcels of food or logs, only to suddenly disappear, like mirages, into the whiteness of it all once more. After a time, all that was present was the vague outlines of the station, the railway lines themselves had long ago vanished, like the people into that strange silence and vastness that only can be experienced in such moments of absolute singleness. Yet, despite the coldness, and almost near total isolation of this outpost, there was something about it that induced that vital sense of being really alive which in the course of my "normal" everyday life, I rarely had felt before, and it reminded me vividly of a conversation I had early in my travels with a Russian "sage". Although the gentleman in question modestly described himself as a true Christian of the only true faith that ever existed on the Planet, namely the Russian Orthodox Church, he nevertheless displayed something of that nomadic, Shamanic, wanderer, so much at home within the Russian land and mindscape. He told me, in rather matter of fact terms, about his incredible wanderings he undertook across vast areas of the former USSR, and, its former "colonies" and about the person who "always arrives in the place where they're meant to be" and that it was "the Christ who never was", that guided this true prophet on his solitary vocation. At the time, I didn't really grasp (due to translation and vodka issues!) what he really meant by the Christ who never was, who was his only true guide on his spiritual wanderings. Why I began pondering these cryptic thoughts once again in the middle of a blizzard, in the middle of no-where, seemed at first just a coincidence, however as I continued peering into the vast whiteness, hoping against hope to see the engine light gradually appear from it- his thoughts began to weave into my mind, as I waited for the illusory light to appear. "My Friend" I remember him insist, "I am a non-believer in Christ, the Christ who guides me cannot be believed in-at all - what you need simply is faith, the faith that doesn't need to be believed in, what you need is to be open to what simply is, as it's in the cracks where the divine often comes to light." And as I waited, I just pondered these very "unwestern" thoughts, until the light of the train eventually came, until the old people re-appeared from no-where and exchanged places with other elderly people departing the train, and the guard shouted "Odessa," seat 5, please.... and the station faded like a black shadow in the white splendour of it all. 
