Ed Kellogg
"Sparks of red energy come out of his hand, and he started a chant . . "
“Filter” (©Ed Kellogg)
EWK 3/8/96 (Fully Lucid) “ . . In an apartment, in darkness. . . I experience a veil wrapped around my head, which obscures my vision further. I become fully lucid, and try to turn on the lights by flipping light switches, which worked earlier in the dream. I also chant “Bright Light!, Light Bright!” a few times, and the space lights up. The apartment looks smooth and modern, newly painted, with a circa 1920s look, illuminated with greenish light.
Remembering my task, I chant: “By the power of Alkahest, let my most powerful past life healer manifest!” Nothing much happens at first, but eventually I see the figure of a man, with his back towards me. He turns around, and I see a tall black man, old but tough and powerful. His eyes seem missing or a dull black. I ask him if he seems my most powerful past life healing self. He answers, “Yes” in a friendly voice. I ask when he lived. He says “Long, long ago.” This warns me, as it may mean that he (an earlier “me”) may not yet have developed ethics. He adds that he “lived at the time of (during the reign of) Ferdinand the younger.” I ask his name, and he says “Filter.” I repeat the word aloud to make sure I heard him correctly. He then proposes doing a healing on me and puts his left hand on my face. Sparks of red energy come out of his hand, and he started a chant: “Nux Am It Tee Ha __ __ __ __ .” I repeat it aloud, to help me memorize it (only partially succeeding). I wonder if he works at improving my eyesight.
However, instead of experiencing a healing I find myself pushed away from him. I end up in a dirty, crudely built hut, with a mud floor. Below me I see a small overweight black man/chief, a black woman, and a pig-like monster, who jumps up and tries to bite me where I float in a sort of transparent OBE body. When I appeared in the hut, the man peered towards me, asking “Max? That you? Have you returned?” I wonder if I’ve gone to some sort of astral hell, and if “Filter” has tried to change places with me. I try to send a lightning bolt at the pig creature, which usually works in lucid dreams, but nothing manifests. I realize I should try loving the creature, but feeling a bit apprehensive, I can’t manage to feel any love towards it. A very real, unpleasant, place for me in which I seem relatively powerless. I continue floating, and then simply make a slight intentional effort to return to physical reality. Somewhat to my surprise, this succeeds.” RWPR.
Comment: “Filter” impressed me as a very powerful dream entity. I sensed no evil in him, but a very strong sense of self, of egotism. I also realized that if he did indeed seem a "past life of mine", that whatever abilities and power he had, I had also, and more - from what I’d gained from the lives after his. Note also that "Filter", if spelled Philtre - designates a potion credited with magical power.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: Continuing improvements and innovations in computer graphic art software makes it easier and easier to effectively and accurately reproduce the inner landscapes of dreams. The ‘dreamscape’ presented here captures a dream scene with high fidelity. For this dreamscape I used Poser3D, and Painter 5. As I see it, computer art (at least as I do it) requires skills and techniques from at least four artistic disciplines: 1. Sculpture - when the artist creates or customizes 3d images; 2. Photography - where the artist arranges 3d images, camera angles, and lighting to get the effect desired; 3. Collage - where the artist integrates different elements, such as digital photos, with everything else in a two dimensional framework; and 4. Painting - where the artist works in all of the special effects, make final modifications to colors, background textures and special effects. All of these serve as modalities through which I can create a graphic that matches what I have in mind. In the case of recreating one of my own dreamscapes, I pick a scene from memory that appeals to me - one particular snapshot, so to speak, of the dreamed experience that captures its essence for me - and reproduce it with as much fidelity as possible. No matter how detailed, a dream report consists only of a pattern of words, that at best still fails adequately convey the living reality of the dream as experienced. In my experience, computer software graphics programs can serve as a connecting bridge, through the use of which one can recreate dreamscapes that can convey the living reality of a dream to someone other than the dreamer.
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