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Astral Planes and Afterworlds

Dreams and images of the astral plane--not just spirits, but whole spirit worlds. Different dream traditions treat these as symbolic or literal. I don't think it matters much, except to point out that regardless of your beliefs about their reality, only a stupid dreamer is rude to the locals. What goes around, comes around. Next week you may find yourself in one of their dreams. Where did you think nightmares come from, anyway?

This list also has dreams of bad puns about hijacking astral you-know-whats (the most egregious example has to be Vertical Planes, with twelve of them, but Hijack! The Christmas Special goes pretty far, too.)

RELATED TOPICS: out-of-body experiences - shamanic dreams - the soul - nature spirits - other worlds - doors into other universes - paradises - hells - just plain planes - See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

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AFTER BIRTH: by Wayan, 2004/9/29, astral acrylic painting
Never mind an afterlife! What if, before life, we were spirits with no idea what happens after birth?...
THE AMAZONS' OFFER: by Wayan; 2012/6/13, a mystical sexy dream poem.
A horde of wild women camp in my yard and practice leaping
through invisible spacetime portals. They invite me along...
CAUTION: FEATHERED, PAINTED NUDITY
AMERICAN WIDOW: by Alissa Torres; February 2002, a dream of her husband lost on 9/11
High-voltage traces of our lust and love flowed through our mattress nightly...
until one night when the power surged and overflowed. Then I felt you...
ANOREXIA NIRVANA: by Wayan; 1993, a digital picture-poem of astral temptation.
I was anorexic for years; I only mastered it when I saw it was a hunger for the spirit world...
ARHATS IN A DREAM: by Guan Xiu, c.891, early dream paintings
Guan Xiu, a painter in the late Tang Dynasty, dreamt that sixteen arhats
or luohans (Buddhist sort-of-saints)asked him to paint their portraits--
not their earthly forms but their (rather peculiar) astral forms. He did...
ASTRALNAUT: by Wayan; 1994/7/30, a reverse ghost dream.
I have amnesia. Plus, I'm dead. But I have this great NASA job! Only there's a saboteur...
CAUTION: SNOTTY ABOUT CHRISTIANS AGAIN
ATLANTIS: 3: MICHAEL'S DREAM; c. 1993 by Mark Doty; dream-based elegiac poem, one of six
I dream I see the soul of my lover step out of his body, a second self of light...
CAUTION: AIDS DEATH
AVENUE OF TREES: by Anonymous #34; July 1911?, early 1924?, 1934/3/30, & Jan. 1947;
four death-omen dreamlets, one predictive
Every decade or so, I dream a loved one says farewell and walks
down an avenue of trees. I wake to find that person's dying...
BEAR READ DUNE: by Wayan; dreamed 1981/1/28, painted 10 years later.
There are many astral planes--this world's just the cellar.
A cat and a bird in love, a literate bear and I guard the astral stair...
THE BEAR'S RIP: by Xanthe; dreamed 1990 or 1991; a lucidish dream with four sketches.
A bear rips open my wall and guides me into a psychedelic space where I learn to see with new eyes...
BLUE DROP: by Vladimir Nabokov; 1966/1/7, a dream-prose-poemlet
The supreme mystery which we learn after death is that the cosmos with all its galaxies is a blue drop...
CAUTION: HIPPIE DIPPIE
BLUE SOUP, NO SPARK: by Wayan; 1985/6/1, an epic dream on outgrowing God
A visit to a world where they fear blue soup ends in death and resurrection, so I'm pissed at my boss--God.
CAUTION: DEATH, REBIRTH, SACRILEGE... JOB BURNOUT
THE BRIDGE: by Wayan; a 3-page comic from two linked dreams, 1989/5/28 & 1989/10/1.
The Hunt of the Unicorn (yeah, guess who I am), as I fly through the worlds fighting Reaganism...
CAUTION: MOCKS THE GREAT COMMUNICATOR
THE CIRCUS HUMANS' DESERTION: by Wayan; 1988/2/19; an epic holy dream.
I join a circus, but soon all the best carnies sail off to the Blessed Isles. The circus animals pitch in
and carry on--clumsy and lonely. Then a divine herald arrives from the Isles: Donald Duck! He says...
COSMIC ORGY: by Wayan, 1971/8/31, an early, taboo-smashing, mystical flying sex dream
I've turned into my sister; and she's turned into me. We try sex. A wolf lopes by and joins us.
The energy from our orgy lifts us into space. Moons planets stars swim by as we float and fuck...
CAUTION: CARTOON ORGY IN SPACE
THE DOOR THROUGH DEATH: by Wayan; 1981/10/25; a Greco-Egyptian nightmare poem
At death's door, my friend lets Cerberus devour her, so I can enter
Death's pyramid alive and expose the truth about the afterlife...
CAUTION: FATAL DOG ATTACK
A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM: by Afton Jandro; c.1983, a transcendent dream
Africa. The elephant seemed attracted to a strange wave of white heat. It faded to nothingness. Suddenly we too were enveloped.
I became flame. I was consumed. I was a thought center, alone in a white void. To create a new life I had only to speak the word...
CAUTION: DEATH
E PLURIBUS UNUM: by Wayan; 1998/8/13. Digital painting of allegorical orgy
America isn't the Melting Pot. It's the Humping Pot...
CAUTION: THE BEAST WITH 300,000,000 BACKS
EAT THE MOON: by Wayan; 2013/9/4; a weird shamanic dream-poem
Lights on the moon! Future cities shine. Gotta fix that time-slip. But in
shaman-space, the moon's a deerskull up a tree! I take it down, pocket its
jewel-city-eyes and try to stew the moon. I'm Coyote, so my cookery goes wrong...
ELF CIRCLE; 2011/3/19 by Wayan; a complex advisory dream.
After trespassing in a staff-only part of Faerie, I'm cast out.
Only I'm cast like a seed, meant to grow a new elf circle...
EMBARKATION, or, THIS PORTAL COIL: by Wayan; 2013/8/28, a magical dream on dreams
A spiral pillow-path leads to an astral portal. But creatures arriving and departing
jam the same path! Squeeze by, hop over, apologize... flirt
Wait, isn't this a dream-image of death & letting go? Then why's it look so fun?
EMISSARY: by Wayan; 2000/3/22, an astral dreamtale.
I signed a prenatal agreement for weird, uneven luck to turn my life toward art and spirit.
I want to broaden it, but I've lost the contract! So my spirit wife Silky sets out to find it...
FALLING INTO A TESSERACT, and Meeting a Being of Pure Energy: by Dustin Latham, 2019/11/7
I knew I was on my bed, yet I felt myself falling into a tesseract--huge, crystalline, colorful.
Inside I met an energy being who explained I'm not meant to die yet; this was just training...
CAUTION: UNCONVENTIONAL GOD
FLOATING: by Wayan; ink with acrylic wash 1982, digital tweaking 1997; sketch of daydream.
Hokusai's wild mad lines inspired me to draw myself his way, floating asleep on the astral sea...
CAUTION: NUDITY
FLUID REALITY: by Wayan; 1983/8/8; a magical dream-sea voyage that turned out to be predictive
On my quest I find magic portals, snarky flower-fairies, undersea redcoats,
reassembling bodyparts, living chess, and Nosferatu the Cheating Vampyre...
GHOST GATOR: by Wayan; 1984/10/9, a lip-reading dream.
A child from another universe materializes--part way. Too bad we called in that expert from Stanford...
GRANDMA: by Eileen and Bill, as told by Gayle Delaney, c.1976, parallel dreams
My grandma couldn't drive, but after she died, I dreamt she drove my brother Bill and me
around--speeding, in fact. When I told him the dream, he filled in details--he'd dreamt it too!
THE HACKER: by Wayan; 1993/11/23, a psychic nightmare.
Who's the demon? Mom, the Dragon, the Smiler, the Rubber Ax Murderer, the Doll Princess or the Tiger?...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
HARE HEAVEN: by Wayan; 1998? Digital dream sketch.
I dreamed my friend Beryl's soul was a giant rabbit, arguing in paradise with our mutual guardian angel...
THE HERONS' TANK: by Wayan, 2020/11/12, a sonnet telling an astral-plane dreamlet
I climb a small-town water tower. The tank holds a reedy marsh where sentient herons live! They say
the Heartland below them is a nest reserved for greedy, screechy, flightless, half-grown souls like us...
CAUTION: DISSES SMALL-TOWN VALUES
HIGHER LEVEL: by Wayan; 2011/12/13, an absurd transcendent dream
I paddle through the grim streets of Karachi on my belly, on a skateboard,
with my flipper-hands, until at last I reach the border to a Higher Realm...
THE HOLLOW HILL (PART 6): by Kathleen Raine, 1940; a dream elegy to a mentor
In Ireland, in Yeats's stone tower, he leads me up the spiral stair toward a thyme-scented portal...
HOUSTON: by Wayan; 1992; automatic writing experiment.
A poster playing with superimposed messsages. How strangely the mind sorts out different layers!
HYDROGEN INITIATION: by Wayan; 1981/1/6, a shamanic nightmare.
I'm an initiate in a Sung Dynasty monastery. But I have no idea how far the hazing can go...
CAUTION: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME
IDI AMIN: by Ben Bamber; 2007/6/25, a possibly predictive dream
I was teaching a class on democracy in Africa when Idi Amin walked in. The crowd turned violent, but then...
IN THE STAR; 1988/9/12 by Wayan; an epic, out-of-body, intrastellar quest-dream
I tour the heart of a red supergiant, where dreaming souls explore
their fears and heart's desires, unconstrained by solid matter...
CAUTION: SWEDENBORGIAN VISION, UNICORN NUDITY
JOURNEY IX: by Gary Snyder, 1970 or before, a dream of ascending through death
Ko said "Now we have come to where we die." I thought it looked just like the land we'd been traveling,
and couldn't see why we should have to die. Ko grabbed me and pulled me over the cliff...
CAUTION: DYING IN DREAM
“JUST A FEW MORE YEARS!”: by Wayan; 2008/1/2, a nightmare on the coming crash
I found myself defending humanity before an astral jury, begging them to delay the great die-back...
THE LIBRARY: dreamed by Audrey Niffenegger between 1976 & 1982; an book-inspiring dream
I die. But then I find a door in my grandmother's pantry leading to a beautiful library...
LITTLE NEMO: by Wayan; 2005/2/6; a little rant on the first dream-comic.
Windsor McCay's dream-comic Little Nemo is gorgeous but plotless & passive. Or is it? Dreamwork is gradual...
THE LOST RING: by Helen Fraser; 1924; an astral lost-and-found dream
A friend in Heaven promises Helen a lost ring would return to her. Three days later it did; but its path had been strange...
MARK'S DISSOLVE: by Wayan, 2015/7/31, a dream-poem of a world where death is different
My friend Mark is ready. He evaporates into the spirit realm--as we all do here when we die! Flesh to glass to air...
THE MIMI: by Robert Moss, 1955, a dream of another life
As a boy in Australia I briefly died on the operating table. I found myself living among the Mimi,
spirits living in rocks. I grew up, grew old, died--and woke up nine years old again...
MYSTERY BETWEEN: by Wayan; 1985/9/27, crayon and acrylic drawing on dreamnesia.
Okay, you got your heaven, and your earth, and between, you got...
CAUTION: MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE
OMELET BEACH: by Wayan; 2007/1/15, a dream on how things look through your third eye
An alien beach scene--as seen through eyes that see bodies’ energy fields more than surface forms...
OOPSPACE: by Wayan; Wayan; a daydream/tribute watercolor, 1999
The poet e.e. cummings drew a book of astral fairytales with watercolors that felt a bit like my dreams...
ORIOLE GIRL: by Wayan; 1992/1/23, psychic dream told as illustrated poem.
While conducting a census of fairies in Golden Gate Park, I fall in love
with an abused oriole-girl, and we try to heal one another...
CAUTION: AWKWARD SEX
PASSIN' THROUGH: by Wayan; 1991, nondream digital picture
Painted to that country song by Leonard Cohen, where Adam, Jesus, Washington, and FDR
all get interviewed in their darkest moments, and they all sing "We're only passin' thru..."
PASTLIFE MIDDEN: by Wayan; 1998/12/28, a past-life dream.
I bike deep into Time Hall, barging through security gates of amnesia, to climb the midden of the past...
PATCHEN'S ANGELS: by Wayan; 2000/1/23, nondream crayon/digital drawings.
I always liked the little creatures in picture-poet Kenneth Patchen's wild collage-pages...
PATH: by Wayan; figures from 1989/10/12 dreamlet invade a waking landscape.
My art teacher said "Draw a spiritual experience." I tried, but that night, I dreamed of sharp-toothed...
CAUTION: TOPLESS MEDITATORS
PRISONS AND STRIPES: by Emily Joy; 2007/10/4, a lucid dream.
In a museum full of spacetime-bubbles holding lost souls, the museum-goers are as weird as the exhibits...
QUOD VITAE: by Rene Descartes; 1619/11/11, three mystical dreams.
In one night Descartes had three dreams convincing him he had to change the course of his life...
RECONCILIATION: by Martha Sherwood; 2003/6/19, a dream-parable
Even after the Resurrection, a mother and daughter still have issues to clean up...
RING-DUEL: by Wayan; dreamed 1988/12/21; a transformation dream on reclaiming your power
A mad scientist sneaks me into a museum that holds the Ring of Power I made at 14. I put it on, and
slip into the spirit world--as a dragon! An ice-drake sent by Sauron comes to duel me for my Ring...
RING OF WHITE WATER: by Wayan; 1983/1/30, an epic astral dream.
I'm a raft guide on a circular river that may just be reincarnation. A girl in my
tour group jumps ship: she dreads the white water of rocky relationships ahead...
CAUTION: METAPHYSICS, SEX, WEAK SOULS...
SERAFINA AND RAM DASS: by Wayan; a 2000/11/6 dream anticipating an 11/9 experience with auras
A Finnish shaman/witch gives me a lesson in night flying; in the waking world
I meet Ram Dass and sense him speak astrally before his body can get the words out...
CAUTION: HIGH MYSTICAL QUOTIENT; IF ALLERGIC, AVOID
SILKY THE PEGASUS: by Wayan; 1984/12/11; a guided flying dream
My anima, a pegasus mare, leaps out of a girl's book and teaches us to fly up to an astral land...
CAUTION: FLIRTY PEGASUS
THE SILVER CORD: by Wayan, 1993; digital poster of dreamwork advice..
An astral travel advisory. You'll fly better, if (before you leave your body) you...
SKINK WEDDING: by Wayan; 2018/3/9, an out-of-lizard-body dream poem
I get assigned a life as a skink. Eat flies, mate, do my lizard pushups, but
behind my daily mind, my soul gets so bored it finally flies out...
SOCK PUPPETS OF THE GODS: by Dee and Wayan; 1994/4/14. Parallel shamanic dreams!
I dream I'm suicidal; but I'm saved when I'm shown the flow of human development--the same pattern,
from souls to civilizations! Eddies and knots recur, but the challenges slowly get more spiritual.
NEXT DAY: I learn what my shaman-friend Dee just dreamed. And now I'm unsure whose dream this is...
CAUTION: IDEAS
THE STYGIAN SENTINELS: by SAO (Shawn Allen O'Neal); 1970s, a recurring astral dream.
The Crocodile King & the Geisha Queen, the couple who guard
the bridge over the River Styx, seem to quarrel a lot...
TAROT: THE SMORGASBORD OF LIFE: by Wayan; Tarot card, 3x5", summer 1978.
You get to fill one tray. Guns sex jewels pot hamburgers TV God power thrills love? Choose!
THIEU, I'M SORRY: by Wayan, 1997/11/1, a troubling dreamtale.
Visiting Time City, I witness the "suicide" of a woman named Thieu but suspect it was really assassination...
CAUTION: SUICIDE? MURDER?
THROUGH THE WIRES: by Wayan; 2007/9/16, two surreal contrasting dreams
I meet some alien wolves, and see the social scene as they do--pack, status issues. But then...
I cross a pasture & slip thru a barbwire fence, as I explain cows, wires & organic life to an energy-being...

UNICORN TAG: by Wayan; 1986, a linked series of illustrated dreams.
Animal teachers, mostly equine, drag me (as I scream NO!) beyond plain dreamwork into shamanism...
Chapter 1: The Deer Party: by Wayan; 6 illus.
Chapter 2: Ariane's Honeymoon: by Wayan; 8K
Chapter 3: The Everest Marathon: by Wayan; 1 illus.
Chapter 4: Who'll Be My Love?: by Wayan; 100K, 4 illus.
Chapter 5: Dreamrider: by Wayan; 7K, a nondream interlude
Chapter 6: Half Shaman, Half Statesman: by Wayan; 170K, 4 illus.
Chapter 7: Eight To A Horn: by Wayan; 2 illus.
Chapter 8: Black Magic: by Wayan, 7 illus.
Chapter 9: Misfits On Mars: by Wayan; 300K, 7 illus.
VERTICAL PLANES: by Wayan; 1990/3/7, an astral pirate dream.
We're air pirates running a music shop, till our biplanes are hijacked by cat angels! Furious, we set out...
VISIONS UPSTAIRS: by Wayan, 2007/1/15, an ero-spiritual dream-comic
Junk in the attic? Treasures! The cat musicians shift from cartoons to life as I ascend,
til in the ultimate attic--the astral beach--I meet a cattaur made of pure (de)light...
CAUTION: SEX-CRAZED CATS, NEW AGE FINALE
WHY ARE WE AFRAID TO DIE?: by Hopper; summer 2008, an astral-interview dream.
I meet a ghost girl and ask her about death. I figure she knows first-hand. And she tells me...
YOU CANNOT STAY FOREVER: by Ursula Le Guin; c.1970, creepy hypnogogic verses
You cannot stay forever / on this side of the river
with darkness coming over / and salt has lost its savor...
ZYGOTE: by Wayan; 1999, a comic astral vision.
It's true: after death, angels advise you where to go next.
But what if you get an over-eager travel agent?



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