Chilling out on a lazy Saturday afternoon, the funk of Sly & The Family Stone’s ‘Underdog’ is booming out from the soundbar, and I am feeling an enigmatic mix of energy and exhaustion.
Intense dreams, layer on layer, seeded from the Sandman, painted from his easel from the night before, leaves me feeling stoned without so much as a carefree drag from the lips. Strange overtones indeed.
Thoughts are drifting by as freely as the slate grey clouds moving outside the window, and I find myself idly flicking through a book been gathering dust on the shelf for over a decade. The book is called ‘The Upanishads’, and it’s heralded as the Bible for Hindu’s, three-thousand years old, and a sacred text for the hardcore religious devotee.
I have an inquiring mind on – as the Happy Monday’s ‘Loose Fit’ revives the nineties baggy revolution from the archive of my Lockdown playlist – wondering about the three levels of consciousness the ‘Shads’ is alluding to somewhere at the beating heart of the book. It’s a head fuck to my heavily medicated synapses.
Level one is Waking consciousness. The reality plane all earthlings inhabit moving through the matrix, either consuming it through dog-eat-dog social conditioning or living mentally, physically, and emotionally off-grid. Both polarised factions doing what it takes to meet and greet or spurn life’s expectations, from the cradle to the grave.
So far, so, so, as an old school hip-hop smoothie from Slum Village floats on the breeze. The thought occurs there are many levels to the Waking, different states of mind for the journeyman soul. And busy checking what condition my condition is in, an overdraft warning text from the bank rudely interrupts my train of thought.
I feel like Sophie in ‘Sophie’s World’, without the sharp incisive innocence of youth.
The next level is Dream consciousness. I instinctively reach for my dream diary – the Dali Journal – and begin thumbing through for a slice of inspiration.
The Dream state is a realm for the brave or foolhardy, where madness stalks, where you can realise all desires or wind up down the corridors of hell.
Dream chasing is a young man’s sport, I muse, opening the journal on a classic dream from seventeen years ago. The dream featured coral snakes slithering up a Booyoung tree, all freshly brushed by the Sandman’s paint, on the backdrop of a primeval swamp.
Finally, according to the ‘Shads’, the Dreamless Sleep consciousness is the third level, and the trapdoor to another near-forgotten domain of unreality. The Dreamless Sleep is played out in a strange ethereal world free of worldly possessions, desire, nightmares, and with no attachment to the physical self. It’s a primal state, I ponder, stroking my long imaginary Confucius beard and scratching my scalp furiously.
And, as Kano raps lyrical in ‘Deep Blues’, I realise I’ve got severe medical shakes powered by a double espresso and make the executive decision to turn the tap off on these scrambled head thoughts for the remains of the day.
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