I returned to working on my levitation and realized that every time I rose up in the air I became proud and vain: I was performing a feat that others could not achieve; I was worthy of admiration. I overcame this problem. I transformed it into something normal, useful, that was of service to me not only for traveling the world but also for leaving it. I began by ascending. I felt enormous terror. It was the same feeling I had experienced in my first lucid dream, in which I did not dare to leave the cinema in which I was shut. I felt that a vital link tied me to planet Earth. I woke up with my heart hammering. Many times during the day I imagined my body floating up through the stratosphere into the depths of the cosmos. At night, dreaming, I achieved what I had desired. I overcame the fear of death, the sensation of weight and of drowning, and I began to travel between the stars with the speed of a comet.
It was an unforgettable experience to move through that calm vastness, where the great masses of planets and the incandescent stars move in an orderly dance, knowing that I was invulnerable, discarnate, a pure and conscious form. It is difficult to explain in words: the cosmos somehow enclosed me, like an oyster with its pearl, as if I were a precious thing; it cared for me as if I were a flame that must not go out; I represented the consciousness that matter had taken millions of years to create. The cosmos was my mother, singing a lullaby to make me grow. The words that I could utter were not mine, but were the voices of those stars. The feeling of floating in infinite space, surrounded by their complete love, made me awaken filled with happiness.
I do not pretend to claim that this initiatory process of lucid dreaming can take place in a short amount of time. In my case, these dreams did not depend on my will; they presented themselves to me amidst the multitude of ordinary dreams as genuine gifts. Sometimes I spent a whole year without having these sorts of experiences. Nor did they happen in the order in which I have described them; sometimes I investigated one type of dream reality, sometimes another, to then return and continue with the first. No rational order exists in the world of dreams, and cause and effect are abolished. Sometimes an effect appears first, and this effect is followed by its cause. Suddenly, everything exists simultaneously, and time acquires a single dimension that is not necessarily the present as reason conceives it. There is no world, but simultaneity of dimensions. What reason calls life here has another meaning there. I determined, as I wandered awake among my dreams, to enter the dimension of the dead.
After crossing a furious ocean in a small boat, I landed on the island where the door to the realm of the dead is to be found. There were lines of applicants, eager to enter. A gloomy doorman palpated them and decided who did or did not deserve to cross the final threshold. Those he refused were devastated at having to continue living. The doorman touched me and declared me dead. As soon as I passed through the door, I found myself in a landscape of green hills. The dead people — relatives, friends, celebrities — did not approach me, but looked at me kindly, as if expecting me to do something that would show them my good intentions. I threw empty envelopes in the air, which came down filled with treats and precious objects. It was a gift to the deceased. I woke up very happy, saying to myself, “Now I know that in my next lucid dream, I can converse with them. They have accepted me.”
I can affirm to all who have not had these experiences that in some region of the brain, if it really is the abode of the spirit, a dimension exists where the dead people we have loved — as well as those we are concerned with but did not know, and for that reason cannot love — are alive, continue to develop, and take immense pleasure in communicating with us. One might respond that this survival is pure illusion and that only I exist in my psychic world. This is true, and yet not true. On the one hand human brains can be interconnected, and on the other hand they can be connected to the universe, which in turn may be connected to other universes. My memory is not only my own; it also forms part of the cosmic memory. And somewhere in that memory, the dead continue to live.
I dreamed of Bernadette Landru, the mother of my son Brontis: she loved me; I never loved her. She went with the newborn to Africa, and from there when he was six years old she sent him to me. I took care of him from then on. Her love for me turned into hate; she followed her own path. Her great intelligence led her into politics, to the most extreme communism. She was a leader. In 1983 the plane departing from Spain that was meant to take her to a revolutionary congress in Colombia, along with other distinguished Marxist intellectuals such as Jorge Ibargüengoitia, Manuel Scorza, and others, exploded during takeoff. Even today, I believe it was not an accident but a crime perpetrated by the CIA. I lamented that she perished so violently without having had the opportunity to engage in a confrontation, which for the sake of Brontis might have led us to a friendly reconciliation. Thanks to a lucid dream, I was able to meet with her in the dimension of the dead. It was in a small village similar to those in the north of France. We sat on a bench in a public square and began to talk. For the first time, I saw her calm, amiable, and full of friendship. We finally clarified that loving someone passionately does not make it obligatory for that person to reciprocate. We also clarified that although Brontis had had an absent, irresponsible father for the first six years of his life, I had settled that debt by taking care of him for the rest of his childhood and adolescence. Finally, we embraced as friends. She said to me, “Politically, I always considered you useless because you lived in your mental island, separate from the misery of the world. Now that you have decided that only art is worthwhile for healing others, I can help you. Politics is my specialty. Consult with me whenever you want.” Today, before taking a position on world events that seem serious to me, I consult with Bernadette.