While an animal encounters no one, not even its own self, we humans are more fortunate, or unfortunate depending upon how you view the matter, in that we can encounter our Selves on four different levels. In encounters of the first kind, we gain some small sense as a child that “I” exist, though not as an island entirely unto itself. Not until we reach the age of puberty are we awakened to the strong feelings we hold for that nebulous other, out there in nature, in encounters of the second kind. But it isn’t until we start thinking for ourselves, or erroneously assuming who we are, that we experience the other in encounters of the third kind which seem so alien to us, at first, we actually believe they take place outside the body, only because we are still so unaware of Who We Really Are. As we gain further insight into ourselves, we begin to see the experiences for what they are, in reality, encounters of the fourth or soul kind, and to discover Who We Really Are, men with souls whose selves can see all three aspects of our greater Self–the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit–with the four faces of our faculties–our own sensations, thoughts, feelings and intuitions.
Just because these experiences take place within the realm of the imaginable doesn’t mean they are any less real than those of the material world. They appear less real only because the truth transcends all dualities such as inner and outer or real and imaginary. In the end, they are no more absurd than our own perceptions of reality to which, of course, they only allude. In that sense, they are much closer to the truth than we realize, for is it not the unstated goal of the experiences of both worlds, to assist us in finding the imaginable hidden within the real, and vice versa, the real hidden within the imaginable?
