Observations placeholder
Custance, John - Adventure into the Unconscious - A strange and terrifying dream
Identifier
001932
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
In the following quote from 1951, a number of systems were in the process of destruction – racial discrimination in the USA for example. The vision – though John clearly interpreted it as negative – may have been entirely positive.
A description of the experience
John Custance – Adventure into the Unconscious
Last night I had a strange and terrifying dream. I dreamt that I went out from my room in the hotel, where I am in bed writing these lines and found myself in a dark street. Somehow I do not think I was in Paris, though I have no idea. A flame of inspiration seemed to descend upon me, and I clearly remember shouting that I was the herald of a great movement that would unite the world in love.
'What another movement?' cried somebody from across the street, flashing a torch on me.
'Yes' I shouted back 'and if you heed me not, woe unto you that compass me about. The mischief of your own lips shall cover you; the atomic and bacteriological fruits of your own wickedness shall fall upon you. Look at your proud cities and look, too, at the wrath to come'
Whether others looked I do not know, but suddenly the great city seemed to collapse about me like a house of cards. I looked at the sky, filled with a blood red glow, as of the very portals of Hell. In the glow I saw pictures; I remember very clearly the magnificent skyline of New York, with the statue of liberty in the foreground. Then came a series of explosions and it was as if it had never been.
I saw other cities too, though I did not recognise them, vast crowds running in panic, and thousands lying motionless in death from plague. At length all became confused and blurred and I woke up, but with a strange certainty that all the cities which had received me so kindly on my journey – Bremen and Hamburg, Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris, would assuredly be saved. Perhaps London too, though if that I am not so certain. Yet who am I to be certain of anything? After all it was only a dream