Mysterious Realities: A Dream Traveler’s Tales from the Imaginal Realm, by Robert Moss
New World Library, 9781608685387, 272 pp., 2018
I have a friend who participates so actively in an ongoing dream life, eerily similar to the one she lives when she’s awake, that in the morning she wakes up exhausted. She goes to work in her dream life and has the same partner, and every night it is a continuation of this life, rather than it being a repeated dream. The way she describes this dream life is almost just like her waking life, except a bit more dull and flat. For years now, we’ve pondered what is happening in her dream landscape. Could it be that she is also living in a parallel universe? Do we really have multiple timelines of ourselves happening? It is possible we exist in more than one realm?
Robert Moss’s latest book Mysterious Realities: A Dream Traveler’s Tale from the Imaginal Realm opened a doorway for further speculation for my friend’s situation. This book is nonfiction and collection of his own personal writing, but Moss is well known as a dream expert and has published many books such as Conscious Dreaming: A Spiritual Path for Everyday Life; Dreamgates: Exploring Worlds of Soul, Imagination, and Life Beyond Death; and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing Becoming Whole.
While this book is Moss’s own creative writing, I get the sense the dreams and imaginings he describes may have truly occurred in his personal life, in some form or fashion, and are being shared in a creative way. I recognize this may be my own suspended belief, for Moss does a wonderful job of using magical realism by opening to the possibilities of dream messages, other worldly adventures, and metaphysical hypothesizes deeply sparked my own creative imagination while reading Mysterious Realities. Having the courage to believe there is more than we ordinarily comprehend seems to be the basis for opening up to these other fantastic dimensions of mind.
Mysterious Realities is composed of 27 short stories. Some are only a few pages, while others span perhaps 10 pages or so. Each story is vividly different and unique in its own right, which makes for a captivating read. I often had to pause between stories, because I wanted time to integrate what I had just read. It seemed as though each story, as I made my way through the book slowly to relish each tale, opened up a chance encounter or synchronicity related to what I had read previously. There were quite a few aha-moments during the course of enjoying this book, which gave me intuitive insight into topics I had been pondering. I particularly enjoyed reading it before bed, because Moss’s writing enhanced my own dream experience. At one point during the course of the book, I entered into what I called “a holographic reality” in my dreams and — for the first time in my dream life — I travelled to a land beyond earth.
There is so much to learn from the book, in addition to the visionary experience facilitated through this reading. The stories are littered with historical figures, well known in both psychology and magick, such as Carl Jung and the Great Goddess of Ephesus. The way Moss brings these characters to life is fascinating, as he presents an intersection between historical fiction and the present musings of the imagination. For instance, one short story features the magical battle between W.B. Yeats and Aleister Crowley. Moss portrays the scenario between these two men by featuring a séance and spiritual combat in an unseen realm, which was extremely intriguing to me and inspired me to do my own research about their magical differences. Another story is about Sigmund Freud’s experience as he approaches death. It may be fictitious speculation, yet Moss truly does weave a good story that is filled with plenty of facts to make you want to learn more about the topics.
Moss’s stories also fanciful astral figures such as a Daimon of Luna, which transported me to a new imaginal realm, where the daimon converses with the dreamer to tell him about life on the Moon. Some stories, such as “Exploring Old Town,” have the feeling of a dream, where scenes fluidly move from one to the next, with little sense or coherence. Others, have a cohesive plot with the dreamer waking up to question what is the reality: waking life or the dream? The stories question the nature of our reality, prompting us to think beyond the confines of the waking life have deemed as the sole reality.
I highly recommend this book to everyone who is looking for creative inspiration. Moss’s stories in Mysterious Realities are fanciful tales that are sure to make one tap deeper into their own dream landscape. The book is an easy read and would be suitable for a wide-range audience. I would be interested to hear if anyone else has more vivid, memorable dreams as they read the book!
