Seeing by George Gillespie

Seeing by George Gillespie

After years of lucid dreaming, the author spontaneously experiences a series of religious encounters with intense light which bring an awareness of the presence of God. He describes a number of these encounters in detail. The greater part of the book then presents an analysis of these experiences. Perhaps the most unique part of the analysis, based on the author's study of his hypnopompic lattice imagery, is the description of how the internal visual image is constructed and seen three-dimensionally. In fact, the visual image is shown to be identified with the part of oneself that sees the image. Every part of the visual field is a nonduality of seer and seen. Finally he analyzes the imagery of dreams (out of which the experiences of light arise), light (as visual image and as spiritual event), and the awareness of the presence of God. His religious experiences of light are shown not to be dreams, but to lie, in a sense, beyond dream imagery and dreaming.

Rev. Gillespie is an American Baptist minister and has taught the history of religions at seminaries in India. He has written extensively on lucid dreaming and has been published in Indian Journal of Theology, Indian Church History Review, Journal of the University of Gauhati [India], Psychiatric Journal of the University of Ottawa, Perceptual and Motor Skills, Lucidity Letter, DreamTime, Dreaming, The Journal of Christian Healing, and Autonomy, The Critical Journal of Interdisciplinary Autism Studies.