Will we meet again? Odds are, no, we won't. She was beautiful, certainly pleasant to look at but not in a cover-girl sort of way; but more than that, she was beautiful in grace and humor - exactly my kind of girl. Thing is, she doesn't live in my neighborhood, she doesn't even live in my dimension. Question is, does she really live anywhere?

I've considered this question times before; do citizens of the astral planes have a life there with the same continuity as I believe I experience here in the earth realm? I've thought it a cruel trick so often to have my desires trampled by the mere act of waking up and today I want only to find her again, but is it possible? And if we decide it is not, then why not?

The many authors of books and cyber-media concerning other-dimensional travel are of one accord; there are 'people' to see and 'places' to visit, but I cannot recall any journal of a revisit of a person or place in exactly the same context as the original experience. Often they will interpret a trip as being to a place or similar 'person' as a previous encounter, but it's always a simile or like comparison - a personal subjective and imaginative taxonomy of their ever confusing experiences.

But no, I want to see HER again. I want to know her and touch her. I want to bask in her presence. How can I do that? I quizzed my daughter about this this afternoon and she suggested this ‘her’ was merely a projection of my own self. As if there is just ‘me’ and no ‘other’ to the equation, and it causes me to wonder, is not she, my daughter, a projection of my own self? Yea, or nay, it doesn't really advance the inquiry either way. Projection or not I still have the same questions; is this dream girl a citizen of another land, does her life there comprise a story that she might tell, could she possibly be pining for ME?

Coincidentally I took a short break from this and picked up Kurt Leland's The Unanswered Question (thank you Korpo). Opening it to the bookmark my eyes fell on this: "Ordinarily, my dreams show little consistency of character or environment. While they may refer to the same subjects from time to time, the treatment of those subjects is highly varied. I may get information from them that seems to build on that provided by a previous dream - but only in my adventures in Otherwhere does such information concern the environment or state of consciousness I'm in, its purposes or function, and what the individuals I encounter are up to."

So, sadly, I believe the answer to my question, 'Will we meet again?' is a dreadful and resounding 'No'. Only if I could exactly duplicate the "environment or state of consciousness" I was in at the time of the dream, could I hope to revisit it. But I am ever so slightly a different person than I was the morning of that dream and whatever the constellations of my psychic energies were for those few moments, they have moved on.

Even with partners in the physical life, we wake up each morning to different people; she is not exactly the person I went to bed with, nor am I to her. Perhaps this says something as to how that 'hot romance' goes cool within a few months. I'm thinking of the lock and key mechanism between a virus and its host cell, how viruses may constantly mutate their combinations, thus eluding the body's defenses. As below, so above?

In the physical life we contract a union between physical selves agreeing up front to ride out the inevitable spiritual challenges that lie ahead. But how much more sensitive it is when there are no physical selves to bind in contract. I can no more bind my dream girl to a future reunion than I can shackle one cloud to another.

At least I can see by this line of reasoning the bigger question cannot be answered: Does she experience her life in the astral with a similar sense of continuity as I do mine in the physical? I doubt I'll ever know.