The year 1973 was significant to me for two reasons; the 1973 oil crisis and a particularly vivid and powerful dream I remembered on waking. It had threads of reality weaved within it as there was a blast of a good time jam packed all inclusive party in the actual apartment I was living in at the time.
At the edge of a deep cliff overlooking the Turcot trainyards of 
Montreal, I had an unobstructed view of the mighty St. Lawrence River, to the farthest extension of the horizon south to the US of A.
Suddenly, the old, 2 story building collapsed into a pile of rubble as the earth shook violently. Climbing out and shaking the dust off, toward the northern view, I could see the real park across St. Jacques Street in front of my apartment and the high-rise apartment buildings in the distance on the higher cliffs of Notre Dame de Grace swaying back and forth.
A Rolls Royce was parked in the street in front of the rubble that used to be my apartment. Getting in and turning on the radio, the only thing coming over all radio bands was, “You have to go to him. He wants you.”
Thinking that was the person I thought of as my best friend on earth at
the time, I drove over to a fabulous dream apartment, not his real life one, having a commanding view of the entire City of Montreal.
“Frank! What’s Happening,” I asked, arriving at this amazing dream apartment. “It looks like the end of the world to me,” he said.
Asking “what do you think we should do?” he said, “If it is the end of the world there isn’t anything we can do about it, so let’s relax and enjoy. If it isn’t the end of the world, lets relax and enjoy anyway.”
He put on a long playing vinyl album on a sound system looking like the kind today’s professionals use. The needle got stuck in the groove, and over and over again it played, “You can’t stay here. You have to go to him. He wants you.”
Stunned on hearing that and backing away from the grand sunken living room, I backed into a tree standing in a corner of the room. The branches of the tree embraced me saying, “You can’t stay here. You have to go to him. He wants you.”
Not knowing who or where he was, I was running on St. Catherine Street as it was in those days. People were running in a panic and I was running in a panic like everyone else.
Bumping into somebody, I fell down and got up. Dodging things falling from the sky, I would stumble and fall. Getting up, I ran and climbed over collapsed rubble, falling and getting up again.
The obstacles seemed endless. Eventually from shear exhaustion, I 
collapsed and gave up. I couldn’t run any more. At this point, the sky parted, and just a hand came down out of the sky, and picked me up. I woke up being lifted up in the palm of the hand.
Maybe I was a slow learner to put 2 + 2 together, but it took two more years after that dream before I came alive to God or God came alive to me on February 1, 1975 as I was turning 31. That Day was as unexpected and as powerful an experience to me personally, as I imagine was the conversion of Saul on the Road To Damascus.
That hand has been there for me TIME and TIME again since then.
If we cannot face the evils from our Past, and learn from them while it is called Today, we will be ill-equipped to deal with them in the world of Tomorrows of the Future if humanity does not changes it’s values and ways?
For Now we have Faith, Hope and Love, but the Greatest of these is Love.
Very well written Ray. It is very difficult to write about Israel and Gaza given the emotional intensity people of both sides express. I have friends in Israel, so I tend to try to not critize them, but it is getting to the point where Israel is creating its own problems in its treatment of Gaza and its land grabs. They have recently pass a number of laws segragating Arabs in a manner that reminds one of the old racially divided South Africa. Hopefully the people of Israel with realize the direction they are going in and change direction. They are losing the support of the rest of the world very fast now.
LikeLiked by 1 person
There are many in Israel who are against that direction. They just can’t sway the political situation.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for your thoughts, Lee, but I suspect you intended this comment in reply to the latest article,
https://ray032.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/present-danger/
LikeLike
regarding Israel, Like I say God said to me that “with my hand on my heart I no longer look upon Israel as the Holy land.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ray, you have had an experience with God, — as I have, and Carl has, — the lawyers will fight you tooth and nail where ever you post. But I don’t think that is going to keep you from delivering the truth!
We can pray that someday they see. ‘They’ being all in darkness to whom the glorious Gospel has not shined into their hearts.
BTW, in my conversion I also saw a hand. I’ll tell you my story one day if you like.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dorthy, you can post your experience here as a comment.
LikeLike
Dear Ray,
Thank you for inviting me to read your post here. I would like to bring your attention to your sentence “Suddenly, the the old, 2 story building collapsed into a pile of rubble as the earth shook violently.” As you can see now, the article “the” has been repeated.
The title of your post, “I Had a Dream”, a dream that occurred to you in 1973, reminds me of “I Have a Dream”, an iconic public speech delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. by American civil rights activist and Baptist minister Martin Luther King Junior ten years earlier during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28 August 1963, in which he advocated for civil and economic rights and called for an end to racism in the United States of America.
The crux of your post, or the moral of the story about your dream, is summed up in the final paragraph of your post as follows:
Indeed, whilst facing evils is necessary and whilst the future could be very fascinating and challenging, human nature may not change fast enough to cope, insofar as I am not very optimistic about human intelligence, and more deeply, the human psyche, as discussed in great detail in my expansive post entitled “We have Paleolithic Emotions; Medieval Institutions; and God-like Technology“. This is a very substantial and topically important post, even dealing with the fundamental problems and the existential crisis of the human species, looming ever larger. Whether or not the scientific method as well as spiritual practices may ultimately yield the best approaches or solutions to understanding and tackling what reality brings, there are always going to be intractable issues arising from cognitive biases as well as sociocultural inertias, considering that what humans tend to perceive, feel and believe can often be very problematic and the source of endless pitfalls and quagmires.
The danger of hero-worship and blind faith in a system (capitalistic or otherwise) has not been lost on us who comprehend the calamity of not just what happened in the Nazi-led Germany impoverished by Versailles, Weimar and hyperinflation, but also in the present the likes of Trump as the symbolic messiah who is going to lead his misguided supporters, sycophants and funders to glory on Earth and the promised land! There could very well be more chaos inflicted by the forthcoming Trump presidency (were he to be elected again), chaos (both domestically and internationally) that might be far worse in scope and duration than that which finally culminated in the infamous riot at the Capitol.
One could indeed say that we live in interesting times, but often for the wrong reasons. It is all quite a big mess in danger of getting bigger still. One can reasonably conclude that certain “Good” ideas like communism or Marxism have a plethora of ideologues and superheroes (or rather supervillains, autocrats or dictators) but usually have horrendous consequences. Yet, capitalism has often fared very badly too, if not been twisted or exploited by populism and illiberalism. Furthermore, I am not very optimistic about (the outcome of) our superhuman ability (imagined or otherwise) in allowing humans to become a very dominant species on Earth, and also our modern technology, which has made us god-like, as well as the failings of both communism and capitalism. You can find all of these reasons, pitfalls, and outstanding issues being provided in great detail in my highly analytical and multidisciplinary post entitled 😱 We have Paleolithic Emotions; Medieval Institutions; and God-like Technology 🏰🚀“, published at
This is a very substantial and topically important post dealing with the fundamental problems and the existential crisis of the human species, looming ever larger. I look forward to your visiting my said post and commenting on whatever that piques your interest there.
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle
LikeLike
SoundEagle, thank you for proof reading this and pointing out my typo now corrected.
Martin Luther King Jr. was right on pointing out such a simple Truth, “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
I revisited your amazing beautiful post on Behavioural Science from 2021 you link in your comment.
Reading the comments on it, you attract a very sophisticated, Intelligent and aware following, way beyond the majority with a 30 second sound byte attention span. I recommend everyone coming here go to it, but since this article was posted 13 years ago, I’ll have to update the tags and categories so more come and see it.
I agree with this , “I am not very optimistic about human intelligence, and more deeply, the human psyche,” and what the Future holds with the current Human condition. Ever more people have the same outlook, both the highly Intelligent and the common sort of people.
In the article https://rayjc.com/2013/09/01/signs-of-the-times/ writing about The Kansas City Times publishing the Historical record of September 13, 1976 it’s this specific portending 2-1/2 years into the Future, “There are 30 months before the fate of the world will be sealed with EITHER Destruction OR the Universal Brotherhood of Man,¨ he said. ¨The 30 month figure concerned a Treaty between Israel and Egypt.¨
NOTE: This does not say Armageddon happens in 30 months from the article.
Not 29 or 31, but exactly 30 months later, in March 1979, history shows a Treaty between Israel and Egypt was signed. The Camp David Accord. History shows talks broke down on the 12th day and no Treaty was to be signed. Begin and Sadat were leaving. It was on the 13th Day, as in the date of the Article and the picture accompanying it, an unexpected window of opportunity appeared and opened the way for the Treaty to be signed.
This signified the Universal Brotherhood part of the 1976 quote.
The Destruction part of the 1976 newspaper record became possible with the 1979 Iranian Revolution happening the month before the Camp David Accord. With all our media prefacing everything unfolding in the Middle East and the Israeli genocide in Gaza in our Times with “Iran backed proxies” the possibility of the Destruction part appears to be what is sealed as spelled out in 1976.
I hope I’m wrong, but I have no new insights into that anymore than the leading indicators the MSM puts out.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dear Ray,
Thank you for your reply. I would be very delighted if you could kindly submit a (preferably very long) comment in my post entitled “😱 We have Paleolithic Emotions; Medieval Institutions; and God-like Technology 🏰🚀” as a token of your visit to my said post for posterity. Please feel free to opine or elaborate on any salient aspects of its contents. Thank you in anticipation.
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle
LikeLike
Dear SoundEagle, I hope my comment in your article as requested meets with your approval?
Ray
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dear Ray,
I shall reward you richly with a VERY LONG reply at my said post. Given the length of this forthcoming reply and my outstanding errands, please give me a day or two to compose the comment.
More importantly, I only mentioned to you that I would prefer a very long comment. This means that the length of your comment is of concern here, NOT the erudition or the academic rigour. Furthermore, it really does not matter how much or little you know about Edward O Wilson and his works. After all, much of what I have composed in my post entitled “😱 We have Paleolithic Emotions; Medieval Institutions; and God-like Technology 🏰🚀” has gone far beyond the fields and territories familiar to Wilson himself.
I would be even more delighted if you could kindly submit another (preferably very long) comment in my said post to give your very own take on whatever issues that you consider to be pertinent or crucial, according to your own understanding and your experience, but without relying on ChatGPT or anything similar. Your forthcoming comment could even be something momentous or significant to you and to what you seriously think about the state of the world that we live in, plus whatever else that you can reflect or elaborate on, given that you have lived a long life and witnessed a great deal. Indeed, it is not at all a mere coincidence that we have gained deep understanding about each other on many levels. Rather, it is our mutual connections with our concerns about various social issues as well as our experiences that have brought us together, regardless of how similar or disparate our lives have been.
By the way, I am glad that you have noticed the new, useful and attractive features that I have incorporated into your blog.
Looking forward to reading your second comment at “😱 We have Paleolithic Emotions; Medieval Institutions; and God-like Technology 🏰🚀“!
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle
LikeLike
Dear Ray,
The answer to your question can be found in my reply at
It is the one that begins with “Let us put some contexts behind your composing …”
I still need to find time to reply to a few of your other comments that you submitted to my blog.
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle
LikeLike