Dream 8: The Completed Integration of the Five Dimensions of True Nature, or the Quintessential Dimension by Almaas

In this dream, I woke up with a clear image of my hand, wearing three distinct nail polish colours – pearl, gold and bronze. In exploring this dream further with my therapist, I understood that these colours were the result of adding gold to white and yellow and red, which I associated to the alchemical stages of albedo (white), citrinitas (yellow) and rubedo (red). Gold is associated with the goal of the alchemical ‘opus’ (Edinger, 1985) and this dream seemed to suggest that there are indeed further processes beyond the alchemical stages of albedo-citrinitas-rubedo through the additional layer of the colour gold.

According to Almaas (2004), the ‘quintessential dimension’ is accessed when all five dimensions of true nature (Divine Light and Love, Being and Knowledge, Awareness and the Nonconceptual, Logos and Creative Dynamism and the Absolute and Emptiness) have been integrated. This exquisite synthesis is so perfect that we no longer experience reality as multi-layered but as a ‘perfect co-emergence’ (p. 439). It seemed that my dream was offering a depiction of this quintessential dimension through the symbolic image of the hand with ‘five’ fingers depicting perfect co-emergence through the layering of colours.