Hi Max - Thanks for the comments. I didn't realise the GoT was such a relatively small document!. I read the Lambdin translation (coincidentally from the site you linked above I think) last night over a couple of hours, pausing after each saying for a few minutes to ponder the meaning.
This is of course nothing compared to your deep investigation of it, and 10 years of dipping in and out. Which is why I would genuinely appreciate any personal insights you feel comfortable sharing about this perspective re. "not bringing any more children", as I doubt I will ever discuss this with anyone with as much personal knowledge & affiliation with the text, and to be honest I cannot see myself having the dedication to it you suggest! I would genuinely just love to hear your personal understanding of it.
I certainly couldn't see what you suggest unambiguously, but there were several "sayings" which could be interpreted as hinting towards it? Certainly a few nearer the end.
Anyway, loved reading your STE experience again. Can't recall if I commented last time, so apologies if repeating myself....
But your experience of the "music" that "ripped" through you, this is a very common thread through a LOT of "other-wordly" journeys and experiences (Eben's NDE also "opens" up into a beautiful realm through a magical "sound", as also in many other NDEs, as I'm sure you know) , and a fundamental aspect of many eastern & tantric mystical practices. You spot references to it everywhere in their texts & mystics sayings. Om. A more "gross" or less subtle aspect of this other-worldly sound also frequently occurs in slightly more down-to-earth "paranormal" phenomena too (I believe there may be an article about this aspect of mystical "sound" in one of the earlier editions of the fantastic "Paranthropology journal" that Sciborg_S_Patel has linked here, if not, D Scott Rogo has a 2 volume book called "Nada" or something which goes into some of it)
Finally, and I hope you don't think I'm making light of your experience, because I'm certainly not, but your experience of seeing all these groups of beings on balconies, and then infinite balconies..... it kind of reminds of several recent Sci-fi films, such as The Matrix and some others I forget....very cool experience! :) It also reminds me a little, I believe, and you probably already aware of it, of aspects of an NDE with some lady called Judy Danison or something? I know it's definitely on the afterlifetv website if you're not aware of it, well worth checking it out. Cheers!
Yeah, you can't really take any GoT saying in isolation, but based on my present understanding of the overall document, I suggest that saying 79
could have such meaning, it's hard to say.
(79) A woman from the crowd said to him, "Blessed are the womb which bore you and
the breasts which nourished you."
He said to her, "Blessed are those who have heard the word of the father and have truly
kept it. For there will be days when you will say, 'Blessed are the womb which has not
conceived and the breasts which have not given milk.'"
There is the definite feeling he has no particular love for his parents, indeed he seems to feel quite bitter towards his mother, and whomever got her pregnant.
There is strong message throughout that our 'internal' perceptions are the same as our perceptions of the 'external' world, and I suspect that this lies behind the repeating message of two becoming one, and the different references to entering and leaving the bridal chamber. The 'external' world is claimed to be dead, and our physical body a poverty.
The popular idea of a resurrection seems to be a misinterpretation in my view, of what he is really seeking to do, which is break the cycle of life and death for ever, by bringing this world/existence to an end.
The idea of bringing children (bodies) into this external world would therefore seem to be somewhat in conflict with my interpretation, at least I can't logically reconcile it. Hence this is why I suggest 79 might have that meaning.
Re: My STE and the balconies. The figures were all identical and faceless, and the act of pulling up my hood, made me faceless and one of them too, that seemed important. All the balconies were identical, with the same number of identical figures, there was absolutely no way of
moving between balconies.
Looking back, it seemed like some sort of metaphor for a reversal of this reality. Here we can move around in space, but have limited abilities to move around in time. Over-there (if that is the right word) there was no ability to move in space, but repeating versions of each balcony seemed to imply I could perceive different temporal locations. I was in permanent and total contact with each and every figure/version, and that contact was emotional.
I have often wondered about the significance of the number of figures (7-9, I don't know exactly how many), or why I was the last back, and why my reserved space was one from the left (looking at the figures from behind), or why there was an identical wall of balconies facing me across a small gap. All these observations feel particularly significant to me, but I have not come to any firm understanding of what they mean, but I feel deep down they have some particular meaning.
The rear of the balcony was sealed, there were no doorways, indeed I knew absolutely that there was simply nothing beyond these two facing walls of balconies, and the space between them. This was all the space there was. I knew I would stand there forever, but that doesn't make any sense really, because the sense was of timelessness, but I knew I wasn't ever going to move 'spatially' from that spot again, and bizarrely, that knowledge filled me with incredible joy.