Have you seen the movie “Inception,” with Leonardo DiCaprio? I went last week with my family and I found it extremely thought provoking.

Aside from the violence, which I don’t care for, the theme was a metaphysical powder keg.

Cobb, the lead character, claims to extract information from people’s dreams, and also through technology to enter people’s sub-conscious and dream states to influence how they think, and even plant notions there that they later act on without realizing it.

The bulk of the movie is Cobb acting on assignment to influence the heir to a huge energy conglomerate to break up the family business by selling it off in pieces, thus building a favorable economic climate for the billionaire competitor who hired Cobb to accomplish the task in the first place.

So Cobb contrives a plan to enter the sub-conscious of this heir through dream states and alter his beliefs, which would in turn affect the business decisions he makes at the office.

When I first read reviews of the movie, it all sounded sort of phony and ridiculous. I wasn’t even going to see the show, but I wanted a day out with the kids and they chose it, so along my wife and I went.

It didn’t take long into the move though, before I saw parallels between what Cobb was doing in people’s minds to what happens in the human mind all the time. And people don’t even realize it. They are unsuspecting.

It’s all phases of mesmerism and hypnotism, make no mistake. But humans seem to have a long way to go to stay protected from its deleterious influence.

What fascinated me was Cobb’s contention that there are dreams within dreams. For instance, he would sedate his subject into a dream state and then enter a dream state to supposedly “be with the subject” and get into his dreamy consciousness as a real character. He would start tinkering around with the dreamer’s consciousness, and if he couldn’t reach his goal, he would put the dreamer to sleep again (a dreamer within a dream), and himself, and go into a deeper subconscious with him. So, it was like a dreamer dreaming a dream in which he starts dreaming another dream. And Cobb did this into the 4th level down until he reached his final destination into the deepest fears and beliefs of his subject.

Anyway, it gets a bit complicated and you have to pay super close attention to follow, and I don’t put any stock in this actually being possible, but again, movies are made to make points, and it was the point that got me to thinking.

The next day I thought about how people experience all different degrees of health. Some stay physically healthy all the time. Others suffer all the time. Some pray and are healed. Others don’t understand prayer at all and spend their days seeking medical prescriptions. And it’s all dream states of mortal mind. But some dreams are a lot worse and deeper into error and suffering than others.

To believe one is a physical body is one layer of a dream state, one might say. To believe one is a physical body and suffers from a disease is a dream within a dream, the logic may continue. And to believe one is a physical body with a disease that must die, is a dream within a dream within a dream, the stream of logic might go.

The ultimate dream is life in matter. But there are many layers to this dream that humans wake out of gradually as thought is spiritualized, is what I began to ponder.

As Jesus proved when he raised Lazarus, we wake out of the mortal dream in degrees. Lazarus walked out of the tomb with a physical body (a dream) but had been awakened from the dream of disease and partially from the dream of death (we assume he later passed on of old age). The dream of physicality was not totally broken yet because the physical body was still there. But nonetheless, a great improvement in his condition had occurred.

I’m running out of room to keep writing on this, but it’s fascinating to consider the layers of belief mortal mind puts on mortals to wade out from in order to find total final freedom from all materiality.

In the movie, there was a question of how to wake from the dream states. One of the experts replied, “With a kicker.” And he kicked the stool out from underneath the sitting questioner who was leaning on the back 2 legs of his chair, and sent him toppling helplessly backward onto the floor.

Yes, every dreamer needs a “kicker” I agreed! Truth is the kicker. Divine Science is the kicker that snaps the human mind out of its dream states into spiritual reality.

In Truth, our mind is the divine Mind, naturally and normally aware of spiritual perfection, complete health, vigor, life, well being here and now. Any suggestion otherwise is a mortal dream state. Any time we believe we’re physical, suffering, in pain, with lack, deprived or immoral, we’re dreaming. We need a kicker to get us out of that dreamy state. Christ is the kicker, and it’s kicking away now with spiritual truth leading the human mind back to sanity, to spirituality, where God is in control and evil is not.

There is no inception of evil in the divine Mind. It’s not possible.

Whew…I haven’t seen a movie that got me to thinking this much in a long time.