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THE MANY PEOPLE WE HAVE INSIDE US

Our Reaction to the Huge that we Are

We are all subject to the forces of growth – it is one of the main functions of life. But because growth is a push toward change, change that we do not want to face, we often resist it, often without realising we are doing so. Psychiatrist say we have resistances to meeting the uncomfortable aspects of our self. A young woman who was anorexic dreamt of cutting off her breast, suggesting trying to cut out the living process that was moving her into being a full woman. So such resistance can also relate to how we try to dissociate from our own process of growth and ageing.

The human personality – the You that you call yourself, with a name, is only a tiny thing. It is moved and tossed around by all manner of drives, ambitions, emotions, fears, temptations, worries, love and desire with its pains and hopes; it is something we take so seriously and get carried away into awful situations; we take many sorts of pain killers to deal with ourselves. Things such as alcohol, coffee, medical drugs and street drugs, and yet we are still prone to break down, as can be seen by the number of people who need antidepressants or are totally lost in themselves. Look around at the number of people who have to take anti depressant, or who have to use alcohol every day, or smoke or take other drugs – all means of not facing the difficulty of meeting self awareness. See Programmed

But we have to remember that having a personality with self awareness is a very new thing and has only existed for a short time. Before that we were like animals that lived only in the Life Will – what we usually call instincts. So the development of self awareness was an immense step, and left us very vulnerable, and still does.

Many people as their awareness reaches beyond what they feel is their normal self feel scared. Such resistances cause us to create awful dreams and fears as a means of avoiding our own inner world and its wonders. We feel that we will be swallowed up and we will die. It is important to say that when we meet the experience of powerlessness through becoming aware of the hugeness of your Life, which we are usually unaware if, it feels like something alien or attacking, and it is a shock.

When we begin to meet the Hugeness that we are, we often react to it in our dreams or in waking with fear or panic. So we dream of being attacked by aliens or frightening creatures; or being swallowed by a whale or something huge, a tsunami, or even possessed by evil entities. If we realise that they are things we have created through our own fear we will pass on. But otherwise it will continue to haunt us as something that will get you; or you feel uncertain even lost in facing it! But it is only our small self image, our ego that reacts because it feels powerless, even though in reality the Hugeness is part of our totality. It is the enormous potential you have within you, it is Life you are frightened of or have been ignoring. It often frightens us. We fear that our ego or personality as it is, will be lost, destroyed or overcome by the Hugeness. My experience is that nothing is ever lost, instead we are added to.

Example: Dr. Karagulla, a famous neurologist, in her book Breakthrough to Creativity, has described an experiment she made with two doctors. To test heightened sensory perception she blindfolded one of the doctors and gave him a photograph. It was a medical picture of a pregnant woman. He was asked to pass his fingertips over the photograph and report any impressions and sensations. At this the other doctor began to protest that what she was asking was not possible. But at this point the blindfolded doctor began to speak of impressions which vividly described the picture he held. The other doctor began to protest so violently, and began to feel so ill, the experiment had to be terminated. See https://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/opening-yourself/ and https://dreamhawk.com/interesting-people/animal-children/…

Self Help

This dictionary was designed to deal with self-help. It was built around thousands of people’s dreams used as search material defining meaning. But a great deal of research into dreams meanings was done by people actually exploring their dreams by entering the experience of waking lucid dreams. See Waking Lucid Dreaming 

Waking Lucid Dreaming is a new description of a very old technique or ability used by many older cultures. But the view and understanding of it has been clarified by realising the connections with the dream process and what has been called psychic phenomena and visionary experience. This new understanding has arisen from what is described and experienced by people using the technique of Life’s Little Secrets; People’s Experience of LifeStream

Both these are very powerful self-help techniques, although it is not a path many people will take because it confronts one with the unknown in oneself, and also the hidden traumas that we hide from ourselves. See – LifeStream

In life and sleep we have two powerful actions working in us. The first is our waking experience based on having a body, its limitations, vulnerabilities, and a particular gender. Our second is the power that gave us life and continues to express as dreams, and in the spontaneous movement of our breathing and heartbeat – our life. This I have given the description as the Life Will.

While we sleep, our conscious self is largely or totally unconscious, and while we dream our voluntary muscles are paralysed – therefore another will or motivating force moves our body. So, we have a Conscious Will, and what I will call a Life Will. The first one we have experience of as we can move our arm or speak in everyday activities; but the second will takes over when we sleep. See Sleep Paralysis

While we sleep and dream, the Life Will promotes subtle or powerful emotions, sexual experience and very deep spiritual experience; it can often teach us things previously not known, so this Life Will can move us to speak, to move our body, and in fact do things that we cannot do with our Conscious Will. As Freud pointed out this inner will has full access to our memories. It can do so many other things that are described elsewhere. See Edgar Cayce and the Cosmic Mind; ESP in Dreams. 

For simplicity, I have called this experience, of what is actually ‘waking lucid dreaming’, ‘LifeStream’. It would take us too far out of looking at dreams to explore it, but it can be studied within these features: Arm Circling Meditation; Opening to Life 

I see dreams and LifeStream as major ways paths of personal evolution. Thousands of people say they are using yoga as a path to transformation, but as explained in “Life’s Little Secrets”; “To help people I would wander around the yoga classes I took, and lift an arm or leg of some of those lying quietly relaxed. I moved the limb to let the person have an enhanced awareness of their relaxed condition. What amazed me was that often the arm or leg was so rigid with tension it was hard to move. If I let go the limb would remain suspended. On asking the person how they felt they would say, ‘Fine. Really relaxed.’ They didn’t know they were carrying enormous tensions.”

It took me a while to realise what that indicated. You could relax surface muscles and feelings, but a mass of tensions remains unconscious. Later I learned that such tensions had often arisen from difficult or traumatic past experiences, still locked in the body and emotions. By using relaxation techniques such as dropping the tension of the voluntary muscles or meditating on positive things those inner tensions were being pushed back into the unconscious – undealt with. When left at that point, relaxation and meditation were a method of suppression and control, not of healing.

Despite having practice yoga and meditation for years, I realised with shock this was true of many things that were supposed to be helpful, such as meditation and positive thinking. What they often did was to calm surface feelings by controlling thoughts and body. They did not deal with the real difficulties that had been pushed into the unconscious. Their purpose was to quieten the conscious mind and the voluntary movements of the body, not release unconscious tensions. 

Real Self Help

Of course, the traditional and ancient teachings of yoga understood this, and the past methods were not just physical postures and breathing exercises. They were methods designed to strip the ego/personality bare of its convictions and attitudes, that are basically programming. See Wild Side

That is why I see dreams and LifeStream as major paths – but both of them require more than using our will and thinking. This is because they are like icons on a computer screen – you must ‘click’ on your dream images to make them come alive. Thinking about them doesn’t work. You need to open yourself to the magic of them. To make them into the wonderful gateways they are you may have to learn certain skills. I summarise the skills needed by quoting Elliot, who so rightly wrote –

I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

This seems to me to be very similar to aphorism 51 in The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali which was written about 2000 years ago. It says, “The train of thought which has but one object, may also be stopped, in which case “meditation without a seed” is attained.”

“Meditation without a seed” is that in which the brooding of the mind has been pushed to such a point that the object selected for meditation has disappeared from the mental plane, and there is no longer any recognition of it, but consequent progressive thought upon a higher plane.”

Maybe this is not the same, but about 1975 I had for years practiced a great many different disciplines of body and mind, and still felt my life was a mess. It led me to realise that I had no idea of what to do to find help. Some of the so-called yogi master and people selling advice, who I had approached either were crafty tricksters who didn’t know anything and so played word games with me; or wanted to grab my dick, or wanted young women to bare their breasts so they could play with them; so, I lost hope in authority figures. I felt that I was as lost as the people mentioned and so gave up any form of discipline or meditation and so sat for half an hour a day simply waiting. I felt that if there was any help, it would be like a friend who touched you on the shoulder, and the touch would be real enough for me to recognise.

This went on for quite a long time, then one evening I had got up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet, and as I was returning, just as I was getting into bed, I heard a voice as clear as if it was from a person in the room. It said, “You have asked how God touches the human soul – now watch closely.”

I had never before heard a bodiless voice speak like that. It was very impressive. I recognised because of my deep acquaintance with the dream world and the unconscious, that I had heard the voice of my unconscious. The result was quick to show itself. Two friends and I had started an explorative group which met a couple of days after the voice spoke to me. As I sat in our small group I began to shake or tremble. I thought I must be cold, and so sat huddle up and tried to stop it. The next time we met the shaking started again, but this time I had put on a thick jersey, and did not feel cold, so I moved slightly apart from my friends and let myself really shake.

What happened was incredible. My body and my emotions discharged the whole experience of having my tonsils out as a six-year-old. My head pulled back, my mouth clamped open and my arms were in the position of being strapped to my side. Perhaps I had not been fully anaesthetised – I don’t know. What I do know is that I had carried that enormous tension and shock inside me from six until I was thirty-five.

Up until that day I had experienced a powerful neck tension that I had tried again and again to ‘relax’ away. My being didn’t need to relax, it needed to discharge in powerful tension, physical struggles, and emotion. After this ‘shaking’ experience there was never again a tension in my neck, a tension that had been caused by trying to pull away from the surgeon cutting my throat. However, it was not simply a physical tension it released. Powerful emotions were also discharged, ones that had created difficult responses to everyday life.

The Secret Is

A great many realisations arose because of that experience, and it carried on its cleaning, healing, and growing experiences for years. See People’s Experience of LifeStream

Yes, the secret is as old as the hills, but it keeps getting buried by being not understood. Two thousand years ago it was rediscovered in the Pentecostal event. Remember that they moved spontaneously and cried out. But of course, it was soon discouraged and became doctrine that people listened to, and was ruled by authorities instead of being personal experience.

In India, a practice that has been used for many centuries is Shaktipat. It produces spontaneous movements of the body. The movements in some individuals are so intense and frantic they appear dangerous. In other people the movements are soft, delicate and flowing. Others begin to dance harmoniously, to sing softly in languages they have never learned, to be­come playful and flirtatious and to utter strange sounds.

While working in Japan I was introduced to the practice of Seitai which also leads to spontaneous movement, but strangely sounds are not made. Unfortunately, like many such practices it is often taken over by ‘authority figures’ who twist and bend people into postures and charge them for the survive. It strikes me that it is a way the people train to earn money, whereas true inner directed movements need no practitioner to do them, for we all have extraordinary wisdom built into us if we allow it.

A practice that works with that understanding is Subud. Pak Subuh, the leader of the practice said that Subud was not a new teaching or religion. The movements (Latihan) is not thought about, learned, or trained for; it is unique for each person and the ability to “receive” it is passed on by being in the presence of another practicing member at the “opening”. The opening was the impact of the Great Holy Life Force.

Nearer our own times, George Fox who was born in 1624 was an amazing man who criticised the church. The worship of Friends in the form of silent waiting seems to have been well-established, they were called Quakers and some Shakers, because people were shaken or moved when they opened to the Spirit – which we can also call the Great Holy Life Force.

Even more recent, we have the testimony of Alcoholics Anonymous which was started by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith in Akron, Ohio in 1935. They put in place the Twelve Step system. But it is the first two steps that I feel are very important. They are –

• admitting that one cannot control one’s alcoholism, addiction or compulsion
• recognizing a higher power that can give strength

I came across this wonderful simple statement before I found my own way to that higher power. When I found the way to “recognise the higher power that gives one strength” I changed the first one to – “Admitting that I could not control my fears and my whole being.”

If we add to that the ‘silent waiting’ of the Quakers, we have a good foundation for self-help. But something that has been forgotten by most, especially AA, is that to receive the higher power fully, you must give yourself fully to it. That means surrendering your body to be moved by that power; surrendering your sexuality, your emotions, your voice, and your mind – in fact your whole self.

Casting Out Demons

Those self-doubts, and the negative feelings that arose from them, created an open door for what has been called the Devil – destructive emotions and urges, negative comparisons, and feelings of being an outsider. Once this is understood it is easy to see other things that leave a door open for evil to enter. They are childhood trauma or abuse, the attitudes, and standards we often pick up – rather like infections – from others around us, and the cultural attitudes we live amidst. When this ‘devil’ enters us it can lead to self-criticism, the denial of one’s own talents and ‘light’, and in bad cases, crime, murder and the infliction of child abuse and trauma.

Naskapi Indian Dream Beliefs

‘Their inner centre is realised in exceptionally pure and unspoiled form by the Naskapi Indians, who still exist in the forests of the Labrador peninsula. These simple people are hunters who live in isolated family groups, so far from one another that they have not been able to evolve tribal customs or collective religious beliefs and ceremonies. In his lifelong solitude the Naskapi hunter has to rely on his own inner voices and unconscious revelations; he has no religious teachers who tell him what he should believe, no rituals, festivals or customs to help him along. In his basic view of life, the soul of man is simply an ‘Inner companion’, whom he calls ‘My friend’ or ‘Mista peo’, meaning ‘Great Man’. Mista peo dwells in the heart and is immortal; in the moment of death, or just before, he leaves the individual, and later reincarnates himself in another being.

‘Those Naskapi who pay attention to their dreams and who try to find their meaning and test their truth can enter into a greater connection with the Great Man. He favours such people and sends them more and better dreams. Thus the major obligation of an individual Naskapi is to follow the instructions given by his dreams, and then to give permanent form to their contents in art. Lies and dishonesty drive the Great Man away from one’s inner realm, whereas generosity and love of one’s neighbours and of animals attract him and give him life. Dreams give the Naskapi complete ability to find his way in life, not only in the inner world but also in the outer world of nature. They help him to foretell the weather and give him invaluable guidance in his hunting, upon which his life depends…. Just as the Naskapi have noticed that a person who is receptive to the Great Man gets better and more helpful dreams, we could add that the inborn Great Man becomes more real within the receptive person than in those who neglect him. Such a person also becomes a more complete human being.” Quoted from Man and His Symbols, by Carl G. Jung

See Naskapi Indians also Naskapi Indians 2

Ex’s

Ex’s play an enormous part in many people’s dreams. The reason is that dreams about ex’s are very tricky for several reasons. To start with most people are often totally unaware of the experience they take in and how it interacts with them when we love or interact with someone. In other words because we memorise the feelings and responses we felt; and because we learn through our experiences, we are changed by them. The memories and the learning are part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. You have taken in millions of bit of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences, along with all the feelings or problems met by loving and living with someone and they are what makes you the person you are. Your dreams tend to put all that in the image of the past person when you are dealing with the influences left in you from the relationship.

Example: The details behind this were that I recognise that my telling my partner frequently that I don’t need her, that I am independent, that I don’t really want to live with her, was the way of hitting at her to test her response. I realise that I am so frightened that the person I love will betray me or leave me, that in a way I challenge them to leave me to see if it is going to happen. Of course this can actually cause the breakup to happen. I know this is a classic pattern in relationships but that doesn’t mean to say I am free of it.

A very beautiful and deep dream (Love was written in blood) can be seen at least in two ways. The usual one is to see it as about a physical partner that is there for you to find. Another more likely view is to see it as the you that you lost without warning – the being that will make you whole and let you know what real love is. But love is learnt and becomes habits at the early experiences – as a baby – of being loved, abandoned, left of abused. All those are very real ways leading you to painful emotions in the present relationship.

Traditions from the past and our own dreams if explored, show that we inhabit a body which is polarised as one expression of gender – male or female. But the ‘we’ that experiences life in a body is a whole being, female and male. Being in a body leads us to long for wholeness which we feel we do not have, and so long for a partner of the opposite sex to feel whole. But of course it is only an illusion of wholeness and has to be sought again and again by having sex. But that is natures or the instinctive way to procreation. See Archetype of the Animus and Archetype of the Anima

This search for wholeness in many cases. Sets up a bloody conflict between the sense of being in a body and the longing for the real love of wholeness. Look around you at the bloody mess that comes for such deep longing for a partner –  amount of ex’s you see, even in those who have ‘everything’.

One of the great and often self-defeating identifications is that with our body. If we accept that dreams portray in images our conception of self, then dreams suggest that our identity largely depends upon having a body, its gender, health, quality, skin colour, the social position we are born into, and our relationship with others. In fact, we know that if a person loses their legs, becomes paralysed, loses childbearing ability, becomes blind or is made redundant, they face an identity crisis. Yet despite all of that they still exist as a person, and if we realise that early we can avoid all the pain and distress caused by a complete identification with our body and our ex’s.

Even an absent parent is a huge figure in our inner life. In dreams we meet them again and again in ex’s, in lovers lost or in the figure of parents. For we are not dreaming about them but the memories, hurts, lessons and experiences stored within us. Everyone we have known are in fact figures of our inner world. To become whole, to love ourselves we must meet, acknowledge and integrate the people we carry within us.

Example: I am not pregnant, but dreamt I was at my ex’s place, with whom I spent a night together 3 months ago (1.5 yrs after our breakup), and he’s cold/avoiding me ever since (claiming he’s seeing someone). In the dream, I was not pregnant with him, and was convinced I was about to deliver around that day.

Example:  It started from a month ago, things started to change. Not so bad, but it’s just only the dream that he has been having lately. He has been having the same dream this past a month! He talks in his sleep. He says his EX’s name over and over again, and then some words too. I love him to death, and he loves me too! I have no other problem with him. Ohh well, few months ago, we had few, but we got through it.

Sometimes we get stuck, unable to move on, because of pains linked with the Ex. Here is a way a man found to freedom.

Example: Then I slowly became aware of a deeper sense of the discomfort. It was a feeling of being stuck in one place and not being able to move. It wasn’t anything to do with moving physically but was as an awareness. It felt awful and I tried to move but couldn’t. The only way of describing it was as if we are all made out of the same stuff – as an example concrete – and as such we filled all space. So, the little space I filled could not move because all around was filled by others. I felt really stuck and wondered what I could do, but there seemed no way out of it. Yet I could not believe this was really how things were.

But that led me to think about my cousin Sid again, and his situation of being constantly linked with his mother, a relationship he never escaped from. Then I realised that I was also linked with Ros, and in feeling that I realised that I could move in at least two positions – me and Ros – because of the loving connection I felt.

Then came a flood of realisation, every person I had loved was another position I could be in; and then I knew all the animals I had loved and even people I had a casual relationship with. But there was even more because in dreams and sessions I had become or encountered amazing things, people, creatures, the Star Beings and others. I knew then that I was FREE to go anywhere and be almost anything.”

See Secrets of Power Dreaming

Debi Wanted to be Dead

Quoted from Russell Lynn’s book, The Wonder of You: What the Near Death Experience Tells You About Yourself – If you wish to own the book see  The Wonder of You

Fit Fits

Seeing or having a fit in a dream is usually an indication of releasing deep tensions often caused by fear or not being able to meet deep or powerful emotions or stress.

In life and sleep we have two powerful actions working in us. The first is our waking experience based on having a body, its limitations, vulnerabilities and a particular gender. Our second is the power that gives us life and continues to express as dreams, in our breathing and heartbeat – our life energy. This I have given the description as the Life Will.

While we sleep our conscious self is largely or totally unconscious, and while we dream our voluntary muscles are paralysed – therefore another will or motivating force moves our body. So we have a Conscious Will, and what I will call a Life Will. The first one we have experience of as we can move our arm or speak in everyday activities; but the second will takes over when we sleep. See Sleep Paralysis

This Life will can move us to speak, to move our body, and in fact do things that we cannot do with our Conscious Will. See LifeStream–People’s Experience of LifeStream– Life’s Little Secrets – Arm Circling Meditation

Example: For some considerable time now I have been troubled by a nightmarish dream which is so realistic sometimes I think I am going to die. In my dream, which sometimes comes within three quarters of an hour of falling asleep, I have swallowed something which is literally choking me or is going to poison me. I wake up and rush down the stairs to the kitchen spitting and choking, holding my throat and making all sorts of disturbing noises which frighten my wife. I have had this dream as many as five or six times a night. My doctor says it could be to do with the last war. I was a child then and my dad had to constantly wake me up to take us down to the shelter, sometimes as many as four times a night, and we were bombed out twice. I cannot recall having any fears about this at the time.

Here is a typical example of trauma trying to be released.

Clone

A dream clone may very well be a sign of you creating a copy of yourself because of troubles with the self you usually know.

The clone may very well develop a different view than the you that you know. this could result in a split in yourself, or even a take over by the clone. This because the dream clone, animal or person all exist in the one mind, so any conflict is a conflict in you. See Wild Side

Great Dreams That Guide Us

Great dreams usually only arise when we have tried our best to find out who we are, to cut through to the central YOU. This is a bit like the journey to the centre of the earth.

The journey to the centre of the world, your world, has been the aim of heroines and heroes of all cultures. Myths from all ages tell of the search for that precious something that the hero/ine risks all for. It might be the pearl of great price, the Golden Fleece, or the love of someone.

But you are the hero/ine of your own life. You brave great dangers, face monsters, pass through difficult initiations. Fundamental to the whole drama of the hero/ine is the emergence of your own identity from the depths of unconsciousness in the physical process of conception, through to developing self awareness as an adult. From the great ocean of collective culture, language, and society, you move toward the possible emergence of yourself as a mature individual. To do this you face death and rebirth several times when you metamorphose from baby to child; from child to adolescent; from adolescent to adult; from adult with youthful body to ageing body. It is such an incredible journey, so heroic, so impossible of achievement, so fraught with dangers and triumphs. It is the greatest story in the world. It is YOUR story. See Archetype of the Hero/ine

The adventure of your life faces you with challenges and threats to your survival not just physical survival but the survival of your soul. Look around you. How many people have given up their own will to alcohol, drugs, medications or a leader figure? How many people have pulled back from the challenge of deeply and creatively meeting their life? How many of those around you live in a tiny worldview of beliefs and opinions, unable to venture into any depth of personal experience? 

To find your way through to a wider life you need courage. To survive the pitfalls, temptations, and dead ends of the journey you need all the survival skills you can gain. Opening the windows of your extended faculties is one of the greatest of survival aids and a doorway to creative expression. If you doubt that read the accounts left us by our forebears who lived amidst a much more dangerous physical world than ours. To find food in difficult times they looked to their wider awareness, their intuition, and visions. After all there were no newspapers or yellow pages to help them no police to fend off dangers. When there was sickness they sought help from within to understand the herbs and animals around them. What else was there? In facing the future, they prayed for guidance from their widest awareness to help them take the best pathway through the uncertainty of the years ahead. The ‘holy’ that they approached was not an abstract God living only as a concept or expressed in the dogma of religion. It was a sacred experience of Life itself and help in times of need. See  Using Your Intuition – Going Beyond – Dimensions of Human Experience

Perhaps your dangers are not hungry predators or lack of food. But we still live in a jungle. There are still enormous dangers. Moving toward emotional and physical independence is possibly more difficult now than it has been in the past. Certain aspects of experience which are necessary to meet during personal growth were ready made in older cultures; this despite the fact our society apparently holds the ideal of independence more than past cultures.

In smaller communities, in groups with a stronger national, religious or family identification, there was less need to be independent in forming an identity and role for oneself. At times, one’s surname or tribal name alone was a ready made statement of who you were, your background, beliefs, caste, and what quality of person you might be. Whether one was enemy or friend, marriageable or taboo, was clearer. Decision making was easier because most groups had a more unified set of customs or religious practices; therefore, there was less pressure on individuals to make personal decisions. In fact, being different was not good form. Those who stuck their head up above the group often had it taken off. You were even helped to leave parents and move into a sense of kinship with a partner via initiation ceremonies and trials. Today, educational, professional and university qualifications are not quite the same thing. On the street, your name may mean nothing; there is no ready made role for you; social security or state aid may in fact develop in you a sense of being a second class citizen. Being out of work can even rob you of the identity and social acclaim gained through employment.

Today’s initiation into adulthood does not consist of recognition or ceremonies like bar/bat mitzvah or acceptance into womanhood by the tribe. It most likely occurs when you confront the impact of the world, its uncertainties, and then manage to carry on life with your head up. This courage might mean becoming aware of the forces of illness waiting in the wings for their chance on you; seeing how much of a nothing you are when viewed against the billions of other humans, and what competition exists in whatever your chosen direction; confronting your own internal world of fears, angers, pains and destructive habits; meeting the fact of death, fallibility and the infinity of your ignorance; recognising and accepting the variety of human beings, their experience, life or beliefs. See Individuation; Meeting yourself

 You need all the help you can get

The universal themes appear again and again in both dreams and waking encounters with the unconscious. When these are experienced they are usually not seen simply as a static physical object, but are full of meaning, movement, and power. Common symbols met are in the form of a mandala, the crux ansata, various forms of the Shiva lingam, jewels, shining objects or animals, or the wheel of life such as shown in Buddhism and in Native American rituals.

Examples:

The dream is that of a man in his mid forties.

“I am walking along a cobbled road going slightly down–hill. I know as I dream that I am in Italy. I do not feel a stranger in this land, and am learning the language.” Ron.

Ron found so much information in his dream, I have to shorten it – but for the long version see The Conjuring Trick – Here is a short version.

I realised that my father was very distant or cautious in his dealings with the market salesmen and porters in the fruit market. A distinct and overall realisation arose out of the many memories and impressions; it was that my father was expressing a particular type of caution in all his dealings with other people. I saw this as keeping who he was secret – keeping his head down.

As I saw this in my father it hit me with great power that this attitude had passed to me, and although I expressed it in a different way, I had inherited it with equal strength. Why? And, how?

I saw that just as a fox cub ‘learns’ how to hunt from its parents without words, so we absorb the deeply etched survival strategies of our parents simply by being around them. If genes come into it anywhere, they perhaps create the reflex response that instinctively draws in the survival tactics that perhaps even our parents themselves have never really been aware they live by. In doing this the higher animals learn what cannot be passed on as instinct, what is not ‘hard wired’ into them. This holds in it a tremendous advantage because ‘hard wiring’ takes a long time. Through this faster method we learn what to be afraid of, what to eat, how to hunt, because the lessons learned by pain through many generations are exhibited in our parents behaviour in dealing with events. Unfortunately, we absord all their bad survival techniques as well as positive ones – depending who your parents are/were.

So what did my father pass onto me – and what did you unconsciously pick up from your parents?

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A woman wrote to me about a recurring dream in which she discovered a door in her house she had never seen before. Beyond it was a whole apartment she has never known or used. It was obviously an area of her life she had never lived in, but she had no idea what.

So I suggested to her to use her imagination and enter the room and allow any spontaneous feelings and images to arise. A soon as she imagined entered the apartment she began to remember and feel again things that had happened in her childhood. Her mother and father had separated when she was very young, and her mother had constantly presented her father as weak and of no value. But the feelings that arose were of the love of beauty and art that her father had shared and helped unfold in her. But she had kept that part of her closed because of what her mother had said. Now it was open to her again and she could allow it to unfold further in her life. An important point here is that the woman did this working alone on her dream, not with professional help or supervision.

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Early this morning I dreamt of meeting  a woman dwarf in a building. I had the sense of knowing her for a long time, but we had not met for ages. She was leading me into the building as if we had just entered it. She went through a door, on the left of a corridor, into a room.

The woman dwarf had features that, even in the dream, reminded me of someone. Once in the room with her I felt more strongly I had known her for many years. She told me she was going to look in her crystal ball to tell me what she could see for me. I realise the woman has never been made love to, and I feel compassion and love for her. I pick her up and hold her lovingly. I do not have an awareness of penetrating her, but the charge of sexual feelings flows into her. She transforms into a beautiful female and I know she will always love me – be a haven of love.

My beautiful friend looks into the crystal. It is not a thing made of glass, but a great dimension of mind which appears to open in the room, hanging in the centre of it, about eight feet across. She tells me I am already touching something that is beginning to happen in the world. My life will become involved in it. I will play my part – by no means a key or leader, but one which I will gain great satisfaction and love from.

The man whose dream this was had the dream in 1991, while he was starting a new  and different project. He was full of doubts, but the dream became stronger help as the years fulfilled the dream. It was so true, every part of it.

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Very often profound understanding flows through dream symbols to the person meeting them. An example of this is as follows:

I looked over at a plain wall in the room. It was light green. To my amazement, a huge living and wondrous circle appeared on the wall. It was full of movement, everything dancing in time to music. At the very centre of the circle was emptiness, nothing, a void. Yet out of this nothingness all things emerged. There were plants, animals, people, hills, rivers, and mountains all coming to birth. They danced out in their own individual movement, yet each unknowingly was part of the whole wonderful and intricate dance which made a great pattern and movement in the body of the circle. All danced to the periphery and there turned and moved, still in their ballet, back to the centre. At that centre they plunged into its oblivion again. But at that very moment new life sprang from it to dance once more.

This experience has stayed with me over the years and continually enlightens me about the essence of life. We emerge from something that is beyond any form, yet is potentially everything. We dance our life, and without knowing it are part of the whole movement of creation, of life and death. Then we move back to our source, lose ourselves in it, only to be brought forth again in a new and unique form.

Grof noted that people experiencing such dynamic symbols, often learned whole systems of thought and insight from the experience. They felt them to be glorious living doorways to the cosmic mind. In one such meeting they would understand the whole structure and meaning of the system it depicted. It seems probable to me that some of the great symbolic systems such as astrology, the chakras and the I Ching were originally grasped from this type of visionary experience. See Masters of Nightmares; Grof

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 There was a gate leading to a path, and somehow I had the feeling that I wanted to put a warning sign over the gate saying something like, “Give up hope all you who enter here”! The path led to a hill, and when I reached the top I was on the edge of a precipitous drop. The view was extraordinary, like looking into a vast void. It was like seeing into everything, and with a sinking heart I could sense no being, no God, just a huge impersonal space.

The feeling floored me and I sat there and gave up on any hope of finding what I had hoped for – a sort of wonderful welcome. But as I sat a deep quietness grew in me – I had given up! And that was when a quiet bliss grew in me, and I realised that many others had got to the same spot and sat there. I also realised that I had been seeking an external god, and in giving up my search and becoming quiet had found the inner god that we all are.

And in my quiet bliss I turned my head and looked to my left there was a path leading up a mountain and I know that it was a path others had taken after they knew the bliss, and I would take it also. I realised that the bliss I experienced was what many people call enlightenment, and I saw or realised that this was not an end, but the beginning of a climb.

I looking at the dream, I realised the mountain was the path I have taken over the years. I got to that spot on the hilltop where I just sat, as if there is no way onwards. This path has led me to drop my ambition, let go of my desire to lead or be a creator of something special to bring me acclaim. But it doesn’t stop me seeing the tragedy of the world and wanting to do something about it. So I feel like putting the image of the mountain path into the world and seeing if people who have also climbed that path and faced the void, who also have sat there and realised freedom, will collect under that image as the dream suggests, to create practical action in the world.

Slowly another possibility clarified – freedom within limitation. An amazing sense and experience of this freedom came upon me. It was more rewarding than Ananda/bliss, and with infinite possibility. Life could begin in an entirely new way. Relationships could be things of depth, variability, and beauty, once freed of the shackles of the eternal buzzing desire to fuck.

Yet buzzing is not forbidden. Work can become a joy and a game instead of a struggle and a task. It is Life itself facing experience naked. Was that really it? I could hardly believe it. Surely an anxiety, problem or injury lay underneath. Perhaps I was still defending. I would dwell deeply in the ache and see.

As I did so the colours got lighter and lighter. It felt as if something was going faster and faster. Yes, kaleidoscopic patterns were moving and changing faster, speeding up and getting lighter. First of all just colour, movement and intensity, then it burst into a direct awareness of energy in my being vibrating faster and faster. I could feel it moving each side of my spine, actually vibrating. It got more and more intense until suddenly it felt like the energy had cleared all its pathways and was vibrating at tremendous speed without barriers. It was an incredible experience yet at the same time not at all strange.

I had read about this, and expected bliss, strange awareness, entrance into other dimensions, contact with nonphysical intelligence’s, or a view of life that was goal oriented. Something like – Aha, so life leads to this wider awareness – or meeting other minds – or fresh worlds – but no. It was all very ordinary in an extraordinary way. There was the energy. It was vibrating in a physically apparent way, just as it does when I sleep, only faster. It had reached a point where it seemed to clear out last remaining obstacles to stream freely. But it didn’t put me in touch with disincarnate entities, other dimensions, bliss, or a hidden life, or divine purpose.

What it did do was to increase what I already had. It gave more. This incredible energy I saw, experienced, that it didn’t do anything in particular, but on the other hand it would do anything. If I turned my energy into fear or self-destructive patterns, then I could be a lot more frightened and self-destructive with that amount of energy. Like a man who drinks and one who paints. With more money or energy they could respectively drink or paint a lot more. If I used my energy toward creativity and life enhancement, then that’s what the energy would do. It could heal or cause illness, give peace or restlessness, wisdom or folly. It would fill whatever one put before it. In my case it was being used to look at life and myself and cleanse body and consciousness of sickness and limiting painful or anxious attitudes, and that was what it was doing.

In fact it cleared so much pain, darkness and anxiety out of my soul, I felt a peaceful joy shining from me and obstructed by the anxieties I have felt of late. It brought clearness, calm confidence, and open warmth. It brought more, in the same sense light brings more in a dark room. Consider this. The room we are in is in darkness. With a little light vague shapes are apparent but no colour. With more light shapes begin to take on meaning as to what they are, and dim shades of colour appear. More still and hidden details in the shapes become obvious and colours begin to blaze out. More still and things hidden in the colours show. The room has not changed. No other doors have opened on fresh dimensions. No other intelligences met. The room changes only in the appreciation and awareness we have of it.

The colour was always there, but we see it more and more, and what has always existed and been experienced opens up to us more fully. So this flood of energy gives more in the same sense. No new worlds within the same world, but with much deeper appreciation and awareness. True the whole world changes, but only because of heightened awareness. As for goal orientation, I wondered, is this where man is destined to evolve? Is this where yoga leads? But really it was not like that. The energy did not lead anywhere. There was nothing to it or beyond it to reach. There was nowhere else to go. That realisation was repeated over and over. There is no divine purpose, higher world, meaning, or future evolution to escape into. There is only me, here, now. I have to be self responsible and self creative or be unconscious, driftwood on the sea of life.

This was all experienced while in a state of waking lucid dreaming – Waking Lucid Dreaming;  Integration – meeting oneself – Life’s Little Secrets  

Dreams As Visions

Without dreaming we are either very ill or dead. If dreaming is stopped altogether, then we are not functioning at our best.

 I have lived in many different worlds and in all of those worlds there have been dreams. Dreams are like the blood that flows through all living things that have intelligence. They carry the life. They carry the love. And they carry also a mirror.  And in the mirror you see what you have created of that life and that love. It’s a gift, and without that gift we can wander far away from your true life.

Dreams encompass the largest and the smallest.  They bring to this limited thing that has emerged in time and space its connection with the ground of being.

(Is it enough to dream without being aware of the dreams?) Is it enough to love without giving that love?  Is it enough to create without making it with your own hands?  Is it enough to want a child without bearing it?  It takes our own movement towards what is offered us to bring it fully into being.  A dream is also an invitation to live in worlds beyond one’s imagination but only an invitation that you might neglect.

(What about the dreams I don’t remember?)  There is no dream that is forgotten except when you wake up. They are all there for you to remember when you wake up. We are all largely asleep in this body.

(What would you recommend are the simplest and most powerful two ways of approaching dreams for the reader of this book)?  Life has a way of coming to us in our sleep and together we weave dreams. To approach that weaving as if it were a book to read or a quotation to remember is to miss that this is a process of creativity between you and something extraordinary.  Take the dream, as it were. gently in your hands like you might pick up something delicate and beautiful.  Don’t hurry with your gaze. This is like meeting a lover.  How will you do that?  Will you sit and ask questions and attempt to penetrate your love intellectually?  Will you walk with your love some way and see if there is a connection that can gradually unfold?  The dream is ready to speak to you if your heart and mind are not closed to it. For dream images are like icons on a computer screen – you have to ‘click’ on your dream images to make them come alive. Thinking about them doesn’t work. You need to open yourself to the magic of them. To make them into the wonderful gateways they are you may have to learn certain skills.

Again imagine this lover.  Could there be connection if you have no heart to feel?  Is your mind already full of things that you believe? The way is difficult for some. If the way is difficult when you hold the dream, is there any part of your being that can respond to it? Look for wherever there is the slightest response.  Listen to that response as small as it might be. For this is like a plant that grows, a bud that opens.  Allow that bud to open and respond.  Be like a gardener watering and caring for that plant as it grows, recognising that as yet it might not have bloomed but the time will come.

(Tell me specifics about dreams that is going to grab the attention of the reader and force them to listen?) The song,  Bad moon rising.  As a child you had dreams, not necessarily the dreams of the night. They were dreams impelling you toward something or away from something. As the years passed, those dreams may have become covered by the debris of memories and events.  And you know inside yourself what it is like not to have dreams, what it is like to have lost that light, that urgent guide toward the future.  What is it like now to stand alone without your dreams? Be honest and look into that dark place where they used to be, where now only shadows and pains stand to haunt you. Those dreams have been pushed into the night and to find again that bright guiding light, you need to open the door of the night and to allow your dreams into your waking.

Masters of Nightmares

Here are examples of meeting what most people run from in fear- yet knowing that no harm can ever come to you.

Whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen, so that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear; so, all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind. So why remain victims of you own fears? See Example 15 – Life Changes

How do they master their awful nightmares? In some way the dreamer has the courage to face what terrifies them, or they realise that dreams are just frightening images and so overcome their fear or fight fire with fire.

How do we face and over come fear? By saying no to the urges of fear that make us run like frightened mice and hide from our own magnificence. We say no to what destroys our own best human self and live like tiny scared children in our own world of adults. We say no to the many shortcuts we constantly try  to take in diving into holes to protect us from pains we have ourselves created by our avoidance’s to face what we need to grow. We are so scared of our own emotions we run and fall into the fire of the pain it causes. We say no to the urge to gorge ourselves with what our basic instincts and human weakness pushes is to do with our hunger, our sexual urge, our desire to push and tread others underfoot in order to satisfy our small selves. For each day of each minute is ours to choose the way of meeting ourselves.

This next example is from Oliver, a boy of six, illustrates how such fears can be met with a little courage. It is a dream which recurred several times, so his description is of a series of dreams.

Example: ‘I am in my bed in my own room and I hear what I know to be a wolf wearing the sort of clogs worn in Lancashire. When the wolf gets to a certain point, there is a bang, and I wake terrified. My Mother’s reassurances do not help. Each night he gets a bit nearer before my panicky awakening. The night came when I know he will reach me. Sure enough he arrives, and the bedroom door – in my dream – is flung wide open with a tremendous bang, I shouted out, “You are not real”. There was no one there. I never dreamt it again.’

A man meeting what for most would have been horrific

Example: I was walking up the several flights of stairs to get to the attic room. I was holding a small dog in my arms – one of those rather flat nosed toy dogs.

When I arrived at the attic I put the dog down. But now the attic was empty and dark. I could feel my hair stand on end and my skin ‘crawling’. Actually I feel it all again as I write this. The feeling arose because there was an unformed dark shape creeping around at the far end of the room. The dog was really afraid and came into my arms.

Then the dark creature leapt at me, transforming into a massive mouth with huge fangs like a sabre toothed tiger and with an awful demonic face. Immediately I leapt at it in the same way and smashed against its face with my own huge fangs. This utterly disarmed it because it had felt, in its primitive way, to terrify me. It surprised me too that I could so immediately transform into a monster when necessary. Later I realised that I had often become something of a monster in real life, and that was how I knew how to become a monster in order to deal with my own inner monster.

Realising why the nightmare was haunting him

Example: Had a very unusual dream last night. I was in an outdoor environment. It seemed a bit dark, or maybe morbid is the right word. I was with other people but none of them stood out to remain in memory. There was a definite awareness though of being near to a place that was haunted, and that a man was in trouble in the haunted place.

I decided to go and see if I could sort out the problem. I walked down a slope to where the centre of the haunting existed. It was an open space with an old double-decker bus in it. The only person on the bus was a middle-aged man who was sitting on the top deck leaning out of a window on the right hand side of the bus. I stood beneath him and looked up. He was staring in a glazed way and didn’t see me. I could see and feel that he was being hit by fantasies or hallucinations by whatever was the source of the haunting. This invasion of his mind was grabbing his attention so fully that he wasn’t aware of his surrounding or of me. I was sure that if he went any deeper into this mind stuff he wouldn’t be able to pull out. I waved my hand in his line of vision and banged my hand on the bus to make a noise and get his attention. At first it didn’t seem as if I would bring him out of it, but after a while he looked at me.

I shouted at him to pull out. I said that he had a wife and some more years of his life to live, so why lose himself into this entrancement. This didn’t seem to grab him so I shouted again and said that he would eventually slip into this empty mind world anyway – at death – so why not live with his wife the remaining years of his life. I was sure that if he lost awareness he would let himself starve.

I was aware that what he desired was to slip away into the Buddhist void, into the awareness of the one life in which he lost any awareness of self. But I banged and shouted and he became more ‘present’. I then felt I had to confront whatever was the source of the powerful ‘haunting’ that was pulling him into the inner mind. I turned away from the man and saw just to my right a short distance from the bus an animal that was the ‘haunter’. It was a mammal of no particular type – a bit like a mixture of dog, rat and guinea pig. It seemed very ordinary and tame, and stood looking at me. I walked toward it and stretched out my hand. It was a tan colour with short fur and gave a feeling of being okay to approach, so I touched it to stroke. This was okay and I was thinking there was no problem when the creature leapt at my throat in a flash of movement and ripped my throat out.

This sounds disturbing but I simply observed this and thought to myself that stroking and trying to be friendly was no way of dealing with this thing. It was as if I was in command of the imagery in that I simply formed another body. But then it dived into me to devour me from within. The only way that felt as if I might deal with the creature was to have the meditative state of holding on to the nothingness that was my centre, and not feeling panic at it’s attacks. In fact apart from the gory imagery, there was nothing to be frightened of, as the creature was only attacking my dream image of myself. As I wasn’t identified with this, it couldn’t hurt me. That was the end of the dream.

But later I explored the dream and it aroused a great anger and hatred for what my mother did did to me, which led to this wild devouring anger inside me. It took a while to release it using what Tony describes as Lifestream, but when it was finished I felt I understood why she did what she did and I felt forgiveness.

A Terror of Tunnels

Dreamt that at the same time I was myself, and had spent a long time following clues in my research into the unconscious. One particular line of clues had led me to go through a door in the house in which I lived. This house has no clear connection with any house I know, although it reminds me vaguely of G. L’s house. The door led to an area somewhat like a cellar or basement. It was certainly down some steps, but I felt more as if it were an almost secret place within the house rather than underneath it. It was dark, with no windows though, and was similar to being down deep.

I was like a detective following clues. To follow the clues I tried an experiment. I sat in this interior place facing a tunnel. It was maybe about five or six feet high. Where I sat was dimly lit, but the tunnel led into complete blackness and the unknown. I believe I repeated some keywords and looked into the tunnel.

I had neither warning nor expectation for what happened. I was overwhelmed by terror, as if the very darkness of the tunnel was a living force of fear that entered me and consumed me. I screamed and screamed uncontrollably in reaction.

Nevertheless, a part of me was observing what had happened, and was amazed and realised I had found something of great importance. Somehow I managed to turn my screaming self away from the tunnel. But on my right – it had appeared to be behind me – was another tunnel that brought about the same terror.

I managed to get to the door, open it and get back into the everyday part of the house. I remember feeling, as I did so, that I hoped no one would observe me coming out, as in some ways it was illegal to go into or be in such a place. I also feel as if I have had many, many dreams involved in the house, that I have never brought to consciousness before.

In meeting the terror of the tunnels I first felt two string connections; firstly I felt that society puts an authoritative stamp on the unconscious by considering that only psychiatrists, doctors, priests, or professors have anything useful to say about it. This leads to my sense of secrecy or illegality shown in the dream.

The second association was with feelings that I had a life long habit of retreat form adult functioning, this showed itself in a spontaneous movement of me burying my head trying not to be involved or to see.

But it worked out as my struggle to avoid the rectal anaesthesia as a child during a medical operation I experiences as a nine year old. I wasn’t experiencing the emotions of that, only the movements and intuitions about its connection with the dream. That is, I kept saying, “I didn’t hurt anybody. I didn’t.” This was expressive of a sense that the pain inflicted to me during the operation, must be because I had done something wrong. I could see that I associated inflicted pain with the punishment a parent gave because of some “bad” action. So, I could not understand why the pain had been inflicted on me.

Because the operation was on my nose I couldn’t be given anesthetic via the nose, instead the nurse tried to stick a pipe up my behind. She gave me no explanation about why or what she was doing, so I fought like mad and kicked the bottle of anesthetic out of her hands. But again without explanation she brought several other nurses who held me down as they applied the anesthetic. The effect of this made me feel I was being blown up and I felt I was dying, so was fighting for my life against what felt like women attacking me.

I screamed, struggle to and shouted, expressive of fighting with nurses. What I screamed was pleas to be left alone. What had I done to deserve such an attack? I screamed to my “attackers” to stop.

What arose from all this was the distinct reaction that people could not be trusted. For no good reason, and despite physical struggle and screamed pleas for them to stop, they yet persisted and caused me pain. So, I saw that out of my experience of people in those situations arose a powerful suspicion and mistrust of people. Also I developed a belief that people are purposely deceitful. This was because my mother, and nurses, doctors, say such things as, “This won’t hurt. Everything is going to be okay. You’ll go in, they will put you to sleep, and you won’t feel a thing.” There was no mention that nurses might attack me and subject me against my will to what felt like death.

The sense of death equated with pain and people hurting one. At the time of the anesthetic my conscious identity had been plunged still with some awareness deep into the unconscious. The loss of shape or senses was felt to be death. So, a conditioned reflex had been set in me lasting many years until I recovered the memory of it and so transformed the terror into understanding. The conditioned reflex was or is that when I get to the point of consciously entering the unconscious, my frantic screaming and struggling for life was triggered. It was the way I mastered the nightmare using such things as Dreams – Practical Techniques to explore them and Opening to Life

Meeting a Ghost

I was in an ancient room. It had the feeling of it being an old church. Then my wife and I were in bed in the room. A middle aged woman was in the room. She appeared to be a ghost. I felt afraid of her, but to confront the fear I reached out my hand to her. I was crying out in my sleep from fear. As she took my hand I was amazed and shocked to feel it as physically real. I cried out ‘I can feel you – I can feel you!’ She was also surprised. I had the impression this level or dimension was recognised by ‘them’. She said to companions I do not see how, ‘He is from the fourth level.’ I then said I wanted to understand. A.T.

Being Shot

Example: I was getting ready to leave and this dark haired guy told me I couldn’t leave, I felt scared and was going to leave anyways, he pulled out a pistol and shot me in the stomach, I fell down, but there was no blood. The thoughts in my head was, “OH NO”. Next thing I remember is that I was still on the floor in the same place and I got up and I remembered being shot but I didn’t seem to have any pain or blood and was moving normally etc. I started looking for a way to leave I was sneaking around trying not to get noticed so that I could get out of there w/o the shooter guy seeing me.

The interesting thing in the example is that even though she could see no hurt came from being shot, yet she was still scared of the guy with the shooter. And it is overcoming such fears that can release you from terror and hurts that haunt us.

Meeting demons

Example: As I walked toward a house a number of demons or devils came at me menacingly, trying to stop me getting near the house. Although they made all the ghostly noises I wasn’t at all afraid of them. I felt they were a damned nuisance, and to show them I meant business I grabbed one and with my right hand I gripped its flesh and squeezed. It started to squeak in pain and I squeezed harder. The squeaking came from my wife. I had grabbed the flesh of her abdomen and was squeezing it. It woke me.

Facing a Killer

Example: Facing my adversary and becoming lucid in the dream, I allowed the adversary to kill me with a sword, knowing all the while that absolutely no harm could come from this experience. Fully lucid and looking at my dream attacker I said: “You can plunge the sword through me if you wish,” whereupon my adversary did just that. Then I drew the sword out of my dream body and very lovingly and wisely gave it back to the adversary and said: “Thank you.”

Fear of Snakes

Last night I dreamt I was outdoors walking through open ground, maybe at times gardens. I was with others – not sure who, and we frequently came across large snakes which we reacted to as if they were venomous. Then I came across a lot of them and they swarmed onto me. I froze, terrified that if I made a move I would be fatally bitten. But they just swarmed over my body and got under my clothes without harming me. Gradually I relaxed and slowly began to move about with the snakes still on me. They started to feel like a built in defence system which would attack anyone who was aggressive to me. At one point several large and aggressive dogs walked past me. They turned as if thinking about attacking, then appeared to sense the snakes and ran off cowed. As time passed the snakes felt like part of my body – which of course they are, for we have a reptilian brain. See Levels of Awareness in Dreams

Becoming the tiger that attacked him

Example: I was in a hallway behind a door, pulling it against me to shield myself against a tiger. The tiger was large with bloodstained paws. Some people stopped outside the door to look at the tiger. I told them to move along, as it had a very uncertain temper, and it could easily attack. In fact it began to grow restless and growl. They went. I saw the deep colours of the tiger, and the blood. I was terrified that at any moment it would pull the door away from me. I then stepped out from behind the door and the  tiger attacked me. It then swallowed me. Now instead of feeling separate I was the tiger, and delighted in his movements and anger.

I had thus became the tiger. Then I, as the tiger I felt enormous temper – anger – hate I leapt up as the tiger to claw and devour. I really felt strong temper. It kept really appearing to get smaller and smaller. Eventually I saw it as just a toy cuddly tiger. Then its head came off as a pantomime horse does, and I was amazed to see that it was my cousin Sidney inside it, who I felt had teased me as a child. He was several years older than me, and used to delight in holding me off with his long arms so I couldn’t hit him. Being the tiger had released the anger I had not been able to express for years.

Falling

I was in a large motor vehicle with perhaps three or four other men. The vehicle was like a very large lorry or removals van. We were driving along an unpaved road in slightly mountainous or rugged countryside. As we were driving along we became aware of a huge vehicle trying to overtake us. This had caterpillar tracks on each side of it like some tanks. It was immensely wide and going very fast. We pulled over as far to one side – the left – of the road as we could to allow it to pass. But as we did so we got too near the edge of the road and went over a precipitous drop.

Quite a long period of the dream was taken up with the experience of falling. We seemed almost to go into free-fall, a weightless state, because the fall was so long that we floated in the space. It was long enough for me to think many thoughts about death, whether death would be instantaneous. I was not aware of any sense of fear or terror, simply an awareness of falling and what it might mean. Then we had crashed and I was still alive. I then had a memory of standing at the bottom of the huge drop waiting for someone.

As can be seen, when there is no fear there is no hurt or terror. Also even when there is terror in the dream there is no hurt. Like the computer game, you can get up again and continue the game – of life – until you learn to overcome your fears and go up to the next level of the game.

Meeting nightmare images

So, as I look at this nightmare scenario – these nightmare images – I recognise them for what they are and pass through them, seeing, as it were, the projectors that produce the images.  I can see that the images project from some of one’s most profound childhood terrors.  They can erupt all those old feelings about such things as their, torture, abandonment, sex.  And I look into these images to see what lies behind the outer form.

I am in a very dark, bleak house, with a young boy. It is night outside and the house is isolated. A dark, shadowy, Thing, is trying to get into the house. I am terrified of it, and I am holding the young boy behind me protectively while I try to keep the door closed with my foot, as the Thing batters at it. – James H.

Beginning To talk

I begin to talk as LIFE,

And was saying –

But it is human beings who wrote all the holy books.

All of the stories arose out of me.

All of the music all of the fears.

All of the possibilities of life arose because I AM.

Because I as human beings

Attained self-awareness,

All of this wonderful array of qualities arose. 

Now I move into being the story teller.

I could hear the sound

Of the birds and crickets outside,

And it felt like I was experiencing

How the world was millions of years ago,

Not like going back into the past,

But recognising how the past is still with us.

I said – “There was a time when

I heard it for the first time.

I heard it all for the first time

And I was amazed.

I had been unconscious,

Asleep, and I woke up.”

I then heard it all for the first time.

I could hear myself –

Life – crying, laughing, mating.

I was in awe.

I was in AWE.

And I fell down before myself

And I worshipped.

What creates all of this?

What could create it?  

In my awe

I listened to it so deeply,

And I would get so entranced

I would forget about everything else,

And IT spoke to me.

IT spoke to ME!

It spoke to me. 

Larva Larvae

A larva is a living thing that usually lives under the surface, in the unknown part of oneself. It is something that is in process of change as it moves toward it adult self. So, it suggests, as it surfaces, that something new and still forming is arising – maybe an idea of feeling that needs to grow more, or needs more food/experience or information to reach its adult form.

Wonders of Your Mind

Humans are known to be capable of incredible and extraordinary various skills. How can it be possible that we can achieve so much and so many things, many of which are discounted?

A good example of how this might be explained is in the way electricity exists in a house. First, we have the supply of electricity into the house. The wires carrying the supply to the house are not in themselves the electricity. The current is invisible, but it has great potential for good or harm. So, we usually deal with it carefully, and have means of controlling it via insulation, fuses, and switches. When the electricity is wired into the house, its potential can be expressed in a huge variety of ways, ways we are still discovering. It can manifest as heat, light, and power to move or do things, such as with a drill or vacuum cleaner. It can produce sound or images as with television, and can, via programs for the computer, manifest in almost magical ways, storing and retrieving huge amounts of information and manipulating it.

The usefulness of this image of the house with its electricity is that we can use it as an analogy of energy in your own life. Your energy potential can express as cellular activity, or physical movement. You can experience it as sexual drive and its pleasure and pain, as emotions, as sight, hearing, sensation, smell, and taste. You can express it as thinking, and vocalising in speech or singing, or as the creation of a personal virtual reality, as you do in fantasy and dreams. In some people, it expresses as great creativity making the new and unexpected. Some people’s experiences even suggest that part of our potential is to extend our awareness over huge distances, or gain penetrating insight into another person’s state of mind or body. But all these are expressions of it, and are not IT (See Edgar Cayce and Eileen Garrett ).

Here is an example of a man discovering this potential:

Example: I dream I am in a landscape and notice that everything is brown; the whole world is brown and lifeless. There is also a feeling of solemnity or dullness. I have enough lucidity to wonder why the world of my dream is so brown and dull. As I ask this I become more aware of what feeling the brownness expresses. It is seriousness – with no room for humour or fun. The feeling deepens, real enough and clear enough to look at and understand. I see it is my father’s attitude to life that I have unconsciously inherited. I realise how anxious he always felt about life, and how I took this in. That is how I became a ‘brown’ person. I see too that I do not need to be either brown or serious anymore.

Then the landscape changes. There are trees, plants, and animals in brilliant colour. I wonder what this means, and the landscape begins to spin until the colours blend and shimmer. Suddenly my body seems to open to them, as if they are spinning inside of me, and with a most glorious feeling, a sensation of vibrating energy pours up my trunk to my head. With this comes realisation. I see how stupid I have been in my brown, anxious existence, how much life I have held back. The animals and plants are the different forces in my being that blend into energy and awareness. I feel I am capable of doing almost anything, like loving, writing a song, painting, telepathy, or speaking with the dead. This sparkling vibrating energy is life itself and can, if I learn to work with it, grow into any ability or direction I choose. I wake with a wonderful sense of my possibilities.

Two things were pointed out in the man’s account, the first being his attempt to understand and question his ‘brown’ feelings. His attempt leads him to the understanding that it is a habitual feeling or attitude he learned from his father and that leads to a wonderful release. The release doesn’t in itself give him new abilities, but it does point the way by showing him that by working, by applying himself in a chosen direction, a new ability would be manifested.

I believe it is the questioning mind that is the real key to unlocking the fantastic potential of the human mind. But to explain it well I will need to describe the mind that preceded the human intelligence.

That the light of our waking awareness can be carried back into what is usually the gloom of your unconscious is now well documented and can be found in such books as Realms of the Human Unconscious by Stanislav Grof. And such research has pointed out that our being is a lot older than your personal awareness, the possibility is that you can explore, delve into, and bring to awareness, the deep living processes of your cells, your life processes, your ancestral heritage, the reptilian and mammalian past that you carry in the very structures of your body and psyche. Those things exist in the dark cellar of our ‘unconscious’. When we turn our focussed self-awareness on them it is like walking down into that cellar with a torch. See The Animals in your Brain

To consciously enter into these levels of our own interior is to meet a very different world than we are used to in everyday waking life. Usually we meet these deep levels in our dreams or in the imagery the unconscious uses to portray what it holds. In doing this there is revealed to us the intimate life of our body and how it is inextricable linked with our personality, its loves and fears.

The Many Storied Self 

As was said, we are largely unaware of these levels, because in a real sense we live on the top level of our being, personal awareness, self-consciousness, which has a very small view if what supports it. Here is an example of the enormous organisation that goes on within us.

The level after level of safety factors built into our system are nothing short of incredible. For adequate functioning our blood pressure needs to be at about 110 to 120 (i.e. it displaces 110 millimeters of mercury). It can drop to 70-80 before a critical situation arises in which tissue may die because blood is not reaching it. If we lose a lot of blood, even as much as 30 or 40 percent, the self-regulatory process maintains adequate blood pressure by constricting the blood vessels. This action is controlled by a part of the brain, and if that brain area is injured or destroyed, other centres take control. If they are eliminated, ganglia in the sympathetic nervous system direct the action. If they too are eliminated the walls of the arteries and veins themselves regulate their own activity.

As is so clearly expressed in that description, control centres are capable of acting at every level of our being, not just the brain or nervous system. In fact, what is slowly coming to be realised, but has been said already by people who have explored their inner life, each cell has a level of intelligence. But its intelligence and agency only become conscious to us if we are able to touch it by entering its world with focussed self-awareness or the dimension experienced in dreams.

We have been told, in so many technical publications, that our emergence was achieved by Darwinian evolution, which has been described as a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual’s ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.

This makes it sound as if it is almost unplanned changes that became inherited because they gave advantages to the species, and were thus passed on. There was no mention of sentience or consciousness as a part of our evolutionary development. Yet it is well known that we all emerged from single celled life forms, and there is no break in the line that led to us. But if we look at life and its basic functions a different view develops.

Homeostasis – An organism’s external (outside) environment is always changing. By keeping the control and regulation of its metabolic activities, an organism can maintain a stable internal (inside) environment. This is the process by which an organism’s metabolic activities are in a state of balance ex. body temp, blood sugar levels.

Communication is a necessary part of living beings. According to David Attenborough, “plants can see…count and communicate with one another…react to touch and estimate time.” These claims are supported by the facts that plants turn towards the light, and even prepare themselves for sunrise by facing east in anticipation; trigger hairs on plants react to touch; there is even a social element in plant behaviour in that they fight enemies for territory and compete for mates in order to ensure the survival of the species.

Also, the tremendous exchange of gases, fluids, bacteria – along with the social, verbal, sexual and sensual signals and interactions going on around us and influencing our own existence. Even bacteria share information with each other? They share what they have learned even with species of bacteria that are different. They give each other building blocks of what they have learned. If they have learned how to deal with a particular substance that is poisonous to them, then they will pass that information on to other bacteria. They give what they have learned. That is so fundamental to life even bacteria do it. Genetic studies in bacteria have revealed that extensive gene exchange is the norm between different bacteria even though they do not have formal sexual reproduction.

In June 2007, Canadian biologists discovered that plants have “complex social behaviours such as altruism towards relatives.” This was revealed by watching how plants in the same ‘family’ “do not increase their root growth while sharing a pot with siblings or family. But if they share a pot with a stranger, they “get competitive and start growing more roots, which allows them to grab water and mineral nutrients before their neighbour’s get them.” The study appears in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters. It shows yet again that consciousness is not unique to mammals. The whole universe demonstrates sentience at various levels of complexity.

Learning and sharing in such basic ways says something different than unplanned changes that became inherited because they gave advantages to the species, and were thus passed on. I believe it shows that levels of awareness were there from the beginning and became more refined as learnt behavior or strategies were passed on. I am guessing that at our emergence from the Big Bang, every little part of what came about were seeds of potential and awareness. These seeds had to pass through enormous periods of learning even experiment, to become the wonderful and intelligence creatures we are surrounded by.

So, what is the difference?

How does an animal perceive the world?

For a start animals do not use words. Anyway, words for humans are only reminders of the real thing, but as humans we are often confused about what is the real thing. For example, when we think of our child or a person we have been acquainted with for a while, we often think our thoughts are a direct insight into them, but they are only our thoughts put into words.

Living creatures at the simplest level only have very low level of behavioural traits. For examples oysters are stuck in their instinctive traits. A dog, although it is also very much an instinctive animal, can learn behaviour that it didn’t gain from its hard wired instincts. Humans have an even wider behavioural range, increased also by learning or personal hard work.

But of course every creature has infinite potential, which is demonstrated by the extraordinary different body shapes and tendency of the dog breeds. Obviously this has been done by humans, and it is something that is almost religiously avoided – the idea that we could develop very different humans. Obviously this still takes place but is largely accidental.

Animals may have a much clearer appreciation of each other and us. The reason is that animals can see our body signals and also can tell enormous amounts about us by their other senses. For instance, here is an account of experiencing in that way.

I had worked in the restaurant for several years on the washing machine. I was cleaning the long counter in which the waitresses put the dirt dishes; and because it was a few minutes to opening time and I had finished I was quite relaxed ready for the day’s lunch time rush. The boss, a man in his sixties was talking to the head waitress, an older woman, talking about the weather, and how many customers they expected. Idle chatter.

Looking up at them again I was suddenly struck by a completely new awareness of them. I seemed to have become hyper aware, and ever tiny movement of their facial expression, their hand and body communicated enormous amounts of information to me. I also saw an energy cable linking the two of them via their abdomen. As I saw it I knew it was a connection made by their having had a sexual union. It was a direct knowing, and quite foreign to me. So much so I later asked the waitress whether she had experienced a close relationship with the boss. Her reply was, “Do you mean did we have sex; well the answer is yes.”

The man told me that he was sure he had glimpsed what it was like to see how animals saw us, with our energy connections and via body communications. It was a direct knowing without words. He never experienced it again, and was uncertain how it had happened. See – Using Your Intuition 

It is now known that animals can tell via their sense of smell whether a parson has cancer, and some dogs can predict when their owner is going to have a serious illness attack.

But it is the unknown aspects of what the man in the restaurant experienced that is interesting. If he was right, animals are involved in a much wider awareness that we humans are. Also, it doesn’t arise from reading or study, but through directly being aware. This suggests that animals are in many ways smarter than we are and have access to knowing things without having self-awareness, but not having spoken language they cannot tell us. But their instinctive knowledge is extraordinary, and without self-awareness, must be considered as arising from unconsciousness.

But this isn’t beyond belief, for many humans exhibit it. The example of Edgar Cayce, of George Washington Carver, of Evelyn and her dowsing, and of Eileen Garrett, are all working models. Even Einstein supports it, for he said, “The intuitive mind is sacred gift, the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

Example: I remember when I was younger I was walking upstairs to my balcony and I can swear that it wasn’t a dream, however when I got up there I could see the whole solar system/ universe in front of my eyes and all the planets revolving around me and the largest planet (Jupiter) just did a full circle in front of my eyes That was a truly amazing experience. I cannot define the feelings in words.

So, animals have access to this ocean of knowledge – BUT – they cannot draw out from it much else than their desires to have killer teeth – the big cats – great insulation – the whales – communication between their group – the dolphins, and for many human beings how to get more money, get sex, fight off ageing, and to hell with those who cannot keep up. To be clear – they cannot, or do not ask themselves, the BIG questions as Einstein did from youth.

As an example of the questions, read this, “But in 1923 a startling new kind of reading was discovered.  Cayce was operating a photographic studio in Selma, Alabama, when one day he met Arthur Lammers, a well-to-do printer.  Lammers hobby was metaphysical philosophy, and what he wanted to know was far beyond the range of Edgar’s normal thinking.

“What is the meaning of life?” he asked.  “What is the real nature of man?  What is the meaning of birth and death? Why are we here?  Cayce accepted Mr. Lammers offer to explain these mysteries through his powers of hypnosis.  What followed was the beginning of the metaphysical thought that emerged from 2,500 “Life” readings, as distinguished from the “Physical” readings he had previously been giving.

For Cayce, this was the beginning of another period of tortuous self-doubt.  Brought up in an atmosphere of strict, orthodox, Protestant Christianity, he was uninformed on the other great religions of the world and their similarities with his own.  What the readings now said seemed foreign to everything he had been taught and had been teaching in his Sunday school classes for many years.  The essential principles of the great religions, said the readings, were nevertheless all the same – they were only clothed in different garments.

Can you see that such questions never occurred to Cayce, and it wasn’t until the questioning mind of Lammers proposed them to Cayce, that treasures of the unconscious could be reached? In fact, Cayce went through agonies of doubt because of his beliefs in the version of Christianity he was raised in. See Edgar Cayce: Who Was This Man? 

Now, the grand finale is that you cannot get beyond your beliefs unless you can dare to question the inconceivable. You need to have a virgin mind that is free from all preconceptions – I believe that is why the image of the virgin was worshipped in many ancient cultures.

If you can stand and look at yourself and say, “What the hell do I actually KNOW?” and if you can put it all to one side and ask – What else is there waiting to be known?

Then you can begin the journey of going BEYOND.

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Sai Baba (of Shirdi)

Sai Baba (of Shirdi)

Superminds 7

It is not known when Sai Baba was born, where he came from, or who his parents were. The term Sai Baba means simply, Saintly Father. He appeared in Shirdi, which is a little village in India, at about the age of sixteen, and stayed there till the end of his physical life in 1918.

Between the years of his appearance at Shirdi, and his transition, his life was an extraordinary succession of miracles and deep communion with his pupils. Like Ramana, he had no need to enter a trance to experience the Unconditional state, but was constantly aware of all things. Through this he would often describe a stranger’s whole life in detail.

As the Unconditional is in all things, so Sai Baba was in all life. As an example of this, there is the experience of Adam Dalali, a pupil of Sai Baba. “Some time previously a poor Malwari had come to his house to ask for food and he gave him four annas and sent him to a Malwari hotel. When he went to Shirdi, Sai Baba immediately said ‘I went to this man’s house and he sent me to a Malwari hotel.’ (From “The Incredible Sai Baba” by A. Osborne. Rider & Co.) In such cases he usually spoke in the first person as if physically involved in the incident. His life illustrated the saying of Christ, “Inasmuch as you do it to one of the least of these, you do it also to me.”

One day a lady asked Sai Baba to come and eat with her. Having prepared special dishes with all her love and capability, she was horrified to see a stray dog just about to eat from the table. She drove it away and left to tell Sai Baba the meal was ready. When she asked him to come he said, “No, you drove me away when I wanted it; now I don’t want it.”

Curing the sick and childless in miraculous ways happened constantly. One old man, grandfather of a pupil, when led before Sai Baba bowed and said, “Baba, I can’t see.” “You will,” Sai Baba replied. He laid his hands on the old man’s head and he could immediately see.

He would, and still does, appear to people in their dreams, either requesting them to visit him at Shirdi, or giving them spiritual instruction. Often these people had never seen or heard of him before, yet came under his influence. As his consciousness had realised its timeless eternal nature, he is still as powerful to help those who turn to him today, as he ever was in his physical body. But the Master, whether in the body or out of it, demands something of us—namely surrender of self to his divine will. Very often, in curing people, he would ask them to let go of their prejudices or self-will. One colourful illustration of this is the experience of Dada Kelkar. Being a strict Brahmin he would not touch onions. Not only this, he hated the sight of them. Having visited Shirdi with a party of people, Dada became enraged when one lady began to cut up onions for her meal. This very much upset the woman. Some hours later Dada’s granddaughter developed a pain in her eyes, and began to cry. Dada immediately went to Sai Baba and asked him to cure it. Sai Baba, who knew nothing of the argument, told him to rub the girl’s eyes with onion. When he asked where he could get the onion from, Sai Baba pointed to the woman he had argued with.

To Sai Baba, however, his miracles were only a means of developing trust and faith in people. He said, “I give people what they want in the hope that they will begin to want what I want to give them.” These other gifts, were of the Spirit. Mrs Manager, one of his devotees, says of him;” One’s first impression of Sai Baba was of his eyes. There was such a power and penetration in his gaze that no one could long look him in the eyes. One felt that he was reading one through and through. Soon one lowered one’s eyes and bowed down. One felt that he was not only in one’s heart but in every atom of one’s body. A few words or a gesture would reveal to one that Sai Baba knew all about the past and present and even the future and about everything else. There was nothing else to do but to submit trustfully and surrender oneself to him.”

As one was not bowing down to a man, but to the divine acting through a man, one was thus relating to God. Sai Baba said, “I shall remain active and vigorous even after leaving this earthly body. I am ever living to help those who come to me and surrender, and seek refuge in me. If you cast your burden on me I will bear it.”

His Wisdom

Turning to Shirdi Sai Baba, there is little in English of his teachings, but his conversation with a disciple named Nana is a magnificent example of his insight. Nana was massaging his master’s legs, chanting a Sanscrit verse from the Bhagavad Gita. Sai Baba asked him to repeat it aloud. It was “Know that by means of prostration, enquiry and service the Jnanis (Enlightened) who have realised the Truth will teach you Jnana (Knowledge).

“Do you understand this Nana?” Baba asked him.

“Yes.”

“Then tell me the meaning.”

Nana gave a free rendering in the vernacular but Sai Baba was not satisfied. “I don’t want a paraphrase; I want the strict grammatical meaning with case, mood and tense.”

Nana gave a literal translation, wondering the while whether Baba knew anything of Sanskrit grammar. He soon found out.

“In tatviddhi, what does tat stand for?” Baba asked him.

“Jnana (Knowledge).”

“What knowledge? Knowledge of what?”

“The knowledge referred to in the previous stanzas.”

“What does pranipat mean?”

“Prostration.”

“And pat?”

‘‘The same.”

“If they meant the same would Vyasa have added two unnecessary syllables?”

“I don’t see any difference between them.” Nana admitted.

Baba left that for a while and passed on to the next point. “What does prasna mean?”

“Asking questions.”

“And pariprasna?”

“The same.”

“Then if they both mean the same was Vyasa off his head to use the longer?”

“I don’t see any difference.”

“Next point. What does seva mean?”

“Service, such as I am now doing massaging your feet.”

“Nothing more?”

“I don’t see what more it can mean.”

“We’ll leave that too! Next point. Krishna tells Arjuna to get Enlightenment from the Enlightened (Jnanis). Wasn’t Krishna himself a Jnani?”

“Yes.”

“Then why does he send Arjuna to others instead of giving him Jnana himself?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wasn’t Arjuna a jiva (being) and therefore an emanation of Chaitanya (universal consciousness—Self)”

“Yes.”

“Then how can knowledge be given to what is already an emanation of Self or knowledge?”

Then Sai Baba explained: “The verse tells us how a disciple is to approach his Guru in order to attain Realis­ation. He must completely surrender body, mind, soul and possessions to the Guru. That is the prostration referred to. The enquiry must be a constant quest for Truth, not questions asked out of mere curiosity or for a wrong motive, such as to trap the Guru. The motive must be pure desire for spiritual progress and Realisation. Then the service is not mere physical service such as massaging. For it to be effective there must be no idea that you are free to give or withhold service; you must feel that your body no longer belongs to you since you have surrendered it to the Guru and it exists only to do him service.”

Then followed questions to which Nana replied ‘Yes’ in each case.

“Isn’t Brahma pure Knowledge or Being and everything else non-Being or ignorance (absence of knowledge)?”

“Do not the scriptures declare that Brahma (God) is beyond the range of speech or mind? So the speech of the Guru is not Brahma or Knowledge. Then you admit that what the Guru says is not Knowledge but ignorance?”

“It seems so.”

“Then the Guru’s instruction is simply a piece of ignorance used to remove the disciples ignorance, just as we use a thorn to remove another thorn from the foot, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so.”

“The disciple is a being whose essential nature is Know­ledge, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Then there is no need to give him knowledge but simply to remove the veil of ignorance that hides the existent Knowledge. This, of course, is not to be done at one stroke, since the disciple is immersed in age-old ignorance and needs repeated instruction, perhaps through life after life. And what is this instruction through speech about what is beyond speech? Isn’t it like removing the cover? Ignorance conceals the pre-existent Knowledge just as water plants cover the surface of a pond. Clear away the plants and you have the water. You don’t have to create it; it is already there. Or take another example—a cataract grows on the eye and prevents a man from seeing; remove the cataract and he sees. Ignorance is the cataract. The universe is the efflorescence of the indescribable Maya, which is ignorance; yet ignorance is needed to illuminate and dissolve ignorance … Jnana is not something to be attained, it is eternal and self-existent. On the other hand, ignorance has a cause and an end. The root of it is the idea that the devotee is a separate being from God. Remove this, and what remains is Jnana.”

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“I shall remain active and vigorous even after leaving this earthly body. I am ever living to help those who come to me and surrender, and seek refuge in me. If you cast your burden on me I will bear it.”

A conversation Jung had with an Indian versed in yoga.

‘You don’t mean the commentator on the Vedas who died centuries ago?’ I asked. 

‘Yes, I mean him he said, to my amazement. 

‘Then you are referring to a spirit?’ I asked. 

‘Of course it was his spirit,’ he agreed. 

At that moment I thought of Philemon. 

‘There arc ghostly gurus too,’ he added. ‘Most people have living gurus. But there always some who have a spirit for teacher’