Posts Tagged ‘communication with core’
Example 7 Out of Body
Once the awareness is independent of the body, the boundaries of time and space as they are known in the body do not exist. One can easily pass through walls, fly, travel to or immediately be in a far distant place, witnessing what may be, or appears to be, physically real there. Sir Auckland Geddes, an eminent British Anatomist, describes his own OBE, which contains many of these features. See: second example in spiritual life in dreams.
Example: Becoming suddenly and violently ill with gastro-enteritis he quickly became unable to move or phone for help. As this was occurring he noticed he had an ‘A’ and a ‘B’ consciousness. The ‘A’ was his normal awareness, and the ‘B’ was external to his body watching. From the ‘B’ self he could see not only his body, but also the house, garden and surrounds. He need only think of a friend or place and immediately he was there and was later able to find confirmation for his observations. In looking at his body, he noticed that the brain was only an end organ, like a condensing plate, upon which memory and awareness played. The mind, he said, was not in the brain, the brain was in the mind, like a radio in the play of signals. He then observed his daughter come in and discover his condition, saw her telephone a doctor friend, and saw the doctor also at the same time.
What is the experience of enlightenment like?
Enlightenment Part 3
Tony Crisp
People attempt to describe it in many ways. Ramana Maharshi says that when you realise the Self (enlightenment), the sense of yourself as distinct from the world disappears.
Another person describes it by saying, ‘I was sitting opposite someone during an enlightenment intensive workshop. We had been posing the question for days – “Who are you?” Suddenly I realised that it was a silly question, because I was the answer. All thought stopped and I existed as the answer. My being had always been this. In this state there was an awareness of being connected with everything around me, in the beginning of creation. This was the first day.
While in the state of simple existence I was able to observe many things I am usually not aware of. For instance while I simply existed, my usual pattern of behaviour and thought went through contortions to be the centre of awareness again. I could see them almost like habits, systems, that have life, like a body does, and they were dying and twitching in their death throes. Also I saw that I knew that all thought is like a mimic, so all our thinking is like photocopies, without any real life. Also as I saw this I had an image of a monkey that was actually me normal thinking self running alongside my every motion and trying to mimic it. It was almost as if as I as a person walked along, another mechanical person ran alongside trying to keep up and mimicking everything I did in an attempt to be alive and real. Yet thought can never be life.’
Another person says, ‘Unexpectedly everything changed and my fundamental self was something that existed throughout all time. It didn’t have a beginning or end. There was no goal to achieve. I am.’
Slightly different but still the same enlightenment. ‘Everything seemed to slip away and I felt as if I melted back into the primal being of the universe. It didn’t seem as if my ego was gone, just melted into everything else. It was blissful.’
Here is a wonderful description from John Wren Lewis:
“My experience itself, which I have described elsewhere (Wren-Lewis, 1985), lacked almost all the dramatic features emphasized in the now voluminous literature on the subject (Lundahl, 1982). I had no “out-of-body” vision of myself in the hospital bed, no review of my life, no experience of hurtling through a tunnel towards a heavenly landscape and no encounter with supernatural figures urging me to return to bodily existence. I simply dissolved into an apparently spaceless and timeless void which was total “no-thing-ness” yet at the same time the most intense, blissful aliveness I have ever known.
The after-effects of the experience, however, were dramatic indeed, and I have found no account of anything comparable in the NDE literature. I have been left with a change of consciousness so palpable that in the early days I kept putting my hand up to the back of my head, feeling for all the world as if the doctors had removed the top of my skull and exposed my brain to the infinite darkness of space. In fact the Living Void is still with me as a kind of background to my consciousness. The effect is that I experience everything, including this sixty-year-old body-mind, as a continuous outpouring of Being, wherein every part is simultaneously the whole, manifesting afresh moment by moment from that infinite Dark. As “John” I seem to have no separate existence, but am simply the Void knowing itself in manifestation, and in that process of continuous creation everything seems to celebrate coming into being with a shout of joy—”Behold, it is very good!” Yet the experience is in no sense a high, for its feeling-tone is one of gentle equanimity. My impression is rather that I am now knowing the true ordinariness of everything for the first time, and that what I used to call normal consciousness was in fact clouded.
I still slip back into that old clouded state frequently, but this is not a process of “coming down.” What happens is something I would have found unbelievable had I heard of it second-hand—namely, I again and again simply forget about the pearl of great price. I drift off into all kinds of preoccupations, mostly trivial, and become my old self, cut off from the Void-Background. Then, after a while, there begins to dawn on me a sense of something missing, at which point I recall the Void and usually click back into the new consciousness almost immediately, with no effort at all.
I think this is what is meant by the mystical notion that so-called normal human life is really a state of chronic forgetfulness of “who we really are,” and I suppose my NDE must somehow have shocked me into recognizing my identity with the Void, with the result that my forgetfulness is now spasmodic rather than chronic. Needless to say, I was bowled over by all this at first, and spent many weeks coming to terms with it. I soon found that the new consciousness did not seem to demand any drastic changes of life-style. In keeping with its sense of utter ordinariness, I remained recognizably John, and neither my tendency to drift out of the new consciousness nor my ability to click back into it seemed affected in any way by variations in diet, environment, or activities such as meditation.”
In her book Collision With the Infinite, Suzanne Segal writes, ‘In the midst of a particularly eventful week, I was driving north to meet some friends when I suddenly became aware that I was driving through myself. For years there had been no self at all, yet here on this road, everything was myself, and I was driving through me to arrive where I already was. In essence, I was going nowhere because I was everywhere already. The infinite emptiness I knew myself to be was now apparent as the infinite substance of everything I saw.’
As can be seen, there is no final description of enlightenment, just as there is no final definition of life, or love, or any human person. Everything is, in the end, transcendent.
Everything, even the commonest of objects or events, transcends final definition. For instance a cup we drink from can be seen as a household item. It can be looked at chemically. We can see it as a piece of art. There may be personal associations or feelings we link with it. There can be an atomic or subatomic examination of it, or a cultural interpretation. Which one of these is correct? Which one is the final or fullest definition?
There is no final definition. The cup is a part of transcendence. Enlightenment occurs when we directly know the transcendence of our own existence, beyond any definition. It is a direct knowing beyond thought or feeling, of the world and self as One.
I am a wave on a shoreless sea.
From no beginning
I travel to no goal,
Making my movements stillness.Here is another description from a great spiritual healer, William Lilley. Who says he was able to consciously ‘leave his body’ and visit the ‘Beautiful Place’, where he meets the dead. His description of this is typical of many other peoples, even to the ‘going through the mists’. Quoted from his book Gift of Healing.
“When I am going into trance, I breathe in the Yoga method shown me by Dr. Letari. Immediately I get a sensation as though I am falling, or being pulled backwards. As this sensation comes to a climax, I seem to be travelling through space at terrific speed. I have opened my eyes many times at this point, but the only vision I have is of passing through a dense fog. Then, quite suddenly, the fog clears and I am at a stile. I climb over this stile and immediately there is a voice speaking to me over my shoulder. This voice is always with me, explaining everything I see and everyone I meet. The stile seems to be on the edge of a large field, which rises gradually to the form of a hill. I walk up the hill, and beyond it I visit many places. It is always the same style, the same hill, the same voice, and it just seems like a large country with so many different towns to visit.
The most interesting and remarkable experience I ever had during these visits happened before I went into trance. Several people had been speaking of consciousness. They had asked me to describe the world I experienced. Was it solid? Did I appear solid? I promised them that if I could, I would find out. I arrived at my stile, the voice came to me, and it evidently knew my desire, because it said “Feel the earth!” I did. It was solid. “Feel the grass beneath your feet!” I did. That was solid too, and even had dew on it. “Smell these flowers!” They were perfectly natural and had the usual perfume. In fact, everything around was natural. Then I was told, “Feel your body”. I did so. It was as solid as I am materially.
‘The voice then said, “Close your eyes; make your consciousness passive”, or as you would do when preparing for a trance state. “Now feel the earth beneath your feet!” There was nothing. “Open your eyes”. It wasn’t dark, it wasn’t light. “Feel at your body”. It wasn’t there. “Such is Spirit” said the voice. “Just a consciousness holding within it all experiences of your lifetime, all the joys and sorrows, your desires, achievements and failures, whence comes spiritual evolution. In your world of the material, you are able to examine matter; everything is matter. When you think of the spiritual, naturally you build in your consciousness another material world.” It is an amazing inner world which offers freedom. It is ours to create, and the very core of us is bodiless awareness”.
If you want to experience enlightenment try Enlightenment Intensives in the USA or UK it really works. It has for thousands.
What part do thoughts and feelings play in enlightenment?
Enlightenment Part 1
Tony Crisp
If you think about a friend, ask yourself, ‘Is this thought my friend?’ If you have feelings about the friend, ask yourself, ‘ Are these feelings an actual representation of my friend?”
You cannot conjure your friend into existence by thinking about him or her. Thoughts and emotions are copies of things, just as a photo is a copy of something. They are never the people or things they attempt to copy. They are never reality.
Therefore we cannot experience enlightenment by thinking about it. Enlightenment is not something we create with thoughts or emotions. We cannot make it by thinking inspiring thoughts or feelings. Enlightenment is a self-existent reality. It does not depend upon what you think or feel. It is not brought about by concentrated thought, meditation or inspiring emotions. It already exists. You are it already.
In some approaches to enlightenment, such as the Zen koan, or the Enlightenment Intensive questions, enlightenment occurs when the mind is baffled and exhausted by the question. Thinking cannot answer the question and collapses. Suddenly there is enlightenment.
But someone who failed says, “Yes, I am doubtful about the effectiveness of psychoanalysis and New Age cliches about “healing the ego”. Zen is ineffective and inefficient to the extreme. 30 years of sitting and being utterly frustrated is extreme. The broad path of Buddhism is a dismal failure. How many has it enlightened? There are distant rumors of one here, another over there… nothing more. Buddhism has become so dark that it has become proud of how elusive its knowledge is, how difficult its way is, what an all-consuming challenge it makes of enlightenment.
All existing paths to enlightenment are profoundly unsatisfactory. They practically don’t work. Who would disagree? Who would claim that many have been enlightened? Who would claim the rewards of these “paths” to be reasonably attainable? Paths, paths, that is their problem. They are a path that leads on, and on, and on, the signs ever announcing “Enlightenment, Next Exit”, but the exit never comes.”
It is true, but it can be found, “But then I was shown the way out – it was by admitting that I was a heap of shit, and asking for help as the twelve steps in Alcoholics Anonymous define it. In opening myself to that wonderful otherness my heap of shit became a compost heap which offered new growth.”
Example: While in the state of simple existence people call enlightenment, I was able to observe many things I am usually not aware of. For instance while I simply existed, my usual pattern of behaviour and thought went through contortions to be the centre of awareness again. I could see them almost like habits, systems, that have life, like a body does, and they were dying and twitching in their death throes. Also I saw that thought is like a mimic. As I was directly being, thought ran alongside my every motion and tried to mimic it. It was almost as if as I as a person walked along, another mechanical person walked alongside and mimicked everything I did in an attempt to be alive and real. Yet thought can never be life.
The ego or personality was still all intact as a series of responses learned during life. I understood that sometimes people take these responses to be themselves, and attach to them with incredible power. These responses are useful in most cases – though some are habits that have outlived their usefulness, and need to be modified or deleted. Since that time, it has seemed quite clear that these can be likened to computer programs, many of which run at the same time. So we have a speech program that may run at the same time as a driving a car program, and a program dealing with social mannerisms and responses. If the person who has developed this ‘software’ becomes identified with it, there is less possibility of them upgrading it from experience, or realising that they are not the responses.
Thus, Self-inquiry is the direct path taught by Bhagavan Ramana. “The ‘I’-experience is common to all. Of all thoughts, the ‘I’-thought is the first to arise. What one has to do is to inquire into the source of the ‘I’-thought. This is the reverse process of what ordinarily happens in the life of the mind. The mind inquires into the constitution and source of everything else which, on examination, will be found to be its own projection; it does not reflect on itself and trace itself to its source. Self-discovery can be achieved by giving the mind an inward turn. This is not to be confused with the introspection of which the psychologists speak. Self-inquiry is not the mind’s inspection of its own contents; it is tracing the mind’s first mode, the ‘I’-thought to its source which is the Self. When there is proper and persistent inquiry, the ‘I’-thought also ceases and there is the wordless illumination of the form ‘I’-‘I’ which is the pure consciousness. This is release, freedom from bondage. The method by which this is accomplished, as has been shown, is inquiry which, in Vedanta, is termed jnana, knowledge. You sit and ask yourself, “Who am I”?
Link back to Chapter Heading – Link to Chapter 2
Is enlightenment a state of mind I can develop?
Enlightenment Part 2
Tony Crisp
R. D. Laing, the psychiatrist, in describing the search for ones fundamental self said, ‘The Life I am trying to grasp is the me that is trying to grasp it.’
One of the enlightenment sites listed has a heading, ‘What you are looking for is what is looking.’
Enlightenment is not a state of mind you can create or develop. It is something beyond any change, outside of anything you can develop. After all, development suggests change.
The frustrating thing about enlightenment is that the harder one tries to grasp it, the further away from it one gets. The more effort one makes in trying to achieve it, the less one finds of it.
It is the ever present, self existent core of yourself that remains when all else drops away.
So the question should not be can I develop the state of mind that is enlightenment, but how can I realise this fundamental state?
One of the enilightenment experiences someone describes was as follows:
The many different paths to the one great ocean of Life can be summarised in a simple way because they all have a common factor. It, like dancing or meditating for extended periods, quietens your normal way of thinking and looking at the world. In a meditation seminar I attended that lasted for several days I observed this with great clarity. After three days of meditation I saw my thinking mind faint. It could no longer sustain the continued concentrated pursuit of the question we were asking. In the moment of my rational thinking mind fainting there was an experience of divine Life knowing itself as this man people call B. In that state I knew connection with all the people around me, and the birds, trees and earth. For they and I shared the same spirit. I had arrived home at the source of things. I felt I was in the Garden of Eden, and that we had never left it. That experience, as ephemeral as it may sound, has given me something that strengthened me to pass through big life changes, and travel joyfully into old age.
Human beings has evolved through huge periods of time to have self awareness, a truly amazing thing, but for many it is a state of constant pain and suffering leading many to commit suicide. But Dr. Maurice Bucke, who himself lived in constant physical pain tells of how him and many others were able to evolve to a new state in which their suicidal pains no longer were active in them. He called it Cosmic Consciousness, but it has been known for ages under different names such as Enlightenment and Liberation. Those who evolved to this level of awareness often say, “That we could all be experiencing this, if only we could stop being typical suffering humans. Regardless of what hell one might fall into an enlightened one is an ordinary person who acts like a true adult.” All the major faiths recognise this and so have left records of how to reach this evolution of self.
Here are some – Ox Herding Pictures – The Many Ways To A New Life – Psychological Vomiting – Communicating With Your Inner Guide
Why is enlightenment sometimes called liberation?
Enlightenment Part 4
Tony Crisp
The state of enlightenment is beyond any sense of good or evil, beyond any opposites, or of oneself and otherness. Because of this it liberates us from the enormous load of old habits, guilts, painful responses, limitations we carry around from the attitudes and viewpoints arising from the habits of duality, of division, of right and wrong.
The sense of oneself as a separate entity, along with all the concepts and feelings we have about the world can disappear. This is enormously liberating. You are given a new world, a new life, with immense freedom of choice.
Link Back to Chapter Headings – Link to Chapter 5
Are Heaven and Enlightenment the same?
Enlightenment Part 5
Tony Crisp
Many things that Jesus is reported to have said can be recognised as connecting with the state of enlightenment. For instance he said you do not have to earn heaven, that it is already here for us to claim. This is like saying heaven is self existent as your own fundamental nature, and you don’t have to be good or perform certain acts to get it.
The story of the pearl of great price is also recognisably about enlightenment. The story says the man has to sell all to get the pearl. In other words he gives up all and then he has the pearl. This does not mean that you have to be impoverished to know the condition of enlightenment. If that were so the beggars in the streets of the world would all be wonderuflly enlightened and wise. It is not a case of having nothing, but of holding onto nothing, of wanting nothing as fully as one wants ones own true existence.
Enlightenment often arises in a person when all their desires, all their thoughts and feelings, for one reason or another, subside, are let go of, even momentarily. That is what is meant by having nothing or giving all up.
The Pearl of Great Price is that awareness of the Divine within you that can be born out of having no preconceptions – the virginal mind.
Link Back to Chapter Headings – Link to Chapter 6
Is enlightenment the same as awareness of God?
Enlightenment Part 7
Tony Crisp
This depends upon what is meant by awareness of God. What many people call an awareness of God is really exalted emotional feelings. That emotions are wonderful does not make them God. They remain emotions. They come and they go.
If what is experienced is naked awareness itself, not an awareness of an object or subject, then that is enlightenment. If what is experienced is recognised as having no cause, no beginning or end, and exists always as the foundation of you, that is enlightenment. That is also an experience of God, for God and you are the same.
Link Back to Chapter Headings – Link to Chapter 8
Toward the Light that is Myself?
Enlightenment Part 8
Tony Crisp
After his initial years of meditation, Gopi Krishna came to see that ‘Contrary to the belief which attributes spiritual growth to purely psychic causes, to extreme self denial and renunciation or to an extraordinary degree of religious fervour, I found that a man can rise from the normal to a higher level or consciousness by a continuous biological process as regular as any other activity of the body.’ (See his book)
The energies of this higher consciousness in man and woman is a natural process. It is as natural as the arrival of teeth in the child, or sexuality in adolescence. In fact it is a continuation of the same process. But it seems as if this natural process of growth that extrudes the body, brings about human consciousness and personality, does not take us to enlightenment without our conscious cooperation. For this further growth, it appears that we must agree to go along with life – must decide that this is what we want. We must co-operate with the process or else be stranded. See Life
The first step is to recognise that your personality did not arise out of your own efforts. Then you offer yourself to be acted upon by whatever underlies your existence. And this offering means some measure of becoming empty, of becoming receptive or surrendered to an action other than that of your own mind, your own emotions, anxieties and habits.
What acts upon you when you do this has been given unccountable names. Sri Aurobindo says: ‘One commences in a method, but the work is taken up by a Grace from above, from that to which one aspires. It was in this last way that I myself came by the mind’s absolute silence, unimaginable to me before I had its actual experience’.
How do we do this? First recognise clearly that some process, some force, causes you to exist. You can call this what you wish, it does not matter. It remains what it is. Next recognise that this process that you are, causes changes in your life, and its action is apparent as growth. Next, decide to go along with this process. Offer yourself as you are to it. Let things happen – allow changes to take place. You will be shown the way. This path does not attempt to crush the ego, the appetites, the instincts. Rather, you hand them over living so that they can be transformed to higher levels of expression, and reach towards fuller self-realisation in everyday life.
Rudyard Kipling, in his book Kim, describes one of the simplest and effective meditations we can use toward enlightenment. He says:
“Who is Kim- Kim- Kim?” He squatted in a corner of the clanging waiting-room, rapt from all other thoughts; hands folded in lap, and pupils contracted to pin-points. In a minute- in another half second- he felt he would arrive at the solution of the tremendous puzzle; but here, as always happens, his mind dropped away from those heights with the rush of a wounded bird, and passing his hand before his eyes, he shook his head. A long-haired Hindu bairagi (holy man), who had just bought a ticket, halted before him at that moment and stared intently. “I also have lost it,” he said sadly. “It is one of the Gates to the Way, but for me it has been shut many years.”
The technique is to daily sit and ask that question for at least twenty minutes – Who am I? You can use your name like a mantra, repeating it over and over. Use it as a focal point, not to think about but to take awareness away from everything else to the quietness beyond thinking and feeling. Look silently into that darkness and silence. Drop all effort. Let go of desire to get anywhere or find anything.
An Experience of Enlightenment
Many years ago I had an experience that assured me the wrongness of believing the scientific view of human life. At the time I had an unforgettable experience of lucidity that after all these years remains a fount of inspiration and guidance. I also began to realise that enlightenment was a process of growth – not a one time experience.
I had let go of any other motives and deeply entered a state of lucidity in which I felt like I was falling down a very deep hole. This wasn’t frightening, but reminded me of Alice in the rabbit hole. As I fell I passed through memories of things that had hurt me during my life, like the time I broke my nose.
Then I hit the bottom, experiencing a womblike feeling of great peace. I realised as I observed, that it wasn’t the womb, but the very basic level of my personal awareness. But there was still a current carrying me back further, and I resisted, fearing I would lose my identity. Then I suddenly realised there was nothing to fear. After all, I did this every time I went to sleep – trusting myself to the bosom of the deep. So I slipped into what I have called the ocean of consciousness, and it caught me and started growing me as if from a tiny seed. This is what we experience when we go to sleep. The difference is that I maintained awareness during the descent into sleep. It felt as if I had no body, and that I had spread out, like a drop of water in the ocean. I knew as this happened that at the core of me was this power that had grown me in the first place, and that there was so much more of me to discover than I presently knew. Then the immense Life spoke to me. “Come to me each day like this (with an open heart to the power that had grown me) and I will know myself in you”. See Life’s Little Secrets
Link Back to Chapter Headings – Link to Chapter 9
A Dream Points the Way
Enlightenment Part 12
Tony Crisp
In my dream I was in a prison cell with two other men. We ate, slept and defecated in the cell. I was standing at the bars of the cell, and had the impression of having been in the prison for years. I was shouting and cursing the people who had put me in the prison, full of hate and self-pity. I had done this day after day while in the prison. Suddenly I realised that my years of shouting had availed nothing. The only person who was upset by it was myself. I was the victim of my own anger and turmoil. So I dropped the attitudes behind the anger and shouting and was free of them. Years went by, and one by one I dropped other habits of emotion and thought with which I had trapped and tortured myself. I realised I could be totally free within myself. One morning I woke and sat up on the mattress on the floor that was my bed. The last ghost of inner entrapment fell away. A fountain of joy opened in my body, pouring upwards through me. So intense was it I cried out. The cellmates called a warden. They stood looking at me as I experienced a radiance so strong I felt as if I must be shining. I was aware my joy poured into them, although they thought I was mad. Nothing would ever be the same again.
Commentary
We are all prisoners of our emotions, of our thoughts, and of our sense impressions. Mostly we live in these as if they are reality. This is a form of confusion, but also of imprisonment. The bars of this prison are often invisible to the person they enslave. Or else the person calls them ‘Me’. We say, ‘That is how I feel. I don’t like this. I am afraid. I am in love.’ Or else we depend entirely upon events and others to stimulate pleasure or pain in us.
The identification between the thoughts, the emotions, and the sense of self is so immense, that no life outside this imprisoning identification is even suspected. Yet here is the source of most human misery.
Drop the identification, as the dream suggests, and immediately a degree of liberation arises. Drop the multitude of other identifications and gradually the bliss of liberation opens.
Link Back to Chapter Headings – Link to Chapter 13
LSD Hypnosis Meditation the Dream
Do You Dream
Tony Crisp
Chapter Eight
There has always been a great deal of criticism aimed at dream interpretation. It has been called many things. Those who have not investigated it have denied any truth in it. Others have said that most dream interpretation was in the head of the analyst, and dreams were meaningless. This has been due to the various interpretations one can give to a dream, and the difficulty of arriving at any interpretation in the case of some dreams. Like an ink blot one can see all sorts of faces in it. But the ink blot is really just a blot, and depicts no face at all, or if it does it is pure coincidence.
When one begins to attempt an interpretation of one’s dreams, especially if doing it alone, these criticisms become important. To start with, dreams present a shifting phantasmogoric world in which one is a stranger, and cannot find the way. It is a world of changing shapes and shadows; a land of hinted meanings, where nothing holds still long enough to determine its real character, and a snake can slip into the form of a frog as easily as a man can become a stone, or learn to fly. It would be unusual then, in this land for which there can never be a fixed map, due to its changing contours, if one did not suffer serious doubts about finding one’s way, or arriving at meaning. This is because different values apply in this world than those of the outer world. To get somewhere in the dream world, we cannot simply follow a road as in the outer world, for the road may quickly become a trackless bog or change into a seashore covered with ferocious lettuce leaves which threaten to eat all the hair off one’s body. It is the world of Alice in Wonderland, of Hercules and the Heroes, it is Fairyland, where one gets somewhere ‘because’, and not by walking at all. Therefore, if we judge this land with our old ideas based on outer, conscious life, we shall certainly be dismayed. If we persist in the face of such difficulties, however, then gradually we shall develop new senses, new values, and the ability to move around in this strange world. We will then be able to converse with the natives of this land, and understand what they are saying. For the natives are symbols and allegory, and their language is not usually in words.
It is fortunate, therefore, that to help our doubting mind in its persistence to understand, evidence does point to the feasibility of dream interpretation. What has already been said about symbols and imagery being an early type of thinking is a part of this evidence. We can test it for ourselves. In the same way, our experiments in active imagination also demonstrate to us personally, that dream images do arise from our psychic values. They can, therefore, through analysis, be traced to these underlying emotions, and thus be understood. When we arrive at an interpretation of our own dreams that thoroughly explains us to ourselves, this too constitutes personal evidence. There are other sources of evidence, however, and because these throw light on another method of interpretation, they will be mentioned.
During the early part of this century, investigators set out to test some of Freud’s conclusions regarding dream symbols. Three men, Gaston Roffenstein, Karl Schroetter, and M. Nachmansohn, used hypnosis for this aim. They hoped in this way to throw light on three dream factors; the dream censor, the symbol making process, and whether dreams help us to stay asleep.
For one experiment, Schroetter used a 24 year old female pharmacist he calls ‘Miss E’. Having put the subject into a ‘deep hypnotic sleep’, he then told her she would dream of having homosexual intercourse with her female friend L. Schroetter comments that Miss E is Aryan, while L is Jewish. The dream that followed during the night was of Miss E sitting in a small dingy cafe’ holding a huge French newspaper. Talking with a strong Yiddish accent, a woman twice asks her, ‘Don’t you need anything?’ Miss E doesn’t answer, but the woman comes a third time, and is recognised as her friend L. She is holding a worn suitcase with a label that reads, ‘For ladies only!’ Miss E goes out of the cafe? with her, and walks along an unfamiliar street, while L hangs on to her. She doesn’t like this, but does not like to be rude by telling her to stop. They arrive at L’s house, where she pulls out a huge bunch of keys from a rag. She chooses a key and gives it to Miss E, saying, ‘I trust only you with it, it is the key to this case. You might like to use it. Just watch that my husband doesn’t get hold of it.’ L then leaves her with the key.
As, according to Freud’s symbology, a case is a woman, a key the male organ, and walking up a strange street, new sexual conquest, this dream is very interesting. It can be seen how a forbidden idea is hidden within the symbols, and how the symbols express the hidden idea. As Miss E had no knowledge of Freudian concepts these symbols are spontaneous products of her own dream state.
Roffenstein, because he wished to be quite certain of the subject’s ignorance of formulated dream symbols, chose a 28 year old nursemaid. She is described as of sub-average intelligence, totally uneducated, and quite innocent of his proposed experiment. She was likewise hypnotised and told to dream, amongst other things, of having sexual intercourse with her father. The dream was of her father. He gave her a large bag, and with it a big key. It was a very big key, like the key to a house. She felt sad, but opened the bag. Then a snake jumped out of it against her mouth, when she screamed and awoke.
Once more, the bag and the key, and one other classic sex symbol, the snake as male penis. If there were not other evidence but this, we still have to admit that they do not suggest dreams being meaningless. Unfortunately, because Freud’s ideas were being tested, which reduce most symbols to male or female, we cannot see how the dream expresses religious feelings, concepts of life, or ambitious drives, but we can see this for ourselves in our own dreams.
Although the two dreams mentioned are full of information and evidence they were nevertheless induced. Another source of evidence helps us to see dreams from a different direction. In the hypnotically induced dreams, the dreamer does not interpret them. But there are cases where dreams are interpreted spontaneously without conscious attempts; or intervention by an analyst to inject their opinions. The most evidential of the ways in which this spontaneous interpretation or understanding takes place, is during the dream itself. While one may not have a lot of dreams where the understanding takes place during the dream, it is by no means uncommon. Most people have such a dream at one time or another, and some people have a whole batch of dreams that are understood while they are taking place. Below is a description of a dream, and the spontaneous interpretation that arose with it.
‘A young girl kept coming up to me and placing my hand on her breasts. She was just developing her breasts, and they felt so very beautiful. Then, while still dreaming, I asked myself what it meant, and an answer came without any effort. The girl represented my desire for sexual satisfaction. That is, not just physical, but also the mating of emotions, mind and soul. I caress her breasts due to the fact that my sexuality is still developing. This means that the other levels of union, such as mental and spiritual, develop out of the physical. So I have to allow this stage to go on being experienced so that the other levels can unfold from it. The girl also represents the Divine Mother, or the female, unconscious counterpart of my outer, male nature. She herself develops as my feelings mature, and this suddenly threw a new light on all my sexual dreams in the past.’
Not only can we see how the interpretation beautifully fits each aspect of the dream, but it is also interesting to see how much longer the interpretation is than the dream. This shows just how much information a small dream can contain. The example gives us the ideal of interpretation as well. It should arise out of the dreamer as understanding, and fit each part of the dream.
Another way in which dreams can be interpreted spontaneously is during hypnosis. The hypnotic state is similar to sleep in some respects, the most obvious being that critical sense, full reasoning powers and conscious judgement are to some extent less active. This is possibly why one can solve the riddle of dreams more easily, and also why they are so fully understood. As we have seen with memory, or active imagination, preconceived ideas, or moral judgements, prevent ideas or inner contents from surfacing. We can see exactly the same process at work in our conversations with others. Certain events in our life we may easily be able to talk about to one friend, but find it impossible even to mention to another. This is very often because one friend is sympathetic, interested, broad minded, does not ridicule, judge or criticise; while the one we cannot tell misunderstands such things, thinks less of us for them, ridicules or criticises. We do exactly the same to ourselves. Because of our attitude to parts of ourself, they can never ‘talk’ to us or tell us about themselves. In sleep or hypnosis, many of these attitudes are put aside, and a more direct contact made with these parts of us. Also, because, with an ultra conscious attempt to understand dreams we may hold the wrong idea in mind, the right one cannot come through. Or else our doubt may press back what we need to know. In fact, what was said earlier about memory is worth reviewing in the light of spontaneous interpretation. In hypnosis, the association of ideas to symbols and dream structure, are also easier and more certain. This is because there is less interference from our reasoning faculties. Even a light hypnotic state, or deeply relaxed condition aids this process.
In the book Three Faces of Eve by Thigpen and Cleckley an example is given of this. The patient, Eve White, has told of a dream which she cannot relate to any of the events or details of her life. The dream is of being in a huge room, in the middle of which is a pool of stagnant green water. Eve is in the pool with her baby, Bonnie. Her husband and uncle stand on the edge of the pool. She tries to get the baby out, because they both seem to be drowning, but tries to avoid putting the baby girl near her husband. Despite this she eventually puts her in her husband’s hands. Then her uncle, whom she loves, pushes Eve’s head under the water. The psychiatrist treating her suggested trying hypnosis as a means of interpreting the dream. During the hypnotic condition it was suggested she Would be able to explain the dream on being wakened and this in fact she did. The room was her existence, the pool was the religious associations of her husband, who was Roman Catholic. She was trying to escape from being drowned in this Church, and to prevent her baby from being educated as a RC. As in life, her husband refused to help her in this struggle. Her uncle had in life suggested she fulfil her promise and have the child brought up as a Catholic, and this is seen as a pushing under.
Further proof of this type of interpretation is shown in recent use of LSD for therapeutic purposes. C. Newland, in her book Myself and I which describes in detail the course of her analysis under LSD, experienced spontaneous interpretation under the drug several times. The LSD analysis was not concerning itself with her dreams. It simply occurred that she knew her dream meanings several times while using LSD. This happened despite the fact that during normal consciousness she had not the vaguest idea what the dreams meant. One of the dreams she mentions is as follows:
In this dream a primitive, powerful country had invaded the United States and I had found refuge, together with friends and relatives, in an underground shelter so well provisioned and camouflaged that we could survive the duration of the war there comfortably. Unexpectedly, enemy shock troops attacked the shelter. My friends and relatives scattered but I was captured and forced above ground, where I was ordered to round up those who had escaped. As soon as I did, I realized, these barbarian shock troops would destroy us all.
Her spontaneous understanding of this is as follows:
About fifteen minutes after having taken the drug, this dream which had been incomprehensible spontaneously revealed its meaning – The underground shelter was obviously meant to be a symbol for my unconscious mind which existed below the surface and had been so well camouflaged that it could survive indefinitely without being discovered. My friends and relatives in the shelter were symbols too – of my symptoms and neuroses which could have survived the duration comfortably had not those barbarian shock troops discovered the underground hiding place. Those barbarian shock troops, I quickly realized, were symbols again – and very apt symbols – for Doctors E and M who were using the barbarian (experimental) shock therapy of LSD. They had already forced my unconscious above ground, and were now asking me to round up those friends and relatives (symptoms and neuroses) that had escaped. As soon as I did round them up, we were to be destroyed. As this interpretation unfolded, the nightmare lost its terror and became instead an encouragement: unconsciously I might be frightened at losing my neuroses but consciously I was delighted.
The more we consider these dreams, and how understanding of them was arrived at, the more it is seen how necessary it is to have the right state of mind. This method of interpretation (the open state of mind) may not be possible for many people, but some people on trying it, will find it comes naturally to them. It will be as if they have a ‘gift’ for it. Others will be able to develop it with some practice. For what can be induced by sleep, hypnosis or drug, can also be arrived at through discipline. Which brings us to the other method capable of giving spontaneous understanding. This is the intuitive method, or meditation. With this method, one consciously tries to take up exactly the same state of mind described in the chapter on remembering dreams.
But LSD and other consciousness altering drugs can open you to your unconscious content,which many people are not prepared for. 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.
Example: I took some LSD in 1980 which caused a dissociation from my feelings because it opened up so much from my unconscious and terrified me. The energy got held in my gut causing pain, spasms and shaking which I have to this day. I have tried many kinds of healing and therapy over the years but not much has helped, mainly because I am stuck in my head and terrified to let go. I hope you can suggest someone or something to help me. When the trip wore off I had this huge energy blockage in my gut and a sense of being dazed and disconnected from everything – my body and feelings, life and others, and I just functioned from my head. I have been trying to get myself back into my body ever since but still have a lot I need to release.
Another approach
If one analyses carefully the state of mind necessary for one to fall asleep, then this is it. There is no effort to go to sleep. One waits without worrying when sleep will overtake you, without trying to control the thoughts. It is an open, relaxed state of being. If we introduce the dream into this; ask ourselves what it means, and simply wait without trying to dig out the answer, ideas may begin to naturally collect around the question. It can be likened to fishing. The conscious mind is rod and line. The dream is the bait, the question the hook. These are lowered into the waters of the unconscious by becoming quiet and passive, letting the question and dream sink into lower levels of consciousness by stilling the upper levels. Then, like the fisherman, one has to be patient. One waits for the line to pull. It is no use thinking.
The following dream and interpretation is an example of this. ‘I dreamt I was courting an Indian girl. We were on a beach, and I was making love to her. All her family knew this. Then we wanted to get married, but now tremendous formalities began, and a banquet was prepared, and my question of worthiness brought up.
In trying to find an answer to this dream I sat and just wondered about it. I didn’t try to find answers for it. Then suddenly it all fell into place. The day before, I had gone for a walk, and had thought about an experience I had the year before. I had seen deeply into myself at that time, and found it very beautiful, often wishing I could reach the same level again. Now I saw that the dream showed me on the beach, representing the borderline of consciousness between unconscious and conscious. It was because I had found a way to this borderline state that the previous experience had happened. As the dream shows, I merged, or made love to, this dark part of myself at the time, but now I wished to reach that level of experience frequently. I wanted to own it, marry it, but this requires the formalities of enquiring into my worthiness. Can I “maintain” the girl by my life. Can I deliberately produce the state of mind that made our former liaison possible?’
While this type of interpretation may be difficult for us, it is at least worth trying when other methods fail. One may even find one has an aptitude for it.
Link To Chapters – Link to Chapter Nine