Posts Tagged ‘dream theory’
Quantum Physics
I have collected several cuttings from various parts of my writings about quantum physics. They are a bit jumbled, and when I get time I will put them in order. But meanwhile I hope they give some idea of the enormity of the change that is suggested
To some, science is treated as a religion. But if treated in that way the specialist preaches a vein of beliefs without understanding the other branches of science. However, science and religions do not look at the big picture of the Universe or Nature, owing to the impact of poor education.
Quantum theory has put forward theorems that show how this might be feasible. Irish physicist John Stewart Bell put forward a quantum theorem that has revolutionised the way reality is considered. In brief, the theorem states that when two sub-microscopic particles are split and moved to a distance from each other, the action on, or of, particle ‘A’, is instantaneously reproduced with particle ‘B’. This interaction does not rely on any known link or communication and is considered to stand above normal physical laws of nature, as it is faster than light. Prior to such findings it was thought nothing could transcend the speed of light. This suggests that the fundamental particles of our body exist beyond time and space, and if a dream touches this level then it expresses a very different experience of time. Yet we still hear scientists talking about the boundary of the speed of light.
This difficulty in crossing the boundary of knowing into the unknown is a sort of general blindness most of us suffer. Considering that dreams portray a very different view of life in which this boundary often does not exist, we can say that dreams are a leap beyond our blindness into full supersensual life. In our dreams we can often see the meaning of life experiences we are failing to understand in waking; we can look ahead into what our attitudes and temperament are creating in our life; we can look deep into the workings of our body, and in general extend our senses and awareness beyond any known limits. See: Cayce, Edgar.
Many modern physicists, working with the information arising in experiments with quantum theory, tell us that our view of the world is based upon our blindness, and is very limited, and through its limitation, unreal. Yet this view we take to be the REAL universe. For instance we are only able to see a tiny fraction of the visible spectrum of light and as small amount of audible sound, so we are almost blind and deaf to the world around us. See The Real World
The physicist Bohm defines this problem by saying that there are two orders in our experience of the world around us. There is the “explicate” order and the “implicate” order of the physical universe. He defines the explicate order as the impressions of the world gained via our senses and the interpretations the brain places on these impressions. These impressions and the brain’s interpretations – based on millions of years of evolutionary experience and input – lead to a view that we each have separate minds in isolated bodies. The implicate order is the universe as it is when we move beyond the limitations of the senses and the brain’s evolutionary programs. Then we begin to see the universe as a single indivisible whole and ourselves as intricately part of that whole.
Bohm says that “if we don’t see this it’s because we are blinding ourselves to it.” He goes on to say that “If we don’t establish these absolute boundaries between minds, then it’s possible they could unite as one mind.”
Stanislav Grof, looking at this from another angle through witnessing thousands of LSD psychotherapy session in which he says: My 17 years of research into the non-ordinary states of consciousness induced by LSD and other psychedelics led to a revolutionary understanding of the human psyche. His research was the impetus behind a vastly expanded cartography of the unconscious, including two new realms still unacknowledged by official academic circles .
The theories underlying quantum mechanics are very similar. Some of the latest thinking in connection with physics states that a careful examination of the phenomena underlying the physical world suggests that we can never finally know what reality is. All we do is give a name or definition to an observable aspect of the phenomena, and in observing and naming it, in some way we create what we call reality. So the argument which surrounds dreams – do they have an innate meaning – may be relevant to every aspect of our daily life.
To quote Gary Zukav, ‘Quantum mechanics is the theory. It has explained everything from subatomic particles to transistors to stellar energy. It has never failed. It has no competition.’ The implications of the theorem are enormous. Something can be in two places at once. Apparently distant objects, or people, are intricately linked in an immediate way. There is no separate existence as we previously thought. Our view of the world is not one supported by the facts of physics. Time and space are transcended. David Bohm, an eminent physicist, goes as far as to say that all things in our observable universe are inextricable linked. Nothing has separate existence.
The fact that light is both a wave and a particle is astonishing enough. More astonishing is the fact that its nature changes according to the way we observe it. Regarding this Mansfield describes an experiment where one particle/wave is made to pass through a series of mirrors along different arms. A single particle/wave is called a photon. As the single photon is passing through the series of mirrors, the method of observing it and measuring it is altered. This means that on its entry into the system the photon is a wave, but when the method of observing is changed, the photon becomes a particle. The astounding thing is that not only does it become a particle from that point on, but its nature is also changed in the past.
This demonstrable fact faces our rational mind with a conundrum or paradox. To quote Mansfield, ‘Now here is a real conceptual knot. It seems that our choice at the last possible moment determines what light did in the past.’ Mansfield goes on to say that if we made the experiment more dramatic it illustrates the enormity of the findings. To do this he suggests that instead of thinking of light passing through mirrors directing the light in different directions (arms), we think of the light reaching us from the stars. He says ‘Let the arms be billions of light years in length. Then we have a billion or so years between the interaction with the half-silvered mirror and the full-silvered mirror (used in the experiment). This means that my decision today effects what light did a billion years ago! This is too weird even for physicists, noted for their playful imagination, to contemplate. How could my decision today influence the universe billions of years ago?’
Therefore, when examining the model of our mind, we need to leave space on one of the walls for a door. It needs to be a door that opens onto a different sort of universe than the one we may previously have felt to be solid reality. It is a universe that alters its appearance – no, its very nature – according to the way we observe it. Each question we ask of the universe, each attitude with which we approach it, each viewpoint we take, reveals to us a different universe. The universe is therefore not separated from us. We are intrinsically a part of it, and are participating in it. In some way the universe is constantly being created by us as participants. It seems as likely too, that the ‘we’ the participants are constantly being created by the universe. And the past is not set in concrete. In some mysterious way it is linked with what we do in the present.
We cannot yet say these revelations of science explain coincidences. However, they do point out that the universe is stranger than we previously believed. Therefore the coincidences you experience or hear about may hopefully be an anomaly opening a new door for you. It is a door that can reveal more of yourself, and more about the world around you. Coincidences are like the cartoon cat that runs to the edge of a precipice and carries on running without falling. Suddenly the rules of the world we are so sure are fundamental truths, are thrown into question. Like the worm-holes or the time-warps now common in films and television, coincidences allow us entrance into other dimensions of experience. See The Holographic Universe
The New Dream Dictionary
The New Dream Dictionary
On the 11th of April 2013 I published a revised version of The New Dream Dictionary. It is a much fuller and comprehensive book and is wonderful and full of information. It is not the Dream Dictionary Ultimate that I am in the middle of working on, but was produced for the US cell phones. Please note: The New Dream Dictionary is currently unavailable, pending re-working (June 2017)
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RECURRING DREAMS and their significance NIGHTMARES – what they reveal and how to banish them OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCES – Giving real insight into the subject RELATIONSHIPS – what your dreams are telling you PSYCHIC AND PROPHETIC DREAMS – Tells you what they are WORK – are you following the right career path? Your dreams will tell. FAMILY – how to resolve old hurts and gain new perspectives PROBLEM SOLVING – in your dreams – how to carry the solutions into real life GAINING INSIGHT – into your own behaviour and that of others MAXIMIZING HEALTH – recognize healing foods, danger signs and more. See what is happening in your body, in your mind, and in your most guarded self and intuitions…. Discover what your style of dreaming (color, smell, setting, and other key elements) say about you. It’s all here, and more, in the ultimate guide to your world of dreams. |
“I’ve been using Mr Crisp’s book for years and find it invaluable in my quest to understand my dreams better. Unlike many other books which seek to tell you what your dreams mean, Crisp guides you through interpreting your dreams as individual and personal stories about your own psyche.”
Olives
Because of the mention in the Bible of live branch and the fruit of the olive, it has the associations of peace and immortality. Certainly with healing. So olives in a dream may represent the resolution of conflict in life.
The olive also is a symbol of wisdom, and in classical mythology and Renaissance art it was associated with the goddess Minerva.
The tree is an ancient symbol of the holy land, peace, love, and the path of healing and regeneration.
Wearing an olive crown can represent resolution to a conflict, and victory over what you face.. A burden will be lifted off you and you will come out victorious.
Because the oil can be pressed from the olive it has the meaning of healing or ease coming from pressure or trial. You might connect this with like or dislike because of your relationship with olives; or memories or associations with times and places you ate olives.
You might connect olives with like or dislike because of your relationship with olives; or memories or associations with times and places you ate olives.
Black olives: An underhanded dealing – like an oily character. Someone or something that is not good.
Olives: Pressing olives for oil, it might represent working hard to get something worthwhile or to make difficulties in love go easier.
Example: I had a dream where a man in a black sweater was putting black olives all over me while I was sleeping. I woke up and grabbed my phone and bashed him to death. I knew that he was about to kill me. When I woke up for real, I knew I had to figure out what black olives symbolized.
Olives are usually associated with healing or long life, but it seems he was going to make a meal of you – as you do with a pizza. But then you murdered him. What have you felt like murdering in yourself, or in your life? And the weapon, a means of communication. So maybe you could ask yourself what raised such a passion in you, and what have you actually killed?
Example: My wife drives into a service station. I take a plastic bottle partly full to get a new full bottle. She says that she is -b-l-a-n-k-w-a-l-l-e-d. I say for what? She says for buying black olives. I say why don’t you ask them directly why they won’t sell them to you. I am not sure they have any to sell. I wish that I had drunk some of the water I gave them. I think she means stonewalled.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Do I like or dislike olives?
What situations would I eat olives in?
When did I last eat or deal with olives?
See food – Background – Dream Action – Being the Person or Thing
Apron
It might point to the mother role, household work, or getting to work on a family situation. It is therefore an indication in some dreams of being capable and of getting things done. It is sometimes linked with an elderly woman in the dream and depicts motherhood, or a grandmother power in your life.
Apron’s are sometimes worn by workmen or women in a restaurant or service situation, so it might indicate a role you are in or a situation you are involved in.
Useful questions:
In what situation is the apron appearing – work, housework, or as a memory of someone?
What are my feelings in connection with this, and what part of my life do those feelings connect with?
Is there a feeling of capability in the dream – if so, capable of what?
Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming
Apnea
40 million Americans are estimated to be chronically ill with sleep disorders. Few people recognise their condition and its cause however. Signs of it are chronic tiredness needing constant stimulants to keep going during the day; constant falling asleep during work, talks, driving, inability to wake easily in the morning. As sleep plays an equally important part in healthy long life as nutrition and exercise, it is important to assure its quality. If our pattern and quality of sleep is disturbed, we may fail to notice the influence of such drinks as coffee, chocolate and alcohol, all of which disturb sleep.
One of the major sleep disorders is called sleep apnea. This condition causes the sufferer to stop breathing for periods of ten seconds to a minute or more. The person is therefore aroused to waking state, or near it, over and over during the night. This may underlie the recurrent nightmare some people have of feeling suffocated. This condition, if suspected, needs a doctor’s help.
About 60% of all cases of chronic insomnia stem from mental or physical ailments. These include depression, sleep apnea (a disorder in which breathing stops dozens — even hundreds — of times a night) and periodic limb movements (which usually involve leg jerks, repeated every few seconds for hours on end). Sleepers may awaken numerous times, but so briefly, awakenings go unremembered in the morning.
The benefits of considering 24-hour sleep patterns in patients who complain of excessive daytime sleepiness become apparent in workups for sleep apnea, a sleep-induced respiratory impairment. Many patients who complain of nighttime snoring-snorting episodes and daytime sleepiness do not connect the two. A focus primarily on a patient’s daytime sleep problems may delay the diagnosis of sleep apnea for months or years, and the possible serious effects of the condition call for prompt diagnosis.
The most likely candidates for sleep apnea are middle-aged overweight men, but apnea can occur in either sex and at any age. Sleep apnea is strongly linked to cardiovascular disorders such as stroke, hypertension, and coronary artery disease. In addition to the snorting, gasping, and bouts of hypoxia during the night, the total sleep profile of a patient with sleep apnea includes
excessive daytime sleepiness, sleep attacks, marked movement during nighttime sleep, diaphoresis, enuresis, morning headaches, decreased sex drive, and occasional cognitive changes if the condition persists untreated. Apneic patients usually have little trouble falling asleep–and thus seldom complain of insomnia–but their sleep may be interrupted upwards of 100 times a night by the episodes.
Ape-man Half man Half Monster
This is a very important figure in dreams. As much as we would like to think of ourselves as civilised and refined humans, we are still governed by patterns of behaviour obvious in animals. We fight, kill, lie and cheat for the sake of sex, follow leaders and generally are obviously still animals. Part of becoming a really mature human is to meet and transform the animal in us. That does NOT mean kill or suppress it. It means allowing its enormous potential to be met and released. It means healing the internal pains and conflicts that inflict that deep level of our being. It means meeting the enormous power of fear, sex and anger, and redirecting their energy into creativity and human action. See: ape and animals.
The ape-man or half animal represent the part of us that is still partly animal, and can, if not met and transformed create a lot of emotional confusion and pain. The reason is that it is a powerful part of us and can influence us without us being aware of it in us. But when made conscious and understood can be a wonderful strength and source of insight. See the quote by Jung in antlers; and also mammal brain.
Example: Dreamt I was in a room, or storeroom, full of chimpanzees. I had to leave them. Some of them opened the door. It was not locked, and I didn’t lock it, but I went back in and asked them not to open the door, as there was a busy road nearby, and they might get run over. As I spoke, one was standing near me who was now almost as tall as myself. The features had become almost human, female. She seemed very sad, perhaps because she was only half human. I felt deep links of sympathy.
A beautiful dream showing the deep connection we have with the animals. Talking to them shows a respect and awareness of them in ones life, and it communicates and helps bring together the instinctive drives that may have been neglected and so could not adapt to the world we live in.
Example: I was saving a very young white wolf from a half man half wolf monster. Someone was with me and we were working together to save it. Finally after much struggle I coaxed it up the wooded path and it ran up the street. I went back to the monster to distract it. I glanced behind me one more time and saw the young white wolf was fully grown now. And that’s where my dream ended.
A wonderful example of accepting and helping the animal that we are to grow and mature in our life.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Am I aware of this part of my nature? See animals for more information.
What are its influences on me – they could be aggression, sex, non rational behaviour?
Read conditioned reflexes to understand how the animal in us can alter our behaviour.
See Street Wisdom; Levels of the Brain – Programmed – Being the Person or Thing – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Coincidence or Synchronicity
While researching a book and corresponding with a number of people about their experiences of coincidence, a high proportion of the people objected to the word coincidence. For instance Roseanne James wrote, ‘Is there such a thing as coincidence, do you think? Or is there order and pattern in the universe? I seem to have encountered strange coincidences all my life, and I no longer believe they are random events, but are evidence of some larger design. Or perhaps even evidence of events, things, or people we are manifesting into our lives by our very desires.’
Nancy Staack expresses the same view, but in a slightly different way. She says, ‘I believe there really are no coincidences in life. God is talking to us constantly – to show us the way, to ease our self-imposed troubles, to light our path – we just don’t listen very well most of the time. He’s fairly screaming at us, but we’re surrounded by so much noise we can’t hear. All we need do is just BE and listen.’
In a similar theme, Toni Turnbaugh writes, ‘I don’t believe in coincidence, I believe a higher power is the key.’
Of course many people hold a totally opposing viewpoint. For them there is no mysterious link between individuals. No hidden process in nature links us one with another. There is only blind fate and unfortunate chance. Their argument is that we are all swept along by uncaring impersonal forces. We may be the victims or we may be the benefactors. Strangely enough such arguments are often mixed with ideas such as the strongest or most ruthless will succeed. Or perhaps that only by personal effort or playing the game right can we succeed, thereby suggesting the world responds to what we do. It is not therefore a game of chance.
In practical ways the concept of separation does not make sense. The clothes we wear, the food we eat, the house we live in and the materials it is made of, all arise out of collective skill, co-operative effort and knowledge. We exist in this collective creativity all the time. We depend upon it but perhaps seldom acknowledge it.
Even our mind is not wholly our own. The building block of self-awareness and thinking – language – is not personally created. We inherited it ready made by countless other people. Even our ideas and viewpoints are seldom unique to ourselves. Many of the things we do or strive for are meaningless if there were not other people to share them with and respond to us. Our opinion of ourselves, our self-esteem, and our feeling of well-being are largely dependent upon relationships with other people.
Our connection with the environment is even more total. Without air we would die in a few minutes. Without fluid our death would take a little longer, perhaps a few days. Absence of food is the longest death, even so we are completely dependent on the plants and animals that are the basis of our food. And they, and therefore we, are dependent on the intricate web of living processes involving weather, water, soil nutrients, bacteria in the soil, insect pollination of plants – in fact the great web of life. We are all – humans, animals, insects, and plants – totally connected with the energy of the sun and the substance of the earth. The sun is dying, and in its death pours out 90% of the energy all living creatures on this earth need. In a similar way the earth also dies as it gives up its energy and resources to living creatures.
As individuals the life that arises out of this constant streaming energy, not only from the sun and the earth, but also from other creatures that have lived, feeds our own pulsing life form.
Even so, the question confronting many people is whether all this connectivity is simply a chemical and biological accident. They might say such connectivity happened because it works. Meaningful coincidences question this viewpoint. Quantum physics, in demonstrating that two widely distant particles can immediately communicate, also punches a hole in the structure of the argument. If a simple particle can communicate beyond the speed of light, why not the consciousness of a human being?
While working with my friends John and Ann Clemence, who own the Capstone Hotel in Ilfracombe, Devon, I was helping to repair a flat roof on their house. The house is about a mile away from the hotel. As I was working on the roof, John told me that he was returning to the hotel. It had been a bitterly cold winter and John was gradually readying the hotel for the coming season. Time passed as I worked and suddenly I heard John shout my name twice. This seemed strange as I had not heard him return. The tone of his voice was very urgent, so I climbed from the roof and looked for him. I could not find him in the garden so looked through the house. He was nowhere to be seen. I stood puzzling over this for a few moments when the telephone rang in the house. Answering it I heard John excitedly shout my name twice, he had turned on the water mains in the hotel and discovered massive leaks due to frost damage. On discovering the leaks he had run from an upper floor to the telephone to get my help.
It seemed to me that John had mentally shouted my name as soon as he had seen the leaks. I heard that call over a mile away.
You and I be of one blood…
Whether we are a mother, a factory worker, a scientist, a business person, or a new born baby, no matter how much we know, life is still a mystery. At the beginning of a university textbook on biology, it states a summary of what is understood in regard to living creatures. It ends by saying that despite all present knowledge we still confront the fact that life is a mystery. Despite thousands of years of human inquiry, despite hundreds of years of scientific investigation, life is still a mystery. It therefore ennobles us if we stand before this mystery with some humility. This humility might include the attitude that as we do not fully know what this mystery is, we cannot be definite about what it is not. If the coincidences that occur in your life, or that I have described in this book, reveal a little more of that mystery, stand before it with a glad heart.
The gladness might arise because the implications emerging from the few coincidences given are immense. They do not simply implying that we have psychic abilities, or that our consciousness can experience things at a distance from our body. Those are piddling little things compared with the major implications. If John’s call reached me at the amplification it did, what is reaching and influencing me beneath my awareness? What is pouring out from my life and thought, and how is it influencing others around the world?
When I look at almost any row of houses, the attitudes of the people living in them are obvious from the condition of the house. One house will look flourishing and alive with plant’s, while the house next door appears devastated, it’s garden full of cans and rubbish. And that is only the surface, only the most physical and obvious of the creative and destructive influence we all have on our environment.
We all take part in creating the world. This creativity or devastation arises out of our attitudes, our emotions, our love or anger. Lynton K. Caldwell, in the book Environmental Science, writes, ‘The environmental crisis is an outward manifestation of a crisis of mind and spirit. There could be no greater misconception of its meaning than to believe it is concerned only with endangered wildlife, human-made ugliness, and pollution. These are part of it, but more importantly, the crisis is concerned with the kind of creatures we are and what we must become in order to survive.’[i]
The implications of coincidences point out that:
- You are an integral part of this planet.
- You are an integral part of the universe.
- Your mind is linked with the mind of others.
- You are a co-creator of the world around you.
- Your existence can never be separated from the existence of the universe. It is as ageless and as timeless as Creation.
This is not about politics. This is not about religion or weird beliefs. It is not about expecting other people to do for you what you can do for yourself. It is about recognising your dignity and place in the scheme of things and living your life from that joy.
Knowing your connection with things, you can dare to take creative chances, you can dare to stretch your wings and perhaps even fly. You can dare to walk on the wild side. For most of us, great coincidences do not happen frequently, but we can certainly increase them by living our life with zest.
If you doubt this is possible I want to remind you that the resources of the universe are standing off-stage waiting to be called. You may not understand fully what these resources are, but living with daring will call upon them more fully than hiding in a shell of separateness or anxiety. If you don’t believe this, read what happens to these ordinary people when their resources are tapped.
While at work one day in a large restaurant kitchen, I was cleaning a work surface during the lull before customers crowded in for their lunchtime break. About 12 ft away the boss, a man in his 60’s, was talking to the head waitress Flo, a woman also in her 60’s. They were conversing idly about the weather and how many customers were about for the season. Occasionally I glanced up at them from my work, but I was in no way trying to analyse them. Without any warning or apparent reason I could suddenly see both of them in a completely new way. It seemed to me as if a new sensory organ had opened, one I had never experienced before. With this new sense each tiny movement Flo and Boss made exploded with information. Subtle changes in facial expression I had never perceived before were now visible and meaningful. It even seemed as if I could sense an enormous energy connection between the two. And what I understood through this new sense was that Flo and Boss at some time had engaged in sexual intercourse with each other. I was in my 30’s at the time, and silly as it may seem, the idea that these two 60 year olds could have sex with each other had never entered my mind. Along with this realisation came the vision of a great trunk of energy passing between them. Although on the surface their actions and speech were inconsequential, at the deeper level of energy exchange, very powerful communication was occurring. I saw that when two people have sex with each other they forge this link. Through it they send messages to each other perhaps without realising it. The link may last a lifetime.
I was so surprised and intrigued by what had happened I asked Flo if she’d had a sexual relationship with Boss. With only slight embarrassment she said it was true, they did have a sexual relationship. She added that she would never look into my eyes again, suggesting I had some sort of psychic power. This was not true, I had never experienced such insight before, nor have I since.
We may be tempted, like Flo, to explain such accurate intuitions, coinciding as they do with reality, as arising from a psychic ability, or the intervention of spirits. This need not be the case. If, as Bohm suggests, we are at all times at-one with the universe, such insights are a natural part of our connection, unless we have barriers in the way. Such coincidences are therefore a normal part of our experience. This will be considered more fully in a later chapter.
The next example of walking on the wild side, was described in Victor Mansfield’s book, Synchronicity, Science, and Soul Making. All the cases he includes are written anonymously at his request:
Helen – I will give her that name – is a university lecturer. She was walking to the University and needed to cross a four-lane highway at an intersection. When the road was clear she started to walk across but without warning a car sped from a side turning. The vehicle hit Helen and she was thrown high into the air by the impact. As if in slow motion, Helen watched the woman in the car clutch her head in horror, as she watched the person she had hit bounce off the bonnet into the air. Helen, now in a timeless and transcendent awareness, was separated even from her own body. She watched the car below her pull to a halt. She could see her body hanging in space. She felt herself beyond danger, beyond time, existing in an eternal awareness.
As the car stopped and the driver stepped out, Helen’s body fell to the ground. As it did so she once more experienced life through her senses. Knocked completely out of her shoes by the impact, they were lying in another lane of traffic. The driver retrieved them for her, and with concern asked how she was. Strangely, apart from a small bruise on her little finger and left hip, Helen was shaken but unhurt. After exchanging information with the driver for the sake of insurance, Helen walked back to her house to report the accident. She later went to the University to teach a group critique in graduate art. Although unharmed, something had changed. She felt intense love for everybody around her. The exchanges between herself and the student’s felt inspired, and as if bathed in a flowing energy carried over from her moments in the transcendent timelessness. She felt it to be the most profound class she had ever taken.
However, on returning home, a different reality caught up with her. Her critical mind began to tear the experience apart. Her out-of-body experience and her awareness of timelessness, could easily have been the result of shock, and an attempt to avoid pain. As the beauty and love she had been experiencing was torn from her, she wept. She cried out, ‘Oh please, please don’t let me lose this!’ At the moment of her cry there was a knock at the door. A women Helen did not know explained that she wondered how Helen was, because she had witnessed the car accident. The woman went on to say that she had told all her friends at work because she had never seen anything like it before. When Helen asked what the woman meant, the woman said, ‘Why, you went up in the air and didn’t come down!’
This objective witness of her own experience was all Helen needed to renew the connection with the light and the love she had felt. She writes, ‘My ordinary life was lifted above the physical laws that seem to govern it, and the door opened a crack to another reality. Now in my higher moments, there are occasions when my inner vision surfaces to pierce the mask of reality. … My moment of transformation and breakthrough into an alternative self-awareness has indelibly changed my perception of myself in relation to the universe.’
[i] Quoted from Environmental Science. Edited by G. Tyler Miller, JR. Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1999, USA. ISBN: 0-534-53546-1.
Dream Incubation
To incubate a dream means to seek earnestly for a dream that responds to a special need or question. This way of approaching the best in yourself for help has been practised widely in many cultures. Some evidence suggests it was first used as a means of curing sterility, and was wide-spread enough to be used by Australian aborigines as well as Chinese and North Africans. It evolved into a much wider application, and in more recent history its various uses range from young women seeking to dream about their future husband, to Amerindian youths fasting in lonely vigil to receive a dream about their inmost character and destiny. Many such approaches, as those used in Ancient Greece in the healing temples of Aesculapius[i], were felt to be sacred. Individuals were helped to take on a feeling of approaching the divine and humbly seeking help from the highest wisdom. The effectiveness of this is to be found in many historical records.
In today’s world we have no dream incubation temples, and our culture does not often encourage us to take a cleansing fast and vigil to incubate a dream. We may not have learned the humility and joy felt in approaching the sacred. But we can still as individuals recognise that the forces behind nature and our own existence are special and potent. The great cycles of birth and death, or mating and reproduction are to be seen everywhere, and spring from eternal powers. To approach the fount of these with reverence is not irrational. To seek deeper understanding of your own life situation, your health, or your relationship with the whole, can still bring wonderful blessings and change.
To apply this yourself, the first step is to recognise that the unconscious processes of your own mind and body, of your transcendent self, are not like a machine into which you can drop a coin or press a button and out pops a can of coke. The unconscious can be helpfully likened to a person. It is intelligent, responsive, is moved by meaningful communication and relatedness. To gain the help of this potent power in yourself, you need its co-operation.
The second step is to remember your dreams and see if they are already dealing with the subject you want information on. It may be your unconscious has other things that need attention first. So think around the question you want answered. Recognise the feelings surrounding the question. A frivolous question that does not connect with the important issues of your life will not easily get the attention of your unconscious. The more important the question is either for your own welfare or work, the more likely it is your unconscious will explore the issue and present a response in a dream.
When you have a reasonable respect for what you are approaching, define your question. Write it carefully as a letter to your unconscious and place it under your pillow. Expect a reply as you would expect a response from a good friend. Your unconscious is your best and loving friend. It knows you intimately as no one else does. When you wake, pause and let any dream flow into awareness. Record it immediately in some way. Then explore it as suggested in the sections above in The Dream Interview and Be Your Own Dream Detective. If you do not get a response the first time try again.
See Dreams – Practical Techniques to explore their meaning – Being the Person or Thing – Opening to Life
[i] One of the most beautiful of surviving shrines to Aesculapius is at Epidaurus. It was built in the fifth century BC. Such centres were often of great size, and the one at Epidaurus took about 150 years to complete.
Acting On Your Dream
A dream image is, in many ways, like an icon on your computer desktop. It just sits there, you can think about it till you are red in the face, but it doesn’t come alive until you click on it. A dream is a product of the miracle we do not understand – LIFE. As such each dream image is alive with intelligence and information, and links not simply with ideas we read in a book or website, but with the workings and wonders of our body, the depths of our mind and even beyond.
Remember that dreams occur in animals, and have been a feature of living creatures long before humans arose. So dreams come from a part of us prior to the arrival of human language. Therefore it might be useless to think about dreams. My poor attempts to communicate this in words as a dictionary are at the best useful – it is best if you actually explore your dreams as explained below. You can then ‘click’ on your dream images using the following ways in.
Below are different tool or approaches you can use – click on to quickly go to them – Peer Dream Work – Talking as the character or thing – Walk On Part – This Is How It Was – Being the Person or Thing – Stand in the Role of Character or Object – Key Words
The Dream Image
A quick way of understanding your dream is to realise that the images in our dreams are just emotions, thoughts, fears. traumas, ideas and feeling projecting out of you and appearing as images, people or scenes outside you on the screen of your mind. If you take away the images of the dream, or draw them back to be a part of you that they really are, you might then discover what they represent about you. This is so simple that many people fail to try it, and instead try ‘thinking’ about their dream’. This may be because many people do not like to meet or deal with their real feelings and emotions. So please take time with it.
If it is difficult to get rid of the image, then take the image into you again – after all it was projected out of you, so taking it back into you introduces you to whatever caused it. Imagine yourself becoming the image. For more information about doing this see Being the Person or Thing
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 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 after you take the image away and feel the feeling underneath it, ask yourself, “When have I felt this before – even years ago? What is the feeling about and what part does it play in my life?”
Talking as the character or thing
This is a technique I have used myself and with groups of people. People arrive at understanding very quickly. But for some people this takes a little practice because instead of – if we dream of a dog – saying, “The dog is only a puppy and is adorable” you need to talk as if you are the dog, person or place. So say “I am a little puppy and the person thinks I am adorable”.
The idea is to really describe in detail what it is you are dealing with, and also what you are feeling as the dream object. The more you use this the richer the experience gets and you allow yourself to really be the dream object or person – and do not make the mistake if it is a person you know by describing them as an outside person. Stick with them exactly as they are in the dream. But it is not something you can rush, because the dream comes from deep within you and has to gather information and transform into our conscious thought life – remember dreams are a VERY old process. The originated at a time before human language and thought. To understand this please read How it Flows
Here is an example: I dreamt I arrived at a railway station, but instead of a platform it was at the top of an old castle keep. I had to walk down through the castle and then out to a street.
So I said: “I am an old castle keep. In the past I was used as a defence, but now people are easily passing through and allowing people to enter me and leave.” As soon as I said that I could see what it meant. I had suffered a lot of shyness and was defended not allowing people near me. I had built impregnable emotional walls to keep people away. Now I was finding it easier to let people come and go.
Here is another example: I dreamt I entered my living room and things had been thrown everywhere. It was a mess. I realised that it was my wife who had done it.
This is a tricky one because the wife was not in the dream, so if he sticks with the dream and not his actual wife here is what was said. “I am an invisible presence in my husband life, a presence he feels tears his living space to bits. Yet I am invisible and so could not have done this. But I am a feeling in his life that assures him that I am an awful intrusion. You see, I am just a feeling he has, and that makes him irritated with me.” The dreamer admitted that it wasn’t his wife that was messing up his ‘living space’ but his own feelings about her.
So try it and see what you find. But take time with yourself and ask the person, castle wall, dog, or object questions to clear things up. If you say whatever comes to mind you will be amazed how well it works.
Walk On Part
This is the simplest of the methods. It requires you to play with your imagination a little and go along with a fantasy, the sort of talent we all develop as children. If you have a sympathetic audience it helps, but only if you feel okay in front of others. It is fine alone as well. Stand with your eyes closed in the middle of enough space to move around. About two or three square metres is usually plenty.
Imagine you are standing on the edge of your dream, like a film set, and you are going to walk into it. Before you actually step into your dream be aware of what you are feeling in your body and emotions. Your body and feelings are a screen upon which subtle changes and shifts will occur. It is this screen of body and emotions that will act as your monitor showing what responses your dream produces.
Now step into your dream. Literally step forward. Walk about in the ‘film set’ of your dream, watching what you feel, what memories come and what your fantasies are. Talk with the characters, even step into their body and register what feelings and intuitions they produce on your screen of body and feelings. This also includes objects such a car, tree, or animals. Literally get into their shape. This is important because all the images we use in dreams are like the icons on computer screens. The front object is only a small indication of what lies hidden underneath.
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Speak what you feel and find to your helpers or to a tape recorder. You can enter into anything in this way, whether it is an animal, a tree, the sea or a house. As you explore your dream in this way you can ask questions and your intuition will play its responses on the monitor of your body and emotions. The possibilities are that you enter the dream and explore its different places and people, or you relive the dream by acting it out. |
In many dreams you the dreamer or one of the characters expresses something dramatic or ordinary that can be used as a doorway to insight. As an example ‘Kelly’ had the following dream:
I am in an exotic foreign shop and the owner doesn’t understand me. Then he speaks English and I laugh and start jumping around saying, ‘You can understand me’.
Kelly could take up the posture she had in the dream and act it by saying out aloud, “You don’t understand me!” This would need to be repeated a few times with as much of the feeling of frustration or attitudes connected with being misunderstood as appeared in or were suggested by the dream. What this can do is to involve more of yourself in expression than you usually do. This brings to the surface feelings that may be difficult to be aware of otherwise. Once felt they can be recognised for what they are. Often what happens is that the acting out carries on from the dream and may even involve some life situation you have been in. In other words you act or feel something more than was in the dream. Kelly could also try ‘jumping around’ shouting “You can understand me!”
The aim is to dramatise what the dream is expressing to see if we can find what part of your history or emotions it is depicting. This often ‘hooks’ memories or feelings that would otherwise not be discovered.
Being the Person or Thing
All the images, people, animals, places we see in our dreams, are simply your own feelings, fears, hopes and wonder projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind as images. So, it makes sense to take the image of your dream person, thing or animal back into you and own it. In that way, you are actually meeting and dealing with the things about yourself you are not owning or conscious of. That is why dreams are often difficult to understand, because we are hiding things from ourselves.
One of the most important things about actually understanding your dream rather that interpreting it is to become the dream person or object – to actually completely identify with it. This needs to be practiced as most people feel the dream person or object is something other than themselves and are often hesitant to become it. For instance the Devil in a dream is simply your own emotions and fears given an exterior image. Also a teacher or Mentor is in a dream the highest wisdom in us. In doing this you can step beyond the imagery of the dream into direct experience of yourself in all its variety and wonder.
So to do this the dreamer next chooses one of the characters, images or objects in the dream to explore. The character can be themselves as they appear in the dream, or any of the other people or things. It is important to realise that it does not matter if the character is someone known or not, or whether they are young or old. The character needs to be treated as an aspect of their dream, and not as if they were the living person exterior to the dream. So do not attempt to describe them an outside person, but the dream character.
In choosing an image to work with, such as a person, a tree, cat, place, or an environment like the street in the example dream above, it must again be treated as it appears in the dream, not as it may appear in real life. One can take any image from the dream to work with. But do not start thinking about the person or thing, imagine yourself as them or it – step into their body. Then wait for any feelings to arise and describe them, avoid trying to understand it by thinking about it – dreams arise from a level that preexists thinking.
Below is an example of how this can work.
Example: I dreamt I arrived at a railway station, but instead of a platform it was at the top of an old castle keep. I had to walk down through the castle and then out to a street.
In being the castle I felt a change of feeling, instead of feeling that I needed to defend myself I described myself and the castle by saying, “I am an old castle keep. In the past I was used as a defence, but now people are easily passing through and allowing people to enter me and leave.” As soon as I said that I could see what it meant. I had suffered a lot of shyness and was defended, not allowing people near me. I had built impregnable emotional walls to keep people away. Now I was finding it easier to let people come and go.
Example: I dreamt I entered my living room and things had been thrown everywhere. It was a mess. I realised that it was my wife who had done it.
This is a tricky one because the wife was not in the dream, so if he sticks with the dream character and not his actual wife here is what he felt when being his wife. “I feel I am invisible presence in my husband life, a presence he feels tears his living space to bits. Yet I am invisible and so could not have done this. So I am a feeling in his life that assures him that I am an awful intrusion. You see, I am just a feeling he has, and that makes him irritated with me.” The dreamer admitted that it wasn’t his wife that was messing up his ‘living space’ but his own feelings about her.
Example: And then one day we discovered our “selves.” We had been talking about vulnerability and Hal suggested that I (Sidra) move over to another part of the room and become the vulnerable child instead of talking about it. I trusted Hal and so I left the couch I’d been sitting on, sat on the floor next to the coffee table, put my head down on it and suddenly everything changed. I became absolutely quiet and experienced the world around me differently. Sounds, colors and feelings were more intense than before.
The sophisticated, rational, articulate woman with all the answers was gone and in her place was a very young child. I was extremely quiet and very sensitive to everything in my surroundings. I responded to energies rather than thoughts. I felt things I had not felt in decades, and knew things that were not known by my everyday mind. I knew, without question, the realities of my soul. After about an hour, Hal asked me to move to my original seat on the couch and I returned to my previous way of being in the world… but my little girl was still with me and I would never lose her completely again. Quoted from http://delos-inc.com/articles/Voice_Dialogue-_Discovering_Our_Selves.htm
A psychiatrist writes that, “The very small child runs round the room saying: “I am a lion.” He or she does not clearly distinguish between the fact that he is a child and the feeling that he or she is a lion. The older child can make such a distinction, unless it is emotionally disturbed, but it will still play fantasy games “let’s pretend.” The adult has not wholly lost this quality, but by the time adolescence is over his personality has struck a balance between reality and fantasy between his outer and his inner environment”. We all have this ability to enter more fully into our inner dream life – but we need to be a little more childlike.
Stand in the Role of Character or Object
The dreamer stands in the role of the character or image they are using. So if they chose to be a person they would close their eyes, imagine themselves as stepping into the body of the dream character and describe him or herself as the person they now are – from the feelings not thoughts. Dreams arise from the processes of life in us. Life is very ancient and was active long before words – associations with sounds – arrived, and dreams uses an older method than thinking with words, and uses feelings and associations we may with everything we see. See Associations–Working With
To do this it usually changes the way your body or feelings are experienced. As this is done notice any changes in how you feel as that person – or object – speak as them in the first person. Do not say, “I feel as if this person is …” but say, “I feel I am and am doing ..” As this happens watch any realisations or insights that arise and explore the person or thing. Ask question of this dream character or thing until you feel you have realised what is is of you that is being revealed.
I know it is difficult for some people to say ‘I’ instead of talking as if the dream character is someone else. But if you start claiming the dream image as your own in this way by saying such things as, “I am a tree” you will quickly realise you are talking about yourself. Seeing that all images of our dreams are productions of our self, in being an object or person we are tuning into aspects of oneself usually unconscious.
Example: It was something like a semi detached and sited on a slope. I was outdoors and I think felt or knew that we had just taken over this house. But I felt uneasy as if something from the past was linked with it.
Then I was at the back of the house, on the part sloping down from the back wall of the house. I noticed things covering what turned out to be a big hole dug against the back wall, deep into the soil. This was where I felt most ill at ease about the place. The hole had been covered with bits of board and other odd pieces of junk. I lifted these at the left of the hole and looked in. Sticking out from the side of the hole, about three feet down was the dead body of a young man. I could see the back of his skull had been smashed in. But although he had obviously been under the soil for some time, and had now been uncovered, the body was still in good condition, being slightly dried out or mummified.
I felt really guilty and connected with the body, as if I had been part of his murder, and was wondering frantically what I could do to hide or get rid of the body. Part of the problem was that pulling it out risked being seen with it.
In ‘being’ the body in the dream the man said, “But it wasn’t until I got into the role of the dead body that any depth of feelings emerged. Almost as soon as I was in the role of the dead body I began to think about and feel things connected with the way I had killed my sexuality as a teenager. Gradually these feelings deepened and I was describing my feeling hatred in regard to sexuality and how the masses were pulled along by their genitals into some sort of conformity and performance. I felt anger and loathing for what I felt at the time were the cattle human beings were.
I despised and hated them. I also felt repugnance at the way people talked about sex or appeared to enjoy it. It has to be understood that in that period in history in the UK, most of sex was depicted in terms of smut, dirt, animal desire, hidden pornography, or loveless fucking. I wept deeply, at times hardly able to breathe, with the pain of seeing what I had done to myself. I said sorry over and over. I saw that I need not have killed my love and sexuality, but could have expressed it in a tender and loving way. Some of this I expressed to a friend when I wrote to her about the experience. Below is the content of the email.
I explored it and met the pain of killing my sexuality utterly, as well as all the attendant feelings about the common herd who are dragged by their genitals into ‘fucking’ and loveless relationships – exactly what I was dragged into by the fact I had utterly killed all genital sensation for all those years. I was able to follow the tracks back – once again – to my own actions, killing any contact with my mother. But then being treated like an alien in my own home town, and seeing my peers treat incoming refuges from the war in Europe like shit. As an ‘Iti’ I identified with them and felt ‘different’. Apart from which I seemed to be carrying this desire never to be like the ‘herd’ from the long past.
The body in the hole was that of the me I would have grown into if I had not murdered that beautiful part of me. In the UK at the time, and in my youth, sex was nearly always about dirt, smut, a quick fuck, and hidden but rampant pornography and homosexuality. I wanted nothing to do with it. I wanted nothing to do with the manipulation via sexual desire that was going on around me. But of course, it need not have been like that, but I had no other role model at the time, so I did a terrible thing to myself. Also I lost all respect for my elders as in none of them could I see that gentleness of love. My schoolteachers were thrashing children with rods. The world was killing each other in tens of thousands. My mother had castrated me, and my father hardly ever even spoke to me. So I divorced the world, and of course lost that wonderful quality of compassion for the human struggle. In the process I threw myself into the volcano of fighting the forces of life itself. I fought God and won, but was mortally wounded in the combat.
Here I stand, a wiser and hopefully gentler man.
Key Words
The most immediate way to gain insight into your dream is to take the keywords and fill in the gaps.
To illustrate this we can use the following dream:
I meet an acquaintance who tells me she is sick. I suggest ways that might help her. As I speak I become aware that others are listening and coming nearer. I apologise and say that I appear to be preaching, but they say, ‘Please go on we want to listen.’ As I continue I find that a rostrum has formed and lifted me two steps higher.
To use the technique of ‘keywords’ on this dream you would need to write down the most important words in the dream. Doing this you might arrive at the words – meet – acquaintance – sick – help – speak – listening – apologise – preaching – rostrum.
For the next step you ask yourself what you have recently met with in yourself or in life? It is something you are acquainted with, and that has to do with not feeling well, whole or satisfied with your life. So you would ask yourself what you are acquainted with to do with not feeling at your best?
The word ‘help’ suggests you have information that will be useful. What is it?
You apologise for yourself, suggesting degrading what you know. How are you doing that in your life?
Preaching comes next. Have you been giving advice? If so, what is it, and is it relevant to you too?
And lastly, can you listen to your own advice given from a rostrum – higher level of viewpoint?
Having arrived at some associations with the major words in the dream, you next put them together in a way that explains some of the insights or ideas you arrived at. Filling in the gaps between the words you might therefore arrive at something like this:
I have lately become aware of the feeling that I am ill at ease with myself. This connects with my lack of confidence about how I feel when talking with other people. The strange thing is that I know how to help myself with this. I was talking with a friend the other day, and the advice I gave them about something similar really applies to me. What I need to do is to stop apologising for myself and positively use what I know will help. I can see from the dream that I have a lot to share with other people, so I don’t need to feel I am preaching.
What you arrive at using this keyword method will give you an excellent overview of your dream. It will take some practice, but persist and you will get very useful results.
Other examples are in Talking As
Dealing with Anger and great Emotions
Being the person who is angry, or being yourself being angry is one of the safest ways of allowing and healing the causes of anger. Anger is a natural feeling, and when we repress it, as we are usually taught to do in our society, it becomes pressurised and sick or dangerous.
You can do this by standing in the role, and sometimes it can help to act out anger by hitting cushions or an armchair with a rolled up newspaper. Acting it our can often lead to a real release and then you can see where it all started.
What Posture or Movement?
Another approach is to take up the posture or movement in the dream. I was a helper once with Dave who dreamt of a cop sitting astride a powerful motorbike. Dave had failed to understand this part of the dream using other methods. So we built a pile of cushions for him to sit astride. He sat there for a while and when we asked how he felt he said, “Powerful.” Dave had been feeling a lack of power to do things or to accomplish anything. As he acted out the posture and feeling of being on the bike he could feel the power in his body and the confidence in himself to do what he wanted. It wasn’t simply the dream confidence, it was Dave’s own strength that he could now experience.
As is suggested with Dave, this acting out can be a group action. Non of us actually got in on the act with Dave, but sometimes it helps to get other people involved in the drama, as when you want someone to resist, or someone to hold. A memorable example was with Olive. A dream scene in which she was sitting opposite a woman in a café puzzled her. Latent in the scene was something to do with love, but Olive couldn’t ‘get it’. So I imagined myself in her dream and felt something, and suggested to Olive that she sit opposite Hy, a woman partner, and I asked Olive to repeatedly say to Hy, “Please love me”. The effect was enormous. All the feelings Olive had buried about wanting love from her mother surfaced and were felt. It was a very healing experience for Olive.
And Then What?
A technique that is occasionally very helpful is to carry the dream forward. As it is so useful a bit more information will be given about it.
It is particularly relevant when the end of the dream is not satisfying or does not resolve the feelings or issue expressed in the dream. The method is simple. Imagine yourself in the dream and continue it as a fantasy or daydream. You can alter the dream in any way you want. Continue the plot forward to some sort of conclusion or resolve. But it is important to watch your feelings to see whether what you do is actually satisfying and feels right. It might be a defensive change you make instead of a creative one. Be aware if there is any anger or hostility in the dream that is not fully expressed. If so, let yourself imagine a full expression of the anger. Look for the feeling of satisfaction. Satisfaction occurs only as you learn to acknowledge and integrate resistances and anxieties regarding what you express. It will not arise if you fail to face your fears or deal with the feelings that are trying to resolve in the dream.
This is a very important method. Moving the dream forward like this changes habits that trap you in lack of satisfaction, poor creativity or inability to resolve problems. Using it you can turn to face the things you have been running from. You can get hold of the elusive dream lover who has always before eluded you. You can catch that train, open that door, get to the top of the stairs, and do all the things that anxiety, habit or low self esteem were holding you back from. This can change your life. But to achieve it you must face, feel and admit what has been holding you back.
Sandison – Grof – Ling and LSD
Many of us are quite well informed about the results of research in sleep laboratories. Most of us know what rapid-eye-movement sleep refers to. However, long before Kleitman and Aserinsky’s discover of REM sleep in 1953 and 1957, another huge area of research pertaining to dreams was being undertaken. This began in April of 1943 when the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann discovered LSD. Because of LSD’s power to change states of consciousness it was quickly experimented with in psychiatry. One of the opportunities it offered was to observe unusual states of mind in an experimental way. This enabled psychiatrists and psychologists to observe areas of mental and emotional functioning they had previously only theorised about. Some of the main people involved were Sandison, Grof, Ling and Buckman.[i] Out of their work an enormously expanded understanding of dreams, of fantasy, of levels of mental process and the unconscious came about. Unfortunately the evidence of their observations is usually ignored by sleep laboratory research.
Although the findings from this source do not answer all the questions about the brain and human personality, something relevant to dreams is defined. It was seen from the research that there are at least two ways of ‘thinking’. One way is to think with words and rational connection between associated ideas. This is the usual waking form of thought. Underlying this is thinking in images and linked similarities – what Tauber and Green called ‘pre-logical thinking’.[ii] This may be the way our ancient ancestors thought – not in words but in streaming fantasy or pictures that linked with feelings and past experience. It is exactly this world of linked imagery, associations and emotions we enter in dreams. A problem that exists for us if we want to understand our dreams and extract the gold nuggets from them is that we usually attempt to understand this world of ‘pre-logical’ experience with our ‘logical’ thinking. We ‘think’ about our dream and attempt to interpret it according to our rules of logical thought. This is like trying to understand what it would be like to bathe in water by thinking about it when you had never before been in water. Thinking will not come up with the answer.
Because of this McKenzie says that ‘Under the influence of LSD a person can often interpret imagery – of a dream – that would seem meaningless in a state of normal consciousness.’[iii] In fact many people experienced spontaneous insight into their dreams while working with LSD. The insight was not simply a sort of intellectual knowing, but an ability to experience the intricate connections of past experience, feelings and imagery out of which a dream is woven.
One of the reasons this can occur is that LSD stimulates pre-logical thinking while at the same time allowing rational observation of what is experienced. Like Miss Z, the volunteers making the experiment could ‘go to sleep’ by entering the fantasy and pre-logical processes of dreaming, and yet stay awake by maintaining a questioning mind. Therefore the theories of Freud and the other great names could be checked against what people actually met in exploring their unconscious consciously. Dr. Betty Grover Eisner, an American specialist in hallucinogenics, said of this:
“In the course of five years’ work with the psycholytic or mind-changing drugs LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, ritalin, and the amphetamines-one can only be awe-struck by the genius of Freud, Adler, and Jung, and be saddened by the forces which split apart this trinity. Their observations and theories should be integrated; for the split skewed so many fundamental conceptions and discoveries.”
W. V. Caldwell echoes this: If the psychedelic experience had confirmed the theories of Freud, or Jung, or anybody else we might have been relieved. Instead it has confirmed them all and added a few more besides.”[iv] Caldwell is referring to the realisation that we all have a many storied brain/mind. Although the brain itself is composed of at least three levels, starting with the ancient brain stem, the medulla, similar to an ancient lizard brain, most of us are only aware of one level of our experience. This is waking consciousness. Caldwell, synthesising thousands of psychotherapeutic LSD sessions in clinics around the world, gives a geography of these levels, listing them as four.
- Body centred awareness that is deeply sensual. It is a level we all experience during infancy.
- The gestural. This emerges as we learn to express our feelings and needs through physical movement in infancy. Thus we may express our deepest hidden feelings in an unconscious body posture or movement. At this level suppressed emotions express as psychosomatic pain or tension.
- The symbolic-mythic. This is a level seen in many older cultures where truths are expressed in the forms of myths and stories. At this level we express our intuitions and needs through symbolic action, as when, feeling trapped we fight authority figures instead of having direct insight into our problem. We may act out what we feel, or what our life situation is, in a drama or play.
- The verbal-analytic. Here we gain direct insight into situations and can also verbalise them. At this level we can define the symbol or myth.[v]
As an adult we may in fact be living with a powerful body posture that we blame on tension, when in fact it is an expression of deeply felt experience. If we are unconscious of it we are living only in our top-story flat – the reasoning mind. What we can learn from this is that dreams often express these various levels of our mind in the drama or objects of our dreams. Recognising them is a big step in becoming aware of how to understand the language of our dreams and to become whole. Consider some of these dream statements in connection with symbolic action for instance:
She is standing on a ledge ready to jump – I am standing with my husband – I reached out – I ran away – I hid in a closet – I could barely walk – He was walking along with his eyes closed – I was cold – I buried the body – I realised I hadn’t fed the baby I was caring for – I was walking on ice.
[i] See: H. A. Sandison, A. M. Spencer, J. D. A. Whitelaw. ‘The Therapeutic Value of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide in Mental Illness. Grof, Stanislav. Realms of the Human Unconscious. Ling and Buckman. The use of LSD and Ritalin in the Treatment of Neuroses.
[ii] See Prelogical Experience by E. S. Tauber and Maurice S. R. Green.
[iii] From Dreams And Dreaming by Norman MacKenzie. Bloomsbury Books 1989.
[iv] LSD Psychotherapy by W. V. Caldwell. Published by Grove Press Inc. 1968
[v] This listing is actually evolved from work done by Van Rhijn. Rhijn defined these levels.