Posts Tagged ‘wisdom from core’
Dreams – The Magic Mirror of Yourself
Every one of us dream.
Whether we remember or not, each time we sleep we create an apparently real world out of our remembered impressions, habits and emotions. As the stage managers of our inner theatres, we have the most abundant props, costumes and backdrops imaginable. Yet, because a dream is our own creation, no part of it, no emotion contained in it, no flight of fancy portrayed, is other than oneself. Even when we dream vividly of another person, such as the man in our life, the dream personality is made up of our own impressions, memories of them, hopes and feelings. Most people are often totally unaware of the experience they take in and how it interacts with them when we live with someone. See Inner People
In other words the memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. You have taken in millions of bit of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by loving and living with someone and they are what makes you the person you are. Your dreams tend to put all that in the image of the past person when you are dealing with the influences left in you from the relationship. Please read this wonderful example, it will show how much we take in from those we love or lived with.
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Your dreams are a magic mirror that reflects nothing but your own beliefs, worries, fears, wisdom and even genius. To do this it creates characters, situations and drama that are all reflections of your own inner world. All the images and drama, along with the emotions you feel are simply you looking at yourself. Most of it we do not recognise because we are so blind to our failings and of course our wonder. |
If you are afraid of your own emotions, your fears, or are locked into particular beliefs, then you are certainly a victim of them, you are powerless. But if you recognise them as simply your own feelings reflected as imagery they are simply you becoming the master of your own inner world. It is the best lesson you can learn – in dreams and in life.
What do you see in the mirror of your dreams?
See Martial Art of the Mind; Man in your Dream – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Habits – Edgar Cayce
Australian Aborigine Dream Beliefs
The Australian native peoples are divided into more than 500 tribal groups. These tribes are also of two major types – those who live inland, and those who live along the coastline. The separation of tribes and the division provided by the environment led to differences in views about the nature of human life and death, and the part dreams played. But some beliefs, such as reincarnation and the ‘Dreamtime’, were universally held.
Dreamtime refers to an experience and to beliefs that are largely peculiar to the Australian native people. There are at least four aspects to Dreamtime – The beginning of all things; the life and influence of the ancestors; the way of life and death; and sources of power in life.
Dreamtime includes all of these four facets at the same time, being a condition beyond time and space as known in everyday life. The aborigines call it the ‘all-at-once’ time instead of the ‘one-thing-after-another’ time. This is because they experience Dreamtime as the past present and future coexisting. This condition – See: altered states of consciousness – is met when the tribal member lives according to tribal rules, and then is initiated through rituals and hearing the myths of the tribe.
Although Dreamtime may sound rather mystical or mysterious to the Western mind, the experience is based on understandable and observable facts of social and mental life which are unfortunately little valued in Western society. For instance the present is observably the result of past actions or events. Present society is particularly the result of past great men and women and their – heroic – deeds. For the Australian native peoples, as with many other ancient races, the heroic deeds of past ancestors were remembered with great veneration. It was seen that all present life, and even the personal skills and character of tribal members, arose out of the life of the ancestors. The ancestors, their deeds, and what arise from them into the life of the tribe in the present, are all held in the Dreamtime beyond the shifting events of things happening one-after-the-other.
The aborigine people believed that each person had a part of their nature that was eternal. This eternal being pre-existed the life of the individual, and only became a living person through being born to a mother. The person then lived a life in time, and at death melted back into the eternal life. See Archetype of the Big Bang
In writing about the state of mind – the mental world – of early races, J. B. Priestley – in Man and Time – says that if we are to properly understand the ancient peoples we must never project onto them our own state of mind and rational thought. Studies have shown that ancient people experienced what is called an undifferentiated state of mind. Their sense of being a separate and independent person was much less than is commonly experienced in modern life. They did not separate their religious life, their social life, their economic life, their artistic life and their sexual life from each other. This is obvious to even a casual observation of such societies, or even third world cultures, where religion and eating, and work are all very much connected. To be banished from the tribe was tantamount to death for primitive individuals, so deeply were they identified in psychological and practical ways to the rest of the tribe. But it is not an unusual thing for a modern man or woman to leave their place of birth, their family or their country, and live abroad. Such simple facts illustrate the deep divide between the modern and ancient state of mind.
If we remember our early childhood, with the absence of an awareness of passing time, the fullness of each day, the eternity of a week or a month, the enormous and unquestioned – if still untraumatised – sense of connection with our family, then we will have an idea of the mental world of the older races. For the aborigine these facts of their life were tangible realities, known through their inner experience in dreams and waking visions. Prior to the development of the reasoning and questioning mind, people did not consider things by thinking about them in neat ideas and definitions. Like the parables in the Bible or Aesop’s fables, which say so much, but do so with images and through the relationship of one thing or person with another, early human beings thought in pictures or dream like images. So the aborigine would meet the influence of the ancestors in their life as an actual visionary person, rather than thoughts about tribal history. With the visionary meeting would come deep feelings and insights, making it a real educational experience. This is exactly how dreams express, and in this manner most creative or problem solving ‘thinking’ was done by ancient peoples. Therefore the entrance into dreams, or into a condition in which the imagery of dreaming could function while awake, as in visions or altered states of consciousness, was important for the aborigine. Common ways of accessing this state of mind were through ritual or initiation rites. In this way enormous learning experiences could be met, a sense of complete identification with ancestors and tribal history achieved, and personal change or growth accomplished.
This condition of mind or being in which time is ‘all-at-once’ and the past is felt as intensely close as the present, is a natural and fundamental state. It is what the baby experiences in the womb prior to the separation at birth and the development of concepts through the learning of language. So the rituals which enable the aborigine to return to the womb of all time and existence enables them to feel connected once more to all nature, to all their ancestors, and to their own personal meaning and place within the scheme of things. The Dreamtime is a return to the real existence for the aborigine. Life in time is simply a passing phase – a gap in eternity. It has a beginning and it has an end. The life in Dreamtime has no beginning and no end.
The experience of Dreamtime, whether through ritual or from dreams, flowed through into the life in time in practical ways. The individual who enters the Dreamtime feels no separation between themselves and their ancestors. The strengths and resources of the timeless enter into what is needed in the life of the present. The future is less uncertain because the individual feels their life as a continuum linking past and future in unbroken connection. Through Dreamtime the limiatations of time and space are overcome. It is a much observed feature of aboriginal life that knowledge of distant relatives and their condition is frequently displayed. Therefore if a relative is ill, a distant family member knows this and hurries to them. Often the intuitive knowledge of herbal medicine is gained also.
For the aborigine tribes, there is no ending of life at ‘death’. Dead relatives are very much a part of continuing life. It is believed that in dreams dead relatives communicate their presence. At times they may bring healing if the dreamer is in pain. Death is seen as part of a cycle of life in which one emerges from Dreamtime through birth, and eventually returns to the timeless, only to emerge again. It is also a common belief that a person leaves their body during sleep, and temporarily enters the Dreamtime.
The aboriginal tribes are connected with their local landscape in a way that perhaps no other race of recent times is. The landscape is almost an externalisation of the individual’s inner world. Each tribe had a traditional area of the land which was theirs alone, and it was believed that in the Dreamtime the ancestors shaped the flat landscape into its present features. Each feature was in some way an act of the ancestors, and therefore the tribe. Like many tribal peoples, the Australian native people were deeply dependent upon their beliefs, the landscape and their inner life for their identity and strength. This makes them vulnerable to anything which disrupts their beliefs, although, apart from such vulnerability, they have a greater psychic sense of wholeness and identity with their tribe and environment than is common in Western individuals.
See the feature Spirit-Child: The Aboriginal Experience of Pre-Birth Communication.
The Archetype of the Self
The symbols of the Self are a ring; a square or square area; a great tree; Christ or other major holy figure such as Krishna or Buddha; a shining thing, being or animal; a talking animal; a strange stone or rock; symbols like the cross or mandala; a round table; God; a guru; an elephant; a crowned or shining snake.
Our conscious self or ego is only a tiny part of our totality, as is obvious when we consider how much of our memory or experience we can hold in mind at any one time. The Self, as defined by Jung, is both what we are consciously aware of, and the massive experience and potential remaining unconscious. That potential is not simply our own personal memories, but also areas of possibility beyond what we usually think of as our personal self. The Self has no known boundaries, for we do not yet know the end of what the mind is capable of, or what consciousness is, or touches, out of sight of waking.
Modern physics is making it clear to us that our concepts and words are simply our own definition of our surrounding or inner reality that is always infinitely more than the definition. A piece of our fingernail for instance, might be thought of as a part of your personal body, a little bit of yourself. It can also be examined as a product of long evolutionary and genetic processes. Another point of view on it would be its molecular and atomic structure, and even the events of its sub-atomic processes. From there you could even begin to see it as part of a cosmic process, its substance being interwoven with the substance of the stars, and the processes of our solar system and beyond – and so on. This escalation of viewpoints applies just as well to any part of us – our brain and mind also.
The mass of experience and potential which lies behind our waking awareness is like an inner factor that, apart from expressing precise information in the form of remembered facts and events, can act as a huge reference base if we listen, through intuition, feeling states, dreams or visions. When we meet this inner potential or healing principle, we may have a powerful experience of meeting Christ, Buddha, Krishna or God, or any number of figures with great powers. Gradually our meetings go beyond form and cultural imagery into a direct awareness of existing throughout all time and space; of involvement in all living and inanimate things. Dante, in his great poem The Divine comedy, describes his experience of this by saying, “I saw within Its depth how It conceives all things in a single volume bound by Love, of which the universe is the scattered leaves; substance, accident, and their relation so fused that all I say could do no more than yield a glimpse of that bright revelation.”
To glimpse that revelation of the core of self, that is at the same time the core of all existence, is to be pervaded by something you can never grasp and hold. It forever flickers and changes, yet at the same time is changeless. Dante says of this, “As I grew worthier to see, the more I looked, the more unchanging semblance appeared to change with every change in me.”
This involvement is not in the end a mystical experience, it is the recognition, sometimes with awe, sometimes with shock, of an existing reality. It is so much a part of everyday life we fail to see it – as perhaps the fish might not know it lived in water. For instance, none of us grow all our food, make our own clothes or their material, produce the energy or gas or electricity in our homes – neither do any of us form the language we exist within and which forms the very structure and self awareness we identify with as ourselves. We exist constantly as an integral and dependent part of this huge web of interactions; we cannot exist outside of it or without it – yet we may fail constantly to hold our integral existence in awareness. We may never see we are part of ONE huge organism. Dreams frequently depict this situation with such symbols as the sea, or symbols of the Self.
In short, the Self is the totality of our being, and any symbol of it within our dreams depicts some level of awareness of, and therefore contact with or communication with, our totality.
An excellent summary of the Self is give in Rudolph Steiners desciption.
“When we come to the fifth level of our awareness, we come to what is frequently called, ‘the Self.’ Here we find the matrix, not of our personal karma, but of our eternal selfhood, the divine individual we could become. It is the awareness and impulse behind all the many earth lives, and is the essence of all these lives, yet not them.
This it is that often appears to us in dreams or visions as our guardian angel or Christ, or a great spiritual being. Here is the archetype, the architectural plan, for our real self, our maturity in God. When we come to this region we see how well or badly we have realised these eternal attributes of our eternal selfhood in our physical life. We gain a view of the many past lives, and how we have again and again sought to become this being that we potentially are. A summary of the past, and a plan for the future comes into being when we measure the fruits of our life against our Self. These fruits are also seen in the light of the eternal wisdom, love and power, shining through the Self. Due to the fact the Self dies to its realm, and is nailed to matter, suffering the loss of awareness of existence in the divine, life after life, that our soul may achieve eternal life, it has a Christ like love, patience and gentleness. Here too we meet those great beings of all nations, religions and times who have trod the path before us. If we remain conscious at this stage, the wisdom and experience of these saints and masters, comes to us as fully as we can receive it.”
Below are some examples of the Self in dreams.
Example: ‘I am climbing a tree to get a stone. This stone has special powers that flower. I’m nearly there when I look down and notice that there aren’t any branches on the left side of the tree. This causes me to consider the possibility of falling and that in turn leads to a fear of climbing any higher. I wake with my heart beating strongly, but little feeling of fear.’ Alan J.
Example: I am standing in the toilet peeing into the water. This creates lots of bubbles. As I look at these bubbles I notice each one has an eye looking at me. Fascinated I bend lower to look back at these eyes. When I do so I see they are not ‘eyes’ but ‘I’s’. Each is a tiny reflection of myself looking back at me. Amused I ponder this multitude of me. Each tiny being, with its own individual sense of self, its own eyes and legs and fingers, feels it is separate from its fellows – and it is. But what they don’t realise is that their awareness, their consciousness is a reflection of me. I am their god. Out of me all have their being. Then suddenly I realise I am myself a bubble. I too have a sense of being independent, with my own eyes, fingers and legs. Yet in reality I am only a reflection of one great life – One Self existent in all diversity and multifarious forms. I felt afraid. Tony.
Example: ‘I look into the third square, it was filled with an iridescent blue colour, shining and beautiful to look at, a beautiful substance. I felt it had to do with religion, but I couldn’t quite grasp it.’ Hyone C.
Example: I watched an insect emerging from what appeared to be its chrysalis – shaped a little like a mermaid’s purse. As it emerged it was vibrant with life, movement and colour. In fact it shifted its shape so quickly I was amazed at how it moved in and out of shapes as it adjusted to its final form. It had a beautiful gold barred design on its back, like a symbol – perhaps a bit like one of the zodiacal symbols. I watched another insect doing the same thing, and began to realise how life was bursting forth in the garden. Looking up in the hedge I noticed a large pod expanding on top of a stalk. Its was visibly getting larger, like a balloon. Suddenly it opened, forming many stalks with leaves and small rose like buds. Another pod was doing the same. As I watched I noticed a young woman nearby. I called to her to witness this extraordinary explosion of growth and life – a dynamic extravagant springtime of activity. She didn’t appear to really see. I was very moved though, and stood leaning against what felt like a wall, perhaps the wall of a house, and wept at the beauty. I started to restrain my emotions, as the woman did not share them, but then thought I wouldn’t hold back because of her. Andrew.
What leads Andrew to weep is his sense of the profound wonder of the formless reality that underlies the vast ever changing world of phenomena.
The only difference was these dancing people weren’t opening to the sacred, to the spirit. So I stepped into the dance area and opened to the spirit. As I did so a most wonderful and extraordinary thing happened to me. I was taken up into the spirit, literally lifted off my feet high into the air and held there by the power and glory of what was happening. Then, still in the air, my body was spun like a top, and at the same time in a circle, until an enormous energy was built up. This energy then flashed down upon the people, entering their body and soul in a transforming way. The feeling of glory and wonder was enormous. I could see this energy, this sacred power flowing down as other people entered this condition, and I saw the transformation of people’s lives, and the change entering into the way they lived, even into the way people were farming their land. I knew that the time of quickening was upon us. But I was one of many who were receiving this power and allowing it to flow into the lives of others.
Here is a very different description of meeting the Self, also from a man’s dream.
In the dream I met my “teacher”. It was a powerful meeting of two men who respected each other. I met him because of my own independence. I recognised his greatness because of my own success and craft in life. Then I was a teacher among disciples. There were only about six. They were all capable and mature adults who were my pupils because they loved and respected me. They gave me great and practical support. One of them, a woman, came to me and said that if I ever needed to be held, I need only go to her.
In exploring the dream I uncovered a lot of emotion. I felt Christ was the teacher I met. The dream expresses qualities of Christ I had never seen clearly before. Namely that Christ is so many-sided. Christ is approachable or open to children – to fishermen – to scholars – to women in love – to the sick – to businessmen.
Also, Christ is understandable by a child. As a child one feels as if Christ is a friend who is just a few steps ahead of oneself, showing the way. But as one grows, Christ is always there, just a few steps ahead. What a wonder that is. Thank goodness there is always that presence beyond one’s best, gently calling us on to greater humanity, greater humility, greater craftsmanship in life.
But contact with the Self can be in so many forms. Here is another one.
Now a most extraordinary thing happened. I experience feelings of being made love to, but not through the genitals, but through my head right the way through my being down into my genitals. For a long time it felt as if I didn’t need to breathe, and in fact I seemed to exist without breathing for quite a long time. There was a feeling of tremendous quietness. Inside something gently moving through the openness in my head down my being, flowing to my genitals. Once there it was like it opened something. It changed something. Then, gradually, that influence of change started moving up my being. I could feel it particularly touch and change things in places like my solar plexus and my heart. When it reached my throat I could feel it tickling and opening something there. It really felt painful as it went through these places, particularly as it reached into my head. It wasn’t a physical pain, but it felt as if something deep inside me was being stretched and opened, and that stretching was painful at a subtle level. I cried out in the pain. I wept. I cried out in pleasure – the mixture of pleasure and pain, just as if I were being made love to in a wonderful and delicate and yet painful way. As it touched and passed through my head I cried out, “Why? Why?”
And here again, a real experience.
Then it was one feather tied to a twig by piece of wool, blowing in the wind – a feather blowing in the wind. This was very stable and persistent in the fantasy. Everything resolved back to the feather blowing in the wind. It seemed like a Red Indian symbol, perhaps tied to the suspended body of the dead, but I could not understand.
Then it came to me that I had to listen in deep stillness – not think, not seek to understand, not struggle, just listen. My whole being entered into silence, gently listening as one might listen to the rain falling on a lake. Then suddenly it was known – the feather blowing in the wind – the sound of one hand clapping – the essence of human existence. Open against the sky – emptiness – enormity.
This was truly an experience of enlightenment. All cares, all pain fell away from me. I had an incredible sense of freedom such as I had never experience before. Every moment of every day we were free – free to choose – free to create pain or peace – free to go or stay – free to live or die. This extraordinary experience of freedom, and of the dropping away of normal perceptions, lasted for three days. Everything looked different. I don’t mean it felt different. I mean it looked different. I remember seeing a bird flying across the sky and it was simply Bird. Maybe even that isn’t true. It was simply what it is without any name.
And here is a magic contact:
I had struggled so long to find a realistic experience of God. After years of effort, meditation and discipline I realised that I didn’t know what to do. So I sat every day without any direction or effort and waited. I did this for an hour each day. I felt that if there is any real thing it would be like me waiting on a street corner for a friend to come. If he or she came I would feel a touch on my shoulder and would know it for real, and not as a sort of imaginary or emotional thing.
Then one evening I had got out of bed to go to the toilet, and just as I was approaching my bed to get back in I heard a voice very clearly saying, “You have asked what are the results of God’s activity upon one – now watch closely.” Within days I was led into a direct experience of that touch. It was a very powerful experience of the spirit cleansing me and growing me toward the stature we can all attain, and it carried on week after week. It was like an initiation into the Mother Church – an experience of where all beliefs have sprung from.
Awareness of the Self is important. It contains what is our own personal wisdom and insight regarding life in general and particular. It is not full of creeds and dogmas and conflict as are organised attempts to express the spiritual. But it does have its dark side. To grasp the stone with special powers; understand the significance of the iridescent blue square; or realise we are a bubble, as these dreams depict, we need a clear rational mind which allows intuition and feeling but is not relinquished or lost in the immensity of the Self. Touching the vastness of our being we may ourselves feel vast, all knowing, a guru, the great world leader, Christ or Buddha. In this state Jung says a person may lose all sense of humour and drop ordinary human contacts. One is then lost in the archetype, possessed by it in some degree.
Negative relations with this archetype might be that as a defence against meeting our pain and childhood trauma as we enter this vast storehouse of our being. As a way of escaping the self responsibility for our difficult human condition we might fly off into feelings of loving all things, of knowing the mystery of it all, of being the Buddha. The problem is that while it might be true we are in essence the Christ, or have wisdom, these realisations are distorted by the undealt with childhood traumas and longings. See: aura; first example under archetypes; compensation theory; mandala; ring; spiritual life in dreams; yoga and dreams.
Useful Questions and Hints:
In what way have I ever touched this wonder that underlies all things?
Have I ever opened myself to its possibility, or am I locked into the prevalent belief system that sees the body as the only reality?
Do I still see Christ or Buddha as belonging to particular organisations or dogmas, or have I moved to realising they are more than that, and represent the core of myself?
It might help reading The Keyboard Condition – Individuation – Methods of Awakening
Spirit-Child: The Aboriginal Experience of Pre-Birth Communication
by Elizabeth Carman and Neil Carman, Ph.D.
The stories that we hear of pre-birth communication are typically about a woman sensing contact with her future child — so much so, that it is difficult to keep the subject from being classified as “just” a women’s issue. How fascinating, therefore, to learn of a culture where it is primarily the men who experience contact before conception. This article, excerpted from Cosmic Cradle, a forthcoming book by Elizabeth Carman and Neil Carman, Ph.D., presents stories from Aboriginal groups as reported in anthropological research. It offers a glimpse into a world imbued with very different assumptions from our own, reminding us of the plasticity of the human psyche.
Cosmic Cradle (publication scheduled for early 2000) is an extraordinary compendium of evidence for the most mysterious phase of human existence–the stage before conception. It brings together traditional accounts, little-known historic references, and interviews with contemporary Americans. This broad-based research makes it clear that the experience of pre-birth communication has been known and recorded throughout history and across cultures world-wide. More information is available online at CosmicCradle.com or email Elizabeth Carman.
Communications with the unborn may be as old as human life itself. Aboriginal peoples of Australia, a territory slightly larger than the U.S., had unique economic, political, social, and linguistic characteristics. At the same time, they shared one extraordinary belief: conceiving a child is founded in a spiritual event–a “spirit-child” selects his parents and this event enables biology to take its course. A Forrest River Aborigine, as a prime example, dreams of a spirit-child playing with his spears or with his wife’s paper bark; the husband thrusts the spirit-child towards his wife and it enters by her foot. Conception then proceeds into pregnancy (except in certain cases where conception occurs several years later).
The term “spirit-child” roughly equates with the Western concept of the soul. Aside from that similarity, the Aboriginal pre-conception paradigm contrasts with science’s understanding of pregnancy. The first anthropologists to hear Aboriginal pre-conception reports assumed that the spirit-child pre-empted the role of male sperm, and labeled this notion “the most elementary belief concerning the genesis of the individual.”
Even more puzzling, Aborigines held their belief after learning about biological conception as an accidental collision of sperm and egg. They contended that sexual intercourse, though it may prepare the way for the child’s entry into the womb, by itself is not the sole cause of conception–since a spirit-child is necessary. As elucidated by anthropologist Ashley Montagu(1):
The Aboriginal world is essentially a spiritual world, and material acts are invested with a spiritual significance… The spiritual origin of children is the fundamental belief, and among the most important stays of the social fabric. It is absurd then to think…intercourse could be the cause of a child.
A contemporary researcher who lived with the Aborigines explains the spirit-child concept(2):
The new life which has chosen to enter the woman is a complete entity who has originated at some time in the long distant past, and is immeasurably more ancient and completely independent of any living person.
Perception of spirit-children depends upon intuitive ability. Aborigines generally agree that the spirit-children are tiny, fully developed babies. Four versions follow:
Ngalia: Spirit-children have dark hair with light-colored streaks. They sit under shady trees, waiting for a compatible mother to pass by. Meanwhile they eat the gum of acacia trees, and drink morning dew.
Tiwi: Spirit-children are small dark-skinned people who are two to three inches high, but reach nine inches in maturity.
Western Australian Aborigines: Spirit-children are as small as walnuts and wander over the land, playing in pools like ordinary children.
Central Australian Arunta: A spirit-child is the germ of a complete pre-formed individual, about the size of a tiny, red, round pebble.
Pregnancy and Dreams
Birth Dreams During Pregnancy
Pregnancy is one of the most powerful experiences any woman can face. A woman’s body changes enormously during childhood and adolescence, but to meet such enormous physical, personal and social changes as an adult is a huge challenge. A woman’s dreams at such a time not only show some of the detailed events that are occurring physically, but also comment on psychological and relationship events and subtleties too. See A Woman’s Creative Power
Robert Van de Castle made a special study of women’s dreams during pregnancy – (Our Dreaming Mind). Other studies were made by Carolyn Winget and Frederic Kapp.
Castle found that during pregnancy women tend to dream about buildings and houses a lot more than in a control group. The dreams would be about things like adding a porch to the house, or seeing distorted parts of a building. These he felt were expressing the change in physical shape the woman was experiencing. As pregnancy progressed so did the shape or size of the buildings.
Those Scary Dreams
Other themes more common in the dreams of pregnant women than in those of a control group are those of animals and water. At first such dreams of water or animals may be calm, even healing, but later on in pregnancy there may be dreams of turmoil or even nightmare. Several studies show this is normal in the sense that it is experienced by many women, and probably reflects the anxieties unconsciously held by the woman about her unborn baby and about birth.
It is also very common for women to dream about actually having the baby, and these dreams are often bizarre or even disturbing to the dreamer. Winget and Kapp found that a high percentage of dreams showed this theme of anxiety, and by following their research through, they were able to observe that the more anxiety dreams a mother-to-be had, the easier the birth was. They conjectured that the anxiety dreams release a lot of tension and fear, and the mother is therefore more relaxed at the time of the birth – usually less than ten hours.
The anxiety dreams include such images as giving birth to a baby who is only a few ounces in weight – the baby is malformed – the baby is born dead – the baby is blind or deaf or injured. (more…)
Archetype of Christ
Although people generally think of Christ as an historical figure, as a human experience he depicts powerful influences acting upon your personality. For a start, Christianity is a huge social and political force in the world. Many of us as children are educated to accept its beliefs or we meet its influence in one way or another. Therefore Christ in our dreams often depicts this enormous influence and how we relate to it – the influence can be many sided, from a recognition of the best in oneself to the hatred and anger about what organised Christianity has done to many.
Although people generally think of Christ as an historical figure, Christ is never that – even though pictures and paintings depict Christ as a human being. That is because we have been taught that Jesus and Christ are the same person. But it clearly says that when Jesus was baptised something immense happened to him. “Now when all the people were baptised, it came to pass, that Jesus also was baptised – of John in Jordan – and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven which said, ‘Thou art my beloved Son: in thee I am well pleased.’ (Luke 3:21-22).”
It tells us that the heavens opened and something from the cosmos entered Jesus and transformed him into having Christ Consciousness. For Christ was an aspect of Godness and had always existed. It is easier to see it rather like our growth. When we were babies we grew and entered another level of awareness and ability called childhood. Later another huge change entered us and we became adolescents – again with a different mental and emotional state.
Many people have attained the change of Christ consciousness. It is a further stage of human growth. As an example Siddartha became the Buddha when he experienced such a great change. In different languages this change has different names such as Krishna Consciousness. It might shock some people to see Christ linked with Buddha and Krishna – if so you have a lot of growing to do and if you do you too can enter Christ consciousness.
Like any of the world’s great religious figures, Christ can also be a very potent compensatory symbol. Each of us have feeling responses to events. Some events lead to a pleasurable response, others to a painful response. As children, and often as adults, we are largely at the mercy of events as to whether our life is experienced as painful or pleasurable. But there is also a way of creating our own response that a few of us use consciously. If we are lonely or depressed for instance, we may read a book, go out with a friend or watch a film, stimulating feelings that displace the loneliness or despair. This ability to produce positive or different feelings is often seen in the dream process. By holding in mind an image connected with hope and love, feelings will be produced that will compensate in some measure for pain or depression we may be feeling.
But Christ is used to compensate for what may be felt as crushing or defeating life circumstances or inner despair. Such compensation may also be used to deal with things missing from ones life, such as a sexual partner or social achievement.
However, being able to achieve Christ Consciousness, or Buddha Consciousness, or even Krishna Consciousness, is much more that a compensation, it is a transformation of ones life from one in which misery is often a part to one of which is symbolised in the New Testament as walking on water. If we take it out of its symbolism it tells us that our emotions that can be stormy and difficult to deal with can be dealt with and even tamed by the immense power we hold within us, which most of us have lost contact with. I am talking about a huge force that can be contacted or allowed into ones life. Without it we are often powerless to deal with negative feelings, and so many people take the path of suicide. But with it we can meet them easily, walking over the surface of such stormy emotions.
The fundamental power of Christ as an archetypal force lies in a that direction however. As an archetype Christ enters our life with powers of redemption, of transformation, as an aid to lead us out of awful life situations, and a type of love transcending the human limitations of jealousy and dependence.
It it is a universal consciousness which is a part of every person, whatever their beliefs. To become aware of it we must somehow have broken our heart and self so be aware of such a huge awareness. See Ages of Love.
Example: It is difficult to convey the immediacy of these experiences deep in the sleep state. Over and over I experienced fantasies, the drama, of being a sacrifice. As one who expressed the new ideas, the new consciousness, I was beaten and smashed to death because I was a threat to the old instinctive order. But the fragments of my strewn body, my flesh, were eaten by those who had killed me. And my flesh was like Seeds that grew within those who devoured, and became in them the new awareness they had sought to destroy. In another of the series I was a willing sacrifice. Through the stress and ritual of being willingly lead to death, I would receive the new consciousness and in some way bring it to my people.
I am going through masses of evolutionary feelings. The struggle to develop self-consciousness, and how the Messiah was first of all a fantasy, then an embodiment of this by individuals. Then how other people lived certain aspects of it, and were taken to be the Messiah, the Krishna, whatever. They did bring into the body another type of awareness, that mankind had been struggling toward for so long. This is where the mystery of the birth of Christ comes from. Why there is no real historical person. Why there is so much myth and legends surrounding such events. It is the embodiment of something mankind needed so much, to help them out of their crisis into the next revolutionary level.
Often overlooked in this influence is the power to look at oneself and life very clearly, very honestly, without hiding behind excuses or self deceptions. Perhaps more than anything else though, Christ is a cultural image depicting the power of our own highest possibilities. It is the outreach to us of collective human love.
Christ is not the only historical figure with these associations. Krishna and Shiva in the Indian culture, Mohammed in Islamic culture, Odin in the Viking age, and Quetzalcoatl/ Kukulkán/ Gukumatz in the South American culture have the same sort of power. Some aspects of the Buddha are approached for redemption and there are many saviour heroes from other cultures such as Anansi in Africa, Cúchulainn in Eire, Osiris in Egypt and Hercules in Greece. Apollonius of Tyana is also recorded as living a sacred life. But Christianity is simply a new expression of an ancient theme.
Mithra was born in a cave, and on the 25th December. He was born of a Virgin. He travelled far and wide as a teacher and illuminator of men. His great festivals were the winter solstice and the Spring equinox (Christmas and Easter). He had twelve companions or disciples (the twelve months). He was buried in a tomb, from which however he rose again; and his resurrection was celebrated yearly with great rejoicings. He was called Savior and Mediator, and sometimes figured as a Lamb; and sacramental feasts in remembrance of him were held by his followers.
Osiris was born on the 361st day of the year, say the 27th December. He too, like Mithra and Dionysus, was a great traveller. As King of Egypt he taught men civil arts, and “tamed them by music and gentleness, not by force of arms”; he was the discoverer of corn and wine. But he was betrayed by Typhon, the power of darkness, and slain and dismembered. “This happened,”says Plutarch, “on the 17th of the month Athyr, when the sun enters into the Scorpion” (the sign of the Zodiac which indicates the oncoming of Winter). His body was placed in a box, but afterwards, on the 19th, came again to life, and, as in the cults of Mithra, Dionysus, Adonis and others, so in the cult of Osiris, an image placed in a coffin was brought out before the worshippers and saluted with glad cries of “Osiris is risen.” “His sufferings, his death and his resurrection were enacted year by year in a great mystery-play at Abydos.” Quoted from Pagan and Christain Creeds by Edward Carpenter
“Such a myth, however, consists of symbols that have not been invented consciously. They have happened. It was not the man Jesus who created the myth of the god-man. It existed for many centuries before his birth. He himself was seized by this symbolic idea, which, as St. Mark tells us, lifted him out of the narrow life of the Nazarene carpenter.” Quoted from Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung
I know I hung on the wind-swept tree Nine nights through, Pierced by a spear, dedicated to Odin, I myself to myself.
There is, above all, the self-sacrifice of the hero-saviour: as Toynbee puts it in A Study of History, ‘A very god who dies for different worlds under diverse names-for a Minoan World as Zagreus, for a Sumeric World as Tammuz, for a Hittite World as Attis, for a Scandinavian World as Balder, for a Syriac World as Adonis (“Our Lord”), for an Egyptian World as Osiris, for a Shi’i World as Husayn, for a Christian World as Christ.’
Depending upon the culture we were raised in, we will unconsciously put an image to the power of change and transformation that we experience. People in all ages, all cultures and all social circumstances have experienced what is often felt to be a divine influence touching them in some way.
I believe through observation that such long held and powerful traditional beliefs are based on something functional. The description of compensation above is an example of this. To be able to survive crushing life experience is a real achievement, not an imagined one, and is therefore functional. Using an image to evoke hope and motivation doesn’t make it less of an achievement. But the archetype links with patterns of love and strength actually lived by others. They are then patterns remaining in the collective experience of us and can be accessed. When we touch these powerful racial memories we may clothe them in the image of our cultural hero or saviour.
To be clear about this, the power that is found is a release of our own potential emerging from our core self. So in this sense the image of Christ is a graphic presentation of our own innate wonder. The patterns of love and strength mentioned above, and other behaviours lived by past individuals that remain in collective memory, offer keys or clues as to how to release this innate potential. That such keys, as well as ones innate potential, are often clothed in symbols and traditional imagery, is simply because we have not made such parts of our potential or heritage clearly conscious. They thus emerge from our unconscious clothed in whatever imagery or ideas we can accept or allow. See The Inner Path of Christ.
So what does the archetype of Christ the Redeemer and Good Shepherd mean in this sense?
To understand this we must first remember that our ego, the sense that we have of being a distinct person, is not one and the same thing as our body’s biological processes, or of our deep psychological processes. We all have some understanding of this because we can observe in ourselves or in others, that we – our personality – may want something that is very much against what our body wants. People with eating disorders for instance may actually die from malnutrition. People who have a fear of sex may constantly fight or repress their sexual urge. A person is often at odds with the natural processes and urges that underlie their conscious ego.
Norman MacKenzie explains this very well in his book . Dreams and Dreaming. Writing about the clinical use of LSD to help patients deal with various forms of neurosis, he says that the drug enabled a massive observation of how people’s mind worked, and how people related to their unconscious drives. When a patient first took LSD one of the commonest reactions was massive anxiety. This degree of anxiety usually arises only when we are threatened physically or mentally. The patient fears the drug is robbing them of control and will overwhelm them. In fact what is happening is that the repressive defences the person uses to keep their inner drives and processes under control are being relaxed. See The Two Powers Explained.
People relate to this threat in two major ways. They either fight to keep control, and employ all manner of techniques such as keeping their attention focused outwardly by such things as talking, walking about, drawing, holding their breath or dancing – or they surrender to what is being experienced. To meet the parts of ones nature that have previously been pushed into unconsciousness, one needs to surrender in some degree. If the person fights the loss of control as the new material from within is emerging, it sometimes feels as if they are disintegrating. Their body may feel as if it is changing or dying, and they are losing themselves.
Below are two descriptions from people who used LSD therapeutically that illustrates these different responses.
It didn’t happen at first, but gradually I began to feel that if I relaxed I would not be able to hold back my emotions, that I would do something that would be seen as crazy. So I sat holding onto myself, literally tensing my muscles to hold back whatever might happen to me. Time seemed to stretch and I felt as if I would never get out of this tension and difficulty. I just had to sit through it, live through it, and hope there would be an end. I also wanted to get away, but I was frightened I would get lost, like I was a child of four or five. Maybe that’s how I felt at that age, so I had to stop myself from doing what I wanted to do. A.K.
Here is someone else’s description of a similar situation.
Early in the session I started having fantasies about being attacked. Each time it happened I put the fantasy aside because I couldn’t see why I would be having these feelings that I was being attacked. There were a lot of images flowing into my mind also about the horror of life in general – babies abused, children murdered, men and women shot or tortured. The fantasies returned and several men attacked me and were trying to drag me off somewhere against my will. As the fantasy progressed, or replayed, I began to realise that it only appeared like an attack because I was resisting the process. In fact the men wanted to show me something that was important to me. They were being quite gentle, but because of my resistance, it felt to me like an aggressive act. I then let myself be carried off by the men, and began to feel as if a great chunk of my nature has been held back since childhood because of anxiety. In fact I had been frightened to ‘live’ this part of me. I had held so much of myself back throughout most of my life that I constantly felt there was something I was missing and had to search for. But it wasn’t an external thing – it was the me I had denied. B.M.
AK was using tensions and experiencing fears he had developed in childhood to hold back feelings that he had been taught were not acceptable. In BM’s experience he learned to move beyond such tensions and fears.
In observing such struggles in thousands of people, the doctors and clinicians working with them saw that no matter what the patient was experiencing, even if they felt completely overwhelmed for a while and were lost in their fears and emotions, something within them was learning from the experience and attempting to integrate not only the insights gained, but also the various parts of their nature that were in conflict or split. Mackenzie says, ‘No one knows what type of ‘thinking’ this may be. It appears to be different both from ‘reality thinking’ and ‘autistic thinking,’ from the patterns of conscious thought and the imagery of fantasy – a kind of bridge between two types of mental process.’
Jung observed something similar in the psyche. He called it the Transforming Principle, or the self-regulating action, which constantly attempts psychic growth. He stated that one can watch this at work by noting many dreams from the same individual over a period of time. When one does this ‘tendencies become visible, then vanish, then return again. …… one can observe a sort of hidden regulating or directing tendency at work, creating a slow, imperceptible process of psychic growth-the process of individuation.’
Most religions call it the power of God at work in ones life, and many of them teach that if one surrenders to it, one will be healed and made whole. Different people and cultures represent or depict this transforming power within them in their own way. It is often represented as Christ, but equally as well as something more abstract. However, whatever we wish to name it, there is in us a potential that has in it more than we presently know of ourselves, and it has the power to heal and transform. It is observable that healing or therapy proceeds by a series of problem-solving movements. As soon as one difficulty is reviewed and removed, another appears, waiting in line to take its place.
In BM’s experience he learned to move beyond such tensions and fears. But also he says something that is at the heart of what this archetype brings. He says, “It wasn’t an external thing – It was the ‘me’ I had denied.”
That is the heart of the Christ archetype. It holds in it the you that may have been crushed, denied, traumatised, repressed, in some way held back from emerging as a reality in your life. It is the potential you hold within you that has not been allowed to flower. It is the very best of what you are, not some distant possibility that you have to get from outside yourself. See: life’s little secrets; compensation theory; self-regulation dreams and fantasy;.
Here is another personal description. This time not from an LSD session, but from a man allowing the transforming action to take place while fully awake and without drugs. This makes clear what it is like to confront the power of transformation within.
In the previous week I had met a feeling I could not account for, which had left me wondering what was happening. I had the very strong impression that I had killed a man and now had the guilt of blood on my hands. This time in the group, when I surrendered, something I could never have suspected happened. I was standing with my eyes closed, but it seemed I could see, because the spontaneous mental imagery was so clear, that I was standing under a clear night sky, with the stars brilliant above. But there was a star more brilliant than the others that fell to Earth, and I knew it was something wonderful and special so hurried to see what it was. Others had also seen it, simple rural people like myself. What we found was a baby. But the wonder of it was so much I fell on my knees and couldn’t stop myself crying out again and again – A baby! A baby!
The tears and the cries were because I had the clear feeling or knowledge, a direct knowing, that all of the heavens, all of life’s mystery, had come to life in this baby. And to actually know this, to feel the impact of it, was almost more than I could bear. But part of the amazement was that this was every baby born. It wasn’t just one special baby. It was my own birth too! All the mystery of life was born in me. I sobbed with the pain and wonder of it.
Then the scene changed and I was standing by a dirt road. There were lots of people lining the road waiting. I didn’t know what for. Then excitement rose as a man came walking along the road toward us. He looked very ordinary to me. But as he got near he looked right at me and a huge feeling of love swept through me. I knew this man loved me in a way I had never been loved before. Then he walked directly to me and took hold of my hands and said, ‘You are my disciple’.
I stumbled backwards away from him. The love was too much, too painful. Looking into his eyes I knew I had been born with all that love, but I had killed it in myself. The blood on my hands was because I had murdered Him/myself. I had crushed the flower of my sexuality through fear. I had denied my own wonder and value in the world, looking to others for guidance. I had killed Christ in me – Christ who was the splendour of my own life and love if I dared to live it – my own birthright. But he had touched my hands, and I went to each of the people in the group and put my hands on them, trying to rub some of that magic onto them. Thomas.
As can be seen from Thomas’s description, the image of Christ holds in it not only the power of self-revelation for him, but also the relationship of teacher to disciple, and transforming love for one in need of wholeness. Thomas cannot help but think of Christ as separate from himself, even though at the same time he realises with deep emotion, that he is gazing at and being touched by his own wholeness, his own potential. See: compensation theory; the fundamental process.
This paradox needs to be remembered not only when meeting the Redeemer archetype, but almost any archetype. Also implicit in this meeting is the possibility that because confronting ones own wholeness and seeing ones own guilt, or the smallness of oneself, can lead to great personal transformation, it may lead the present personality, as it is at the moment, to dying and being left behind. Thus the meeting with Christ may include a personal experience of death and resurrection.
So the experience of meeting Christ may be a representation of the denied force of joyous life within – denied out of attempting to live social or religious rules and regulations, or social pressure to conform. Therefore, because ultimately we are an integral part of the universe, and have no existence outside of it, when we meet Christ/our wholeness and potential, we also become aware in some degree of the hugeness we are a part of or an expression of. We meet a sense of eternity, an awareness of the symbiotic – or cooperative processes or forces – operative in human life and the cosmos.
The Sunday School or Church Christ
This is another aspect of the Christ archetype and depicts social norms, the generally accepted morals and social rules. This ‘Christ’ comes about because the church tends to represent traditional values and national history, and attempts to press people to live these values. The dreamer may have a child-like relationship with this Christ, or if attempting to be self responsible, be in conflict with it. Some people find this Christ has a castrating role in their life, and flee in horror. In fact this aspect of social indoctrination may lead to such a burden of guilt and suppression that it can create psychic cripples. Trying to do all the ‘right’ things may lead us to the point where ‘we can’t say no to a glass of water without a pang of guilt.’
Two of the great forces that push at the human soul or psyche are, firstly, social pressure, such as the moral norm; and secondly, biological pressures such as the sex drive. Individuals may fight a lifelong battle with one or the other of these. The social criminal typifies battle with social authority pressures and rules; the ascetic and the bulimic battle with biological drives.
These two forces can be seen in the symbols of Christ and Mary Magdalene. The battle of these two immense forces is not really won until there is the marriage or unity between the two. The following dream and its exploration illustrate this dynamically.
I was in the basement of the house where I lived in London. I had taken some floorboards up because they were rotten. Underneath I saw a large white serpent or worm, somehow connected with a dead evil woman like a force of destruction and evil. I seemed to understand the evil could corrupt all of London, that it lived in a great underground lake that existed under all of London. I poked at the serpent with a piece of wood and it came to life and plunged into the earth. There seemed to be an air filled hole that I poked into and the wood I was using was wrenched away from my hands.
My family thought I was crazy because I was trying to tell them about this and sent for a doctor. I was very pleased to see him because he was very unbiased though, not believing – nor disbelieving. I explained my experience and feelings. With him there I dared to poke at the floor with a long scaffold pole. The pole was ripped from my grasp by some force below. Then we tied the pole to a beam and it ripped part of the beam off. I felt there was enough power to tear down my house if I had used it as an anchor. Then I saw Christ standing on my right, and the terrifying woman on my left, and they came together and the evil was neutralised – but so was the power of Christ. Mathew
Mathew saw the Christ figure as the moral norm in the society he was raised; a morality he had struggled with all his life. The woman he experienced as the urges such as his sexual needs, with which he had also struggled. When Christ and the woman merged he felt enormous peace.
The positive aspect of ‘Sunday School Christ’ is that prior to maturing enough to take realistic self and social responsibility, people need guidelines for behaviour. They often yearn for security or certainty. Religion in the form of powerful positive declarations of ‘truth’, supply this need for many people. For such people, making personal decisions in the face of the ever shifting external situations is enormously stressful. So organised and dogmatic religion is of great strength to them.
The Ideal Christ
This is yet another facet of this archetype, and is the psychological process which causes us not to take responsibility for our own highest ideals; our own yearnings for the good; our own most powerful urges arising against what we see as evils in the world. This influences us to wait for a sign from Christ or God in our dream or waking life in order to gain authority, or to overcome the anxiety associated with the urges. We want God to say we should act in a certain way because we are not willing to be self responsible. We deny in ourselves the core self and its divinity.
Example: ‘I stood outside a castle. It was closed and guarded by soldiers in armour. Wondering how to get in I thought that if I dressed and acted as a soldier I would be allowed entrance. It worked and inside Christ met me and said he had important work for me to do.’ Sonia.
The closely guarded secret is Sonia’s own impulses to do some sort of socially creative work. She doesn’t want to own them as her own. It is much easier if she can say ‘Christ told me to do this.’ In this way she avoids direct encounter with opposition and has a feeling that she has greater authority than her own. Joan of Arc might well be seen in this light.
The Healing Christ
The Christ archetype has powerful healing influence for many people.
Example: ‘A fierce battle was raging with bullets flying. I immediately fell down and ‘played dead’. It wasn’t that I was hurt in any way, but I didn’t want to be at any risk in the fight. As I lay there I saw a tall well built man in soldiers uniform walk to me. He gave no sign of any fear concerning the bullets, and quietly knelt beside me. I felt he was Christ, but was confused by him being a soldier. He placed a hand on my back and gradually worked his fingers under the shell of a large limpet type creature that I had never before known was parasitically attached to my back. I could feel him pull it away, but knew its tentacles still ran right into my chest. It seemed and alien had entered me. He then sat me up and told me how I could rid myself of the tentacles and so be healed.’ Peter Y.
Peter, whose dream this was, had a debilitating psychosomatic illness at the time of the dream, causing pain where the tentacles ran. The shell is his defences against feeling his own hurts and inner conflicts. The dream shows him contacting a strength which is not afraid of his internal battlefield or conflicts, and can show ways of healing real human problems. The healing rests upon the dreamer’s conscious action, not Christ’s, suggesting the dreamer taking responsibility for his own situation. Peter realised he had been avoiding his own internal battles, but felt he had found a strength – in the Big Man – which would support his efforts to find healing. In fact he met his conflicts and grew beyond his ailments.
Peter’s conflicts were between his love for his children and his love for another woman. The Christ he met was his own undammed life, the flood of loving sexuality, the strength to burst through social rules and regulations because love or life pushes. When we find it in ourselves we don’t give a hang about bullets, death, right or wrong, because we have a sense of our own integral existence within life, and our own rightness and place in eternity.
The Integral or Cosmic Christ
Each of us have, perhaps deep in their unconscious, a sense of connectedness with the whole, with the cosmos. Perhaps it is best to call this our own wholeness, which incorporates all the light and darkness in us, all the expressed and the potential. We may be little aware of this. We may be denying it sceptically as Lester is in the example below.
Example: ‘I am a journalist reporting on the return of Christ. He is expected on a paddle steamer going upstream on a large river. I am very sceptical and watch disciples and followers gather on the rear deck. The guru arrives, dressed in simple white robes. He has long, beautiful auburn hair and beard, and a gentle wise face. He begins to tap a simple rhythm on a tabla or Indian drum. It develops into complex intermingling of orchestral rhythms as everyone joins in. I now realise he is Christ, and feel overwhelmed with awe as I try to play my part in the music. I’m tapping with a pen and find myself fumbling. A bottle or can opener comes to me from the direction of Christ. I try to beat a complementary rhythm, a small part of a greater, universal music.’ Lester S.
Finding this inner connection with things can enrich all that we do in life, even if it is a very humble thing like Lester’s can opener. The awareness of connectedness and wholeness brings with it a realisation of taking part in the unimaginably grand drama of life. It gives a feeling, no matter what the state of our body, crippled or healthy, that we have something that makes any faults insignificant. It doesn’t take all the difficulties out of life, but it is a wonderful companion on the way. We come to know that at base we are a wonderful shining being, and that life and its circumstances and events, are a way in which we are learning to let that internal wonder shine out.
Another way of looking at this is by seeing Christ as a process. Christ might then be seen as a collective identity arising in the consciousness of humanity. This relates to us as individuals much as our identity relates to the cells of our body. Just as our identity survives the death of billions of cells in our lifetime, so the Christ consciousness survives our death and change, integrates our experience, transcends our function, and has a personal relationship with us.
Example: We are each living that mystery play – that mysterious drama of which the Christian myth is a summary. Each in our own way play out that drama we call life. Each of us give birth to or abort the divine in us. Each of us chooses whether we are going to wash our hands of meeting that splendid call of our own being, or whether we will crucify it on our own political, monetary, or power hungry demands. Each of us makes the decision of whether we will denounce our relationship with the love that is in our own heart.
We don’t have to be a saint to live that Mystery. We are living it now! We live every tiny part of the story. For some of us, one tiny part of that grand story becomes a central theme for us — motherhood, the loss of the lover, the departed parents, the betrayal, the struggle with the forces of evil, or that grand search for the beloved.
What part of the story are you experiencing? Is it the raising of the dead? The healing of personal blindness? Feeding the hunger of the multitude? Working in the garden of life? Being a shepherd?
In dreams and religion Christ is also represented as the son of the Cosmos or God. This aspect of Christ possibly comes about because of a sense many people have that the origin of their personal life is from beyond the Earth. This powerful urge to see oneself as more than a physical body is symbolised by Christ, a being who transcends physical boundaries. Perhaps this is why the film ET is so moving for many.
Human beings of all ages have, when opening to the influence of their larger perceptions during meditation, trance, prayer, or drug use, experienced awareness of love existing behind the creation of things, a love that is the source of the big-bang itself, a love that willingly died that we might exist. Humanity became aware of this at a particular stage of the development of self-awareness. The arrival at this stage of self-awareness was expressed in what we know as the historical Jesus. The internal awareness of the love that gave us being was projected outwardly and became the Christian Myth.
As one man who encountered Christ said, “Christ is like the sun, a principle of nature. No one can own it, although different individuals or groups can relate to it or use it in various ways, as happens with electricity. The Roman Catholic Church cornered the market so to speak. Prior to the Council of Nicaea there was a free market. You could say the church fenced off a beach and started charging people to go to it on Sundays. And there are different names for this natural principle in different languages.”
See: meetings with Christ; religion and dreams; Archetype of the self.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What aspects of the Christ archetype, if any, am I influenced by?
Am I repulsed or held by the influence of the ‘live by these rules’ pressure?
Am I helped by the belief there is a divine loving presence?
Do I feel the power of an inner wonder and potential I am allowing into my life?
In recognising my relationship with Christ, can I evolve it to something more satisfying?
Try Talking with a Dream Character.
Anaesthesia the Mind and Dreams
Although anaesthetics are often thought of only as a means of reducing pain, several drugs used as anaesthetics may also produce powerful psychological effects. Winston Churchill reported an extraordinary vision experienced during anaesthesia. During it he reached a state of mind in which he felt that his awareness encompassed all that existed and was to be known. In this exalted state he was gradually aware there was another horizon forming beyond his present knowledge. Then he broke through to this new realm, gradually reached the point of once more feeling he encompassed it all, only to find another horizon.
Modern research tends to call this experience the ‘ecstatic state’. Other terms for it are ‘cosmic consciousness’, vision or revelation. William James, when experimenting with nitrous oxide, reported a similar experience. During it he felt he knew the secret of the universe and all in it. On awakening however all he could recall in detail was the verse – ‘Higamus Hogumus women are monogamous – Hogumus Higamus, men are polygamous.’ As he was an influential thinker for many years this led to the standpoint that such experiences were of little value. See: a new look at enlightenment; secret of the universe dreams.
On going into or emerging from anaesthesia some people report the remembrance of dreams that had occurred in the past, or the recurrence of a nightmare which had been previously experienced. In the latter situation the nightmare is usually one which expresses some traumatic past experience, such as an actual battle scene or motor accident. In my own observation of such trauma being re-presented in dreams or in abreacted experience, this appearance during anaesthesia once more suggests a link with a self-regulatory process active in the psyche. See: Life’s Little Secrets; compensation theory; self-regulation dreams and fantasy.
Quite a number of people report the experience of standing apart from their body during anaesthesia. This out of body experience – OBE – is now well documented, and cases have been followed up by investigating the circumstances and the information provided by the person experiencing the OBE. In several cases for instance, the person under anaesthetic is taken into a room they have never seen before and operated on by people they have not met. They experience the separation of their awareness from their anaesthetised body and not only observe the people in the room and their actions and conversation, but also sometimes go exploring adjacent rooms. Their descriptions have frequently completely tied in with the facts of the location they were operated in, the people present, and the adjacent rooms.
See: Going Beyond – Dimensions of Human Experience; Talking with Dead; near death experiences; esp in dreams; out of body experience.
In the book Ishi – The Last of his Tribe, by Theodora Kroeber, Ishi, a Native American unspoilt by exposure to Western life styles, was allowed to witness a tonsil operation on a child. He was horrified to see the child put into a sleep state by a man who had not himself been initiated into consciously entering the inner worlds of the unconscious. He was vitally aware that without such knowledge the anaesthetist was exposing the child to many real dangers. In fact many people have been left with psychological scars from lack of awareness on the part of surgeons and anaesthetists, of what is being experienced by the person being anaesthetised. See: The Labours of Hero Cules, a straightforward description of what it was like to remember an actual tonsil operation.
A patient under anaesthesia for a short operation told of ‘a complete revelation about the ultimate truth of everything. I understood the ‘entire works.’ It was a tremendous illumination. I was filled with unspeakable joy.’
But another description of a child being anaesthetised during a nose operation:
Example: As I explored the dream it worked out as my struggled to avoid the rectal anesthesia as a child. I didn’t experience the emotions of that, only the movements and intuitions about its connection with the dream. That is, I kept saying, “I didn’t hurt anybody. I didn’t.” This was expressive of a sense that the pain inflicted to my face (nose) during the operation, must be because I had done something wrong. I could see that I associated inflicted pain with the punishment a parent gave because of some “bad” action. I could not understand why the pain had been inflicted on me.
Also, I felt that religion itself was a projection out of the unconscious, from such fundamental premises. In other words, inflicted pain equals punishment. Pain equals God’s punishment.
Because I felt I was dying during the anesthetic, the sense of death equated with pain and people hurting one. At the time of the anesthetic my conscious identity had been plunged with awareness deep into the unconscious. The loss of shape or senses was felt to be death. So a conditioned reflex had been set. During anesthesia I had fought desperately with the nurses – for my life. What I was fighting for my life and kicked and struggled so much I had kicked the bottle of anaesthetic out of the nurses grasp and it broke. Then I was held as a fresh bottle was used and the anaesthetic was poured into my rectum – it couldn’t be given by nose – and I have a memory of the nurses saying, “Don’t do that!” To me it was like a hypnotic command saying, “Don’t fight for your life. Give up!” That was kept in me till I relived it using LifeStream.