Category: Dreams

Bed Hopping With The Hostiles

On By Douglas M.In Dream Interpretation, Dreams1 Comment

About a week ago I had a dream where I was taking in a very beautiful mountain setting. When I awoke the next morning I felt a strong desire to get myself together and focused on the sadhana, which for me largely revolves around rejecting the unwanted thoughts and trying to keep the mind quiet.  I was able to build up a little momentum over the course of two days, and on the late evening of the second day I felt a little bit of calm and clearness open up inside me. It was nice because I haven’t had anything happen like that in a while, and it may have been what that mountain scene in my dream represented. A beautiful scene in nature can also have that effect of clearing you out on the inside.

Anyway I sat with the feeling  for a while, and then something odd happened before I went to bed.  Over the course of say 10 minutes there were around seven quick flickers of the power going out, but so fast it didn’t reset any of the clocks in the house. At first I wondered if was just my lamp, but on the third time or so I noticed my lava lamp was going out too. Now I know this isn’t some odd paranormal event I’m describing, but there was something queer about it, something that ‘tingled my spider sense’ so to speak.

So I went to bed and probably fell asleep around 11pm. I awoke a little after midnight to the sound of the smoke detector in my room chirping about every 30 seconds.  It does that when the battery gets low, and though it isn’t loud, it’s enough to keep you from falling asleep. I knew the detector would keep it up until the battery got changed, but rather than going to the garage and getting the ladder so I could change the battery, I decided to move to the guest bedroom for the night.  Once I got in there I  could still hear the chirping of the detector a little bit, but I figured if I put a pillow over my head that would muffle it enough that I could go back to sleep. Then strangely enough the chirping suddenly stopped. I decided though to stay in the guest bedroom in case it started doing it again and was able to fall asleep.

About an hour later I woke up from a rather obscure dream where I think I had been in bed in cataleptic trance (sleep paralysis), but not lucidly aware of that.  In the dream I could hear my parents outside the room fixing the smoke detector.  I was feeling a sense of unease and fear as I lay there, but without any specific cause.   At the end of the dream my mother came in and stood by the bed, and, still feeling the fear, I reached out and grabbed her arm for comfort.  I think it was right after that that I woke up.

Upon awakening I was still feeling the fear and didn’t want to open my eyes.  I figured a hostile force was trying to rattle me, and since the smoke detector was still keeping quiet, I went back to my room.  I really wanted to be back in my bed and next to the altar I have on my nightstand.  As I was getting back in bed I was thinking about my second altar on my computer desk as well as my collection of spiritual books, and how all three of those things added to the spiritual and protective atmosphere of the room.  I also thought about how in the guest room I’d been sleeping on top of the 3,000 plus comic books I’d collected as a teenager that are stored under the bed.  I realized those densely packed comic books we’re giving off a pretty low vital vibration.  Not as low perhaps as 3,000 porno magazines, but low enough that they degraded the atmosphere of the room and probably made things more conducive to a hostile influence.  That may sound far-fetched to some people, but allow me to share a quote that forever changed the way I look at books.  It’s from the book Nirvana: An Occult Experience by the Theosophist George Arundale.  He tells us:

I went the other day into one of our largest bookshops, and I found myself amidst a weird babel of sounds.  Every volume was vocal.  In each book was its author speaking his message – in some cases powerfully, clearly, upliftingly; in other cases, at the other extreme, vaguely, purposelessly, vulgarly, perhaps, often sordidly, or sometime with a well-chiseled form distressingly empty of purpose.  Each work was a sound-scheme, often a jarring sound-scheme, but sometimes a beautiful symphony.  Each book too, was a light-scheme, a dull light-scheme, a lurid light-scheme, a bright, clear light-scheme, now and then a gorgeous light-scheme.  I was not able to follow up this discovery, but I knew that books are alive, that some are in the savage state, and thence there is graded ascent in evolution to God-books, as the Scriptures, and others less than these, yet great.  I cannot pursue further this fascinating theme, but it will be realized that books are no longer mere tomes, they are living beings, for which their creators have serious responsibility, which speak and shed their influence around them.  A book in a room is a factor with which we have to reckon; a library is a potent force.1

Sri Aurobindo has pointed out in his letters that there are hostile forces standing ready to try and spoil any positive movement in the sadhana as well as the existence of mischievous vital physical entities that can do things like cause accidents to happen. In light of that, there does seem to be something to this idea of a gremlin which can cause mechanical or electronic problems, and I imagine a lot of people could relate a strange or bizarre occurrence with a mechanical or electronic device.  In fact, I just read a column the other day in one of our local papers where the writer talked about how her washing machine had been acting up but then went back to functioning normally after she prayed for it to start working again.  And the strangeness continued at our house too the following day with another smoke detector chirping for a few minutes before suddenly stopping.

Now to some people my theories about what happened here will just look like paranoid hogwash, but if you’re the type of person that is open to these ideas, and if I’ve communicated all this effectively, I think you’ll be able to see the possibility that something got into the atmosphere of the house and then set things up so I would retreat to the guest bedroom.  Whether it was something mischievous or hostile, or some combination of the two, I can’t say for sure, but the element of fear in my dream suggests something hostile to me. Why that hostile being or force didn’t try to attack me in my own room I don’t know, since I’ve had my share of brushes with the hostiles while sleeping in my own bed.  Maybe for some reason that night I wasn’t as vulnerable in my room.

Regardless I guess I got out of the guest bedroom before too much damage was done, since the next day I still had the strong urge to press on with the sadhana. Nothing really noteworthy happened on that day, but then on the fourth day after the mountain scene dream something else nice happened, and I found myself quite easily and spontaneously making the movement inwardly of remembering the divine and offering my work to the divine throughout the day.  It was so simple though; there were no bells and whistles about it, just a quiet and uncomplicated movement of devotion. It was a small opening of the heart chakra I believe and fit perfectly with the card I had drawn that day from Medhananda’s Eternity Game,2 which was ‘Heart’. That card represents the heart chakra, and like each card in the game it has four aspects. I usually pay attention to the aspect that is upright, and that day that aspect was ‘Simplicity.’  

The Heart Card
The Heart Card

Getting back to our main topic here I think I should point out the fact that most of the time nothing bad or scary happens to me when I find myself in cataleptic trance. While it’s true that hostile forces can come along and try to scare us or trick us in that state, the state itself is nothing to dread or be afraid of.  These hostile forces want us to be afraid of this state because you can have an out of body experience from there or, as I’ve found, very easily enter into a lucid dream. Now I can only speculate, but I think what happened in this case was hostile forces could see what was going on with me that day I experienced the calmness and clearness, perhaps saw that I was ripe to enter cataleptic trance or maybe even have a lucid dream, and they wanted to spoil any nice or uplifting dream experience I might have had. Or maybe the goal was to get me in the guest bedroom on top of those comic books and give me some bad dream experiences in an attempt to stifle the opening that was happening sadhana-wise. Or maybe they had both objectives.  How much they might have succeeded is impossible for me to say.  All I know is after my day of simplicity my four day sadhana rally came to an end, but that may not have been primarily due to hostile influences.  I feel these surges in the sadhana come from within, are cyclical and peter out or withdraw due to inner causes.  It’s natural part of the process, but at the same time not an excuse to be lax and just wait for the next sadhana rally to come.

So in closing I think the main lesson of this article is the hostiles are craftily standing by to throw a wrench in the works when they see any glimmer of light.  I don’t want to encourage anyone to obsess about this, but to just be aware of it and on one’s guard.  And if it comes to pass that they do knock you down, just get up, try to learn whatever lesson is there, and carry on.

Notes and References

  1. Nirvana An Occult Experience by G.S. Arundale pgs 174-175
  2. The Eternity Game is an oracle I use frequently that was created by Medhananda for the Integral Yoga.

 

Breaking Down A Dream Feeling

On By Douglas M.In Dream Interpretation, Dreams1 Comment

Even though I’ve been reading about and trying to dedicate my life to what you might call the advent of a divine life (or heaven on earth if you prefer) for years, it’s not yet something my vital can get greatly excited about. I don’t think I’m unique in this, but rather the rule and not the exception. This inability I feel comes from the limitations of the little mind and vital that I and most everyone else live in. I think it’s possible for that little mind and vital to get more excited and comprehending about the prospect of a divine life than mine do. In fact, the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo aims at ultimately converting and transforming these parts (as well as the body) into willing and able instruments of the divine life.

There’s another part of us though referred to in the Integral Yoga as the psychic being or in more common language the soul. It’s a part of us which is “already given to the Divine”1 and just naturally possesses an ardent fire and aspiration for the divine life which can also spread to the other parts of the being. Now both the words soul and psychic get a lot of usage and can mean a lot of different things to different people. So before I go on, let me allow the Mother to explain in more detail what she’s pointing to with the terms ‘psychic being’ or ‘soul.’

It is the seat of the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Self in the individual being. It is a centre of light and truth and knowledge and beauty and harmony which the Divine Self in each of you creates by his presence, little by little; it is influenced, formed and moved by the Divine Consciousness of which it is a part and parcel. It is in each of you the deep inner being which you have to find in order that you may come in contact with the Divine in you. It is the intermediary between the Divine Consciousness and your external consciousness; it is the builder of the inner life, it is that which manifests in the outer nature the order and rule of the Divine Will. If you become aware in your outer consciousness of the psychic being within you and unite with it, you can find the pure Eternal Consciousness and live in it; instead of being moved by the Ignorance as the human being constantly is, you grow aware of the presence of an eternal light and knowledge within you, and to it you surrender and are integrally consecrated to it and moved by it in all things.2

Though I am not united with my psychic being nor even yet had a really definitive experience of it, I had a smaller experience recently that I believe was the result of an influence or contact with the psychic being and which was connected with a dream. So having set the scene, I’ll now get into what happened.

A few weeks ago I was getting out of bed in the morning and suddenly remembered something that seemed to come from a dream. The memory though was a feeling; there was no picture or image content to it. I wish at the time I had recorded what that feeling felt like on my voice recorder, because now I can’t really conjure it up, whereas it was quite concrete at the time. I do recall though that the feeling somehow grasped what you could call infinity or eternity for lack of a better word. It didn’t bowl me over though. I felt it faintly but distinctly on the left side of my chest for a few seconds and then it sunk back down out of my awareness. I knew it was something significant, figured it came from some kind of experience during the night, but didn’t give it much more thought than that. The whole thing kind of caught me off guard.

So I went about my day and in the afternoon I picked up one of the books I was reading, a book of short stories called Guardians of Oneness by a German disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother who went by the name of Medhananda. The story I was currently reading was called ‘One Million A.D.’ It’s the story of an astronaut who returns to earth after a long tour of the galaxy. However, since the astronaut spent most of his time away “traveling on a G-beam in a galactic slipstream”3 only 10 years have passed for him, whereas a million have passed on the earth. A lot has changed. The earth, he discovers, has again become a forest clad Eden populated by self-conscious animals and one remaining man. This man, who introduces himself as homo ultimus, is evolved far beyond what we would call human and has remained behind to foster and oversee the evolution of the animals. The rest of humanity has gone to live and continue their evolution in the suns, where, as homo ultimus explains, they take part in “those higher intensities of life and love which are possible in a sun.’’4 After that initial meeting most of the story is dedicated to showing the life of peace, harmony and joy of creation and discovery that the animals enjoy. Toward the end of the story though, homo ultimus gives the astronaut and us a glimpse of the life man is now living in the suns, through a link between their minds. This is what the astronaut experiences:

all I could see was the stars. But as I looked through his eyes and vibration receptors they were not merely stars any more, they were my fellow beings: friends, comrades, brothers – each one speaking to me, singing his particular and eternal hydrogen song which vibrated directly by molecular resonance in my DNA chains. Each had its own message, each was a guardian of a whole solar system, each was telling me about his adventure in evolution on the planets with which he was surrounded. Each one was singing his paean of cosmic love, of encouragement, of bliss, of victory, of triumph over the difficulties and obstacles of life and evolution. For hours I lay there listening, learning by memory-absorption all this news of the universe, of solar adventures and experiences.5

This was I believe the third time I’ve read this story, and like the other two times, I was struck and somewhat awed by the what this passage implies. This time though it went a little further in me, somehow made me really see the reality of this greater life and helped trigger a little inner opening. Later on as I sat on the front porch and was thinking about what I’d read a strong excitement and yearning for that greater life arose as well as a sort of knowing that this divine life of splendors we can’t even hardly conceive was really waiting for us. This knowing though wasn’t an intellectual thing, but rather a feeling, a confidence. My mind in fact had gotten fairly quiet as this state came to the foreground. In addition, there was joy in the experience as well as calm and a feeling of purity   A further boon was that the chronic pain I constantly experience was significantly diminished.

The yearning and excitement waned after I got up from the porch rocker and had to start actively doing things, but the joy and calm hung around and diminished over the course of a few hours. There was still a touch of it when I went to bed, but upon awakening the next day it was gone. It was just a little glimpse that came and went much like the one I referred to in my last blog post, and like that experience I feel it was a promise of something that could become permanent. One of the reasons I think this was a psychic contact is because the experience was mainly on the level of the heart which is where the psychic being has its nexus with the outer nature. Others things about the experience that for me are indicative of the psychic are the element of aspiration as well as the element of feeling/knowing. As the Mother points out the psychic being:

has the true knowledge, an intuitive instinctive knowledge. It says, “I know; I cannot give reasons, but I know.” For its knowledge is not mental, based on experience or proved true. It does not believe after proofs are given: faith is the movement of the soul whose knowledge is spontaneous and direct. Even if the whole world denies and brings forward a thousand proofs to the contrary, still it knows by an inner knowledge, a direct perception that can stand against everything, a perception by identity. The knowledge of the psychic is something which is concrete and tangible, a solid mass. You can also bring it into your mental, your vital and your physical; and then you have an integral faith—a faith which can really move mountains.6

Now I think I should point out that this wasn’t some exalted state. It all happened within the confines of normal human consciousness and was basically a temporary uplift. Regardless I think any sane person would find it much more preferable to exist in that state if they once had a taste of it. The requirement for that though it seems would be to unite with one’s psychic being, otherwise experiences like this will remain transient.

It also bears mentioning that this memory from the dream and the experience in the waking state were not identical. The essence of the dream memory was something more profound, but more subtle. Regardless, for me the link between the two is clear, and what I think happened was that there was an inner experience during sleep that spilled over a bit into my waking life first as the dream memory and then later as the waking experience. And even though reading Medhananda’s story helped trigger the state, the mostly unrecalled sleep experience was the primary thing in my opinion. I’m also of the opinion that things like this happen with some frequency during our sleep hours, but most of the time we’re unable to bring back any memory of them. In one of her talks on dreams the Mother explained why this is:

Some people do not have a passage between one state and another, there is a little gap and so they leap from one to the other; there is no highway passing through all the states of being with no break of the consciousness. A small dark hole, and you do not remember. It is like a precipice across which one has to extend the consciousness. To build a bridge takes a very long time; it takes much longer than building a physical bridge…. Very few people want to and know how to do it. They may have had magnificent activities, they do not remember them or sometimes only the last, the nearest, the most physical activity, with an uncoordinated movement—dreams having no sense.7

So the lesson here is that with the right development a conscious bridge can be built between all the regions we visit in sleep and our waking state. Then we can more easily recall these things upon awakening. I’m sure there are occult disciplines that have been laid out for building that bridge, but I haven’t come across them with the exception of Tibetan dream yoga. And while I’ve done a lot over the years to improve my dream recall and also my ability to lucid dream, the main thing I rely on now in dream work (other than keeping a journal of dreams I feel are important) is just trying to do the sadhana and asking the Mother to help me reach my psychic being as well as the higher levels of consciousness above the normal human mind while I’m in the dream state. In addition, I’ve asked her to take charge of my lucid dreams and to help me remember to call on her when I find myself lucid. When I do remember to call on her, usually a force takes me and I travel in blackness for a while. A few times I’ve reached another dream, but normally I find I either can’t hold the concentration and fully wake up or am back in my body in the cataleptic state.

I had some dreams though that came about three weeks before the experiences I relate in this article which I feel offer some encouragement that the process of building that bridge is moving forward. The reader should know that both of these dreams happened in the same night. I should also mention to the reader that Sam, who appears in the first dream, was a professor of mine and later a friend. More importantly though he was the first person I ever met who talked openly about how he was on a spiritual path.

In the first dream I’m in a car with Sam going down a country road and he’s driving. As we drive I’m reading a little book someone gave me that was written by Sam. I’m telling Sam the story of how I got the book, which had something to do with how I kept trying to bring someone’s business cards into the chamber of commerce where I work, and they kept blowing out of my hand. I’m reading something in the book, and the gist of it was that you keep up your practices until the zero hour, or maybe it said the third hour. It’s implying that grace eventually intervenes. It says something too about how the grace came for Sri Aurobindo. When I look back at that part of the text again, it’s changed now to say Sir Richmond and not Sri Aurobindo. I know that Sir Richmond is a name Sam uses to refer to himself in the book. Then Sam pulls over and stops the car because he thinks it’s acting up. I tell him we better turn around and head back. Instead though he pulls up a little side road, and we pass through a bit of forest until we get to a wooden bridge that is too narrow for the car. The bridge has some plants on it which are draping it with beautiful flowers. One was like a bougainvillea with purple or pinkish purple flowers. I believe there were light blue flowers too. On the other side of the bridge is a beautiful big stone house landscaped also with the purple flowers and also blue ones too if I remember correctly. The stones are cut and are about the size of cinder blocks. They fit together perfectly and are a dark grey. It’s almost like a fortress or castle in style, but it doesn’t have a sense of foreboding about it. On the contrary, it looks very cool and inviting the way a shady spot next to a cool stream would be. We’re both admiring the beauty, and I tell Sam that the house must be 5,000 square feet at least.

In the second dream, as the observer, I’m looking at a bridge that is being built from both sides to meet in the middle. The bridge is about 50 feet long and is an arch or at least slopes up toward the middle. It’s almost done and there is just a few feet more until the two sides connect. I’m semi lucid and remembering the bridge from the earlier dream with Sam as well as another bridge from another dream from that night, and I’m remembering them both as almost ready to meet in the middle too. I’m thinking this must have something to do with making the connection to the psychic being, and I’m repeating “Mother I must have this.”

Now in one dream the bridge was too narrow, and in the other it wasn’t complete, but I think it’s just two ways of saying the same thing. Namely that there’s some work to go to complete the bridge to whatever is represented by the beautiful stone house with all the flowers. My guess is that the house symbolizes the sanctuary of the psychic being, and the presence of flowers would seem to support that since flowers can represent things psychic. Another thing in favor of this idea is the intuition I had in the second dream that the bridge represented making the connection to the psychic being. I think I will trust that intuition for now until I feel I have good reason not to or I discover in time that the bridge represented something else. I should point out though that while in the Integral Yoga pink is a psychic color, blue is more of a spiritual color and purple a color corresponding to the vital. So maybe there’s more represented here than just the psychic change [or transformation] .

Another interesting point about the bridge in the second dream that was raised by my collaborator Donny, is the fact that it’s being built from both ends to meet in the middle. He suggested that could mean that the one end represents my own personal effort and aspiration in the sadhana while the other end represents the answering grace, and that both are needed to make that connection. I don’t know if that’s true, but it makes enough intuitive sense that I thought it worth putting forward for consideration.

In conclusion, I think that regardless of what the house in the first dream symbolizes, it’s clear the bridge to something good is nearing completion. How near to completion is hard to say. There were feet left to go and not inches, so it may not be something imminent. Being shown though that the bridge is being built has given a boost to my faith, and perhaps that was the primary purpose of these dreams. The first dream also gives some good advice, which I’ll try to take, which is to carry on with the sadhana keeping frustration at bay and with the faith that when the zero hour is reached the grace will take care of the rest.

Notes

1.Question and Answers 1929-1931 by the Mother pg 62
2.Question and Answers 1929-1931 by the Mother pg 62
3.Guardians of Oneness ‘One Million A.D.’ by Medhananda pg 45
4.Guardians of Oneness ‘One Million A.D.’ by Medhananda pg 53
5.Guardians of Oneness ‘One Million A.D.’ by Medhananda pg 63-64
6.Question and Answers 1929-1931 by the Mother pg 152
7.Question and Answers 1953 by the Mother pg 38

 

Going Up?

On By Douglas M.In Dream Interpretation, Dreams1 Comment

A couple of weeks ago I had two dreams in the same night featuring a skyscraper.  Here are the dreams:

I’m at the Steel Building1 in Pittsburg and I go rapidly up the elevator to the top floor.  The top floor is like a lounge.  I’m sitting in a chair for awhile and then get up and go to another room.  I realize I don’t have my wallet so I go back to the other room to look for it and  I find it on the floor.  Then I’m talking to two kids in Spanish, showing off my Spanish skills.  They only seem to speak English though and don’t seem to understand me.  Then I take the elevator down to the ground floor to look for my mom.  I go outside the building and find her there.

I’m on top of a skyscraper sitting at an outdoor restaurant.  I’m waiting for some people to show up and finally they start showing up and sitting at my table.

For me going to the top of a skyscraper is an obvious symbol for some kind of ‘rising above’ so to speak consciousness-wise, so I wondered how it might manifest in waking life, if at all.  I would guess most people who study their dreams have found like me that you can have a dream like that, or even a negative dream like getting bitten by a snake, and no outer event happens that seems to correlate with it.  Such was not the case here as I will describe, but let me give some background first.

For a number of days prior to the dream, my vital and mind were wrapped up in some things I was concerned about going on in Donny’s life in India.  The morning after the dream, as I was observing the charge in the vital and the unrelenting grinding of the thoughts on this matter, I just threw up my hands, so to speak, realizing that while I had to buckle down and reject the mental movements, it would probably take some time for that vital charge to move out of the system, and I would just have to ride it out.  One thing I’ve observed in myself  when the vital gets taken over by strongly charged emotion, such as worry in this case,  among other things, is that the worry takes hold of  the mind and creates worried thoughts.  Those worried thoughts in turn feed the emotional charge of worry,  which produces more worried thoughts in a vicious cycle.

What’s important about this I’ve found is that the thought is where you can break the cycle since it’s easier, in my case at least, to reject a thought than to push out an emotional charge.  It’s still not easy though, and it’s not something you do once and it’s over.   I stop the thought for a little while, but then as long as the charge is still there the thought comes back, and has to be stopped again and again.  But what happens is that you can get the thoughts under control, and even if the emotional charge lingers you’ve put a little distance between yourself and the emotion, so it’s no longer in command of the mind.

There are ways, however,  that an emotional charge can go out of you quickly.  For example the thing you were worried about gets resolved or the vital’s attention goes elsewhere for some reason, hopefully to something positive happening in your life or that of someone close to you.  Another thing that can happen though, often for no discernable reason, is some help comes from within, and that’s what happened to me that day.  Late that afternoon as I took our dog Rosie for a walk I noticed that my mind had suddenly gotten quiet and that the emotional charge had given way to a slight but very palpable sense of ease and contentment.  I realized this little uplift was what had been indicated in my dream by being on top of a skyscraper and was grateful for the alleviation.  It didn’t last long maybe 45 minutes or so and then the vital charge and thoughts came back since I guess it hadn’t moved completely out of my system.  It wasn’t as bad though.

Regarding some of the other symbols in the dream, the wallet seems like it would be money or money concerns, and there were definitely some money concerns for me in this situation.  I’m not sure what to make of my speaking Spanish, or being in a restaurant.  Regardless I think what’s mainly important is the movement of uplift and being able to connect that to the actual manifestation of that in waking life.

Here again as in other past posts I’ve put this out mainly to show what’s possible, and I think I should say that such experiences as this are the exception and not the norm for me.  Why such an experience comes in one situation and not in another I have no idea.  The subliminal parts of ourselves seem to have their own law and process which are a complete mystery to our waking selves.  What I think is important to realize, assuming one is on some kind of spiritual quest, is that these things are little glimpses or promises of states that can become fixed and permanent in our waking life.

What’s also important I think from a practical viewpoint is what I pointed out about the vicious cycle of thoughts feeding emotions feeding thoughts, and then showing how you break the chain at the level of the thought.   For many people that’s Mindfulness 101, but for some reading this article that could be a real and very significant revelation, and there are few things I think that are as fundamentally important for a person to see as this.

Notes
1. It might be worth pointing out that the Steel Building is the only skyscraper I have been to the top of.

Living The Dream (literally) As A Street Performer

On By Douglas M.In Dream Interpretation, DreamsLeave a comment

Dreams can offer guidance on all kinds of things.  Many years ago I had a dream that sent me on a brief career as a street performer.  Let me tell you the story.

Back around the turn of the century, I was living in Cusco Peru on tourist visas.  Those visas were only good for 90 days, so every three months I would head to the Bolivian border to go out of Peru for a few days and then come back with another 90 day stamp.  On one of those trips I was staying in a hotel in Copacabana on Lake Titicaca and had this dream.

I’m in front of Buckingham Palace in England and I have a crowd around me. I’m street performing telling jokes and doing pretty well.  When I’m finished I’ve got a large stack of dollar bills for my efforts.

Since I was a teenager I’ve loved telling jokes and could remember just about any good joke I’d hear.  Before the dream, I’d never thought though of doing it as a busker.  I didn’t really need the money, but it seemed like a fun way to meet people and hopefully pick up some chicks.  So I started to compile a list of my jokes, but it wouldn’t be until I left Peru for good some months later that I’d begin my career as a street comedian as I traveled through Bolivia.  I started out working in plazas in front of big crowds and passing the hat like I was doing in the dream, but gave that up in lieu of going to places where people were sitting outside drinking and then telling a few jokes at each table.  As the dream indicated I did pretty well, though the dream exaggerates as dreams often do.  I had good jokes and I am funny, but the secret of my success was I told the jokes in spanish, and for the Bolivians my gringo accent was hilarious.

Later when I got to Brazil, I was able to speak passable portuguese in a few days and continued my comedy career.  In fun loving Brazil though, I found myself being invited up on stage at times at bars and clubs and handed the microphone to tell a few jokes.  I also did a few actual shows where I was the headliner.  As in Bolivia, I was a hit with my gringo accent.

Since I was doing it mainly for fun and not for money, I mostly worked on weekends.  All that preparation was good though, because after a few months in Brazil I suddenly found myself cut off from both my bank accounts and having to rely on jokes to survive.  My debit card for my account in the United States had expired a few months before, and since I had a bank account in Peru with over $5,000 in it I hadn’t bothered about getting another one.  The ATM fees for the Peru account we’re quite high though, and I would only withdraw money from it once a month.  That was fine for a while until suddenly I found the account had been frozen due to lack of activity and was basically told I would have to show up in Peru to get it unfrozen.  So for about two weeks, as I waited for a new bank card from my USA account and fruitlessly tried to get the Peru account reactivated, I lived off jokes.  It wasn’t easy, and if I hadn’t been staying with friends I would have had a hard time paying the cost of a hotel and covering my food too.  Finally Fed-Ex brought my new debit card, and I celebrated by buying pizza for my friends. Eventually too with the help of another friend I was able to get my bank account in Peru reactivated and withdrew all the money as fast as I could.

After this financial crisis my comedy career continued in Brazil as well as in a later trip to Central America. While in Central America though, I came to the firm resolution to leave things like sex and partying behind to begin the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s yoga in earnest.  It would still be a few months before I went to live at the Sri Aurobindo Sadhana Peetham Ashram in Lodi California, but that was the turning point.  After going to Lodi and later to India, I continued to tell jokes from time to time to friends and people I’d meet, but after a while that just dropped away and I haven’t told anyone a joke in years.

In closing, I should say that, as in a recent post I wrote on dream drugs, I haven’t shared this dream and subsequent happenings because they hold any insight as far as sadhana goes.  It’s just to show people what’s possible, and also to show how dreams meet you where you are.  To be honest, when I look back at that epoch of my life, I still can feel a little vital thrill at the memory, but the more enlightened parts of me wish I had spent that time doing other things.  I guess though I just wasn’t ready to leave the vital life behind, and my inner being knowing that provided the guidance via the dream.  And while I am funny and the gringo accent was truly hilarious, the other and perhaps primary reason for my success was that it fit with my process, was what I needed to be doing.  I think that’s why in the dream I was in front of Buckingham Palace, it was my ‘royal road’ at the time.  And though I’ve moved on from telling jokes, the comedian is still there and he comes out sometimes in my writings and video work in the form of satire.  Perhaps one day I’ll return to performing comedy, but if so it will definitely be in a different form, one that would have the divine and the quest for the divine in some way as its basis.  We’ll see what unfolds.

A Soul-Dialogue Between a Poet and the Leader of Islamic State

On By Donny Lee DukeIn Dreams, overhead poetry, video poetry6 Comments

I’m sorry, but you’ll have to sign into Internet Archive to see this video.

This video was taken down from YouTube after 7 years up, which happened on October 31, 2022, and I’ve updated the post accordingly. I contested it, and they reviewed the video and removed the strike against me for violating their terms and policy, saying the violation wasn’t as severe as they thought. Their policy, along with that of all the major social media companies, keeps getting narrower in terms of what you can post. When I posted it the terms were more favorable to art depicting violence, if its intentions were to stop it.

Luckily, I posted this at that same time at Internet Archive, and they immediately made it so you have to sign in to view the video, and they later put it in their deemphasized collections, but it’s still up.

In a few years, the visible net will be controlled like television, and even private websites will be censored, but first it will be the big social media companies that will do it, are doing that now, and it will take longer to take down or control the content on privately owned websites, and so we at Harm’s End are in the process of making our own website to put up our stuff, as many of our posts call for social change, and anything that truly does that is radical and would offend somebody.

The Rape Of The Vital

On By Douglas M.In Dream Interpretation, DreamsLeave a comment

A few months ago, I was going to the garage to make sure the side door to the outside was locked. There’s a flight of three stairs you have to go down to get to the garage, and I stumbled on the last one, but was able to put my hands out on the door to the garage and catch myself. Everything seemed fine, but some worry arose that I might have really tweaked my back, and it took a little while for that anxiousness to die down.

Now I don’t remember if it was before or after the stumble, but sometime that evening I read this in Sri Aurobindo’s Letters on Yoga:

Yes, the difficulty is always that something in the nature gives a hold to the attack. It either still indulges it and likes it or even, if wanting to be free, is too accustomed to receive and respond to the old feelings, thoughts, suggestions and does not yet know how not to respond. The first thing is for the mental being to stand back, refuse to accept, say “This is no longer mine.” Then, even if the vital feeling responds to the attack, one part of the nature can be free and observe and discourage it. The next thing is for this free part to impose the same will of detachment on the vital so that after a time this also when the attack comes feels that it is something foreign, not its own,—as if a stranger had come into the room and was trying to impose his ideas or his will on the inmates. After that it becomes more easy to get rid of it altogether.1

The next morning I awoke a couple of hours before I needed to get up, and the worry that I may have really tweaked my back the night before hit again, creating anxious thoughts. I was able to go back to sleep though and had this dream:

These four guys in their late teens have broken into a house and are robbing it. The woman of the house is there, and one of them drags her into the back yard. She’s in her thirties or forties and is slim and attractive. She seems to be a housewife and I know that she actually knows all these boys from the neighborhood. She’s wearing a skirt, and the guy is trying to pull her panties off, but she’s resisting him. Then it changes and now it’s like she’s given in. The guy is on top of her and having sex with her. She seems to be taking pleasure in it, but she also seems to be out of it, like she’s drugged or something, and the whole scene has a sickly sort of blue color to it. It’s not seen but I know the other three boys each have a turn with her as well.

When I awoke from the dream I found myself struggling with the anxiety again. Then I recalled what I’d read the night before, and the meaning of the dream came clear. The woman is my vital and the four boys were the anxious thoughts and feelings having their way with it. I saw my vital was responding to the suggestions more out of habit then anything, like the woman in the dream who, although she struggled at first, gave in to the rape, but it was like she was drugged and wasn’t totally with it. The vital even takes a sort of pleasure in these negative movements just like the woman was taking pleasure in the rape in the dream.

As you might expect seeing what was happening so clearly gave the impetus and will to do as Sri Aurobindo recommends and detach and witness the movement as a foreign invasion. It died down for the most part after that though it did linger for a little while after I actually got out of bed and went about my day.

In closing, I’ll say this isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this idea in Sri Aurobindo’s writings nor the first time I’ve tried to put it into practice. It’s so easy to forget though in the heat of a vital movement. Maybe this time however the reading coupled with a dream like that has made the lesson stick in such a way that a step forward has been taken in handling these kinds of vital uprisings. I hope so.

References

  1. Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo Vol 31 Letters on Yoga Volume 4 pg 792.

Dream Drugs

On By Douglas M.In Dream Interpretation, Dreams, Inner Voice and Vision1 Comment
peyote flower by zapdelight, on Flickr
Creative Commons Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License   by  zapdelight 

I would imagine many people have had the experience of taking a drug like marijuana or alcohol in a dream and feeling high or intoxicated while within the dream, but having the effect disappear upon awakening. This has happened to me a number of times over the years. What’s perhaps less common, but in my experience possible, is to take a drug in a dream or vision and have it produce an effect in the waking consciousness. I’m going to share two examples of this. In one instance, the effect was immediate, and in the other there was a slight delay.

The first example I’ll give occurred about 16 years ago in Mexico in the part of the country where peyote grows wild. I was out there with a group of people including Dominique, a French Canadian woman and peyote connoisseur. On that day I had not eaten any peyote. It was about mid-afternoon, and I was having a sinking spell so I laid down to rest. I didn’t fall asleep but entered that twilight space between waking and sleeping and had this vision:

I was with a group of people gathered around a fire. A deep, and powerful voice kept repeating the word “Amor” (which means love in Spanish) and I could actually feel the sound waves from the voice penetrating my dream body. Then Dominique put a piece of peyote on my tongue. As soon as the piece touched my tongue, it sent a jolt through my entire body and I was abruptly brought back to full waking consciousness.

At first nothing interesting happened, and I just got up and started to resume waking activities. After a few minutes though, I suddenly found myself filled with a large upwelling of love wanting to find some means of expression. Fellow Harm’s End editor Donny was there in the desert with me and my first instinct was to go and find him. On my end I was irked with Donny about some things, and the love helped to see that those feelings really weren’t legitimate. When I found him I told him that, and was able to clear the air as well as my vital. After that the love began to fade and then was gone. All in all I would guess that the experience lasted about 30 minutes.

Roughly a year later I had another memorable experience with a dream substance. This time I was in Nicaragua and was once again with Donny. We were staying in a hotel near the border with Costa Rica and had plans to cross the following morning. At around 4 am, I awoke from a dream in which I had been drinking coffee. Since it was still dark outside I tried to go back to sleep but found it impossible to do so because I was COMPLETELY awake. Normally I feel quite horrible if I try to get up early in the morning, but this time there was no grogginess whatsoever and my body felt energized and ready to go. As I lay there I sensed that Donny was also awake, so I told him about the dream and what I was experiencing. We concluded that there must be some purpose behind it, and that the most likely reason was to give us an early start. So we got up and went to the border only to sit there and wait for three hours for immigration to open at 9 o’clock. Go figure. Despite that however, Donny and I remained convinced that forces had moved us out of there at an early hour for a reason even if we couldn’t see it.

Unlike other posts of mine there’s no real concluding lesson or moral to my sharing of these experiences. I’ve really just thrown this out to show what’s possible and maybe spark the interest of a reader or two towards their inner life. If this possibility perks your interest then why not try for yourself? Put your intention in that direction before sleeping and see what happens. Give it a fair shake if you don’t have immediate success. I do recommend though that you approach this exercise and dreams in general with the intention to learn or to grow. While dreams can serve as entertainment for the human vital, especially if you’re a skilled lucid dreamer (I myself am not), that isn’t in my opinion their true purpose. Rather I feel dreams are an aid for our growth and development and should be approached as such.

A Will Not My Own

On By Donny Lee DukeIn Dreams, UncategorizedLeave a comment

lightning

Some years ago I’d made it rain in a lucid dream and felt a little god-like. Liking that hubris, I decided in my next LD to call down lightning. So, upon becoming lucid the next night or so, I looked commandingly at the sky and hurled my voice to the heavens, shouting over and over, “Lightning! Lightning! Lightning!”

Nothing happened at first of course, as usual, and so I kept at it, and way off in the distance I saw a flash of lightning, and so I continued with more fervor. It got closer, the thunder cap with each bolt getting louder and louder, and then I realized it was walking towards me! And walking is the word, like it was coming for me. Then I began to shout, to myself, “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” and just as it got so close I knew the next bolt would hit me, I awoke in bed, shaking like a leaf.

I’ve mentioned this before: there’s some conscious intention in dream beyond our own, or beyond the known part of us; something there is in dreams that just steps in and puts limits on things, in this case my nemesis the lightning bolt. Maybe I was just being a coward, and that was a doorway to somewhere, since dream doors are like that: a fear or terror to overcome, but I sure wasn’t going to remain in that dream and find out.

Has anyone else a story of an unknown intention in LD, a will not yours, that just steps in and changes your plans?

(I originally posted this in the Facebook discussion group Lucid Dreaming For Experts (closed group), and if anyone’s interested in joining, though it’s a closed group, you can. If you’re a beginner there’s the general group called Lucid Dreaming (closed group).

Donny

Portrait of a Grouch

On By Douglas M.In Dream Interpretation, DreamsLeave a comment
Oscar on my bag by cbcastro, on Flickr
Creative Commons Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic License   by  cbcastro 

In a recent post, I pointed out how people in dreams often represent the presence in us of what we would consider their defining characteristic. I had a lucid dream recently, which is a good example of this:

I’m in a bright, well-lit house, and I realize I’m dreaming. I’m walking down a corridor and there’s a big mirror ahead of me. In the mirror I can see that there is a picture of the Mother (Mirra Alfassa) down the hall behind me.   So I turn around intending to head toward the picture, but now there’s a painting, a portrait, of Janet there instead. The entire background of the portrait is black and Janet, clothes hair and all, is kind of a smoky white or light grey color. She has an odd look on her face, which is hard to describe, but it was most certainly not positive. I go up to the painting and, assuming something’s wrong, I tell her I’ll call or email her.   Then I go around the left side of the portrait and enter a room hoping to still find the picture of the Mother. I don’t see it, but then a force picks me up, and I just ask the Mother to take me. It carries me up through the wall and roof of the room to the outside of the house. Then the dream starts to go black so I just close my eyes and move through the blackness for awhile before I wake up.

First of all let me point out that the Mother along with her partner Sri Aurobindo are my teachers, and the ones who are in charge of my spiritual welfare. They therefore appear in my dreams from time to time, and the Mother’s presence in this one let’s me know that there’s something here I need to pay attention to.

Now regarding the symbol of Janet, Janet is a former coworker and friend who’s been in the midst of a long battle with cancer. I haven’t been very attentive to her situation as of late, and I feel on one level the dream was showing me things are not good with her at the moment. After contacting Janet, I found out that things indeed aren’t good, and I made arrangements for my mom and I to take Janet out to lunch next weekend.

On another level though I feel the Mother was trying to draw attention to something in me represented by Janet, something I need to work on. Now while Janet has many positive qualities, on the negative side anyone who has ever worked with her knows she is very much a grumbler and complainer, to the point that people have referred to her as a ‘negative’ person. She is also very inflexible and very resistant to change. Having this dream prompted me to have a closer look at how I act like Janet.

I find my ‘Janetness’ is more of an issue at work, and in general it’s more of an inner grumbling than an outer one.   Lots of things come up that I don’t want to do or think is the wrong thing to do or think is eating up time that could better be spent doing something else. Despite what I’m feeling on the inside though, I do what I’m asked even if I have issues with it and don’t usually outwardly show my feelings by complaining or protesting.   I do also at times express things negatively or pessimistically in speech, but not to the point where anyone would refer to me as a negative person. On the contrary, most people would probably say I’m a positive person, though I’m not as positive as I might seem on the surface. I’ve just developed a certain amount of self-control, and I suspect that’s the way most ‘positive’ people are. This sort of self-control though is very important and we certainly shouldn’t knock it, but it’s necessary to go further.

So what’s the cure? I think ultimately the only complete cure is to transition to a higher consciousness to which these movements are completely foreign. What, however, can you do in the meantime? Well one thing I pointed out in another post is to try and remember that ultimately everything comes from the One1, and if a task falls to you in a situation like your job where you can’t really refuse, you can try and accept the fact that the Divine himself has thrust this work upon you, and then do it as best you can for that reason. That requires a mental effort though and isn’t always so easy at least for me.

Then there’s also the element of active rejection. I recently read a wonderful passage by the Mother about this, and it seems like a fitting end to this post. She tells us:

This is the dark side. And so, the moment one sees it, if one looks at it and doesn’t say, “It is I”, if one says, “No, it is my shadow, it is the being I must throw out of myself”, one puts on it the light of the other part, one tries to bring them face to face; and with the knowledge and light of the other, one doesn’t try so much to convince—because that is very difficult—but one compels it to remain quiet… first to stand farther away, then one flings it very far away so that it can no longer return—putting a great light on it. There are instances in which it is possible to change, but this is very rare. There are instances in which one can put upon this being—or this shadow—put upon it such an intense light that it transforms it, and it changes into what is the truth of your being.

But this is a rare thing…. It can be done, but it is rare. Usually, the best thing is to say, “No, this is not I! I don’t want it! I have nothing to do with this movement, it doesn’t exist for me, it is something contrary to my nature!” And so, by dint of insisting and driving it away, finally one separates oneself from it.2

Notes and References

  1. To avoid confusion I think I should point out two things. The first is that the concept of everything coming from the One is still just a belief for me, though it’s a belief I feel for which I have enough evidence that I can do my best to try and take my stand on it. The second thing is that, even if I’m correct that it’s all ultimately coming from the One, that doesn’t mean everything that comes is good or appropriate. Until you’re in that higher consciousness that knows spontaneously what to accept or not accept, you can’t take leave of your discrimination and common sense.
  2. Collected Works of the Mother Vol 6 “Questions and Answers 1954”, pg 263.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lucid Quest for the Light, a video

On By Donny Lee DukeIn Dreams, Inner Voice and Vision, Poetry, Reviews, Synchronicity, video artLeave a comment

I saw this on a Lucid Dreaming closed group page I follow, and over 12,000 people are in it, and so it’s a fast feed. Coming at me are ideas, images, and videos that run the gambit if something’s worth my time or not, and so I have to be very choosy or I waste my time, which I have to add isn’t so bad because it’s good to see all the degrees of quality, from bad to worse. While there is a lot of ‘good stuff’, and things I just need to see, else I wouldn’t follow the group, much of the material and media coming down the page is either ads (disguised as a person; I do it too) or rough drafts to say it kindly.

A difficulty in detecting things of quality is that things are coming down the pike very quickly, and you only have a second or so to recognize quality work, and that kind of work by its very nature takes more than a second or two to appraise. In fact a lot of the time it’s even jarring and disjointed, or too obtuse, the first couple of three times you see it.

You have to give it more than a chance, and so, it’s not possible to always or even often actually spend you time on what’s worth your time, since something worth it also taxes you at the same time, taxes you with your focused attention, and you don’t give that freely. It’s the dilemma of art in a digital medium, a dilemma of us all.

This video by Paul W. Coca is art, maybe not Michael Angelo or immortal, but it crosses that indefinable line that makes a work art. I didn’t see it the first time, only saw a good video, but after living with it some, and especially after Douglas liked it (I admit it I’m herd sour), I see what I’d like to share with others because it will enrich them.

Donny