I Want Struggles To Be Light

On By Douglas M.In Inner Voice and Vision, PoetryLeave a comment

A few days ago this line from the muse came to me in the morning.

I want struggles to be light.

You can definitely play around with multiple interpretations of a line like this because of the different meanings for the word ‘light’. One interpretation jumps out right away if you take ‘light’ in the sense of something being not heavy or not dark in color. Read this way the line is saying that I want a lighter load of struggles.  There’s no doubt I feel that way often, and I’m sure most people reading this can relate to that sentiment. Another idea though along these lines has to do with my belief that what really makes struggles and pain so dark and heavy is this consciousness we live in which is a state of identification with this mind and body. But as many spiritual teachers have said throughout the ages, if you can enter into a consciousness where you’re identified with the divine, or oneness or whatever you want to call it then you realize that this mind and body isn’t you, is more like a shirt you’ve put on, and you don’t take what happens to them so seriously anymore. Then, even though life’s challenges are still there, they’ve lost their heaviness, and you no longer suffer from them. You deal with them from a state of Light or Knowledge and not a state of Ignorance.  Hand in hand with that idea is a complementary take on the line where ‘light’ means spiritual illumination. This gives the sense to me of struggles being spiritually illumined and transmuted.

Another interpretation that occurred to me takes ‘light’ in the sense of a ‘means of igniting something’ as in “Hey buddy, you got a light?”. It’s a less obvious reading of the line and one that probably wouldn’t have occurred to me if I hadn’t been thinking a lot about something I’d read in the Mother’s Questions and Answers a few days before. I’ll share the quote first before I get into the interpretation.

Quite naturally we ask ourselves what this secret is, towards which pain leads us. For a superficial and imperfect understanding, one could believe that it is pain which the soul is seeking. Nothing of the kind. The very nature of the soul is divine Delight, constant, unvarying, unconditioned, ecstatic; but it is true that if one can face suffering with courage, endurance, an unshakable faith in the divine Grace, if one can, instead of shunning suffering when it comes, enter into it with this will, this aspiration to go through it and find the luminous truth, the unvarying delight which is at the core of all things, the door of pain is often more direct, more immediate than that of satisfaction or contentment.1

So like the Mother says here I think the line could be interpreted in the sense of changing my attitude so that struggles and pain become more a means of advancing on the spiritual path, more a means of igniting my aspiration to go through them in order to reach that ‘unvarying delight’ than something that holds me back when I have  resistance to the pain or depression about the pain. Backing up this idea, I feel, is an experience I had with Medhanada’s Eternity Game two nights before I received this line and a few hours after I’d read the above quote from the Mother. That quote is part of a longer passage where she says a number of things one of which is “When pain comes, it comes to teach us something.”2 As I’ve mentioned in other blog posts, probably my biggest difficulty is contending with the constant chronic pain in my back and knees. So that night after reading the Mother’s words I asked the Eternity Game, “What’s the purpose of this pain?” The card I drew was ‘Dwarf’.

Europe 1997.3 25

In the Eternity Game this card represents the mental being, and as you can see its aspects are ‘Quest’, ‘Next Step’ and ‘Intelligence’. Medhananda gives detailed commentary on all the cards in the game, but he also gives short one sentence descriptions.  The short one he gives for the ‘Dwarf’ card is ‘advance, take the next step.’3 I took this as confirmation that I have to try and take the mental attitude the Mother recommends towards the pain so it becomes more a means of progress. I should point out that for me the fact that my reading of the  Mother’s words was followed by synchronicities with both the Eternity Game and my own inner guidance in just a matter of a few days stresses the need for this change in attitude. It’s not easy to do, and to truly surrender this pain is something I’ve been aspiring for for a while. Hopefully this will help me to take the ‘next step’ with that.

So that’s my take on things. Please feel free to share other ideas in the comments!

References

  1. Questions and Answers 1957-1958  by the Mother pg 41
  2. Ibid pg 42
  3. The Eternity Game by Medhananda pg 133

 

 

Your Horsemen Are Already Here

On By Donny Lee DukeIn Dream Interpretation, Dreams, spirituality1 Comment
me coming in door
photo: Dhina

Your Horsemen Are Already Here

Our dreams are scattered not only with the present and past, but also the future. That’s usually hard to see until the thing predicted happens, and even then you have to be able to interpret the symbols of the future in dream to see it when it does manifest. I’ve done dream work on four continents, in many different cultures and religions, and I’ve seen it over and over. In my nonfiction story “Behind the Mask Jerusalem, the Journey of a Thousand Tongues”, posted on my personal blog, I give a very clear example of a dream of the future that is cloaked in symbols, since dream is from our creative reflex and doesn’t usually say anything outright but tells a story of the story that will manifest at some point in waking reality, usually quite soon, but not always. About three weeks ago, however, I had a precognitive dream that wasn’t hidden in symbols, and though it wasn’t an exact rendition of the waking reality event, it was close enough to have no doubt it was precognitive dreaming, and even before the event occurred, I was waiting for it to happen. It did last week.

I dreamed I was in my room, and a person came in and told me someone very special to me was at the door, that they’d brought them, some close relative I hadn’t seen in a long time. I went into the living room of my apartment, which was a little different than the one in waking reality, and at the door was Midhun, my one and only yoga student, who had moved to another city about a year ago. When I saw him there was a dream shift, and the scene changed, as though the piece of ‘dream ground’ he was standing on wasn’t dream but waking reality, although there was a glow to it, and that glow was his presence, like it was actually him standing there. I was surprised to see him, and we hugged, and when we did I started to become lucid but woke up before I did.

About 2 weeks after the dream I was in my room, and someone came in and said someone had come to see me, was at the locked gate downstairs waiting to be let in, and it was Midhun, the person telling me that knowing it would be a surprise, and I’d be happy about it. I sent someone down with the key, but it took some time, and so I went out to open it myself, but there he was at my front door exactly like he’d been in the dream, and we hugged and had a short but fruitful three hour visit.

Now, I’d sent him a Facebook message a few days after my dream telling him about it. He’s in school and a teenager, and his parents don’t want him traveling here alone, why I haven’t seen him for so long. You could say my telling him the dream made him come, but he came on family business, something that happened on the spur of the moment, though he probably took the opportunity given him to come when it finally presented itself. In any event, the conscious power behind dream knew that opportunity would come, and the events of the dream itself were an obvious rendition of waking reality, making it such a clear example of the future in dream.

A dream connection like that we don’t just have with anyone. I’ve been in his dreams for the past three years, and he in mine, my muse too, and it was dream that brought him to me to begin with. For reasons I relate elsewhere, my function on the spiritual path is not to do the usual and become a teacher, and so I don’t accept students. When he showed up at my door the first time he wanted to talk to me about superpowers. He was 14. I laughed and talked to him a bit and sent him on his way. Then he returned a few days later and told me of a dream he’d had where I was his teacher. I explained again I didn’t accept students. Then he came again telling of another dream where I was his teacher, and I refused again, though I told him a couple of stories I tell the young people here, what had brought him to me to begin with since he’d heard about it. But he was persistent, and the next time he came I’d had a lucid dream about teaching him, and it’d come up in my muse, and so I agreed, but I told him I wouldn’t be his teacher, just his coach, and that the teachers would be The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, who my teachers are.

He advanced rapidly, too fast, and in a short time he was having lucid dreams and inner contact with deity, vibration in the heart and head, a little of the inner voice, and by the time he left he was having out of body experiences, but I didn’t focus him on those things. I was giving him the tools to find his soul and God. By that time he was being pulled into trance in the late mornings in school, and he was experiencing changes in his consciousness, and it scared him a little bit, and just when he learned not to be afraid, his family moved unexpectedly to another city. Obviously he needed time to assimilate all that he’d learned, and so the conscious power behind reality arranged for that to happen.

Even though I told him I would only be his coach, in practice I became his teacher, and that’s a relationship on the level of soul when it comes from within like it did with both of us, and so the connection between us in dream in very strong, as evidenced by the precognitive dream being so close to what happened in waking reality and the realness of his presence in the dream. We don’t hear about these kinds of precognitive dreams very much because the dream connection has to be quite strong, and they happen more in private I imagine, like between spiritual teachers and their students.

I will close by saying that, although for all practical purposes I’m his spiritual teacher, I’m still ‘coaching’ him to the real teachers, the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, and as for the future, I think I’ve shown that, not only the future of our relationship (that there’ll be more inner connection and outer meeting), but also that the future is here among us already if we can but see it. Dreams are the most readily available portal for that, and you’re actually seeing it often and just don’t realize it. When, however, you have a dream like I describe here, and it comes true, you begin to.

A Buddhist Couplet 2

On By Douglas M.In Inspirational Quotes, Poetry, spiritualityLeave a comment

Right now you are identifying.

Switch the master appearance.

A Buddhist Couplet

On By Douglas M.In Inspirational Quotes, PoetryLeave a comment

Strangeness to be nothing

Is to be all that is.

 

Nolini Kanta Gupta on ‘Evil’

On By Douglas M.In Inspirational QuotesLeave a comment
Here’s a thought provoking quote from Nolini Kanta Gupta to celebrate the summer solstice.

Evil, according to Sri Aurobindo, is not coeval or coterminous with the Divine, it is a later or derivative formation under given conditions, although within the range and sphere of the infinite Divine. Evil exists as a stern reality; even though it may be temporary and does not touch the essential reality, it is not an illusion nor can it be ignored, brushed aside or by-passed as something superficial or momentary and of no importance. It has its value, its function and implication. It is real, but it is not irremediable. It is contrary to the Divine but not contradictory. For even the Evil in its inmost substance carries or is the reality which it opposes or denies outwardly… As we have said, evil is a formation necessitated by certain circumstances, the circumstances changed, the whole disposition as at present constituted changes automatically and fundamentally.

Nolini Kanta Gupta
From ‘The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo Part 4’

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.

 

For Janet

On By Douglas M.In Inspirational Quotes, Poetry2 Comments

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This morning my friend Janet’s long ordeal with cancer finally came to an end.  The last time I saw her a few days ago in hospice I read her a passage from Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri about the soul.  I share it here as a tribute to her but also for the benefit of the reader.  It’s long but well worth the time to read.

A being stood immortal in transience,

Deathless dallying with momentary things,

In whose wide eyes of tranquil happiness

Which pity and sorrow could not abrogate

Infinity turned its gaze on finite shapes:

Observer of the silent steps of the hours,

Eternity upheld the minute’s acts

And the passing scenes of the Everlasting’s play.

In the mystery of its selecting will,

In the Divine Comedy a participant,

The Spirit’s conscious representative,

God’s delegate in our humanity,

Comrade of the universe, the Transcendent’s ray,

She had come into the mortal body’s room

To play at ball with Time and Circumstance.

A joy in the world her master movement here,

The passion of the game lighted her eyes:

A smile on her lips welcomed earth’s bliss and grief,

A laugh was her return to pleasure and pain.

All things she saw as a masquerade of Truth

Disguised in the costumes of Ignorance,

Crossing the years to immortality;

All she could front with the strong spirit’s peace.

But since she knows the toil of mind and life

As a mother feels and shares her children’s lives,

She puts forth a small portion of herself,

A being no bigger than the thumb of man

Into a hidden region of the heart

To face the pang and to forget the bliss,

To share the suffering and endure earth’s wounds

And labour mid the labour of the stars.

This in us laughs and weeps, suffers the stroke,

Exults in victory, struggles for the crown;

Identified with the mind and body and life,

It takes on itself their anguish and defeat,

Bleeds with Fate’s whips and hangs upon the cross,

Yet is the unwounded and immortal self

Supporting the actor in the human scene.

Through this she sends us her glory and her powers,

Pushes to wisdom’s heights, through misery’s gulfs;

She gives us strength to do our daily task

And sympathy that partakes of others’ grief

And the little strength we have to help our race,

We who must fill the role of the universe

Acting itself out in a slight human shape

And on our shoulders carry the struggling world.

This is in us the godhead small and marred;

In this human portion of divinity

She seats the greatness of the Soul in Time

To uplift from light to light, from power to power,

Till on a heavenly peak it stands, a king.

In body weak, in its heart an invincible might,

It climbs stumbling, held up by an unseen hand,

A toiling spirit in a mortal shape.

Here in this chamber of flame and light they met;

They looked upon each other, knew themselves,

The secret deity and its human part,

The calm immortal and the struggling soul.

Then with a magic transformation’s speed

They rushed into each other and grew one.

From Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri pgs 526-527

 

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.

GOODNESS AS RECOGNITION OF DIVINE PRESENCE

On By Douglas M.In Inspirational QuotesLeave a comment

“The goodness which one man may express in his relation to another is derived ultimately from his own divine soul and is an unconscious recognition of, as well as gesture to, the same divine presence in that other. Moreover, the degree to which anyone becomes conscious of his true self is the degree to which he becomes conscious of it in others. Consequently, the goodness of the fully illumined man is immeasurably beyond that of the conventionally moral man.”

Paul Brunton

More: http://paulbrunton.org/notebooks/6/1