About a month ago my mind and vital was in the grip of something. I don’t remember what now exactly, but it was something that had been troubling the mind and holding it under siege for a couple of days. I wanted to get free of the movement but was having trouble doing so. Then I received these lines from the muse in the morning:
Don’t muddy the mind courts (Came at the end of a dream where I was watching a performance of the hip hop group Run DMC) My mind relief from madness Mooning.
The first line’s advice was pretty clear, and motivated me to really try and throw the disturbing thoughts out of my mind, but I was having only limited success. Then all of the sudden, in the evening, I noticed my mind got abnormally clear, and it didn’t take much effort to keep it clear. There was no peace or joy or anything, just a quiet, fairly focused mind. Still it was a welcome respite.
Sri Aurobindo says, among other things, that the moon is a symbol of the spiritual consciousness which is above our normal human mind. One of the main movements in the integral yoga is for the sadhak to not only ascend to this level (or levels I should say) of consciousness, but also for it to descend and transform these lower levels of mind, life and body as well with its peace, silence, light and bliss. So what happened here I think is I got ‘mooned’ by a descent from the spiritual consciousness which quieted my mind and gave me relief from the mind’s madness. It didn’t last and was gone the next morning, but it broke the momentum of the disturbing thoughts, and I was able to move past them. I imagine it was important that, prompted by the muse, I was making a strong effort to throw out the thoughts myself. That I feel opened the door to the descent from the spiritual consciousness.
Now as the reader has no doubt noticed, the first line came at the end of a dream. This is a fairly common occurrence, but I have to admit I often can’t make any connection between the lines that come at the end of a dream and the dream itself. A lot of the time the lines don’t seem to have anything to do with the dream. Here though I can see a correlation between mud in the mind and hip hop music, which overall has a pretty low vibration, one that appeals to the less enlightened parts of the human vital.
Does anybody else see anything in these lines that they want to share in the comments?
I feel there’s a reason why ancient cultures gave such importance to astrological events like equinoxes, solstices, full moons and such things as planetary alignments. Basically they’re days of power, a day you can get a boost for your sadhana or your dream life if you’re receptive. Usually for me, if there’s any effect at all during these times (and a lot of times there isn’t), it’s on the level of dreams. I’ll have a powerful dream or a lucid dream. However during the last summer solstice, which was paired with a full moon, I had a little spiritual uplift that I think was shown in a dream I’d had the night before. The part I’m going to share however is just the end of a much longer dream since it’s only the end that’s really relevant as far as the spiritual uplift that day was concerned.
I put my backpack on and walk down the street and eventually find myself in some woods. There’s a stream there and in the water I can see these birds, about twenty of them, that have the heads of peacocks but bodies more like an ostrich’s. They’re about as tall as a man and in the dream I regard them as peacocks. One of them comes up and peers at me curiously though a gap in the trees. I can see that we’re at a delta where this stream meets the ocean. I go down into the water which is only about a foot deep and a very beautiful bluish green. The whole scene is very beautiful as well. The peacock/ostrich birds are moving out into the ocean, and I’m walking with them. Though the birds are big they don’t seem aggressive nor do they seem to be bothered by me. If I remember correctly their ostrich-like bodies are black or greyish black. It’s getting close to sunset and I want to watch the sunset with the peacock/ostrich birds.
One thing I’ve started to notice recently and have shown in a couple of recent blog posts is how a beautiful natural scene in a dream seems to be showing a nice ‘scene’ trying to manifest inside you in your waking life that day or a day or so afterwards. I believe that was the case here. So let me tell you what happened. On the day of the solstice, in the late morning, I went for a ride in my kayak. While I was out, I encountered one of my favorite water birds around here, a roseate spoonbill, roosting in a mangrove tree. I don’t often see them when I’m kayaking so I just sat there for a while admiring the bird and its beautiful pink plumage. When I returned home I noticed I felt cleared out as I often do after a spin in the kayak, since I can get fully immersed in nature. I noticed also that my thinking was elevated, and I found myself naturally pondering some things I’d recently read by Medhananda and Nolini Kanta Gupta and was looking at the world through the lens of those ideas. It didn’t require any hard mental effort or tapasya though. It was just happening naturally and spontaneously. For the most part I can’t remember exactly what I was reading at the time, but I do recall one little aphorism by Medhananda that was on my mind:
Spirit is tremendously solid. It is like diamond. In comparison matter is only a cloud of probabilities.1
A little later I took our dog Rosie for a walk. As we walked I was really feeling the stillness in the plants, and while that’s not a common experience for me it wasn’t the first time that’s happened, and I’m sure a lot of people have felt the stillness in plants. This time though, I could also feel the joy that was in the plants, and I caught it a bit by contagion and was feeling joy inside me as well as I walked. I was also appreciating how beautiful and unique the plants were, seeing them the way you might when tripping on psychedelics but to a much much lesser extent. There was one group of plants I encountered that were nothing but huge leaves on stalks which had been planted to hide a fire hydrant. When I looked at those plants, there was something so delightful about those big leaves that I couldn’t resist the urge to go over and touch one, giving a little laugh as I did so and feeling delight similar to what I think a small child does when they do something like that. That delight continued on the walk, and the uplift continued after that. It might have still been there a little bit when I went to bed. I honestly don’t remember now. It wasn’t there the next day when I woke up though.
So what I think happened here was I was able to open to the amplified energy that was available that day and benefit from it in this altered state of consciousness, which was foreshadowed by the beautiful sunset scene in my dream. This idea that a beautiful dream scene is symbolic of a beautiful uplift in waking life is still a working hypothesis for me, but one I’m getting more and more evidence to support. Recently, I had another dream where I was looking at a beautiful blue lake ringed by breathtaking mountains on the far side, and two days later there was a definite shift in consciousness in the evening, a state of peace and quiet. It wasn’t as strong as other experiences like that I’ve had, but it was definitely there.
One thing that I feel is important to point out is the beauty of these dream scenes is beyond the greatest beauty you can see in the physical world or even in normal dreams. I can’t really explain it any better than that, but if you start to have dreams like this I think you’ll see what I mean, see that it’s a certain class of dream or has a certain type of dream substance that can embody that beauty. It might be a glimpse of what Sri Aurobindo calls the subtle physical, but I can’t say for sure.
Regarding the peacock/ostrich birds in the dream I should point out that Sri Aurobindo has said that a peacock is a symbol of spiritual victory and that fits with the fact that I had a little spiritual opening. The fact that the rest of the body was like an ostrich is interesting since the thing that most quickly comes to mind when I think of the symbolic meaning of an ostrich is sticking your head in the ground. If I’m remembering correctly that the color was black that would indicate a hostile force. So I’d guess the element of spiritual victory is still marred by an element of sticking my head in the ground and maybe also a hostile influence. I think the birds in the dream were also connected to the encounter I had with the roseate spoonbill even though the dream birds were completely different. I always enjoy the sight of a roseate spoonbill because pink is the color that symbolizes the psychic being or soul in the integral yoga.
So in closing I think it’s important to try and keep yourself clear every day and not just on days like full moons and solstices. Knowing, however, that you can get a little boost on days like that is a good motivator for keeping yourself clear especially on those occasions.
References
On the threshold of a new age with Medhananda, pg 165 by Medhananda
Some months back I posted a movie review of the Jamin Winans film The Frame, and though I am a proponent of the film for various reasons, I make it clear I don’t consider it a spiritual film. To justify that I threw out a working definition of what I thought a truly spiritual film would be. I consider a spiritual film to be one that acknowledges in some way that our true purpose in this world is a shift in identity, a change in consciousness resulting in an actual lived experience of ourselves as God, Being, Oneness or whatever you want to call it. Recently, I saw a film which I feel isn’t quite knocking on the door of that definition, but it’s at least turning in the driveway. That movie is the recent independent film Divine Access.
This movie is worth seeing for a number of reasons not the least of which are great performances by much of the cast. It also has an entertaining and to a certain extent meaningful story punctuated by some very clever and amusing satire on religious veneration, new age spirituality and gurudom.
The main character is Jack Harriman, who grew up making the rounds of the New Age circuit with his New Age mom accumulating a vast wealth of teachings and scriptural quotes from Buddhism to Christianity and everything in between. Growing up in that free love atmosphere, Jack also fostered his passion for the opposite sex. Fast forwarding to the present we find Jack as a 40 something underachiever whose life largely revolves around his johnson and trying to bed as many women as possible.
Things change though when Jack’s friend Bob, who’s aware of Jack’s vast religious knowledge, invites him as a guest on his no-budget late night cable access show Divine Access. On the show Jack debates and shows up current host Reverend Guy Roy Davis, and after a favorable response from viewers, Guy Roy is out and Jack is in. Things pick up steam from there on out when, by Bob’s prompting, Jack gives a talk in town, and one viral video later Jack embarks on an inspirational speaking tour of the southern United States. His main motivations though for going on the tour are to make money, ‘selling ideas for cash’ as he puts it, and to hook up with loose women who are attracted to his celebrity status, and who are propositioning him via email. Jack claims not only to have no original ideas, but also no belief in the things he says. From his perspective he’s giving people hope, and as long as the people believe what he says that’s what matters.
Among the important supporting characters in the movie is Nigel, who works as a ‘catcher’ catching fainters who’ve been slain in the spirit1 at religious revivals. He tags along with Jack to serve in that capacity if necessary and also keeps a journal chronicling the events of the speaking tour as well as Jack’s teachings. Another character is Amber, a down on her luck prostitute who presents Jack with the chance to help a woman unselfishly as opposed to trying to get her into the sack. Then there’s Marian, a mysterious woman who knows things about Jack that she shouldn’t and pops in at different points in the story to challenge Jack’s indifference and call him on his behavior. She represents a divine element in the movie since she’s obviously not a normal human and she can appear superimposed over other people as well as vanish into thin air. What is she, some form of God, an angel, or a representation of Jack’s soul? The movie never actually tells you, but it does show that she can be seen and heard by other people than Jack, so she’s not just a figment of his imagination.
The story also periodically shifts to follow the exploits of Reverend Guy Roy, who blames Jack for the loss of his late night TV pulpit and who he views as a minion of Satan. As the hapless Reverend’s life and mental stability come unraveled, things build to a final showdown with Jack at the movie’s climax.
Now I won’t tell you what that climax is, but I will say that I was at first disappointed with it. Afterwards though, I realized it would have been hard to take the story any farther without it crossing the threshold to a spiritual movie and actually addressing the idea of a shift in consciousness. As it is, Jack’s wisdom is mostly along the lines of what you’ll mainly find in trendy best sellers from the Self-Help section of your local bookstore.2 It’s not pointing people to that change in consciousness.In addition, Jack’s growth is towards the genuinely sattvic3 man that he is and is trying to deny. It’s not a growth toward surpassing man.
Regardless of that, I’ll say again that the film is well worth seeing. It’s a story of growth and redemption and of accepting one’s destiny, and because of these things I feel it stands out from even the small crowd of independent films. Ultimately it’s a ‘human’ story and not an ‘exceeding the human story’, but it does have the element of divine help in the figure of Marian who is pushing Jack towards self-betterment. That, for me, is what really raises the other elements of the film to a step on the way to a truly spiritual movie, puts it in the driveway. For those thirsting for such a movie I think, like me, you’ll find a little sustenance in Divine Access.
Notes
Being ‘slain in the spirit’ refers to the practice of people falling to the floor in religious ecstasy. Usually their fall is broken by ushers or ‘catchers’.
I say ‘mainly’ because you’ll also find the likes of Eckhart Tolle and Michael Singer in the Self-Help section.
Dictionary.com defines sattvic as: having a serene, harmonious, balanced mind or attitude.
Every since mainstream science has admitted the existence of lucid dreaming (as if it needed to say that for it to exist), interest in it has sky rocketed, and there are forums and groups talking about it around the net. Out of body experiences, however, science studies but doesn’t allow into its cannon. It’s considered a sort of a hallucination/dream, not an OBE, because if it were, it would cross the material line that science has drawn and would give consciousness independence from the body.
Any chat or forum about lucid dreaming will show, not only it’s closely related to OBE, but also that line, and the science-minded and the spiritual-minded are arguing over it. I’ve gone out of groups because I just don’t want to argue with the mind that uses science as its sole authority for an investigation of reality, often denying or explaining away their own personal experience so as not to be heretical to their beliefs. The spiritual-minded seems to have a tendency to the opposite, too easily accepting its personal experiences as this and that without rigorously testing the field, and so I stopped commenting in groups.
This present article on OBE, while it doesn’t give proof that I would accept as clear and certain evidence the consciousness is actually leaving the body, it’s one of the most powerful I’ve had, because of the dream experience that ends it, but it’s one of only 3 or 4 OBEs in my life where I’m out of body in outer reality without little or no dream or inner elements present, what I’d call being an independent invisible spirit in the material world.
An article I’ve posted on my personal blog, “The Evidence of Man”, is one that I do take as proof I’m going out of the body and not just having a ‘strange dream’, and you would too if you have confidence I’m not lying or exaggerating, but only there time travel is involved, and it’s inner body travel, not a journey in the outer world, though it more substantially shows that the consciousness can leave the body and travel than in a regular OBE. If you chalk it up to ‘coincidence’, then you’re not only grasping at straws to keep your faith in the materialism of science intact, you’ve crossed that line where you put your beliefs over reason itself. Read it.
Panorama of Enchanted Rock, a granite pluton rock formation near Fredericksburg, Texas. Photo Wikipedia Commons, user Jujutacular
Returning to the story of this OBE, I’d gone with some friends to a state natural area in Texas called Enchanted Rock, a dome-shaped “425 foot pink granite batholith”[i] that just juts up out of the landscape almost like something from another world. Local Indians, the Tonkawa, had named it that because of a legend that a Spanish conquistador had cast a spell on it, making ghost fires glow at the top, and because they believed spirits roamed the place, and if you hear the haunting winds whistling around it, you might yourself feel that to be true. Whatever’s the case with why they named it, or the story we have today why they did, I believe the Native Americans knew the place to be a portal, a power spot on the earth where the fence of matter has a hole in it, making it possible to travel ‘elsewhere’.
I’d gone with the intention of inducing an OBE and going to the moon. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I’d had many OBEs in my life and had done some experimenting with it, and it’s only natural to want to try and leave the earth eventually, and the moon is the most obvious and natural first target to attempt to reach. I’ve heard others who have honed these skills try the same. I was sleeping with three other people in a tent in the campground of the park, near the foot of the mountain, and I awoke in cataleptic trance, or sleep paralysis as it’s known now that the state is talked about on the net, usually as something to fear and get out of as quickly as possible, because of the ominous presences often felt or seen in that state.[ii] I’ve found it to be a state, where, among other things, it’s easy to leave the body. I’ve only once been able to lay down with the intention of going into cataleptic trance so to leave the body, though many times if I awoke in the night anywhere near the state I could relax and bring on the full McCoy. What killed my mastery over inducing the state was a metaphysical accident I had a few months after this present story I’m telling; I conjured a demon and had to deal with that and learned there really were fearful things lurking in our bed sheets.[iii]
Studying ancient literature about the exploration of consciousness, what I did to get a handle on what I’d experienced with that demon and other inner experiences I was having, I found those presences that present themselves in cataleptic trance and lucid dream to be called guardians of the threshold, what you have to overcome in order to go further in your exploration, like a test you have to pass, whatever they themselves think they’re doing there, but I never have been able to get back to such mastery as to be able to lay down and induce the state. Now I’m doing sadhana, spiritual practice, and I don’t focus on ‘powers’, as they are called in yoga, and so both my experience of cataleptic trance and OBE have waned, but when it’s called for by my practice, and it seldom is, I leave my body, usually for a specific purpose.
Getting back to that enchanted rock, I had no trouble going out of my body, something you learn if you have enough practice doing it. I simply use my will and rise up out of it. I was just above my body and had a thought about seeing the tent from the outside, and suddenly I found myself well away from the tent up closer to the mountain about 20 meters above the ground. In inner exploration (though here it’s more like being on the inside in outer reality) where you put your will, which might just be thinking about something or someone, is where you will go or attempt to reach, why it takes such focus and concentration to explore consciousness. You really have to have a handle on it.
The moon was nearly full, waxing or waning I don’t remember, and I became excited when I saw that I’d done it, was a free spirit floating in the material world, what I figured I had to be in order to leave the earth. I’d tried to go just into space free of the earth in a lucid dream a couple of years before, and I realized I’d have to do it in an complete OBE. I didn’t make it then. As I got to the outer atmosphere everything disintegrated, and I awoke in my bed.
What I hadn’t yet fully grasped, though, was the threshold matter. There are thresholds other than the hostile powers, and one quite significant one is leaving the room or enclosed space you’re in. If you don’t have enough focus, grasp on your consciousness, you simply go out of there and into a lucid dream. Obviously leaving the earth is a much larger and more difficult threshold to master, and though I’ve had dreams of being in space or on the moon or Mars, I’ve yet to cross that threshold and actually leave the earth intending consciously to do so. I don’t know the difference between dreaming of that and doing that in waking reality while in the dream or inner state, such as an OBE, but I do feel there is a large or small distinction between the two, but I can’t discount the possibility of finding myself off the earth in dream and really being off it. I suspect our view of the matter is too rigid, and that there aren’t clear cut lines between the planes as we believe. Nature, whether inner or outer, doesn’t draw distinct lines between things like we do. Things often sort of blend into something else, though there are definite boundaries too.
The scene before me with that looming moon was fantastic. As a ‘spirit’, the moonlight seemed to be what the scene was about, not what was creating it but its focus. I looked around me and, to my slight disappointment, saw that there was one difference with waking reality. Though my friends in the tent were all sleeping as though the tent was there, curled around its walls, my body too, there was no tent. Other than that I was the free spirit I wanted to be. I looked up at the moon and willed myself up, going up very quickly, faster and faster, and just as had happened in that aforementioned lucid dream, as I got to the threshold of space the scene before me disintegrated, but I don’t think it was a lucid dream I found myself in but a dream experience, what in the integral yoga means you actually go somewhere in the inner fields and don’t just dream you do, intending to or not.
I found myself looking at a clearing in an old growth ancient forest, the full moon shining upon the scene illuminating it with moonlight’s coolness. I didn’t have a physical presence. Sitting in the middle of the clearing was a beautiful middle aged woman. Her hair style was quite distinctive, very intricate braiding that’s too complicated to describe, and she wore simple but adorned natural clothing. She was sitting on some sort of chair or stool I couldn’t see because all around her and on her were the animals of the forest, birds, butterflies, squirrels and things on her body like living decorations, larger animals as near to her as they could get, as it was evident they loved her and she them. The clearing was full of animals, predator and prey alike, but there was no strife. They just wanted close to her, and so did I.
She was smiling the sweetest and wisest smile I’ve ever seen, smiling at me, and with mirth sparkling in her eyes she said simply, and I remember her exact words, “You’re on the right path. Don’t turn to the right or left, and take baby steps.” Then the scene faded suddenly, and I awoke in my body inside the tent.
The path I was on, and still am, though I’m a sadhak of the Integral Yoga of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, was what I called at the time the personal growth process towards wholeness and healing, and my focus was inner exploration. It would bear mentioning that for me I didn’t take up the spiritual path for realization but for healing with an impossible disorder I relate in poems, stories, and articles on my personal blog.
In order to prepare for the moon shot, I just stopped all vital indulgences, rigidly, the vital in our yoga the life-body of the impulses, desires, emotions, and preferences, what usually in a sadhana gives the trouble, more than the mind and body, the two other instruments of the lower being. My main indulgence at that time was grass, and I’d stopped smoking it for the duration of my attempt to reach the moon.
Grass for me has been an indulgence, accelerator, and a medicine. The powerful spiritual experiences I had at the beginning of my sadhana were partly triggered by it, except the finding of the soul, where I wasn’t stoned because I was deep inside a night’s trance. I don’t call it a sleep because, though it’s the same state, there I was conscious. Lucid would neither be what I was because I was no longer in dream but had gone all the way through it via a dark ‘tunnel’ and was no longer in this universe or this type of existence but in spirit, the well of soul, a journey I took some months after this OBE. The story is in the works and will be posted on this blog upon its completion if I do actually complete it.
Lately, pot has only been an indulgence and a medicine, the latter since it stops nausea and vomiting and eases stomach pain, and I’ve have a serious mysterious stomach condition. It also helps accelerate having spiritual experiences, if you know how to use it that way, but not for a permanent realization, though anything is possible in the wide conditions we find ourselves in. I see it now more as an immaturity than as an aid. My muse said, when it first started some 15 years ago, when I was a daily pot smoker, that “pot can take over any nature there is,” and I’ve found that to be true. I guess I just have to say smoker beware; pot’s a double-edged sword.
The earth mother, whom I feel that woman was, wasn’t telling me to give up pot at that time, or anything else. She was saying something in very simple language that I can’t explain no matter how many words I use: neither denying your desires nor simply indulging them. My latest story on my personal blog, “Clambers on the Mountaintop,” about posting poems on Mt. Sinai in Egypt, goes into that idea in great detail, but, as much detail as I give, I still can’t put that idea into concrete language, but the attempt, I feel at least, is worth the read. That story takes place some years after this one, and it was the earth mother that planted the seed that had me planting poems in Jerusalem, Mt. Sinai, and the pyramids at Giza. Now those seeds and poems are flowering, and I understand what she told me, but I can’t give you that understanding. I can only tell you the story, taking my time to do that, 25 years, because the last thing she said is as important as the other two, what I needed to hear because I wanted the moon, and wanted it now. You see I didn’t get it. I may try again at some point, but when and if I do it’ll be the right time.
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’.
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!
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.
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’
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
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
Nirvana An Occult Experience by G.S. Arundale pgs 174-175
The Eternity Game is an oracle I use frequently that was created by Medhananda for the Integral Yoga.
Harm's End 