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E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c D.r.e.a.m.s
Volume #12 Issue #1
January 2005
ISSN# 1089 4284
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http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams
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Download a cover for this issue:
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C O N T E N T S
++ Editor's Notes
++ Global Dreaming News – Harry Bosma
++ Column: An Excerpt From the Lucid Dream Exchange
Sleep Paralysis: If You Can't Avoid its Occurrence,
Can You Change the Experience?
Lucy Gillis
++ Article: Out-of-Body in Bird Form
Linda L. Magallón
++ Column: The View From the Bridge
A Peace Dream Voyager
Olivia Strand
++ Article: Whitehead's Process Theory and Dreaming
Richard Catlett Wilkerson
++ Article: Susan Sontag – A Farwell Dream
Richard Wilkerson
++ DREAM SECTION: Dreams from December, 2004
Host Kat Peters-Midland
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D E A D L I N E :
January 17th deadline for February 2005 submissions
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Post Dreams and Comments on Dreams to:
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple
Send news, events, workshops, conferences& reviews to
Harry Bosma <
ed-news@...>
Send Articles, news and other items to:
Richard Wilkerson: <
rcwilk@...>
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Editor's Notes
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Welcome to the January 2005 issue of Electric Dreams, your portal to dreams
and
dreamwork online.
If you are new to dreams and dreamwork, please join us on
dreamchatters@yahoogroups.com and we will guide you to the resources &
groups you
need. To join, send an e to
dreamchatters-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
This month in Electric Dreams:
Lucy Gillis is a guide for students, researchers, authors, film makers and
others in the
world of lucid dreaming, and publishes research, articles, and interviews
in the Lucid
Dream Exchange. This month she offers Electric Dreams an except of an
article on Sleep
Paralysis and how you can use the same techniques that work for lucidity to
get a handle
on sleep paralysis. A skill set every dreamworker should know.
Linda Lane Magallón (author of "Mutual Dreaming") furthers her research on
flying
dreaming. This month, in "Out-of-Body in Bird Form" Magallón connects flying
dreams
and Out-of-Body experiences with the art and imagination of cultures from
other places
and times and ponders how many of these depictions of flying beasts are
really an
expression of our own imaginal flights.
Jean Campbell takes a vacation this month and invites guest speaker, Olivia
Strand to fill
us in on the activities of the World Dream Peace Bridge. Olivia give here
view of the
Bridge as a trek across time and space, culture and geography, and how the
hope of the
world lies in the dreams we dream together. Be sure to read all about this
in the View
From the Bridge.
I'm including in the article I wrote on Whitehead, an introduction to his
work and how it
may be related to dreamwork. Ever since David Pleasant's presentation at
the IASD
PsiberDreaming Conference, I have been excited about the revival of
Whitehead's
process theories and how they may contribute to dreamwork. In the next
month or two I
plan to add an article on how Whitehead can be applied to dream psi. The
current article
will act as an entrance to Process theory, or a warning, if this isn't your
cup of tea.
Susan Sontag, a controversial writer, feminist and left political figure,
just died. I had
been influenced by her work and am including a farewell note I posted on the
IASD
bulletin board.
Have you seen the Electric Dreams Articles Archive? Almost all the articles
from the last
decade of Electric Dreams are sorted by author, and now, thanks to Janet
Garrett, you can
see them listed chronologically by issue as well. You can see her work
progress and view
hundreds of article on dreams at:
http://www.improverse.com/ed-articles/index.htm
Finally, I have updated the Search Index, so you can search by topic,
author or what-
have-you.
Harry Bosma has collected dream news, web updates, conference announcement
and
other events in the world of dreaming and you can read about those below in
the Global
Dreaming News. If you have any dream news, conferences, books, workshops,
and
especially any online meetings or events, be sure to send that information
to Harry by the
15th of each month at
ed-news@...
A broken hobby horse, the1890's, attacked by snakes and dogs, a call from a
strange
man. What do they all have in common? They are all dreams from the December
Dream
Section! Kat Peters-Midland has collected the finest from the month and you
can read
them all.
If you want to send in dreams, please enter them at
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple
or join the dream flow at
dreamflow@yahoogroups.com
(
dreamflow-subscribe@yahoogroups.com)
--------------------
For those of you who are new to dreams and dreaming, be sure to stop by one
of the
many resources:
http://www.dreamtree.com
http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/library
Electric Dreams in PDF: (thanks to Nick Cumbo)
http://electric.dreamofpeace.net/
--------------------
Wishing you the best of dreams,
-Richard Wilkerson
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////
G L O B A L D R E A M I N G N E W S
http://dreamunit.net/news-en/
January 2005
If you have news you'd like to share, simply email Harry Bosma at his
special ed-
news@... address. I can also publish especially European and Asian
dream
news on the Dreamers United web log, see www.dreamunit.net if you're
curious.
Online:
- Old / new year dreaming with Dream-ruyaTurkiye
- History of Dreams course by Richard Wilkerson
- Fourth More Lucid Dreams group
Physical world:
- Discount deadline of the IASD conference
- January: Robert Bosnak workshop, California
- February: First meeting Danish association
- October: Dream Writing conference, UK
Books, movies, research:
- Women's Big Dreams by Jennie Hatherley
- Personal bible research
* * * ONLINE * * *
---
- Old / new year dreaming with Dream-ruyaTurkiye
---
Our next group experiment will be "Goodbye to 2004 - Welcome to 2005
Dreaming"
between 29 December - 3 January. We are thinking of it as a past - future
projection,
precognitive, psi, lucid, etc. dreaming. We can test the results all next
year, as well as
look back to last year.
Ilkin
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dream-ruyaTurkiye/
---
- History of Dreams course by Richard Wilkerson
---
A six week online course about dreams, dreaming and dreamwork from online
dreamwork pioneer, Richard Wilkerson.
This delightful class gives you both e-mail essays on the the history of
dreams and dream
sharing, as well as interactive groups to teach you ways of working and
playing with your
dreams. Modules arrive twice a week for six weeks, and cover dreams from
ancient
Thrace to Cyberspace. Some topics include ancient dreamwork, dreams and
spirituality,
dream anthropology, Freud, Carl Jung, Fritz Perls, the Dreambody, Grassroots
dreamwork, lucid dreaming, telepathic and psi dreaming, the latest in
dream-brain
science and much more.
Six Week Course: $29.99 (US) Register before the 1st of the month.
Registration and
additional information at
http://www.dreamgate.com/class
This is a non-accredited class and there will be no psychotherapy provided.
Certificates
are available. The dreamwork groups are moderated and you must be at least
18 years old
to participate.
---
- Fourth More Lucid Dreams group
---
Harry Bosma is planning to host a fourth More Lucid Dreams group starting at
Saturday,
February 5th in 2005. The group will run for four weeks on a password
protected online
discussion forum. For more information please see the Alquinte website:
http://alquinte.com/en/
* * * PHYSICAL WORLD * * *
---
- Discount deadline of the IASD conference 2005
---
>From the International Association for the Study of Dreams Discount
Deadline for
Berkeley Conference in December!
Hello everyone - I just wanted to remind you that the conference discount
ends 31
December 2004 so please register on-line before that date at
www.asdreams.org/2005 if
you are thinking of attending the IASD 22nd annual conference June 24-28,
2005 at the
Doubletree Hotel in Berkeley, California.
The discount is roughly 10% off of our early 2005 rate. Also please send in
your
responses to the Call for Papers before 31 December if you wish to present.
We are going
to start processing and scheduling early so please get them to Robert Hoss
right away
with a copy to Alan Siegel
VENUE The Conference will be held on the San Francisco Bay at the Doubletree
Hotel
adjacent to the Berkeley Marina. The hotel is in a beautiful quiet
waterfront setting across
the bay from the Golden Gate Bridge, and offers spectacular views of the Bay
and
marina. The site offers a wildlife sanctuary, and large waterfront park,
plus ready access
to Berkeley and the 4th street shops and restaurants. The San Francisco Bay
Area is an
ideal cool and sunny summer vacation spot, and with the 4th of July
fireworks displays at
the marina the weekend following the conference, it makes for a perfect time
to stay and
vacation in the Bay Area. For that reason the hotel is offering a special
vacation package
for the 4th of July weekend in addition to the discounted group rates for
the Conference.
---
- Jan - Robert Bosnak workshop, California
---
Embodied Dream Imagery with Robert Bosnak, Psy A.
"In this experiential workshop, participants will learn to use dreamwork
techniques that
give access to embodied states otherwise unconscious. Through incubation
methods,
participants will learn to seed their dream life and access material
relevant to their
intentions. This workshop is designed for therapists, people with physical
illness wishing
to approach their illness through dreams, and artists who want to deepen
their
involvement with their art."
$350 General Admission
Special Prices and Meals available
Pacifica Graduate Institute Public Programs
249 Lambert Road, Carpinteria, CA 93013
1-805-969-3626, ext 103
publicprograms@...
www.pacifica.edu
---
- Feb - First meeting Danish association
---
This message is meant especially for people who are Danish or living in
Denmark and
interested in dreams.
We are a group of danes who are establishing a danish "branch" of ASD called
"Danish
Association for the Study of Dreams" or "Foreningen for studiet af Drřmme".
Our first general meeting is going to be held in Copenhagen in February.
Anyone who is
interested is welcome.
You can read the (Danish language) invitation on our web site
http://www.ffsd.dk/ or you
write to
mail@... if you have any questions or would like to join the
association.
Best regards
on behalf of the initiative-group
Anders Vogt
---
- Oct - Dream Writing conference, UK
---
A two-day conference
October 15-16, 2005
The University of Kent, United Kingdom
We live alongside our dreams, even if it is not to our liking. Not only are
dreams
recurrent themes in literary and visual representations, but theories of
dreams and
dreaming permeate all humanities disciplines. The dream is a potent critical
tool; we
suggest 'dream' could be the name of a new genre, like 'film'. We are
surprisingly
uncritical of our appropriation of dreams, which are too often taken to mean
something
else – symbols, manifestations of our psyche, or as a literary or rhetorical
device through
which truth, otherwise suppressed, slips into the open. This
interdisciplinary conference
wishes to shed fresh light on our relationship with dream and the mysteries
of its allure,
in order to redefine our approach to dreams. We will explore how, when, and
why dreams
come to us within the academic disciplines (or do we resort to dreams?). We
wish to read
dreams alongside and against psychoanalysis, and to ask to what extent
'dreams write',
how much the texts we read and produce in our daily life are informed by
dreams, or by
our understanding of what dreams are.
We seek to bring together different disciplines, practices and genres
through the theme of
dream writing. Papers are thus sought across the humanities (literature,
art, film, history,
philosophy, anthropology, creative writing, etc), from specialists and
non-specialists of
dream theories. We welcome unique approaches to all aspects of dreams and
dream
writing, pointing to new ways of dreaming through reading / writing /
conceptualising
dreams.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to :
* Dreams and writing
* Dreams and language
* Dreams and psychoanalysis
* Interpretation of dreams
* The politics and ideologies of dreaming
* Translation theories and dreams
* Dreams and intertextuality
* Dreaming in the different epistemes – the Middle Age,
Renaissance, pre-Freudian, non-European dreams etc,
their dream theories, and/or their place in our
contemporary ways of dreaming. Philosophy of dreams,
history of dreaming
* Race and dreams: colonial and anthropological dreams,
fantasy and dreams as the Other. Postcolonial uses of
the dream space, e.g. dreams as the site of identities/
ethnicities
* Arts and dreaming: films, photography, sculpture, music,
etc.
* Architectural dreams
* Alternative spaces of dreaming: computer games, drugs
and hallucination, utopias, travels, daydreaming, etc.
* Geography of dreams, dreamland
* Nightmares, fear, panic, sanity
* Political dreams, ethical dreams
* Dreams and consumerism
* Dreams and memory
* Censorship and boundaries. Dream as a genre
* Dream and literature, dream journals, autobiography,
poems, etc.
* Dreams and religion: theology; dreaming with God(s), God
as a dream.
* Sexuality and dreams; gendered dreams
* Voices in dreams. Bodies or materiality of dreams
* Dream universities
Please send an abstract to Kaori Nagai (
K.Nagai@...) by 20 April
2005.
For further details and enquiries, please contact :
Dr. Kaori Nagai / Dr. Sarah Wood
School of English
The University of Kent
Canterbury, Kent
CT2 7NZ, UK
e-mail :
K.Nagai@...
* * * BOOKS, MOVIES, RESEARCH * * *
---
Women's Big Dreams by Jennie Hatherley
---
Although trained in various therapeutic fields and highly interested in
Jungian thought -
my book was more of an exploration of people's experiences based on a simple
premise
that dreams are a part of our neglected natural intuition. In a world where
we are far too
busy with the problems of daily survival dreams seem to try and help us
reflect on
healthier ways of being. They sharpen our intuition and instincts and tell
us more about
ourselves than any expert could ever reveal. There are some wonderful
examples in the
book on how everyday people have responded to their dreams - often being
moved to
change. Although it is titled Women's Big Dreams, it is equally relevant to
men.
For more details, see Amazon.com.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0850919193/qid=1101935785/sr=1
-
6/ref=sr_1_6/102-1707812-0090562?v=glance&s=books
---
Personal bible research
---
My name is Elton E. Fonseca and I am E-mailing you in Referance to my
Webpage
which I originally started in 2001, all of the Info on my Webpage is
Verifiable and can be
proven through Government Sources who have Copies of my Webpage through the
Year
2004, you are welcome to use my Webpage Info for any editorials, webpage
address
http://community-2.webtv.net/eltonfon.
Happy Holidays and hope to hear from you.
Sincerely, E.E.F.
---
Virtual Reality research
---
My name is Barry I am currently studying towards my degree in Virtual
Reality. I was
wondering if you could spare 5 minutes and fill in a dream related online
questionnaire.
The questionnaire is to help me in completing my dissertation.
Dissertation outlook:
Companies spend millions developing ultimate virtual environments that
depict a detailed
representation of reality to a user. But anyone can make one a 100 times
greater than
these. Using our minds as the super computer to create the environments and
our dreams
to display them.
With Lucid dreams we are able to control and change our dream environment as
we see
fit, something Virtual reality simulations are far from achieving. So
wouldn't this make
our dreams the ultimate virtual reality experience?
The link to the questionnaire is
http://www.euphemia.net/questionnaire/questionnaire.html
This would be extremely helpful in completing my dissertation. Thank you for
your time
and your help.
My appreciation
Barry Dowd
------------------------ END NEWS ----------------------
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An Excerpt From The Lucid Dream Exchange
By Lucy Gillis
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Sleep Paralysis: If You Can't Avoid its Occurrence, Can You Change the
Experience?
(c) 2004 Lucy Gillis
Sleep paralysis (SP) -- a normal, natural, part of the sleep cycle is
largely an unknown
phenomenon in today's culture. Let's face it, most people are not really
interested in the
mechanics of the human sleep cycle. During SP (that part of the sleep cycle
when all but
your eyes are paralyzed during the REM state) the individual is usually
unconscious, fast
asleep. However, sometimes consciousness can arise during sleep paralysis,
so that the
individual is conscious, believing himself to be awake, though his body is
still paralyzed.
But this awareness, though it can feel like your everyday waking
consciousness, is not
fully awake in the sense that we consider everyday awareness in waking
reality. In the
"awareness during sleep paralysis" condition the individual can experience
visual,
auditory, and tactile hallucinations; in other words, dream-like phenomena.
Awareness during sleep paralysis may never occur to most individuals; once
or twice in a
lifetime to some, more frequently for others and, chronically -- nearly all
the time -- for
yet others. Some people learning to lucid dream or to have out-of-body
experiences, will
sometimes find themselves in this state. But because they are familiar with
(and have an
interest in) dreams, they can usually recognize the visual, auditory, and/or
tactile
hallucinations as "dream stuff."
Lucid dreamers, in particular those first learning to lucid dream, use
techniques to help
program themselves to recognize when they are dreaming. Lucid and non-lucid
dreams
can be incubated, (programmed) usually with the use of suggestion,
repetition, intent,
expectation, etc., with excellent results. Many psychologists suggest the
use of lucid
dreaming to help nightmare sufferers. They encourage their patients to learn
to lucid
dream so that they can either confront the "monsters in their dreams",
conquer them,
diminish them, understand them, transform them, etc. This also has proven to
have very
good results.
So, if we can influence our dream experiences by incubation techniques and
suggestion,
then it stands to reason that the dream-like qualities (hallucinations) seen
and felt during
"awareness during sleep paralysis" might also be influenced by similar
techniques. I'm
not talking about trying to induce the "awareness during sleep paralysis"
phenomenon,
rather, why not try to program, or at least influence, the accompanying
experience?
For instance, if an individual, unaware of the sleep paralysis phenomenon,
suddenly
experiences it, he may find it to be a very frightening event. If the
process continues over
time, becomes more frequent, the individual may come to associate that
experience with
fearful imagery, noises, sensations, etc. so that these phenomena are then
expected to
occur when SP awareness occurs. In effect, the individual conditions, or
programs, his
mind to create these fearful experiences when sleep paralysis is felt. In
effect, he is doing
what dream workers do when they want specific dreams: he is practicing dream
incubation, programming his mind for a particular kind of dreaming
experience.
What if this individual were to change his expectations and beliefs? Easier
said than done
perhaps, when one has been suffering sleep paralysis for years. But why not
try anyway?
What would he lose? For most healthy, normal, individuals this may be one
way to
reduce the anxiety associated with SP. (For those with mental illness,
depression, anxiety
disorders, insomnia, etc. it is strongly advised to seek professional
medical advice before
trying this or any similar task.)
Perhaps by "reprogramming" his expectations, beliefs, etc. the individual
would be able
to effectively create neutral, or at best even pleasant dream-like
experiences to occur
during SP. If successful, the individual might eventually move beyond his
fear and may
decide to use the sleep paralysis state to an advantage. He may decide to
use the SP state
as a means to induce lucid dreams. For in effect, the sleep paralysis
"sufferer" already has
an edge that lucid dreamers strive for -- awareness during sleep.
When the individual discovers he's in SP, instead of struggling to wake up,
he could
attempt to go deeper into sleep, into the dream state, maintaining his
lucidity. From there,
he could go on to wonderful, exciting, lucid dream adventures. He could even
attempt to
continue to program his dreaming consciousness while still in the dream
state, to create
positive, pleasant SP experiences, or even to minimize or rid the awareness
during sleep
paralysis occurrence. (Sounds contradictory doesn't it? Programming yourself
to use the
SP condition to initiate lucid dreaming, and then using the lucid dreaming
state to
program yourself to not have awareness during SP!!)
You may not achieve your desired results overnight (then again, maybe you
can!!).
Remember that each person's SP experiences, interpretations (of the event),
and history
are unique. Not everyone will proceed in the same way, or have the same
results. But I do
believe that with determination and focus, and by changing your beliefs,
thoughts, and
expectations about SP, and by using suggestion (or any technique you are
comfortable
with) that you can program yourself for a different, positive, experience.
You might then
even use the sleep paralysis state itself as a gateway into lucid dreaming,
where you can
continue your dreaming adventures in a more pleasant, productive, and joyful
way.
********************************
The Lucid Dream Exchange is a quarterly newsletter featuring lucid dreams
and lucid
dream related articles and interviews. To subscribe to The Lucid Dream
Exchange send a
blank email to:
TheLucidDreamExchange-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
You can also check us out at www.dreaminglucid.com
********************************
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Out-of-Body in Bird Form
©2004 Linda L. Magallón
(From "How To Fly")
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According to the most popular presumption, dreams are not what they seem.
They stand
for something else, so they must be deciphered to discover exactly what it
is. The
interpretation of dreams has been with us since the dawn of recorded
history. However,
there's an alternate approach that stretches even further back in time. It's
the assumption
that at least some sleeping events are literal rather than symbolic. The
dreamer exists and
travels in an actual world. This perspective is commonly called the OBE, or
out-of-body
experience. Flying dreams have bounced back and forth between literal and
symbolic
explanations. They are claimed by both camps: ordinary dreams and
extraordinary. Thus,
they are uniquely positioned to serve as a transit from one to the other and
back again.
There are distinct differences between these two perspectives of
consciousness. For one
thing, with an OBE, the emphasis is on a *body*. And often, more than one.
However,
that body doesn't necessarily have to be pictured as a human body. After
all, a human
body can't fly in the waking world, can it? But something else truly can,
something we
see with our very eyes, talk about and, most importantly, portray for other
people to see.
When we do picture it, we imply the idea of flight, whether it be the
obvious sort or a
type that's hidden from physical sight.
Picturing the OBE
When Calvin Hall used his statistical content analysis technique on a large
batch of
dreams in mid-twentieth century, it revealed that the most commonly dreamt
animal was
a bird. That's reasonable, since there are more species of bird than any
other animal on
the planet.
Now, if you were going to depict a human in flight, how might you go about
it? If you
were writing or speaking about such an experience, you could be quite
straightforward.
You'd tell your audience, "I was flying." But if you had no written
language, or preferred
the visual mode, then the best representation would be a picture. A painting
that displays
an elaborate landscape would do; you could just add a human figure suspended
in the
sky. However, if you wished to indicate the idea of flight in general, the
more appropriate
choice would be something succinct, like a sign or logo. The shortened
pictorial version
of the OBE puts the human shape together with the shape of something that
can truly fly
in the waking world. And what's the most common flying creature? A bird, of
course.
There are several ways you could connect human and bird. You might draw a
human
figure atop a bird or other flying conveyance. Shamans throughout history
report that
they have ridden eagles, drums, clouds or horses in the sky on their altered
state journeys.
Even today native peoples like the Carib, New Guinea and Eskimo take these
"magical
flights." The Chinese preferred to ride dragons, though. The Greeks and
Hebrews favored
chariots.
On the other hand, you could combine the human and flying creature together.
One way
would be to retain the full human figure, along with arms and hands, and
attach wings to
the back. This might render the figure more like an insect than a bird.
Still, you'd get the
idea across. However, if you based your picture on a truly altered state
experience, rather
than a romantic reverie, it's more likely you would *feel* like a bird
aloft. And birds
don't have hands.
In New Guinea, a man of the Sambia people had a such an experience. "I climb
up a
pandanus tree...there is a bog below," he reported. "The bog rises...I am
scared...then I
look at my hands and they turn into bird wings. I fly into the air and land
atop a tree. I see
the bog and it subsides into place. I awake with a start.'
Cross-cultural studies indicate that about 9/10ths of native peoples profess
a belief in the
out-of-body experience even today. In the past, the ancient Egyptians
believed in a "ba"
or soul. A painting from about 1250 B. C. shows the unmoving physical body
lying
prone, while the ba is represented as a second body, with wings spread,
hovering above
it. Only the face of the ba is human; the rest of the body is a bird.
Awareness of two
bodies is very characteristic of the OBE.
The Egyptians also did just the opposite. They created many images of bodies
that had
bird heads, while the rest of the body remained human. These figures may
have actually
depicted priests who donned bird masks as part of a religious ritual.
On the wall of one deep cavern from the Upper Paleolithic Age (at least
15,000 B. C.),
bird and human are combined this way. In the Lasceaux cave is a painting of
a man that
specifically portrays the idea of flight in an altered state of
consciousness. He is lying
down, with an erection, indicating that he is either in trance or is
sleeping, and he has a
bird's head. In that prone position, he pictures himself bird-like. Because
he lies near a
wounded bison, there has been speculation that he is a shaman of the hunt,
viewing the
bison like a bird would, aloft, from an out-of-body perspective.
The doubling of bodies is depicted, too. There is no second human body in
the Lasceaux
cave painting, but there is a second bird. Next to the man with the bird's
head is a staff
with another bird atop it. Why wouldn't there two human bodies, like in the
common
image of the OBE? Simple. If the man was a shaman, he had only one human
body - the
sleeping one. His other body was a winged creature. Shamans are "shape
shifters,"
turning into a bat, bird or insect in order to fly.
A medicine man in Central Australia had a "shape shifting" experience that
shifted right
back again. He dreamt that he went out-of-body. His soul was at first
transformed into the
shape of a feather and the wind blew it to the west. It "rolled over,
disappeared in the
sand and went right in under the ground." When he came out of the ground, he
looked
like himself, in waking life. The medicine man flew up to the Milky Way, to
a black hill
called Talarara, "where the souls always fly to when they go up to the sky."
He flew from
one point of the Milky Way to the other before coming back into his body at
daylight.
Actually, an out-of-body human can be represented as a bird, period. It's
pretty difficult
to tell if that bird is symbolizing a human aloft and not the physical
animal, unless,
perhaps, human and bird are depicted together in the same two-dimensional
painting. For
three-dimensional creations, the two images are usually merged. From
archeological digs
around the world, there are iconographic representations of humanoid figures
with wings,
bird heads, bird bodies, bird feet or some other combination. Such images
have been
sculpted in stone, etched on rock cliffs and baked in clay. It's usually
assumed that these
were gods, goddesses, angels, demons or other denizens of the inner realms.
However,
there's reason to believe that some of the depictions were of actual humans,
with bird
parts symbolizing their out-of-body flight.
Excursion of the Spirit
"If the sleeper sees things which meet his desires, that is because the
soul, knowing all
forms, can, when it is purified in sleep from the defilements of the body,
float at ease
over everything that it desires to possess, although it well knows that in
the waking state
it could not enjoy such a privilege." So wrote Mas'udi Ali ibn Husayn of
Bagdad (946-
974 A. D.). "It is thus that a man sees himself flying in the air, although
in reality he does
not possess the ability to fly. He really only sees the form of flight,
without bodily
participation, as he knows it is not executed before his eyes, but his
thought, concentrated
on this operation, acquires enough force to make it really sensible to him."
Besides Mas'udi and the Egyptians, many people have described an OBE as an
excursion
of the soul or spirit. The idea is that whatever transpires in dreams and
nightmares is the
soul's actual experience and it is an idea found worldwide. This belief in a
soul is
supported by very realistic nighttime events. While the physical body
remains
motionless, the dreaming spirit-body is nonetheless capable of movement.
Tribal people as far flung as the Azande of Africa, Cuna of South America,
Rigo of New
Guinea, Lepcha and Burmese of Asia, the Huron, Seneca and Iroquois of North
America
and the Pokomam of Guatemala believe that the dreamer's soul leaves the body
at night.
It roams in different places, near or far, familiar or unfamiliar, as if it
can glide on the
wind. About half of native peoples who were surveyed believe that only
special people,
like a shaman or medicine man, can have an out-of-body experience. The other
half
believe an OBE is a possibility for nearly everyone at some time or another.
I vote for the
latter choice.
Sleeping Travels
Where do out-of-body travelers go? Their dreaming bodies visit places near
and far,
realistic and fantastic, colorful summerlands and bleak grey netherworlds.
For the ancient
Assyrians, the dead were like birds, covered with feathers. Although the
bodies of the
deceased may lie as if they are sleeping, yet in sleep dreamers can interact
with these
individuals as if they were still alive. When the deceased are encountered
on the journey,
the experience may well engender a belief in an afterlife.
In the Kiwai tribe of New Guinea, the land of the hereafter is considered to
be an
underworld. One tribesman, sick unto death, was told by his people, "You
died
yesterday." He had dreamt that while visiting the netherland, he was kicked
from behind.
He flew up and landed where he was lying in the physical world and thus
returned to life.
Some sleepers travel in an alternate reality, such as to the realm of the
gods or ancestors
or the after-death state. Others travel within what seems to be the physical
world. One
Kwakiutl dreamer from the Pacific Northwest stated, "In my dream I flew
upwards. It
was as though I was going to the place where the stars were showing in the
daytime. I
saw all around our world. Then I wished in vain to go down again. I was not
able to do
so. I was very afraid. Then I awoke."
The Rar‡muri (or Tarahumara) Indians of the Sierra Madre mountains in
northern
Mexico seem to fly much closer to the ground. They consider dreams to be the
activities
of a person's principal soul during sleep. When they are unencumbered by the
bodies in
which they live, these souls can travel very fast and even fly. The small
whirlwinds that
speed across the desert countryside are said to be souls in transit.
Some cultures draw no sharp distinction between the world of dreams and the
world of
waking life. After an African chief dreamt that he had visited England and
Portugal, he
awoke, dressed in Western clothes and described his trip to his people. They
greeted him
and congratulated him on his safe journey.
No matter what the form the dreaming body takes, whether it be human, bird,
feather or
whirlwind, it is capable of flight. If it's depicted for the rest of the
world to see, would the
artwork look like a person, an animal, a bird-part or even a simple spiral?
Any of these
are possible, and more. When we look at pictographs on stone, images on
pottery or
drawings on cave walls, we are tempted to popular conclusions. But perhaps,
with first-
hand experience of dreaming flight, we might interpret such images through
new eyes, as
evidence of humans describing their out-of-body adventures.
References
Cotterell, Arthur (Ed.) The Encyclopedia of Ancient Civilizations. NY:
Mayflower
Books, 1980.
Coxhead, David & Susan Hiller. Dreams: Visions of the Night. NY: Avon Books,
1975.
de Becker, Raymond. The Understanding of Dreams. New York: Hawthorn, 1968.
Dentan, Robert Knox & Laura J. McClusky. "Pity the Bones by Wandering River
Which
Still in Lovers' Dreams Appear as Men." In The Functions of Dreaming, Alan
Moffitt,
Melton Kramer, Robert Hoffmann, eds. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993, 489 -548.
Dreams and Dreaming. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1990.
Garfield, Patricia. Your Child's Dreams. NY: Ballantine, 1984.
Herdt, Gilbert. "Selfhood and Discourse in Sambia Dream Sharing," in
Tedlock, Barbara.
Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations. Cambridge:
Cambridge
University Press, 1987, 55-85.
Lincoln, Jackson Steward. The Dream in Primitive Cultures. London: Cresset
Press,
1935.
Merrill, William. "The Rar‡muri Stereotype of Dreams," in Tedlock, Barbara.
Dreaming:
Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations. Cambridge: Cambridge
University
Press, 1987.
Psychic Voyages. (Editors of Time-Life.) Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books,
1987.
Roheim, Giza. The Gates of the Dream. New York: International Universities
Press,
1952.
Stein, Wendy. Shamans/Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press,
1991.
Talbot, Michael. The Holographic Universe. NY: Harper Collins, 1991.
Zaleski, Carol Goldsmith. Otherworld Journeys. NY: Oxford University Press,
1987.
http://members.aol.com/caseyflyer/flying/dreams.html
(Dream Flights)
© 2004 Linda Lane Magallón
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THE VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE
A Peace Dream Voyager
December 2004 – January 2005 2004
Olivia Strand
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For many I guess the image of a bridge suggests one of reaching out, or of
closing, or
bridging, a gap. When Jean welcomed me onto the Bridge, after last month's
DaFuMu
dreaming, I instead had a completely different image – I thought of Star
Trek! And the
more I thought about this simile, the more I liked it.
Most of the time it looks as if the crew on the Bridge have an excellent
view of space
ahead, much as a jet pilot can see through the windows of his cockpit. Only
the space
ship has no windows, instead the ship's sensors scan the surrounding space,
and display
what they 'see' on a large screen. At other times the screen acts as a
communication link,
as the S.S. Voyager encounters alien races on its journey home through the
Delta
quadrant.
My computer works a bit like that, with a 56K modem functioning as 'sensors'
and where
my flat screen displays messages from, well, not exactly aliens, but
dreamers from all
over the world. And if you regularly read this column you will by now have
figured out
that Jean has taken a holiday, and I can tell you that this particular dream
view from the
Bridge comes to you through the eyes of Olivia.
But oh, how busy the past four weeks seemed, on the Bridge! Never before did
I belong
to a group where so much information flowed between its members. When I
first joined,
and hadn't checked my email for about three hours, I had 24 messages!
If I felt almost overwhelmed at first, I have since found the World Dreams
Peace Bridge
an interesting group to belong to. Many things get discussed, and I for one
have found it
refreshing to again share views on topical and political matters. How many
of us can go
weeks and months without anyone in our family, or at our workplace, ever
mentioning
the news, let alone the ongoing war in Iraq? In the UK, where I live,
coverage of Iraq has
become reduced to a mere trickle, since the Black Watch returned home – in
time for
Christmas, mind, just as Tony Blair had promised – with media highlighting
only some of
the most violent flare-ups. However, many members of the Bridge have
alternate sources
of news, often from inside Iraq, and news and links get shared amongst us.
The Bridge received new members during the past month, as well, this time
adding to the
number of Muslims in our inter-faith group, and providing us with more
direct links to
Iraq. Iraq has seemed very much the focus for the past month, with much
discussion and
many members sharing dreams, dreams that often seemed as if through the eyes
of one of
the Iraqi people, as they try to go about their daily business.
The subject of dreaming itself came up for discussion, as in whether or not
dreams will
bring peace and feed the hungry. "No, they won't," seems the simple answer,
and yet, if
we lose our dreams, we lose a vital aspect of our humanity. The Turkish have
this
wonderful saying, "You make things come true as long as you can dream,"
which to me
illustrates not only a deep spiritual truth, but resonates with the very
reason I joined the
Bridge. As I understand it, one of the cornerstones of the work of the World
Dreams
Peace Bridge, part of its foundation, rests on the principle that only that
of which we can
dream – in the widest sense of the word – can become a manifest reality in
the physical
world.
Perhaps one of this group's main tasks centres on holding the dreams of
peace, and of a
just and fair world, alive. Alive, for those who cannot in the moment feel
or know peace,
love, or serenity, because they no longer have a home to return to, or they
have lost those
near and dear, and lack even the grim consolation of a grave to visit, or
their children
waste before their eyes because they can find neither food nor medicine.
No, dreams alone will not bring peace, justice, or food, to those in need.
Vision needs
grounding, ideals require implementation, and many of the members of the
Bridge
engage with precisely that, raising money, not least. And not only members;
a group of
eight high school students from Vermont, who found the Peace Bridge by
googling
"Iraq" and "Children," managed to raise $1,500 for the Seasons Art School in
Baghdad
by holding an art show at their school. Jean has received a package of
photos, articles and
quotes, and we will soon add a page to the World Dreams Peace Bridge web
site to show
what they have done. Thank you, guys!
Another main event of the month just gone by saw the launch of the first of
the monthly
DaFuMu dreaming events. We settled for the 15th of each month, a date easy
to
remember, but chosen in honour of one of the greatest outpourings of peace
ever, as the
world rallied against the impending war in Iraq on March 15-17, almost two
years ago.
The overall focus for the monthly DaFuMus centre on the image of the
mandala, and
indeed several of this month's submitted dreams echo that theme.
http://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org/dafumumonthly2.htm
And as I close I would like to come back to the subject of Star Trek, once
again. While a
great fan of the first four series, I can't quite close my eyes to the fact
that, futuristic
vision and idealism aside, Star Trek seems permeated with a Western world
view, and
that "To boldly go where no man has gone before" only too easily can read
"Fools rush in
where angels fear to tread," not least if one takes the war on terror, and
the war in Iraq
into account. And yet, it represents a dream, and perhaps, if peoples of all
nations and
faiths join the dream, each adding their images of hope, love and wisdom, we
might one
day know a sustainable peace.
Olivia Strand
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Whitehead's Process Theory and Dreaming
Richard Catlett Wilkerson
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An illustrated version of this article is available at:
http://dreamgate.com/pomo/whitehead_and_dreamwork.htm
KEY:
AI = Adventure of Ideas
MT = Modes of Thought
PR = Process and Reality
PRr = Process and Reality, revised edition
SMW = Science and the Modern World
"Music is feeling, then, not sound" Wallace Stevens
"The basis of experience is emotional" Alfred North Whitehead
INTRODUCTION
What is the stuff of which dreams are made? Are they completely mental
material, cut
off from the rest of matter by the prison house of sleep? Are dreams the
final froth of a
material brain heated by neurotransmissions? Are dreams more imagination,
or memory,
and what is the difference? Are dreams part of a third realm of stuff
between mind and
matter, like Neoplatonic psyche/anima/imagination? If dreams are just
mental, or if
dreams are psyche, how and where do they touch and influence the ideal above
or matter
below?
The placement of dreams in mind or matter is part of a great debate in
Western culture
that has deeply divided our thinking and is referred to as dualism, or the
mind-body split.
Our science has decided to look only at the body, and developed materialism
has no place
for the subject, only the object. If there is a subject, it says, it will
eventually be explained
as a kind of object. Even in quantum physics where observation becomes a
factor, it is
considered a problem and nuisance that we will eventually get past. This
goes against the
grain of our most direct experience, which is, experience. There is
something or someone
that experiences these objects which seems quite different than the objects
experienced.
This intuition is so strong that the opposite view to materialism has also
been developed,
that all is mind, and all objects are really object projected by our mind,
or a great mind
behind our mind. The third position, the most popular, is a dualism that
holds that there is
both experience and experiencer, and the object and subject are two
distinctly different
things. But just how they communicate becomes problematic. How does an
object leap
over to the subject? How does the subject's will shift from mental to
physical?
It is with these problems that Whitehead's process theory becomes so
valuable. For
Whitehead, there is no matter, no mind. Not initially, anyway. These are
both errors of
abstract concreteness, where we have confused an abstract idea of something
as being the
real thing itself. Science, Whitehead says, is quite valuable, and has
finally seen that
matter is really a set of processes in motion, of events. But what science
fails to see is that
these processes are creative, experiential processes. Rather, science
reverts back to its old
notion that processes are just a new container for materials. Whitehead's
process theory
proposes a radically different stuff of which the universe is made, creative
experience, or
feelings. This doesn't mean that the world is just a projection of our own
mind, but
rather that the universe is a process of multitudes of experiencing
individuals.
While most take experience to mean clear, distinct perceptions and ideas,
Whitehead sees
these, along with object consciousness, as derivative abstractions from our
more basic
experience of feeling. Since our bodies are not separate from our feelings,
so too the
individuated bodies of the whole world pass on their feelings. These
feelings are not
interpretations of the world, but direct nonsensory passages of
subjectivity, of interiority,
of what he calls occasions of experience, which can creatively synthesize
and pass
themselves on as novel feeling/thought/forms to subjects in the present who
experience
them anew. In fact, the experiencing subject will slip into the past and
become this very
object-once-subject. What we experience is ourselves that we were a moment
ago, along
with a synthesis other selves that were experiencing a moment ago.
Who Was Whitehead?
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), was an amazing, yet humble and reserved
man,
who had three separate careers. His first career was in England as a
mathematician and
teacher of at Trinity College, Cambridge. His interests were more in applied
mathematics
and mechanics, but his theoretical developments were impressive as well. He
came up
with a universal algebra, he worked with his student Bertrand Russell on the
Principia
Mathematica, which attempted to reduce all math to logic, and he developed
an
alternative relativity to Einstein's, which wasn't dependent on the constant
speed of light.
In 1911 he moved to the University of London and eventually became an
educational
reformer and administrator. Instead of retiring in 1924, he moved his whole
family to
America and became a philosopher at Harvard, where he developed his unique
Process
Theory. His main biographer was Victor Lowe.
PROCESS THEORY
Whitehead's theory is a process theory. Though its popular now to assume the
world is a
process rather than an object, this was really something quite new a century
ago. And
Whitehead's view is still considered one of the most complex and advanced of
all process
theories. Whitehead lived during a time when science was rapidly revamping
its views of
about matter and energy. Einstein's convertibility equation, that matter and
energy are
one and the same thing, liquefied the universe. The whole idea of hard
matter melted
before us, as mountains became butter flowing out to sea. Yet the notions of
matter and
substance persisted. Atoms, molecules, electrons, these all hide in them the
older notions
of matter that goes bump. Processes were still seen as inert, dead matter
occurring in
space. Personal experience was seen by the sciences seen as an accidental
byproduct.
For Whitehead, experience is primary, and precedes matter. Matter and
substance, even
forces and energy, are for him Johnny-come-lately products of our
imagination that we
have made up for our convenience and we now confuse with reality. However,
his
'experience' is something quite unique and separate from human
consciousness, though
human consciousness is built up out of his primary experiences. For the
moment, its best
to think of experience as primitive feeling, or awareness with subjectivity
and value,
which may or may not reach consciousness.
Having experience as the primary unit or process of the world means for
Whitehead that
the internal or subjective aspect of life is returned to the world, and not
set aside as it
often is in materialism. All individuals, human or not, have experience.
This is called
panpsychism (pan = all, psychism = psyche) Whitehead is more often referred
to as a
panexperiencialist, as for him not everything has experience, only special
units of process
called 'individuals.' An individual can accept influences from the past as a
whole, unified
organism. Thus we might see individuals in many forms, as sub-atomic
processes, atomic
processes, molecules, and other beings/becomings that can take in the
influences of the
past as a unified whole, and give them a unique spin. Just how unique this
spin may be
will vary dramatically depending on how long an experience can last for an
individual.
Subatomic processes may have durations of billionth of a second, while an
animal with
memories may have experiences that last many seconds or longer. The longer
one can
maintain an experience, the greater the chance of giving it a unique spin.
Obviously this
kind of experience that an electron has is not the same as what we could
call everyday
object consciousness, where we can consciously identify tables, chairs, and
people. Still,
all individuals are composed of experience and receive previous experiences
and
creatively produce other novel experiences. I will consider the case of
dream entities
later, but for now, one might imagine a dream character as an entity being
able to have
feelings and therefore being able to synthesize unique experiences.
Whitehead calls these individual experiences 'actual entities'. They are
"the final real
things of which the world is made up. . . drops of experience, complex and
interdependent" (PRr 27, 28). They are also called actual occasions, and
occasions of
experience, feelings, and prehensions, terms which will be explained below.
A table
would not be an individual actual entity, but rather is an aggregate of
actual entities. So
the table is swarming with a multitude of experience, but not as a whole.
You or I have
full body responses to the world and so have a dominate actual entity (think
mind, but not
as ghostly as a mind) as well as micro swarms of cellular and atomic and
subatomic
actual entities.
The next thing to know about actual entities is that they are subjects
while in the
present, and become objects after they move into the past. An atom (that is,
a small actual
entity at that level) in the table, for example, is in its present an
experiencing individual,
but then passes into being experienced. These actual entities pass their
subjective
feelings, their own unifications, directly into the next actual entity. In
this way,
subjectivity as well as objectivity is inherited by the present actual
entity. We don't just
get interpretable data, but we get the subjective feeling itself, primitive
feelings that are
the stuff of which the whole universe is made. Since all things are made of
these feelings,
we might say that we get objects directly as well, even if they are built up
derivatives of
actual entities. Only present time actual entities can experience, only
past actual entities
can be experienced. What they experience is other actual entities. In other
words, we
experience the world here in the present, though the world experienced is
just past, and
we feel it directly, its aim to continue in some particular way, and we also
have some
degree of freedom in passing on something novel as we are connected to the
realm of
alternatives and possibilities.
Prehension
The term prehension was first used by Whitehead in relation with causality.
(SMW,
Chap 4). He was very unhappy with the notion that causality is seen as the
bumping of
external objects in space. Rather, Whitehead envisioned each event directly
including
within itself aspects of the events to which it responds temporally as well
as spatially, and
that it will react selectively towards these events. This process of
response through
creative incorporation is prehension. One might say it's the connecting of
the actual with
the possible in an individual evaluation, and individual event, an actual
occasion.
Though actual entities are the fundamental stuff of which the universe is
made, and can't
be further divided ontologically, (can't really be divided) we can discuss
conceptually the
various parts of the process in terms of prehension. Prehending comes from
apprehending, without the ape, or conscious animal mind, [Riker 1976] and
refers to the
grasping/receiving/synthesizing process of actual entities or actual
occasions. What is
prehended are other actual occasions, which have moved into the past and
become
objects (objects for other subjects, never material objects in a void).
Note the temporal
rather than spatial spin. What is at risk here in using such a word as
'object' is a fall back
into external relations, of things going bump into one another. Rather,
prehension is a
process first, one that first takes an objective datum, which it
subjectively unifies with
other objective datum, and finally passes a unique datum back into
objectivity.
As a quick model, we might say that here in the present, we experience a
whole universe
that influences us, and feel this whole thing as one unified thing. It is a
multitude or
multiplicity of influence that we synthesize into one new experience. And
then when our
present passes, we will pass this feeling-now-object on to all (individuals)
who are
experiencing us.
The Three Factors of Prehension.
Category of Explanation XI: "That every prehension [feeling] consists of
three factors:
(a) the 'subject' which is prehending, namely, the actual entity in which
that prehension is
a concrete element; (b) the 'datum' which is prehended; (c) the 'subjective
form' which is
*how* the subject prehends that datum." (PR pg.28)
Note that each prehension is three feelings in one. There is the feeler, the
feeling being
felt and the feeling of the feelers reaction to what is felt. As Nobo
notes, prehension
involves a process "in which the occasion unconsciously grasp the objective
reality of
earlier occasions as efficient causes of its own existence and as
determinants of it own
initial ingredient subjectivity. " (Nobo 229)
Further, a prehension may be divided into its physical and conceptual sides.
In its physical form, the prehension is a datum from a previous actual
entity. It is a
"feeling of a feeling as felt elsewhere" (Leue, chap2). In this subjective
form, the
physical feeling is said to be conformal, meaning the subjective feeling is
passed to the
new actual entity. However, this passage or conformation is never complete.
This
subjective form of physical feeling/prehension is not a sensation nor
developed human
emotion, but rather more a direct feeling of a something, along with a sense
of attraction
or aversion.
In its conceptual form, the prehension selects from the many alternatives of
the universe
to individuate or define itself. There is no pure conceptual prehension.
These alternatives,
called eternal objects, are prehended as hybrids of physical/conceptual
datum. That is, the
eternal objects are not floating in space, but always come with each
physical prehension.
Some interpretations of these eternal objects see them like Archetypes or
Platonic forms,
but more recent interpretations point out that Whitehead did not see them
this way at all
and they always need to be discussed in relation to physical feelings.
Eternal objects are
not part of an ideal realm to which physical feelings conform, but rather
are part of the
pure world of becoming which is never actual nor complete. I think they are
better seen
as the time-space folds that alter and mutate in alternatives. That is,
alternatives are
falsely seen as objects of choice, rather than forces of alteration. The
process allows the
concressing of conceptual feeling to experiment with relevant alterations
before
actualizing. The process intuits into and experiments with the realm of
possibility and
selects the most relevant through valuing up or down. Dreamers often notice
this in
semi-lucid dreams where they are following their own story along in a dream
narrative
(I'm headed down to the river with a fishing pole to get some fish.) but
notice side
alternatives cropping up along the way (No, I'm not really going fishing,
I'm going to get
the boots I left. No, not the boots, the car I parked.). The final recalled
dream will have a
particular actual narrative, but these alternatives surround it at every
turn. One gets the
sense in these dreams that while it seems like we are revising the
storyline, the more
accurate description of what is happening is that the actual final storyline
depends and
rests on these alternatives or alternating forces.
Finally, the completed actual occasion has an aim. These aims are
experienced by the
next actual occasion as causes, or as Whitehead calls them, efficient
causes. These aims
must be addressed, but don't completely determine the actual occasion. Since
this aim is
the final cause of an actual entity, we might say that the feeling process
is one of taking
account of the universe and synthesizing a subjective purpose that is passed
on.
And so the stuff of which the universe is made is a creaturely process,
multiplicities of
entities prehending the universe and carrying the universe forward in
creative droplets of
experience. There may be groups of actual occasions within larger actual
occasions, as
with the subatomic particles in an atom, the atoms in a molecule the
molecules within a
human being, a human within a society and societies within worlds.
How Does This Make Any Difference?
Sensory and Nonsensory Perception
Sensory perception is derivative from two earlier modes of experience, 1.
perception in
the mode of causal efficacy (physical prehension in the language of
perception) , and 2.
perception in the mode of presentational immediacy (sense-like data).
Perception in the mode of causal efficacy is nonsensory, primitive feeling
directly of the
world. Whitehead interpreter, David Ray Griffin, suggests that we, as
experiencing actual
entities, get this directly from our brain, almost in a psychokinetic way,
and thus from the
nervous system of our whole body. However it is, it is direct, thus a
subjective
perception, pre-sensory, a feeling. "In prehending my body, for example, I
prehend some
of its parts as causally efficacious for my own experience. " [Griffin,
World Knot,
Pg.133] That is, we directly get the world as being important in the flow
of causal
influence. This includes pleasures and pains, but also a priori categories
and external
sensory perception. Extrasensory perception takes on a new meaning as well,
as direct
nonsensory perception needed be limited by traditional views of causality
being the
bumping up of material objects and their wave patterns. (see Griffin,
Archetypal Process
and essays by Dave Pleasants). Whitehead cites immediate memory as an
example of
nonsensual perception. Not long term memory, which is filled in with
abstractions, but
something more like the memory that allows me to not forget the point as I
complete this
sentence. It is the immediate visceral grasp of the world.
Perception in the mode of presentational immediacy is similar to sense data
and more
derivative than casual efficacy. Visually it would include space, shape and
colors. We
know we see yellow, but not why or from whence it came. Yet it defines an
area that
separates it from the rest of our visual field.
Sensory perception combines casual efficacy and presentational immediacy,
and might be
termed presentation in the mode of symbolic reference. If we say, "Oh,
that's the yellow
sun." then we may or may not be correct. It might be something else, and it
might be we
are imagining it rather than seeing it. I can't be wrong that I saw or
imagined yellow, and
that I had direct primitive feelings about it, but the symbolic mode
introduces interpretive
possibilities and errors.
Thus, while only more complex creatures may have presentational immediacy
and
symbolic reference, all individuals, down to subatomic particles, perceive
in the mode of
causal efficiency. That is, from the most complex to the simplest organism,
there is
emotional, appetitive, purposive experience.
There is no reason not to extend this to imaginal creatures as well. In
dreams, the debate
as to whether our dream characters are really projections of our selves or
autonomous
creatures often arises. The question in process theory then becomes somewhat
different.
Its doesn't matter whether our dream entities are projections or independent
residents, but
rather what actual entities are operative and dominate. That is, the
question becomes
whether these entities can feel and experience. If they can, then they are
as 'real' as any
other actual entity in the universe. How long they exist, whether or not
they disappear
when we wake up or go on living in their own dimensions is irrelevant.
Experiences of
subatomic particles may be counted in billionths of a second. The relevant
question is
just as with other societies, how to best help people fulfill their
destinies and actualize
their potentials.
Panpsychism, Again
There is a radical difference in the way we treat objects vs. subject in
dreamwork, but
these differences all shift when we see the dream as the carrier and unique
synthesizer of
experience.
Of course, one wonders what evidence might exist for experience existing in
non-living
individuals in nature. The basic argument goes as follows; we never
encounter in life a
element or piece of life that is just hanging around in the void, separate
from experience.
Even a dream of a void with nothing, if reported, was experienced.
Speculations of
objects located spatially beyond experience must all be speculated about
from experience.
We cannot think about relations without experience. We can deny this aspect
of the
relation (I'm imagining a void without anyone imagining it) but it remains
in every
equation of relation. For Whitehead, it follows that instead of assuming
that the rest of
the world besides ourselves *don't* experience, that it is a more sane
assumption to
understand that all individuals *do* have experience, no matter how
primitive, and that
the world is their relation to one another.
What is What
The fallacy of misplaced concreteness, which was discussed above as when one
confuses
the processes of the world with more derivative objects, is essential to
Whitehead's
argument. Or more accurately, this view surrounds the issues that process
theory
addresses. The only truly fundamental items of the universe are experiences,
actual
occasions. Notions of force, atoms, photons, electrons and the like are
abstract entities
that we have created to understand the world, and not parts of the
fundamental structure
of the world. And for Whitehead, problematic units as well, since they
describe realty
without reference to experience. It may serve us to not confuse actual
entities and the
societies they produce with the multitude of objects void of experience with
which we
have inhabited our world. In dreamwork, this is somewhat more difficult on
one side and
yet simple on the other. Tables, windows and other aggregate objects in
waking life,
unable as wholes to respond with any creative unity, may be actual entities
in our
dreams, capable of very create feelings. On the other hand, dreamworkers
are very aware
that dreams are already experience.
Mind-Body Dualism
Because actual entities are subjects in the present, objects in the past,
the mind-body issue
is dramatically shifted. Instead of wondering how mind stuff over here gets
connected
with body stuff over there, in process theory, everything is mind in
present, and body in
the past. The division is not here and there, but now and then. Again,
dreamworkers are
acutely aware of how the present feeling manifests as a reality in the next
moment that
can be experienced. Also, dreamworkers are not surprised by dreams enduring
beyond
sleep in the form of complex images, thoughts and feelings. By focusing on
these dreams,
the relevancy of their actual occasions allows them to connect directly with
life, other
dreamers, and the universe.
GLOSSARY
------------------
Actual occasion: an enduring moment of experience, a unifying process, a
feeling. Also
called an actual entity, and sometimes just called feeling, where something
is felt, and felt
with affective tone.
Concrescence: the process by which actual entities prehend other actual
entities and then
form new occasions. Kline suggests 'concrescence' to mean the internal
adventure of
becoming of the final real things, and 'concretum' to refer to the
objectified actual
occasion, the past product of a present concrescent process.
Causal Efficacy: The direct, nonsensual prehension of the past.
"Sympathy, that is, feeling the feeling in another and feeling conformally
with another"
(PRr 246). Perception in the mode of causal efficacy is a vague but powerful
emotion.
" . . . in the silence, the irresistible causal efficacy of nature presses
itself upon us . . . the
inflow into ourselves of feelings from enveloping nature overwhelms us" (PRr
267). It is
"our general sense of existence, as one item among others, in an efficacious
actual world"
(PRr 271).
Eternal Objects: Conceptual objects (rather than subjects) in a state of
potentiality. They
enter into the actual entity becoming concrete without themselves being
actual. Eternal
objects (alternative non-actuals) enter into the concrescence of an actual
entity through
valuation, as a hierarchy. Alternatives are selected, some as more relevant
than others,
but to become actual, the occasion must become definite. "Potentiality
becomes reality;
and yet retains its message of alternatives which the actual entity has
avoided" (PRr 226).
Prehension: The way a feeling or actual occasion grasps the world, at the
same time, as
an object and a subjective feeling. "The word perceive is, in our common
usage, shot
through and through with the notion of cognitive apprehension. So is the
word
apprehension, even with the adjective cognitive omitted. I will use the word
prehension
for uncognitive apprehension: by this I mean apprehension which may or may
not be
cognitive."SMW., p. l0l.
REFERENCES
Easton, T and Keeton, H. (2004). Physics and Whitehead: Quantum, Process,
and
Experience. State University of New York Press: Albany, NY.
Griffin, David Ray (1998). Unsnarling the World-Knot: consciousness,
Freedom and the
Mind-Body problem. University of California Press: Berkeley.
Griffin, David Ray (1989). Archetypal Process: Self and Divine In
Whitehead, Jung and
Hillman. Northwestern University Press: Evanston, IL.
Lowe, Victor, (1990) Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and His Work : Volume I
& II
Johns Hopkins University: Princeton, NJ.
Leue, William Hendrichs (2004). Metaphysical Foundations for a Theory of
Value in the
Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Available online at:
http://www.thoughtsnmemories.net/whitehead2c.htm
Nobo, Jorge Luis (2004). Whitehead and the Quantum Experience. In Easton, T
and
Keeton, H. (2004). Physics and Whitehead: Quantum, Process, and Experience.
State
University of New York Press: Albany, NY.
Pleasants, David (2002). Panpsychism, Intersubjectivity and the Nature of
Time.
Available online at:
http://www.geocities.com/dave_pleasants/Panpsychism_and_Intersubjectivity.ht
ml
Pleasants, David (2003). Transtemporal dreaming: intersubjectivity,
precognition, and the
physics of time. Presentation at the 2003 Berkeley Conference of the
International
Association for the Study of Dreams. Available online at:
http://www.asdreams.org/2003/abstracts/pleasants.htm
Pleasants, David (2003). Precognitive Dreaming and the Physics of Time.
Presentation at
the 2003 IASD PsiberDreaming Conference. Online, passwords needed.
http://www.asdreams.org/psi2003/psiboard/papers/david_pleasants001.htm
Riker, John (1976). Non-Deistic Process Theory of Alfred North Whitehead.
Class notes
from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1978). Process and Reality ,Revised Edition.
[Edited by David
Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne], The Free Press: New York, New York.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1933/67) Adventures of Ideas,: Cambridge University
Press:
Cambridge, MA. Free Press edition, 1967.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1938/1968). Modes of Thought. The Macmillan Co.,
New
York. Free-Press edition, 1968.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1929). Process and Reality,, The Macmillan Co., New
York
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Susan Sontag – A Farwell Dream
By Richard Wilkerson
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
I wanted to mention her here due to two of her less well know books. The
main one was
The Benefactor, a story where a person lived their life *for* their dreams.
That is, they
would go around and do things to see how they impacted their dreams, a kind
of reversal
of the way interpretive types approach dreams, as ways of viewing waking
life.
I also wanted to mention her Against Interpretation, which both irritated
and inspired me.
While not about dream interpretation, her analysis of intepretation in the
arts reveals the
power dynamics (the shadow side) of interpretation that can slip into many
kinds of
interpretive enterprises.
"... I don't mean interpretation in the broadest sense, the sense in which
Nietzsche
(rightly) says, 'There are no facts, only interpretations.' By
interpretation, I mean here a
conscious act of the mind which illustrates a certain code, certain 'rules'
of interpretation.
"
Though not happy with the impositions of ancient forms of interpretation,
she is even
harder on contemporary styles:
"Interpretation in our own time, however, is even more complex. For the
contemporary
zeal for the project of interpretation is often prompted not by piety toward
the
troublesome text (which may conceal an aggression), but by an open
aggressiveness, an
overt contempt for appearances. The old style of interpretation was
insistent, but
respectful; it erected another meaning on top of the literal one. The modern
style of
interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it digs "behind"
the text, to find a
sub-text which is the true one."
"It is always the case that interpretation of this type indicates a
dissatisfaction (conscious
or unconscious) with the work, a wish to replace it by something else. "
"Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is
composed of
items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for
arrangement into a
mental scheme of categories. "
"Proust, Joyce, Faulkner, Rilke, Lawrence, Gide . . . one could go on citing
author after
author; the list is endless of those around whom thick encrustations of
interpretation have
taken hold. But it should be noted that interpretation is not simply the
compliment that
mediocrity pays to genius. It is, indeed, the modern way of understanding
something, and
is applied to works of every quality. "
How then, does she envision our encounter with dreams or other works of art?
"
"What kind of criticism, of commentary on the arts, is desirable today? For
I am not
saying that works of art are ineffable, that they cannot be described or
paraphrased. They
can be. The question is how. What would criticism look like that would serve
the work of
art, not usurp its place? "
Susan could have easily said what Oscar Wilde said "It is only shallow
people who do
not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the
invisible."
"What is needed, first, is more attention to form in art. If excessive
stress on content
provokes the arrogance of interpretation, more extended and more thorough
descriptions
of form would silence. What is needed is a vocabulary - a descriptive,
rather than
prescriptive, vocabulary - for forms. The best criticism, and it is
uncommon, is of this
sort that dissolves considerations of content into those of form. "
"Equally valuable would be acts of criticism which would supply a really
accurate, sharp,
loving description of the appearance of a work of art. "
Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted,
and proceeds
from there. This cannot be taken for granted, now. Think of the sheer
multiplication of
works of art available to every one of us, superadded to the conflicting
tastes and odors
and sights of the urban environment that bombard our senses. Ours is a
culture based on
excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our
sensory
experience. All the conditions of modern life - its material plenitude, its
sheer
crowdedness - conjoin to dull our sensory faculties. And it is in the light
of the condition
of our senses, our capacities (rather than those of another age), that the
task of the critic
must be assessed. "
"What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more,
to hear
more, to feel more."
"Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art,
much less to
squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to
cut back
content so that we can see the thing at all".
"The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and,
by analogy,
our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of
criticism should
be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to
show what it
means."
"In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art. "
Farewell, Susan Sontag. I will miss you irritating and prodding me on to new
ground,
higher ground, groundless depths.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Dream Section is edited by Kat Peters-Midland
_
If you want to send in dreams, enter them at
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple
Dream title: none
Dream date: not given
Dreamer name: dreamer
Dream text: I dreamed that a guy that I still have a crush on died. My
husband was there
and his whole family was too, but they didn't say anything. All I know is
that I cried in
front of my husband and his entire family. I was saying that I loved him
and why did
they have take him away and that I loved him so much.
Dream comments: I'm married and I want to know, what does this dream mean?
Dream title: none
Dream date: 10/9/04
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I saw walking along a sidewalk with my boyfriend in broad
daylight. I fell
into a huge bottomless pit and fell for a while. Then I landed on a
sidewalk at a night
time scene.
Dream comments: none
Dream title: hitting
Dream date: 9/11/2004
Dreamer name: mouse
Dream text: I went up to my sister, who was leaning against a car in my
parents'
driveway, and proceeded to fist her in the face. One loud smack was heard. I
grabbed her
and we hugged, not knowing if to cry or not - we just held each other.
There was no
blood or anything. I could see me holding her, but not her face. After
hitting her in the
face she asked why I did it, I answered its just the way it has to be. Then
the hugging in
silence.
Dream comments: The loud noise from the smack sort of woke me and that's the
only
thing I can still hear in my head.
Dream title: Snakes
Dream date: 12/03
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I am coming out of a house and there are a lot of people
standing around. I
start walking at the end of walkway and I notice that there are snakes
biting me. Not just
one or two - there are hundreds of them biting me on my ankle.
Dream comments: I have this dream about four to six times a year.
I don't know what it means.
Dream title: heating
Dream date: 11-16-04
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I have always been having dreams lately that my husband is
constantly
cheating on me.
Dream comments: I don't know what it means I wake up crying all the time and
mad at
my husband why do these mean and why do I have them all of the time?
Dream title: End of World #1
Dream date: October
Dreamer name: SM
Dream text: I was innocent and naďve, just playing in the snow plowed mound
just above
the bridges' corner. It was the middle of winter. I thought I was safe in
all my layers of
clothing. All the sudden this yellowish steam comes from the snow as it gets
wet. Steam -
in the middle of winter. That cannot be good. And it wasn't. Everything
started melting.
Heat was coming up from under the iced over lake. What about the whole city.
That's when "we" (I don't know who "we" were), made a group agreement and we
just
knew that it was the end of the world.
My friend departs and I am running down the stairs of some school. They are
cement and
hard stairs but they are hot to my feet in the middle of winter. The school
appears to feel
as if it was in Japan or some Asian country where everything seems to be
under this
unnatural and quiet control. I am rushing out of the building and mom and I
head north. I
do not know where Steven was at this time. But we go anyway. As mom fills
the car with
gas I am terrified watching the huge city across the little lake smoke. The
city literally
gave off this black smoke and I could see the color of the flames consuming
a good
quantity of something. It is dying.
As for us, we will soon but we are heading north anyway. Even though it is
obvious that
the whole earth will be destroyed very soon maybe keeping you alive might
somehow
make things a little bit better. There are so many cars..... We are all
going north. But we
know what is going to happen. Here in Michigan there is much snow. The
glaciers will
surely melt and based on how fast that snow was melting we will be drowning
going
north and being burned alive or cooked by the boiling water that once
resembled a frozen
lake if we stay.
During this crisis we were silly. We stopped to look at some famous Canadian
Tree or
something. But then again we knew we were kind of delaying the inevitable
and just
pretending that it's not really going to happen. Then when we do start
driving north again
we stop shortly after. In the middle of dying we are hungry enough to stop
at the car
along side of the road that is holding up his trunk and selling much food
and supplies
from inside his car. We are buying food and flashlights as if we were going
to last that
long.
Dream comments: Several days after having this dream my best friend and
cousin both
suddenly left to different ends of the country within four days of each
other. I like to
think it may have been a warning that massive pain and suffering was soon to
be endured.
Dream title: Only one tooth this time.
Dream date: 11/17/04
Dreamer name: SM
Dream text: I was forced to wear this retainer inside my mouth. But the
funny thing was
that I was already suffering with braces on. So the retainers' metal wires
wrapped
themselves painfully around my braces. Both top and bottom too. It was very
slow to put
on and hard to sit trough.
I was on some secondary mission as well. I was doing two things at once
because even
although I was concentrating on what was going on in my mouth I was also on
a journey
walking and going all over the place.
Just then it happened. This time I actually saw it happen. It was just
slowly slipping
down. Before, I had never seen my teeth fall out. The braces weren't there
either. The first
time two teeth fell and it was horrible. Then two days later all my teeth
fell out and I was
busy scrambling on the floor looking for them. Frantically I searched as if
finding them
would fix the problem. I didn't know how it had happened. That was about six
months
ago and now only one tooth fell out and it was like nothing.
Dream comments: I think this came to me because over time hard hits tend to
hurt less.
We become colder and bitterly attempt disconnecting us from this worlds'
society. An
oyster makes a pearl to cover up the pain but the problem never goes away.
Dream title: headless lady
Dream date: 2002
Dreamer name: blue
Dream text: I was cleaning the mirror inside a lady's room and saw myself
wearing my
uniform but headless. I woke up grasping my breath.
Dream comments: While having a 3 hour break, I went to my room and had a
short nap. I
had this terrifying dream. After 2 months I was terminated. I was working
in a luxury
ship. Is my termination related to my dream? They say it's a blessing that I
was
terminated because my dream means DEATH. Is these true? Need help.
Dream title:
Dream date: 11/18/04
Dreamer name: jb
Dream text: My friends and I were on a bridge and the bridge was bending
over, but not
breaking. We got so close to the water without falling in that we could
literally taste it.
We could reach our hands down and touch it. But the bridge was not broken it
was just
bending over. And it was a long bridge.
Dream comments: none
Dream title:
Dream date: 11/18/04
Dreamer name: jb
Dream text: This dream was about a bridge too. My friends were jumping off a
bridge to
go swimming. I was down by the side, feeling as if something was wrong. It
started to
rain, and as I looked down in the water there were sharks that just
appeared. I yelled to
Travis not to jump "Travis no, stop don't" but he didn't hear me. He and his
friend were
wrestling and he falls in the water. The sharks didn't eat him but nibbled a
little. So I ran
on to the bridge and it became very wobbly. There was a kind of porch thing
in the
middle of the bridge, maybe a foot long. A small fence was dividing the
porch and the
bridge. It began to rain even harder like a storm. I was so frightened to be
on that bridge.
I couldn't get off the porch thing. somebody out of the middle of know were
came
swooped me up, ran to the end of the bridge with me, to where I was before
and threw me
there was a small piece of a fence that was broken on the ground were he
threw me. My
face hit the fence and I had the imprint of the fence on my face. I couldn't
see, but it
stung. Then I see an image coming towards me. Now I'm not married but I ask
that
image if it is my husband. They respond yes. I ran towards him. I hear in
the woods
behind me a noise it's a baby bear. I ran onto the bridge and a small door
appeared,
separating the bridge and the wood. A bigger bear came and there was not way
to hold
the broken door closed. My husband took off and I said wait "you're my
husband your
supposed to protect me." So I pulled him toward me and threw him towards the
broken
door. And I ran.
Dream title: none
Dream date: 11/18/04
Dreamer name: J
Dream text: I had a dream that I was in a train in a black tunnel. When we
resurfaced
from the tunnel there was a very large hill on the left side of the tunnel
and a field on the
right. The sky was blue and clear and we were coming close to a two-story
farm-style
white house that was old and drab. The next thing that happened was there
was a large
airplane, gun-metal gray, and it started to spin. It looked more like a
rocket with boosters
than an airliner. It dove straight down behind the house, resurfaced and
dove again. The
people in the plane could see flames bursting out behind the house and over
the hill. The
whole time, the train seemed to be completely still! The next thing I knew,
the plane
came sliding out over the hill and landed right on our train! The train
didn't burn and no
one was hurt, but the tip of the plane was next to my face, raging in
flames. I could still
see the flames when I opened my eyes!
Dream comments: I have no idea what this means.
Dream title: Dog dream
Dream date: 18 Nov 2004
Dreamer name: MN
Dream text: I was in a park with my partner and two dogs, the park had large
rolling hills.
I recently just got a new dog which means I now have two, in the dream the
dogs were
both identical but their personalities were totally different just like in
real life one being
full of life and the other just plodding along. In the dream I remember
going down a lane
after one of the dogs and theirs was a large wall I got the feeling like the
dog wanted to
get over the wall. But I pulled her back the dream skips back to the park
and I'm chasing
the mad dog all over the park down a large hill. There's a lake and I get
the feeling that I
have to get away because people are there. Then I'm in a car driving home in
a car with
my partner and we get a flat. My partner tells me it's a flat. Then we get
a second flat
but it's a slow puncture, then we get a third flat, and I ask if we're ever
going to get there.
Then we pull up to a drive and we get out and knock on a door someone opens
it and the
dream ends
Dream comments: none.
Dream title: none
Dream date: none given
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I have dreams of my old boyfriend talking and kissing. Dream
comments: In
reality we lately haven't talked or anything.
What does this mean because I dreamt about him a whole week.
Dream title: The swimming pools
Dream date: 11/19/04
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I was in the swimming baths. One pool was dirty and the people
in it were
horrible, pushing and shoving each other. But the sun was shining over the
pool and it
was warm. The other pool was cold had no sunshine in the shade; however it
was clean
and new. The people in the pool we nice and friendly. I went in both pools
but could not
decide which pool to stay in. I wanted to keep warm, but the warm pool was
dirty.
Dream comments: I thought it meant two situations in my life. One warm and
dirty and
one cold and new, if that makes sense.
Dream title: a baby
Dream date: 5 days in a row
Dreamer name: C
Dream text: I've been having a lot of dreams where I have a baby or I'm
taking care of a
baby (but most often the baby is mine). So this baby is mine and I love this
baby but all
of a sudden (and this happens in all of this dreams) my baby turns into a
doll.
Dream comments: It's really freaking me out – what does this me?
Dream title: strange
Dream date: this morning
Dreamer name: W
Dream text: pressure of a saw on my face, I can't see and no blood. Then I
woke up.
Dream comments: I was just screaming then I woke up
Dream title: The meeting.
Dream date: Dec 3, 2004
Dreamer name: displeasedidealist
Dream text: in the dream, I am at a Walmart type store, as I am shopping
(for what, I
can't remember). I meet this girl whom I've known for years. As soon as I
see her, I hear
someone saying "everyone needs to get out!" We go outside the store, where
everyone is
climbing up the walls, to the top of the store. We follow all these people,
and as soon as
we get to the top, the sky begins changing colors from blue to red to green,
and then
combinations of the three. It was like aurora-borealis, except in the early
evening, and all
over the sky. I said "I hope I get to see you again", and then woke up.
Dream comments: The conclusion to this dream comes a week after I had it. As
I am in
the local mall shopping for Christmas presents for my son, the same girl
from my dream
comes in. we exchange a glance, but say nothing at all. I pay for the gifts
I bought, leave,
and haven't seen her since.
Hey guys, you are doing a really cool thing here. I've wanted to share this
dream with, I
guess you'd say, a "professional" for sometime. I don't know if you have
ever heard of
"Coast-to-Coast am with George Noory", but I shared it with him live on his
radio show,
and he thought I probably should've spoken to the girl in my dreams when I
saw her.
I apologize for any grammatical mistakes, and I ask you to please publish
this dream.
Dream title: none
Dream date: none given
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: about dead family members.
Dream comments: none
Dream title: conversation with a friend
Dream date: 8/27/04
Dreamer name: maidenangel42083
Dream text: I dreamt that my friend, Matt was sitting on a couch and we
started to talk. I
hugged him in the beginning and then I told him this has to be a dream
because you're
dead, so this isn't really real. He told me yeah, I was dreaming but that
he wanted to
hang out with me for a little while. We carried on for a while just talking
about stuff but I
really don't remember what. At the end I told him "well I gotta go and he
said yeah me
too, that he was going to help his parents with selling their house. I
hugged him goodbye
and then I immediately woke up.
Dream comments: My childhood friend Matt killed himself in January of this
year. He
was very close to me and I took his death very hard. The house his parents
are selling is
the one he killed himself in, what do you think this all meant?
Dream title: clear water
Dream date: last night
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I was sailing a canoe boat swam in the clear water. Suddenly it
turned into
dense water. I swam and I saw thereafter how clear the water was.
Dream comments:
Dream title: Don't tell
Dream date: 28/11/04
Dreamer name: Charlie
Dream text: I had a dream where my boyfriend came round and he was upset and
said
"why didn't you tell me?" He said someone at school had told him I was
leaving for
England in 7 months and he was so sad.
Dream comments: Truth is in 7 months I do have plans to leave to go back to
England
and haven't told him. What does this mean?
Dream title: Friend to Boyfriend
Dream date: 29/11/04
Dreamer name: Jen
Dream text: I had a dream about my co-worker kissing me at work.
Dream comments: My co-worker has become a good friend and I talk to him
about the
probs me and my boyfriend have but lately my boyfriend has completely
changed and I
feel bad for feeling this way towards my co-worker
Dream title: none
Dream date: none given
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I had a dream that someone (a female) ate my child who is 4
years old).
Dream comments:
Dream title:
Dream date: 11/30/2004
Dreamer name: confused
Dream text: My dream began with me receiving a phone call from a strange
man. He
was trying to get a date with me. I was made to believe that my nephew had
given him
my phone number because he was calling from my nephew's mother's (my sister)
cellular
phone. Our conversation was long because I was trying to get him to put my
nephew on
the phone because I wanted to know why he had my sister's phone. My sister
and my
other family members were in my house with me and they were playing cards.
I tried to
tell them it was something wrong but they would just say "oh, he's fine". I
kept calling
the number back and calling my nephew's cell phone. The man answered his
phone and
I disguised my voice to get information out of him. When I was talking to
him I just
started to see a lot of dogs that were at the man's house which is where my
nephew was
supposed to be. There was another man who was being attacked by the dogs.
He was
letting them attack him (I guess because he felt guilty). A woman came up
to that man
and slapped him and demanded to know what happened to my nephew. I saw the
dogs
going into the woods and then I woke up.
Dream comments: none
Dream title: none given
Dream date: 11/29/04
Dreamer name: Db
Dream text: I was on a plane with my best friend and I kept looking at the
window. It
seemed like we weren't moving at all. Finally it was time to land and we
began to
descend. Next thing I remember is hearing someone with panic in their voice,
speaking in
terms I do not understand, having to do with the plane. After that I notice
that we are
going to land on a street, one very close to my old high school. I remember
holding on to
my friend's back and watching the people in the street panic. Next thing I
realize I am on
the ground and someone tells me that they have to land vertically. The plane
comes out of
the sky and lands vertically upright and I run to open the door. An old high
school teacher
was on the ground and told me I couldn't run to the plane but I did anyway.
As I ran over
to the plane, and I ripped down the buttons of my high school teacher's
shirt in the back.
My friends then began to hop out the plane. However, the friend I took out
wasn't the one
who was on the plane with me. He got out and I found a beer on the floor and
I remember
feeling guilty for taking it instead of giving it to him. He asked for a
Jack and Coke
though and my guilt went away. The next thing I remember was going over to
my friend
who was originally on the plane with me. He was sitting on the hood of a car
and I could
tell he was about to cry. The last thing I remember was wondering why the
plane was not
falling over and than it began to, however, the houses it landed on were not
breaking
Dream comments: Why were my friends in the dream? Why was I off the plane
without
any explanation? The part with the ripping of the shirt as the plane was
standing upright?
Dream title: snakes
Dream date: 11/21/04
Dreamer name: dreamweeper
Dream text: I was walking on the river bank and saw three snakes. One was
huge in front
of a bar, the other was medium a little farther down from the other, and a
small one
sunning by the water. They were rattle- snakes of some kind. I was scared of
the biggest
snake because it was running for me. So I turned my back and ran and I came
upon the
medium-sized snake which watched me slowly back away from him. A man I don't
know
or recognize jerks me away from the snake and the snake bites me on my
forearm. I could
feel the venom going up my arm and slowly through me body. The rest of the
dream I
continued to try to find help through the crowd of people. Now one could
hear or speak
to me. They only looked and turned away, even the man that pulled me away
from the
snake. Eventually I pulled my belt off and put it around my arm. I never
made it to the
hospital or found any other form of help then I woke up scared.
Dream comments: this dream was so real. Towards the end I felt like I was
the girl off of
Resident evil when she was looking around and everything was empty. The
dream was
black and white
Dream title: Forest of Choice
Dream date: 12-1-2004
Dreamer name: wanderer
Dream text: I'm wandering through a forest on foot, in low coastal
mountains
between ocean (where I grew up) and inland valley (where I've lived mostly
since). I
arrive at a rundown resort of some kind, where there s only a 30-something
woman and
her young son. She wants me to stay and help her fix up the place, at least
for one night.
But I realize I don't want to be there and I set out on foot toward the
valley below. After I
walk for awhile, I see an absolutely straight and very wide highway going
down to the
valley and out of sight into the distance. First I see it on the terrain and
next as on a map,
with its five lanes outlined. Then it becomes very bold black and much
wider than it
would typically be on a map. It seems very much laid out for me. Yet,
rather than follow
it, I return to the hills and forest. But I still don t want to be there,
and I'm thinking of
going the other direction toward the coast and my former home.
Dream comments: It seems a time of decision and that a part of me knows
there's a wide
and obvious path to follow, while another part still longs for the apparent
'comfort' of
familiarity.
Dream title: Someone attempting to kill me
Dream date: December 1, 2004
Dreamer name: cal
Dream text: Hi, I'm suffering from cancer and I often dream someone is
attempting to kill
me...That someone is often felt around...I feel he's tied my hands and legs
while I'm
sleeping and is stabbing a knife in my right eye.
Dream comments: What could this mean? I know I might not be surviving too
long but
what could this mean? I feel some one around always...does it have anything
to do with
spirits?
Dream title: none
Dream date: none given
Dreamer name: EK
Dream text: I've been having these really scary dreams lately, in my dreams
I'm laying
dead in a coffin and the people attending my funeral are singing my favorite
church
songs.
Dream comments: I've had this dream more than once, what does it mean?
Dream title: Boyfriend
Dream date: 10/13/2004
Dreamer name: R
Dream text: I had dream that I was at a party and guy from my school and my
boyfriend
were at the same party. My boyfriend was in the other room so I started
talking to the guy
from school. I told him that I thought my boyfriend was cheating on me, and
he said
probably. So I asked my boyfriend if he cheated on me. He said yes and
laughed in my
face.
Dream comments: This dream freaked me out
Dream title: heart
Dream date: 11/10/04
Dreamer name: dinky
Dream text: I always have a dream where this gorgeous guy wants me, but I
tell him no.
He follows me around and tries to hold my hand and kisses me. Sometimes I'll
see my
boyfriend but he just stares at me.
Dream comments: My boyfriend and I have been dating for 2 years, but I don't
understand why it bothers me.
Dream title: Hiding in locked room
Dream date: 12/8/04
Dreamer name: sass
Dream text: I'm in a church, but really was a work office. I wanted to go
in my office &
not be bothered. I kept seeing the door locked.
Dream comments: none
Dream title: Lost
Dream date: 11-30-04
Dreamer name: Amb
Dream text: I had a dream that I was a old black man in a school from like
the 1800's or
something and I was wearing overalls. Then everything just went crazy and
there were
gunshots and there were young kids from the school running outside. I ran
to the edge of
the main road from the school and just stood there and I could see myself
standing there
beside the kids who came out of the school. Even though the person I was
looking at was
not me, I just knew that that was me in this dream. It was weird.
Dream comments: none
Dream title: boat
Dream date: November 2004
Dreamer name: jh
Dream text: I was riding in a boat with I think 15-20 persons in it... we
are in a river....
Dream comments: what does my dream mean???
Dream title: snake
Dream date: 12-08-2004
Dreamer name: king
Dream text: I had a dream that I was eating my pet snake alive. I started
by the tail and
when about to finish his head was still moving in my mouth.
Dream comments: his tongue was moving, I guess its because I just finish
watching my
snake eat a rodent.
Dream title: snake
Dream date: snake
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I dream of me sleeping with the bunch of snake hugging me.
Dream comments:
Dream title: 2005 premonition?
Dream date: June 2001
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: In my dream I realized that I was dreaming. I was excited about
having a
lucid dream and asked my subconscious what was going to happen in the
future. It
showed me a deserted playground with a broken hobby horse. I felt cold
dread and asked
it when this was going to happen. It said Sept 25th. So, of course, the
next thing I asked
was "what year?" It answered "Sunday".
Dream comments: 2005 is the first year that Sept 25th falls on a Sunday
since I had that
dream. I have had premonitions about things in the past that have come true
but not in
dream form. Just intense knowings...
-------------------- END ISSUE -----------------
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