Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z
E L E C T R I C D R E A M S
Volume 4 Issue #5
26 May 1997
ISSN# 1089 4284
Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z
Electric Dreams - on the World Wide Web
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~mettw/edreams/home.html
Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z
Download a GREAT COVER for Electric Dreams 4(5)!
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~mettw/edreams/home.html
Cover by Jesse Reklaw
Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z
C O N T E N T S
++ Editor's Notes
Hello to Asheville Conference Goers!
++ Help out Electric Dreams -
++ The Spinning Wheel: Dream Wheel Update
Chris Hicks
++ Dream Airing Column - Victoria Quinton
- Mutual Dreaming - Now in the Stores!
- Hypertext version of ED anyone?
- Anyone know the Springfield Hotline?
++ Column - Dream Trek Goodbye Group Mind
Linda Magallon
++ Forum: Postmodern Dreaming - An Introduction
Richard Wilkerson
++ Graduate Education in Dream Studies
Mena Potts, Ph.D.
++ Column: Life, Art Dream : Bones
Alissa Goldring
++ Interview: with D.R.E.A.M.S. Foundation Director
and Lucid Paddling Adventure Trip Guide: Craig Webb
++ Madame Aionia's Astrological Dreaming Series:
Dreaming Through the Houses: 5th House
++ Some Fifth House Rooms...by Island
++ Fourth House Dreaming... by Island
++ Osanna Wisdom Online - Dream Network Journal
G L O B A L D R E A M I N G N E W S - Peggy Coats
THIS MONTH'S FEATURES:
NEWS
- ASD Conference Update
- Lucid/Mutual Dream-In, June 21/22, 1997
- ASD Encourages Regional Meetings and Co-Sponsored Events
- Explore the Dreamtime with Dream Reentry
- Dreams: Resources for Healing and Guidance
- DreamSpinner -- Software that Integrates the Analytical and the Intuitive
- Intuition Network Presents Its Fifth Conference, August 1997
- Dreaming as a Spiritual Practice
- Film Review: James and the Giant Peach
RESEARCH & REQUESTS
- Children's Dreams and Trauma
- Dreams and Deja Vu -- Help Needed
- Telepathic and Precognitive Dreams
WEB SITE UPDATES
- New Oniros Club Website and IRC
- Dreams and Postmodernity Update
- Dream Cloud -- A Creative Dream Website and Project
- Dreams can make you Rich
- Cyber-Dream Library Update
- Visit The Wanderer
- Intuitive Adventures in Surrealism and Dreaming
DREAM CALENDAR: June-July 1997
ELECTRIC DREAMS - DREAMS SECTION - Bob Krumhansl
Highlights from this issue: Death dreams - A death Sentence and a realization
of lifelessness; A toothless dream from Seattle - Is there a match in New
York?; A Hill Street Journey through the West coast & into an otherworldly
barnful of animals aware of an impending earthquake & through another
dream; Meet a magical Tornado-Maker - one of the sources of all those fear
provoking dreams; In Relationship dreams, we ponder how a Daddy-Long Legs
is like a Daddy?; A special contribution under Writing and Writers outlines
an approach to dreams, a "precognition" of sorts, and features
Allen Ginsberg. All kinds of animals and bodies of water appear in this
issue. Enjoy!
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
June 18, WED deadline for submission
FOR Next Electric Dreams vol 4(6)
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Editors' Notes
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
A warm welcome to all new & old subscribers and ASD Asheville conference
attendees!
At last year's ASD dream conference in Berkeley, the Electric Dreams
community provided a wide spectrum of support for the first ASD conference
with a Computer and Internet Track. This year we can help out by stopping
by and participating in online activities. Stop by the ASD Web Site for
more information. www.outreach.org/gmcc/asd/
More ASD updates. (Association for the Study of Dreams). Please read
Peggy Coats' Global Dreaming News for information on the Asheville conference
and beyond. The GD news also includes a wide variety of dream events, both
online and off, including workshops, retreats, seminars, lectures, web
sites, and more.
A note on the online Dream Groups, the ED DreamWheels. We have a new
subscription procedure that has one extra step. Simply return the verification
notice that will be sent to you per instructions that will be included.
Read the details in Chris Hick's DreamWheel Update.
Linda Magallon has a spectrum of offerings this month. Here book, _Mutual
Dreaming_ is now on the book stands and there are interactive projects
that relate to this work in which you can participate. See the details
the GD news under lucid mutual dream-in. Linda continues her Dream Trek
column this month by critically examining the group mind and offering a
partnership paradigm as an alternative to loss of individuality in the
collective field of relations.
Charles Mcphee finishes his chapter summaries of _Stop Sleeping Through
Your Dreams_, a lucid account of consciousness during sleep. Many thanks
for the last 6 months he has been with us.
We have an interview this month with Craig Webb, director of the D.R.E.A.M.S.
Intitute and creative dreamer extraordinare. If there an event in dreams
and dreaming that will someday be significant, you can bet that Craig is
somehow involved.
Have you ever walked through a forest with a quiet mind?
Alissa Goldring, though mixed media will teach you how to walk through
a dream with a quiet mind. Be sure to read her column selection this month
"Bones" and stop by her site to see the related graphics.
Topics in Dreamwork this month promised "Phenomenology and Dreaming",
but due to lack of space we are taking a "Spring Break" and will
return next month. If you can't wait until next month for this information,
drop me a line and I'll send you a copy of the article.
But don't think education is a low priority here! I am re-printing an
ASD DreamTime newsletter article by Mena Potts on the project to actually
have a Doctoral Program in Dreams and Dreaming! Be sure to read the article
"Graduate Program in Dream Studies". After including this article
I had an old school dream that I was on my way to the last class and hadn't
been half the semester, which, among other things, indicated to me that
there is always more to learn.
Also, I would like to direct your attention to my ASD Dreamtime article
on Dreams and Spirituality online. If you don't get ASD's DreamTime, be
sure to join up and get not only 4 DreamTime issues, but 4 Dreaming Journals
each year as well. The Dream Time Newsletter "Spirituality, Dreams
and the Internet" article is also online at www.dreamgate.com/dream/cyberphile/
Note: There are *3* DreamTime dream newsletters out, the ASD newsletter,
the BADG newsletter and a financial forecast using dreams newsletter. Be
sure to check the context to know which DreamTime is which.
I'm starting a new and not-so-regular forum in Electric Dreams called
"Postmodern Dreaming". In a sense, all of Electric Dreams and
our Cyberspace projects are part of Postmodern dreaming, filled with new
ideas on identity, communication, power structures, representations and
presentations, language and dreams, reason and irrationality, and indeterminable
authors and histories. In the pomo section I will be focusing on bringing
the American Pragmatic aspects of the Postmodern (as in the development
of the Internet) in contact with the mostly French inspired post-structural
& postmodern theories thinks like Jaques Lacan, Slavoj Zisek, Alphonso
Lingis, Michel Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Baudrillard, Lyotard and
others. This will be a kind of online experiment in fusing dream sharing,
the Internet and theory and I encourage you to submit articles and ideas
for projects for the section.
Our attempts to bring astrological houses and dreaming together continue with three articles this month. M. Aionia gives a general layout of the fifth house, psyche and dreams, and then Island opens up a number of imaginal rooms in the House that truly sound the depths of this approach. For those of you collecting these houses and dream articles, Island has also provided an additional article on the Forth House and dreams.
Well, ok, it wasn't an additional article, I simple didn't get it in
the last issue where it was suppose to be. However, these articles, along
with all other ED articles, are now available and collected together for
your ease of access at
www.dreamgate.com/dream/library
Select "Articles"
As always, I'd like to invite all new and old ED subscribers to join
in the ED community at any place where you like. While some of our mail
lists, like ed-core@igc.apc.org, sound exclusive, they are really open
to everyone. For more information on participation and ED regular activities
and projects, see the "Help Out Electric Dreams" section.
For an summary of the wonderful dreams and comments, see Bob Krumhansl's
editorial and summary section below in the Dream Section.
Dreamin' up a Storm,
-Richard
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Help out Electric Dreams -
Be an Electric Dreamer!
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Electric Dreams continues to offer a wide variety of free dreamsharing
venues and this means we log a lot of online time. It is fun and we do
this because we love it! But sometimes we can't keep up with all the networking
tasks and then the quality is diminished in our programs.
And not everyone has the time to be a staff member (though if you *do*
have the time and desire, drop me a line!).
And so we would like to ask for ELECTRIC DREAMERS - volunteers who can
give just a few minutes every week or even once a month. Here are some
of the ED areas that Electric Dreamers might help in:
- Co-Moderate a dream group.
- Start a column on ED about your favorite topic in dreams.
- Post a few dreams to a few Newsgroups or Mail lists.
- Post an ad regularly to a Newsgroup you will "sponsor".
- Post an ad to a mail list you will "sponsor".
- Post an ad to a SIG at your commercial online carrier.
- Surf the net for new dream web sites.
- Surf Educational college sites for dream bibliographies
- Send in addresses of magazine departments that might like to carry a story about dream sharing in cyberspace
- Send in local resources on dreams - groups, schools, lectures, library resources, newsletters and new age papers.
- Check you Yellow Pages for schools and ask what programs or classes on dreams and dreaming dreams are available.
- Many other projects available!
Be and Electric Dreamer, sign up today...
Note: If you have offered your time before and I haven't gotten back
to you, it is only because I've lost your request. Please resend!!
contact Richard Wilkerson
rcwilk@aol.com
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
The Spinning Wheel: Dream Wheel Update
by Chris Hicks
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Note: the IGC/DreamGate mail list dream-on@igc.apc.org
has changed. We used to sign on by simply sending a note
To: majordomo@igc.apc.org
And in the body of the email putting:
subscribe dream-on
And you still do this to sign on to the dream groups, but there is ONE
ADDITIONAL STEP. After subscribing, you will get a note from the majordomo
that *has to be returned* to verify your subscription. I know this is a
chore, but it saves the list from attacks of unwanted visitors, junk mail
and other problems. Thanks for your understanding - List Manager, rwilkerson@igc.apc.org
Chris here and the new dream group will begin soon. There are new opportunities
for people to join us. So, send your requests to join to me, Chris at:
dreamwheel@michweb.net, today!
The WWW groups have been slow to take off due to some technical problems,
but things are looking up with the new WWW Bulletin Board format! The new
format will eliminate the long lag times between submitting questions/answers/comments
and seeing them up at the Dream Lynx site. In addition, there are some
"neato" things in the works for further smoothing things out
for the WWW Dream Wheels! If you haven't seen the WWW Dream Wheels, or
haven't seen them lately check us out at:
http://www.iag.net/~hutchib/.dream
Click on "Wheel" from the main menu. Please note that the current postings, although real dreams, are serving to test the new system. You are free to post questions as you normally would for a Dream Wheel group. Please disregard the instruction messages as they are out dated.
The small un-moderated groups continue to move along. There seems to
be a core of a few groups that have stuck together since they were first
started some months ago.
If you would like to submit a dream(s) for either the E-mail or WWW
Dream Wheel groups please email it to me, Chris at:
dreamwheel@michweb.net
Please include a short title for all submitted dreams and the pen name
you would like to use in the group.
For more information about the Dream Wheel groups, including their history, and a description of the "If it were my dream" technique go to:
http://users.michweb.net/~chrish/dw.html
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Dream Airing Column - Victoria Quinton
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Do you have questions, answers, comments, replies? This is your column
to communicate with the rest of the Electric Dream Community, so just send
those email to me at mermaid@alphalink.com.au
Mutual Dreaming
When Two or More People Share The Same Dream
By Linda Lane Magallon
In Bookstores Now!!
New York: Pocket Books, 1997
ISBN: 0-671-52684-7
$12.00 U.S./$16.00 Canada
There is no experience as uniquely intimate as having a dream with another
person. Incredible, but very real, the phenomenon of sharing the same dream
with one or more people is much more common than we might think--and also
extremely revealing about the way the subconscious works and sends us its
messages.
_Mutual Dreaming_ leads us on an astonishing voyage of discovery. With
dozens of extraordinary anecdotes and true-life stories, we'll find that
mutual dreams can take any form--from erotic dreams, to terrifying nightmares
to dreams of mystifying encounters with strangers. We will learn how to
recognize and understand, decode and gain insight from mutual dreams. We
can even learn how to incubate mutual dreams with another person--or more
than one person.
Linda Lane Magallon has invested more than a decade of field research in the area of mutual dreaming. Now an internationally know authority on the subject, she has been socially active in the dreamwork community since 1984. Her accomplishments include membership on the founding board of the multidisciplinary Association for the Study of Dreams, co-founding the regional Bay Area Dreamworkers Group and serving as publisher of the foremost dream community journal, _Dream Network_. Ms. Magallon also makes presentations on the topic of mutual dreaming to international audiences, and regularly conducts dream projects that emphasize group participation. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Richard,
I been reading the ED for a while now and find portion of great interest to me but some of the stuff may even be objectionable (however mildly.) I am a lucid dreamer. May I make a suggestion? If it were possible to have a table of contents with hyper text or something like that so that an individual could skip uninteresting stuff and go directly to points of interest. This will save a lot of time and frustrations for me and others. I enjoy reading the ED and wish to encourage your continued effort in publishing it.
LC
Hi LC, great idea. Anyone want to do this for us each month? If you
can post that copy on a web site, even better! If not, I will offer space
at DreamGate. - Richard
Dream Hoteline in Springfield MO: Does anyone have info on this?
Send to rcwilk@aol.com (from an AP wire)
"About 100 people will take phone calls at the college's main campus in Windyville and 14 satellite campuses in seven states - Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Texas.
The so-called dream interpreters help callers decode their dreams' symbols and what they might mean, but don't offer counseling. And Clark said a dream's significance must be determined by the dreamer.
``The dreams are in symbols and they tell you about your attitudes,''
she said. ``They are not telling you about the literal events in your life.''
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
DREAM TREK
By Linda Lane Magallon
Goodbye Group Mind
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
When it comes to the macroview of dreaming, a commonly held concept
is that of the collective unconscious or group mind. As Douglas Whitcher
describes it, "each individual is like the individual polyp organism
of a coral reef, the compound coral reef being a single organism. The revelations
we each receive which challenge us and compel us onward are like so many
nervous messages sent to different cells of the body in order that it may
function in coordination. "
Now, in a way, psychic and group dreaming research seems to second this
notion. Psychoanalyst Jule Eisenbud stated, "The goals psi serves
are primarily not those of the individual at all, but of an ascending hierarchy
of interrelated systems." And Henry Reed found that separate sleeping
reports from a group dreaming project are akin to the pieces of a jigsaw
puzzle. Furthermore, the homogenous flavor of the classic mutual meshing
dream seems to support the picture that we are all part of one uniform
mind mush.
The problem with this "group mind" idea is that despite the
use of the word "individual," the particular dreamers are rarely
honored. Instead, it is the theme or archetype or dream imagery which holds
center stage. Indeed, Whitcher says, "Dream-fantasy is assumed to
hold the truth".
At the threat of being melted into the homogenous mesh of imagery, the
individual ego objects...and the objection can be noted in the dreams!
As Reed has discovered, the group dreams of his 1976-1978 Sundance Community
Dream Journal project asked the questions, "Who am I?" and "Who
are we?" Since before 1984, dreams in the mutual dreaming projects
of Jean Campbell, Barbara Shor and I displayed the same concerns. I'm talking
about the dream egos speaking through nonlucid dreams.
The ideal of "oneness" is highly regarded in the dreaming
community as an ultimate spiritual goal. And the dreaming egos, the dreaming
selves, being citizens of a mutuable reality, are quite capable of blending
and melding. Just as they are capable of being separate and distinct. These
are the extremes of their behavior. The "either/or" dichotomistic
view of the universe, which is our heritage from the Age of Pisces, would
have us choose sides and decide which is the most true or valuable.
But the partnership paradigm offers a "both/and" solution.
At the brink of the Aquarian Age, that's the experiment and experience
that the dreaming selves are trying on for size. The evidence from both
group and mutual dreaming projects points to the reality of highly individualistic
dreams and dreamers, who are nonetheless able to communicate and cooperate
towards a common goal.
Seen together, the picture that the dreams of the partnership paradigm
paint is less like a bowl of numinous mush and more like a variegated fabric
or mural with multiple styles. To use cyber-analogy, we are not "a
bunch of dumb terminals connected to Big Brother, the mainframe."
The partnership paradigm supports the picture of "personal computers
linked in networks" instead.
Whitcher, D."Some Reflections on Dream Group," Coat of Many Colors/Dream Network Bulletin, Mar, 1983. pp. 101-102.
Magallon, L.L. Mutual Dreaming. NY: Pocket Books, 1997.
CaseyFlyer@aol.com
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Postmodern Dreaming
An Introduction
Richard Catlett Wilkerson
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
"Each time you say what a dream means , you get your face slapped"
James Hillman
o Preamble
There has been a growing suspicion and critique of Reason and Rationality
in the last century that was pre-figured with the Romantics, given its
first technique of investigation with ideas of the unconscious and then
fearfully brought into the mainstream culture with the advent of the atomic
bomb. The cold war kept us in America believing it was only the Communist
who were irrational and needed to be controlled and contained. By the end
of the 1960's the rational policies of containment, mutually assured destruction
and the cold war were exposed as paranoid delusions. The peace movement,
grassroots coalition, novel social contacts, psychotherapies and ecologically
minded living offered contact with a productive irrationality. Some felt
we just matured in our ideas of what is rational, but others began seeing
rationality itself as the culprit.
The pragmatic critique of the Modern World has continued in the America
and produced fabulous responses in architecture (i.e. insides of building
found on the outside), politics (i.e. grassroots movements) , law (i.e.
extreme reform), therapy(i.e. contact with irrational), science (i.e. chaos
theory) and alternative culture( i.e. cyberspace). In Europe, the critique
has been more intellectual and has produced an even wide variety of social,
philosophical, literary and political responses. Generally these critiques,
responses and new productions are often called "Postmodern",
"Postmodernity" and "Postmoderism", but I want to note
that there is no one movement or set of ideas that contain the postmodern.
Many would argue that it has nothing to do with the move from rational
to irrational.
In this month's Postmodern Dreaming column I would like to give a quick
general introduction to the postmodern and how it differs from the Modern
and suggest what it might have to do with dreams and dreaming. Later articles
will then wander organically, if not randomly, through the Postmodern ideas,
reading them together with dreams and dreaming ideas in hopes of producing
new concepts, ideas and practices that might enrich both. References and
suggestions for other texts and articles are highly recommended for a more
complete introduction.
o Forward into the Past
It has been of interest to me for some time that there are a great many
parallels between the history of the interpretation of literature/poetry/texts
and the history of the interpretation of dreams. Like dreams, early sacred
texts were seen as sacred and messages from the gods. While this view continues
even today, new streams formed and diverged. The author's intention, what
the author meant to say, was seen as important. Others began to view the
text separately from the author and saw the meaning resting in the reader's
response. Others found the meaning by looking closely at the structure
and context of the text, seeking both the archetypal and social forces
at play. This sequence follows quite closely the ways of interpreting dreams.
By the 1960's it seemed that all the ways of interpreting a text had
been played out and there was nothing much left to do but catagorize these
elements. Then a post-modern revolution occurred. Some anticipated it coming.
In dreaming Jung, and later James Hillman, began talking about something
irrational in the dream image that needed to be encountered to avoid getting
stuck in dead categories. They knew that only a break with old patterns
offered new pathways. And they knew that archetypes were not just stereotypes.
Encounters with the numinous core could strip away old neurosis and open
the door to the unrealized. Had the postmodern revolution occurred first
in Switzerland, it may have been very different.
In France psychoanalysis was slow to take hold, being seen as a German
Project in the irrational. The French considered themselves as coming from
the rational tradition of Rousseau. By 1940s and 1950 things began to shift.
The Literary Left tended towards Marxism and the structuralist projects
of Levi-Strauss in anthropology and Jacques Lacan in psychoanalysis had
taken shape. In 1968 the country (France) was temporarily shut down by
a country wide walk-off of workers and students, backed by the French-Marxist
who were at the time denied any political power. But within days the Marxist
representatives had traded most of their political positions for government
positions and the country was up and running, except for the intellectual
Left who felt betrayed and now drifted away from Marxism. It was clear
that even the most radical of political groups could be tamed and dominated
by the seduction of power. Perhaps, it was thought, that organization itself
if the culprit. In literature, philosophy, critical theory, linguistics,
psychology, leftist politics and art a radical departure from the values
of the past was in the making. This departure was so powerful that a lecture
by Jacques Derrida in America in the 1960's lead to a widespread movement
of American Deconstruction in literature, philosophy and law. But the intellectual
aspects of the movement remained in America mostly in academic, and it
wasn't until the advent of the Net that the ideas became more widely disseminated.
The implications for interpretation, of dreams and text, as well as
politics, religion, recreation, sex, identity, psychology, play and other
social practices are so strange and uncanny that Americans have barely
begun to grasp their theoretical implications and significance. This may,
as some suggest, be because we already act out so many of the postmodern
paradigms anyway, even if without the intellectual baggage. We tend to
*make* and *do* things in America. Again, the Internet may be *the* postmodern
expression, with emphasis on dissemination, multiple identities, unrecoverable
authors, multiple levels of meaning, social practices crossing boundaries
and categories once thought to be in-violate, the championing of the particular,
organic-order, non-hierarchical, non-human, fluid, linguistic, textual
and graphical, and metamorphic.
How like the dream. And here I hope to read dreams through the lens
created by postmodern writers. The purpose is not to break down the illusions
of the past views in hopes of recovering some hidden truth. Rather the
hope is more that these lenses (themselves fictions) we will use for temporary
viewing, will move us towards fictions we find more significant, more meaningful,
or even to those categories beyond meaning and significance that cannot
be named. To move not towards the dream, as if it would finally open up
and reveal its secrets, but with the dream, as a co-player in the creation
of the improvisational universe that lives between reality and fiction.
I would recommend having one or more dreams at hand as you read through the history I have presented below on dreams and the postmodern. How does each approach change your relationship with the dream image? What does each approach offer or promise? What does each approach tell you about *what* you are interpreting when you do dreamwork? What does each approach say about who the author of the dream might be, and what the author's intentions are? Who is the reader? How much of these questions and answers are dependent on the language we are using?
o The History of the Interpretive Response
There is a correspondence, or at least, strong parallels between the
history of literary interpretation and the interpretation of dreams.
The earliest writings include the recording of dreams and their interpretations
in Sumerian cuneiform tablets. In these writings, it is assumed that the
author of the dream is a god and the the dream is a message to the dreamer.
The dreamer, like many a scribe, are seem merely as conduits of the divine
or demonic.
And the study of the interpretation of sacred texts, hermeneutics (HERmenOOtiks)
which originally referred to theories of biblical interpretations, later
came to refer to the theory of interpretation in general. The center of
hermeneutics is the belief that the text contains a stable meaning that
can be determined and possibly recovered. This was first extended from
religious texts to legal, historical, bibliographic and literary texts,
but by the 19th Century had been extended to all works in the
humanities and social sciences. From this emerged the idea of what is now
called "Authorial Intention". Here, the meaning of the text has
to do with the author's attempt to use commonly know language to produce
a meaning. The recovery of the meaning is found in forming a hypothesis
about the author's meaning and attempting to confirm or invalidate this
by continual reference to the text.
In Psychoanalysis, the true meaning of the dream text was arrived at
by a close reading as well. Results of Free association we added to the
patients clinical material and historical background to discover the true
meaning of the dream, the true unconscious intentions.
These ideas carried on into the middle of the 20th Century.
By the 1940's an 50's, this interpretive text approach was giving way
to New Criticism. There was a shift from history and content to form. At
the heart of this approach was the autonomous *image* in the text, independent
of the author. The image, such as a poem, could now be analyzed at several
levels, the particular image (or poetic line), the genre, or the place
in literature in general. The old focus on the intentions of the author
were seen now as guilty of committing the "intentional fallacy"(Wimsatt
& Beardsley 1954) which sees the appeal to an author's designs as irrelevant
to the autonomous structure of a text. Who can really know the author's
intention? Perhaps even the author him/herself may not really understand
the motives and intentions that went into text.
Conflicts and resolutions in the text were seen as the guiding path
into the texts, with the focus on coherence and internal tension. Universal
collective patterns were found, and as Kugler (1987) has noted, this literary
style reflects more Jung's approach to dreams. The focus on image patterns,
the move to deeper collective themes, the discovery of paradox and reconciliation,
and the ultimate belief in the coherence and unity of the psyche were as
important to Jung as the New Critics.
Now all these style have been called into question. Not only authorial
intention, but the texts unity, autonomy and ability to reveal some referential
truth have been seriously questioned. The first new trend to emerge out
of all this doubt was called Structuralism.
o Structuralism
Structuralism is a complex intellectual movement that became important
in France about 1950, and included such works as that of anthropologist
Claude Levi-Strauss, Literary Critic Roland Barthes and psychoanalyist
Jacques Lacan. By the 1970's there influence was considerable in England
and the United States. The roots of Structuralism are diverse, but usually
traced to the Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and his
theory of language as based on a system of internal differences rather
than in resemblances to objects in the material world.
- Signifier - The acoustic sound or material written word
Sign =
- Signified - The concept to which the signifier refers.
Language, and thus the text and dreams made up of language, are seen
as closed, culture bound systems. This new science of linguistics , Semiology,
would study all of the signs that make up a culture, their nature, their
laws. A key to understanding this systems approach is the idea of words
or signs as having both a signifier and a signified. The signifier is the
word itself, like "tree". The signifier is seen as arbitrary.
I could have used arbre in French, dendro in Greek , silvus in Latin. Or
"tree" in English might have not ended up as "tree"
but rather "oglot" and we would have all gotten by just fine.
And know when someone says "tree" it is "tree" because
the way it sounds is *different* than "me", "free",
"treat" and so on. Thus the material acoustic sound "tree"
is unique because it is surrounded by a whole system of differences. Try
describing any object-word in your room, a desk, a chair, a door, without
referring to how it is different from another object and you will quickly
see how difference plays an essential key.
Now each word or sign also points to something beyond itself. In normal usage we talk about what the word refers to, a particular tree in material reality. But as a sign, it also points to a concept, (as in the concept of "trees") and this is called by Saussure the "signifed". We can think of the signified as the concept or idea that a community of speakers associate with the sound or written word. And again, the relationship between the signified and the signifier is arbitrary as well. Saying "Tree" in one culture may refer to the concept of "Bringing me some fish!"
The point of all this was to construct a view of language not tied to
material objects. The rules are inherent in the structure of the parts.
Just like a chess or checkers game, the pieces could all look very different,
as long as the underlying structure of the game remained the same. The
authors intention (the inventor of chess), the historical shapes of the
pieces and the materials they are made up of take a back seat to the rules
of the game.
o Structuralism at Work
By the early 1950's and 1960's people such as Roland Barths and Claude Levi-Strauss had extended Saussure's semiological approach to anthropology, literature and culture in general. In the new interpretive vision, the sign's ability to reflect or mirror nature and the human psyche gave way to the study of how the words and images work as a system of structural relations.
In 1949, Levi-Strauss reformulated Freud's unconscious into two parts,
the subconscious and the unconscious. The Subconscious is much like Jung's
personal unconscious, and Freud's unconscious, full of psychic substances,
memories & imagos, and associations collected during the course of
life. The Unconscious was (structurally) more like Carl Jung's Collective
Unconscious, devoid of images and full of structural laws. Levi-Strauss
saw the personal subconscious like the personal words & pieces of life
gathered, while the structural unconscious is what really creates the rules
that the pieces play out in life.
By 1953, French psychotherapist Jacques Lacan adopts this idea of the
unconscious as full of rules, processes and structural strategies and proposes
a three part psychic system, the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary.
"The object as such, attempting to be know" is the Real. We only
experience this indirectly. The representations of the object constitute
the Imaginary. The Symbolic is more structural and organizes representations
into meaningful images. The self for Lacan is a linguistic construction.
Language here is extended to mean any psychic capacity for representation.
In the act of representation we can represent ourselves thus creating self
awareness. However, this ability to represent divides us into a self that
experiences and a self that represents what it experiences. The experiential
self on one hand is only known because we can represent it, ("I"),
but at the same time separate from those representations and excluded from
the common world we all share through language/representations. This exclusion
leads to an unconscious order of existence, which may be seen as all our
unmediated experience.
The structuralist project focused on these representational realms and
worked toward developing an objective science of interpretation, capable
of revealing the symbolic structures underlying all narratives. But by
the 1970's even the main proponents of the movement were beginning to questions
the usefulness and desirability of extracting a collection of abstract
rules in every narrative and text. Essentially, the text, once categorized
and filed in the place of all the narratives, loses its uniqueness and
its difference.
o Poststructuralism
A new movement was arising that was to shun the search for structural similarities between texts.
This post-structural movement found its root influences in such thinkers
as Hegel, Nietzsche and Jacques Derrida. The key idea was a suspicion of
any project of interpretation that tried to ground itself in an absolute,
such as truth, reality, self, center, unity, origin and even author.
Whenever we have a set of rules or system, there is always a grand ole idea that stands outside of the structure and informs it, though the grand ole idea is always itself outside of explanation. Derrida point out in a seminal lecture (Derrida, 1966) an example of how these ultimate first principles work in removing themselves temporally, either ahead or behind of the system they explain. An example with dreams would be the theories that posit anterior causes, such as biochemistry, drives, family, trauma, childhood and day residue. All explanation in these systems refer to an event in the past that caused the dream, but is itself never questioned. Or
the dream is posited as moving forward in time towards ultimates such as Self, Wholeness, Unity, Death and God. To work, the principles have to be removed and the status has to be different.
These transcendental god-terms function as the lynch-pins for the entire
Western theory of interpretation.
Derrida points out these are not grand eternal structures we assign
to them, but linguistic by products of a naively representational view
of language. These terms are... fictions. Useful, but none the less made
up. There is no language that is literal, even science. It is all metaphorical.
All language is ironic, both revealing and at the same time concealing.
Even dream interpretation systems that simple describe the dream images
(such as versions of the Phenomenological approach), certain terms will
be literalized and given a privileged status, and all the rest of the terms
in the system will revolve around this term and refer to it. Notice in
dream theory how these terms are privileged: wish, oedipus complex, archetypes,
drives, phallus, desire, imagination, self, repression, compensation. One
term is seen as the origin, such as the Jungian Self, or in Freud, the
drives.
Try raising the question of origins without thinking about the origin
of *that* origin. It is next to impossible. "Origin" is now the
transcendental term and all further thinking about it will refer to it,
though it remains outside interpretation itself. Origin now explains everything
but itself.
Now this dissatisfaction with central explanatory principles was not
new to the Post-structuralists. Nietzsche had been working on this "god
is dead" theme since the end of the last century. The post-structural
addition extends this idea to language and begins to show how hidden in
everyday language, this first principle still exists. As Gilles Deleuze
said, all words point to Pharaoh, meaning that there is inherent in our
language the implication of center to which it is all referring. And yet
linguistically, we never reach that center. Instead there a hole in the
center of the universe. Those with faith or a flair for gnostic or mystic
contact can say the hole is not empty in the way an atheistic approach
might have it, but this must always be either private experience and or
belief. Shamanistic approaches try to bridge this gap by providing mediating
and initiatory experiences for the sake of the seeker, but these generally
lie outside of the realm of interpretative theory and are based on relationships
of trust between shaman and initiate, or teacher and student, or guru and
disciple.
The shift from structural to post-structural interpretation is that
of seeing the text as a closed unity with decipherable meaning to viewing
the text as irreducibly plural, swinging from literal to metaphorical significance(s)
which can never be fixed to a single center, unity or meaning. When we
are aware that the theories by which we see the world are just that, theories,
then we can pick and choose among them. When we forget that they are theories,
then they become more unconscious and begin to structure our views, fooling
us and tell us that they are really real. As James Hillman has pointed
out, dreams are so wonderful a teacher in this area, because during a dream
we realize that we are in the image, the image is not in us.
Does this all sound a bit like Nietzsche and the death of god? It should
as Derrida and the other post structural thinkers are all profound readers
of Nietzsche. Not only is the idea of a center looked at with suspicion,
but all structure is seen as founded on an untenable paradox found in all
Western Metaphysics. And yet there is no call to despair. Though the origin
cannot be recovered, the awareness of this leads to a particular kind of
freedom, what Derrida calls "freeplay"
Since these early days of Derrida, many thinkers made the poststructural shift, including Julia Kristeva & Jacques Lacan in psychoanalysis, Michel Foucault and Michel de Certeau in history, Jean Francois Lyotard and Gilles Deleuze in cultural-political critique and oodles of others in literary and aesthetic criticism. Though each has his/her own unique contribution, the was a general abandonment of explanation of meaning via first causes, origins and orders based on binary oppositions. The idea that there was even a single "me" or "you" was abandoned as well. The idea of a single text is replaced by the word "discourse" generally meaning that anything longer than a sentence erupts into history, breaks into contexts, decenters the subject and distributes a continual flow of meaning. (How like the dream.).
Even the concept of "man" or "Humanity" becomes
a linguistic construct. We have no nature, or more properly, to speak of
our Nature is to get caught up in the linguistic binary game of what is
nurture, what is nature, and thus it has no meaning outside of this game.
All universals that are posited as valid fall into this new paradox.
While this movement was highly involved in linguistic critiques of social
and political practices, showing how language figures in the construction
of the possibilities of meaning and reality, the larger cultural movement,
postmodernism has extended itself into and beyond these initial linguistic
and social critiques to include the signifying practices of the culture
at large. In literature, the writer may have the text become self conscious
and have the text converse with the story itself. In architecture, what
is usually seen only inside a building might be found on the outside. The
general significance of the postmodern spills out into the streets and
is as relevant there as with the avant-garde. (How like the Dream)
o Sign of the Times
Increasingly important in Postmodern thought is the Sign in Culture. The social order shifts from
productive to reproductive, and simulations and models of reality begin
to replace what was once thought to be real. The differences between appearance
and reality fade. Representation is replaced by presentation. Singularity
of truth is replaced by plurality of viewpoint. Lyotard speaks about the
grand narratives being replaced by more local accounts of reality. Just
as the emphasis in structuralism moved the attention away from the concrete
object to the objects sign, the postmodern continues to move the attention
away from the signified (concept) to the signifier or the signifying act.
Like an improvisational jazz movement or a rock and roll concert, the meanings
may swirl around the event, but the focus is on the instrumentality or
acoustic materiality of the moment.
o Dreams and the Postmodern: A brief account to date
There have been a few attempts by dream theorists to move dreamwork and dreaming into the postmodern, but these are mostly scattered talks and texts. In 1989, Harry Hunt's book the Multiplicity of Dreams was published. In this close examination of the cognitive science of dreaming, Hunt revealed how bias of perspectives also bias the not only the interpretation of empirical results, but choice of the objects of study and the funding as well. Hunt also recognized the core of dreaming as "exterioriz(ing) the processes of cross-modal synesthetic translation and mutual reorganization that may constitute the core of all symbolic intelligence." (Hunt 1989 206).
Here the process of cross-modal synesthetic (hearing colors, tasting sounds) translation and mutual reorganization refers to a post-representational presentation in which meaning is generated in the freeplay of being, becoming and re-becoming. Bert States, in his book _the Rhetoric of Dreams_ explores Dreams and the Freudian Primary Process, (the dream-work of displacement, symbolization, condensation and so on) in literary terms of Irony and other metaphoric shifts brought about by language. Paul Kugler, a Jungian (post-jungian?) and Gordon Globus have both given presentations at the Association for the Study of Dreams on the postmodern and dreams. Kugler attempts to question the limits of dream theory as we move from the modern to the postmodern. Kugler asks of any dream interpretation:
Where is the dream being literal, and where is it being figurative? To what does the dream refer, the inner world, the outer world, or is it self-referential? Who is the author of the dream, biology, a wish, a desire, a deity, or is there no author? How do we develop a dream theory that is itself self conscious? That is, capable of carrying an awareness of its own figural aspects and assumptions? ( its own unconsciousness?). Gordon Globus has been attempting to construct a connectionists theory of mind/brain and apply this to dreaming as a way to move into viewing dreaming without getting caught up in representational thought. In his Neural Net theory, the brain flows, and in this flow of interactive influences there are valleys and hills that we settle for a few moments and experience one of many possible worlds. Dreaming is simply the flow of these neural nets without the constraints of outer stimulation. James Hillman has also attempted to view dreams without importing theories from the past and his _Dreams and the Underworld_ creates a bridge between the structural projects of Jung and the Postmodern psychoanalytic theories that remove the idea of the Self as a central organizing principle to open the individual to a spectrum of archetypal influences which may play out on a larger cultural theater than the therapist's couch.
However, the most explosive and creative venue for postmodern dreaming
has been the Internet. Some ideas are more apparent than others. The ideas
of the pre-commercial Net have influenced contemporary Late 90's Cyberspace,
which include sharing of resources, the acceptance of multiple identities,
the encouragement toward the non-familiar, the cooperative spirit of helping
one another get these ideas up and out to the public, general trust of
chaos and anarchy and relationships bonded by mutual interest rather than
coercions. Though most of these concepts have collapsed under the proprietary
territorializations of the commercial networks, they are the backdrop that
have provided support to what I'm calling America's Postmodern Dreaming
in Cyberspace. Here the multiple forms of trans categorical presentation
erupt in ever new forms. Typically we catagorize them, dream art, dream
work, dream sharing, dream science, lucid dreaming, shamanic dreaming,
spiritual dreaming, journey dreaming, psychic dreaming, dream journals,
dreams comments, dream inspired poetry and so on. But these dream eruptions
generally defy any classification and break many boundaries. At one moment
a dream is a journal entry, the next a discussion between people from around
the world in a simulated virtual room. Later a picture emerges on a Web
site and it is linked to the sleep research laboratories in Cincinnati.
An individual following this path may be involved in the meaning of the
dream, but they are also involved in the track of the dream, the medium
of the text in a chat room, in an email, and on the Web, as a gif or jpeg.
This, I feel, has been America's contribution to the Postmodern, a computer
mediated anarchical network of discourse vibrating with the eruptions onto
its virtual surface.
What seems to be missing is a reading together of the pragmatic American know-how with the Continental discourses on theory. Instead of using new ideas to explain the meaning of what we have done, the idea here is to use the ideas to further what has been done, to break through old concepts and restrictions of the real, to reach, as the surrealist call it, the Surreal.
In dreamwork online we have in many ways already achieved postmodern
status. The identity of the player is always in flux and there is an emphasis
on play itself as important. We often acknowledge the inability to establish
the meaning of a dream for another subject, and thereby all agree from
the start that all meanings are really our own. A dream might mean a life
style change to one participant, while another may build a new community,
another take on social injustice. We are deeply aware in the late 20th
Century of all the ephemerality, fragmentation, discontinuity and chaos.
To move into the postmodern is not to transcend this, nor to counteract
it, nor even to find the eternal elements in it. Rather, we learn to swim
in it, to wallow, to witness as if that is all there is, Samsara is Nirvana.
Thus, this column plans no particular direction or schedule. At this moment
it appears there is a postmodern attitude, but this may change. Deleuze
suggests to 'develop actions, though and desires by proliferation, juxtaposition,
and disjunction," and "to prefer what is positive and multiple,
difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over
systems. Believe that what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic."
(Preface, Anti-Oedipus).
How like the dream.
-Richard Wilkerson, May 1997
If you are interested in learning more about Postmodern(ism)? I have set up an index site to online texts. I recommend first reading the alt.postmodern faq file.
www.dreamgate.com/pomo/
Beginning Book Suggestions: (by priority )
+Sarup, Madan (1989). _An Introductory Guide to Post-Structrualism and Postmodernism_. Athens, GA:University of Georgia
[Best all around short introduction to the postmodern]
+Best, S. & Kellner, D. (1991). _Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations_. New York: The Guilford Press.
[an overview of the postmodern from the Jump--Right-In school. Some generalizations may be confusing and the use of language and style often needs more investigation]
+Berman, Art (1988). _From the New Criticism to Deconstruction: the reception of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism_. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[a very good analysis of the American Reception to poststructuralism and its influences. Tends towards literary and philosophical types, misses a lot of the cultural stuff]
+Adams, Hazard & Searle, Leroy (1986) _Critical Theory Since 1965_. Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University Press.
[for the history of interpretation this is a great sampling, with some introduction to dozens of prominent and classical texts in critical literature]
+Harraway, Donna(1980) "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s" (Linda J. Nicholson, ed. *Feminism/Postmodernism*. NY: Routledge, 1980, pp. 190-233)
[This seminal essay is a must for everyone in cyberspace. Suggestions for how the mix of technology and humanity will break down both categories and re-assemble a more even playing field for women and other repressed minorities].
Anderson, Water Truett (1995). _The Truth about Truth: De-confusiong and Re-constructiong the Postmodern World_. New York, NY: Jeremy P. Tarcher
[A collection of quick takes on the postmodern from a wide variety of authors]
+Leitch, Vincent B. (1983). _Deconstructive Criticism_ New York:Columbia University Press.
[an overview of deconstruction in literary theory - assumes reader has
some familiarity with a pre-deconstructive philosophy and theory]
Bibliography
++Adams, Hazard & Searle, Leroy (1986) _Critical Theory Since 1965_. Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University Press.
++Anderson, Water Truett (1995). _The Truth about Truth: De-confusiong and Re-constructiong the Postmodern World_. New York, NY: Jeremy P. Tarcher
++ Barthes, Roland (1977). The Death of the Author. In Image, Music, text. Trans Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang.
++Berman, Art (1988). _From the New Criticism to Deconstruction: the reception of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism_. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
++Best, S. & Kellner, D. (1991). _Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations_. New York: The Guilford Press.
++Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1983). _Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia._ Minneapolis: Univ. of Minn Press. Originally Published as _L'Anti-Oedipe_, 1972 Les Editions De Minnuit
++Derrida, Jacques (1966). Structure, sign, and play in the discourse of the human sciences. In _The Strucuralist Controversy_, Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato, eds. 1972, The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Also available in (1991/1972). Structure sign and play in the discourse of the human sciences. _Criticism: Major Statements_, 3rd editon Charles Kaplan and William Anderson (eds) New York: St Martin's Press pp. 513-534 SF PN 81 .c85 1991
reprinted from Richard Macksey & Eugenio Donato (eds)(1972). The Structuralist Controversy. John Hopkins University Press.
++ Foucault, Michel (1977). What is an Author? In language, counter-memory,
Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Trans. Donald F Bouchard and
Sherry Simon. Ithica, NY: cornell Univ. Press.
++Harraway, Donna(1980) "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s" (Linda J. Nicholson, ed. *Feminism/Postmodernism*. NY: Routledge, 1980, pp. 190-233)
++Hillman, James (1979). Dreams and the Underworld. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc.
--------. (1979). Image-Sense. Spring, 130-143.
--------. (1978). Further notes on images. Spring, 152-182.
--------. (1977). An inquiry into image. Spring, pp. 62-88. ++Hillman, James (1973). The dream and the underworld. Eranos, 42 237-319.
++Hillman, James & Roscher, W. H. (1988). Pan and the Nightmare. Dallas: Spring Publications, Inc.
++Hunt, Harry (1989). The Multiplicity of Dreams: Memory, Imagination and Consciousness. New Haven: Yale University Press.
++Globus, Gordon G. (1993). Connectionism and sleep. In A. Moffitt, M. Kramer, R. Hoffman (Eds.), The Functions of Dreaming. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
--------. (1992) Toward a noncomputational cognitive neuroscience. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 4(4), 299-310.
--------. (1991). Dream content: Random or meaningful? Dreaming, 1(1), 27-40.
--------. (1989). Connectionism and the dreaming mind. The Journal of Mind and Behavior, 10(2). 179-196.
--------. (1988). Existence and the brain. The Journal of Mind and Behavior, 9(4). 447-455.
--------. (1987). Dream Life, Wake Life: The Human Condition Through Dreams. Albany: State University of New York Press.
++Kugler, Paul (1987). From Modernism to Postmodernism: Some Implications for a Psychology of Dreams. Presentation at the 1987 Association for the Study of Dreams.
++Lacan, Jacques (1966). The insistence of the letter in the unconscious. Yale French Studies: Structuralism, 36& 37,
pp. 112-147.
--------. (1953-54). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Jacques-Alain Miller, (ed). Book I, Freud's Papers on Technique. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [selections on dreams]
++Lakoff, George (1993). How metaphor structures dreams: The theory of conceptual metaphor applied to dream analysis. Dreaming, 3(2), pp. 77-98.
--------. (1987). Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
++Lakoff, George & Turner, Mark (1989). More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
++Leitch, Vincent B. (1983). _Deconstructive Criticism_ new york:Columbia University Press.
++ Lingis, Alphonso (1988). Deleuze on a deserted island. Chapt. 6 in Silverman, Hugh (ed.) Philosophy and Non-Philosophy since Merleau-Ponty
++ Nietzsche, Frederich (1954). On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense" In The Portable Nietzsche. Trans and ed, Waleter kauffman. New York: Viking.
++Norris, Christopher (1982). Deconstruction: theory and practice. London: Methuen.
++States, Bert O. (1994). Authorship in dreams and fictions. Dreaming, 4(4), 237-253.
--------. (1992). The meaning of dreams. Dreaming, 2(4), 249-262.
--------. (1990). Dreaming and storytelling. The Hudson Review, XLIII(1), 21-37.
--------. (1988). Rhetoric of Dreams. London: Cornell University Press.
[Introduction/Rhetoric and Repression/Metaphor+notes]
--------. (Spring 1986). I think, therefore I dream. The Hudson Review, 39(1), 53-80.
--------. (1983). Dream and memory. Dreamworks, 3(2), 153-159.
--------. (Winter 1978-79). The art of dreaming. The Hudson Review, 31(4), 571-586.
++Wimsatt, W. K. and Beardlsey, Monroe (1954). The Intentional Fallacy. In The Verbal Icon. Lexington: Univ of Kentucky Press
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Graduate Education in Dream Studies
Mena Potts, Ph.D.
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Reprinted with permission of M. Potts and Alan Siegel from
ASD Newsletter Spring 1996 13(1), 31-33.
Editors Note: Though this article has been printed in the ASD newsletter,
I would like to see the participation in this program extended to the public
at large. RCW
In response to the interest of ASD members and the dearth of available
dream study programs our Task Force on Graduate Education in Dream Studies
was formed. Our objective is to encourage the development of graduate education
in dream studies. The Task Force was founded by Stanley Krippner in 1993,
during his tenure as President of the Association for the Study of Dreams.
Our Task Force grew out of a Hospitality Suite focused discussion on Graduate
Education in Dream Studies conducted during the 1993 ASD International
Conference. Sensing that there might be ASD members who were interested
in graduate education in dream studies, I convened a Hospitality Suite
discussion entitled, "Developing Creative Ph.D. Programs in Dream
Psychology." The purpose was to explore ASD members' needs and interests
in graduate education in dream studies.
The focus of the discussion was creative interdisciplinary graduate study in dream psychology through "Universities Without Walls." As the convener I led a discussion and shared my experience with The Union Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio; Saybrook Institute, San Francisco, California; and the Center for Humanistic Studies, Detroit, Michigan. Materials were distributed describing the learning opportunities in dream studies which these three graduate schools provided.
Several ASD Conference attendees came to our discussion seeking information on doctoral programs in dream psychology and
graduate education in dream studies. During our discussion we each drew
from our own experience. I reviewed my experience in developing the first
Doctoral Program in Dream Psychology which I achieved through The Union
Institute with the cooperative input of Montague Ullman, Stanley Krippner
and Saybrook Institute and Clark Moustakas and The Center for Humanistic
Studies.
My interest in graduate education in dream studies actually began some
twenty five years ago, originating with my own precognitive dream experiences.
In 1970 I began to keep a dream journal which I still maintain. In addition
to extensive reading I pursued my interest by taking courses and workshops
through universities and organizations, including The Center for East-West
Studies in Switzerland, a Tibetan Buddhist university in England and training
in sand play.
At that time dream studies were largely confined and concentrated in
the various analytic institutes. I studied at an analytic institute and
worked with an analyst for several years. Wishing to learn as much as possible
about dreams I did a comparative review of the various dream theories.
I encountered numerous theories and approaches, some of which were inconsistent
or contradictory with others. Dream interpretation was obviously shaped
by theoretical training, but I wanted a scholarly overview.
Instead of a singular theory or particular analytic school I wanted
to locate an eclectic and comprehensive study of dreams through a university
psychology department. My extensive search began with the American Psychological
Association and their publication on graduate education in Psychology.
This entailed my writing and contacting many universities both in the United
States and in Europe. Several universities would have permitted a dissertation
and research in dream studies and, in fact, many people had completed dissertations
in this area. However, I could not locate any university that offered a
doctoral study program in dream psychology and an internship and training
program in dream psychology, in addition to the dissertation. It was a
discouraging odyssey that began to appear unrealizable.
So I looked inward, asked for guidance through my dreams and I proceeded
to have a precognitive dream in February 1980. The dream opened with a
marriage (a "union"). In the next scene I was walking on a Pittsburgh
street on my way to see an analyst I had worked with. There was ice on
the pavement and my shoes were too small. They were tight and constricted
my ability to walk or to attain a firm grip on the ground. I decided to
take a new path through a tunnel in the University of Pittsburgh Cathedral
of Learning, now on my way to see an analyst by the name of Monet or Monte.
Upon awakening I felt this analyst (by the name of Monet or Monte) was
an important clue related to my interest in graduate education in dream
studies. Since I did not know an analyst by either of those names I searched
through the directories of analysts at the University of Pittsburgh and
asked around, but to no avail. No one knew an analyst named Monet or Monte.
A few months later, when I first met Montague Ullman, I shared my dream
with him and asked him if he knew of an analyst by the last name of Monet
or Monte. He did not, but he told me his nick name was Monte and I realized
he was the analyst in my dream. The shoes in my dream, which were too small
and tight, metaphorically represented the constrictions of a singular or
particular theory, which constrictions prevented me from getting a solid
grip or grounding in dream understanding. The marriage in my dream (the
"union") precognitively represented the Union Institute, where
I would later receive the first doctorate in Applied Dream Psychology awarded
in the United States. The relation of my dream images to Montague Ullman
and our future endeavor in dream psychology became strikingly apparent
when we subsequently charted a new course in a "Cathedral of Learning"
without walls, The Union Institute.
The Union's emphasis on creatively individualizing higher education
through an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program provided an opportunity for
our development of a doctoral program in dream psychology that was nowhere
available through traditional universities. Within my Union doctoral committee
and the Union Institute's "Universities Without Walls" I found
what I could not locate within the walls of any university, anywhere -
one of the largest collections of dream knowledge and dream authorities.
In retrospect, learners seeking graduate education in dream studies
can benefit by looking both inward and outward. I urge them to read the
literature, attend ASD and other conferences to find who and what resonates
with their areas of interest. I suggest they contact those with whom they
are interested in studying. Through introspection and working with our
dreams we can embrace the challenge to find our own way and to create our
own path to knowledge and understanding.
Currently our ASD Task Force is working on the development of an interdisciplinary
doctoral program in dream studies. The learning field is wide and unlimited,
with ample space for graduate education in dream studies in many disciplines.
In 1994 the ASD Task Force on Graduate Education in Dream Studies developed
a model for a masters' degree in psychology in dream studies but that proposal
has not yet been implemented at the university level. Nevertheless, since
my initial exploration in 1980 there has been notable progress. ASD and
its members have played a significant role in the development of graduate
education in dream studies by offering more and more courses in dream studies
at colleges and universities where they teach. Today, 15 years after my
initial pursuit and the development of the first Ph.D. program in Dream
Psychology the "universities without walls," such as The Union,
Saybrook and Fielding Institutes and The California Institute of Transpersonal
Psychology, continue to offer impressive resources for graduate education
in dream studies. It may take time but I am confident that our day will
come when the value of dream studies will be recognized and incorporated
within more universities as a bona fide Masters or Ph.D. degree program.
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Column: Life, Art Dream
Bones
by Alissa Goldring
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
<http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/goldring/bones1.htm>
BONES
The Dream:
"I see people whose bones are not actually bones, but some composition material n the shape of femurs, ribs, skull and so on. The outer layer, though having the appearance of skin, is actually synthetic and the space between bones and skin is filled with a grey, mealy substance . Yet the total aspect resembles a human form which can walk, speak, more, eat, sleep and interact like a human being.
These creatures tell me that the process which transformed them from
natural humans is termed "minsking" , and was administered by
the powers who control this country. Because they are in this condition
they are unable to change themselves back into authentic humans."
That word "minsk" intrigues me. Is it a child's version of "mince" - to chop into little pieces, to mash up?
Two incidents, occurring shortly before, are relevant to this dream. First, I'd been upset by my reaction to a friend when she stretched out her wrist to show a scar from her attempted suicide. I could not look. Filled with remorse and shame as I remembered turning away when I wanted to give her the comfort and understanding she needed, I could not fathom what had blocked me.
Second, a boy I knew, who would have been thirteen in two days, returned
from school, walked out of his house to the large oak tree in the back
yard -- and hung himself. Returning tired after a day's work, his mother
dumped her things on the kitchen table, called his name, went looking for
him, and found him hanging there, dead. When I heard of this I could not
stop crying. That poor child, that poor mother. How could no one have noticed
his sorrow, his pain, I wondered? Why didn't someone do something before
it was too late?
Not long after, a compassionate friend said to me, " You are really
asking, 'Why didn't someone pay attention to me when I was a child? Why
didn't someone help me in my misery?'" My crying is like the ocean
bursting a dike where a child had been holding her finger in the hole to
keep back the waters.
My wise friend said to me, " You too ' killed yourself ' to escape
unbearable pain, but, unlike Pauli, and your friend, you 'minsked' yourself
and created a stand-in, so that you could survive, at least partially .
You escaped into your imagination; Pauli escaped into death, as your friend
attempted to."
Alissa
alissa@dreamgate.com
The online version with graphics of Alissa's work is at
www.dreamgate.com/dream/goldring/g97may.htm
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Madame Aionia's Astrological Dreaming Series:
Dreaming Through the Houses: 5th House
+ Some Fifth House Rooms...by Island
+Dreaming in the Fourth House... by Island
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Have you ever wondered how dreams and astrology are connected?
There are many ways we can connect dreams to astrology, and many don't
require that you know all about your Natal Chart. In this column we will
be exploring the symbolic rather than predictive aspects of astrology.
Symbolic astrology attempts to use the images of astrological to give meaning
to one's life and empower choices rather than predict paths. We do this
by imaginal overlay. In this process we impleach, (poetically interweave)
dream, image, feeling, life and symbol in a way to evoke a felt sense of
the dream's imagery and its position in our life.
This year we are focusing each month on a different House. The inner
circle of the Natal or Birth Chart is divided into 12 distinct regions
know as Houses. They relate to everyday activates. One will be about physical
appearances and temperament, while another relates to possessions, for
example. Planets and signs fall within these Houses and influence the areas
of focus. We will be watching for images of planets, signs and other celestial
events and hopefully begin to see the emergence of an astrological chart
that dips into birth charts, dreams, and our waking life.
The Fifth House traditionally includes such areas as pleasures and amusements,
love affairs, children, creativity and self-expression, speculation and
investments. What is the thread? Being Leo and the reflection of the Sun
and thus conscious ego, it might be seen as the area where an individual
can be uniquely and completely oneself. Feelings, desires, ideas and activities
are all full of one's own essence where there is no compromise with otherness.
Through creative self-expression, the meaning of ones own identity can
appear. Often the Fifth House is called the House of Love, but perhaps
it would be better characterized as the House of Romance. Here we can project
ourselves fully into the other and experience a love that reveals peeks
at our own inner center.
Dream: "He came into my dark bedroom and I could clearly see only
the red tulip he carried. I knew we would spend the night together. We
began nibbling the tulip, bumping noses and laughing, both finding the
game so funny. He was so easy to play with, I couldn't believe it, it was
like we had always been playing together."
Perhaps the natural instincts in the dream are emblematic of the intuitive
perception in this House, intuition of one's completeness or total psyche.
There is that special kind of intuition that comes from reflecting on oneself
and one's creations, though not an intellectual grasp. It is more the kind
of understanding that brings us closer to the experience.
A problem in the Fifth House erects barriers between and individual
and his/her self realization. Generally these will appear first as shadowy
elements. Children may have dreams of bad animals, adults of intrusions
of characters that seem morally inferior, who bug us and who we would rather
die than think we are like. More abstract symbols might be circulations
where the flow is block, like water not being able to circulate, or breaks
in land and vehicular travel. More emotionally, dreams where the dreamer
gives and gives, but doesn't receive may appear. Or audiences that don't
respond, possible love encounters where there is rejection, being disconnected
from one's creations or children.
Dream: "I'm leading a team of archeologists and I push the team
through many perils before reaching the ancient tomb. The team doesn't
seem to appreciate how much I have helped them. We open the tomb and find
many rooms of treasure, yet all the time I sense it is all worthless and
pointless and feel no joy in all we have achieved. I'm repulsed at first
at how the team is running around excited by all the treasure, but then
become amused and begin to see them like kids in a candy store."
Salvation for those afflicted in the Fifth House will usually come from
being able to shift their wounded self attention to the joy of others.
This is difficult since envy can be very prevalent. In the above dream,
the dreamer is pushy and achievement oriented, and all the treasures in
the world cannot connect him (?) with himself. A glimmer of hope appears
as the attention shifts to the joy of the others.
There are many other interesting areas in the Fifth House, which Island
has wonderfully unfolded for us in the essay on "Some Fifth House
Rooms".
M. Aionia
============================
Some Fifth House Rooms...by Island
When I meandered through the fifth house (Leo, Sun), I discovered a
grand and impressive house, with many rooms. A living room where children,
once born, whether a child of the imagination or womb, are its heart and
soul, its reason for being. A den and casino-like game room, where diversions
of all kinds take place; the bedroom, where romantic love may be kindled;
the kitchen where laughter, good humor, and high spirits spill over and
replenish the activities of the house; the study where decisions are made
in a bear or bull market, with caution being thrown to the wind; the basement
where artistry flourishes; the sundeck where happiness, contentment and
joy reign. Yeats's judgement in Purgatory, "To kill a house I hereby
declare a capital offense" haunts an unrealized fifth house. "Men
without joy seem like corpses" [Kathe Kollwitz, East Prussian artist].
And in this house, there is one and only one player: "Me." What
follows is a selection of quotations and dream fragments which is a further
elaboration on the fifth house. Hopefully, an indelible impression of the
fifth house remains so that any dream sharing fifth house concerns can
be easily grasped. Some few questions posed by fifth house concerns are
(and there are zillions others)...
What...
is my pleasure? values and lessons do I impart to my children? stages/arenas appear in my dreams? To what extent have I developed my abilities?
(How) Do I...
laugh a lot? receive applause? perform? transcend suffering and pain?
celebrate? play, communicate from myself, create, procreate, speculate?
bring a spirit of play to work? take risks? bring romance into my life?
entertain myself?
Am I...
dramatic? popular? worshiped? spontaneous? Self-expressive? humorous?
Interestingly enough, an approach toward answering these questions are
embedded in the dreams I dream.
A few quotes to give the tones of the vibrations that echo off and through
the walls, carried by a Southern breeze or a Northern wind, no matter what
activities are underway:
Quote 1: I celebrate myself and I sing myself. I dote on myself, there
is that lot of me and all so luscious! [Walt Whitman]
Quote 2: When I walk out, I am a great event. [Sylvia Plath]
Quote 3: Always star in your own movie. [Ken Kesey]
Quote 4: All the world's crazy but me and thee, and I sometimes worry
about thee. [My sometimes father, when drunk]
Quote 5: Everyone has a right to my opinion. [Anonymous]
Quote 6: I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse
-- I will not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard. [WL Garrison]
Drama is the Doorman...
Quote 1: A people without drama is a people without truth. [Rodolfo
Usigli, Mexican writer]
Dream Fragment: A woman steps in for a famous male actor to play the
last part of Hamlet the closing night. I think to myself, "How can
a woman play the part of Hamlet with any credibility? Does she disguise
herself as a man, or what?"
Children In The Wings...
Quote 1: The period of childhood is a stage on which time and space
become entangled. [Yukio Mishima, Japanese Writer, Confessions of a Mask]
Dream Fragment: Two children, traveling on a beam of light, to the moon.
At the moon's entrance, they look at each other, one falling to the right
of the ray and the other moving to the left, and do a dance.
Dream Fragment: I'm to see this film. I do. The film begins. I'm amazed.
It's absolutely wonderful. There's this huge, huge highway that you see
immediately that's opening up. And the highway seems to have water flooding
it. Going up the highway is a band of children, perhaps gypsy children.
They are children who play and make their own way. You can hear them engaged
in song and laughter and conversation. They remind me of the kind of children
that Charles Dickens would write about. Or children in Les Miserables.
A gang of ruffians.
Quote 2: Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them
not, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. [Jesus Christ, somewhere in the
New Testament]
Dream Fragment: Maybe we are drawn from out of his office to the party
by a laughing, singing circle of children in a ring: ring around the posie
style. But the entertainment is like a flash, it happens so quickly. When
the circle breaks, a couple of kids dialogue in a scripted fashion. Long
haired dogs spring to mind. Also adults are begging and coaxing the kids
to come to them.
Quote 3: Let us return to the magic hour of our birth for which we mourn.
[Kofi Awoonor, Ghanaian writer, "This Earth, My Brother"]
Dream Fragment: I watch a little boy being pushed out into the world
to make it on his own. He couldn't have been more than two years old, and
I see him struggling for language, for movement, and I do not do anything
but observe. I see the baby on its own striking out for the beach, then
heading directly for the water. In Andalusia someone who is to wait for
me leaves me in the square. I walk around and am whisked by this man inside
this makeshift theatre behind curtains. Looks like a gypsy setup. He begins
to perform, he and his troupe, for me with all the gusto and assurance
of a professional actor, then loses confidence and stops as if he does
something absurd by even attempting to perform. I encourage him to continue,
but he won't.
An Artist is Always Engaged Because Everything Is Done With Style and
a Flair...
Quote 1: Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow
the talent to the dark place where it leads. [Erica Jong, american writer,
The Artist as Housewife: The Housewife as Artist]
Dream fragment: We are going down a river together and see a group of
musicians. One is a female flautist who plays effortlessly and beautifully.
The group is reminiscent of former fraternity/sorority kids who decide
to turn into hobo-artists. Perhaps it is a riverboat gig. Then they pile
up together in the form of a pyramid, then dance. It reminds me of a cabaret
pose, or a frieze from any modern musical. They are imitating keeping each
other warm in the arctic cold.
Dream Fragment: I walk down a highway, or street, with both husband
and stepson. I've been given a clarinet to play. As I begin to play, I'm
upset because I cannot achieve the easy grace and flow and style achieved
during my youth, when I played the clarinet. I keep complaining that something
is wrong with the instrument because the wind isn't blowing through freely.
There is much strain in playing. The sound is not fullbodied. It is as
if I've lost my ability to be a musician.
Quote 2: In order to find reality, each must search in his own universe,
look for the details that contribute to this reality that one feels under
the surface of things. To be an artist means to search, to find and look
at these realities. To be an artist means never to look away. [Akira Kurosawa,
Japanese film director]
Dream fragment: I am squeezed between a refrigerator and a wall. I am
facing a wall and cannot, or do not want, to move. A woman behind me wants
me to turn around and look at her. I do not want to. She finally gets me
to do so by holding out a necklace that has a delicate art object on it,
and it captures my attention. She herself is beautiful in every way, dressed
elegantly without a care in the world, and very successful. Or gives that
appearance. We go for a walk, and she tells me about her lifestyle. Makes
plenty of money. Everything is easy. Inside a large apartment or house
several females are gathered together for a reunion, as she's telling us
about herself. I am in awe but still have a hanging question regarding
whether or not she is really in an enviable position. We plan to leave
for the movie. It is raining. She pulls out a huge green umbrella. I admire
how not one drop of rain touches us, encircled in a magic circle of protection.
I think of my paltry black umbrella. We enter a movie house and wait for
a midnight performance. I look at the listings, and it is like Cable TV
on display in a movie theatre. There are too many choices, and I cannot
choose.
Joy, Pleasure, Laughter, Good Humor Abound...
Quote 1: After carrying and collecting like the ant, enjoy -- before
the grave worm devours thee. [Sa'di of Shiraz, Persian poet]
Dream Fragment: She is not your usual supervisor. There is an air of
careless abandonment about her and a country freshness that is rare. But
there is also more a mystical quality about her, for she never says a word
to me. We walk up a huge flight of stairs, very wide. The kind of stairs
one might find in an institution or prison because they are iron stairs,
yet grandiose due to their width. I say to her, "How can you stand
this bureaucracy?" At that very moment, beautiful jazz music blares
out, and she begins dancing to the music up the staircase with an enigmatic
smile. I am getting frustrated because there is never the moment when I
can air my grievance. When we reach the top of the stairs, a party is underway.
Food is placed in an "L" shape, or at least it appears so with
the wall. I see the food but I eat nothing.
Quote 2: Do anything, but let it produce joy. [Henry Miller]
Dream Fragment: I see this beautiful house. Opposite the house on a
road is a huge lake. I wonder if the people ever go out and canoe or fish.
It's wonderful. Then I'm with Daddy and we're travelling. I ask, "Daddy,
have you ever seen this neighborhood?" He says, "No, I never
have." It's like discovering something very surprising in this gorgeous
neighborhood. I ask, "Please find out how much these houses are."
He says, "I'm not going to ask anyone." I say, "Ask a teenager
or someone who just happens to come up." We stop.... He sees a little
kid who's playing. He gives the kid a whole bunch of change. The kid jumps
up, ecstatic. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" I say, "Daddy,
that was really a generous to do." Daddy made him so happy! The joy
is infectious. He says, "No, it wasn't. The change was right there
before me, all the time. I didn't do anything. I just pointed it out to
him." The feeling is as if it's happening right now, with Daddy full
of life, spirit, fun and joy. Whole. Then I'm on a children's playground,
a special kind of school where children play. A private school. Wide, open,
spacious. How do I fit in, or what am I doing there?
Quote 3: (Wo)Men without joy seem like corpses. [Kathe Kollwitz, East
Prussian artist]
Dream Fragment: I am sitting in a park, or garden, and mother, I think,
sits beside me. But it's not exactly mother, yet it is. A woman tells me
I may never see her again. She is laughing gaily, giggling but beautifully
almost, like a little girl, bubbling over with joy.
Quote 4: The greatest happiness is to transform one's feelings into
actions. [Madame de Stael, French writer]
Dream Fragment: Something strikes my eye. A rope coiled around in a
circular fashion and something inside the coil, a smooth mound or something
covered over with cloth. Lee and I take two separate sleds and go sledding
in the snow -- a real joy ride! A very winding path where we careen through
snow and ice. Actually it feels treacherous.
Quote 5: He deserves paradise who makes his companions laugh. [Qur'an,
sacred book of Islam]
Dream Fragment: I felt like I was dying, of being in a stadium. I am
part of a couple, or between a couple. We are there, observing. We look
into the arena, and see night. A man and a woman have just been given an
award for having each known that they are to die within the year and yet
had lived completely and fully. While this is going on, there is repartee
and wit abounding among the people that I am with, to the point that I
am absolutely laughing hysterically. And I wake up, laughing hysterically.
Should I die laughing? I have never laughed so hard in my life.
Lady Luck The Guardian Angel Always On Call...
Quote 1: Venture all; see what fate brings. [Vietnamese proverb]
Dream Fragment: On the spur of the moment a radio sweepstakes is announced.
I respond immediately knowing I will win. My mind whirls with the winner's
assurance only because the first who responds is the winner. But then they
throw all the first responses together and at a later date draw the winning
ticket. Now I am not so sure.
Eternally Swept away by Romance...
Quote 1: Clean is the autumn wind, splendid the autumn moon, the blown
leaves are heaped and scattered, the ice-cold raven starts from its roost.
Dreaming of you -- when shall I see you again? On this night sorrow fills
my heart. [Li Po, Chinese poet, Verses]
Dream Fragment: Rock takes me out and to my surprise begins to treat
me in a highly romantic fashion. We kiss at length and he is gentle and
tender. Furthermore, knowing how solid as a "rock" he is, I have
no fears about allowing intimacy to develop. Being with him feels wonderful
and is a relationship with a man I always hoped to have.
Dream Fragment: He says he's been wanting to meet me all my life. The
meeting transforms him because, typically, he's incredibly shy, though
when he meets me, he's not shy at all. So spend the better part of the
evening together. We kiss. He looks into my eyes, and I his. Very intense,
powerful. He needs to return to his own home, doing so without me.
Dream Fragment: I whisper in his ear, "You are mine." I immediately
wish to take back these words, as if I am afraid I will scare him off.
I don't mean it in the sense I wish to own him. We kiss forever. I get
lost inside them.
The Roof and Sky Overhead: Spirit of Giving and Receiving...
Quote 1: If Heaven above lets fall a plum, open your mouth. [Chinese
proverb]
Dream Fragment: As he looks at the window, seeing the water, a beautiful
view, he says, "How lucky I am to enjoy God's world." And I agree
with him. I point out, "You shouldn't be concerned about anyone taking
over this particular vacation spot."
Dreaming in the Fourth House - Island
Here is an example of a fourth house dream:
Where There's Fire, There's Deep Lawnings (97.03.01)
Dreamed Rob and I walk across the lawn of a two-story house where at
least one man & probably others live. Smoke alerts us to the possibility
of a fire, and we let the young man coming down from the 2nd story know,
although I'm not sure we are believed. Something about me then calling
a store owner who sold the man the sofa, which is to be carted out of the
house and back to the shop. I think that's where the problem lies. Only
as the store owner tells me the ID# of the sofa, he repeats it so quicky
several times that I cannot write it down. I ask him to go slower again
and again as his patience runs out and I never get the number. Then Rob
and I are at a table eating with a friendly group, who suddenly disappear,
while we are then eating with at least one unfamiliar person who isn't
so friendly.
-- but when I dreamed it on March 1st, 1997, I had no clue as to the
dream's meaning. Intrigued, however, by the possibility of astrological
keywords that might help me unlock at least the focus of the dream, I analyzed
the dream, first, by assigning house numbers for every word that appeared
in the dream, using The Astrological Thesaurus: House Keywords, by Michael
Munkasey, published in 1992 by Llewellyn Publications.
Here's the simple analysis. Every number references an astrological
house. Every word with a number appears in The Astrological Thesaurus,
also referenced by house (and category). Any number in parentheses means
the keyword is introduced earlier in the dream; any #/# means shared houses.
Seems like a lot of work, but it really isn't. Just provides clarity where
little existed before.
12 Dreamed
7 Rob and I
1 walk across the
4 lawn of a
4 two-story house where at least
9 one man & probably others (strangers)
4 live.
12 Smoke
1 alerts us to
9 the possibility of a
1/5 fire,
2 and the young man
10 coming down from the 2nd story
11 we let know, although
12 I'm not sure
9 we are believed. Something about
1 me then calling
4/2 a store owner who
9 sold the man
2 the sofa, which is to be
(3/4) carted out of the house and back to the shop.
8 I think that's where the problem lies. Only as the store owner
3 tells me
1 the ID# of the sofa,
3 he repeats it so quicky several times
3 that I cannot write it down.
8 I ask him to
2 go slower again and again as
1 his patience runs out and
12 I never get
6 the number.
(7) Then Rob and I are
6 at a table
4 eating
11 with a friendly group,
8 who suddenly disappear, while
(4) we are then eating with
2 at least one unfamiliar
7 person who isn't so friendly.
When I say, "This is a fourth house dream," what I mean is
essentially, this dream may be primarily about fourth house matters. And
fourth house matters are at the core of Self. We begin our sojourn here,
and end it here. It's the heart, the root of things and, perhaps, the wellspring
of life itself. It's about caring, devotion, ethnic traditions, family,
hearth and home. It's about our fundamental nature; quality of life; it's
about anything from the past -- memory, history -- what calls forth sentiment;
it's about accumulation -- attachment, holding onto what one considers
valuable, worth cherishing -- and how one goes about protecting what is
near and dear to one's heart.
Did I personally need to reference the houses and do an actual count
to get a sense that this was a fourth house dream? (Even though it is debatable
that it is a seventh house dream, just as much as a fourth house dream,
but I feel it's fourth house because of what the dream seems to be striving
for). Unfortunately, yes. This is how my interpretation of the dream evolved:
Rob and I (a married couple) are defining ourselves as a couple as we
walk across the lawn of a two-story house occupied by strangers. From the
getgo there's a sense that we have not clearly defined as a couple what
we value or cherish as a couple. Interesting because March is our anniversary
month, and we are now married seven years. But that's clear to me why we
probably haven't evolved to that point yet. We are from such radically
different walks of life, inherited radically different values, belief systems,
et cetera, that no wonder we are seven years into a marriage without having
done little more than delineating for each other who we are as individuals.
I assume, in retrospect, that it's our unclaimed, unpossessed house
we're looking at. It's two stories. I'm glad of that because it gives us
a chance to be cerebral as well as grounded. Right now strangers, perhaps
soon to be acquaintances, live there. So perhaps soon Rob and I will come
into an increased understanding of what is valuable to us as a couple,
rather than just as the arch individualists we are. But there's smoke,
suggesting a 12th house matter. This 12th house, hidden matter, brings
one of the strangers in the house down to the ground. The fire -- could
potentially be the ardent fire of desire; the purifying fire; the creative
fire; the fires of destruction. We sound the alarm or recognize the potential
of the fire, but something lacks conviction, or purpose. Something is missing
because we are uncertain that we are believed, or believable. Belief is
a 9th house concern. It appears that something emanating from the dark
recesses of our beings, from the shadowlands of the 12th house, is eroding
away our belief in ourSelves, perhaps.
Funny thing, but implicit in the dream is what that belief in ourSelves
may refer to. When our story of a possible fire brings the young man down
from the 2nd story, that alludes to 10th house matters. And the 10th house
has to do with achievements and accomplishments, for starters. Do we question
this about ourselves? Yes, we do. Maybe that's our Achilles' heel and where
we feel most vulnerable. What have we achieved or accomplished as a couple
in the eyes of anyone looking at us? Little, I'm sure. Does it matter?
Maybe not, because we bring the man down. Perhaps that's one way in which
we are beginning to define ourselves as a couple: our inherited understanding
as to what matters in terms of status and recognition is not important
to us.
The second conundrum: there's the problem of the sofa in this house.
Funny, we don't even in reality own a sofa: just a day bed. So when people
come over and want to sit comfortably on the expected sofa, they won't
because it ain't there. (How many times have I walked into houses where
sofas are placed, but no one ever sits?) Is the dream suggesting to us
that we have a problem with sofas? Rob didn't want one. Neither did I.
Yet does that problem stand in the way of our occupying our own house?
Well. Could be. Must be our own house because otherwise, how would I even
know how to contact the store owner who sold the sofa that now sits there?
And needs to be removed? Must be repaired, fixed, so it can become functional,
or have some value. What should exist without value in a house? But something
to do with that sofa and perhaps the shared meanings we attach to it could
be looked at.
I must want to get to the heart of the conundrum because I contact the
store owner and try to get the ID# of the sofa, ostensibly for return and
repair. How to identify that sofa? How to seat people comfortably in our
presence when they drop in or visit? Or more important, what about those
strangers who live in our house? Maybe they're not too comfortable with
us a couple. So they can never plop on a sofa and hang around for while
just to be known. Maybe the two of us are just two rugged individualists
who love each other very much but, beyond that, there's a degree of awkwardness
about, perhaps, hidden or private matters that I have heretofore not considered
consciously.
Still I must return to the 10th house matters because, though I want
to go slow -- and I do -- he repeats the identification number rapidly
several times, and I never get it. Delays, repeating efforts, mastering
tasks: certainly a tenth house concern. Who likes to work fast, furiously
and, in many divergent directions? Rob. When he's on the ground floor.
Who likes to go slow on the ground floor? Me. But when I'm on the second
floor, I like to do what he does on the first floor. Go off in many different
directions simultaneously. And when he's on the second floor, he likes
to do what I do. Go slow. Take one thing at a time. So as of yet I haven't
really been able to identify the sofa that will have me and Rob sitting
on it, and what we value and cherish as individuals, becoming shared, even
though the store owner's patience runs out!
The dream ends by foreshadowing a developing sense of what we each have
to share with the other at our heart of hearts as individuals that will
begin to build on who we are together. Build on our home base -- not our
parents but our home foundation -- together. I have problems even now articulating
what that means exactly. It feels like an amalgamation of some kind where,
what either of us chooses brings to the table (or sit on a sofa), remains
undiminished by the other in value, even though the other might not embrace
that value as an individual. It's more than accepting or honoring differences
-- it's like embracing, including a difference somehow.
Yet Rob and I eat at a table, a fourth house activity, first, with a
group, and then with an unfamiliar person, who is not as friendly as the
group of people. Mr. Munkasey, in his Astrological Thesaurus, references
unfamiliarity as a second house concern, whereas a stranger is referenced
as ninth house. Because the second house concerns itself with the value
one places on things, to include psychological worth, and how one goes
about enjoying the finer things in life, such as eating a wonderful dinner
or reclining on a luxurious sofa, I see the relevance of our now eating
with an unfamiliar person. Feels just right for now.
I could only but marvel at how Mr. Munkasey has tackled, I feel, successfully,
the awesome project of making astrological houses accessible to understanding.
Secretly I sighed because dream interpretation is in its infancy by comparison.
Yet I wondered if I might not make my dream more accessible by relying
on this man's decades of research because I instinctively believed that
there are is a strong correspondence between dream language and astrological
concepts. Certainly deserves further thought.
-- Island
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
An Interview with D.R.E.A.M.S. Foundation Director
and Lucid Paddling Adventure Trip Guide: Craig Webb
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
http://prelude.PSY.UMontreal.CA/dreams_foundation/
D.R.E.A.M.S. Foundation
Richard Catlett Wilkerson (RCW): Craig, you seem to be involved in
just about every aspect of dreaming from the high technology of
cyberspace and the lucidity dream-mask development to the natural
ecologies of dream focused canoeing/outdoors trips to the establishment of
research foundations. Is there a central thread in all this, or
are you more like a dolphin who just pops up where there seems to
be some action happening?
The central thread, if there is one, is following my dreams - both the
nighttime ones and the daily life ones - and there may not be any difference
- the waking effect of which has been to follow my bliss, like Joseph Campbell
would say. Early in life, I latched onto the idea from author Richard Bach
that nobody was going to make an adventure out of my life unless I did
it myself, so I might as well get to it. I never looked back. My interest
is in truth, and I've explored wherever I thought it might be found - from
high technology to people to the wilderness. My variety of interests has
also been a central theme throughout my life, and I feel very grateful
that I have natural ability in many different areas. It is my belief that
the goal of the technology and consciousness revolutions now taking place
is basically ecological. That is to say that, our dreams, increasing awareness,
and all our technological tools are here for us to learn to live more in
harmony with the natural environment, which of course includes other people,
and ultimately for us to re-integrate our natural or what you might call
instinctive knowing in a conscious way.
(RCW): What got you interested in dreaming in the first place?
Well, I would say that dreaming got me interested in itself. I was going
to a French university in Quebec City, swimming on a swim team over 20
hours a week, doing a B.Sc. in Physics and Electrical Engineering when
all of a sudden, Wham! During Christmas break, I started remembering 8-10
dreams a morning. Being the scientist I was, I was intrigued enough to
record them, just to see what might happen. I also happened to pick up
Richard Bach's newly published book "Bridge Across Forever" in
which he and his new wife did something akin to lucid dreaming. I thought
this was a fun idea and decided to try with the girl I was seeing at the
time. Without ever having heard of Stephen LaBerge, and hence without knowing
that he was pioneering it at the same time, I spontaneously used the MILD
technique (which at the time I called setting off "memory bombs"),
and had a lucid experience the first night I tried, much to my utter amazement
and shock at the time. The rest of that year was a very powerful inner
awakening with numerous dream and spiritual experiences. I had no idea
what the heck was going on, but it was fascinating, so I went with it.
The best way I can explain what happened is that I went so deep into the
academic/intellectual way of being that, just like going through the little
circle inside either half of the Chinese yin yang symbol, I swung right
into the other side and was guided (or forced is what it more felt like
at the time) to explore the whole dream/intuitive side of life. Fortunately,
since then I've understood much better what happened and have integrated
these two polarities to a much greater extent, so that this may explain
my interests in the opposite yet complimentary realms of science and spirit.
All in all, dreams chose me to discover them.
(RCW): How did you get involved with the development of the lucid
dream technology?
In the Spring of that year at University, I fell upon LaBerge's newly
published first book, "Lucid Dreaming", and was excited to find
that other people were learning about this too. I would say that LaBerge's
scientific approach was probably very timely for me too, because I as very
quickly becoming disillusioned with the education in science that I was
going through since there wasn't even the slightest talk of any of the
experiences that I was going through, except for maybe a passing reference
to Freud or Jung. I had quite a number of lucid experiences that summer,
and have probably clocked over 1000 lucid dreams since that time. I became
a member of the newly formed Lucidity Institute, and stayed a member for
quite some time. I remember phoning them once to see if LaBerge was doing
any research on automated lucid state recognition using EEG signals, which
I wanted to do as my thesis. At the time, whoever answered the phone told
me that he wasn't (though I much later found out that he was - I guess
the time for us to meet wasn't yet ripe). I ended up doing my thesis on
computerized recognition of epileptic seizures (which is quite closely
related). A couple years, later, I had finally let my Lucidity Institute
membership expire, yet by interesting coincidence, I'd done more than three
newsletter research experiments and someone at the Institute (Jennifer
Dole - the same one I'd spoken to when I first phoned) spontaneously decided
that anyone who'd done three experiments or more was entitled to a free
subscription, so I continued receiving the NightLight newsletter. It was
in the Spring issue of that year that I saw a job offered at Lucidity Institute
for office help. I was interested enough and applied, hoping that some
of my engineering and lucid dreaming skills might also find a home there.
The rest is history, and I moved from Montreal to work at Lucidity Institute
and at Stanford with LaBerge. The timing was impeccable too, because the
Institute was struggling financially and had just finished designing the
DreamLink, a cheap DreamLight - flashing lights on a timer without any
smarts. Well, it seemed like my life experience had been designed to bring
me exactly to that place and time, and I designed the NovaDreamer, a smart,
cheaper lucid dream biofeedback device. I had started leading dream workshops
before I moved, and now continued alongside LaBerge. It was a time of tremendous
challenge and growth for me, since although I was in a very exciting position,
using almost all of my abilities alongside a brilliant man such as LaBerge,
working with him proved very difficult at times.
(RCW): Do you use the Lucid Dreaming technology yourself?
I must say that even though I designed the NovaDreamer and had a part in the conception of its add-on peripherals, I don't support the device, nor do I really encourage anyone to use it. In the year that I designed it, I learned a lot, and one of the things that I learned from my experience in using, giving workshops with and providing customer service and support for this new technology was that, for the most part, it wasn't making that much difference for most people after the first few weeks, and if anything, it was disempowering people by having them transfer their own innate ability to successfully have lucid dreams onto a technological device which then soon stopped helping, if it even had in the first place. I know that most of the DreamLights, DreamLinks, and NovaDreamers out there are sitting unused in drawers along with many people's reduced motivation and faith in having lucid dreams. Sadly, in a way, the technology is like the lucid dream microwave oven, and by the nature of the way it's marketed and also due to the quick-fix thinking in our culture, it ends up doing a disservice to lucid dreaming rather than helping it. In my times of deep personal questioning about its effectiveness, I incubated a dream, asking what overall effect it was having out there in the world at large. The dream was simple and to the point. In it, a dear friend and wise, shaman woman that I knew simply left the room - her name (in waking life) is Joy. After that, though it was a great personal challenge for many reasons, I left LaBerge and the Lucidity Institute because I no longer agreed with important aspects of the framework and thinking there. I do see the devices as being useful in some regards to some people, especially as research aids
in lab or home lab settings with the computer interface connected.
(RCW): Is there a "Next Step" in lucid dream technology?
The next step would be one that plays a much more tutorial role, and
also one that empowers the user to a much larger extent by offering a rentable,
training device, that comes along with an appropriate training program.
It's feedback would also be more inclusive of the waking aspects of the
users' life. My general feeling is that people are on the average better
off learning various principles and techniques from a good teacher or even
a book and having their skills and awareness develop naturally and "organically",
rather than purchasing a device when it comes to expanding consciousness
such as with lucid dreaming. However, I have seen and experienced various
technological methods, some aspects of which look very intriguing and promising.
(RCW): Many people are still quite suspicious that lucid dreaming
is just another exercise in the kind of willful egoic muscling
that has brought our planet to the brink of destruction. What's
your take on all this?
A very good question. In terms of having more lucid awareness, either in dreams or in life, I am generally for it, though my position has shifted somewhat since I was first a gung-ho promoter of as-much-lucidity-as-possible-as-soon-as-possible for everyone. I have learned through personal experience that there is a healthy time for people to begin to experiment with consciousness (such as lucid dreaming) and a healthy, organic rate of learning too - which many people don't recognize. Conscious awareness brings responsibility - literally, the ability to respond knowingly - so too much too fast will be far less than the fun that it initially seems to be. The time to begin and the rate of learning are different for everyone, so it's a very personal thing. As one grows in awareness, this predisposes change as one's thinking and hence the framework and waking symbols of the person's life die and then evolve to form new structures. This is the natural process of creation. The change, however, is scary to many people, since they do not recognize it as an evolution - the dying of the old and the birth of the new. The changes that comes into our lives is generally designed by our larger selves (often in our dreams), and hence it's guaranteed to lead us directly towards our greatest fulfillment and by definition, this usually involves facing our fears. Even with those people who know what's going on, if change comes too fast or too big, it's like biting off more than we can chew at once. I know.
As for those people who are afraid of "controlling" dreams
because they don't want to meddle with what they consider to be a source
of divine or intuitive knowledge, I would have to say a couple things.
First, that such a perspective stems from fear-based thinking, a fact which
I would advise anyone who follows it to look into. I would also suggest
that the same divine source of dreams also must know what is best for each
person, and knowing this has encouraged many people towards lucid awareness
in their dreams, and also, as a natural by-product, in their lives. It
also knows if they're "controlling" their dreams too much and
it will guide them to such a realization. Second, among other numerous
examples of creativity, healing, problem-solving and useful, practical
guidance, lucid dreaming has also helped many people to resolve recurring
nightmare themes along with their related waking issues once and for all.
There is a delicate balance of experience and understanding to be kept
however. Lucid awareness is one thing, and what each person does with it
is quite another. I personally haven't and professionally don't encourage
people to become "control" freaks in their dreams, but rather
suggest that they keep a curious, open approach to the situations that
present themselves. If there is anyone who wants to try out my favorite
lucid dream experiment, which has brought me truly, truly incredible and
often very surprising and fulfilling results, then try this: The next time
you go lucid, say to the dream (or think out loud), something like "Please
bring me whatever experience and/or knowledge that would bring me the greatest
fulfillment right now" (note: sometimes I leave off the "right
now" part). I find this to be about the best balance between guiding
and letting go that I've discovered to date.
(RCW): Dream work seems to have now slipped off the couch and into the
culture at large. Do you foresee a widening gap between clinical and grassroots
dream work?
Generally, I see the opposite. With internet, and all the various books
and viewpoints being offered to the public, I see people in our culture
becoming far more in tune, not only with dreams in general, but with their
won (interesting Freudian finger- slip there, I consciously meant "own")
personal power and best way to work with their dreams. This is an ongoing
process and will likely continue at least over the next few decades, but
that is precisely the mission of the D.R.E.A.M.S. Foundation which I founded
here in Canada - to spread the awareness of what being in touch with one's
dreams has to offer, and to show people how to do it and that there are
many great teachers out there, but that, in the end, they are really their
own best teacher, as most dream workers would agree.
(RCW): Do you have a theoretical stance or bias yourself in approaching
dreams?
I would have to say that I have a number of them. I have grown up with
the Seth philosophy which is a framework for viewing experience in general,
and by extension, dreams. I also would say that a large aspect of my personal
stance is intuitive in that I draw from a tremendous base of insight and
experience from over ten years of focused personal dream work, training
in many widely varied models of thinking from lucid dreaming to yoga and
meditation to ecology and the truths of nature, and from having worked
with, trained with or interviewed a number of who I consider to be the
great teachers of our times, including Ram Dass, Shakti Gawain, and Hal
& Sidra Stone, among others. The intellectual framework which I have
personally found to be the most powerful in the last few years comes from
the work of psychologists Hal and Sidra Stone, whose work is a powerful
extension of the Jungian model and Gestalt techniques. I have also gained
much insight into dream symbolism from Philadelphia dream worker James
Villareal, who is not only an incredible master of symbolism, but also
now a personal friend.
(RCW): There hasn't been much done to bring dream interpretation
and dream science together since Harry Hunt's work in the late 1980's.
As a matter of fact, dream science seems to be losing funding in general.
Have we reached a wall or limit in dream science, or do you see new horizons
opening up?
"Dream science" per se, is definitely not as up and coming
as it was at the times of the discovery of REM sleep or at the scientific
proof of lucid dreaming. As for it's future, I would say that the science
and art of dreams will likely become more integrated as more scientists
work with their dreams, and as more dream workers realize that the religion
of science, which is basically what it is in our culture, is one of the
large present day frameworks which people trust and through which many
people can initially come to experience more subjective states, as I personally
did. Likely, there will be a few more watershed scientific experiments
that grab media and academic attention to bridge the present gap. Dreams
for me, are the most fascinating personal science there is. There are plenty
of principles and laws to be learned, but nobody can hand them to you gratis,
you have to go discover them for yourself. And how fun and freeing that
is!
(RCW): How did the idea for D.R.E.A.M.S. foundation come about?
The summer that I moved to California to begin work at the Lucidity
Institute, another summer student at the Sacre-Coeur sleep and nightmare
lab got inspired enough to create a non-profit foundation on paper, though
that's all that ever happened. I found out about it by chance, a couple
years later, after I had my split with Lucidity Institute, while I was
sleeping at the Sacre-Couer lab a couple years later to record some lucid
dreams. It was just another one of those right-place-and-right-time experiences
that I've come to know so well. So with great support from the lab director,
Dr. Tore Nielsen, I took the Foundation on as my new career, and have been
slowly getting it established ever since. (RCW): Is the D.R.E.A.M.S. foundation
planning any activities in coordination with the Global Dreaming Congress
2000?
We are on the mailing list to be informed of any events that come about,
and are quite interested, though at the moment, nothing is planned. It
would be great to hear from Jeremy Taylor and the committee there if there
is one.
(RCW): With all this activity, do you still get a chance to run the
rivers?
Most certainly. I'm off for a white-water canoe trip this week-end as
a matter of fact, though it's a private vision quest/fun trip with friends,
not a publicly advertised trip. The lucid paddling adventures (see www-sca.PSY.UMontreal.ca/dreams_foundation/dumoine1.html)
that I've been running for the past few years are offered later in the
summer and anyone interested in having a powerful dream and lucidity training
in the grounded setting of a canoe-camping trip may contact me by e-mail
at lucid@magnet.ca, or through the D.R.E.A.M.S. Foundation at 514-488-0347.
(RCW): Can you tell us a little more about this program, how it started,
what its about?
I've always loved the water and was a national level competitive swimmer,
and lifeguard. Over the last seven years, I've guided numerous river and
flat-water varying-length canoe trips at first for a couple other organizations,
but four years ago, I started my own business and have run vision quest
adventure trips during the summer ever since. Early on, I realized I had
a lot of different interests and hence directions going, so this is one
of my attempts to integrate as many different aspects of my life as possible,
share my skills and knowledge with others, and have a great time doing
it - and it worked great from the start. Like Thoreau says, if one advances
confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life
which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.
Life is meant to be like that.
(RCW): So Craig, what are your favorite dream books?
I've appreciated various ones at different times. Patricia Garfield's
"Creative Dreaming" is a good lucidity introduction book, as
is LaBerge's original "Lucid Dreaming", though it's a bit more
scientifically geared. I also like Dr. Harmon H. Bro's "Edgar Cayce
on Dreams", Jane Roberts/Seth's "Dreams and Projections of Consciousness"
& "The Nature of the Psyche", as well as the screenplay "Groundhog
Day" which is really all about lucidity, in my opinion. Other great
movies include "Excalibur" and "LadyHawk", which are
packed with great symbolism, and nothing beats the good ol' Wizard of Oz.
(RCW): What do you foresee as the role of the Internet in the future
of Dreams and Dreaming?
I see the internet as the physical extension of dreams, and I joke about
it as the waking counterpart of the "innernet" (but there's no
"t", since dreams can be "t"ime independent). Practically,
I see the internet getting more multidimensional in terms of better input
and output systems such as virtual reality, and becoming the way that we
can break down all barriers of race, age, sex, and even remove the limits
of geography, as dreams can. I also see it being prime soil for all types
of global dream experiments, dream work and dream-sharing. I even have
a pet project that I'd like to see developed of regional dream "weather"
maps, which would process and group dreams from various parts of the world
and warn of impending natural disasters, or of political or social upheavals
before they occurred physically. For example, Quebec, the province I live
in, had a referendum over a year ago to see if they were going to separate
from Canada. They didn't, but it was ever so close, and the psychological
implications are phenomenal, though somewhat invisible to the general public
- it's almost like this region was hit with a huge psychological plague
that can be transmitted by word of mouth and the media as people's attention
is focused on the tension of the situation here between French and English
cultures. There really was no big split going on, but the whole referendum
began creating one. After the referendum, many people were suffering from
nightmares about earthquakes and splitting earth and I myself was at a
few "dream" rallies where the issues were being worked out on
the dream level. I'm sure there were hints of all this in the dreams of
people connected with this area before the event. Imagine what the a communal
dream view of the gulf-war or of the dissolution of Russia would be like?
It would be fascinating to watch the dreams of different regions for trends
such as this and I could actually see you heading up such an intriguing
project, Richard. It would surely get plenty of media attention for dreams
in general and specifically for dreams and the internet.
(RCW): What kind of projects are you planning for the future in dreams
and dreaming?
I'm presently finishing my book about applying lucidity and dream principles practically in life, and planning various events through the D.R.E.A.M.S. Foundation such as taking lucid dreaming and dream incubation to high schools for teens as an alternative exploration and rebelliousness outlet over drug and alcohol abuse. I've also started working with dying patients at the invitation of a dream work student of mine who is a doctor there, to see how dream work and related skills may help with the terminally ill, and especially with cancer and AIDS patients, possibly even providing insight into their cures. As for other projects or directions, only my future self knows, so I'll tell you when "I" awaken.
-----------
=================================================
"Believe you can, believe you can't. Either way you're right." -H. Ford
=================================================
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Stop Sleeping Through Your Dreams
Part VII
by Charles McPhee
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
How does one become a conscious participant with the dream?
Charles McPhee assists anyone interested in finding out by offering a step-by-step guide to mastering the techniques of lucid dreaming in his book _Stop Sleeping Through Your Dreams_. Charles has also offered us a Web site through which we can discuss the issues of consciousness and dreams with him directly. He has been visiting with us here for the last few months at Electric Dreams, answering questions and giving us peeks into his work on lucid dreaming
- Richard
For previous articles, stop by
www.dreamgate.com/dream/mchphee/
Previously we began exploring just what we *are* aware of in dreams and lucid dreams, a good first step in actually becoming lucid. In Earlier issues we explored the phenomena of dream sleep and consciousness, the possession of consciousness in dreams, its significance to our waking lives and what consciousness may be. All of this speaks to how unconscious we are as well, and how to live with this through journaling and other consciousness raising techniques.
This month concludes our journey with an optimistic and pragmatic approach that recognizes the large yet fulfilling task of coming to terms with the unconscious and how dreams help us along the way.
CHAPTER 12: "Mental Health"
THE TRANSPARENT SELF
When we awaken in the morning do our dreams take us by surprise? Do
we ask ourselves, "Dear Lord, where did that dream come from?"
or are our dreams more mundane? The reason I ask is not to detract from
the mystery and spontaneity of our dream life but rather to assess the
quality of communication between our conscious and unconscious levels of
awareness.
In chapter nine I suggested that as we routinely monitor our dreams,
we must ask ourselves whether or not we were aware yet of the feelings
and awarenesses being represented. Is the material in our dreams familiar
to us, at least partially, or does it arrive each morning unannounced?
When communication between conscious and unconscious abilities is good--when
we have trained ourselves through dream work and the practice of consciousness
in waking experience to listen to our mind and body and to integrate
feelings and awarenesses into conscious awareness--then our dreams increasingly
represent concerns with which we already are familiar. As a consequence
of our familiarity with this material, our dreams also become more transparent.
The achievement of transparency in one's dream life is a great accomplishment.
The transparent reflection of feelings and awarenesses indicates that the
dreamer is succeeding in his or her efforts to remove the distorting filters
of repression, which previously were erected to buffer him or her from
experiencing difficult feelings and awarenesses directly. When a dreamer
experiences concrete representations of difficult feelings and awarenesses--feeling
of confusion or of the need for corrective action in his or her own life,
contradictory feelings with regard to lovers, close friends, and family
members--he actually should take great encouragement from these dreams.
The dream worker is growing increasingly able to manage difficult feelings
and awarenesses consciously. The reduction and elimination of disguise
from one's waking life, and, accordingly, from one's dream life, is a hard-won
accomplishment that all dream workers should experience warm satisfaction
in achieving.
********
PSYCHIC DETERMINISM
As we become more familiar with the patterns of psychological dynamics,
eventually we learn that the mind is not a mechanism governed by random
events and chance occurrences but rather is a regular and predictable system.
One of the first laws of psychoanalysis, as elaborated by Charles Brenner
is his seminal work _An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis_,
is the principle of "psychic determinism." Brenner writes,
The sense of this principle is that in the mind, as in physical nature
about us, nothing happens by chance, or in a random way. Each psychic event
is determined by one ones which preceded it. Events in our mental lives
that may seem to be random and unrelated to what went on before are only
apparently so. In fact, mental phenomena are no more capable of such a
lack of casual connection with what preceded them than are physical ones.
Discontinuity in this sense does not exist in mental life.
This principle has been embraced by nearly all segments of the professional
psychoanalytic community. In the passage above, Brenner is summarizing
Freud, and both of the excerpts at the head of this chapter--one from Jung
and the other from a more contemporary psychiatrist, M. Scott Peck--continue
to reflect this view. I propose that as we make progress in our psychological
sophistication, we too will grow to appreciate this principle. The important
consequence of this appreciation, however, is that gradually we will become
able to discern order and structure in what previously appeared to be random
and disconnected psychological events. We will also begin to grasp the
idea that concepts such as "mental health" and "personal
effectiveness" are not elusive personality characteristics of mysterious
origin but rather are qualities of mind that correspond, with astonishing
precision, to the quality of the relationship we maintain between conscious
and unconscious aspects of our personality. "Unification of the personality,"
similarly, will move from being a theoretical construct to being a recognizable
(and demonstrable, through dream work) consequence of psychological integration.
In the same way, qualities such as personal happiness, the absence of self-destructive
behaviors, and strong powers of emotional recovery will all be recognized
as consistent manifestations of healthy self-esteem. As both Jung and Peck
hinted at, the mind, when it is free of organic damage, is a consistent
and predictable machine. The happy news at the end of the psychological
journey is that mental health, happiness, personal effectiveness, and healthy
self-esteem, are all attainable qualities of personality if we are willing
to walk the path required to achieve these goals.
Did you miss the previous month's discussions? For a full
Chapter Summary of _Stop Sleeping Through Your Dreams_ visit my web
site below. If you would like more on this, my book is published by Henry
Holt and Company, Inc. Publication Date: December 27th, 1995. 0-8050-2500-6
$22.50, cloth. Contact: Robin Jones, (212) 886-9270
There is a Special Pricing Available if you act now! Amazon Books
www.amazon.com Amazon Books is offering discounts on both the hardback
and paperback versions:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0805025154/6229-5525424-361812
Finally, I'd like to discuss lucid dreaming with you. You can email
me or stop by my web site and join in the bulletin board discussions.
-Charles Mcphee
Brainsufr@aol.com
www.dreamgate.com/dream/mchphee/
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Osanna Wisdom Online
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Every two weeks new articles are added by Roberta Ossana, the editor
of the DreamNetwork Journal.
Here are some of the titles of the available articles:
Exploring The DreamTime Mystery, "How To Better Recall Your Dreams",
"Recurring Dreams: What Are They Saying", "Nightmare... A Blessing in Disguise!",
"Incubating Dreams for Guidance and Problem Solving", "Developing Dreamsharing Relationships and/or Dream Groups","The Many Types of Dreams & Purposes for Which Dreams Come to Us.",- "Ethics to Employ in Dreamsharing, Dreamworkand Dreamplay",
and "Dreams and Deja Vu"
www.hmtp.com/new/gather/dreama.html
What, you've never heard of the Dream Network Journal? Be sure to stop
by the DreamNet web site and look into backissues, info on dream sharing,
updates on special events or just order your subscription from the web.
You'll be able to find that all at
http://waking.com/waking/dream/
================================================
||>>>||>>|<<||<<<||>>>||>>|<<||<<<||||>>>||>>>||
G L O B A L D R E A M I N G N E W S
||>>>||>>|<<||<<<||>>>||>>|<<||<<<||||>>>||>>>||
================================================
THIS MONTH'S FEATURES:
NEWS
- ASD Conference Update
- Lucid/Mutual Dream-In, June 21/22, 1997
- ASD Encourages Regional Meetings and Co-Sponsored Events
- Explore the Dreamtime with Dream Reentry
- Dreams: Resources for Healing and Guidance
- DreamSpinner -- Software that Integrates the Analytical and the Intuitive
- Intuition Network Presents Its Fifth Conference, August 1997
- Dreaming as a Spiritual Practice
- Film Review: James and the Giant Peach
RESEARCH & REQUESTS
- Children's Dreams and Trauma
- Dreams and Deja Vu -- Help Needed
- Telepathic and Precognitive Dreams
WEB SITE UPDATES
- New Oniros Club Website and IRC
- Dreams and Postmodernity Update
- Dream Cloud -- A Creative Dream Website and Project
- Dreams can make you Rich
- Cyber-Dream Library Update
- Visit The Wanderer
- Intuitive Adventures in Surrealism and Dreaming
DREAM CALENDAR: June-July 1997
================================================
NEWS
================================================
============== Association for the Study of Dreams'Conference June 17-21 ==================
Beneath the high peaks of the Craggy Range in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina lies a valley the Native Americans called Swannanoa, "land of beauty". It is a setting that has inspired community, creativity, learning and a sense of harmony with the environment. It is also the home of Warren
Wilson College in Asheville and the setting for the Fourteenth Annual International Confer-ence of the Association for the Study of Dreams. With the conference taking place on a college campus, ASD XIV will enjoy a return to our roots. We will once again be able to eat, sleep, and dream in close proximity.
Here are some of the Invited Speakers for Asheville Conference XIV
+Presidential Address: Our Dreams for ASD -Johanna King, Ph.D.
+president-elect Address: Feminine Fragments of a History of Dreaming - Kelly Bulkeley, Ph.D.
+A Creative Approach to Transcending the Unconscious Paradox -Wewer Keohane, Ph.D.
+Beyond the Myth of Dream Metaphor -Don Kuiken, Ph.D. Editor-in-Chief of ASD's Journal, Dreaming
+Dreams and Violence Frances Menezes, Ph.D. -Director of the Tata Management
Centre in Pune, India
And some of the Invited Workshops:
+Connecting Sound with Dreams - Monique Tiberghien, Ph.D.,Belgian psychotherapist and past-president of the European Transpersonal Association.
+ Releasing the Spiritual Energy in Dreams - Patricia Berne, Ph.D. & Louis Savary, Ph.D., co-authors of Dreams and Spiritual Growth: A Christian Approach to Dreamwork
+ Panel on Dream Research: A blue ribbon panel will explore "What's
New in Dream Research" with Ross Levin, Ph.D., Monique Lortier-Lussier,
Ph.D., Milton Kramer, M.D., G. William Domhoff, Ph.D., Mary-Therese Dombeck,
Ph.D., and David Kahn, Ph.D.
Additional Topics: Symposiums, Papers, Workshops, and General Events
at the conference will address the clinical use of dreams, lucid dreaming,
laboratory studies of dreaming, dream-inspired art, poetry & literature,
gender issues in dreaming, cross-cultural & anthropological studies,
dreams & spirituality, dreams & the body, telepathic & psi
dreams, trauma & recovery, and a sunset dream-sharing hike.
Registration: Attendees may pre-register through the ASD Central Office or register on-site,
on a space-available basis. Registration forms are available from the
ASD Central Office (PO Box 1600, Vienna, VA 22183, USA;703-242-0062; phone/fax
703-242-8888; e-mail ASDreams@aol.com). Fees for the conference are based
on the following "packages:" (1) those attending the full conference,
five nights in campus housing (double occupancy), with meals(Tuesday evening
through Sunday breakfast); (2) those attending the full conference, not
staying on campus, with meals from Wednesday breakfast through Saturday
dinner; (3) those attending the full conference with no meals or campus
housing. One-day rates are also available, with and without meals. Housing
single occupancy rates are available. The Conference Package is wonderfully
affordable including lodging, meals, and full conference registration.
ASD members: $350.00 Non-members: $420.00 ASD Membership: To receive the
substantial reductions in fees available to ASD members, you are invited
to join at the time of the conference (or right now) and receive all membership
benefits, including four issues of the ASD Newsletter and four issues of
the professional journal, Dreaming.
For further information on travel and recreation opportunities in the
Asheville region contact the Chamber of Commerce to request brochures or
obtain answers to specific questions. Phone: 800-257-1300 e-mail: cvb@ashevillechamber.org
or via internet at: www.ashevillechamber.org
=======================Lucid/Mutual Dream-In, June 21/22, 1997==============================
Dream along with the Voyagers, a group of dimensional explorers who meet to explore dreams and other states of consciousness. The Voyagers will have a sleep-over retreat at the home of coordinator Tony Golembiewski. The Dream-In has a dual goal: lucid and mutual dreaming. Lucid dreaming is dreaming from a state of self awareness; mutual dreaming is the phenomena of sharing a common dream. The Voyagers will focus on the WILD (Wakefully Induced Lucid Dreams) technique to induce lucid dreams on the night of the Dream-In. The expectation is to achieve lucidity together as a group and attempt from this state to meet with others. Wherever you are, you can dream along with the group from your own bed. Incubate a dream the night of Saturday, June 21st. After you wake and record it, send a copy directly to Tony Golembiewski, 259 Elizabeth Ave., Waynesboro, VA 22980. Or you can send your dream report to CaseyFlyer@aol.com (Linda Lane Magallon) and she will forward it to Tony via snail mail. The viewpoint of the Voyagers is that dreams and visionary experiences are doorways to other dimensions or planes of being. They are realms wherein we come face to face with the deepest and most encompassing elements of our subconscious, conscious nd superconscious minds as they are expressed both individually and collectively. They believe not only that these spaces are accessible to us but that through them we can begin to rediscover the truths of our beingness and unlock our hidden talents.
The primary purpose of the Voyagers is to bring people to a communal
awareness of these dimensions through shared and group exercises and adventures.
A parallel objective of the group is to help and assist the members in
the process of realizing the creative and learning potentials of dreams
and similar experiences. Coming July 19/20: Mutual Dreaming Reunion, sponsored
by the Fly-By-Night Club (http://members.aol.com/caseyflyer/fbnc/fbnc01.htm).
Stay tuned for more group and lucid dreaming!
==================== ASD Encourages Regional Meetings and Co-Sponsored Events =============
The ASD encourages its members to host regional meetings and co-sponsored
events, and the ASD will provide logistical and financial support to promote
such events. The benefits of regional meetings and co-sponsored events
are twofold. First, they help ASD members in a particular geographical
region to meet each other, socialize, network, and share their different
approaches to dreams. Second, they help to advance the basic mission of
the ASD, which is to broaden public awareness and appreciation of dreams.
Although these are the primary goals, another aim is to generate new funds
for the ASD's educational and outreach programs. An ASD regional meeting
is a gathering managed solely by ASD members. A co- sponsored event is
managed jointly by the ASD and another group, association, or institution.
Both are open to participation by non-ASD members. Within these two basic
models, many different kinds of events can be organized. For example, a
number of regional meetings have been held in people's homes, and have
simply involved dream-sharing, informal discussion, and a group meal. Another
regional meeting involved an all-day workshop presented by a prominent
dream therapist. A co- sponsored event was held in conjunction with a graduate
school and offered 8 different workshops and lectures for the almost 100
attendees. Gatherings of various sizes and levels of complexity are possible--the
ASD encourages members to use whatever format they think will work best
in their particular area.
** Basic Guidelines
If you are interested in organizing a regional meeting or co-sponsored
event, the ASD is eager to help you make it happen. The following are some
basic guidelines:
Contact the ASD board as soon as possible with a proposal (including
information on dates, location, format, registration fees, anticipated
size, etc.). The ASD executive officer and/or her designee will be assigned
to work with you on strategy, logistics, and finances. All publicity, pamphlets,
other printed matter, and financial arrangements will be reviewed by this
liaison.
On a case-by-case basis, the ASD will provide financial support for
printing, postage, and publicity. With regional meetings, any profits will
go to the ASD's educational and outreach programs. With co-sponsored events,
an agreement must be made with the other group, association, or institution
prior to the event regarding any profits.
Policies regarding ASD member discounts, ethics, and product sales are
the same at regional meetings and co- sponsored events as they are at ASD
annual conferences. Whatever format you use, the meeting or event should
give attendees a sense of the broad diversity of approaches used by people
who study dreams.
In organizing the activity you should communicate with other local dream-related
groups and organizations, to promote networking and mutual assistance.
Regional meetings and co-sponsored events should not be scheduled so as
to compete with the ASD's annual conference. However, the ASD encourages
people to organize activities right before the annual conference (to build
up local interest) and right afterwards (to carry forward the interest
from the conference). These guidelines are intended to be as flexible as
possible, to allow for maximal innovation and creativity in organizing
these activities. People who have organized regional meetings and co-sponsored
events have found them to be very enjoyable and rewarding experiences.
We welcome your proposals! For further information, contact the ASD central
office. www.outreach.org/gmcc/asd/guideline.htm
================== Explore the Dreamtime with Dream Reentry Healing ==========================
Facilitate safe, elegant & powerful image tracking & transformation
at the soul-cell level in an introductory workshop with Fred C.Olsen, M.Div.
on June 7 10AM - 5 PM at the Wy-East Healing Center, Sandy, Oregon. Whether
you are looking for personal healing, transformed relationships, changed
organizations or tools to expand your therapeutic skills, you will discover
powerful and elegant ways to track and transform the deep patterns of imagery,
belief and action in your life. Fred C. Olsen, M.Div. evolved the Dream
Reentry Healing process over the last 24 years. His methods of tracking
inner imagery into the deep layers of the mind-body system and transforming
soul-cell states is unique and powerful. His models of the channels of
communication within the imaginal domain are elegant, powerful and intuitively
congruent with the way information is processed in the human mind-body
system. Call (503) 668-7698 or Fred at (503) 286-9949 for details.
========DreamSpinner -- Software that Integrates the Analytical and the Intuitive ===============
Last year, at the Association for the Study of Dreams conference in Berkeley California, I presented the beginning ideas of a software we then called DreamWeaver. I learned that that name was already Trademarked and asked the readers of Electric Dreams to help me find a new name. I received many suggestions and the final decision is (drum roll please!!)DREAMSPINNER. And now, after a year of constant work, we are pleased to announce that DreamSpinner is up and running. I am currently contacting those of you who volunteered to be Beta Site testers so we can begin the process. In addition, I will be at the International Association for The Study Of Dreams conference at Ashville, NC, June 17-22, 1997. I have a computer reserved in the Computer Hub where I will have a working version of DreamSpinner up and running. I will also have a free demo package available, on a first come, first serve basis. I am so excited about this software package. It is a powerful database
connected to a powerful word processor. You can record your dreams and your dream insights. Then you dream link the words from the dream narrative to the core word dictionary which is hooked to hundreds of categories. From there, you can query hundreds of different questions. You can ask your dreams how often you dream of a particular symbol. Who are the characters you most frequently dream about. How many nightmares do you have? What problem solving techniques do you use most often? Don't just want content analysis? Then dialogue with your dream characters or write poetry about them and all that information is dream linked to the dreams. Finally, a way to keep all your dream stuff together and instantly accessible to you. Oh, and if you don't like the categories or the word definitions, just change them to your own. This dream work software package does not give you chunks of pre-digested interpretations. It is a tool to give you the information you need to interpret it all yourself. This software has delete, add and edit buttons all over it. It doesn't tell you what your dreams mean, it
assists you to figure it out yourself . I hope to see you at the conference.
If you can't make it there, keep an eye out for the DreamSpinner Web page
coming soon. or e-mail me at Bjo@efn.org
=================Dreams: Resources for Healing and Guidance =================================
We experience expanded states of awareness and consciousness in the
form of dreams. This class will provide a supportive setting for exploring
the dream world. Students will learn various techniques, both analytical
and non-analytical, for understanding the metaphorical language of the
dream state. Bring your dreams, questions and sense of humor to share in
a circle of dreamers. Instructor Gina Pearlin. July 23 - Aug. 13. Wednesdays
6:30 - 9:30pm. Tuition:$112. Twin Lakes College of the Healing Arts, Santa
Cruz, CA. (408) 476-2152.
============ Intuition Network Presents Its Fifth Conference, August 1997 ================
Intuition -- from the Art of Inner Knowing to the Skills of the Business
World -- Join the network in August. Advance registration discount ends
May 30. To receive a (snail-mail) brochure, contact: PowerHunch@aol.com
======= Dreaming as a Spiritual Practice =====
Mark your calendars! This Fall Kelly Bulkeley, Ph.D., will lead an 8-week
workshop devoted to exploring the spiritual dimensions of dreaming. The
workshop is open to people from all different spiritual and religious perspectives.
This class will meet Wednesday, September 24 to November 12, from 7-9:30
PM at the San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo. Call Joan
Currey at 415-258-6583 for more information.
==================Film Review: James and the Giant Peach ================================
by Shaul Olmert, olmert@netvision.net.il
The film "James and Giant Peach" does not include even one
dream scene, though the entire movie is about dreams. This is the story
of James, a ten year old kid who lives with his loving parents in a beautiful
hilltop dream house. The idyll is broken when a storm causes the death
of his parents and leaves poor James with his two wicked aunts, who torture
the poor orphan, forcing him to work for them while they are having a good
time. The turning point occurs, thanks to a giant peach that's been mysteriously
growing in their garden. James enters the peach, which is cut off the tree
and flies to the ocean, away from his home. This is the beginning of a
magical journey, that ends up when the Peach lands in NYC (the place James
and his parents have always dreamt of going to), on top of the Empire State
Building. For James, this journey is also a dream come true. His fantasies
of taking part in adventures, breaking away from his aunts and playing
with other kids instead of working, always contradicted the tough reality
he had to face. That is why the happy end teaches him a meaningful lesson
about the important role of dreams in waking life. James learns that good
things can only happen if you dare to dream about them, and yearn for them.
Dreaming can sometimes cause a lot of misery, as one faces the gap between
the dream and real life, but if one constantly keeps up with and follows
their dreams, there is a chance that they will come true. This film is
like a fairy tale -- the realistic and dreamy parts of the film are combined
together to create a dream-like reality atmosphere. The film begins in
realistic design and turns to animation when the Peach adventure takes
place. But the so-called realistic part, just like the fiction, is designed
like the drawings of a legend book. The landscapes, the background images
and the structures surrounding the real actors, are all designed in a way
that resembles the animated fiction world of inside the Peach. This design
creates an atmosphere in which real life looks no different then a legend,
and since the theme of the movie is all about dreams and making dreams
come true, it seems that the creators of the movie have been putting some
life to the real world, by designing it with s dream like inspiration.
If you've seen a film about dreams or dreaming and would like to write
a review to share with others, let me (Peggy) know, by emailing me at <pcoats@dreamtree.com>.
For other films of interest, visit The Dream Tree's "Dreams on Film"
website at http://www.dreamtree.com/film.htm.
================================================
RESEARCH and REQUESTS
================================================
======= Children's Dreams and Trauma ===========
I have been doing a great deal of clinical work and research work with
dreams after trauma and how dreams seem to "handle" trauma. So
far, however, this has all been in adults. Does anyone have a long series
of dreams or a "dream log" from a child? Your own child perhaps?
And does this series or log cover a period when the child experienced any
traumatic event, even a minor one? If so, and if you might be willing to
share this material , please get in touch. I'll be happy to discuss this
with you -- why I think such dreams are important, etc. Thank you. Ernest
Hartmann M.D. 27 Clark St, Newton MA 02159. (617) 969 9383. Fax: 617 965-6548.
E-mail: EHDREAM@AOL.com
========Dreams and Deja Vu ====================
I am interested in investigating two forms of deja vu, namely a) deja
vecu (already experienced) which is situational (time-sequential), &
b) deja visite (already visited) which is geographical (uncanny knowledge
about a new place where one has never been before). I would like to eceive:
1) accounts of especially striking instances of one or both of these types
of deja vu (especially if they were in any way connected with important
life situations, but more banal examples are welcome, too); 2) theories
about how this or these phenomena arise; 3) theories about how it is possible
for the mind to access the future (for those that believe it occurs); and
4) references to published papers and/or books related to this subject.
Please send them via e-mail to Art Funkhouser, art_funkhouser@compuserve.com
=========Telepathic and Precognitive Dreams=====
Those who are 21 years or older who have experienced either telepathic or precognitive dreams and would like to participate in a research project designed to study the range of these experiences, please call or write: Helen M. Erickson, 1208 Virginia Way, La Jolla, CA 92037, 619-459-8557 or email
HErick7847@aol.com. This study is part of a doctoral dissertation and
all responses will be kept confidential.
===============================================
WEB SITE UPDATES
================================================
=========New Oniros Club Website and IRC =======
Oniros, the premier French dream group, has a new, restructured site on dreams. There, you will find information about their cyberdream group on IRC : Meeting on IRC, Friday evenings (once every two weeks), from 21 HHto 24 H (GMT + 2). Meetings are on channel <#oniros> via the IRC server <FR.Undernet.org> (or another server on the network Undernet). A preparatory connection for the meeting to give an hand for the solving of technical problems is open by email <oniros@club-internet.fr> from 20 to 21 H (email checked at 20 H 30 and 21 H). Languages : french, english and smileys...Operators : Roger Ripert (tl. : 01.48.20.21.36) and/or Robin Fercoq : (tl. : 01.45.21.80.94)
http://perso.club-internet.fr/EASD/
DERNIERES INFORMATIONS/ LAST NEWS
CYBERGROUPE SUR LES REVES VIA IRC
CYBERGROUP ON DREAMS VIA IRC
(Causerie au moyen d'Internet)
(Internet Relay Chat)
Version franaise
Pour la rencontre qui a lieu ce soir, de 21 H 24 H (GMT+2), l'oprateur aux commandes sera Robin Fercoq (davantage cyber-activiste qu'onirologue !). La liaison de prparation la rencontre et d'aide la rsolution des problmes techniques sera ouverte par son e-mail <frob@mail3.imaginet.fr>
de 20 21 H (courrier relev 20 H 30 et 21 H). Rgles de base en 7 points de la technique projective
(Si c'tait mon rve, je...)
Basic rules of the projective technic (if it was my dream, I...)
Version franaise
1. Lors de la prise de contact, les participants font le choix du rve qui va tre explor (rcent, marquant et pas trop long de prfrence). 2. Le rveur expose son rve au prsent en tant le plus clair possible.
3. Le participants posent des questions au rveur sur son rve pour bien
le saisir et l'intgrer (uniquement sur le rve et non sur le contexte rel).
4. Le participants soumettent au rveur leurs projections personnelles :si
c'tait mon rve, je pense que... 5. Une fois les projections puises, le
rve est rendu son auteur. 6. Le rveur met des commentairs sur les projections
mises. 7. Les participants posent au rveur des questions sur le contexte
rel du rve (libre lui d'y rpondre) et ramnent ainsi le rve la ralit...
English version
1.During the touch-in, the members make the choice of the dream they will work on (new, important and not too long, if possible). 2.The dreamer tells his dream at the present time being as clear as possible.
3. The members ask questions to the dreamer about his dream in order
to undestand and integrate it well (questions only on the dream and not
on the real context). 4. The members offer their own projections to the
dreamer : if it was my dream, I think that... 5. Once the projections are
completed, the dream is given back to the dreamer.6. The dreamer tells
his commentaries about the projections. 7. The members ask questions to
the dreamer about the real context of the dream (the dreamer is free to
answer or not), and so, the dream is brought back to reality...
======= Dreams and Postmodernity Update ========
The Pomo-Dream resource page is now online and offers a index to postmodern sites and articles on the Internet. An introductory "Postmodern Dreaming" article has been made available here by Richard Wilkerson and may help to bridge the cultural gap between the search for the meaning of a dream and the tracing of its significance. Also included in the article are suggestions for bringing dreamwork and postmodern theory together. Wilkerson feels that the actual practice of the postmodern has begun in dreamwork, but much of the useful theory has been ignored, in large due to its seemingly
obscure and intellectual texts that make up the body of Pomo literature.
The index brings together the alt.postmodern faq in enhanced hypertext
for a general introduction to postmodern studies, and patches together
other various indices which relate to Pomo issues and concerns. www.dreamgate.com/pomo
===========Dream Cloud -- A Creative Dream Website and Project ===========================
Barbara Rauch has created a unique dream collection website, which is aimed at allowing dreamers to participate through a variety of medium. In her words: "I invite the world to dream, break free from being grounded in the physical, intimate space and move through as a meditation. I use the net to call people interested in dreams, asking them for multimedia material (I imagine text, sound, image (x K inf.), Quicktime movies, art pieces,...) concerning dreams, but I will work on a more interactive side, where you not only choose; but also it should allow response, memory, hope, fear, desire and fantasy; there must be a direct line of communication. There will be different ways to interact. There is no limitation on sending material that concerns dreams. A mysterious virtual dreamcloud will grow and I believe that all dreams are linked and connected, as they are unconscious or subconscious material, more or less covered or disguised. This project is one of self-knowledge and identity location, held together by archetypes like the knots of a net. My planned project is based on using Jung's terms but dealing with contemporary tools; communication and collaboration, but also amplification and fertilization of dreams to build the dreamnet. Jung's work with psychologically ill children was a setup of two cubes with dry and wet sand. There was a shelf with many different figures to play with in the sand, to construct situations after dreams or similar events. After building the dreamcloud I will organize a project with 2 rooms. I will invite people to play these dreams from the collective dreamcloud. Wet and dry sand, china figures and models will provide a starting point to work on your dreams. But there will also be media sources, cameras , computer and an online situation, which the performer can use. The netcommunity from Planet dreaming will be online; the room itself will be realtime online- so both will be connected through the net. They are viewing themselves and they will be aware of it. All people involved in the dreamcloud project get their dreams back, in a different state....Connections to the psychology of dreams will grow step by step. But also just memories and thoughts about the theme will fertilize the area. Let me know if you want to work anonymously or send an e-mail contact or address. You can use your mother tongue or English. Contact me: by email: < brauch01@newport.ac.uk > by fax/phone: 0044-1639-730098, by phone CAiiA: 0044-1633-432168
post to: Barbara Rauch c/o CAiiA, University of Wales, Caerleon Campus,
P.O.Box 179 , NP6 1YG Newport, Wales GB. Visit the website at: http://caiiamind.nsad.newport.ac.uk/dreaming/Text/dreamstates.html
========= Dreams can make you Rich ===========
Stephen H. Kapit is a "dream futurist", and believes that
dreams can literally make you rich, both spiritually and financially. Receiving
information in the DreamTime on stocks, commodities and global events,
he shares what he has learned with others through his DreamTime newsletter
and believes that dreams do come true and can also make you a lot of money.
To find out more about his unique views and achievements, visit The DreamTime
Web Site which is updated weekly, and includes DreamTime alerts will go
out and DreamTime back issues, normally available only by snail mail or
fax subscriptions. www.dreamtime.net. To subscribe or for more information
call: 1-888-855-0101 toll free voice mail/pager or 619-454-1074 - Private
line.
======= Cyber-Dream Library Update =============
For May and June the Library will be focusing on backissue articles in Electric Dreams on Kids and Dreams. Be sure to stop by and get a copy of these articles if you don't have them. As the Electric Dreams community debate on the appropriateness of dream sharing for children on the Internet continues, these opinions of other may be useful or inspiring. The Library would also like to update the Electric Dreams FAQ and is offering a TOPICS page to start the discussion and resource list. Stop by and look over what we are putting up, and then email us with suggestions. faq@dreamgate.com
The ED Cyber-Dream Library is currently at www.dreamgate.com/dream/library
=========== Visit The Wanderer ================
Visit Wanderer's Web site at http://members.aol.com/eumarks/homepage.html.
Dreams, Amazing Tales from Wanderer's Notebook and much more.
===============Intuitive Adventures in Surrealism and Dreaming=======================
http://members.aol.com/Brownflowr/surreal.htm
Although not completely dedicated to dreams or dreaming, Jeff Brown's
"Brownflower" website is a delightful romp through the highways
and biways of our mental processes, operating in much the same way as our
psyches do when we are sleeping. Not for the literal or linear minded!
================================================
DREAM CALENDAR -- June/July 1997
================================================
June 7 -- Sandy, OR
Dream Reentry Healing Introductory Workshop with Fred C.Olsen, M.Div. 10AM - 5 PM $ 65 Wy-East Healing Center.
Call (503) 668-7698 or Fred at (503) 286-9949 for details.
June 7 -- Gainesville, FL
"Dreamwork & Healing Touch" workshop, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Peaceful location near Melrose Bay. For women who wish they had time to
go to an island or a monastery. Vegetarian lunch. More info contact Gail
Ellison, PhD 352-475-2220, or Charlotte Mixon, RN. 352-375-7545. E-mail
ellison@afn.org.
June 8 -- Concord, MA
Dream Council meeting, convened by Nancy Gazells, from 7:00-9:30 pm,
at The Dreamwheel, 191 Sudbury Road in Concord, MA. 508/369-2634. Cost:
sliding scale $5-20.
Jun 8-13 -- Big Sur, CA
Five-Day Workshop with Jeremy Taylor. For more information, call Esalen
Institute, 408-667-3000
Jun 8 -- West Hollywood, CA
Dreams can make you rich. 7:30pm at the Bodhi Tree Bookstore, 8585 Melrose
Ave, West Hollywood, CA. $5.00 door charge. Call 310-659-1733 for directions.
Jun 13-15, Flintstone, MD
Weekend of Dreams at the Rising Phoenix Retreat Center, led by Dr. Art
Funkhouser, Jungian Therapist and trainer in dream interpretation at the
C. G. Jung Institute, Kusnacht, Switzerland. For more information, contact
Margee Iddings, tel. no. 301-478-2715 or 800-322-1090 or send e-mail to
Iddingsm@aol.com.
Jun 17-21 -- Asheville, NC
14th Annual ASD Dream Conference. Contact ASD, 703-242-8888 or email
ASDreams@aol.com
Jun 22-27 -- Sausalito, CA
Five-day intensivv class with Jeremy Taylor (part of the Summer Program
of the University of Creation Spirituality) at Headlands Institute. Call
Joseph Sheehan for more information: 510-336-0174.
June 27 -- New York, NY
Dream Reentry Healing Presentation with Fred C. Olsen, M.Div. 7-9:30
pm, 12 White Street. $15 For more information, call 212-334-3011.
June 28 -- New York, NY
Dream Reentry Healing Workshop with Fred C. Olsen, M.Div. 1-6 pm, 12
White Street. $65 For more information, call 212-334-3011.
Jun 28 -- Santa Cruz, CA
Dream Theater Dream Group every six weeks at the Dream Institute located
in Santa Cruz. Call Kathleen O'Connellat 408-425-3320 for more information,
or visit the website at http://got.net/~kathleen
Jul 7-14 -- Abiquiu, NM
Dreamwork as a Catalyst for Poetry with Gail Ellison and Marjorie Ryerson.
Call 505-585-4333 for more information, or email ellison@afn.org
Jul 12 -- Mendocino, CA
Workshop with Jeremy Taylor. Call Nancy, 907-964-2849
July 17-20 -- San Diego CA
Comic-Con International at the Convention Center Jesse Reklaw will be
presenting Concave Up, the illustrated dream anthology, at the "Best
of the Small Press" table. Drop by and have your dream sketched! Contact
Jesse Reklaw reklaw@nonDairy.com for more information or visit the Concave
Up website at http://www.nonDairy.com/slow/wave.cgi
Jul 17-20 -- Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada
Five day workshop with Jeremy Taylor at Hollyhock Retreat Center. For
more information, call 604-935-6773.
July 19- 20 --
Mutual Dreaming Reunion, sponsored by the Fly-By-Night Club (http://members.aol.com/caseyflyer/fbnc/fbnc01.htm)
Jul 23- Aug 13, Santa Cruz, CA
"Dreams: Resource for Healing and Guidance", instructed by
Gina Pearlin. Wednesdays 6:30 - 9:30pm. Tuition:$112. Twin Lakes College
of the Healing Arts, Santa Cruz, CA. (408) 476-2152.
Jul 20-Aug 8 -- Rhinebeck, NY
"Jung on the Hudson" presented by The New York Center for
Jungian Studies presents a seminar series held in the scenic Hudson Valley,
designed for thoseinterested in exploring the relevance of Jung's ideas
to their personal lives and/or professional activities. For more information,
call 212-689-8238
Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z
DREAMS DREAMS DREAMS DREAMS DREAMS DREAMS
Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z
== D R E A M S S E C T I O N == ED V4 N5 ==
** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
D R E A M S SECTION INDEX BY BOB K. (For ED V4N5)
Hi there! Welcome to ELECTRIC DREAMS - DREAMS SECTION for
Vol. 4 Number 5.
Highlights from this issue: Death dreams - A death Sentence and a realization
of lifelessness; A toothless dream from Seattle - Is there a match in New
York?; A Hill Street Journey through the West coast & into an otherworldly
barnful of animals aware of an impending earthquake & through another
dream; Meet a magical Tornado-Maker - one of the sources of all those fear
provoking dreams; In Relationship dreams, we ponder how a Daddy-Long Legs
is like a Daddy?; A special contribution under Writing and Writers outlines
an approach to dreams, a "precognition" of sorts, and features
Allen Ginsberg. All kinds of animals and bodies of water appear in this
issue. Enjoy!
THANKS
FEEDBACK FROM THE DREAMERS
COMMENTARY ON DREAMS FROM PREVIOUS ISSUES
NEW DREAMS:
PRECOGNITIVE/FUTURE DREAMS [Stories from past experiences, or send them
in before it happens, if you can]
See Writing and Writers
REPETITIVE DREAMS [Significant by nature]
DREAM TRACES IN WAKING LIFE [The effects of external stimuli on our
dreams or is it the other way around - our dreams leaving a trace on our
physical reality?]
DEFYING CLASSIFICATION [Your stumpers may not be so mysterious to others]
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
LINKS TO STAGES OF LIFE
BIRTH [Starts]
*Dream: Baby Ball by Tamra (970512) *
= Commentary by Tom G on Baby Ball by Tamra (970513) =
CHILDHOOD [Early development]
ADOLESCENCE [Maturing, testing]
ADULTHOOD [The main event for most]
OLD AGE [Wisdom, Approaching the Journeys end]
DEATH [Endings]
* Dream: Dying in a Dream - help! by Simon (970511) *
= Commentary by Richard on Dying in A Dream - Help! by Simon (970512) =
* Dream: "Suicide" by Anonymous (970522) *
COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD [Beyond our terrestrial limits]
========================================== ==========================================
AGGRESSION [By us or against us- crossing others paths]
ALIENS [Visitors or visited - creatures from other dimensions]
ANIMALS [Basic Instincts]
[This month brings us: Fish, A white horse with white wings, a giant
brown furry tarantula patch, lots of baby spiders and a Daddy Long Legs
- all in Dark Dream under RELATIONSHIPS; house cats, large cats, Siberian
tigers, mountain lions, albino tigers and several cages with birds in them
colored blue, yellow, orange and gold in The Death Of Me under JOURNEY.]
* Dream: Becoming Fish by Kerstin (970522) *
= Commentary by Hermine on "Becoming fish" by Kerstin (970524)
=
BATHROOMS [Maintenance, Cleansing and Elimination]
BELONGING [What we are associated with or wish we were]
BRIDGES [How we get across an obstacle or go from here to there]
CELEBRITIES [The well known - famous and infamous]
See Mark Greene(Anthony Edwards/ER)in The Death Of Me under
the JOURNEYS theme, and Allen Ginsberg in WRITING AND WRITERS.
CLOTHING [What we wear tells us about ourselves and the events we participate
in]
COMMUNICATIONS [From telepathic to devices to signs & symbols]
COMPUTERS [Extensions of our minds, mind tools, communication]
CULTS [Somewhere out there ...]
DIRECTIONS [Ever stop and ask for directions? North, South, East, West,
up, down, ahead, behind, straight, turn, right, left, make a circle, cross,
go through, open, close, mix, add, boil, cook, simmer, but most of all
- follow these instructions carefully...and don't be shy about asking someone
else down the path, except, of course, for the Big Bad Wolf!!!]
DISCOVERY [New insights and unexpected developments]
DRUGS [Healing or Hurting?]
EATING [Getting nourishment for maintenance, growth and pleasure]
See "...eating mustard out of a hair dye jar in the bathroom ...
followed by a brownie" in Dark Dream under RELATIONSHIPS.
ELEVATORS [Going UP or DOWN - Push the right button or else...]
ESCAPE [Get me outta here!!!]
FEAR [What scares us]
FOOD [The source of our physical nourishment]
FLYING [Confidence, Power, Freedom & Perspective]
* Dream: Floating Dreams by Tamra (970512) *
GIFTS [Offerings to or from others]
* Dream: "Finding jewels" by Hermine (970513) *
HOBBIES [Our interests and desires]- COLLECTING THINGS
HOLIDAYS
HOSPITAL [A place for treatment, healing and repair]
HOUSE [Where our lives take place]
HOTELS [Temporary Dwelling or Special Event location]
JOURNEYS [Missions away from our home base -explorations]
* Dream: "Hill Street Dream" by SCV (970511) *
* Dream: "The Death of Me" by Nutcracker (970521) *
LOST [Disorientation or abandonment]
LOTTERY DREAMS [Sudden Wealth - Randomness favors the dreamer]
LOVE [All around us, yet so hard to find and keep]
MEMORY [Remembering ...In dreams we often struggle with the issue of
memories and remembering a dream which by definition involves the process
of recollection.]
MIRRORS [Reflection of Self]
MUSIC [Melodies of the land within]
NUDITY [What you see is what you get]
PERFORMERS [Entertainers]
PROBLEMS [Situations or difficulties sometimes present choices]
POLITICAL SCENE [Public issues through positions of power]
RELATIONSHIPS [Other parts of ourselves including family which constitutes the first and earliest of our relationships, often influencing how we relate to the outside world]
*Dream: Dark Dream by Quiet Cellar (970429) *
RELIGIOUS RELATED [The Ritual and the Spiritual]
ROMANCE [Thrills and Chills, lost in another]
SCHOOL THEMES [Learning and learnings trials]
SOLUTIONS [The answers to problems or quandaries]
STAIRS [Bridges between levels, between the upper and the lower]
TEETH [Ok, losing teeth is one of the top ten dreams people have questions
on. Theories on what they mean range all over the spectrum of possibilities.]
* Dream: "Toothless in Seattle" by Anna (970511) *
= Commentary by Conan on Toothless by Anna (970512) =
TORNADOS [Pretty well defined destructive power of nature]
* Dream: "The Tornado-Maker" by Melissa (970506) *
=Commentary by Hermine on The Tornado-Maker by Melissa (970507)=
TRAPPED [Temporarily helpless- Sometimes we are paralyzed or imprisoned
by jobs, relationships or expectations]
VEHICLES [Means of transportation, reflection of lifestyle]
WATER [A magical earthly fluid]
See an unknown Pool and Pond in Dark Dream under RELATIONSHIPS.
* Dream: The Unguided Tour by Victoria (970506)
WORKPLACE [Where we make a living]
WRITING & WRITERS [Communication and creativity]
* Dream: A Dream Story by JG (970513) *
== == == == == == == == == == == ==
DREAM SERIES
(See Allen Ginsberg Dream (A Dream Story by JG) under Writing &
Writers)
== == == == == == == == == == == ==
DREAMS SECTION EDITORIAL:
With Memorial Day upon us in the US, it is time to remember the deeds
of those who have died on the battlefields helping our country to become
what it is today. Let's take a moment to remember those past selves and
dream selves which have died on the battlefields of past life experiences
and fleeting dreams that helped make us who we are today - stronger and
better adapted to our lives in the present and the challenges of our futures.
As always thanks to the many dream contributors who generously share
their dreams and the commentators who share their dream wisdom.
Wherever you are, thanks for reading, and come on join in the fun. Send
us a dream or commentary.
Bob Krumhansl
bobkrum@erols.com
FEEDBACK FROM THE DREAMERS
COMMENTARY ON DREAMS FROM PREVIOUS ISSUES
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
NEW DREAMS:
PRECOGNITIVE/FUTURE DREAMS [Stories from past experiences, or send them
in before it happens, if you can]
REPETITIVE DREAMS [Significant by nature]
DREAM TRACES IN WAKING LIFE [The effects of external stimuli on our
dreams or is it the other way around - our dreams leaving a trace on our
physical reality?]
DEFYING CLASSIFICATION [Your stumpers may not be so mysterious to others]
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
LINKS TO STAGES OF LIFE
BIRTH [Starts]
*Dream: Baby Ball by Tamra (970512) *
I had this dream last night: I am looking at my baby (I have no children)
and it is a transparent glass ball with painted-on eyes and little stumps
that will grow into legs. Then my friend Patti takes the ball away.
Any comments?
Tamra
= Commentary by Tom G on Baby Ball by Tamra (970513) =
Ok, since no one seems to be stopping us, why don't I start out as in
group by asking you objectifying questions concerning the manifest content.
These would be questions such as When, What, How Big, How Fast, What color,
etc. Tamra, since it's just we two, would you prefer to take to E-Mail
rather than list? If so, you can reply to me directly. That way, we don't
clutter other people's inboxes. Your next reply will be your answer.
When did you have the dream? Does your dream have a title? How large
was the ball? What color were the eyes? Were they painted in a realistic
manner?
Who is Patti (just a brief statement of relationship such as "my
sister", "my best friend from high school, I haven't seen her
in years", that kind of thing - no details at this point.)
Is it Day or Night in your dream? What is the setting? Where is the
"baby" in relation to you (are you holding it? Is it on a shelf?
In a crib?) How do you feel about seeing the "baby"? Are you
in your dream as you are now? Do you remember any colors that particularly
stand out? Where does Patti take the "baby"? How do you feel
about this action?
Tamra, you will get two copies of this message because I sent it to
you directly and through the listserver so that you will have an option
to reply through each avenue without undue cutting and pasting.
CHILDHOOD [Early development]
ADOLESCENCE [Maturing, testing]
ADULTHOOD [The main event for most]
OLD AGE [Wisdom, Approaching the Journeys end]
DEATH [Endings]
* Dream: Dying in a Dream - help! by Simon (970511) *
Last night I had a dream. Some would call it a nightmare. Predetermined
death. The details are vague, but here is the general outline. I was with
a group of people whom I was familiar with. As a group we were forced to
spend time with each other during our death sentence. Not to make it sound
like a prison term, in fact we were free do as we pleased. It was a 24
hour death sentence. At the end of this 24 hour period our lives would
expire. Nothing gruesome, or cruel, just death. Our lives would end. Now
here's the twist: the group I was part could not separate we would have
to live the last hours of our life until one by one we were gone.
Another symbol predominant in this dream was the appearance of water.
Those who were waiting to die, as I mentioned, spent every last minute
together. This is where it gets really vague. We continually tried to attempt
suicide by diving into the tumultuous ocean deep. But no one ever succeeded
because it was not yet our time. I watched a passing of several members
in our party, yet my time came and went and I was still alive.
does any of this make sense to you?
p.s. is it true if you die in your dreams, you die in real life?
please reply, my mind is driving me crazy...
================================================
= Commentary by Richard on Dying in A Dream - Help! by Simon (970512)
=
Hi Simon,
Thanks for the interesting dream. Instead of just giving you my opinion,
I'm sending the dream into the ED dream community and you can read a variety
of responses in the next Electric Dreams. This way you remain anonymous
and won't just get my opinion. By the way, I've had a lot of these type
dreams myself, and I seem to still be here!
You can join Electric Dreams by sending a email to: majordomo@igc.apc.org
in the body of the email put only
subscribe electric-dreams
Also, you are welcome to join our mail list discussion channel on dreams
send to: majordomo@igc.apc.org In body of email put only
subscribe ed-core
Richard
* Dream: "Suicide" by Anonymous (970522) *
<<Had a dream that really disturbed me. I'm sending it to Jane
too, because she is in it. I rarely remember dreams and don't usually have
gut-wrenching ones like this one.>>
I dreamed my sister Jane and I were talking on the phone about how awful
the world had gotten--violent, uncaring, etc. We made a suicide pact. Jane
was going to kill herself on Saturday (we talked on a Friday) and I was
going to kill myself on Sunday. I woke up early on Saturday morning and
felt like we had made a really big mistake and frantically called Jane
to tell her not to kill herself but she had already done it.
The dream then mutated into me trying to get to Jane's memorial service
and my friend Laura wouldn't leave my side and wouldn't let me go. We were
in some old Asian guys ratty apartment and he was prattling on and on about
how no one knows how to do laundry properly anymore. It was getting closer
and closer to the time for the memorial service and I couldn't get away
from Laura and the Asian man.
<<Too weird. I felt so guilty and emotionally drained when I woke
up. None of the elements of the dream relate to anything I can think of
or anything that was going on in my life. It was one of those dreams I
wish I'd never had.>>
COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD [Beyond our terrestrial limits]
========================================== ==========================================
AGGRESSION [By us or against us- crossing others paths]
ALIENS [Visitors or visited - creatures from other dimensions]
ANIMALS [Basic Instincts]
[This month brings us: A white horse with wings, a giant brown furry
tarantula, lots of baby spiders and a Daddy Long Legs - all in Dark Dream
under RELATIONSHIPS, ]
* Dream: becoming fish by Kerstin (970522) *
I just had this dream about being a fish in a big ocean. I did not do
anything else than swimming the whole night in this huge , light and beautiful
ocean seeing other nice fish.
Does anybody knows what that means?
Kerstin
= Commentary by Hermine on "Becoming fish" by Kerstin (970524)
=
Hi Kerstin,
I got the message of Richard about your fish dream..
If it was my dream:
The freedom to let go, experience oceanic feelings, shared oneness,
floating, Christ energy or spirituality, liberty, finding out for yourself
how you felt after this dream...
my last fish dream was in 1990 and I still remember how much emerged
from my unconscious. . . We even talked about sexuality and sensuality
when I shared my dream in a group. I believe it must have been a joyful
experience for you...
What is your Astrology sign?
Hermine
BATHROOMS [Maintenance, Cleansing and Elimination]
BELONGING [What we are associated with or wish we were]
BRIDGES [How we get across an obstacle or go from here to there]
CELEBRITIES [The well known - famous and infamous]
See Mark Greene(Anthony Edwards/ER)in The Death Of Me under
the JOURNEYS theme, and Allen Ginsberg.
CLOTHING [What we wear tells us about ourselves and the events we participate
in]
COMMUNICATIONS [From telepathic to devices to signs & symbols]
COMPUTERS [Extensions of our minds, mind tools, communication]
CULTS [Somewhere out there ...]
DIRECTIONS [Ever stop and ask for directions? North, South, East, West,
up, down, ahead, behind, straight, turn, right, left, make a circle, cross,
go through, open, close, mix, add, boil, cook, simmer, but most of all
- follow these instructions carefully...and don't be shy about asking someone
else down the path, except, of course, for the Big Bad Wolf!!!]
DISCOVERY [New insights and unexpected developments]
DRUGS [Healing or Hurting?]
EATING [Getting nourishment for maintenance, growth and pleasure]
See "...eating mustard out of a hair dye jar in the bathroom ...
followed by a brownie" in Dark Dream under RELATIONSHIPS.
ELEVATORS [Going UP or DOWN - Push the right button or else...]
ESCAPE [Get me outta here!!!]
FEAR [What scares us]
FOOD [The source of our physical nourishment]
FLYING [Confidence, Power, Freedom & Perspective]
* Dream: Floating Dreams by Tamra (970512) *
On the weekends when I can sleep in I sometimes wake up at 6:00 and
then go back to sleep. While I'm drifting off I begin to hear a buzzing
sound and feel a vibration in my head. Then I feel as if I am living up
out of my body and floating about 3 feet above the bed. It feels very nice
and I am totally relaxed, but it is so unnerving that I get nervous and
have to wake myself up. It's been happening for a few years now. When it
first began happening it was only my arms that I could life up. I would
look at my arms and touch my hands together which caused an electrical
kind of feeling. As I got more comfortable with that, I began to be able
to sit up in bed. There was a peeling away or unzipping feeling. Now that
I seem to be able to float above my body, I'm wondering what to do next.
I know many people have had this experience because after it started happening
to me I read some books on the subject. I'm wondering if this is just a
lucid dream, which I have been doing for a few years. It seems different
because in lucid dreams there is a dream scape and when I'm floating it
just looks like I'm in a grey fog. If anyone has some ideas for experimentation
during this state, or if you want to share your experiences with me, I'd
like to hear from you.
= Commentary by Tom G on Floating Dreams by Tamra (970512) =
IMHO, if you've been dreaming lucidly for several years, and you're
asking the question, you may want to investigate the possibility that it
is what people refer to as an OOBE (Out Of Body Experience). Many people
believe that OOBE's are a variety of Lucid Dream, other's feel it is something
altogether different.
In a lucid dream, your experience of time is still pretty fluid, notwithstanding
that you are aware you are dreaming.
I have never had an OOBE, but I have read that the experience of time
in one is Chronos time - that it corresponds exactly with objective time
as measured by your clocks. I don't know if this is so because, as I've
said, I have never had one. My sources could be mistaken - or they could
be correct.
I hope this helps, but it's probably just muddied the waters for you.
If so, sorry.
Tom
= Reply by Tamra on Floating Dreams Commentary (970512) =
Thanks for the reply. There have been only a few times while floating
that I have seen anything other than the grey fog. I'm going to try to
look at my digital clock so I can get some idea of how time works in this
environment.
I began writing my dreams down nine years ago because I had an interest
in psychology and symbolism. It has turned out to be more fascinating than
I expected. Have you had any precognitive dreams?
GIFTS [Offerings to or from others]
* Dream: "Finding jewels" by Hermine (970513) *
<<I dreamt about Robert B. last night after the workshop.>>
I am sitting in my house with Robert, he lays down after a while with
his head on my books. I show my diary to find out which workshops I can
follow with him (He invited me to go with him to Australie in September
with a group of 12 people.) I promise to find out today when I come.
Then I see outside a child playing with some springy material, afterwards
2 American children are in my house, one is the child who was first outside.
They tell me they live in Indiana River (not an existing place in America?)
I tell them Robert works all over the world and lives in Boston, with his
wife and children.
Then I throw material in the fireplace, but it comes out again by the
springiness. Then the dreams continues but without Robert.
I am in a bus with Gerben the youngest of 13, two other boys from his
judosport are also sitting beside me. I kiss my son during his sleep. The
bus stops and they go out for a restroom visit. He looses my watch and
ring, I pick it up from the floor. The string,/chain of the watch is broken.
Then I find a precious ring with the symbol of horseshoes UU on it.
Afterwards I find jewels of children on the floor, which were in a circle,
I have a look at two of them and lay them back by the knowing it is meant
for childplay. At the same moment there is a video in another room, I believe
Liza Minelli has the leading role, I am not sure they ask me if I know
this, maybe another woman had the leading part. The title of the movie
is "The accusation." This was our movie each year the 4th of
May about war experiences, and the justification for the Jewish people.
then it is the end...
For me it had to do with the dream I worked with but also with my wish
to be a teacher as Robert does and give workshops all over the world! I
am not experienced in giving workshops, but I like to develop that part
more...
Hermine
HOBBIES [Our interests and desires]- COLLECTING THINGS
HOLIDAYS
HOSPITAL [A place for treatment, healing and repair]
HOUSE [Where our lives take place]
HOTELS [Temporary Dwelling or Special Event location]
JOURNEYS [Missions away from our home base -explorations]
* Dream: "Hill Street Dream" by SCV (970511) *
HILL STREET DREAM
I was reading about some bacteria (or algae) that grew on stamps. In
fact it only grew on a certain stamp from the Netherlands, and escaped
detection by mimicking a not-terribly- rare printing error. I had a few
copies laying around the house, so I sprayed Lysol on them, but nothing
happened. "This is stupid," I determined, and laid down.
There was a knock on the door. The clock said 4:060, just to be annoying.
Who the hell? Right. It was Dad, flown all the way out from NY. Surprise.
"Well, come on in then ..."
"No, no. That's okay." He handed me a loaf of bread (Roman
Meal) and warned me very emphatically about an impending earthquake. "You
should come back east before it hits."
"No, no. That's okay," I said. "Nobody knows what they're
talking about."
So he left. I hoped he was using frequent flyer points, but he never
in fact goes anywhere. I walked around confused, and stood on the corner
of Palm and Washington for a while, but the world didn't end. On the way
home, I passed thru someone else's dream, which was annoying.
Some boring girl down the street, always complaining about our jam sessions
being too loud. First there was an oink, then a moo, sounds of a farm getting
ready for sunrise. Then there was a farm, and a barn, and I slipped into
the barn to see what all the noise was about. So far, in this whole dream,
there had not been any light. The barn, also, was pitch black, but I could
make out the outlines of one each of every farm animal I could think of
on a Saturday. A pig, then the huge smelly shadow of a head of cattle,
then something horny like a goat. The farm girl came in with a fat crunchy
bag labeled FOOD, and started throwing the stuff around. She bumped into
my shadow, gasped, thought "HUMAN?" and ran screaming out of
the barn leaving a trail of oats.
She ran out into the street, and there I was, walking up the hill. "Still
no earthquake," I was thinking.
"Help there's some horrible smelly demon-thing lurking in the barn
here's a baseball bat come bash its brains out for me oh thank you thank
you eek!" she shouted.
I muttered something about the show Twin Peaks eating away the fabric
of reality, and figured it was worth a detour. Besides, it was me in the
barn, and I figured since I wasn't in the barn any more that I probably
wasn't still in the barn, so I wouldn't need to bash my own brains in,
even if this WAS a dream. The sun was coming up, another greasy smoggy
day, hooray.
She pushed me towards the barn, which was far too lopsided and boring
to get my adrenalin flowing. I recited something stupid from the Book of
Mormon (any page will do), then kicked open the door to the barn like a
naked Boris Vallejo hero.
Nothing happened. So I saw her older sister coming outside with a glass
of o.j. and a copy of Julian Jaynes's THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE
BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND, and I thought I should say hello.
I said I had just published a story about the guy, who was, in my opinion,
totally technocentrically nuts. I'm always disgusted by people who downplay
the abilities of the men (and women) of our ancient civilizations. "The
guy is just a Von Daniken with a real vocabulary. Oooh."
I had a copy of the OMNI with me. The picture was cool, a seething dust
storm with a hundred faces. The title? THE BICAMERAL WIND.
An opaque breeze blew down upon us; the pages were ripped away. I woke
up twice, and one of me was already on the way to work, thinking there
was some deep meaning to everything. The rest of me stayed behind, knowing
that there are only glimpses without answers.
- scv!
* Dream: "The Death of Me" by Nutcracker (970521) *
Night had fallen. I was with a group of about four or five guys (I'm
female). We're all detectives. We've gone to a house to check on someone,
a man. Outside his residence to the right of the sidewalk, a trench has
been dug (sewer work?). One guy notices a foul smell coming from the trench
(the smell of death?). We walk to the front of the man's house. There's
something hidden in the shrubs. I'm afraid to look, but I think it's the
guy we came to see. We all go inside the house. There are dozens of cats
running loose, house cats and large cats; Siberian tigers, mountain lions,
albino tigers. They just pace back and forth amongst us. I go over to a
window. There are several cages with birds in them. The birds are all of
the same species and colored blue, yellow, orange and gold. I check to
make sure the birds are alive (like coal miners taking canaries down into
the mines) and they're fine. I think it's amazing that the cats don't bother
the birds at all.
I walk to another part of the room. The larger cats are near me and
I don't feel exactly safe and try not to panick. I call out, "Guys.
Guys.....where are you?" I see someone in the other room and call
out again, "Hey guys." Then right in front of me stands this
guy, not one of us. He's short, about 5'5", has longish thinning blonde
hair and is wearing white jeans and a white t-shirt with black scratch
marks on and he's wearing a clown mask. The mask is white and has a design
painted on it with red and blue paint and sprinkled with glitter. Before
I can register shock at seeing him, twice he sprays something in my face.
I'm expecting mace, but it's clear and odorless and puts me to sleep. I
fall face down on the floor. My body feels like wave after wave is crashing
over me (I remember feeling my body undulating at this point). I feel I'm
melting into the floor. When I come to I hear someone come into the house.
"Who is it?" I call out. Out of the shadows steps Mark Greene
(Anthony Edwards/ER). "Mark, it's you," I say. Did you see that
guy that just left? To myself I have this suspicion it's the guy who beat
Mark up several weeks ago (on the tv show ER).
Mark goes outside to look for the guy and I follow. We stop outside
a school or university. We're standing on a small cement bridge over a
walking path. The bridge has a wrought iron railing. There's a maple tree
behind us. I'm telling Mark about what happened to me back at the house,
but he's not listening, so I give up trying. Mark leaves and I find a place
to sit down.
Nearby is a young woman and an older woman. The young one says, "I
can see my auric field. It's blue." The older woman comes over to
look and says, "No, it's lite (lime) green." I look to see if
I can envision my own auric field. I hold my hands in front of my face,
palms to my face, fingers spread apart and I stare and stare at my hands,
but see nothing. I'm empty. I have no electric energy at all. I am void.
A black empty hole. I start to cry. The older woman comes over to comfort
me. (5/21/97) #316 Celebs/M&M (The Death of Me)
LOST [Disorientation or abandonment]
LOTTERY DREAMS [Sudden Wealth - Randomness favors the dreamer]
LOVE [All around us, yet so hard to find and keep]
MEMORY [Remembering ...In dreams we often struggle with the issue of
memories and remembering a dream which by definition involves the process
of recollection.]
MIRRORS [Reflection of Self]
MUSIC [Melodies of the land within]
NUDITY [What you see is what you get]
PERFORMERS [Entertainers]
PROBLEMS [Situations or difficulties sometimes present choices]
POLITICAL SCENE [Public issues through positions of power]
RELATIONSHIPS [Other parts of ourselves including family which constitutes the first and earliest of our relationships, often influencing how we relate to the outside world]
*Dream: Dark Dream by Quiet Cellar (970429) *
After eating some really gross mustard out of a hair dye jar in my bathroom,
I decided I was going to go downstairs & get a brownie. When I got
down to the kitchen, my uncle, who was on the phone, told me angrily to
shut up. My dad started arguing with me about ignoring someone who called
for him, which I was sure I hadn't done. After we argued about it for a
minute there was a silence, & then for some reason I threw the cup
in my hand into the sink, as an angry gesture, & went back upstairs.
I was in my room laying on my bed & my mom was in the doorway. After
I told her what had just happened, she told me my dad said they should
get a gun (to protect themselves) if they were going to have me in the
house. I said "I can't believe this! Just because I threw a cup in
the sink?!" Then my dad was in the doorway too & we argued more
about it. Then I was back by the head of my bed & my dad was in front
of me on my bed, with his hands on my hands, squishing my legs. I knew
he wasn't mad anymore. He was saying he knew I was "the prettiest,
too."
I was irritated by this situation, but then I found myself downstairs
with my mom, looking out a window. It was gray & raining outside &
I noticed for the first time that we had a pool. My mom hadn't known it
was there either, & we were excited about it. It was like we had just
moved into a giant new house, & this was the first time we'd really
noticed.
We went outside to look at the pool. It wasn't raining now, just dark
& gray. I told my mom "Tomorrow when Dad goes out of town we should
go swimming." Past the pool there was a pond. We were standing on
the sidewalk in front of the pond & a white horse with white wings
went running through the water. I liked it, but I knew this couldn't be
natural, & said "That poor manufactured animal." The fur
was a different color where the wings had been attached.
Then my dog came up behind us, & my mom said "Wanna see what
we'd do when the dogs try to save us?" and threw a giant furry brown
tarantula onto the back of my neck on my hair. I ran off into the grass
& knocked the spider off. Then I realized the grass was full of these
giant spiders. I had to tip toe back to the sidewalk not to touch them.
She had done this as a joke, so I didn't really get upset. I thought maybe
I could get used to the spiders & they would just add to the greatness
of this place, but I told my mom maybe we could sell them instead. We were
over by some white lawn furniture now & I was looking at a big spider
that was on it's back, dying, with one leg still moving, until it died.
My mom wondered who would buy them, & I said people keep them as pets.
She said "But what about the little ones that follow them around?"
I said maybe they were babies, & she said "Ooh, baby spiders"
in a funny voice.
A rat had gone by my foot, squeaking, and I said something about how
I'd rather have the place full of rats than these spiders. Then my dad
came up with a giant lady bug, that had a smaller one attatched to it by
a thread of spider web. They were dead. I said "Giant beetles, maybe
we can sell those too." I just wanted to get rid of them. The big
one had a strange bubble on it's back, but then I thought maybe I should
keep it for art. But I realized I might have to touch it then, which horrified
me, especially it's black underneath & I just wanted to get away from
it. My dad seemed insistent that I have it though, & handed it to my
mom, telling her to do whatever she had to so that I could keep it &
not have to touch it. I woke up seeing a daddy long legs crawling on my
table and was ready to leave the room, but it disappeared.
See Suicide Dream under DEATH for a sisterly pact gone awry.
RELIGIOUS RELATED [The Ritual and the Spiritual]
ROMANCE [Thrills and Chills, lost in another]
SCHOOL THEMES [Learning and learnings trials]
SOLUTIONS [The answers to problems or quandaries]
STAIRS [Bridges between levels, between the upper and the lower]
TEETH [Ok, losing teeth is one of the top ten dreams people have questions
on. Theories on what they mean range all over the spectrum of possibilities.]
* Dream: "Toothless in Seattle" by Anna (970511) *
I had a dream where I was driving to work and my teeth began falling
out! At first I thought they were just loose, but soon I easily pushed
them out with my tongue. I was horrified and nearly wrecked the car. Then
I woke up and my teeth were fine, but I recalled the dream very vividly.
= Commentary by Conan on Toothless by Anna (970512) =
Hey Anna,
There's three major sources for "teeth falling out" dreams.
First, of course, are memories from childhood. We my not remember much
on a conscious level, but subconsciously, we remember a great detail about
those strange days when we were very young and our teeth fell out to be
replaced by our "grown up" teeth. Our parents assured us that
this was part of becoming big boys and girls, and we came to associate
the slight horror of losing our teeth with "growing up." So,
losing your teeth while in the car may represent some change in your life,
which is kind of scary, but at the same time, it's something you feel is
part of "growing" or improving yourself, or your life, with the
car representing forward progress, or your body.
Second is our own personal experiences and thoughts about teeth falling
out. Maybe at some point your Grandpa traumatized the whole family when
his dentures popped out at the dinner table or something, leaving you with
a subconscious resource for tooth falling out dreams, associated with Grandpa
and social embarrassment; that sort of thing, you know? In that case, you
have to ask yourself about what memories you have about teeth falling out
and cars.
The third source for interpreting any dream is that memory you have
stored in your lower brain functions; memories from your primate past that
everybody shares; such as a fear of heights or a love of eating. You don't
need any "personal" experiences to know what these things are,
and to dream about them. That's why babies dream, even though you'd think
they haven't experienced much, well, we as a species HAVE. This gives us
some common ground, and so we can come up with some "standard"
interpretations.
On that level, teeth often represent what we SAY, and if you're in your
car, it may represent what you "say" to other drivers. You may
be worried about your driving style. Then again, cars represent our bodies,
so it could literally represent what you say to people in general; a loss
of control of your words or a concern that you "chatter" too
much. That sort of thing.
Best of luck -- Conan --
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become
a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you." -- Nietzsche (bless you)
TORNADOS [Pretty well defined destructive power of nature]
* Dream: "The Tornado-Maker" by Melissa (970506) *
Wow, I don't know what to think of this, but here goes........
I remember I was at a house I lived in about 5 years ago, out in the
front field. I was sitting in this field with my current room mate (who
I didn't know back then) and we were playing cards, but I don't know what
game.
All of the sudden the sky got really dark, and I could see a tornado
starting. I told her to run for the house, to get out of there, and she
ran. I was still sitting in the field, just watching the tornado get closer.
Suddenly, I was in the house, upstairs, looking out the window. Now
the setting was different, I was in a neighborhood that I didn't recognize,
I could see green fields and white fences and houses. Anyway, I looked
down into my yard, and there were parts of the yard, sectioned off in 10x10
ft. squares, just covered in black cloth, with weird stuff on them. I don't
remember what all of it was, but some had candles, some had jewels, it
was like some sort of strange fair or flea market.
I went outside to look at them, and a very attractive man (I don't know
who he is) appeared. He was wearing black, had short brown hair, clean
shaven. He was doing something like magic because his hands had a bluish
glow to them, and I suddenly knew he was the one causing the tornados.
He knew I had a great interest in him, and he was almost teasing me
about it, but not quite, holding out one of his electric hands to me and
laughing.
I don't remember anything after that.
Oh well, thanks, I just had to write it down....
Melissa
=Commentary by Hermine on The Tornado-Maker by Melissa (970507)=
Hi Melissa,
My first reaction on your dream, Tomorrow I' ll leave for a dream intensive
weekend till Sunday , therefore my reaction now,:
Playing cards does mean to me "It's all in the game" even
if you don't know the answer yet. You were protecting here and still waited
the tornado, what would come on your mind... Being in the house, you have
your own protection, watching what's going on. The interest you have in
the "Magician" with his hands and the blueish glue does seem
to me the energetic power of his hands or your hands which is a new experience
and you are interested in this quality or laughing about by the unexpected
experience.
I would develop the magician quality in yourself...
If it was my dream the title would be:
The energy of the Magician
How energy flows and tornado's are caused , it's all in a game, play
with energy and don't be afraid, just laugh about and feel the worth (like
jewels)
Questions:
About the colours in your dream, dark,green,white,black,brown,
blue. The house 5 years ago, what kind of memory you have? What kind
of relation you have with your current room-mate? The relation with the
vert attractive man? This is it for the moment, I am curious about following
dreams after this dream?
Hermine
TRAPPED [Temporarily helpless- Sometimes we are paralyzed or imprisoned
by jobs, relationships or expectations]
VEHICLES [Means of transportation, reflection of lifestyle]
WATER [A magical earthly fluid]
* Dream: The Unguided Tour by Victoria (970506)
Last night part of my dream was of being in a group, on a guided tour,
going up some carpeted stairs. I was carrying lots of books and bric a
brac and wondered why nobody, especially my husband, thought to help out.
When I asked he said "oh ok" and took the burden.
It seems we were on a tour of a grand mansion and then went outside.
There was a large lake with slippery mud around it. The bossy tour guide
woman was telling me where I may and may not go around it, and several
others over the other side of the lake were telling me not to go the way
I was going. I continued and soon found myself a few feet in the air above
the water float/flying and grinning both at the world around me and the
funny look of a heavily pregnant woman bouncing through the air..
Victoria 8*)
See an unknown Pool and Pond in Dark Dream under RELATIONSHIPS.
WORKPLACE [Where we make a living]
WRITING & WRITERS [Communication and creativity]
* Dream: A Dream Story by JG (970513) *
As I read this request for items for the next issue the Allen Ginsberg
quote leapt out at me with great force. I will share with you and others
the vivid gift dream I had of Allen Ginsberg just a few days before his
death. It was like a visitation, a real presence and was dreamt in the
context of a dream experiment I was engaged in for one week with A. ****
in UK. We were involved in a shared mutual dreaming experiment for one
week in which we agreed to each focus on two words on a small index card
which we carried about during the week and placed under our pillows each
night during that week. The whole week's results were fascinating but for
me the most important event was the premonitory visitation dream of/about
Allen Ginsberg just before his death.
This kind of experience is not uncommon for me but it was most notable
in the context of the two words we chose to focus on and a shared incubation
experience. The words were "meditate and love".
I am moved to send you this dream/day correspondent experience as the
impulse to do so leapt forward as I read the Allen Ginsberg quote in your
invitation for submittals for the next issue. I would be interested in
knowing what moved you to use it just now; of course there is the obvious
fact of his recent death. But how does or did it/he touch you?
I am also interested to know if others have dreamt of him and anything
akin to my experience, premonitory or near to his death dreams of him.
===========================================================
Date: 4/2/97 between 4-8am Eastern Daylight Time Incubated dream on
seed thoughts: "Meditate and Love"
I dreamt I was at a retreat or meditation center. Found myself in a
small room, an interior space where I had my "spot." This spot
was like a cushion, as for meditation, but also seemed to be my bed. It
was in one corner of the room and there were other similar spots nearby.
Most notably there was a man near me who was silent but communicated with
me non-verbally great kindness and love towards me. He was like a partner
in this experience. I realized with surprise that this man was Allen Ginsberg!
(dream became somewhat lucid at this point as a stream of analyzing and
reflecting on the dream went on concurrently with unfolding action). However,
he didn't look like Allen Ginsberg in pictures I've seen, yet I was quite
sure it was Allen Ginsberg!
He placed a white jacket on my pillow as a gift and also as a useful
and appropriate article for the activities at this place.
Now there was a gong calling people outside to an assembly in the yard,
an exterior space. I was changing clothes and in fact was only partially
dressed, changing underwear and looking for my clothes. Becoming concerned
and a little anxious that I would be late. But eventually I made my way
outside.
Here I found myself in a vast open field, many, many people here. This
was not the space of the courtyard adjacent to the building where my spot
was. This was beyond that place.
People were arriving and some were already encamped. It was a huge assembly,
perhaps thousands of people. At the center of the field there was a focal
point of a stage or some symmetrical arrangement, like a large scale three
dimensional mandala. There was a sense that the persons assembled would
bring their offerings to this center at some point in the event, not all
at once however.
Many people, including myself, brought small brown bags of food, provisions.
I was trying to find my place in this gathering and understand the protocol
of the event, like was it proper to eat and such. My companion, Allen Ginsberg,
was there with me, still no verbal exchange with anyone however.
New Scene:
I am conversing with an aged nun about an article in a newspaper. It
has been a big thing in her life focusing a great deal of attention on
her, lots of people contacting her about it. I am speaking with her about
all that, but my real intent is to enlist her help in getting a gift together
for C. Westheimer, our elderly Jewish friend whose brother recently died.
This sister is key to obtaining some flowers from a nursery across the
street. She comes out with me though she is tired and preoccupied to facilitate
my selection of plants in preparation for a rendezvous with Charles and
Mae at the nursery.
Inside the greenhouse I walk among many beautiful plants with this old
sister who is still dressed in the old-fashioned habit (contemplative order?).
There are some large potted plants that remind be of canna lilies as well
as varieties of bamboo. I am particularly attracted to one big plant whose
pencil tight leaf buds are tipped with an elegant black. I ask her for
a cutting of this plant but she says no to my request. There are other
varieties of this same plant we consider for cuttings.
But my attention is now strongly drawn to some beautiful flowers, bright
yellow and orange plants. They are all rare, exotic. One is familiar to
me, a salmon shrimp colored spray of flowers which I'm told is the reindeer
or antler plant because of the form of flower which terminates in a horn
like form. It is off to my right and ahead as we walk. To my left is a
whole case of flowers, densely arranged in a window alcove.
There are brilliant yellow flowers here in the shape of pineapples!
Soft, all flower pineapples. I reach out and touch them and enjoy their
soft delicate feel. Some awareness (lucidity) that pineapples mean hospitality
and this whole part of dream is about friendship and love and beauty and
gift selection for a friend who is grieving.
Somewhere in this place I encounter Mae and inquire about Charles. Also
at this point the nun seems to be my walking companion, but also am aware
of her bi-located as it were across the street simultaneously. In two places
at once. (I am aware that I am "traveling" or "bi-located"
myself at this point in dream).
Final scene:
As I looked closely at this window full of blooming plants, I also looked
with close scrutiny at the ground on which they were placed, raised platform,
nearly chest high. There was a bed of pebbles beneath these plants. In
fact, the grower's name, name of the enterprise, had the word "pebble"
in it: this was to indicate that nature particularly favored pebbles as
right environment/ground for many plants, these included. This was the
final detail or commentary as it were at the conclusion of the dream.
End of Dream
Dream 4/6/97 Dreamt this in the middle of the night
I dream one simple image in two positions: See two dials, circles that
are superimposed like clock faces, though there is no time calibration
marked on the wheel. I see them in the horizontal plane or position first
( I made a drawing in my notes, sorry I can't type out the drawing here).
Then I see through them as one mechanism and realize they are a lens, as
in a camera or binoculars. There is just one lens which is focused by turning
one dial or wheel with respect to the other. Dream becomes lucid. This
is the focal point of the dream itself. Aware that my intent to dream of
a focus is meditation mandala.
There is some sense of a diagonal in this dream too which makes me aware
of the square piece of paper under my pillow on which I've written these
words: "meditate and love"
End of Dream
Notes:
I am aware that my intention to experiment with the shape of the paper
beneath my pillow to see if it influenced the format of my dream image
would occur. It did.
Horizontal plane: seems to be temporal plane, like clocks, plane of
waking consciousness perhaps. Also, we changed clocks to daylight saving
time starting this am.
Vertical plane: Vision. Focus like a camera, a lens, into another dimension.
Light is implied. Lucidity.
Calibration or turning one wheel against another: time and eternity;
conscious and unconscious realities.
Wheel of Maya Wheel of Dharma
Two key seed thoughts: meditate (focus) and love (connect/commune)
End of Notes early am 4/6/97
When I came down to breakfast immediately after writing the above I
saw the newspaper headline and picture of Allen Ginsberg who died last
night. I was flooded with feeling at my dream visitation several nights
earlier and this dream on the day/night of his death (actual day was 4/5/97).
I went to a collection of poetry and found his poem "White Shroud"
and remembered the white jacket laid on my cushion in the first dream by
him. I do not consciously remember reading this poem before.
End of second entry notes 4/6/97
In honor of this great spirit and the words set down by Richard Wilkerson
to request entries to this edition of Electric Dreams I close with those
very words from Allen Ginsberg:
"I wake up in the morning with a dream in my eyes." Allen
Ginsberg
(From Richard: thanks JG, and also to Timothy Tate and DreamWave where
I found the Ginsberg Dream Memorial)
== == == == == == == == == == == ==
DREAM SERIES
(See Allen Ginsberg Dream under Writing & Writers)
== == == == == == == == == == == ==
Well, that's all for now Folks. See you in ED 4.6. I hope your summer
is off to a great start. Hasta La Vista!
Bob Krumhansl
bobkrum@erols.com
Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z
ELECTRIC DREAMS ACCESS INFORMATION
Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z
Subscriptions:
The Electric Dreams E-zine (issn 1089 4284)is *free* and distributed
via email about once a month. You can have Electric Dreams delivered right
to your email box by sending an e-mail
TO: majordomo@igc.apc.org
SUBJECT: sub me (or anything, this line is not read)
In the BODY of the e-mail put only
subscribe electric-dreams
In a short while you will receive a welcome letter and subscription
acknowledgement.
=================
SUBMITTING DREAMS and Comments about Dreams: EASY!
Electric Dreams will publish your dreams and comments
about dreams you have seen in previous issues. If you can, be clear
what name you want or don't want. Most people use a pen name. Please include
a title for your dream. Email to: Bob Krumhansl <bobkrum@erols.com>
==================
SUBMITTING ARTICLES, projects and letters-to-the-editor.
Electric Dreams is responsive and experimental. If you
have articles or suggestions on dreams, dreaming or
dreamers - including book reviews, movie suggestions or
conferences and meetings, we will publish them. I'm
especially interested in creative interpretive approaches
to dreams, including verbal, dramatization, and mixed
media approaches. Send to:
Richard Wilkerson <rcwilk@aol.com>
===============
SUBMITTING NEWS and Calendar events related to dreaming. We usually
have a deadline at the 15th of each month. Send all events and news to
Peggy Coats <pcoats@dreamtree.com>
SENDING IN QUESTIONS, Replies and Concerns about dreams and dreaming. We don't pretend to be the final authority on dreams, but we will submit you questions to our network and other Internet networks. Also, you are free to post special interest requests. Send those to Victoria Quinton
<<mermaid@alphalink.com.au>>
JOINING DREAM GROUPS sponsored by Electric Dreams. If you are interested
in joining a group to discuss your dream with peers, contact Chris Hicks
<dreamwheel@michweb.net>
JOINING DISCUSSIONS ON DREAMING. Electric Dreams in conjucntion with DreamGate support the Oneiro-Network, and you can join their mail list by sending an e-mail
TO: majordomo@igc.apc.org
SUBJECT: Sub me (or anything, this line is not read)
In the BODY of the E-mail put only:
subscribe dreamgroup-c
In a short while you will receive a welcome letter and subscription
acknowledgement.
Attach your own web page to Electric Dreams. Do you have an idea for
a dream page, but no web site? Send that page to Matthew Parry. If you
need help with creating the web page, contact Matthew for about classes.
<mettw@newt.phys.unsw.edu.au>
ELECTRIC DREAMS HOME PAGE ON WEB:
Thanks to Matthew Parry:
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~mettw/edreams/home.html
From here you will have access to information about Electric Dreams,
back issues, FAQ and other online dream resources.
NEED A COVER for your issues of Electric Dreams? We now provide them and you can download them at
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~mettw/edreams/home.html
or, if you have a black&White printer, you can in Netscape choose the "Print..." option while on the page you wish and get B&W copy that is adjusted to your paper size.
Backissue covers are available at:
http://www.nonDairy.com/ED/covers.html
BACK ISSUES OF ELECTRIC DREAMS:
WWWEB:
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~mettw/edreams/archives/archives.html
or if you can't get through there, send your browser to:
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/ed-backissues/
CURRENT ISSUE OF ELECTRIC DREAMS ---- URL:
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~mettw/edreams/ ed-current.html
Also available via Delphi and
America On Line:
Keyword: writer
\writers club library
\writers club e-zines
Available via Delphi
UK and both versions are
available on Dan P.'s BBS:
PsychoNautica BBS +44 0181 764 1446.
Thanks to ONIROS for mentioning ED in your Magazine in France!
Thanks to Compuserve New Age Forum for ED info Posts.
To access the New Age B Forum From CompuServe Information Manager 1.4
:
1) In the CIM program, pull down the Services menu
2) Select Browse
3) On the Main Services Menu, click the Home /Leisure icon
4) Then, Click: Special Interests icon
5) Then, Click: Religion option
6) Then, Click: New Age B Forum option (also referred to as NEWBAGE)
7) Then, Enjoy.
Thanks to John Labovitz for putting us on his e-zine list:
http://www.meer.net/~johnl/e-zine-list/zines/
electric-dreams.html
Thanks to Todd Kuiper for listing us on his e-zine list:
http://www.merak.com/~tkuipers/elists/elists.htm
Thanks for the listing in The eZines Database Collection:
Zines@Dominis.com
<URL:http://www.dominis.com/Zines/>
Thanks to the Dream Network Journal for mentioning the Electric Dreams project. dreamskey@sisna.com
Thanks to the Usenet newsgroups for mentioning us in the
FAQ files at alt.dreams and alt.dreams.lucid and for other Usenet Newsgroups
for allowing us to continually post messages.
Thanks to our many web links!
Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=
The Electric Dreams Staff
Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=
Peggy Coats - News & Calender Events Director
pcoats@dreamtree.com
http://www.dreamtree.com
Chris Hicks - Dream Research & Group Moderator
chrish@michweb.net
dreamwheel@michweb.net
Bob Krumhansl - Editor & Dream Editor
bobkrum@erols.com
Matthew Parry - Web Master
mettw@newt.phys.unsw.edu.au
Nutcracker - Dream Journals & Dream Reaper
Myst@ix.netcom.com
Rob Childress
rdc@inreach.com (Rob Childress)
http://home.inreach.com/rdc/
--
The Oneiro-Network
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/2357/
Victoria Quinton- Questions & Answers Editor
mermaid 8*)
mermaid@alphalink.com.au
http://daemon.apana.org.au/~mermaid
Jesse Reklaw - Art Director & cover Designs
reklaw@nonDairy.com
Lars Spivock - Research and Development Director
lars@dreamgate.com
Alissa Goldring - Contributing editor
Cover this month by Jesse Reklaw dandy@iinet.net.au
http://www.iinet.net.au/~dandy/
Richard Wilkerson - General Editor, Articles & Subscriptions
rcwilk@aol.com
www.dreamgate.com
+ The wonderful anonymous Core who respond each issue to your dreams!
+ The generous authors of our articles
+ The delightful dreamers and commentators
+ Special thanks to Catherine Decker & Jay Vinton
w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=
All dream and article text and art are considered (C)opyright by the writers, artists and dreamers themselves. Anyone other than the authors may use or reprint the text for non-commercial use, but all other use by anyone other than the author must be with the permission of either the author or the current Electric Dreams dream editor.
w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=
w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=
DISCLAIMER
Electric Dreams is an independent electronic publication not affiliated with any other organization. The views of our commentators are personal views and not intended as professional advise or psychotherapy.
w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
June 18, WED deadline for submission
FOR Next Electric Dreams vol 4(6)
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z
ELECTRIC DREAMS ACCESS INFORMATION
Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z
Subscriptions:
The Electric Dreams E-zine (issn 1089 4284)is *free* and distributed
via email about once a month. You can have Electric Dreams delivered right
to your email box by sending an e-mail
TO: majordomo@igc.apc.org
SUBJECT: sub me (or anything, this line is not read)
In the BODY of the e-mail put only
subscribe electric-dreams
In a short while you will receive a welcome letter and subscription
acknowledgement.
=================
SUBMITTING DREAMS and Comments about Dreams: EASY!
Electric Dreams will publish your dreams and comments
about dreams you have seen in previous issues. If you can, be clear
what name you want or don't want. Most people use a pen name. Please include
a title for your dream. Email to: Bob Krumhansl <bobkrum@erols.com>
==================
SUBMITTING ARTICLES, projects and letters-to-the-editor.
Electric Dreams is responsive and experimental. If you
have articles or suggestions on dreams, dreaming or
dreamers - including book reviews, movie suggestions or
conferences and meetings, we will publish them. I'm
especially interested in creative interpretive approaches
to dreams, including verbal, dramatization, and mixed
media approaches. Send to:
Richard Wilkerson <rcwilk@aol.com>
===============
SUBMITTING NEWS and Calendar events related to dreaming. We usually
have a deadline at the 15th of each month. Send all events and news to
Peggy Coats <pcoats@dreamtree.com>
SENDING IN QUESTIONS, Replies and Concerns about dreams and dreaming. We don't pretend to be the final authority on dreams, but we will submit you questions to our network and other Internet networks. Also, you are free to post special interest requests. Send those to Victoria Quinton
<<mermaid@alphalink.com.au>>
JOINING DREAM GROUPS sponsored by Electric Dreams. If you are interested
in joining a group to discuss your dream with peers, contact Chris Hicks
<dreamwheel@michweb.net>
JOINING DISCUSSIONS ON DREAMING. Electric Dreams in conjucntion with DreamGate support the Oneiro-Network, and you can join their mail list by sending an e-mail
TO: majordomo@igc.apc.org
SUBJECT: Sub me (or anything, this line is not read)
In the BODY of the E-mail put only:
subscribe dreamgroup-c
In a short while you will receive a welcome letter and subscription
acknowledgement.
Attach your own web page to Electric Dreams. Do you have an idea for
a dream page, but no web site? Send that page to Matthew Parry. If you
need help with creating the web page, contact Matthew for about classes.
<mettw@newt.phys.unsw.edu.au>
ELECTRIC DREAMS HOME PAGE ON WEB:
Thanks to Matthew Parry:
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~mettw/edreams/home.html
From here you will have access to information about Electric Dreams,
back issues, FAQ and other online dream resources.
NEED A COVER for your issues of Electric Dreams? We now provide them and you can download them at
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~mettw/edreams/home.html
or, if you have a black&White printer, you can in Netscape choose the "Print..." option while on the page you wish and get B&W copy that is adjusted to your paper size.
Backissue covers are available at:
http://www.nonDairy.com/ED/covers.html
BACK ISSUES OF ELECTRIC DREAMS:
WWWEB:
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~mettw/edreams/archives/archives.html
or if you can't get through there, send your browser to:
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/ed-backissues/
CURRENT ISSUE OF ELECTRIC DREAMS ---- URL:
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~mettw/edreams/ ed-current.html
Also available via Delphi and
America On Line:
Keyword: writer
\writers club library
\writers club e-zines
Available via Delphi
UK and both versions are
available on Dan P.'s BBS:
PsychoNautica BBS +44 0181 764 1446.
Thanks to ONIROS for mentioning ED in your Magazine in France!
Thanks to Compuserve New Age Forum for ED info Posts.
To access the New Age B Forum From CompuServe Information Manager 1.4
:
1) In the CIM program, pull down the Services menu
2) Select Browse
3) On the Main Services Menu, click the Home /Leisure icon
4) Then, Click: Special Interests icon
5) Then, Click: Religion option
6) Then, Click: New Age B Forum option (also referred to as NEWBAGE)
7) Then, Enjoy.
Thanks to John Labovitz for putting us on his e-zine list:
http://www.meer.net/~johnl/e-zine-list/zines/
electric-dreams.html
Thanks to Todd Kuiper for listing us on his e-zine list:
http://www.merak.com/~tkuipers/elists/elists.htm
Thanks for the listing in The eZines Database Collection:
Zines@Dominis.com
<URL:http://www.dominis.com/Zines/>
Thanks to the Dream Network Journal for mentioning the Electric Dreams project. dreamskey@sisna.com
Thanks to the Usenet newsgroups for mentioning us in the
FAQ files at alt.dreams and alt.dreams.lucid and for other Usenet Newsgroups
for allowing us to continually post messages.
Thanks to our many web links!
Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=
The Electric Dreams Staff
Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=
Peggy Coats - News & Calender Events Director
pcoats@dreamtree.com
http://www.dreamtree.com
Chris Hicks - Dream Research & Group Moderator
chrish@michweb.net
dreamwheel@michweb.net
Bob Krumhansl - Editor & Dream Editor
bobkrum@erols.com
Matthew Parry - Web Master
mettw@newt.phys.unsw.edu.au
Nutcracker - Dream Journals & Dream Reaper
Myst@ix.netcom.com
Rob Childress
rdc@inreach.com (Rob Childress)
http://home.inreach.com/rdc/
--
The Oneiro-Network
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/2357/
Victoria Quinton- Questions & Answers Editor
mermaid 8*)
mermaid@alphalink.com.au
http://daemon.apana.org.au/~mermaid
Jesse Reklaw - Art Director & cover Designs
reklaw@nonDairy.com
Lars Spivock - Research and Development Director
lars@dreamgate.com
Alissa Goldring - Contributing editor
Cover this month by Jesse Reklaw dandy@iinet.net.au
http://www.iinet.net.au/~dandy/
Richard Wilkerson - General Editor, Articles & Subscriptions
rcwilk@aol.com
www.dreamgate.com
+ The wonderful anonymous Core who respond each issue to your dreams!
+ The generous authors of our articles
+ The delightful dreamers and commentators
+ Special thanks to Catherine Decker & Jay Vinton
w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=
All dream and article text and art are considered (C)opyright by the writers, artists and dreamers themselves. Anyone other than the authors may use or reprint the text for non-commercial use, but all other use by anyone other than the author must be with the permission of either the author or the current Electric Dreams dream editor.
w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=
w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=
DISCLAIMER
Electric Dreams is an independent electronic publication not affiliated with any other organization. The views of our commentators are personal views and not intended as professional advise or psychotherapy.
w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=w=
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
June 18, WED deadline for submission
FOR Next Electric Dreams vol 4(6)
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX