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Electric Dreams Volume 12 Issue 01
E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c D.r.e.a.m.s
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E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c D.r.e.a.m.s
Volume #12 Issue #1
January 2005
ISSN# 1089 4284
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http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams
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Download a cover for this issue:
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C O N T E N T S
++ Editor's Notes
++ Global Dreaming News Harry Bosma
++ Column: An Excerpt From the Lucid Dream Exchange
Sleep Paralysis: If You Can't Avoid its Occurrence,
Can You Change the Experience?
Lucy Gillis
++ Article: Out-of-Body in Bird Form
Linda L. Magallón
++ Column: The View From the Bridge
A Peace Dream Voyager
Olivia Strand
++ Article: Whitehead's Process Theory and Dreaming
Richard Catlett Wilkerson
++ Article: Susan Sontag A Farwell Dream
Richard Wilkerson
++ DREAM SECTION: Dreams from December, 2004
Host Kat Peters-Midland
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D E A D L I N E :
January 17th deadline for February 2005 submissions
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Post Dreams and Comments on Dreams to:
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple
Send news, events, workshops, conferences& reviews to
Harry Bosma <ed-news@alquinte.com>
Send Articles, news and other items to:
Richard Wilkerson: <rcwilk@dreamgate.com>
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Editor's Notes
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Welcome to the January 2005 issue of Electric Dreams, your portal to dreams and
dreamwork online.
If you are new to dreams and dreamwork, please join us on
dreamchatters@yahoogroups.com and we will guide you to the resources & groups you
need. To join, send an e to
dreamchatters-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
This month in Electric Dreams:
Lucy Gillis is a guide for students, researchers, authors, film makers and others in the
world of lucid dreaming, and publishes research, articles, and interviews in the Lucid
Dream Exchange. This month she offers Electric Dreams an except of an article on Sleep
Paralysis and how you can use the same techniques that work for lucidity to get a handle
on sleep paralysis. A skill set every dreamworker should know.
Linda Lane Magallón (author of "Mutual Dreaming") furthers her research on flying
dreaming. This month, in "Out-of-Body in Bird Form" Magallón connects flying dreams
and Out-of-Body experiences with the art and imagination of cultures from other places
and times and ponders how many of these depictions of flying beasts are really an
expression of our own imaginal flights.
Jean Campbell takes a vacation this month and invites guest speaker, Olivia Strand to fill
us in on the activities of the World Dream Peace Bridge. Olivia give here view of the
Bridge as a trek across time and space, culture and geography, and how the hope of the
world lies in the dreams we dream together. Be sure to read all about this in the View
From the Bridge.
I'm including in the article I wrote on Whitehead, an introduction to his work and how it
may be related to dreamwork. Ever since David Pleasant's presentation at the IASD
PsiberDreaming Conference, I have been excited about the revival of Whitehead's
process theories and how they may contribute to dreamwork. In the next month or two I
plan to add an article on how Whitehead can be applied to dream psi. The current article
will act as an entrance to Process theory, or a warning, if this isn't your cup of tea.
Susan Sontag, a controversial writer, feminist and left political figure, just died. I had
been influenced by her work and am including a farewell note I posted on the IASD
bulletin board.
Have you seen the Electric Dreams Articles Archive? Almost all the articles from the last
decade of Electric Dreams are sorted by author, and now, thanks to Janet Garrett, you can
see them listed chronologically by issue as well. You can see her work progress and view
hundreds of article on dreams at: http://www.improverse.com/ed-articles/index.htm
Finally, I have updated the Search Index, so you can search by topic, author or what-
have-you.
Harry Bosma has collected dream news, web updates, conference announcement and
other events in the world of dreaming and you can read about those below in the Global
Dreaming News. If you have any dream news, conferences, books, workshops, and
especially any online meetings or events, be sure to send that information to Harry by the
15th of each month at ed-news@alquinte.com
A broken hobby horse, the1890's, attacked by snakes and dogs, a call from a strange
man. What do they all have in common? They are all dreams from the December Dream
Section! Kat Peters-Midland has collected the finest from the month and you can read
them all.
If you want to send in dreams, please enter them at
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple
or join the dream flow at dreamflow@yahoogroups.com
(dreamflow-subscribe@yahoogroups.com)
--------------------
For those of you who are new to dreams and dreaming, be sure to stop by one of the
many resources:
http://www.dreamtree.com
http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/library
Electric Dreams in PDF: (thanks to Nick Cumbo)
http://electric.dreamofpeace.net/
--------------------
Wishing you the best of dreams,
-Richard Wilkerson
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////
G L O B A L D R E A M I N G N E W S
http://dreamunit.net/news-en/
January 2005
If you have news you'd like to share, simply email Harry Bosma at his special ed-
news@alquinte.com address. I can also publish especially European and Asian dream
news on the Dreamers United web log, see www.dreamunit.net if you're curious.
Online:
- Old / new year dreaming with Dream-ruyaTurkiye
- History of Dreams course by Richard Wilkerson
- Fourth More Lucid Dreams group
Physical world:
- Discount deadline of the IASD conference
- January: Robert Bosnak workshop, California
- February: First meeting Danish association
- October: Dream Writing conference, UK
Books, movies, research:
- Women's Big Dreams by Jennie Hatherley
- Personal bible research
* * * ONLINE * * *
---
- Old / new year dreaming with Dream-ruyaTurkiye
---
Our next group experiment will be "Goodbye to 2004 - Welcome to 2005 Dreaming"
between 29 December - 3 January. We are thinking of it as a past - future projection,
precognitive, psi, lucid, etc. dreaming. We can test the results all next year, as well as
look back to last year.
Ilkin
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dream-ruyaTurkiye/
---
- History of Dreams course by Richard Wilkerson
---
A six week online course about dreams, dreaming and dreamwork from online
dreamwork pioneer, Richard Wilkerson.
This delightful class gives you both e-mail essays on the the history of dreams and dream
sharing, as well as interactive groups to teach you ways of working and playing with your
dreams. Modules arrive twice a week for six weeks, and cover dreams from ancient
Thrace to Cyberspace. Some topics include ancient dreamwork, dreams and spirituality,
dream anthropology, Freud, Carl Jung, Fritz Perls, the Dreambody, Grassroots
dreamwork, lucid dreaming, telepathic and psi dreaming, the latest in dream-brain
science and much more.
Six Week Course: $29.99 (US) Register before the 1st of the month. Registration and
additional information at http://www.dreamgate.com/class
This is a non-accredited class and there will be no psychotherapy provided. Certificates
are available. The dreamwork groups are moderated and you must be at least 18 years old
to participate.
---
- Fourth More Lucid Dreams group
---
Harry Bosma is planning to host a fourth More Lucid Dreams group starting at Saturday,
February 5th in 2005. The group will run for four weeks on a password protected online
discussion forum. For more information please see the Alquinte website:
http://alquinte.com/en/
* * * PHYSICAL WORLD * * *
---
- Discount deadline of the IASD conference 2005
---
>From the International Association for the Study of Dreams Discount Deadline for
Berkeley Conference in December!
Hello everyone - I just wanted to remind you that the conference discount ends 31
December 2004 so please register on-line before that date at www.asdreams.org/2005 if
you are thinking of attending the IASD 22nd annual conference June 24-28, 2005 at the
Doubletree Hotel in Berkeley, California.
The discount is roughly 10% off of our early 2005 rate. Also please send in your
responses to the Call for Papers before 31 December if you wish to present. We are going
to start processing and scheduling early so please get them to Robert Hoss right away
with a copy to Alan Siegel
VENUE The Conference will be held on the San Francisco Bay at the Doubletree Hotel
adjacent to the Berkeley Marina. The hotel is in a beautiful quiet waterfront setting across
the bay from the Golden Gate Bridge, and offers spectacular views of the Bay and
marina. The site offers a wildlife sanctuary, and large waterfront park, plus ready access
to Berkeley and the 4th street shops and restaurants. The San Francisco Bay Area is an
ideal cool and sunny summer vacation spot, and with the 4th of July fireworks displays at
the marina the weekend following the conference, it makes for a perfect time to stay and
vacation in the Bay Area. For that reason the hotel is offering a special vacation package
for the 4th of July weekend in addition to the discounted group rates for the Conference.
---
- Jan - Robert Bosnak workshop, California
---
Embodied Dream Imagery with Robert Bosnak, Psy A.
"In this experiential workshop, participants will learn to use dreamwork techniques that
give access to embodied states otherwise unconscious. Through incubation methods,
participants will learn to seed their dream life and access material relevant to their
intentions. This workshop is designed for therapists, people with physical illness wishing
to approach their illness through dreams, and artists who want to deepen their
involvement with their art."
$350 General Admission
Special Prices and Meals available
Pacifica Graduate Institute Public Programs
249 Lambert Road, Carpinteria, CA 93013
1-805-969-3626, ext 103
publicprograms@pacifica.edu
www.pacifica.edu
---
- Feb - First meeting Danish association
---
This message is meant especially for people who are Danish or living in Denmark and
interested in dreams.
We are a group of danes who are establishing a danish "branch" of ASD called "Danish
Association for the Study of Dreams" or "Foreningen for studiet af Drømme".
Our first general meeting is going to be held in Copenhagen in February. Anyone who is
interested is welcome.
You can read the (Danish language) invitation on our web site http://www.ffsd.dk/ or you
write to mail@ffsd.dk if you have any questions or would like to join the association.
Best regards
on behalf of the initiative-group
Anders Vogt
---
- Oct - Dream Writing conference, UK
---
A two-day conference
October 15-16, 2005
The University of Kent, United Kingdom
We live alongside our dreams, even if it is not to our liking. Not only are dreams
recurrent themes in literary and visual representations, but theories of dreams and
dreaming permeate all humanities disciplines. The dream is a potent critical tool; we
suggest 'dream' could be the name of a new genre, like 'film'. We are surprisingly
uncritical of our appropriation of dreams, which are too often taken to mean something
else symbols, manifestations of our psyche, or as a literary or rhetorical device through
which truth, otherwise suppressed, slips into the open. This interdisciplinary conference
wishes to shed fresh light on our relationship with dream and the mysteries of its allure,
in order to redefine our approach to dreams. We will explore how, when, and why dreams
come to us within the academic disciplines (or do we resort to dreams?). We wish to read
dreams alongside and against psychoanalysis, and to ask to what extent 'dreams write',
how much the texts we read and produce in our daily life are informed by dreams, or by
our understanding of what dreams are.
We seek to bring together different disciplines, practices and genres through the theme of
dream writing. Papers are thus sought across the humanities (literature, art, film, history,
philosophy, anthropology, creative writing, etc), from specialists and non-specialists of
dream theories. We welcome unique approaches to all aspects of dreams and dream
writing, pointing to new ways of dreaming through reading / writing / conceptualising
dreams.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to :
* Dreams and writing
* Dreams and language
* Dreams and psychoanalysis
* Interpretation of dreams
* The politics and ideologies of dreaming
* Translation theories and dreams
* Dreams and intertextuality
* Dreaming in the different epistemes the Middle Age,
Renaissance, pre-Freudian, non-European dreams etc,
their dream theories, and/or their place in our
contemporary ways of dreaming. Philosophy of dreams,
history of dreaming
* Race and dreams: colonial and anthropological dreams,
fantasy and dreams as the Other. Postcolonial uses of
the dream space, e.g. dreams as the site of identities/
ethnicities
* Arts and dreaming: films, photography, sculpture, music,
etc.
* Architectural dreams
* Alternative spaces of dreaming: computer games, drugs
and hallucination, utopias, travels, daydreaming, etc.
* Geography of dreams, dreamland
* Nightmares, fear, panic, sanity
* Political dreams, ethical dreams
* Dreams and consumerism
* Dreams and memory
* Censorship and boundaries. Dream as a genre
* Dream and literature, dream journals, autobiography,
poems, etc.
* Dreams and religion: theology; dreaming with God(s), God
as a dream.
* Sexuality and dreams; gendered dreams
* Voices in dreams. Bodies or materiality of dreams
* Dream universities
Please send an abstract to Kaori Nagai (K.Nagai@kent.ac.uk) by 20 April 2005.
For further details and enquiries, please contact :
Dr. Kaori Nagai / Dr. Sarah Wood
School of English
The University of Kent
Canterbury, Kent
CT2 7NZ, UK
e-mail : K.Nagai@kent.ac.uk
* * * BOOKS, MOVIES, RESEARCH * * *
---
Women's Big Dreams by Jennie Hatherley
---
Although trained in various therapeutic fields and highly interested in Jungian thought -
my book was more of an exploration of people's experiences based on a simple premise
that dreams are a part of our neglected natural intuition. In a world where we are far too
busy with the problems of daily survival dreams seem to try and help us reflect on
healthier ways of being. They sharpen our intuition and instincts and tell us more about
ourselves than any expert could ever reveal. There are some wonderful examples in the
book on how everyday people have responded to their dreams - often being moved to
change. Although it is titled Women's Big Dreams, it is equally relevant to men.
For more details, see Amazon.com.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0850919193/qid=1101935785/sr=1-
6/ref=sr_1_6/102-1707812-0090562?v=glance&s=books
---
Personal bible research
---
My name is Elton E. Fonseca and I am E-mailing you in Referance to my Webpage
which I originally started in 2001, all of the Info on my Webpage is Verifiable and can be
proven through Government Sources who have Copies of my Webpage through the Year
2004, you are welcome to use my Webpage Info for any editorials, webpage address
http://community-2.webtv.net/eltonfon.
Happy Holidays and hope to hear from you.
Sincerely, E.E.F.
---
Virtual Reality research
---
My name is Barry I am currently studying towards my degree in Virtual Reality. I was
wondering if you could spare 5 minutes and fill in a dream related online questionnaire.
The questionnaire is to help me in completing my dissertation.
Dissertation outlook:
Companies spend millions developing ultimate virtual environments that depict a detailed
representation of reality to a user. But anyone can make one a 100 times greater than
these. Using our minds as the super computer to create the environments and our dreams
to display them.
With Lucid dreams we are able to control and change our dream environment as we see
fit, something Virtual reality simulations are far from achieving. So wouldn't this make
our dreams the ultimate virtual reality experience?
The link to the questionnaire is
http://www.euphemia.net/questionnaire/questionnaire.html
This would be extremely helpful in completing my dissertation. Thank you for your time
and your help.
My appreciation
Barry Dowd
------------------------ END NEWS ----------------------
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An Excerpt From The Lucid Dream Exchange
By Lucy Gillis
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Sleep Paralysis: If You Can't Avoid its Occurrence, Can You Change the
Experience?
(c) 2004 Lucy Gillis
Sleep paralysis (SP) -- a normal, natural, part of the sleep cycle is largely an unknown
phenomenon in today's culture. Let's face it, most people are not really interested in the
mechanics of the human sleep cycle. During SP (that part of the sleep cycle when all but
your eyes are paralyzed during the REM state) the individual is usually unconscious, fast
asleep. However, sometimes consciousness can arise during sleep paralysis, so that the
individual is conscious, believing himself to be awake, though his body is still paralyzed.
But this awareness, though it can feel like your everyday waking consciousness, is not
fully awake in the sense that we consider everyday awareness in waking reality. In the
"awareness during sleep paralysis" condition the individual can experience visual,
auditory, and tactile hallucinations; in other words, dream-like phenomena.
Awareness during sleep paralysis may never occur to most individuals; once or twice in a
lifetime to some, more frequently for others and, chronically -- nearly all the time -- for
yet others. Some people learning to lucid dream or to have out-of-body experiences, will
sometimes find themselves in this state. But because they are familiar with (and have an
interest in) dreams, they can usually recognize the visual, auditory, and/or tactile
hallucinations as "dream stuff."
Lucid dreamers, in particular those first learning to lucid dream, use techniques to help
program themselves to recognize when they are dreaming. Lucid and non-lucid dreams
can be incubated, (programmed) usually with the use of suggestion, repetition, intent,
expectation, etc., with excellent results. Many psychologists suggest the use of lucid
dreaming to help nightmare sufferers. They encourage their patients to learn to lucid
dream so that they can either confront the "monsters in their dreams", conquer them,
diminish them, understand them, transform them, etc. This also has proven to have very
good results.
So, if we can influence our dream experiences by incubation techniques and suggestion,
then it stands to reason that the dream-like qualities (hallucinations) seen and felt during
"awareness during sleep paralysis" might also be influenced by similar techniques. I'm
not talking about trying to induce the "awareness during sleep paralysis" phenomenon,
rather, why not try to program, or at least influence, the accompanying experience?
For instance, if an individual, unaware of the sleep paralysis phenomenon, suddenly
experiences it, he may find it to be a very frightening event. If the process continues over
time, becomes more frequent, the individual may come to associate that experience with
fearful imagery, noises, sensations, etc. so that these phenomena are then expected to
occur when SP awareness occurs. In effect, the individual conditions, or programs, his
mind to create these fearful experiences when sleep paralysis is felt. In effect, he is doing
what dream workers do when they want specific dreams: he is practicing dream
incubation, programming his mind for a particular kind of dreaming experience.
What if this individual were to change his expectations and beliefs? Easier said than done
perhaps, when one has been suffering sleep paralysis for years. But why not try anyway?
What would he lose? For most healthy, normal, individuals this may be one way to
reduce the anxiety associated with SP. (For those with mental illness, depression, anxiety
disorders, insomnia, etc. it is strongly advised to seek professional medical advice before
trying this or any similar task.)
Perhaps by "reprogramming" his expectations, beliefs, etc. the individual would be able
to effectively create neutral, or at best even pleasant dream-like experiences to occur
during SP. If successful, the individual might eventually move beyond his fear and may
decide to use the sleep paralysis state to an advantage. He may decide to use the SP state
as a means to induce lucid dreams. For in effect, the sleep paralysis "sufferer" already has
an edge that lucid dreamers strive for -- awareness during sleep.
When the individual discovers he's in SP, instead of struggling to wake up, he could
attempt to go deeper into sleep, into the dream state, maintaining his lucidity. From there,
he could go on to wonderful, exciting, lucid dream adventures. He could even attempt to
continue to program his dreaming consciousness while still in the dream state, to create
positive, pleasant SP experiences, or even to minimize or rid the awareness during sleep
paralysis occurrence. (Sounds contradictory doesn't it? Programming yourself to use the
SP condition to initiate lucid dreaming, and then using the lucid dreaming state to
program yourself to not have awareness during SP!!)
You may not achieve your desired results overnight (then again, maybe you can!!).
Remember that each person's SP experiences, interpretations (of the event), and history
are unique. Not everyone will proceed in the same way, or have the same results. But I do
believe that with determination and focus, and by changing your beliefs, thoughts, and
expectations about SP, and by using suggestion (or any technique you are comfortable
with) that you can program yourself for a different, positive, experience. You might then
even use the sleep paralysis state itself as a gateway into lucid dreaming, where you can
continue your dreaming adventures in a more pleasant, productive, and joyful way.
********************************
The Lucid Dream Exchange is a quarterly newsletter featuring lucid dreams and lucid
dream related articles and interviews. To subscribe to The Lucid Dream Exchange send a
blank email to:
TheLucidDreamExchange-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
You can also check us out at www.dreaminglucid.com
********************************
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Out-of-Body in Bird Form
©2004 Linda L. Magallón
(From "How To Fly")
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According to the most popular presumption, dreams are not what they seem. They stand
for something else, so they must be deciphered to discover exactly what it is. The
interpretation of dreams has been with us since the dawn of recorded history. However,
there's an alternate approach that stretches even further back in time. It's the assumption
that at least some sleeping events are literal rather than symbolic. The dreamer exists and
travels in an actual world. This perspective is commonly called the OBE, or out-of-body
experience. Flying dreams have bounced back and forth between literal and symbolic
explanations. They are claimed by both camps: ordinary dreams and extraordinary. Thus,
they are uniquely positioned to serve as a transit from one to the other and back again.
There are distinct differences between these two perspectives of consciousness. For one
thing, with an OBE, the emphasis is on a *body*. And often, more than one. However,
that body doesn't necessarily have to be pictured as a human body. After all, a human
body can't fly in the waking world, can it? But something else truly can, something we
see with our very eyes, talk about and, most importantly, portray for other people to see.
When we do picture it, we imply the idea of flight, whether it be the obvious sort or a
type that's hidden from physical sight.
Picturing the OBE
When Calvin Hall used his statistical content analysis technique on a large batch of
dreams in mid-twentieth century, it revealed that the most commonly dreamt animal was
a bird. That's reasonable, since there are more species of bird than any other animal on
the planet.
Now, if you were going to depict a human in flight, how might you go about it? If you
were writing or speaking about such an experience, you could be quite straightforward.
You'd tell your audience, "I was flying." But if you had no written language, or preferred
the visual mode, then the best representation would be a picture. A painting that displays
an elaborate landscape would do; you could just add a human figure suspended in the
sky. However, if you wished to indicate the idea of flight in general, the more appropriate
choice would be something succinct, like a sign or logo. The shortened pictorial version
of the OBE puts the human shape together with the shape of something that can truly fly
in the waking world. And what's the most common flying creature? A bird, of course.
There are several ways you could connect human and bird. You might draw a human
figure atop a bird or other flying conveyance. Shamans throughout history report that
they have ridden eagles, drums, clouds or horses in the sky on their altered state journeys.
Even today native peoples like the Carib, New Guinea and Eskimo take these "magical
flights." The Chinese preferred to ride dragons, though. The Greeks and Hebrews favored
chariots.
On the other hand, you could combine the human and flying creature together. One way
would be to retain the full human figure, along with arms and hands, and attach wings to
the back. This might render the figure more like an insect than a bird. Still, you'd get the
idea across. However, if you based your picture on a truly altered state experience, rather
than a romantic reverie, it's more likely you would *feel* like a bird aloft. And birds
don't have hands.
In New Guinea, a man of the Sambia people had a such an experience. "I climb up a
pandanus tree...there is a bog below," he reported. "The bog rises...I am scared...then I
look at my hands and they turn into bird wings. I fly into the air and land atop a tree. I see
the bog and it subsides into place. I awake with a start.'
Cross-cultural studies indicate that about 9/10ths of native peoples profess a belief in the
out-of-body experience even today. In the past, the ancient Egyptians believed in a "ba"
or soul. A painting from about 1250 B. C. shows the unmoving physical body lying
prone, while the ba is represented as a second body, with wings spread, hovering above
it. Only the face of the ba is human; the rest of the body is a bird. Awareness of two
bodies is very characteristic of the OBE.
The Egyptians also did just the opposite. They created many images of bodies that had
bird heads, while the rest of the body remained human. These figures may have actually
depicted priests who donned bird masks as part of a religious ritual.
On the wall of one deep cavern from the Upper Paleolithic Age (at least 15,000 B. C.),
bird and human are combined this way. In the Lasceaux cave is a painting of a man that
specifically portrays the idea of flight in an altered state of consciousness. He is lying
down, with an erection, indicating that he is either in trance or is sleeping, and he has a
bird's head. In that prone position, he pictures himself bird-like. Because he lies near a
wounded bison, there has been speculation that he is a shaman of the hunt, viewing the
bison like a bird would, aloft, from an out-of-body perspective.
The doubling of bodies is depicted, too. There is no second human body in the Lasceaux
cave painting, but there is a second bird. Next to the man with the bird's head is a staff
with another bird atop it. Why wouldn't there two human bodies, like in the common
image of the OBE? Simple. If the man was a shaman, he had only one human body - the
sleeping one. His other body was a winged creature. Shamans are "shape shifters,"
turning into a bat, bird or insect in order to fly.
A medicine man in Central Australia had a "shape shifting" experience that shifted right
back again. He dreamt that he went out-of-body. His soul was at first transformed into the
shape of a feather and the wind blew it to the west. It "rolled over, disappeared in the
sand and went right in under the ground." When he came out of the ground, he looked
like himself, in waking life. The medicine man flew up to the Milky Way, to a black hill
called Talarara, "where the souls always fly to when they go up to the sky." He flew from
one point of the Milky Way to the other before coming back into his body at daylight.
Actually, an out-of-body human can be represented as a bird, period. It's pretty difficult
to tell if that bird is symbolizing a human aloft and not the physical animal, unless,
perhaps, human and bird are depicted together in the same two-dimensional painting. For
three-dimensional creations, the two images are usually merged. From archeological digs
around the world, there are iconographic representations of humanoid figures with wings,
bird heads, bird bodies, bird feet or some other combination. Such images have been
sculpted in stone, etched on rock cliffs and baked in clay. It's usually assumed that these
were gods, goddesses, angels, demons or other denizens of the inner realms. However,
there's reason to believe that some of the depictions were of actual humans, with bird
parts symbolizing their out-of-body flight.
Excursion of the Spirit
"If the sleeper sees things which meet his desires, that is because the soul, knowing all
forms, can, when it is purified in sleep from the defilements of the body, float at ease
over everything that it desires to possess, although it well knows that in the waking state
it could not enjoy such a privilege." So wrote Mas'udi Ali ibn Husayn of Bagdad (946-
974 A. D.). "It is thus that a man sees himself flying in the air, although in reality he does
not possess the ability to fly. He really only sees the form of flight, without bodily
participation, as he knows it is not executed before his eyes, but his thought, concentrated
on this operation, acquires enough force to make it really sensible to him."
Besides Mas'udi and the Egyptians, many people have described an OBE as an excursion
of the soul or spirit. The idea is that whatever transpires in dreams and nightmares is the
soul's actual experience and it is an idea found worldwide. This belief in a soul is
supported by very realistic nighttime events. While the physical body remains
motionless, the dreaming spirit-body is nonetheless capable of movement.
Tribal people as far flung as the Azande of Africa, Cuna of South America, Rigo of New
Guinea, Lepcha and Burmese of Asia, the Huron, Seneca and Iroquois of North America
and the Pokomam of Guatemala believe that the dreamer's soul leaves the body at night.
It roams in different places, near or far, familiar or unfamiliar, as if it can glide on the
wind. About half of native peoples who were surveyed believe that only special people,
like a shaman or medicine man, can have an out-of-body experience. The other half
believe an OBE is a possibility for nearly everyone at some time or another. I vote for the
latter choice.
Sleeping Travels
Where do out-of-body travelers go? Their dreaming bodies visit places near and far,
realistic and fantastic, colorful summerlands and bleak grey netherworlds. For the ancient
Assyrians, the dead were like birds, covered with feathers. Although the bodies of the
deceased may lie as if they are sleeping, yet in sleep dreamers can interact with these
individuals as if they were still alive. When the deceased are encountered on the journey,
the experience may well engender a belief in an afterlife.
In the Kiwai tribe of New Guinea, the land of the hereafter is considered to be an
underworld. One tribesman, sick unto death, was told by his people, "You died
yesterday." He had dreamt that while visiting the netherland, he was kicked from behind.
He flew up and landed where he was lying in the physical world and thus returned to life.
Some sleepers travel in an alternate reality, such as to the realm of the gods or ancestors
or the after-death state. Others travel within what seems to be the physical world. One
Kwakiutl dreamer from the Pacific Northwest stated, "In my dream I flew upwards. It
was as though I was going to the place where the stars were showing in the daytime. I
saw all around our world. Then I wished in vain to go down again. I was not able to do
so. I was very afraid. Then I awoke."
The Rarmuri (or Tarahumara) Indians of the Sierra Madre mountains in northern
Mexico seem to fly much closer to the ground. They consider dreams to be the activities
of a person's principal soul during sleep. When they are unencumbered by the bodies in
which they live, these souls can travel very fast and even fly. The small whirlwinds that
speed across the desert countryside are said to be souls in transit.
Some cultures draw no sharp distinction between the world of dreams and the world of
waking life. After an African chief dreamt that he had visited England and Portugal, he
awoke, dressed in Western clothes and described his trip to his people. They greeted him
and congratulated him on his safe journey.
No matter what the form the dreaming body takes, whether it be human, bird, feather or
whirlwind, it is capable of flight. If it's depicted for the rest of the world to see, would the
artwork look like a person, an animal, a bird-part or even a simple spiral? Any of these
are possible, and more. When we look at pictographs on stone, images on pottery or
drawings on cave walls, we are tempted to popular conclusions. But perhaps, with first-
hand experience of dreaming flight, we might interpret such images through new eyes, as
evidence of humans describing their out-of-body adventures.
References
Cotterell, Arthur (Ed.) The Encyclopedia of Ancient Civilizations. NY: Mayflower
Books, 1980.
Coxhead, David & Susan Hiller. Dreams: Visions of the Night. NY: Avon Books, 1975.
de Becker, Raymond. The Understanding of Dreams. New York: Hawthorn, 1968.
Dentan, Robert Knox & Laura J. McClusky. "Pity the Bones by Wandering River Which
Still in Lovers' Dreams Appear as Men." In The Functions of Dreaming, Alan Moffitt,
Melton Kramer, Robert Hoffmann, eds. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993, 489 -548.
Dreams and Dreaming. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1990.
Garfield, Patricia. Your Child's Dreams. NY: Ballantine, 1984.
Herdt, Gilbert. "Selfhood and Discourse in Sambia Dream Sharing," in Tedlock, Barbara.
Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987, 55-85.
Lincoln, Jackson Steward. The Dream in Primitive Cultures. London: Cresset Press,
1935.
Merrill, William. "The Rarmuri Stereotype of Dreams," in Tedlock, Barbara. Dreaming:
Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987.
Psychic Voyages. (Editors of Time-Life.) Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1987.
Roheim, Giza. The Gates of the Dream. New York: International Universities Press,
1952.
Stein, Wendy. Shamans/Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1991.
Talbot, Michael. The Holographic Universe. NY: Harper Collins, 1991.
Zaleski, Carol Goldsmith. Otherworld Journeys. NY: Oxford University Press, 1987.
http://members.aol.com/caseyflyer/flying/dreams.html
(Dream Flights)
© 2004 Linda Lane Magallón
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THE VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE
A Peace Dream Voyager
December 2004 January 2005 2004
Olivia Strand
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For many I guess the image of a bridge suggests one of reaching out, or of closing, or
bridging, a gap. When Jean welcomed me onto the Bridge, after last month's DaFuMu
dreaming, I instead had a completely different image I thought of Star Trek! And the
more I thought about this simile, the more I liked it.
Most of the time it looks as if the crew on the Bridge have an excellent view of space
ahead, much as a jet pilot can see through the windows of his cockpit. Only the space
ship has no windows, instead the ship's sensors scan the surrounding space, and display
what they 'see' on a large screen. At other times the screen acts as a communication link,
as the S.S. Voyager encounters alien races on its journey home through the Delta
quadrant.
My computer works a bit like that, with a 56K modem functioning as 'sensors' and where
my flat screen displays messages from, well, not exactly aliens, but dreamers from all
over the world. And if you regularly read this column you will by now have figured out
that Jean has taken a holiday, and I can tell you that this particular dream view from the
Bridge comes to you through the eyes of Olivia.
But oh, how busy the past four weeks seemed, on the Bridge! Never before did I belong
to a group where so much information flowed between its members. When I first joined,
and hadn't checked my email for about three hours, I had 24 messages!
If I felt almost overwhelmed at first, I have since found the World Dreams Peace Bridge
an interesting group to belong to. Many things get discussed, and I for one have found it
refreshing to again share views on topical and political matters. How many of us can go
weeks and months without anyone in our family, or at our workplace, ever mentioning
the news, let alone the ongoing war in Iraq? In the UK, where I live, coverage of Iraq has
become reduced to a mere trickle, since the Black Watch returned home in time for
Christmas, mind, just as Tony Blair had promised with media highlighting only some of
the most violent flare-ups. However, many members of the Bridge have alternate sources
of news, often from inside Iraq, and news and links get shared amongst us.
The Bridge received new members during the past month, as well, this time adding to the
number of Muslims in our inter-faith group, and providing us with more direct links to
Iraq. Iraq has seemed very much the focus for the past month, with much discussion and
many members sharing dreams, dreams that often seemed as if through the eyes of one of
the Iraqi people, as they try to go about their daily business.
The subject of dreaming itself came up for discussion, as in whether or not dreams will
bring peace and feed the hungry. "No, they won't," seems the simple answer, and yet, if
we lose our dreams, we lose a vital aspect of our humanity. The Turkish have this
wonderful saying, "You make things come true as long as you can dream," which to me
illustrates not only a deep spiritual truth, but resonates with the very reason I joined the
Bridge. As I understand it, one of the cornerstones of the work of the World Dreams
Peace Bridge, part of its foundation, rests on the principle that only that of which we can
dream in the widest sense of the word can become a manifest reality in the physical
world.
Perhaps one of this group's main tasks centres on holding the dreams of peace, and of a
just and fair world, alive. Alive, for those who cannot in the moment feel or know peace,
love, or serenity, because they no longer have a home to return to, or they have lost those
near and dear, and lack even the grim consolation of a grave to visit, or their children
waste before their eyes because they can find neither food nor medicine.
No, dreams alone will not bring peace, justice, or food, to those in need. Vision needs
grounding, ideals require implementation, and many of the members of the Bridge
engage with precisely that, raising money, not least. And not only members; a group of
eight high school students from Vermont, who found the Peace Bridge by googling
"Iraq" and "Children," managed to raise $1,500 for the Seasons Art School in Baghdad
by holding an art show at their school. Jean has received a package of photos, articles and
quotes, and we will soon add a page to the World Dreams Peace Bridge web site to show
what they have done. Thank you, guys!
Another main event of the month just gone by saw the launch of the first of the monthly
DaFuMu dreaming events. We settled for the 15th of each month, a date easy to
remember, but chosen in honour of one of the greatest outpourings of peace ever, as the
world rallied against the impending war in Iraq on March 15-17, almost two years ago.
The overall focus for the monthly DaFuMus centre on the image of the mandala, and
indeed several of this month's submitted dreams echo that theme.
http://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org/dafumumonthly2.htm
And as I close I would like to come back to the subject of Star Trek, once again. While a
great fan of the first four series, I can't quite close my eyes to the fact that, futuristic
vision and idealism aside, Star Trek seems permeated with a Western world view, and
that "To boldly go where no man has gone before" only too easily can read "Fools rush in
where angels fear to tread," not least if one takes the war on terror, and the war in Iraq
into account. And yet, it represents a dream, and perhaps, if peoples of all nations and
faiths join the dream, each adding their images of hope, love and wisdom, we might one
day know a sustainable peace.
Olivia Strand
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Whitehead's Process Theory and Dreaming
Richard Catlett Wilkerson
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An illustrated version of this article is available at:
http://dreamgate.com/pomo/whitehead_and_dreamwork.htm
KEY:
AI = Adventure of Ideas
MT = Modes of Thought
PR = Process and Reality
PRr = Process and Reality, revised edition
SMW = Science and the Modern World
"Music is feeling, then, not sound" Wallace Stevens
"The basis of experience is emotional" Alfred North Whitehead
INTRODUCTION
What is the stuff of which dreams are made? Are they completely mental material, cut
off from the rest of matter by the prison house of sleep? Are dreams the final froth of a
material brain heated by neurotransmissions? Are dreams more imagination, or memory,
and what is the difference? Are dreams part of a third realm of stuff between mind and
matter, like Neoplatonic psyche/anima/imagination? If dreams are just mental, or if
dreams are psyche, how and where do they touch and influence the ideal above or matter
below?
The placement of dreams in mind or matter is part of a great debate in Western culture
that has deeply divided our thinking and is referred to as dualism, or the mind-body split.
Our science has decided to look only at the body, and developed materialism has no place
for the subject, only the object. If there is a subject, it says, it will eventually be explained
as a kind of object. Even in quantum physics where observation becomes a factor, it is
considered a problem and nuisance that we will eventually get past. This goes against the
grain of our most direct experience, which is, experience. There is something or someone
that experiences these objects which seems quite different than the objects experienced.
This intuition is so strong that the opposite view to materialism has also been developed,
that all is mind, and all objects are really object projected by our mind, or a great mind
behind our mind. The third position, the most popular, is a dualism that holds that there is
both experience and experiencer, and the object and subject are two distinctly different
things. But just how they communicate becomes problematic. How does an object leap
over to the subject? How does the subject's will shift from mental to physical?
It is with these problems that Whitehead's process theory becomes so valuable. For
Whitehead, there is no matter, no mind. Not initially, anyway. These are both errors of
abstract concreteness, where we have confused an abstract idea of something as being the
real thing itself. Science, Whitehead says, is quite valuable, and has finally seen that
matter is really a set of processes in motion, of events. But what science fails to see is that
these processes are creative, experiential processes. Rather, science reverts back to its old
notion that processes are just a new container for materials. Whitehead's process theory
proposes a radically different stuff of which the universe is made, creative experience, or
feelings. This doesn't mean that the world is just a projection of our own mind, but
rather that the universe is a process of multitudes of experiencing individuals.
While most take experience to mean clear, distinct perceptions and ideas, Whitehead sees
these, along with object consciousness, as derivative abstractions from our more basic
experience of feeling. Since our bodies are not separate from our feelings, so too the
individuated bodies of the whole world pass on their feelings. These feelings are not
interpretations of the world, but direct nonsensory passages of subjectivity, of interiority,
of what he calls occasions of experience, which can creatively synthesize and pass
themselves on as novel feeling/thought/forms to subjects in the present who experience
them anew. In fact, the experiencing subject will slip into the past and become this very
object-once-subject. What we experience is ourselves that we were a moment ago, along
with a synthesis other selves that were experiencing a moment ago.
Who Was Whitehead?
Alfred North Whitehead (18611947), was an amazing, yet humble and reserved man,
who had three separate careers. His first career was in England as a mathematician and
teacher of at Trinity College, Cambridge. His interests were more in applied mathematics
and mechanics, but his theoretical developments were impressive as well. He came up
with a universal algebra, he worked with his student Bertrand Russell on the Principia
Mathematica, which attempted to reduce all math to logic, and he developed an
alternative relativity to Einstein's, which wasn't dependent on the constant speed of light.
In 1911 he moved to the University of London and eventually became an educational
reformer and administrator. Instead of retiring in 1924, he moved his whole family to
America and became a philosopher at Harvard, where he developed his unique Process
Theory. His main biographer was Victor Lowe.
PROCESS THEORY
Whitehead's theory is a process theory. Though its popular now to assume the world is a
process rather than an object, this was really something quite new a century ago. And
Whitehead's view is still considered one of the most complex and advanced of all process
theories. Whitehead lived during a time when science was rapidly revamping its views of
about matter and energy. Einstein's convertibility equation, that matter and energy are
one and the same thing, liquefied the universe. The whole idea of hard matter melted
before us, as mountains became butter flowing out to sea. Yet the notions of matter and
substance persisted. Atoms, molecules, electrons, these all hide in them the older notions
of matter that goes bump. Processes were still seen as inert, dead matter occurring in
space. Personal experience was seen by the sciences seen as an accidental byproduct.
For Whitehead, experience is primary, and precedes matter. Matter and substance, even
forces and energy, are for him Johnny-come-lately products of our imagination that we
have made up for our convenience and we now confuse with reality. However, his
'experience' is something quite unique and separate from human consciousness, though
human consciousness is built up out of his primary experiences. For the moment, its best
to think of experience as primitive feeling, or awareness with subjectivity and value,
which may or may not reach consciousness.
Having experience as the primary unit or process of the world means for Whitehead that
the internal or subjective aspect of life is returned to the world, and not set aside as it
often is in materialism. All individuals, human or not, have experience. This is called
panpsychism (pan = all, psychism = psyche) Whitehead is more often referred to as a
panexperiencialist, as for him not everything has experience, only special units of process
called 'individuals.' An individual can accept influences from the past as a whole, unified
organism. Thus we might see individuals in many forms, as sub-atomic processes, atomic
processes, molecules, and other beings/becomings that can take in the influences of the
past as a unified whole, and give them a unique spin. Just how unique this spin may be
will vary dramatically depending on how long an experience can last for an individual.
Subatomic processes may have durations of billionth of a second, while an animal with
memories may have experiences that last many seconds or longer. The longer one can
maintain an experience, the greater the chance of giving it a unique spin. Obviously this
kind of experience that an electron has is not the same as what we could call everyday
object consciousness, where we can consciously identify tables, chairs, and people. Still,
all individuals are composed of experience and receive previous experiences and
creatively produce other novel experiences. I will consider the case of dream entities
later, but for now, one might imagine a dream character as an entity being able to have
feelings and therefore being able to synthesize unique experiences.
Whitehead calls these individual experiences 'actual entities'. They are "the final real
things of which the world is made up. . . drops of experience, complex and
interdependent" (PRr 27, 28). They are also called actual occasions, and occasions of
experience, feelings, and prehensions, terms which will be explained below. A table
would not be an individual actual entity, but rather is an aggregate of actual entities. So
the table is swarming with a multitude of experience, but not as a whole. You or I have
full body responses to the world and so have a dominate actual entity (think mind, but not
as ghostly as a mind) as well as micro swarms of cellular and atomic and subatomic
actual entities.
The next thing to know about actual entities is that they are subjects while in the
present, and become objects after they move into the past. An atom (that is, a small actual
entity at that level) in the table, for example, is in its present an experiencing individual,
but then passes into being experienced. These actual entities pass their subjective
feelings, their own unifications, directly into the next actual entity. In this way,
subjectivity as well as objectivity is inherited by the present actual entity. We don't just
get interpretable data, but we get the subjective feeling itself, primitive feelings that are
the stuff of which the whole universe is made. Since all things are made of these feelings,
we might say that we get objects directly as well, even if they are built up derivatives of
actual entities. Only present time actual entities can experience, only past actual entities
can be experienced. What they experience is other actual entities. In other words, we
experience the world here in the present, though the world experienced is just past, and
we feel it directly, its aim to continue in some particular way, and we also have some
degree of freedom in passing on something novel as we are connected to the realm of
alternatives and possibilities.
Prehension
The term prehension was first used by Whitehead in relation with causality. (SMW,
Chap 4). He was very unhappy with the notion that causality is seen as the bumping of
external objects in space. Rather, Whitehead envisioned each event directly including
within itself aspects of the events to which it responds temporally as well as spatially, and
that it will react selectively towards these events. This process of response through
creative incorporation is prehension. One might say it's the connecting of the actual with
the possible in an individual evaluation, and individual event, an actual occasion.
Though actual entities are the fundamental stuff of which the universe is made, and can't
be further divided ontologically, (can't really be divided) we can discuss conceptually the
various parts of the process in terms of prehension. Prehending comes from
apprehending, without the ape, or conscious animal mind, [Riker 1976] and refers to the
grasping/receiving/synthesizing process of actual entities or actual occasions. What is
prehended are other actual occasions, which have moved into the past and become
objects (objects for other subjects, never material objects in a void). Note the temporal
rather than spatial spin. What is at risk here in using such a word as 'object' is a fall back
into external relations, of things going bump into one another. Rather, prehension is a
process first, one that first takes an objective datum, which it subjectively unifies with
other objective datum, and finally passes a unique datum back into objectivity.
As a quick model, we might say that here in the present, we experience a whole universe
that influences us, and feel this whole thing as one unified thing. It is a multitude or
multiplicity of influence that we synthesize into one new experience. And then when our
present passes, we will pass this feeling-now-object on to all (individuals) who are
experiencing us.
The Three Factors of Prehension.
Category of Explanation XI: "That every prehension [feeling] consists of three factors:
(a) the 'subject' which is prehending, namely, the actual entity in which that prehension is
a concrete element; (b) the 'datum' which is prehended; (c) the 'subjective form' which is
*how* the subject prehends that datum." (PR pg.28)
Note that each prehension is three feelings in one. There is the feeler, the feeling being
felt and the feeling of the feelers reaction to what is felt. As Nobo notes, prehension
involves a process "in which the occasion unconsciously grasp the objective reality of
earlier occasions as efficient causes of its own existence and as determinants of it own
initial ingredient subjectivity. " (Nobo 229)
Further, a prehension may be divided into its physical and conceptual sides.
In its physical form, the prehension is a datum from a previous actual entity. It is a
"feeling of a feeling as felt elsewhere" (Leue, chap2). In this subjective form, the
physical feeling is said to be conformal, meaning the subjective feeling is passed to the
new actual entity. However, this passage or conformation is never complete. This
subjective form of physical feeling/prehension is not a sensation nor developed human
emotion, but rather more a direct feeling of a something, along with a sense of attraction
or aversion.
In its conceptual form, the prehension selects from the many alternatives of the universe
to individuate or define itself. There is no pure conceptual prehension. These alternatives,
called eternal objects, are prehended as hybrids of physical/conceptual datum. That is, the
eternal objects are not floating in space, but always come with each physical prehension.
Some interpretations of these eternal objects see them like Archetypes or Platonic forms,
but more recent interpretations point out that Whitehead did not see them this way at all
and they always need to be discussed in relation to physical feelings. Eternal objects are
not part of an ideal realm to which physical feelings conform, but rather are part of the
pure world of becoming which is never actual nor complete. I think they are better seen
as the time-space folds that alter and mutate in alternatives. That is, alternatives are
falsely seen as objects of choice, rather than forces of alteration. The process allows the
concressing of conceptual feeling to experiment with relevant alterations before
actualizing. The process intuits into and experiments with the realm of possibility and
selects the most relevant through valuing up or down. Dreamers often notice this in
semi-lucid dreams where they are following their own story along in a dream narrative
(I'm headed down to the river with a fishing pole to get some fish.) but notice side
alternatives cropping up along the way (No, I'm not really going fishing, I'm going to get
the boots I left. No, not the boots, the car I parked.). The final recalled dream will have a
particular actual narrative, but these alternatives surround it at every turn. One gets the
sense in these dreams that while it seems like we are revising the storyline, the more
accurate description of what is happening is that the actual final storyline depends and
rests on these alternatives or alternating forces.
Finally, the completed actual occasion has an aim. These aims are experienced by the
next actual occasion as causes, or as Whitehead calls them, efficient causes. These aims
must be addressed, but don't completely determine the actual occasion. Since this aim is
the final cause of an actual entity, we might say that the feeling process is one of taking
account of the universe and synthesizing a subjective purpose that is passed on.
And so the stuff of which the universe is made is a creaturely process, multiplicities of
entities prehending the universe and carrying the universe forward in creative droplets of
experience. There may be groups of actual occasions within larger actual occasions, as
with the subatomic particles in an atom, the atoms in a molecule the molecules within a
human being, a human within a society and societies within worlds.
How Does This Make Any Difference?
Sensory and Nonsensory Perception
Sensory perception is derivative from two earlier modes of experience, 1. perception in
the mode of causal efficacy (physical prehension in the language of perception) , and 2.
perception in the mode of presentational immediacy (sense-like data).
Perception in the mode of causal efficacy is nonsensory, primitive feeling directly of the
world. Whitehead interpreter, David Ray Griffin, suggests that we, as experiencing actual
entities, get this directly from our brain, almost in a psychokinetic way, and thus from the
nervous system of our whole body. However it is, it is direct, thus a subjective
perception, pre-sensory, a feeling. "In prehending my body, for example, I prehend some
of its parts as causally efficacious for my own experience. " [Griffin, World Knot,
Pg.133] That is, we directly get the world as being important in the flow of causal
influence. This includes pleasures and pains, but also a priori categories and external
sensory perception. Extrasensory perception takes on a new meaning as well, as direct
nonsensory perception needed be limited by traditional views of causality being the
bumping up of material objects and their wave patterns. (see Griffin, Archetypal Process
and essays by Dave Pleasants). Whitehead cites immediate memory as an example of
nonsensual perception. Not long term memory, which is filled in with abstractions, but
something more like the memory that allows me to not forget the point as I complete this
sentence. It is the immediate visceral grasp of the world.
Perception in the mode of presentational immediacy is similar to sense data and more
derivative than casual efficacy. Visually it would include space, shape and colors. We
know we see yellow, but not why or from whence it came. Yet it defines an area that
separates it from the rest of our visual field.
Sensory perception combines casual efficacy and presentational immediacy, and might be
termed presentation in the mode of symbolic reference. If we say, "Oh, that's the yellow
sun." then we may or may not be correct. It might be something else, and it might be we
are imagining it rather than seeing it. I can't be wrong that I saw or imagined yellow, and
that I had direct primitive feelings about it, but the symbolic mode introduces interpretive
possibilities and errors.
Thus, while only more complex creatures may have presentational immediacy and
symbolic reference, all individuals, down to subatomic particles, perceive in the mode of
causal efficiency. That is, from the most complex to the simplest organism, there is
emotional, appetitive, purposive experience.
There is no reason not to extend this to imaginal creatures as well. In dreams, the debate
as to whether our dream characters are really projections of our selves or autonomous
creatures often arises. The question in process theory then becomes somewhat different.
Its doesn't matter whether our dream entities are projections or independent residents, but
rather what actual entities are operative and dominate. That is, the question becomes
whether these entities can feel and experience. If they can, then they are as 'real' as any
other actual entity in the universe. How long they exist, whether or not they disappear
when we wake up or go on living in their own dimensions is irrelevant. Experiences of
subatomic particles may be counted in billionths of a second. The relevant question is
just as with other societies, how to best help people fulfill their destinies and actualize
their potentials.
Panpsychism, Again
There is a radical difference in the way we treat objects vs. subject in dreamwork, but
these differences all shift when we see the dream as the carrier and unique synthesizer of
experience.
Of course, one wonders what evidence might exist for experience existing in non-living
individuals in nature. The basic argument goes as follows; we never encounter in life a
element or piece of life that is just hanging around in the void, separate from experience.
Even a dream of a void with
nothing, if reported, was experienced. Speculations of
objects located spatially beyond experience must all be speculated about from experience.
We cannot think about relations without experience. We can deny this aspect of the
relation (I'm imagining a void without anyone imagining it) but it remains in every
equation of relation. For Whitehead, it follows that instead of assuming that the rest of
the world besides ourselves *don't* experience, that it is a more sane assumption to
understand that all individuals *do* have experience, no matter how primitive, and that
the world is their relation to one another.
What is What
The fallacy of misplaced concreteness, which was discussed above as when one confuses
the processes of the world with more derivative objects, is essential to Whitehead's
argument. Or more accurately, this view surrounds the issues that process theory
addresses. The only truly fundamental items of the universe are experiences, actual
occasions. Notions of force, atoms, photons, electrons and the like are abstract entities
that we have created to understand the world, and not parts of the fundamental structure
of the world. And for Whitehead, problematic units as well, since they describe realty
without reference to experience. It may serve us to not confuse actual entities and the
societies they produce with the multitude of objects void of experience with which we
have inhabited our world. In dreamwork, this is somewhat more difficult on one side and
yet simple on the other. Tables, windows and other aggregate objects in waking life,
unable as wholes to respond with any creative unity, may be actual entities in our
dreams, capable of very create feelings. On the other hand, dreamworkers are very aware
that dreams are already experience.
Mind-Body Dualism
Because actual entities are subjects in the present, objects in the past, the mind-body issue
is dramatically shifted. Instead of wondering how mind stuff over here gets connected
with body stuff over there, in process theory, everything is mind in present, and body in
the past. The division is not here and there, but now and then. Again, dreamworkers are
acutely aware of how the present feeling manifests as a reality in the next moment that
can be experienced. Also, dreamworkers are not surprised by dreams enduring beyond
sleep in the form of complex images, thoughts and feelings. By focusing on these dreams,
the relevancy of their actual occasions allows them to connect directly with life, other
dreamers, and the universe.
GLOSSARY
------------------
Actual occasion: an enduring moment of experience, a unifying process, a feeling. Also
called an actual entity, and sometimes just called feeling, where something is felt, and felt
with affective tone.
Concrescence: the process by which actual entities prehend other actual entities and then
form new occasions. Kline suggests 'concrescence' to mean the internal adventure of
becoming of the final real things, and 'concretum' to refer to the objectified actual
occasion, the past product of a present concrescent process.
Causal Efficacy: The direct, nonsensual prehension of the past.
"Sympathy, that is, feeling the feeling in another and feeling conformally with another"
(PRr 246). Perception in the mode of causal efficacy is a vague but powerful emotion.
" . . . in the silence, the irresistible causal efficacy of nature presses itself upon us . . . the
inflow into ourselves of feelings from enveloping nature overwhelms us" (PRr 267). It is
"our general sense of existence, as one item among others, in an efficacious actual world"
(PRr 271).
Eternal Objects: Conceptual objects (rather than subjects) in a state of potentiality. They
enter into the actual entity becoming concrete without themselves being actual. Eternal
objects (alternative non-actuals) enter into the concrescence of an actual entity through
valuation, as a hierarchy. Alternatives are selected, some as more relevant than others,
but to become actual, the occasion must become definite. "Potentiality becomes reality;
and yet retains its message of alternatives which the actual entity has avoided" (PRr 226).
Prehension: The way a feeling or actual occasion grasps the world, at the same time, as
an object and a subjective feeling. "The word perceive is, in our common usage, shot
through and through with the notion of cognitive apprehension. So is the word
apprehension, even with the adjective cognitive omitted. I will use the word prehension
for uncognitive apprehension: by this I mean apprehension which may or may not be
cognitive."SMW., p. l0l.
REFERENCES
Easton, T and Keeton, H. (2004). Physics and Whitehead: Quantum, Process, and
Experience. State University of New York Press: Albany, NY.
Griffin, David Ray (1998). Unsnarling the World-Knot: consciousness, Freedom and the
Mind-Body problem. University of California Press: Berkeley.
Griffin, David Ray (1989). Archetypal Process: Self and Divine In Whitehead, Jung and
Hillman. Northwestern University Press: Evanston, IL.
Lowe, Victor, (1990) Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and His Work : Volume I & II
Johns Hopkins University: Princeton, NJ.
Leue, William Hendrichs (2004). Metaphysical Foundations for a Theory of Value in the
Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Available online at:
http://www.thoughtsnmemories.net/whitehead2c.htm
Nobo, Jorge Luis (2004). Whitehead and the Quantum Experience. In Easton, T and
Keeton, H. (2004). Physics and Whitehead: Quantum, Process, and Experience. State
University of New York Press: Albany, NY.
Pleasants, David (2002). Panpsychism, Intersubjectivity and the Nature of Time.
Available online at:
http://www.geocities.com/dave_pleasants/Panpsychism_and_Intersubjectivity.html
Pleasants, David (2003). Transtemporal dreaming: intersubjectivity, precognition, and the
physics of time. Presentation at the 2003 Berkeley Conference of the International
Association for the Study of Dreams. Available online at:
http://www.asdreams.org/2003/abstracts/pleasants.htm
Pleasants, David (2003). Precognitive Dreaming and the Physics of Time. Presentation at
the 2003 IASD PsiberDreaming Conference. Online, passwords needed.
http://www.asdreams.org/psi2003/psiboard/papers/david_pleasants001.htm
Riker, John (1976). Non-Deistic Process Theory of Alfred North Whitehead. Class notes
from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1978). Process and Reality ,Revised Edition. [Edited by David
Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne], The Free Press: New York, New York.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1933/67) Adventures of Ideas,: Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge, MA. Free Press edition, 1967.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1938/1968). Modes of Thought. The Macmillan Co., New
York. Free-Press edition, 1968.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1929). Process and Reality,, The Macmillan Co., New York
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Susan Sontag A Farwell Dream
By Richard Wilkerson
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I wanted to mention her here due to two of her less well know books. The main one was
The Benefactor, a story where a person lived their life *for* their dreams. That is, they
would go around and do things to see how they impacted their dreams, a kind of reversal
of the way interpretive types approach dreams, as ways of viewing waking life.
I also wanted to mention her Against Interpretation, which both irritated and inspired me.
While not about dream interpretation, her analysis of intepretation in the arts reveals the
power dynamics (the shadow side) of interpretation that can slip into many kinds of
interpretive enterprises.
"... I don't mean interpretation in the broadest sense, the sense in which Nietzsche
(rightly) says, 'There are no facts, only interpretations.' By interpretation, I mean here a
conscious act of the mind which illustrates a certain code, certain 'rules' of interpretation.
"
Though not happy with the impositions of ancient forms of interpretation, she is even
harder on contemporary styles:
"Interpretation in our own time, however, is even more complex. For the contemporary
zeal for the project of interpretation is often prompted not by piety toward the
troublesome text (which may conceal an aggression), but by an open aggressiveness, an
overt contempt for appearances. The old style of interpretation was insistent, but
respectful; it erected another meaning on top of the literal one. The modern style of
interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it digs "behind" the text, to find a
sub-text which is the true one."
"It is always the case that interpretation of this type indicates a dissatisfaction (conscious
or unconscious) with the work, a wish to replace it by something else. "
"Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of
items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a
mental scheme of categories. "
"Proust, Joyce, Faulkner, Rilke, Lawrence, Gide . . . one could go on citing author after
author; the list is endless of those around whom thick encrustations of interpretation have
taken hold. But it should be noted that interpretation is not simply the compliment that
mediocrity pays to genius. It is, indeed, the modern way of understanding something, and
is applied to works of every quality. "
How then, does she envision our encounter with dreams or other works of art? "
"What kind of criticism, of commentary on the arts, is desirable today? For I am not
saying that works of art are ineffable, that they cannot be described or paraphrased. They
can be. The question is how. What would criticism look like that would serve the work of
art, not usurp its place? "
Susan could have easily said what Oscar Wilde said "It is only shallow people who do
not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."
"What is needed, first, is more attention to form in art. If excessive stress on content
provokes the arrogance of interpretation, more extended and more thorough descriptions
of form would silence. What is needed is a vocabulary - a descriptive, rather than
prescriptive, vocabulary - for forms. The best criticism, and it is uncommon, is of this
sort that dissolves considerations of content into those of form. "
"Equally valuable would be acts of criticism which would supply a really accurate, sharp,
loving description of the appearance of a work of art. "
Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds
from there. This cannot be taken for granted, now. Think of the sheer multiplication of
works of art available to every one of us, superadded to the conflicting tastes and odors
and sights of the urban environment that bombard our senses. Ours is a culture based on
excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory
experience. All the conditions of modern life - its material plenitude, its sheer
crowdedness - conjoin to dull our sensory faculties. And it is in the light of the condition
of our senses, our capacities (rather than those of another age), that the task of the critic
must be assessed. "
"What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear
more, to feel more."
"Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to
squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back
content so that we can see the thing at all".
"The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy,
our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should
be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it
means."
"In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art. "
Farewell, Susan Sontag. I will miss you irritating and prodding me on to new ground,
higher ground, groundless depths.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Dream Section is edited by Kat Peters-Midland
_
If you want to send in dreams, enter them at
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple
Dream title: none
Dream date: not given
Dreamer name: dreamer
Dream text: I dreamed that a guy that I still have a crush on died. My husband was there
and his whole family was too, but they didn't say anything. All I know is that I cried in
front of my husband and his entire family. I was saying that I loved him and why did
they have take him away and that I loved him so much.
Dream comments: I'm married and I want to know, what does this dream mean?
Dream title: none
Dream date: 10/9/04
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I saw walking along a sidewalk with my boyfriend in broad daylight. I fell
into a huge bottomless pit and fell for a while. Then I landed on a sidewalk at a night
time scene.
Dream comments: none
Dream title: hitting
Dream date: 9/11/2004
Dreamer name: mouse
Dream text: I went up to my sister, who was leaning against a car in my parents'
driveway, and proceeded to fist her in the face. One loud smack was heard. I grabbed her
and we hugged, not knowing if to cry or not - we just held each other. There was no
blood or anything. I could see me holding her, but not her face. After hitting her in the
face she asked why I did it, I answered its just the way it has to be. Then the hugging in
silence.
Dream comments: The loud noise from the smack sort of woke me and that's the only
thing I can still hear in my head.
Dream title: Snakes
Dream date: 12/03
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I am coming out of a house and there are a lot of people standing around. I
start walking at the end of walkway and I notice that there are snakes biting me. Not just
one or two - there are hundreds of them biting me on my ankle.
Dream comments: I have this dream about four to six times a year.
I don't know what it means.
Dream title: heating
Dream date: 11-16-04
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I have always been having dreams lately that my husband is constantly
cheating on me.
Dream comments: I don't know what it means I wake up crying all the time and mad at
my husband why do these mean and why do I have them all of the time?
Dream title: End of World #1
Dream date: October
Dreamer name: SM
Dream text: I was innocent and naïve, just playing in the snow plowed mound just above
the bridges' corner. It was the middle of winter. I thought I was safe in all my layers of
clothing. All the sudden this yellowish steam comes from the snow as it gets wet. Steam -
in the middle of winter. That cannot be good. And it wasn't. Everything started melting.
Heat was coming up from under the iced over lake. What about the whole city.
That's when "we" (I don't know who "we" were), made a group agreement and we just
knew that it was the end of the world.
My friend departs and I am running down the stairs of some school. They are cement and
hard stairs but they are hot to my feet in the middle of winter. The school appears to feel
as if it was in Japan or some Asian country where everything seems to be under this
unnatural and quiet control. I am rushing out of the building and mom and I head north. I
do not know where Steven was at this time. But we go anyway. As mom fills the car with
gas I am terrified watching the huge city across the little lake smoke. The city literally
gave off this black smoke and I could see the color of the flames consuming a good
quantity of something. It is dying.
As for us, we will soon but we are heading north anyway. Even though it is obvious that
the whole earth will be destroyed very soon maybe keeping you alive might somehow
make things a little bit better. There are so many cars..... We are all going north. But we
know what is going to happen. Here in Michigan there is much snow. The glaciers will
surely melt and based on how fast that snow was melting we will be drowning going
north and being burned alive or cooked by the boiling water that once resembled a frozen
lake if we stay.
During this crisis we were silly. We stopped to look at some famous Canadian Tree or
something. But then again we knew we were kind of delaying the inevitable and just
pretending that it's not really going to happen. Then when we do start driving north again
we stop shortly after. In the middle of dying we are hungry enough to stop at the car
along side of the road that is holding up his trunk and selling much food and supplies
from inside his car. We are buying food and flashlights as if we were going to last that
long.
Dream comments: Several days after having this dream my best friend and cousin both
suddenly left to different ends of the country within four days of each other. I like to
think it may have been a warning that massive pain and suffering was soon to be endured.
Dream title: Only one tooth this time.
Dream date: 11/17/04
Dreamer name: SM
Dream text: I was forced to wear this retainer inside my mouth. But the funny thing was
that I was already suffering with braces on. So the retainers' metal wires wrapped
themselves painfully around my braces. Both top and bottom too. It was very slow to put
on and hard to sit trough.
I was on some secondary mission as well. I was doing two things at once because even
although I was concentrating on what was going on in my mouth I was also on a journey
walking and going all over the place.
Just then it happened. This time I actually saw it happen. It was just slowly slipping
down. Before, I had never seen my teeth fall out. The braces weren't there either. The first
time two teeth fell and it was horrible. Then two days later all my teeth fell out and I was
busy scrambling on the floor looking for them. Frantically I searched as if finding them
would fix the problem. I didn't know how it had happened. That was about six months
ago and now only one tooth fell out and it was like nothing.
Dream comments: I think this came to me because over time hard hits tend to hurt less.
We become colder and bitterly attempt disconnecting us from this worlds' society. An
oyster makes a pearl to cover up the pain but the problem never goes away.
Dream title: headless lady
Dream date: 2002
Dreamer name: blue
Dream text: I was cleaning the mirror inside a lady's room and saw myself wearing my
uniform but headless. I woke up grasping my breath.
Dream comments: While having a 3 hour break, I went to my room and had a short nap. I
had this terrifying dream. After 2 months I was terminated. I was working in a luxury
ship. Is my termination related to my dream? They say it's a blessing that I was
terminated because my dream means DEATH. Is these true? Need help.
Dream title:
Dream date: 11/18/04
Dreamer name: jb
Dream text: My friends and I were on a bridge and the bridge was bending over, but not
breaking. We got so close to the water without falling in that we could literally taste it.
We could reach our hands down and touch it. But the bridge was not broken it was just
bending over. And it was a long bridge.
Dream comments: none
Dream title:
Dream date: 11/18/04
Dreamer name: jb
Dream text: This dream was about a bridge too. My friends were jumping off a bridge to
go swimming. I was down by the side, feeling as if something was wrong. It started to
rain, and as I looked down in the water there were sharks that just appeared. I yelled to
Travis not to jump "Travis no, stop don't" but he didn't hear me. He and his friend were
wrestling and he falls in the water. The sharks didn't eat him but nibbled a little. So I ran
on to the bridge and it became very wobbly. There was a kind of porch thing in the
middle of the bridge, maybe a foot long. A small fence was dividing the porch and the
bridge. It began to rain even harder like a storm. I was so frightened to be on that bridge.
I couldn't get off the porch thing. somebody out of the middle of know were came
swooped me up, ran to the end of the bridge with me, to where I was before and threw me
there was a small piece of a fence that was broken on the ground were he threw me. My
face hit the fence and I had the imprint of the fence on my face. I couldn't see, but it
stung. Then I see an image coming towards me. Now I'm not married but I ask that
image if it is my husband. They respond yes. I ran towards him. I hear in the woods
behind me a noise it's a baby bear. I ran onto the bridge and a small door appeared,
separating the bridge and the wood. A bigger bear came and there was not way to hold
the broken door closed. My husband took off and I said wait "you're my husband your
supposed to protect me." So I pulled him toward me and threw him towards the broken
door. And I ran.
Dream title: none
Dream date: 11/18/04
Dreamer name: J
Dream text: I had a dream that I was in a train in a black tunnel. When we resurfaced
from the tunnel there was a very large hill on the left side of the tunnel and a field on the
right. The sky was blue and clear and we were coming close to a two-story farm-style
white house that was old and drab. The next thing that happened was there was a large
airplane, gun-metal gray, and it started to spin. It looked more like a rocket with boosters
than an airliner. It dove straight down behind the house, resurfaced and dove again. The
people in the plane could see flames bursting out behind the house and over the hill. The
whole time, the train seemed to be completely still! The next thing I knew, the plane
came sliding out over the hill and landed right on our train! The train didn't burn and no
one was hurt, but the tip of the plane was next to my face, raging in flames. I could still
see the flames when I opened my eyes!
Dream comments: I have no idea what this means.
Dream title: Dog dream
Dream date: 18 Nov 2004
Dreamer name: MN
Dream text: I was in a park with my partner and two dogs, the park had large rolling hills.
I recently just got a new dog which means I now have two, in the dream the dogs were
both identical but their personalities were totally different just like in real life one being
full of life and the other just plodding along. In the dream I remember going down a lane
after one of the dogs and theirs was a large wall I got the feeling like the dog wanted to
get over the wall. But I pulled her back the dream skips back to the park and I'm chasing
the mad dog all over the park down a large hill. There's a lake and I get the feeling that I
have to get away because people are there. Then I'm in a car driving home in a car with
my partner and we get a flat. My partner tells me it's a flat. Then we get a second flat
but it's a slow puncture, then we get a third flat, and I ask if we're ever going to get there.
Then we pull up to a drive and we get out and knock on a door someone opens it and the
dream ends
Dream comments: none.
Dream title: none
Dream date: none given
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I have dreams of my old boyfriend talking and kissing. Dream comments: In
reality we lately haven't talked or anything.
What does this mean because I dreamt about him a whole week.
Dream title: The swimming pools
Dream date: 11/19/04
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I was in the swimming baths. One pool was dirty and the people in it were
horrible, pushing and shoving each other. But the sun was shining over the pool and it
was warm. The other pool was cold had no sunshine in the shade; however it was clean
and new. The people in the pool we nice and friendly. I went in both pools but could not
decide which pool to stay in. I wanted to keep warm, but the warm pool was dirty.
Dream comments: I thought it meant two situations in my life. One warm and dirty and
one cold and new, if that makes sense.
Dream title: a baby
Dream date: 5 days in a row
Dreamer name: C
Dream text: I've been having a lot of dreams where I have a baby or I'm taking care of a
baby (but most often the baby is mine). So this baby is mine and I love this baby but all
of a sudden (and this happens in all of this dreams) my baby turns into a doll.
Dream comments: It's really freaking me out what does this me?
Dream title: strange
Dream date: this morning
Dreamer name: W
Dream text: pressure of a saw on my face, I can't see and no blood. Then I woke up.
Dream comments: I was just screaming then I woke up
Dream title: The meeting.
Dream date: Dec 3, 2004
Dreamer name: displeasedidealist
Dream text: in the dream, I am at a Walmart type store, as I am shopping (for what, I
can't remember). I meet this girl whom I've known for years. As soon as I see her, I hear
someone saying "everyone needs to get out!" We go outside the store, where everyone is
climbing up the walls, to the top of the store. We follow all these people, and as soon as
we get to the top, the sky begins changing colors from blue to red to green, and then
combinations of the three. It was like aurora-borealis, except in the early evening, and all
over the sky. I said "I hope I get to see you again", and then woke up.
Dream comments: The conclusion to this dream comes a week after I had it. As I am in
the local mall shopping for Christmas presents for my son, the same girl from my dream
comes in. we exchange a glance, but say nothing at all. I pay for the gifts I bought, leave,
and haven't seen her since.
Hey guys, you are doing a really cool thing here. I've wanted to share this dream with, I
guess you'd say, a "professional" for sometime. I don't know if you have ever heard of
"Coast-to-Coast am with George Noory", but I shared it with him live on his radio show,
and he thought I probably should've spoken to the girl in my dreams when I saw her.
I apologize for any grammatical mistakes, and I ask you to please publish this dream.
Dream title: none
Dream date: none given
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: about dead family members.
Dream comments: none
Dream title: conversation with a friend
Dream date: 8/27/04
Dreamer name: maidenangel42083
Dream text: I dreamt that my friend, Matt was sitting on a couch and we started to talk. I
hugged him in the beginning and then I told him this has to be a dream because you're
dead, so this isn't really real. He told me yeah, I was dreaming but that he wanted to
hang out with me for a little while. We carried on for a while just talking about stuff but I
really don't remember what. At the end I told him "well I gotta go and he said yeah me
too, that he was going to help his parents with selling their house. I hugged him goodbye
and then I immediately woke up.
Dream comments: My childhood friend Matt killed himself in January of this year. He
was very close to me and I took his death very hard. The house his parents are selling is
the one he killed himself in, what do you think this all meant?
Dream title: clear water
Dream date: last night
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I was sailing a canoe boat swam in the clear water. Suddenly it turned into
dense water. I swam and I saw thereafter how clear the water was.
Dream comments:
Dream title: Don't tell
Dream date: 28/11/04
Dreamer name: Charlie
Dream text: I had a dream where my boyfriend came round and he was upset and said
"why didn't you tell me?" He said someone at school had told him I was leaving for
England in 7 months and he was so sad.
Dream comments: Truth is in 7 months I do have plans to leave to go back to England
and haven't told him. What does this mean?
Dream title: Friend to Boyfriend
Dream date: 29/11/04
Dreamer name: Jen
Dream text: I had a dream about my co-worker kissing me at work.
Dream comments: My co-worker has become a good friend and I talk to him about the
probs me and my boyfriend have but lately my boyfriend has completely changed and I
feel bad for feeling this way towards my co-worker
Dream title: none
Dream date: none given
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I had a dream that someone (a female) ate my child who is 4 years old).
Dream comments:
Dream title:
Dream date: 11/30/2004
Dreamer name: confused
Dream text: My dream began with me receiving a phone call from a strange man. He
was trying to get a date with me. I was made to believe that my nephew had given him
my phone number because he was calling from my nephew's mother's (my sister) cellular
phone. Our conversation was long because I was trying to get him to put my nephew on
the phone because I wanted to know why he had my sister's phone. My sister and my
other family members were in my house with me and they were playing cards. I tried to
tell them it was something wrong but they would just say "oh, he's fine". I kept calling
the number back and calling my nephew's cell phone. The man answered his phone and
I disguised my voice to get information out of him. When I was talking to him I just
started to see a lot of dogs that were at the man's house which is where my nephew was
supposed to be. There was another man who was being attacked by the dogs. He was
letting them attack him (I guess because he felt guilty). A woman came up to that man
and slapped him and demanded to know what happened to my nephew. I saw the dogs
going into the woods and then I woke up.
Dream comments: none
Dream title: none given
Dream date: 11/29/04
Dreamer name: Db
Dream text: I was on a plane with my best friend and I kept looking at the window. It
seemed like we weren't moving at all. Finally it was time to land and we began to
descend. Next thing I remember is hearing someone with panic in their voice, speaking in
terms I do not understand, having to do with the plane. After that I notice that we are
going to land on a street, one very close to my old high school. I remember holding on to
my friend's back and watching the people in the street panic. Next thing I realize I am on
the ground and someone tells me that they have to land vertically. The plane comes out of
the sky and lands vertically upright and I run to open the door. An old high school teacher
was on the ground and told me I couldn't run to the plane but I did anyway. As I ran over
to the plane, and I ripped down the buttons of my high school teacher's shirt in the back.
My friends then began to hop out the plane. However, the friend I took out wasn't the one
who was on the plane with me. He got out and I found a beer on the floor and I remember
feeling guilty for taking it instead of giving it to him. He asked for a Jack and Coke
though and my guilt went away. The next thing I remember was going over to my friend
who was originally on the plane with me. He was sitting on the hood of a car and I could
tell he was about to cry. The last thing I remember was wondering why the plane was not
falling over and than it began to, however, the houses it landed on were not breaking
Dream comments: Why were my friends in the dream? Why was I off the plane without
any explanation? The part with the ripping of the shirt as the plane was standing upright?
Dream title: snakes
Dream date: 11/21/04
Dreamer name: dreamweeper
Dream text: I was walking on the river bank and saw three snakes. One was huge in front
of a bar, the other was medium a little farther down from the other, and a small one
sunning by the water. They were rattle- snakes of some kind. I was scared of the biggest
snake because it was running for me. So I turned my back and ran and I came upon the
medium-sized snake which watched me slowly back away from him. A man I don't know
or recognize jerks me away from the snake and the snake bites me on my forearm. I could
feel the venom going up my arm and slowly through me body. The rest of the dream I
continued to try to find help through the crowd of people. Now one could hear or speak
to me. They only looked and turned away, even the man that pulled me away from the
snake. Eventually I pulled my belt off and put it around my arm. I never made it to the
hospital or found any other form of help then I woke up scared.
Dream comments: this dream was so real. Towards the end I felt like I was the girl off of
Resident evil when she was looking around and everything was empty. The dream was
black and white
Dream title: Forest of Choice
Dream date: 12-1-2004
Dreamer name: wanderer
Dream text: I'm wandering through a forest on foot, in low coastal mountains
between ocean (where I grew up) and inland valley (where I've lived mostly since). I
arrive at a rundown resort of some kind, where there s only a 30-something woman and
her young son. She wants me to stay and help her fix up the place, at least for one night.
But I realize I don't want to be there and I set out on foot toward the valley below. After I
walk for awhile, I see an absolutely straight and very wide highway going down to the
valley and out of sight into the distance. First I see it on the terrain and next as on a map,
with its five lanes outlined. Then it becomes very bold black and much wider than it
would typically be on a map. It seems very much laid out for me. Yet, rather than follow
it, I return to the hills and forest. But I still don t want to be there, and I'm thinking of
going the other direction toward the coast and my former home.
Dream comments: It seems a time of decision and that a part of me knows there's a wide
and obvious path to follow, while another part still longs for the apparent 'comfort' of
familiarity.
Dream title: Someone attempting to kill me
Dream date: December 1, 2004
Dreamer name: cal
Dream text: Hi, I'm suffering from cancer and I often dream someone is attempting to kill
me...That someone is often felt around...I feel he's tied my hands and legs while I'm
sleeping and is stabbing a knife in my right eye.
Dream comments: What could this mean? I know I might not be surviving too long but
what could this mean? I feel some one around always...does it have anything to do with
spirits?
Dream title: none
Dream date: none given
Dreamer name: EK
Dream text: I've been having these really scary dreams lately, in my dreams I'm laying
dead in a coffin and the people attending my funeral are singing my favorite church
songs.
Dream comments: I've had this dream more than once, what does it mean?
Dream title: Boyfriend
Dream date: 10/13/2004
Dreamer name: R
Dream text: I had dream that I was at a party and guy from my school and my boyfriend
were at the same party. My boyfriend was in the other room so I started talking to the guy
from school. I told him that I thought my boyfriend was cheating on me, and he said
probably. So I asked my boyfriend if he cheated on me. He said yes and laughed in my
face.
Dream comments: This dream freaked me out
Dream title: heart
Dream date: 11/10/04
Dreamer name: dinky
Dream text: I always have a dream where this gorgeous guy wants me, but I tell him no.
He follows me around and tries to hold my hand and kisses me. Sometimes I'll see my
boyfriend but he just stares at me.
Dream comments: My boyfriend and I have been dating for 2 years, but I don't
understand why it bothers me.
Dream title: Hiding in locked room
Dream date: 12/8/04
Dreamer name: sass
Dream text: I'm in a church, but really was a work office. I wanted to go in my office &
not be bothered. I kept seeing the door locked.
Dream comments: none
Dream title: Lost
Dream date: 11-30-04
Dreamer name: Amb
Dream text: I had a dream that I was a old black man in a school from like the 1800's or
something and I was wearing overalls. Then everything just went crazy and there were
gunshots and there were young kids from the school running outside. I ran to the edge of
the main road from the school and just stood there and I could see myself standing there
beside the kids who came out of the school. Even though the person I was looking at was
not me, I just knew that that was me in this dream. It was weird.
Dream comments: none
Dream title: boat
Dream date: November 2004
Dreamer name: jh
Dream text: I was riding in a boat with I think 15-20 persons in it... we are in a river....
Dream comments: what does my dream mean???
Dream title: snake
Dream date: 12-08-2004
Dreamer name: king
Dream text: I had a dream that I was eating my pet snake alive. I started by the tail and
when about to finish his head was still moving in my mouth.
Dream comments: his tongue was moving, I guess its because I just finish watching my
snake eat a rodent.
Dream title: snake
Dream date: snake
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I dream of me sleeping with the bunch of snake hugging me.
Dream comments:
Dream title: 2005 premonition?
Dream date: June 2001
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: In my dream I realized that I was dreaming. I was excited about having a
lucid dream and asked my subconscious what was going to happen in the future. It
showed me a deserted playground with a broken hobby horse. I felt cold dread and asked
it when this was going to happen. It said Sept 25th. So, of course, the next thing I asked
was "what year?" It answered "Sunday".
Dream comments: 2005 is the first year that Sept 25th falls on a Sunday since I had that
dream. I have had premonitions about things in the past that have come true but not in
dream form. Just intense knowings...
-------------------- END ISSUE -----------------
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