Author: quantumdreamer

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Context and Scale

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People can be more than a little blinkered when it comes to looking outside of their own context, their own world. At the moment we have an American president viewing everything through the idealised spectacles of what America once was and not giving a shit how the rest of the world views them. If he is trying to sell us the American dream he is failing, all that once was good about Americana is getting tarnished. That old man is doing harm to the image of US of A, he is bad marketing PR for USA plc. He is teaching everyone else to avoid relying on them and depending on them, to make relationships elsewhere. He is reducing their importance.

Maybe he is a visionary. I think he is stuck in some faux-sepia image of a Great America. Times have changed. He is trying to raise it from the dead. Without tariffs “capitalist” America is no longer competitive commercially.

Let’s remake “The Bird Man of Alcatraz”.

Hindsight is often 20:20 but people can be {willingly} blinded if there is something in it for them. With a modern context this image differs from when it was taken.

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People seeking kudos and fame associate with those who might purvey that for them. The single minded can neglect hazard warning lights.

People can get very caught up in their own world unaware that there is a much wider context and a scale which they are completely oblivious of. Their own little world, the relationships and socio-political pecking order are tantamount; the border and boundaries of universe are defined. Like a particle in a box only certain behaviour wavefunctions are allowed. They are confined. It rarely occurs that to an outside eye they might look a bit odd.

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They can be surprised if you even suggest that there is something outside of their “world”.

For quite a while I was closeted in UK science academia and unaware of how the outside world thought and did. Aside from the jibes of my father, “those who can, do, those who can’t, teach!”, I had a fairly naïve view of business.

I’ll suggest that my worlds now extend way beyond that microclimate and that I am appreciative of a much wider set of contexts than I once was. I have a sense of scale which surpasses my mundane existence as a “poor” arthritic retired person.

I know that the previous post in this blog if taken seriously, by those whose world to which it pertains, is a very big deal if true. If I am just a nut job and a dreamer then it is of no import. In one context big, in another irrelevant. Context matters.

There is no way you can advise, warn or help an “omniscient” being to learn, to see a wider perspective. By definition those who think they know a lot are the least willing to accept any new stuff outside of their world, their assimilation of reality. Caught in mundane socio-political advancement games they do not know what harm they are doing to themselves. What karma they are making.

And nobody can help them see. This is because they do not want to see, they already know best.

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If for example you were to find yourself interacting with a Bodhisattva of a certain degree. You could have no idea of the context in which you are interacting nor of the scale of implication of your actions. Chances are you would try to shoe-horn your interaction into your customary context or set of contexts.

I might be able to still have a conversation for a while within the confines of an academic context world-view. I can borrow a trailer from the farm store and bring my sit on tractor-mower to them for repair, highlighting the problem areas on an engineering diagram. I have learned {partially} a new context. The scale of a two acre garden was way bigger than I had first anticipated. I know now.

We all of us learn {hopefully}. A good starting point is to imagine that there are very many things outside of our preferred and well used, dog-eared contexts.

Someone not so long ago told me that the Guardians of the Race did not exist, that there was no such thing as the spiritual hierarchy. He was adamant and insistent.

Clearly it was I, as is so often the case, who is/was in need of education…

My Five Buddhist Incarnations – Dreaming

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In around 2003 whilst living in London and working as a lecturer in Physical Chemistry at Imperial College in London I started having waking visions of myself dressed as a Buddhist monk / priest. These visions overlaid normal day to day reality and I was able to lecture to a theatre full of ~one hundred students on chemical reaction kinetics or in smaller groups, chemical applications of group theory, whilst these visions were resident. They persisted on the crowded Victoria Line tube trains. I had repeat visions of om mane padme hum tattooed in Sanskrit on my inner forearms. Accompanying these images was/is the sensation of tattoo. These visions lasted on and on for over a year.

I did not mention this to anyone because I thought it would not go down well in the Chemistry department. I thought human resources might not appreciate this and occupational health might be consulted.

I however was pretty sure that this was past life recall.

Obviously, it is impossible to prove scientifically, that any past life recall is real. At best there can be what the courts call, circumstantial evidence. Dreaming comprises some of this kind of evidence.

In 2009 I had a series of visionary telepathic conversations, early in the morning, walking in the woods near Tring with the master Djwhal Kuhl. He told me of five of my previous lives, two of which were Buddhist. He said that I had been a very close disciple of Siddartha.

The dream yesterday has added Nāgārjuna to the list of possible life-candidates.

Irrespective of accuracy or otherwise the theme of scholasticism and scholar runs through all the/my putative incarnations as does the theme of entrepreneurship. I am “on” the second ray, of the Elephant dreaming class and conditioned by love-wisdom, the teaching ray.

One dream suggests that I was Bakula a close disciple of Siddartha who came late to the path after a scholarly life.

Yesterday’s dream suggests some six hundred years later Nāgārjuna. Who was a “founder” of Mahayana and may have taught at Nalanda university.

Another dream has pointed at a saffron trousered Muay Thai trained Burmese / Thai incarnation, a monk/priest/protector.

Then there is dreaming evidence of a Japanese Vajrayana monk incarnation, with poetry.

{The feeling for me is that I also had a Japanese Zen life but no dreams as yet}.

The next two lives were not substantially Buddhist.

Of late there has been increasing “evidence” for a 20th century incarnation as a Tibetan Buddhist. So far there is no evidence of a named individual. If it was a sequential birth then they need to have died before or in early 1964. If it is a shared emanation then there is no strict constraint of time frame.

It is not for me beyond the realms of possibility that I have had five {six} incarnations with a dominant Buddhist flavour and of a non lay orientation.

It is not going to detrimentally affect my career prospects to write about this here and now.

I can just be some crazy eccentric old git living like a quasi-hermit.

“Look at the twp boy over by there…”

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Dream Follow Up – Nāgārjuna

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The first obvious thing to note is that the dream from this morning contrasts significantly with the one about semiconductor clean rooms the day previous.

Nāgārjuna is a highly significant figure in the development of Buddhist thought. He has an entry in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

Nāgārjuna

There are numerous scholarly articles on him and he is represented often on water

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Here he has a seven snake halo/aura, is on water and with lotuses.

At Samye Ling of the Karma Kagyu in Scotland he is like this, protected by the Nāgāraja king cobra.

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Our pond looks like this and in a few weeks, we will again have full flower.

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Given that we watched Helen Fry on Motorways, an episode of Annika and 24 hours in A&E on the TV last night, there is no obvious “reason” as to why I should be dreaming of a named Buddhist from ~ two thousand years ago.

In my putative chronology of incarnations there is a gap around Zero AD.

The mantram associated with the heart sutra:

gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā

Gone gone, gone beyond, gone beyond the beyond, hail the great awakening.

I once had a blog called “aum parasmagate”

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It is a little strange and for sure this is the first time explicit mention of Nāgārjuna has occurred in my dreams.

The wife asked, “what do you do with dreams like that?”

There is nobody to tell about them. I can put them up on the blog and make a mental note. That is about it.

Lightning Tree – Rainbow – Karmapa – I Ching – Windhorses – Nagarjuna Dream – 05-05-2025

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Here is this morning’s dream / vision.

The dream starts with a view of a large, gnarled tree with many visible roots. The tree is effectively dead with no foliage or growth. I know it to be a bodhi tree which has been struck by lightning.

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The tree is in the middle of a temple / monastery courtyard. It is in a square shaped flowerbed sectioned off with stones. The courtyard is very foot worn. Around the edge is a quasi-covered walk way on all four sides. There is one entrance and one exit corridor. The feel is very Tibetan / Himalayan. This tree has lain dormant ever since it was struck by lightning, by a thunderbolt, dorje. There is sun on the tree and despite its state it is tended and looked after.

This morning a young novice monk to whom the job has fallen is weeding and watering the tree. He notices significant new growth which has appeared overnight. There is growth on some of the roots and higher up in the tree. That growth has been caused by me and my arrival on the planet. The young monk is very excited and runs to find someone to tell. Soon there are a few monks there looking and chattering excitedly. They look up to the sky and to the South they can see a rainbow just below the clouds. The rainbow is feint but persistent. There is much excitement, which increases.

I wake up for a loo break it is 4:30 AM.

In between sleep and wake, I become very aware of the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa in my full visual and mental field. It is as if we are some how joined twinned or connected. The feeling is guttural. They have started some kind of pre-dawn / dawn ritual in honour of the Parinirvana of Siddhartha. They are in a planetary sense to the East of me. There is chanting and those awful horns. I can hear and feel the ritual as if I am there in the hall with them. The visual image of the 17th persists and it is even here slightly as I type. It is clear that something is up / happening. I wonder if the Dalai Lama is dying but search for him and can still find the feeling of him, so am reassured. The ritual goes on and I know in one sense it is connected with me.

I drift off.

I am shown D whom I knew ~ 20 years ago. He is bloated and unwell. He is filled with anger and even hatred towards me. I can see his bloated bare stomach upon which are written the positions by number of each of the 64 I Ching hexagram numbers. They are medical points. I know that he has misused Dao and that he has been taught dark Dao and it has taken seed in him and others. The only chance that they have is to use the I Ching medically to reverse and impede the spread of bad-Dao. I am the key.

The scene changes and I am in the garden outside my office here. I can hear some noises up by the purple rhododendron. Out of sight I can hear munching. I catch sight of a grey spotted foal and her mother a dark brown horse. So as not to scare them I move very quietly. I know they are windhorses or lungta. They jump up and run along the top of our hedges down towards the river. The foal stops and takes a snack on the maple. As they approach the river they are joined by two more white adult horses. Together all four of them ride off along the tops of the French oaks by the river. They are not touching the oaks but flying and galloping in the air.

I am now in communication with some being which says that I am of Nāgārjuna with the j being specific. That I am of the nāgas and nāgarājas.  That is my source and my belonging. I am of Nāgārjuna. The role of the nāgas is not yet understood.

The dream ends.

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Notes:

Nāgārjuna (Sanskrit: नागार्जुन, Nāgārjuna; c. 150 – c. 250 CE) was an Indian monk and Mahāyāna Buddhist philosopher of the Madhyamaka (Centrism, Middle Way) school. He is widely considered one of the most important Buddhist philosophers.

Nāgārjuna is widely considered to be the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy and a defender of the Mahāyāna movement. His Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Root Verses on Madhyamaka, MMK) is the most important text on the Madhyamaka philosophy of emptiness. The MMK inspired a large number of commentaries in Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, Korean and Japanese and continues to be studied today.

From Wikipedia

Deep UV Lithography Concept – Wine Blend Marketing Dreams – 04-05-2025.

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here are this morning’s dreams perhaps relating to a previous incarnation in this life.

The first dream starts in the sub-floor of an ultra-high class semiconductor clean room fabrication facility {FAB}. This FAB is state of the art and ultramodern. I am dressed in appropriate kit for a clean room suited, masked and with a yellow see-through plastic visor. I have booties and gloves on and am with two other men one of whom is a senior manager of the FAB.

They are showing me all the sub-floor gas, chemical and liquid supply lines with mass flow controllers and blinking green LED status lights. They show me that the metal-organic supply modules are plug and play, when one of them empties you pull the module out and fit new one. The modules arrive on weight bearing “rails” suspended from the FAB sub-floor ceiling. The modules slot in.

They show me the bank of lasers which supply, via light tubes, the lithography apparatus upstairs. The ultraviolet excimer lasers are each double hermetically sealed in case of failure and corrosive gas leakage. They then take me upstairs to show me the 200, 300 and 450mm Silicon process lines with onsite dielectric growth.

They show me the current deep ultraviolet {DUV} lithography tools and how they fit into the wafer process lines. We get out a plasticised non-shedding engineering diagram of my lens-mirror beam conditioning design which fits to the penultimate stages of beam delivery optics in the DUV tools. This is patented by me.  I am confident that the protype we have made is retro-fit able to current tools sets. They agree. We decide to try it out on their pilot research line which can be found elsewhere in the FAB campus facility. The anticipation is that we will use it first on the 13 nanometre node test rig and then if it works to specification, introduce it into production.

The dream changes scene and I am at an up market conference facility. I am running a challenge team training course for three groups of diverse people. I have set them into teams each with their own breakout room base and kitchen. In each kitchen is laboratory style equipment and several bottles of wine from different origins within the same country. Their task as a team is to make a blend for mid-high market sale and develop a marketing strategy together with a launch pitch for their blend / brand.

There is some grumbling about getting their hands dirty and having to make a blend taste it and market it. One of the team leaders is a woman and she asks to be excused from tasting because she is a disqualified driver who lost her licence for drink driving. I say that she can lead up the market/launch sub grouping for her cohort. They have 24 hours.

There is a large hubbub and two teams have red wine and one white. They also have to design labelling and to bottle up six of the product for the launch stand. The wine will be tasted by a small panel of “experts”. As time is running out, I go around to check the branding ideas. The white wine concept led by the woman is “Earth Berry” and is based on a Sauvignon Blanc ultra-dry crisp gooseberry finish. It smells good and clean. One of the teams “led” by a fairly corpulent man with dark hair in a pin striped suit is in disarray and squabbling. I remind them that this is not just a game and that their jobs depend upon performance. They are resentful, in that team, that they have do this task as they see it as below them. The man is pompous and arrogant. There is ill will towards me.

The dreams end.

Quality of life

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Quality of life is defined by the World Health Organization as “an individual’s perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns”. Standard indicators of the quality of life include wealth, employment, the environment, physical and mental health, education, recreation and leisure time, social belonging, religious beliefs, safety, security and freedom.

Health related QOL (HRQOL) is an evaluation of QOL and its relationship with health.

In healthcare, quality of life is an assessment of how the individual’s well-being may be affected over time by a disease, disability or disorder.

Measurement

Early versions of healthcare-related quality of life measures referred to simple assessments of physical abilities by an external rater (for example, the patient is able to get up, eat and drink, and take care of personal hygiene without any help from others) or even to a single measurement (for example, the angle to which a limb could be flexed).

The current concept of health-related quality of life acknowledges that subjects put their actual situation in relation to their personal expectation. The latter can vary over time, and react to external influences such as length and severity of illness, family support, etc. As with any situation involving multiple perspectives, patients’ and physicians’ rating of the same objective situation have been found to differ significantly. Consequently, health-related quality of life is now usually assessed using patient questionnaires. These are often multidimensional and cover physical, social, emotional, cognitive, work- or role-related, and possibly spiritual aspects as well as a wide variety of disease related symptoms, therapy induced side effects, and even the financial impact of medical conditions. Although often used interchangeably with the measurement of health status, both health-related quality of life and health status measure different concepts.

Activities of Daily Living

Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) are activities that are oriented toward taking care of one’s own body and are completed daily. These include bathing/showering, toileting and toilet hygiene, dressing, eating, functional mobility, personal hygiene and grooming, and sexual activity. Many studies demonstrate the connection between ADLs and health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Mostly, findings show that difficulties in performing ADLs are directly or indirectly associated with decreased HRQOL. Furthermore, some studies found a graded relationship between ADL difficulties/disabilities and HRQOL- the less independent people are at ADLs- the lower their HRQOL is. While ADLs are an excellent tool to objectively measure quality of life, it is important to remember that Quality of life goes beyond these activities. For more information about the complex concept of quality of life, see information regarding the disability paradox.

In addition to ADLs, instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) can be used as a relatively objective measure of health-related quality of life. IADLs, as defined by the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), are “Activities to support daily life within the home and community that often require more complex interactions than those used in ADLs”. IADLs include tasks such as: care for others, communication management, community mobility, financial management, health management, and home management. Activities of IADLS includes: grocery shopping, preparing food, housekeeping, using the phone, laundry, managing transportation/finances. Research has found that an individual’s ability to engage in IADLs can directly impact their quality of life.

Importance

There is a growing field of research concerned with developing, evaluating, and applying quality of life measures within health related research (e.g. within randomized controlled studies), especially in relation to Health Services Research. Well-executed health-related quality of life research informs those tasked with health rationing or anyone involved in the decision-making process of agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, European Medicines Agency or National Institute for Clinical Excellence. Additionally, health-related quality of life research may be used as the final step in clinical trials of experimental therapies.

The understanding of Quality of Life is recognized as an increasingly important healthcare topic because the relationship between cost and value raises complex problems, often with high emotional attachment because of the potential impact on human life. For instance, healthcare providers must refer to cost-benefit analysis to make economic decisions about access to expensive drugs that may prolong life by a short amount of time and/or provide a minimal increase to quality of life. Additionally, these treatment drugs must be weighed against the cost of alternative treatments or preventative medicine. In the case of chronic and/or terminal illness where no effective cure is available, an emphasis is placed on improving health-related quality of life through interventions such as symptom management, adaptive technology, and palliative care.

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Extracted from Wikipedia.

Last Few Years – End Game

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Since we have been in France several people have commented that I am still young. I have not and do not believe them. I do not see myself as young. I don’t feel that I have two decades left. I feel increasingly decrepit.

The average UK male life expectancy in the UK might be 84 but I have smoked a lot, drunk a lot and have early stage COPD. The government web site “thinks” on average that I will make the state pension age of age of 67. I am less sure. Various anti-tobacco web sites suggest that I have taken around ten years off my life expectancy. Someone like Boris Johnson is the same age as me. There is no way I could countenance his reported familial circumstance. I simply could not hack it. Some of my erstwhile peers are still having useful and successful careers. My overt socio-political career effectively stopped nearly two decades ago. I am done in that context.

The end-game trajectory looks pretty simple.

Many of the things which are advertised as activities for the aged are of no interest to me. The sanguine advertisers’ pictures of garden centre visits, SAGA river cruises, stairlifts, cremation plans and incontinence pants don’t really light my candle. Weirdly old farts like me are pictured using smart phones like a teenager! I will not be a grey-fox male model nor a complicit cripple smiling to camera and simpering in a wheel chair, thanking my lucky stars.

There is a disconnect in perception. People see sixty-year olds differently from how I experience it.

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There is nothing on my bucket list and no residual ambition. I am not keen on bingo nor lawn bowls. I do not want to play bridge nor socialise with my fellow gummy-bear toothless.

I don’t really have much of anything to offer which people might want and/or pay for. I know some things but the things I know are not that which people desire or want. These will go up the crematorium chimney with me.

I know that on the warrior’s path anything might and can happen. So, if something hugely life-changing happened I would not be overly surprised. It looks mightily unlikely now.

I could treat myself to a new camera and renew my photography. I am 90% sure that I could write a truly terrifying occult based psycho-terror novel. Exorcism might feature. Cancer epidemiology and life expectancy / month graphs could be included. I could add some chem-bio-gene terror to the plot, maybe throw in a few mutations.

It remains a hypothesis that other people have karma to work out in respect of me and that I can in no way facilitate this process. Either they will do it in time or I will pop my clogs first. I am powerless to help, incommunicado and our circles are unlikely to cross again this life.

If we down-size the garden a lot. I will need something to do.

I don’t really have a vision of where to from here…the current horizons however are not large…

Leaving the Palace and Miscellaneous

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Nirmāṇakāya (Chinese: 應身; pinyin: yīngshēn; Tibetan: སྤྲུལ་སྐུ་, tulku, Wylie: sprul sku) is the third aspect of the trikāya and the physical manifestation of a Buddha in time and space.

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Nearly ten years ago I tried to explain to the anaesthetist that because of the very large amount of meditation I had done there might be some anomalies in how I responded to medication – anaesthetic. They completely ignored me and did not take me in any way seriously. A few days subsequent to the operation I had strong recall of being above the operating table watching the “vultures” around my corpse operating. On going into theatre, I was chatting about the clean room conditions of the operating theatre. The same night after ~ six hours of surgery to remove a colon cancer, I stood on my own two feet. Which freaked out the nurse in recovery.

I am pretty sure that something weird transpired during the operation and that it was not spoken about.

There is no way that a modern medical professional would countenance the notion of a nirmāṇakāya or janmanirmāṇakāya; སྐྱེ་བ་སྤྲུལ་སྐུ, skye ba sprul sku. Nor that they might be biologically different to a regular human being.

If one takes the dreaming “evidence” in this blog, then there is a hint of non-standard reincarnations plural stemming back lifetimes. It could be a Soul reincarnating or it could simply be some kind of emanation. In the latter case the emanation body or nirmāṇakāya may not clothe itself in meat in a standard way. I have not read of any different approach to the medical treatment of Tibetan tulkus. But there is a vast amount of stuff which is kept away from prying eyes. My guess is that Tibetan Vajrayana etc. is like an iceberg, with only a tiny bit showing.

The body may be similar but the “mind” very different. Tulkus may be very different to normal people though looking the same. The manifestation, the emanation, need not be that of a full buddha.

On the horizon for me are up to three more major surgeries. In 2019 they put my titanium pin into the left femoral neck/head whist under the influence of a spinal injection and some other drugs. I can remember the bone shaking pneumatic drill. They would not let me watch even though I asked. It was enough to induce PTSD…I was conscious if drugged.

It can be said or observed that I left / renounced the Imperial palace, when I walked out of my job as a senior lecturer at Imperial College in London. I was a strict vegan for a long time, close to nine years. I walked out of a relationship with a wife, a home and a very young female child. I renounced my family later. I meditated extensively away from the madding crowd. I learned science sport and martial arts. There are some of the twelve acts attributed to Siddartha.

At a very long stretch one could say I share these, have them in common.

There is a part of me that wonders if the medical approach to me needs to take other factors into consideration. This adds a little reticence to the notion of drastic orthopaedic surgery. Somehow, I need to understand better…

Hmmn..

X-rays – Whales – Water – West Wales – Catherine – Lens – Gig – Tibet Dream 02-05-2025

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For the first time in over three months, I slept through to 4:30 AM. I was very surprised when I checked the clock on going to the bathroom. Here is a sequence of dreams / snippets.

The dream starts with me walking in multiple magnolia-coloured corridors carrying A4 x-ray images of my hips and knees. I am going back and forth and talking with various elements of the medical profession. There is something in these films which they have never seen before, implied something inside me, unique.

I am now in an ultra-modern house high on a hillside overlooking a sound, an inlet, from the coast. The feeling is of a damp pacific northwest America, as per the early Twilight films. There is forest and rain, Vancouver or Seattle. There is water in the air. There is a huge floor to ceiling glass window looking out to the sound below, there are droplets on the glass. I am close almost pressed to the window. It is my invalid home, for recovery.  Far below in the sound I can see whales swimming in a V formation. They are the same black and white non-orca whales from the dream before. My relationship is totemic. As they swim up the fjord inland there is one lead and two on each side of the V. I count thirteen whales in total. It is as if I am swimming behind the lead whale protected by the pod.

I am now at the waterside of the sound. Despite the northerly latitude I enter the water to swim. I can see my dive partner from Sharm El-Sheikh. She is young and attractive as she was then. She is dressed in a green bikini and somehow mostly above water. I swim towards her fully immersed in the cold water completely at home.

The scene changes and I am with my wife and Ashley. We are sitting on the front seat of a right-hand drive minibus. It is one of those continuous bench seats. It is getting towards night and dusky. Ashley is driving, she is in the middle, and I am on the left. In front of the steering wheel behind the dashboard there is a huge mess in front of Ashley, which contrasts to the space in front of us. Now dark we drive down a lane. It is deep in rural West Wales, not too far from the sea. The roads are windy. Ashley pulls up in front of a property and asks, “is this it?”

“Yes”.

He gets out and goes to open the door with a key. It unlocks but the door does not open. I get out and look at the very sophisticated modern locking mechanism. He does not know what is the other side of the door in this rather nondescript building, I do. I pull a key out of my right trousers pocket. It is at the end of a chain attached to one of the belt hooks. The key is golden and slightly shimmering.  I go to the door and with ease undo the mortice. The door starts to open, and a radiant light spills out of the doorway, through the small gap between door and lintel. In contrast to Ashley neither the wife nor I are surprised.

The next part of the dream starts with a strong visual image of Catherine Middleton. She is a bit thin and wearing only a long T-shirt. She wants me to look at her body which I do. I can see her small breasts and the scar from her operation on her abdomen. She feels frail yet determined. In the dream she wants me to have sex with her, which I know is not sex but cooperation. She wants to talk with me about George in particular. Something is bothering her, and she can’t let it go. She needs an explanation different from those she has already had. I comment that I would be happy to try to help.

The setting now changes to the English West Country, Devon, Somerset or Cornwall. Inland, I am due to run a large course at a conference facility. It is due to start in the afternoon, and the preparations are ok. There are people handling the arrivals. I have a team assembled.

Driving the minibus from before I pull up in a layby by a series of beachy coves. I get out and put my belongings in a black plastic workman’s bucket with a handle and head down to the beach with the bucket. I put the bucket on the beach. I enter the water and swim like I used to be able. I swim along shore and in and out of the little coves. I note that there is a strong current running along the shore in the direction of where I started. I decide to part body-surf the current back. Others are doing this too. When I get back to the beach my bucket is gone. It has my ‘phone and documents in. Sat on the decking of a beachfront bar at an outside table is a couple of American men. They are being loud. I can see the bucket with them. I go up to them and say that I need the contents of the bucket. They joke a little, but I insist it is very important because I have a gig to do soon. I look in the bucket and find what I am looking for. It is a small ~1cm diameter bi-convex lens in what looks like a slightly leaden glass. I hold it up to my eye between my left index finger and thumb. “This I what I was looking for!” They look non-plussed. I need to hurry back for the course I am due to give.

 I move on and am back in the van. I am calling to check something for the course. The call goes through to a public pay phone, US style attached to a telegraph pole outside of the modern pacific house from earlier. I can see the ‘phone ringing from where I am sat. The pay phone is quite fancy. Nobody answers. I try again and somebody answers the phone, but it is now not the pacific phone.

I am saying hello etc. There is no response. The phone start to crackle and a female voice asks me if I am who I am using my name and the prefix dr. I say yes. She says that she is Mrs. Andersen and is due on my course. She apologizes that she will not be able to make it. I ask why. She says that she is in the middle of Tibet. She is making a journey from East to West and that it is taking longer than expected. I say to her that it is fine and a very good explanation as to why she will not be attending. We both laugh a little. Life is strange.

The dream ends.