Category: Buddhist

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson Dreams 03-02-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is last night’s sequence of dreams. I made no attempt to rejoin the dreams on waking but this is kind of what happened. I awoke multiple times and can think of no obvious reason, this side of the channel, why BoJo should pop up.

The first part starts on a beach which has sand dunes behind it. There are a number of people on the beach and the weather is clement though not hot and sunny. I hear some vehicles pull up and some shouting. Men darkly clothed and armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles are charging the beach firing. I shout to everyone to get into the sea and swim as far out as they can. Bullets are ripping into the water as we get further out to sea. I can see dead on the beach and blood in the sea.

There is a strong tide forcing us up the length of the beach. I encounter Boris who has been swimming there. We are being forced towards a rocky part at the end of the beach. There is no way around the headland, and we are forced to land one the beach. I say to Boris that he must resist the temptation to say who he is and to try not to give the terrorists a piece of his mind. There is an off chance that they won’t recognise him, and we should save that for later should we need it.

I wake up

The next section starts in an underground cave. We are clearly in a hostage situation. The cave is equipped with computers, cameras and much media kit. The terrorists are partially masked and clearly highly organised. The hostages me included are now dressed. Boris and I are at the back of one cave with two young boys. I have suggested to Boris that he keeps a low profile and minimise the risk of being recognised. The terrorists have installed a huge TV, and we can see that there is a media circus on the dunes. There are multiple religious groups amongst the hostages, and we are international.

Boris starts to chat with the young boys. One of them says that he can see daylight coming into the tunnel. Boris suggests that he quietly investigates. Which he does. There is a gap. Something kicks off in the main terrorist room. Sending the boys first we attempt to leave the tunnel. Boris manages to bash his head and although a little dazed we make it out into the sunlight.

I awake.

I am now walking with Boris towards a semi-ruined church. I know that inside there are Buddhists keeping vigil for those held in the hostage taking. Unusually these Buddhists are wearing grey robes and are mostly Western. I knock on the church door and am welcomed in by a Buddhist “priest”. I explain what has happened and who Boris is. The man sits Boris down and tends to a slight wound on his head with some cotton wool and water. The atmosphere in the church is calm and tranquil.

The priest asks Boris for a number to call for people to come and get him. Boris takes the ‘phone and calls for help.

I awake.

I am now sitting in a room with Boris and Carrie. I explain to Boris that, he is like me, a Wood Dragon by birth and that we are contemporaries. I say that if he really wanted to be world king, he should have stuck with Alexander which is more regal than Boris. I ask him if there are any umlauts in the spelling of his name because I may do his numerology.

I say that he is a lot fitter than me. He says that downstairs in a bottle is some fat which he has had sucked out of his body and that accounts for it. I know he is joking. I explain that although we both can see bigger pictures, he as an ENTP is very different from me as an INFJ.

I awake again and wonder what the bloody hell has Johnson been doing to be in and out of my dreams all night.

Buddhist Monastery – Dual Airport – Flight Lieutenant – Dream 27-01-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ 1 Comment

This dream from between 2 and 4 AM.

The dream starts in the refectory area of a Buddhist monastery. I am wearing one of my white collarless shirts which is slightly open in the front. My hair is fresh from a recent buzz cut and I am clean shaven. Everyone is sat on the floor on a cushion with a Tali style platter of Indian food in front of them. We all have roti and a small bowl of rice.

The land around the monastery is very mountainous. There is little vegetation and a glacial melt stream / river. There are rocks strewn widely. It is dry.

The monks are wearing largely maroon colour robes and I know them to be of a Tibetan inspired Vajrayana lineage. I am sat in front of the room facing in. The monks are all asking me questions. The atmosphere is cheerful and light.

Sat next to me is a young woman dressed in a lay robe. She has very short black hair and is of an Indian colouring. Her English is impeccable and I know that she is also a Flight Lieutenant in the Indian Air Force. There is a sense of latent royalty or nobility to her. She is very respectful.

The monks keep asking me questions, they do not want me to go.

Eventually I plead my goodbyes and together with the officer head off in an open top jeep to the airport. The airport has a civilian and a military entrance. We go in via the military one, she gets a salute. The airport has a dual purpose.

We pull up next to a Cessna two seater propeller driven plane. I am to fly us out with her as a co-pilot. The night has started to fall and there is an incoming mist. I say to the woman that I am not confident that I could fly out of there. She agrees that I do not have the experience and that it would be dangerous.

She offers to drive me back to the monastery and I accept. I am welcomed and know that because the weather is closing in, I might be here for a few more days. The monks are happy with this.

The dream ends.

As I come to, I am reminded of Leh airport in Ladakh which on a quick Google search is due a second runway to enhance its military capabilities. The civilian airport is called Leh Kushok Bakula Rinpoche Airport. The online images of which are mostly consistent with the dream

The Philosophy of Personal Identity

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The killer awoke before dawn
He put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall

“The End” by The Doors

I found by experimentation that if a pub was a little crowded of a Friday night, putting the song “The End” on the Juke box several times was causal of a marked thinning out of people density.

If one were to take too many masks from the ancient gallery one might end up with a split personality or a dissociative identity / multiple personality disorder.

“Dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously known as multiple personality disorder (MPD), is one of multiple dissociative disorders in the DSM-5, ICD-11, and Merck Manual. It has a history of extreme controversy.

Dissociative identity disorder is characterized by the presence of at least two distinct and relatively enduring personality states. The disorder is accompanied by memory gaps more severe than could be explained by ordinary forgetfulness.”

From Wikipedia

I think it is generally held that having a fairly stable sense of personal identity is a sign of mental health, though many can have an identity crisis in which said set of views and processes, the identity, are called into question. After crisis one might arrive at a changed personal identity, that change could be small or large it is unlikely however to be an utterly complete change. The notion of self-plays a big role in modern psychiatry, dissolution of self leads to liberation is Buddhism etc. Self-esteem which we hear these days is under threat partially because of all the imaginary imagery. Petabytes of doctored pictures provide an illusory ideal yardstick by which to measure inadequacy.

The sense of self might have a strong component of profession. There may be qualities and descriptors to which one subscribes. These may change during life. The thing is I don’t think that many people actually know themselves very well, which suggests that their self-image, self-description and personal legend are at best inaccurate. This does not prevent life from going on as an ersatz. Not everyone needs to fathom the depths.

Whilst one is fully engaged in the common currents of life and the angular momentum of the daily hamster wheel there is little time for reflection and discovery. The pace of life is too fast to bother. Crisis can change this.

I have heard it said that many who go on a 30 day silent solo retreat, struggle. This is because without the accoutrements of self and a lifestyle, the notion of self starts to fall away. This can be very scary. Some may get scarred. Others come out the other side less obsessed by notion of self, less attached to this and have little or no urge to defend anything even minorly contradictory to the illusory narrative of self. Other people are not holding you to this self-image which you have spent much time projecting into the world and your relationships. You are not bound by a self-narrative to the same extent.

For a number of years, I was an evangelical vegan. Then my notion of self had veganism as a core part. Others saw me as a vegan, perhaps annoyingly evangelical, to sit down at table with them and eat beef steak was a game changer for them and for me. I was bricking it that they would call me a hypocrite. They had a sudden change of view.

Self and identity refer to similar things. I could say that I identify as a heterosexual male. But I don’t really, it is a side effect of my dangly bits, chromosomes and residual sexual orientation.

The ninth aspect of the stalker’s rule is:

“A stalker never reveals his identity, not even to himself.”

The notion of stalking is to stalk perceptions, primarily one’s own perceptions. If you have strong descriptor of self and a fixed identity then you will perceive everything through the possible colouration of that lens. It will provide a perceptual and conceptual bias. If you have no identity or no fixed identity the range and scope of possible perceptions increases.

When I first started stalking my perception, I started with the ninth aspect instead of the first. The implications of this aspect of rule are very wide ranging on the one hand and utter simplicity on the other.

If you don’t say things like, “I am / was a senior lecturer in physical chemistry of Welsh extraction, with left wing leaning politics and profound concern about anthropogenic climate change with a wife and a nice house in the country.” Then people will not know where to place you. But this kind of little sentence forms the basis of many person-person interactions. There is a desire for such a one liner for people to start to feel comfortable about who and what they are dealing with. On one level that one liner is true. But it says nothing about what I am like nor how my world view is configured. I do not identify with that sentence even though it is correct. This kind of statement is a part of ritual sniffing where humans metaphorically sniff each other’s arses, like dogs.

If people ask, I can now say that I am retired. If you say it in a particular way few inquire as to retired from what. Although I am retired from in-world quotidian interactions I am not retired in an absolute sense. I have not carked it yet.

At first glance and upon fleeting interaction I seem pretty much like everyone else. I’ll speculate that once my very different world view was rubbed up against, I would see less normal. If I did not wear my normal society mask and let my true colours emanate, I would differ markedly. Just how markedly is impossible to explain, it would have to be experienced. This is because I have used over two decades erasing self and weakening any identification, especially with the form side of life. At first pass a psychiatrist might be concerned, especially if they were taking notes upon how I see myself, what I like, what I don’t like. They may reach for their bible, the diagnostic manuals, excited.

If I say that I learned at an early age to blend and be a chameleon they might raise an eyebrow. But this is a true if metaphorical statement. I went from an “experimental” late sixties Bristol primary school where I was allowed to play chess instead of do art, to a traditional Mines School deep in the Australian outback. For safety I learned to blend. A sore thumb pom quickly spoke Strine.

If you have a sense of identity, whether strong or otherwise, it is difficult to imagine what it is like to have none. Group and group mind comprise a subset of identity. There are millions of red cap wearing MAGA devotees who might identify as non-woke anti-liberal nonce. Group identity remains identity and it is this which is aback and casual of wars.

Many people identify as Christian but in no way do they practise the teachings of Christ, they might better call themselves old-school Jehovian. Brutal destructive vengeance is not a Christian trait to my understanding.

A big contribution to sense of identity is peer group. In the peer group people share stories about their lives and others keep them beholden, to an extent, to these stories. There may be underlying assumptions and expectations on identity.

If you identify to / as anything it can be used to leverage and manipulate you. You can manipulate others with/by their identity.

Look you are eating steak! I always knew you were a hypocritical self-righteous bastard, shame on you. If you do this for me, I won’t tell the others.

Tibet / Nepal / Katmandu – Being Shot – .99 Calibre Dream 02-08-2018

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I am waiting at a train station to get a train up to the top of a mountain in darkness. The idea is to get the train up during the night and then walk down as darkness yields to dawn. The train station has an “Indian-Asian” flavour but is old school. There is a lot of hustle and bustle. The word comes that at last the train is ready. We all board the train and it chugs off, windows open, up the mountain. We are at sea level and the mountain train stop is at 3600m.

When we get there to the top it is like Nepal / Katmandu / Tibet. There are many “hippie” tourists here and what “we” are about to do is a part of THE “trail”. In my mind I wonder if I will be recognised by people at the top.

“We” set off down the hill past a small blue lake where there are Buddhist monks meditating and they bless us as is their custom. We continue on the trail down the hill as darkness continues to fade and dawn comes in. It is a long hike down.

Next, I am with a tall thin blonde woman with curly hair whom I do not recognise. We are in “Katmandu” or a town like it with many tourist “hippie” shops and hawkers. One of these latches on to the woman and I try to dissuade him. He draws a knife as if to attack. I disarm him and he runs off very displeased and very angry with me.

Sometime later the “air-raid” siren goes off and people are sheltering. I find myself a niche in the stone and lay down with my bag over my head. I remove this as there does not seem to be any attack. The man from earlier is now standing over me with a pistol. He shoots me in the left leg which stings a great deal. He says that he might kill me. I start to ask him why and move to get up. He shoots me again lower down my leg. I cry out for help. The police come running and he runs off. The “Indian” policeman says that I have been shot twice with a .99 calibre weapon.

Strangely despite this I am able to walk / limp.

Later the man finds me again and asks me if the blonde woman is my fiancée. I say that we have never met. He intimates that he will get even with me by getting at her. I tell him that before “yesterday” I had never met the woman.

He is doing a drug deal and wants me to skin up with his hashish. I attempt this but fail. The police then come and he runs off. His idea was that I am caught in possession of hashish. I throw this down a street drain. The police are not concerned about me rather the man who set me up.

“Wolfgang” is there and we are discussing how thing are very different at 3600m. He says, as he has done previously, that people are and have been gossiping about me.

Outside of town the lake has now frozen. The idea now is to ski down the mountain. Given my injured leg I am unsure about this. So, I try to ski / skate on the frozen lake which is covered in snow. I can do this easily. I am able to make turns on the ski-skate rink which in the dream I find highly enjoyable shouting, “Yaaaay”….

I wake up and the dream ends.

—————–

* 9 is the jewel of awareness completion

3 + 6 = 9

9 + 9 =18

18 is the jewel of awareness courage.

Ashram-Retreat Centre – Dolphins – Dream 21-02-18

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I arrive at a large building on multiple levels which backs directly onto the sea. The shore is rocky but not too step. It has many rooms which are like warm rounded caves and are decked out in “ethnic” fabrics and furniture.

Soon various people start arriving. They are of all ages and some with children. The rooms are all open, without doors, yet still afford some privacy, they feed into one another. This is to be the retreat centre it has an ethos of non-denominational, discursive-ness and openness. It is to be themed around dreaming. There is a slight yet noticeable “hippie” vibe. Whilst it is not yet an Ashram, it has the potential so to be.

People are gathering around, and we are expecting a visit from a lama Y. together with his entourage. They tip up and take the tour. We are sat in one of the larger rooms and I show him an “ethnic” carved figure of a deer. He comments that although it is pretty the workmanship is not so good. I have sourced it at a local shop. After this I go to the shop and the owner agrees that the workmanship isn’t high quality. He says that he will send it back to his supplier and replace it for me. He thanks me for bringing it to his attention.

As lama Y. is leaving, he asks me what it is all about.

I say, “Dreaming is dreaming, and it will work itself out.”

From the house we can see all the children playing in the glass-sided infinity pool which is tidal.

I go down to the inlet by the sea. There we can see fish swimming in the creek. We can discern amongst them 3-4 dolphins. This causes much excitement. I whistle to the dolphins and they swim in closer to us. When one of the dolphins gets close it morphs into a dolphin-man. He gets out of the water and onto the stone jetty we are sitting on. He says, “Praxes” and I ask him if he is Greek. He replies in perfect English that he is and that he and his friends run a local taxi business.

I ask him for some business cards which we can put up on the notice board for the guests. He hands me some of these and then dives back into the water. The dolphins swim off.

Two Americans have come to visit, they are a female and a male. The woman has a “hippie” vibe and the man is an astronaut with short hair.  He is unconvinced. He proceeds to wander off to check out the organisation, sceptical.

Dressed now in my yukata I ask the woman if they need some sunscreen. It can be deceptive around here, the amount of sun. The woman thanks me but does not think it is needed. I say that the offer remains open.    

Back now in the main room of the centre many of us are gathered. We look out to the sea and cannot tell if the tide is out or not. I say that we need to install a tidal monitor, which I will do later.

Now we have to decide more about the retreat centre, what it will do and how it will work.

Dream ends

——————

praxis (ˈpræksɪs)

n, pl praxises or praxes (ˈpræksiːz)

1. (Education) the practice and practical side of a profession or field of study, as opposed to the theory

2. (Education) a practical exercise

3. accepted practice or custom

[C16: via Medieval Latin from Greek: deed, action, from prassein to do]

————–

  • There is an implicit question as to whether I want to form / found an Ashram.

Brocade Book – Occult – Dream 8-9-16

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Here is last night’s dream

I am in some kind of mansion or Chateau. The rooms are dimly lit by candles and gaslight. The furniture is period. The walls are dressed in curtain like hangings stretching floor to ceiling. The colour is a boudoir red / purple. There is a sense of fading Victorian even tsarist grandeur. In the distance I can hear a social function, a party. There are harpsichords playing, laughter and chatter. I wander around the room; it is well-kept but overly opulent and not to my liking. I walk past a table, with ornate carved legs and I trail my hand along the tabletop.

Next, I am in an ultra-modern museum which has a Germanic or Swiss feel. It is somehow on top of a mountain and very high up. The museum is minimalist. There are only a very few glass cabinets. They contain artefacts in gold and other metals. Each has a slip of paper in the cabinet with a date and a small explanation. Many of the artefacts are oriental, Buddhist and relate way back. They are very precious, and security is high. I come upon a case; it appears to be empty. In the case is a slip of white paper saying Dr A.G.Taylor and a list of the universities that he worked at. There is no date. I get excited and go to find the curator. I say to her that this is me…can I have look at what is in the exhibit? She puts on her white gloves and with a golden key attached to her neck chain she opens the drawer below the exhibit case. She pulls out a book, a much valued manuscript. It is kept out of sight to preserve it. It is about standard book size. The book has a cover, even a cage, of the finest golden filigree brocade, exquisitely carved and put together. It is in raised almost moving relief. The cover of the book is white and although not glossy it somehow shines. The whole thing shines and glows. It is radiant. She makes me put on white gloves and hands it to me. I marvel at the book and open it. Both she and I know that it is I who wrote this book.

–

–

The scene changes to another room deep in the vaults of the museum. It is where all the treasures are kept. The floor is of white marble and the room has two levels split by a small half staircase. At the staircase are wall length curtains held back by a fancy golden coloured tie. The curtains are of luxuriant red with a yellow gold coloured backing. I wander through the room looking at the artefacts. Many are to do with magic of both light and dark varieties. I instinctively know which is which and what they are for. As I wander through the room, I get the sensation of something, some being, watching me. I know that it is not benign. So, I “swell up” and fill myself with energy. I open my hands so as to distribute {if needed} and say out loud. “I know you are there, show yourself!!” It is an occult command of very high order. The curtains at the stair flutter in the breeze and I know that whatever it was, it has gone.

The dream ends. I know that it is highly significant. I pause to recollect and store it. I go back to sleep.

On typing today the word Grimoire popped into mind.

Glowing Skelton – Third Universe – Dream 17-11-2012

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Here are some excerpts from what was a lengthy dreaming sequence.

Against a dark backdrop I see an image of myself. I am superimposed upon a glowing skeleton which has pink, fluorescent blood vessels. It is living. The two images or my normal body and the skeleton pulse back and forth in precedence. I am become death the destroyer of worlds.

In the dream I wonder if this is a harbinger of my own death. It is not it has only symbolic value…

—-

I know that the world of this dream in an intermediate world between life and death.

—

I am shown three worlds as three circles / spheres and written upon each world in vivid dripping pink lettering are the following:

The world of starving Spirits

The world of the Hungry Ghosts

The world of the in between.

I know in the dream that this current universe is the third manifested universe and to understand the true nature of Bardo and karma I will need to expand my consciousness so that it can stretch backwards to the times of previous universal manifestations. This will be a part of my training.

—————–

  • Sometimes the nagal or spirit is seen as a luminous pinks shade.

This from 18th May 2012 was more of a vision and seems related to this so I have appended it here:

I see a scene with four “men” dressed in different pastel-coloured robes breaking through into consciousness. They are “pastel” blue, pink, yellow and white, which are mildly and softly radiant.

They are waiting for me on the beach. Their facial features are not easily discernible. They are the four Lords of Karma, the Lipika Lords.

Renunciation or Self-Sabotage?

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The human ability to kid oneself is well known though for those kidding, difficult to accept. At the moment there are many who deem the slaughter in Gaza justifiable and apt. They do not imagine any karmic consequences because that notion would be very inconvenient. Irrespective of how things are temporarily brought to a close, there will be consequences ongoing.

The normal idea of success in the “West” might be to have a good career, make progress, climb the housing ladder and perhaps have a relationship or marriage and thence to propagate the species. One might like a nice car and pleasant foreign holidays. Perhaps gaining some measure of societal kudos along the way. One would not sulkily throw one’s toys out of the cot; one would comply more or less to the norm. Psychology might point you in this direction.

If for example you are a bodhisattva called Siddartha Gautama, it would be OK to run out on a young wife and child, leave the palace of your father the King and renounce the kingdom to which you are heir. But for normal people this would be wrong.

Viewed from one angle this is an ungrateful act of wanton self-sabotage. Siddhartha shot himself in the foot and abandoned a pleasant life, one which many might aspire to. To the starving, the poor and the unshod this makes no sense. Yet according to legend this subsequently facilitated his teaching and his completion of the career goal of any bodhisattva, namely enlightenment and Buddhahood.

In the post previous I pointed at something that many would not understand. I shelved a high value job at a prestigious space agency. The successful completion of which could have opened the way for senior positions and a way back from the “wilderness”. We would have had plenty of cash.

There were a number of warning omens when we were viewing properties in and near Leiden. Retrospect suggests that the job was a temptation of sorts.

Earlier I walked out of a marriage with a very young child which caused the sale of a house in London now worth £ 1 million. I left a new age group which I gave heart and soul to establish. I “gave” my shares back to a start-up company the vision for which was to a fair extent mine. I quit a then tenured academic job at a top university, something to which many aspired. I had no other job lined up just a few training courses. One of these went pear shaped so I gave them up too. To move from a highly timetabled job into near nothing was a bit of a shock to the system. I resigned from another short lived university teaching post. I cut contact with my aged mother. I forwent relations with family.

None of these were easy. I am not a prince.

One could say that I am simply a loser who could not hack it.

One could say that these were acts of stepwise renunciation. The integral over micro-renunciations has a similar effect to sudden departure.

 Or one could call deem them all the INFJ door slam, a fault in my character.

What is it that seeks success? It is the self and not the Soul. In this logic renunciation is indeed an act of self-sabotage. The ambitions of the self are stymied in stepwise succession. I know that I can live without any of these accoutrements. If you like I have physical plane proof by experience. I am not bound by the fear of missing out on a normal successful life.

I could be kidding myself. Trying to find an excuse for my squandering of opportunity. Or maybe I have simply thrown my toys out of my cot because things did not go my way.

Nobody else has experienced these things like I did. Nobody else has felt the tearing, the ripping. I am alone in my moccasins which I may not loan to another.

People might have opinions.

I cannot return to the trajectory my life was once on. Any attempt has gone badly awry. The dramatic might say that I am not meant to. Or one could argue that it is the karma of wanton squandering. I made the bed and now I must sleep in it.

There remains one question concerning what if anything I do with the remainder of earthly sojourn.

Hmnn…