Category: Musings

Self-Diagnosed Omniscience and the Closed Mind

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I have been having a dabble on LinkedIn and am more than a little surprised at the plethora of coaching, self-development schema and other things which sound too good to be true. People have to make a buck and the platform is used to tout and sell services. My logic suggests that either there are a lot of insecure and incapable people who need someone to help them and therefore there is a market or there are lot of “experts” surplus to demand. It has always seemed a bit of swizz to me. Someone develops some schema, some training, then demands payment from others to be certified by them. This kind of business model is in Aikido, NLP, Reiki etc. Someone must issue the certificates.

But exactly who was the source certificate, who passed them as competent?

I’ll postulate that many imagine their knowledge and wisdom to be more extensive and comprehensive than it actually is. This group of people includes really smart people at universities.

We might call them the self-diagnosed omniscient or the know-it-all gang. There are a lot of people who think they are “experts” who are unaware of the extent and breadth of their ignorance. But because they deem themselves clever and smart they are closed minded and negating of anything outside the limited church of their knowledge. They profess from their soap boxes in real life and on-line.

There is a related phenomenon, “the not invented here syndrome”. This is when group mind develops a norm, an explanation, a brand or a product. Anything which is not sourced from within that set or peer group is suspect. The brand must be evangelised and cannot tolerate any new ideas which might threaten market share. Ideas from outside of group mind are repelled with boiling oil from the parapets or Winchester rifle rapid fire from within the circled wagons. Nothing foreign and “Apache” can be tolerated and allowed to live. “They” and “we” do not like nor trust “them”.

On an off for over a decade I have had dreams in which I am not believed or listened to. There is not much I can do about that, nor do I feel hard done by. I know enough about human nature to understand that I am a bit of a non sequitur in the minds of many. I don’t make sense in the world of should and ought. For too many the step to “as it actually is” can be tricky.

We have the robes or Levis joke. I say that because of my background and my penchant for black Levis 501 I am not believed. If, however, I wore Buddhist monk’s robes the incredulity would mostly be washed away in a flash of saffron or magenta. It is that simple, people do judge a book by its cover even when they are self-diagnosed omniscient.

Which suggests that said diagnosis is at best premature.

Hmnn…

The Waking Dream – Saṃsāra

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“Saṃsāra in Buddhism, states Jeff Wilson, is the “suffering-laden cycle of life, death, and rebirth, without beginning or end”. Also referred to as the wheel of existence (Bhavacakra), it is often mentioned in Buddhist texts with the term punarbhava (rebirth, re-becoming); the liberation from this cycle of existence, Nirvāṇa, is the foundation and the most important purpose of Buddhism.”

From Wikipedia.

If you are not aware that you are dreaming during nocturnal dreams, what chance do you have of being awake during the samsaric waking dream which people assume is the day to day socio-political reality?

It follows that in the limit a genuine dreaming practice has the goal, the purpose of liberation, Nirvāṇa.

The common socio-political mundane “reality” is a different assimilation of world from that of a being who has attained much of Buddhist philosophy. The mind of one of these follows the advice of the diamond sutra and is not anywhere near as gripping nor as adamant that the assimilated and evangelised version of reality is both factual and the only true reality. They would not kill anyone who has a different opinion.

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If you are awake in your night dreams you can wake up in the samsara day dream and see things for what they are. If you understand dissatisfaction {suffering} has a large mental component it is possible to not want to be reborn. Carnal rebirth requires a carnal re-death. If you are obsessed by the form, your meat, then you will desire another piece of meat. Letting go of obsession is a stepping stone toward liberation.

I’ll speculate that many people have had a conversation with me and been totally unaware of how differently I view the world from them.  People assume a commonality of socio-political interpretation. The world is encapsulated by the boundary conditions of should and ought.

In order to wake up in the samsaric day dream one needs to quieten the mind and to really know oneself and not simply at façade level.

A very common modern form of delusion is called fear of missing out, FOMO. It stems from group mind and wanting to be “in” on whatever it is that is going on. Not being up to date with gossip can risk social exclusion. Newspapers rely on juicy titbits to sell. But nobody has ever died from not knowing what Harry and Meghan have been whinging about today. If you are awake to this you will not waste your life worrying about them and the gigabytes of gossip generated.

Some of the things in nocturnal dreams are clearly not real, likewise many of the things in the samsaric daydream are not real. There are a lot of delusions which people advocate and defend. People tend to forget that image, self-image, is explicitly imaginary yet they work to prop it up and defend it, they can get psychologically ill because of image.

The basic truth is glamour is not real, simple reality is simple and unglamorous. Yet people spend vast sums on “glamorous” things and travel. They document it in vast energy ravenous server farms and destroy the planet to take selfies in famous glamorous places. People want to show off in ultrahigh definition gigapixel style.

They are asleep in the waking samsaric dream.

Being awake aware and lucid in nocturnal dreams aids waking up in the samsaric daydream/nightmare which we call modern 21st century living.

Trying to Dream in a New Quantum Modality

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Dreaming and en-visioning can be seen as roughly the same things. At the moment I am trying to dream in, imagine and picture a new modality for molecular quantum bits. Instead of starting from what is already operational I aim for a blank canvas, nothing ruled out from the get-go.

I am loading my head with a wide range of research papers to reactivate some of the capacity. I am not trying to “get” the full meaning of them, besides in some cases my maths is way too poor. What I can do is picture the experimental configurations in terms of lasers, optics, pumps and molecules. I “see” molecular symmetry and can visualize potential energy surfaces. I can animate in the mind’s eye molecular vibrations and wave packet trajectory.  

This is a form of actively conscious dreaming, arguably.

I am leaving my background intuitional {not currently conscious} processors to work on the input.

Fully aware that what I am trying to do is unlikely, it is not however beyond the realms of possibility.

Because I am under no time pressure nor institutional pressure to perform to metric, I am relaxed and unstressed.

It does not matter if I succeed or not. I’ll speculate that this lack of fretting is beneficial and not detrimental.

So far, I have a few very hazy pictures which are not starting to coalesce yet. One has already vanished as a no go.

I trust my intuition to go far left field and past the constraints of regular reason. If and when it is ready it will pop something partially formulated into mind. Then I will have to check and maybe be calculate.

In the absence of measured reasons “why not to”, the intuition can get on unhindered by “what if” and “but what if”.

I may even get a “science” dream…

Basic ingredients in the frequency domain are, there should be a manageable balance between thermal budget and decoherence. Optical detection is better at shorter wavelength means less detector cooling. High clock rate good. High quantum fidelity is important or massive error correction methodology.

What may be on the cusp of the dream?

Dreams and Fate

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One of the underlying postulates behind my interaction with both my passive nocturnal fully lucid dreams and my interpretation of waking dreaming symbols / omens is that there is such a thing as fate and that dreaming may help one to evolve that fate.

I suspect that this approach is very uncommon amongst those with my scientific training and background in research / higher education. I’ll hazard a guess that I may be perceived as a whacko, a few cards short of a deck and missing a few marbles.

Unlike many who might seek the credibility of scientific experiment and orthodoxy I am unconcerned by this. Several people have called me a mystic. I live a life aside humanity as a married hermit. We don’t get off the compound all that much, only for shopping, medical appointments and the odd walk by the sea or in the countryside. I personally do not think that fMRI will answer questions of Soul. To look for something like that in big ring of magnets with rf probably won’t work.

I know that I can still speak “science”. I was even awarded a quantum optics UK patent fairly recently.

One could comment that I threw it all away. Someone with my privilege should not be living as I do. I might have contributed a whole lot more to UK plc. Maybe I should have done. In the context of fate, maybe it was always my fate to jack it all in. Or maybe I was forced out. Perhaps I was fated to do a series of renunciations in order to learn that what most people cling to, does not need clinging to. I was fated to attain impermanence.

Perhaps I genuinely am a deluded nutcase.

At the moment we have one chronic problem to solve. How can I generate a very small income stream to help pay for a gardener instead of eating into cash reserves? The housing market is constipated here, one solution is to downsize to a manageable plot.

I do not want to work for more than 1 day a week. That work needs to be sedentary and preferably using my bonce. I don’t think that the kind of work I am looking for exists here. I am handicapped by language.

There is an ancillary question.

Am I basically done in this life time or is there anything of significance left for me to do?

Is there any significant fate / karma left?

I have an inkling of some of the things on the cards, these are internal on the compound things.

I am 99.9% sure that I will be unable to manage extended 5 day a week close contact in a working environment. I just won’t be able to hack it.

I had a dream recently suggesting that I need to “get off the bus” and change direction. It seems to be referring to my “outward” LinkedIn journey.

The other themes in my dreams are “somebody else’s mess / cock up” and that “I will not be believed or listened to.”

In a sense if it is my fate not to be believed or listened to, there is little to no point in trying. It is fated thus.

I can’t work off other people’s karmic mess for them. If I am entangled in that karma all I can do is sit tight and not make any more karmic entanglement.

What I could do is try to dream up some more quantum intellectual property. I have doubts as to whether there is a purpose or point to this. It would take a couple of years to grant and several months to read up, research and write. I doubt there is a buck in it for me, as things stand.

I am going to be having a spell as carer soon and perhaps in autumn.

Another recent dream says that the tantra in the Kālacakra has rotated a quarter turn., something has changed.The wheel of time has part turned. I have been putting off delving perhaps the time is now right, this is a change of direction away from the “bus” of social conditioning. The problem with Vajrayana is that things can get weird quickly.

Maybe I need to take a turn around the pond…

Passive Nocturnal Lucid Dreaming

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Schredl et al. have published a questionnaire to measure lucid dreaming skills, IJODR vol 11, Page 54 in 2018.

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There are some differences in approach.

In every single case when I am having a dream which I am able to recall I am fully aware that I am dreaming. I don’t have to decide, I know. This makes many of the questions superfluous for me. If one logically knows that one is dreaming it follows that the objects in dreams are not real as measured by physical plane notions of reality. You know you are dreaming there is no doubt or confusion.

I also often know that a dreaming symbol is a dreaming symbol while I am dreaming it. I can interpret it live.

I personally am very wary about setting intentions in a dream.

Logically If you have a dream and you recall it, it has already affected your waking life. By writing it down your life has changed. You can’t un-have a dream. Some of them can have profound impact.

For a while I had prescient dreams.

I have made life changing decisions because of dreams including ones with very significant financial impact.

When I first started, I did play with flying and jumping. I no longer do this.

In most dreams I let the dream play out, I am both observer and participant. I do martial arts in some dreams, but I don’t consciously think “I will throw this dude”. I do it.  I am not sure where the idea of a dream “body” comes from. I have a BMI of 33, does that count? I experience a sensation of “me” not it/body/meat. The vehicle can do things I can no longer do. I do have sensations, smoking in dreams being an example.

I don’t have to decide to observe. When I have “finished” a dream, I can recall and replay it on many occasions which I do to assist recall. I can go back into dreams which I have noted down. I have been doing this this afternoon. I can recall quite a few past dreams to waking consciousness even without the aide memoire of a journal entry.

I have no sense of how long time is in dreams. You can pack a hell of a lot into 15 planet earth minutes.

I can if needed wake up. Sometimes the dream fades, but I can often re-enter a dream where it left off.

Note of caution – if you go to take a piss in a dream you had better wake up first.

I’ll comment that for something to be bizarre for me it will be off the scale bizarre and weird for “normal” people. If you don’t believe me sit down and read a swath of my dreams.

The principle idea I subscribe to is that my dreams help me to evolve my fate in this life and advise on any karmic steps which need to be taken, this is my dreaming philosophy. Part of the notion of this is to let go of control and to let the dream of life evolve. One gives the steering wheel over to the dreamer.,

I don’t recognise emotions in dreams. Even in very “scary” dream situations I have no fear. The exceptions to this were way back when I had unable to move nightmares. These have passed.

I do magic in dreams.

The problem with intention setting in dreams is that it can get a bit like witchdoctor / voodoo. Best not mess with that stuff, especially when one is not fully compos mentis.

Some dreams are so very intense, others not, I generally dream in technicolour.

Many of the characters in my dreams are real world people who pop up in my dreams.

Although fully lucid and aware whilst dreaming there is no checking or other technical things. There is some overlap but there are technical differences.

I guess the biggest difference is that I sometimes interpret “real” world day-to-day happenstance as dreaming symbols. If you have problems with your physical plane car you have problems with your vehicle your state of awareness!!  

Dreams and Death

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This morning, I have had a dream in which someone slightly known to me is reported dead to me. This follows on from my golden Toblerone dream, a dream which I am considering significant.

If the contents of the dream today have substance it heralds a new sequence of events. The dream was so out of the blue, that its juxtaposition to our daily life looks very odd indeed. And therefore notable.

On at least one other occasion I have dreamed about the death of someone only later to find that the dream was contemporary with their death. In once case cause of death, heart attack was probably accurately predicted.

In other dreams I am visited by people not long after their death, and I have seen with waking eyes dead people such as my maternal grandfather. People might say ghost.

Tibetan Buddhism has an intermediate state know as bardo. To my eyes it is not a place but a state of consciousness.

Dreaming is a kind of in between state too. It is possible that dreaming might access this bardo state on occasion.

I personally am not scared of ghosts who are just checking in to see how I am doing on their journey out of form.

In a few days’ time I will check the “fichier des personnes décédées” to see if there is any correlation between the dream and physical plane reality…..

Only Two people In the World and Some Speculations

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I have read a lot of so called New Age books and hardcore science. I did my Ph.D. at the same gaffe Michael Faraday did his research which has the highest per capita Nobel laureate density associated with it in the world. I did my degrees at a world top ten university {UCL} and subsequently taught at this year’s #2 {Imperial} according to QS university rankings. That is a pretty snazzy background.

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I have ~60 legit publications in the physical sciences literature.

And yet here I am getting some weird and wonderful dreams. I’ll speculate that if taken as a whole there is no modern accepted psychology / psychiatry which could account for them.

I’ll speculate that these dreams may be unique in scope and in content. Who else dreams of witches and high technology patents?

I have absorbed what might be called four schools of thought, modern science, Toltec Teachings, The Ageless Wisdom {Alice Bailey Djwhal Khul blue books} and elements of Hinayana, Mahayana, Zen and Vajrayana Buddhism.  

I approached this learning with an inquiring open mind, several kilos of salt for pinching but an ideation to practice and not scoff.

Only two people in this world have been exposed to the scope of my dreaming, the wife and me. One of the first things we ask of a morning is, “did you have any dreams?” There have been occasions when our dreams are fairly synchronised.  She has predicted things happening for me. Her dreams pertain more to time, whereas mine are “out there”.

In one school of thought I belong to the south, the place of dreams with a predilection for dreaming. My secondary predilection is philosophy.

I have always had a strong ability to construct abstract and complex visualisations, which I can animate in my consciousness.

I’ll speculate that I am kind of a melting pot, a cauldron if you like, in which these thought streams are synthesised into a whole.

I like using rhetorical questions, what is wrong with that?

Well people often mistake my questions for soul searching angst. I already have the “answers” {to my satisfaction}. The questions are meant to stimulate thought.

I am allergic to adamant assertion; it is a short cut away from thought and is behind much of the polarisation and cleavage in the world today. People die because others assert.

To expect others to be interested in an opus of dreams is likely to result in disappointment. The “not invented here syndrome” dominates the human psyche. And besides people need to make a living somehow.

Life for us is very simple and we live isolated on our compound with little contact to/with the outside world. This is in stark contrast when juxtaposed with the content of my passive nocturnal dreams….

Everyone is busy, caught up in their hectic FOMO dramas.  Only two people in the world are likely to be interested in this exercise of dream study … …

Dreaming and Intuition are they linked?

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In terms of MBTI, I have a clear INFJ preference. I have very high scores for N intuition and J judging. This means that I am a bit of time freak, I like to be early and get things done well before any deadline. It has come as a shock to some that I am very introverted.

My dominant function is introverted intuition, which means that few get to see what goes on internally. Occasionally people are very surprised at what pops out. I have some skill in envisioning, so called big picture thinking, but pictures are generally 2d so that description is limited.

Intuition comes in various degrees from knowing the next number in a number sequence puzzle to having a profound insight into the psyche or soul of others based on little “evidence”. The first case of intuition here is an extension of logic. The second is an unexplainable knowing.

 Intuition can be re-written inner-tuition.

Where a kind of learning happens as if by magic. If I cannot solve a problem, I leave it to my background processors intentionally and then a few days later a solution or a new way of thinking comes into mind, ta-da!

Dreaming, passive dreaming at night, does not come from outside. So, we could call this internal process, intuition, particularly if insights arrive in a dream. Dreaming is a subset of intuition.  

I personally trust my intuition and dreams more than what is said in overt and verbal conversation or even text. If there is divergence, I trust my inner-tuition over what is presented or spun. Being introverted I don’t let on.

In esoteric psychology some dreams can be termed “dramatizations of the soul” in which the soul is trying to assist the mundane being. You can’t get more inner inner-tuition than that.

Statistically INFJ is the least common personality type. If you know one hundred people then only one of them is INFJ. {Of course, INFJs cluster in certain professions}. Many of us report problems fitting in with society and the square peg in a round hole is a depiction of the INFJ. There are lots of different visualisations of INFJ because INFJs often like metaphor and allegory.

Because INFJs are interested in things like psychology, then it follows that many may have an interest in passive nocturnal and active lucid dreaming.

Some dreams are internal dialogue and daily angst carried into sleep. I’ll suggest that at certain depths dreaming is a form of inner-tuition or intuition. There are similarities to heightened meditative states and conscious nocturnal dreaming.

The trick is learning how to remember your dreams and transfer them into the so-called waking “reality” of life quotidian.

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Not With a Bargepole

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I recently began a foray into using LinkedIn with a view to getting some scientific English editing work. The “try for free” premium services made it difficult to cancel without paying after the first month. This is a part of a “stealth” subscription model which is internet wide. I personally don’t like it. By mistake I paid one month. It is a bit sneaky. Alongside WordPress is forever suggesting purchase of add-ons and upgrades. It is a sign of the times and being an old fart I am not happy with it. This hard-sell is ubiquitous. My pet hate is airlines who offer a low price ticket only to charge you for luggage and seat reservation meaning the headline ticket price is a smokescreen. I can remember on BOAC getting food served in economy on a china plate and having my unaccompanied minors flight miles log signed by the captain using a fountain pen. I had 150,000 airmiles by the time I was 13!

The good old days are no longer here.

Seems everyone one is ultra cautious about who they are seen to associate with in public on the internet on things like LinkedIn. A fair percentage of my invitations to join my network have been turned down. My leper’s bell can clearly be heard in some quarters. People whose career was aided and even jump started by their interactions with me do not want to network with me now I am no longer any use to them. I don’t add kudos. It makes you wonder how real the interactions were in the first place all those years ago. They don’t want to associate with me, not even with a bargepole.  

I have learned a few things one of which is the strength of feeling in the Israeli community concerning the rise of antisemitism. I guessed the concern was there but to see it first hand is interesting and educational.

I have also learned that you can get various forms of personal services from coaching, through security experts, dream trainers, shamanic soul recovery right the way through to cartomancy and exorcism. I had thought LinkedIn was just for conservative business. My assumptions were wrong.

A lot of people are pushing services. Logic says that the quality must be variable, many perhaps are over hyped.

Some of my posts on quantum computing etc. get several hundred reads. I have toyed with idea of launching “Man in His Shed PLC” or “Homme dans son grenier SARL”.

I get more reads on LinkedIn than on any of the other blogs I have written.

At the moment it looks like my time on LinkedIn is limited and I am getting the urge to pull the account and vanish in a puff of smoke. I joined it with a burner email address so that I had an exit if needed.

It looks as though the science editing thing is a no-go perhaps due to AI and Skynet…

I need a plan b, it seems…

hmnn

Incredulity Rumours Not Believed nor Listened to in Dreams since 2008

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In my dreams a common theme cropping up in five of my typed up dreams is that people cannot believe what has happened to me, nor accept it as real. It is for them a massive non sequitur that I should find myself where I actually am doing what I actually do. They cannot believe that I am interested in the things that I am and that I metaphorically fell off the edge of their world.

They are incredulous to the point of denial.

In three other of these dreams, rumours {and implied gossip} are being circulated by people once close to me. These rumours are believed even though they are wildly inaccurate bordering on slander or defamation.

I am warned in five other dreams that no matter what I say or do people simply will not believe what it is I am saying and doing. The notion is that to try to get people to believe is to smack my head against a brick wall.

People are more willing to believe rumour than me.

Further in three other dreams I offer advice or knowledge and in no way am I or will I be listened to. The message is that it is tending towards {utter} futility to even try.

The subsequent post {“previous” according to wordpress} in the blog roll is an example of this disbelief theme.