Orthodox mainstream science is not fond of the notions of paranormal, ESP, telepathy, parapsychology, occult, tarot, ghosts and things that go bump in the night. They may be sceptical about reincarnation and see dreams just as dreams. To err into the non-accepted is career threatening. It can evoke a ridicule. It is OK to be homosexual but homeopathy is frowned upon. I will wager that any person keen to soap-box about the lack of ghosts and ghoulies will be more likely to shit themselves in a haunted house than I. They are also more likely to call forth the wrath of any entity.
Reincarnation as per the Dalai Lama is global news today!! Many are very sceptical about this. It is a geo-political issue, however.
If you take the opus of my dreams published here as an entirety and offer them to a psychology professional, what might they make of them? What theories, explanations and guesses might they come up with? I’ll speculate that even the most imaginative and resourceful psychologist would struggle to come up with a congruent and global explanation from within the accepted “scientific” approaches.
I would love to see and hear someone attempt.
Today’s dream can be seen as another piece of the jigsaw pertaining, in this case, to my most recent incarnation, “pony-tail” man. My rough time line suggests around 200-250 years ago. In no dream have I seen anything convenient like a newspaper! Nor did I meet Doc Brown in a DeLorean. I could not look at an LED display to see the year.
Genuine past life recall is probably not that common, wishful thinking however might be…
As an erstwhile “clever” scientist I should be attempting to debunk my own dreams. Clearly, I am a traitor and a turncoat. Maybe I am no longer “clever”.
In the dream in which I was shot, there was no fear of being executed. Because I knew that I was dreaming and I also knew that the younger man in the dream survived, because of an earlier dream. Many might wake up in a cold sweat after being handcuffed and shot. I was quiet relaxed.
Quite why I am dreaming Tarot and civil / independence war is yet to be seen. Dreaming takes its time, it happens as and when it is meant to do. Interacting with the dreaming for goal oriented people can be very frustrating because there are no bullet pints or objectives. It can fry their “minds” which is an altogether welcome thing. You cannot control the dreaming nor set the pace. Dreaming can be uncomfortable for those obsessed with trying to control every aspect of their lives.
A clever scientist might say, “they are just dreams Alan!”
Someone of a more spiritual or religious orientation might confer more importance. Most religions have dreams as a part of their hagiography and narrative….
Here is last night’s dream. I managed to sleep until 5 AM without interruption which is unusual these days. We watched the film “Old Guard” last night.
The dream starts in the South-Eastern corner of America. It is in the recent past. It is sweltering hot, humid and sweaty. We are under siege. We can hear gunfire from the nearby town which is surrounded. There is smoke in the air and cordite on the wind. From time to time the night sky lights up with an orange light from afar due to a large munition. They are being pounded. We too are besieged but by a much smaller force. It is quiet where we are but we know that they are out there on our property in numbers.
In the dream I am very surprised to be in America. Though it does make sense.
I am sat at a large table in the kitchen or scullery. There are candles burning and several finished bottles of wine. I have a glass on the go. We are speaking Cajun or creole French. There are a few of us white and a few servants or slaves black. We have all hastily eaten something quick. Others are keeping watch. We are in some wooded “mansion” type house on a plantation of sorts. The windows are boarded up from the inside.
On the table is a tarot deck de Marseilles. On the wall there are pictures of soldiers in a kind of uniform of dull grey colour. My minds thinks Confederate but it could have been earlier. It could be militia but is definitely not redcoat. There is an air of civil war or revolution and of tearing apart. On the table I can see the cards 0,1 and 10. The cards are le mat, le bateleur and la roue de fortune. I focus on the latter. It seems apt. Also on the table someone has been sketching a contemporary “confederate” set of cards and having them cut out. The table is like that of le bateleur in front of us. The tarot arcana have been given a modern twist. La roue de fortune is comprised two pistols intertwined head to tail to make a kind of pistol ying-yang circle. Other figures are made contemporary with white wigs sat on judicial “thrones”. One of the company is whiling away the time drawing. We all know what is coming in the morning. One of the black women in a dark blue dress clears the plates from the table. One man in the corner is drinking brandy to forget. There is a sense of impending.
The scene changes to morning. We are outside in daylight. I am wearing black riding boots, black pants and a dirty white blouson shirt with a lace up closure in the front. It is partially undone. I have blood spatters on it. It needs a wash as do I. My long dark brown hair is held at the back in a pony tail. I am partially dishevelled and have been roughed up. My hands are tied behind my back and I am being held by them. I am being brought before. I can sense a pistol very close to my right temple. I can sense an arm and a hand holding it. They are going to execute me. I see a flash of smoke as the pistol mechanism fires. I hear a loud bang.
In the dream I know that it does not kill me because I can see myself back in Europe as an older man with a white-grey ponytail and clean shirt sat at my desk. This shooting is early in my previous life.
I mentioned earlier in the blog that around 2003 I started having visions of myself as Buddhist priest / monk with om mane padme hum tattooed on my forearms in Sanskrit. This tattooing suggested the Sak Yant of Thai, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia / Burma, I could not see the colour of the robes in those visions but was certain that the calligraphy was not Tibetan.
More recently I had an “Indochina” dream, a link is below.
One could say that the Buddhist Muay Thai dream resulted from me watching Tony Jaa in the early Ong Bak films. But I don’t think so.
–
–
As a regular user of Watkins books where one can find much on “spirituality” I frequented Cecil Court near Trafalgar Square, London. There was an artefact shop opposite. There I purchased this Buddha / Avalokiteśvara. He is sitting in our hallway to this day.
–
–
At the time I was talking with a chemistry student during her final year research project on statute patinas joint with The Royal College of Art. The shop has moved probably to Camden. I had a long conversation with proprietor about how the village from which he sourced the statuettes used special techniques to create ancient looking patinas.
Many years later following on from a dream I visited a Thai Forest Buddhist centre, Cittaviveka, also known as Chithurst Buddhist Monastery. This was not far from where we lived in the UK.
When I had the “Thai” dream in 2023 I was genuinely quite surprised because I had mentally ruled out Indochina. But today that notion has again resurfaced. The hair-do on the statute is very Indochina – style. I have said “Thai” but it could be elsewhere on the peninsula.
The Buddhist thread is linked to the pen-pal of the wife’s mother who was the daughter of a Sri Lankan ambassador and a Pali Scholar, the author of a Pali dictionary and important to the spread of Buddhism to London. This is the Theravada link.
The monk I spoke with at Cittaviveka had looked after Christmas Humphreys. A key figure in bringing Buddhism and meditation to London.
In that dream for the first time, “I am wearing only some saffron-yellow trousers.” I am clearly Asian.
It is very difficult to get across to most people just how out of touch we are with modern living and specifically people density and noise. Aside from medics, tradesmen and checkout people, I speak with nobody other than the wife. This has been the case for quite a while, over six years. I have spoken in person to/with her brother and friends when they visited. I have had very few zoom type calls in that six year period. Certainly, less than two dozen. I do not speak on the ‘phone. Nor do I chat via email or WhatsApp whatever the hell that is.
In many ways I am a bumpkin, a pikey and a hermit. I am no longer accustomed to “sophistication” nor the high octane pace of somewhere like Saint Helier Jersey. {Population~ 30k}
I am unaccustomed to any social interaction.
Part of the purpose of visiting Jersey was to see how it felt to be surrounded by people and anglophone people at that. It is fair to say that I am still a little shell shocked. We were out of the compound for less than 48 hours and in the Metropolis for 24.
The fist thing I noted was just how frantic and ill at ease people were. The energy they were giving off was edgy and wanting to please, to fit in. The manager at Pizza Express asked us if we wanted the app…Why? I don’t use apps and we have not been to a Pizza Express for more than six years. I did not even have a ‘phone.
The people in Jersey seemed rushed and hassled compared to here. And boy were they loud when bullshitting each other. I noted several chunky “personal trainer” types, keen to exploit the Jersey dollar for fitness and “well-being”. There is money and it attracts.
The only calm experience, outside interaction, I had was when I sat on the bench outside M&S and a well-heeled woman older than me sat next. Neither of us were rushed. We shared silence for a few minutes. She went into Givenchy. The main street was a bit like a cross between high street Guildford and Bond Street London.
Jersey is clean and “posh”. It is also surprisingly multi-national with people there to meet the services sector demand. I used to hang out in posh places, South Kensington and earlier Mayfair / Piccadilly. I lived in Brixton.
The hotel we stayed at was very nice. We ate at the hotel restaurant. They played loud “party” music and people outside on the terrace were necking booze and smoking or vaping. The food was good and the service very, perhaps overly, quick. There was noise and laughter outside. I thought to myself that once I used to do that kind of thing. I would have been content as a Brit on the piss. It all seemed more than a little forced and false. It was hurried. There were ostentatious handshakes and kissy-kissy helloes.
I was the alien from another planet. I was able to order, in English, food from the pygmy African waitress. I was observing, earth.
–
–
The rheumatologist suggested we move to Jersey for the “quality of life”. It did not seem that attractive to me. How do you explain quiet tranquillity with no social interaction and a gentle river running through the garden? That has quality and not a constant needy need for social interaction and social affirmation. There is no need for endless consumption, conspicuous or otherwise.
I am still sighing a little, a whole day later.
What is obvious from that visit is that it is probably not wise to live in a “built-up” area and that I do not miss the people in whose country I once lived. I do not need that English vibe.
It might be possible to live in the countryside and visit an urban “metropolis” when there is a need.
Unfortunately, I am like a sponge and can pick up all that emitted jangly nervous energy. It made “in town” sleeping hard.
Theoretically It would be possible to earn money tutoring wealthy kids in physics and chemistry on Jersey. But I don’t think there is anywhere there far enough away from “civilization”.
If I found Jersey difficult to hack, London would cause a complete meltdown.
Did I really get on the Victoria Line every weekday morning during rush hour? Really? And without any medication?
In terms of incarnation that seems like the most surreal incarnation that I have ever had.
Still more than a little shell shocked after only a very brief jaunt…
The first dream starts in a 18th century style horse drawn carriage. It is closed and very much like an Adam Ant video. We are heading north to Edinburgh. There is a couple who are well off, myself and my helper / lieutenant. I am dressed casually in white blouson and with my long grey hair tied back in a pony tail. It is getting towards dusk. We will be staying at a large turnpike inn just inside the borders.
We pull up in front of the inn and the horsemen steady the horses and let them drink. We dismount and I am greeted by the landlord who has been waiting for me. He has a lantern and is accompanied by his wife. He has a Scottish brogue. The otherwise bustling turnpike inn is fairly deserted. He has called me north to investigate. There have been a series of haunting /poltergeist like happenings which have scared his customers.
He leads me into the bar and we have a drink out of pewter cups. It is some kind of port. He asks me how I want to proceed. He then comes with me upstairs into a wood panelled suite with a large four poster style bed and a dressing room with commode. He says that this is where most of the “action” is. He puts a lantern, the port bottle and a pewter cup on the table. He backs out nervously.
I know this physical body from before. I pull my pony tail gently. I introduce myself to who/whatever is there. I take a cushion off the bed and put it on the floor next to the wall. I sit there with the cup full by my side. I am getting ready to wait. I can see my pantaloons, the tops of my stockings and my brown leather riding boots.
I say out loud, “Don’t be afraid because I am not. If you wish to materialise, please feel free. I will just sit here. What troubles you, what ails you? I am happy to discus and help put your mind at rest.”
I reach over and blow out the lantern and sit quietly adjusting to the darkness. In the night I can start to see. I note the semblance of fog-like patterns forming. I start to get a very strong sense of camaraderie as if someone/thing has sat opposite me on the floor. It is the ghost. He is now relaxed. We just sit and share each other’s company. He has no need to talk. We just feel.
This segment ends. This more towards dawn.
The next segment starts in a very brightly lit hospital environment. I am on a hospital bed which is raised for me to sit up. In the corner of the room is the large doughnut of an unspecified high-tech scanner. A male nurse is taking a cannula out of my arm through which I have had contrast agent. I know that it is a CT scanner. The nurse is chatting away.
A young girl who is in a wheelchair comes in. She manoeuvres towards my bed curious of me and what is going on. She has a nasal oxygen supply and is wearing a hospital gown. She is hairless and smiling with me. Her parents come in and call her name, Abby. They come over to us and say hi to me.
A female doctor in a white coat comes in with a small retinue of medical students. She hands me a blister of large bright Rhodamine-pink tablets each about the size of the end of my little finger. She gives me a small bottle of medicine. She hands several blisters of pink tablets to the girl’s parents. Her tablets are the size of the end of my thumb. I joke with her that the doctor has mistaken her for a horse or an elephant. She says that she is used to these tablets. I know that these tablets are very high dose steroids. They are on clinical trial. We both have to take them.
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.
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.
—
—
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.
——————————–
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.
I have found that if you start looking into things Tibetan that complexity soon arrives.
Today I came upon ma ’das sprul sku for the first time.
———————-
Abstract: A ma ’das sprul sku is a non-hereditary reincarnate lama (sprul sku) who assumes his or her predecessor’s status, but who takes birth before his or her predecessor’s death. This paper presents ten oral histories of ma ’das sprul skus and examines what they and their narrators reveal about the logic of transference in establishing the personhood of a ma ’das sprul sku, how ma ’das sprul sku personhood may challenge conventional understandings of sprul sku personhood and temporality, ma ’das sprul sku and their creators as reflective agents, and what the dearth of ma ’das sprul sku hagiographies may imply.
Marcia Calkowski in The Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies.
The notion that a being can have a second incarnation whilst still alive, kind of messes with the idea that one needs to leave the meat before getting some more. She mentions the idea of mandé trülku.
Taken to the limit that could mean that an emanation, similar to that which gave rise to the Dalai Lama, could already be incarnate whilst he lives.
——————————–
Literary Sources for Tulku Lines
Successive systems of reincarnation or tulku (sprul sku) are fascinating sources for the study of the social history of Tibet. The tulku, predicated on Buddhist metaphysics of rebirth, is a phenomena in which a person is recognized as embodying a previous person, in their own current body. This is technically referred to in Tibetan as one who is “recognized as having returned to existence” (yang srid ngos ‘dzin or sprul sku ngos ‘dzin).
There are hundreds of multigenerational tulku lines in Tibet. By looking at when such tulku lines were declared, within which contexts, patterns of interpersonal relations, institutional alliances, and regional practices emerge. We are given new visions of these trans-generational social networks and the weblike worlds in which tulkus function.
This suggests that there are so many tulkus that some could be considered common or garden as opposed to the big three.
The naming and interweave is not easily tractable. If I was to start with my recent Tibetan dream, trying to find out who I might have been, there are many pitfalls.
This dream, if taken literally, suggests that I was being escorted out of Tibet in and around the early sixties / late fifties. Clearly that is a big if. It suggests an importance sufficient to warrant an escort and a rank above common or garden
I could search for a person, lama or tulku, who died in and around that time but the list of tulku lines is not easily searchable by date. The dream suggests that I was not going to make it.
But I may have made it. Which might make me a co-incarnation of a living person. We share an emanatory source. That co-incarnation could have passed on since and could in principle have been born biologically before me, say ~1940s in order to be old enough to march to freedom.
The feeling from the dream was that I was a youth / young man. Which puts a window ~1935 – 1945. My hands in the dream were soft inconsistent with extended heavy manual labour.
Points at Southeastern Tibet / Shigatse/ Shigatze which might geo-locate an incarnation but does not take me much closer to a named individual in the twentieth century.
My Tibetan Buddhist Search Committee Dream suggests that I might recognise a magically inscribed cabinet. It suggests that I might recognise Tibetan martial arts weapons.
“The carpet on the floor of the hall has been rolled back to reveal a parquet dance floor of some considerable sheen. Amongst the entourage I can hear gossiping. “It cannot be him; he is too coarse thickset and muscular.”
I hear this and whip off my shirt to reveal my muscular bare chest. I say that I will cooperate with whatever it is they must do. Take a look if you must. I am now wearing saffron yellow trousers, training pants, that are “elasticated” at the ankles. I start to do a forward splits on the floor to warm up. I say that given I am nearly sixty I am surprised that being that old I can still do that.
One of the woman in the entourage says to me that I am much older than that both in this lifetime and stretching way back. I am nearly 73 she says. I do the mental calculation that I must have been “born” in the early 1950s. She says, “we tried to wake you five years ago”. You have been “asleep” and we have been waiting.”
——————————————
So, the dreams suggest an inconsistency of age or timing.
——————————————
The monastery airport dream points at Leh in Ladakh.
There are other dreams with H.H. Karmapa and H.H. Dalai lama in.
———————————-
If dreams are “evidence” then there is quite a bit suggesting some Tibetan connection. If I were a Tibetan having these dreams then the Tibetans would take them more seriously. A hairy arsed sixty-year old Welsh ex-academic spendthrift is not as attractive as perhaps a younger person linked to the sangha.
It is difficult to explain these dreams cropping up from a Freudian or Jungian perspective.
There is circumstantial evidence. It is pretty unlikely that any conscious imaginations / research makes its way fully into dreams. I did not make any of them up. They were recorded as is the morning after.
I have not tried to visualise this putative life as that is more likely to be prone to prejudice / confirmation bias.
It is possible that having looked at this theme there may be more passive dreams on the way….
Prompted by this morning’s dream I found this one in the vaults, so to speak.
Dream Diary 1-11
I am outside with Charlie. He and I are loading bricks into the trunk / boot of a car. The bricks have curly writing on them, it is not Sanskrit or Tibetan. They are golden and more like large ingots of gold.
He and I are now on a long journey across the mountains on a plateau which is in Tibet. With us is a smiling lama who is our guide, guard and escort. He is showing us the way. The landscape is very sparse and rocky with scree falls. I look at the lama’s physique and it is very similar to mine only that he is shorter and obviously Tibetan. I say that I didn’t know that they built Tibetans like that…
As we continue on our journey. Charlie and I are now wearing saffron and magenta monk’s robes. This journey is to be extensive. As we move forward Charlie is often out in front exploring the different routes. At one stage we need to pick up speed. The Tibetan monk picks up his companion, also a monk, and carries him piggy-back. I do the same with Charlie. I am not sure that I can walk and climb at this altitude like this. After a few steps I realise that I can and easily so.
A little later the trail becomes tortuous and Charlie is way ahead up the hill. He comes down back to me via a slippery and windy route. I find a more direct route. This is a part of a long journey together.
Back now in London, we are at a Tibetan Dzong as guests of honour. Sat waiting are Charlie , the wife and I. We are offered some western food. I turn to her and say that she had better tuck in before they come out with the yak’s butter….
Dreamyoga 