Category: Toltec

The Philosophy of Personal Identity

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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.

Dreams Around a Death 01-08-2011

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I am in Africa with Théun. We are dressed in khaki shorts, with boots and khaki hunting vests. We are walking in a river and he is showing me some aspects of hunting {stalking}. As we walk along, we catch various fish which we discard. We near a rockpool which is where we are going to fish. The river goes between a rock formation and he wants to show me what is past that. So, we go through and right up to the lip of a waterfall which is there. The water cascades over into a massive plunge pool it is totally beautiful. I am a little nervous about the height but cope OK. As we pull back from the edge, I lift up the river bed as if looking under a carpet or rug. Under the river I can see night stars and sky. I replace the river bed and we move back to the fishing spot.

Later we are inside a room. In front of us on a table is a giant human heart which is still pulsing. I start to run a grater come mandolin over the heart. This removes aged, vitrified muscle so that the heart can function better. He looks on and there is a sense of us working on this together.

On the night 4 – 5th of September a Le Creuset casserole spontaneously split asunder in our kitchen in Surrey

22nd October 2011

I am somehow at a hotel resort over looking vast dunes. I notice Théun walking there he is very old and frail. He is walking. I ask him if he would like to talk. Not now. He turns and walks away. I think to myself whatever. He seemed a bit like a ghost.

Later in the same dream.

Theun is now paddling in the sea. I see him from a distance getting into trouble. He is having difficulty breathing. I am with E and I ask her what is needed. It is my Ventolin. I rush to the scene with my Ventolin. When I get there, he is being given CPR. I go to the hospital and am sat there beside him feeling his veins whilst they sort out a drip. The vein is “metallic” and I know that I am bringing him comfort. He passes away. There is a no resuscitation policy in place. It is clear to me that he is in a mess physically. I do not know why I was “there” at the end.

I was not in contact with Théun at this time and the dream prompted me to do an internet search.

His death is reported at being on the 5th of September.

Recapitulation of the Waking Dream

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Are you sure that, as you read this, you are not dreaming.

 Are you fully awake and certain of your notions of reality?

One could suggest that each incarnation is the dream of the power within, the soul, the reincarnating Jiva. You the dreamed are currently living the dream of the dreamer, the real you. Therefore, it makes sense to write down the content of the dream to see if you can make sense of it.

–

–

In the Toltec teachings one is encouraged to recapitulate an entire life right back to the moment of birth, but to do so in an honest and non-biased manner. In 2007 I finished my recapitulation which effectively started 1995-6 when I had a severe bout of clinical depression. Retrospect suggests that my power within, my Soul, was not happy with the way I was living my life and pulled the plug so-to speak.

Few have the clarity on what their current life is all about. In order to gain clarity one can look at what your life and the people in it are reflecting for you. They are your mirrors and mirrors never lie. But you must be honest. If for example you see other people scheming and executing cunning plans, then in order to see the cunning plans, perhaps everywhere, you must have experience of executing cunning plans yourself, otherwise how would you recognise them?

In working with mirrors, it is necessary to recapitulate your entire life, from the present moment right back to the moment of birth. Such a recapitulation demands a level of honesty which is only attainable through an act of ruthlessness. Ruthlessness must begin with yourself. Only when ruthlessness has replaced self-pity can you achieve the sobriety needed in order to discriminate with wisdom.

Gaining accurate ruthless honesty is not facile. People can have a tendency to self-coruscating criticism or imagine butter does not melt in their mouth, that everything is somebody else’s fault. One can oscillate from criticism to denial and blame. Responsibility for events and behaviours can be hard to accept, the fingers of some are often ready to point, unless with responsibility comes blame.

Getting an accurate and honest balance takes a while, there are things which may be difficult to accept. Once you have done this, acceptance, the things no longer have power over you. You are metaphorically free of your past and your stories about it. You may find that your stories are in fact a pack of lies.

Here is a part of my recapitulation summary chart which I have been looking at this afternoon.

–

–

I have been looking at it because a dream the other day suggested that I did. The overarching notion was that I literally had to resign in 2006 because there is no way that I could have done my exacting job and handled all that was to unfold 2007 onwards.

I have been pointed at a dream I had during the global financial crash 2007-8 which follows this post.

Failure as a Human Being

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I have a pet theory which states that most people are literally sleepwalking, they are caught in the hamster wheel of material success and social kudos and have completely forgotten the purpose of their current incarnation. They may have all the accoutrements of success but when the time comes to show their humanity they fail, they fail as a human being. That failure, the lack of courage, the lack of honesty at time of crisis can weigh heavy. It is at the core of “The Seed and the Sower” by Laurens van der Post. Jack Celliers could have saved his little hunchbacked brother from public mockery but he tried to save face and look good. He was offered the chance for his brother to be spared of the ritual, the rite of passage. He had his cubic centimetre of chance but did not take it. He chose poorly. Subsequently Jack became reckless with his life and a part of his story, his betrayal, is immortalised in the film “Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence”.

–

“All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between an average man and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of this, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately waiting, so that when his cubic centimeter pops out, he has the necessary speed, the prowess, to pick it up.”

Carlos Castaneda

–

A watered down version of this public humiliation happened to me in boarding school. In my common entrance English exam aged 12 I wrote a poetic piece about being set loose in a coracle from Cape Town Harbour under a moonless sky and by the light of the Southern Cross. It was in a way prophetic. My housemaster, “Bulldog”, chose to read it out in school assembly, without asking me. He eulogised about the poetry in my soul. I got five white bonus points for my house, Lincoln. I never wrote anything like that again until I was in my late thirties. I did not let go again. As a direct result of that moment, I chose chemistry, physics and maths, instead of English, Latin and French for my “A” level subjects. I pivoted away.

–

–

Many people are convinced, adamant even that know where people are coming from, what they are all about and how they think. Not asking they never truly know. People in my experience prefer to tell me what they think I am thinking. Being introverted I am very unlikely to offer any narrative or opinion, unless it is on a subject about which I am interested. I could have written passionate here but I didn’t because I am past the stage of passions.

I have made a statement. People may take it at face value, they are very unlikely to ask me what I mean by that. So, they will be extrapolating from their own knowledge and, if interested, simply guessing.

–

–

I can think of several occasions when I have been interacting with people where they have absolutely no idea about what I know. Where I could have given them many gifts of power. They were too interested in the sound of their own voice and keen to have a mutual bullshit session. They missed an opportunity which might have become profound. They did not ask they told. I let them carry on talking.

It seems to me obvious that a part of incarnating as a human being is to practise and learn humanity. By all the numerical and material metrics you may be a rip-roaring success. Yet if you fail to embody and express humanity you have failed as a human being. You may gob off about immigrants, sue people for throwing milkshakes at you. You may turn a social media platform into a den of iniquity.

The tendency to soap box in an adamant manner is not really practising an inclusive humanity. You may get millions of followers and become an influencer, have social kudos. But exactly what example are you setting?

Are you really developing your humanity?

Are you somehow missing the point of your current incarnation?

How are you doing being a human being?

Hmnn…

Toltec Baby Dream 9-5-18

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Just found this one in the vaults, so to speak.

—–

Here is this morning’s dream:

I am at a US style motel and we go around the upper veranda to an upstairs room. Which we enter. I am with a younger man, taller than me, whom in everyday life I have not yet met. The room is deceptively spacious.

At one side there is a ceiling to floor curtain on the wall. This stands out and is noteworthy. I go to the curtain and peak behind it. I can see that behind it is a wall. I draw the curtain back and the wall starts to warp, bend and breathe. There is a sense that this wall is a portal.

Something is trying to come through the wall now that we have drawn the curtain. We stand back and a “hologram” baby starts to materialize. It is wearing diapers but is standing up. It is a bit big for a baby. It glows and shimmers and gives off light. I know that this is a / the Toltec baby.

With the baby is a remote control. By using the remote control, we can get the baby / hologram to play scenes for us. The scenes are numbered and can be repeated, seen again.

We watch a number of these scenes which are holo-projected out of the Toltec baby. I already know them all, but they are new to the younger man.

In scene three the younger man is to have a meeting with “don Juan”. He is to go through the portal and on the other side Juan will be waiting for him in the lobby of a swish hotel, all suited and booted. 

I get the younger man to replay the scene because it is for him specifically.

We then call down to reception for a suit. A room service man who is ultra-helpful comes up to the room with a suit which is the correct size for the younger man. He acts like a tailor’s assistant and helps the younger man to get dressed. As he strips to his undergarments, we notice that he is wearing an FBI style “wire”. We say that he must take this off because it is of no use where he will be going. This he willingly does. The tailor continues to dress him, he is very nearly ready to go and looks smart and well-manicured in the suit.

Outside a cow in the shed starts mooing loudly in the barn and I hear it through our open bedroom windows. It causes me to wake from the dream.

Transmutation – The Riddle of the Mind.

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

On having the dream this morning, I was intuitively reminded of the first insight pertaining to the rule of the four pronged nagal. The insight arises out of the first contact with the void.

The butterfly arises from the caterpillar. Egg-caterpillar-chrysalis-butterfly.

The chameleon can change colour, fire is transformative / transmutative, things are forged therein.

In the blue books opus, the first initiation is the transmutation, followed by transformation and then transfiguration.

The riddle of the mind suggests that most are stuck at the level of rationalisation and justification, there is little true thinking or true mind. One needs to get past these bad habituated habits to arrive at a real clarity as opposed to mind-stuff. Lower mind is not abstract and deals largely with the mundane and quotidian.

If you think about it the root of rationalisation is ratio, which is by definition comparative and this comparison is made to the known. Rationalisation is useless for the unknown. Justification is often by way of an excuse to “allow” things which are often a bit dodgy. One thinks of the imaginary weapons of mass destruction which allowed and excused the mass destruction of Iraq and the widespread slaughter.

We are taught in school to “justify your answers”. Humanity has a very habituated way of “thinking”.

I’ll put here a juxtaposition for you to rationalise and justify.

Climate Change and the Atlantis Metaphor

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Humans not only create Gods in their own image but Aliens too. Gods and Aliens can also be extrapolations of other known terrestrial lifeforms, animals. We project our ideas onto other putative forms. We imagine life will comply with the biochemical norms of that extant currently on our planet. We look in an astro-biological sense for water, Carbon, Nitrogen, Hydrogen and Oxygen. These are said to be the building blocks of life. Higher living things are a bag of water with some form of skeleton which reproduces sexually via internal womb like development or by means of eggs. We look for life perhaps in the so called goldilocks zone on a planet near a star. Life we imagine must be corporeal and Carbon based, we are prejudiced against Silicon. We cannot imagine a lifeform in absence of a body yet we may “believe” in God.

We do not know if this is the first and only universe or if we are in universe 2.0. We do not understand why there is so much matter and not antimatter. We do not know what dark matter and dark energy are. These are fundamental gaps in knowledge. There are things beyond our ken. We can be very arrogant and adamant.

We assert that there has never been an Atlantis despite the prevalence of deluge and inundation myths in most cultures. Nobody has ever found an Atlantean skeleton. We know less about the depths of the ocean than we do the moon.

In esoterica the kingdom of Atlantis was very highly advanced. The golden days were under the guidance of the Toltec adepts. The Atlanteans started increasingly to engage in depravity and no longer followed the “good law”. This caused its demise and disappearance below the sea. Sorcery, perverse sexual activities and evil power over practices were widespread and brought about downfall. Atlantis called forth its own submersion and destruction.

If I was emigrating from a sinking Atlantis, I would seek high ground. I might head for the Tibetan plateau.

If you look on the internet it is not a big extrapolation to say that sexual gluttony and perversions have become normalised. My generation is perhaps among the last to have grown up without smartphones and access to on line pornography in all its shades. Modern mores would seem depraved to my parents even though they had the swinging sixties. Things have taken a dark turn. The gender “debate” is not about biology. It is not filled with light and luminosity.

One could speculate that we need a cleansing flood and a reset for humanity. Perhaps we are due a mass extinction / dis-incarnation event. We could argue that by trying to fight climate change we are resisting a fully natural phenomenon in that humanity brings about its own downfall and disaster. The planet needs rid of us human-locusts and a chance to recover from us and heal itself. We are only trying to put off the inevitable…

The solution to global warming is a widespread nuclear winter. This is perhaps more likely than inundation.

Some of the floods around the world recently have been truly biblical. Things will probably ramp up even further. People moan that the government doesn’t help enough yet forget that our behaviours and lifestyle is causal of global warming.

The United Nations formed out of the brutal forge of the 1914-1945 war is losing its relevance and significance. The days of “enlightened” internationalism are splintering into nationalist popularism. The cult of the personality is again on the rise and right wing politics resurgent. Force is preferred over diplomacy.

The metaphor of Atlantis sinking under the weight of its own karma grows ever more apt….

Are we doing Groundhog Day on a planetary scale?

Dragon Lore Dream 23-11-2024

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

This is a short but very intense dream from ~ 4 AM

I am with MF whom I knew as an undergraduate. We are sat in the front room of a British house in which I am living temporarily. He is sat on leather bound armchair. We have invited him over for dinner. We have eaten and are relaxing in front of an open fire.

I am lying on my stomach on the floor. My legs are bent at the knee and moving freely. I am reading my beat-up copy of “The Mists of Dragon Lore”. I can see the well-thumbed yellowed pages. I turn to the back of the book. Inside the hard cover is attached a vellum high quality cream envelope, the flap of which is sealed down with a fine bright red braided fabric. I slowly unwind the fabric and open the flap of the envelope.

With utmost care I pull out a card like piece of paper which is like artist’s paper. Embossed into the paper is an exquisitely drawn oriental dragon. It is in jet black ink and is something to behold. Next to it in fine black calligraphy is written in Kanji is “the famed black dragon”. I show the dragon to M he admires it and thinks it odd that such a print is stored in such a tatty old book.

In the dream I note that this is the very first black dragon I have encountered. I have seen many other colours.

With greatest care I return the artwork to its envelope and retie the seal.

The scene changes and I am now with M in a freight railway carriage. The carriage is empty of goods. M turns to me and says that the mullahs are talking about the coming of a new buddha. I ask if he is referring to the Islamic mullahs. Yes. I say that I know a little bit about Buddhism.

M gets out a prayer mat and places it in one corner of the carriage. He sits on it. Two young white boys, young teenagers, follow suit sitting next to him. Without a prayer mat, I sit next to the youngest boy. I put my hand on his shoulder to comfort him.

The scene changes again and I am no longer in the carriage nor bound by the rails. I can go wherever I want.

Dream ends.

Unprecedented Dreaming

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

For me it has been a useful exercise to group these dreams thematically and see the scope and variety of subject matter. Many people are interested in dreams and things like lucid dreaming. There is an attempt to gain scientific credibility for dream studies using instrumentation and the statistical methods of psychology. Taken as a whole the opus of dreams published here and those not yet published may be unprecedented, and unique. Who else dreams of vajras, patents, lamas and hydrogen bonded water clusters?   

Am I simply an anomaly or is there something more significant at work?

In general people seek to promote their own ideas and profile. The not invented here syndrome can be found on all sides. Group mind is very anti anyone or any idea which does not originate in the group. Outsiders are not very welcome especially if they challenge the status quo or question current operational dogma.

I did, religiously, a Toltec dreaming practice daily at least once a day for eight years. I did it on the Victoria line of a morning. If you can do dreaming practice on a crowded rush hour tube you can do it anywhere. The control has to be good. The intent behind this practice is to connect with the dreamer {Soul or reincarnating Jiva} and then to hand over the steering wheel of the earthly vehicle to her. To live life according to the advice given in dreams, to surrender control.

Subsequent to this I did a meditation called the master in the heart which has a similar purpose, of connection. It builds the Antahkarana, a rāja yoga. One could say that Toltec dreaming draws inspiration down and the yoga builds upwards. They are rose and lotus visualisations. Union or at-one-ment are the goals or aim if you like. It does not require wearing tight leggings or looking fit / hot. It does mean that some measure of letting go of imagined control is needed.

Because I am good at visualisation, I have extended the rāja yoga to “places” beyond any written account. In Toltec terms a steady pictorial visualisation is an active dream in which you imagine and hold fast an image. These dream thought forms tend to stabilize when they are “accurate” and reproducible.  For example, the Sahasrāra chakra or crown chakra is one such visualisation. Opening this chakra and going beyond it is a death practice in which one opens the exit door. In order to do this one needs to stretch the sūtrātman anchoring the life inside the body. It is a risky thing to do, control must be impeccable. I first did this in a detached house in the middle of a wood on a country estate a distance from interruption and people. During the day I was quite alone in a “cabin” in a wood.

–

–

Because I am a scientist by training and I used to train smart young things in science at a top university and at high school sixth form levels. I even had postdoctoral workers. I have kept lab books or dream journals. The rāja yoga or active dream meditations were extensive with some of the thought forms taking weeks and months to build.  What one experiences in passing to a “higher” more “rarefied” state of consciousness is a kind of “membrane” which has to be transcended / popped. Each new state is difficult to hold or stabilize. Yet with practice it can be done. Here is one page from my dream journal.

–

–

In these meditations slight residual corporeal awareness remains but all sense of earth-time vanishes. There is a distant awareness of the room. One continues breathing but unconsciously so. I did record electroencephalograms {EEG} and video for a few of these. The EEG is, aside from very low frequency and amplitude theta, essentially flat despite the visualisation.

These meditations have a sensation of extensive travel to non-mundane “levels” “states” or “places”.

There is no way that I could adequately convey the experience to others. Unless you have “gone” there yourself you cannot know. Of particular assistance was the mantra associated with the Heart Sutra which one can chant in order to change between states when working upwards.

Gate gate, para gate, para sum gate bodhi svaha

Gone gone, gone beyond, gone beyond the beyond, hail the awakening

I was in conscious control doing this during daylight and without drugs or booze.

One needs to take great care to come back “down” and into body consciousness. At first the “path” downwards is as slow as the “upward”. In time one knows the way “home” and this can be done more quickly.

I guess these meditations are a form of white tantra. They are situated at anja and above and have nothing to do with basal tantra. In some later meditations three centres are active, heart, anja and sahasrāra.

In my book active visualisation and 3d {sometimes +} thought form building is active dreaming.

Of course I could be kidding myself, but I somehow doubt that.

This is what I mean by dreamyoga…