Mystic Lake Dream – 27-02-2026

———

I am my mother’s savage daughter
The one who runs barefoot
Cursing sharp stones
I am my mother’s savage daughter
I will not cut my hair
I will not lower my voice

My mother’s child is a savage
She looks for her omens in the colors of stones
In the faces of cats, in the falling of feathers
In the dancing of fire
In the curve of old bones

Karen Kahan / Wyndreth Berginsdottir

———–

Here is last night’s dreaming it was in some parts accompanied by this song during the dreaming. There is a sense of something broadly shamanic incoming. I was reminded of Snowdon’s Glaslyn and Oeschinensee in the Berner Oberland.

The dream opens in a brightly lit indoor setting. It is like a pharmacy / clinic. Two young nurses, one female and one male, are struggling to calm down and contain a large older man with unruly blonde hair. He is panicking about his test results and upcoming injections. He will not listen to them. The woman turns to me and asks me to explain. I am of a similar age to the man. She explains to him that I am a trained scientist. I start to explain to him and slowly he calms. I show him a test tube in which the red blood cells from his blood have been sedimented out to the bottom. This means that for now he has not been infected which is why he needs to be vaccinated, something the nurse will gladly do for him. He is surprised that his blood liquid is light yellow murky over the small layer of sedimented red blood cells.

The scene changes and I am climbing a mountain track with a leather coracle on my back. I round the bend and go over the last lip into the corrie / cwm where there is a mountain lake of sublime beauty. It has been scoured out by glaciers of days gone by. I place the coracle and oar down on the rocky shore and marvel at the azure blue. I am home. I am back at the source of the river. I marvel at the rocky slopes plunging into the icy waters. I hear an all-encompassing silence. I will in time row out onto the lake because I have an appointment there.

The scene changes and I am in something of an ersatz physics laboratory. An experiment using lasers in being prepared for the school children. The technicians are struggling to get the experiment to work. They call for help and Ian M tips up and together we start to align the outdated clunky optics on a heavy metal rail. They are confident because of our laser expertise the experiment will work.

The scene changes and I am back lakeside. A magnificent mist has come in cloaking the lake and making the atmosphere heightened and mystical. At any time one might imagine the lady of the lake rising with Excalibur in her hand. The mist enshrouds and welcomes. I get into the coracle and row slowly out into the centre of the lake and the centre of the mist. I have a meeting and I have something to retrieve, to find again. I stroke my beard with my left hand. I am enlivened and energised. My palms are tingling with “electricity”. I have come for something and am reminded of the role of all the lakes in this life and beyond.

I am now outside a funeral parlour. There is a mass funeral taking place. Where members of two families are being sent off together following a huge violent brawl at a wedding. The two sides have been at war for generations. Yet they have decided to join together to remember their dead. Coffin after coffin is walked from the hearses into the crematorium. A newspaper photographer is there and goes to take a picture. I stop him and seize his camera. Such a thing would inflame and ignite.

Back out on the lake the mist clears and I can see far in the crisp pristine mountain air. I look down into the hyper-transparent water of the lake and several metres down I can see the rocky bottom with a few arctic fish like char. I remove my heavy fur jacket / long coat. It is bearskin. I am wearing a shirt fastened at the top with a shoelace like fastening. I stand in the coracle and am ready to plunge into the icy depths.

The scene changes to the carriage of a bus which is brightly lit and modern. The bus is only partially full. I am at the back of the bus and there are a few young people there. They are taking the piss out of me because I am not sitting down even though they are seats. I am holding on to a tube train style ceiling handle. They are all chatting and playing on their electronic devices.

The bus is coming to a stop. I have fallen asleep standing up much to the surprise of everyone except me. The bus has morphed into an airplane and we are taxying to the terminal. The doors open and because I am standing I am the first one to leave the plane.

The dreaming ends and as I awake I make a mental note to search my dream archive for dreams with lakes in and in writing I am reminded of the morning when I threw my katana souvenir into a lake in Hertfordshire.

Vajrapāṇi Avalokiteśvara Manjushri – Power Compassion Wisdom

The three perhaps best know Bodhisattvas are Vajrapāṇi Avalokiteśvara and Manjushri. They are thought of as the embodiment, in the Buddha field, of power compassion and wisdom. They can be thought of as the three principle esoteric monadic energies, will to power, love-wisdom and active intelligence. Ray one, ray two and ray three. After all compassion is detached brotherly love advised by wisdom and “wisdom” can be thought of as the active application of intelligence and knowledge.

These three are reflected in the Buddhas of activity.

Avalokiteśvara is the second ray Bodhisattva and an archetype of love-wisdom. He emanates compassion for all sentient beings irrespective of their own personal values and actions. He is om mane padme hum or the jewel in the centre of the lotus. He emanates through the palm chakras the essence of enlightened heart. Avalokiteśvara is the Bodhisattva of the Elephant dreaming class.

These three Bodhisattvas can be seen as the benevolent aspect of what might be otherwise termed deity. These are a kind of Buddhist and energetic trinity.

As an antidote to the spread of division, xenophobia and hatred, the quality of compassion is much needed to offset the nastiness now spreading.

This second ray love-wisdom is the ray par excellence of inclusive compassion. Compassion is not to be confused with gullibility for sometimes the needed medicine lacks sugar.

Right now when the axe of cleavage and brutal coercion is being wielded humanity is in dire need of wisdom and of love. There is a bit of a drought…

—-

om mane padme hum

om mane padme hum

om mane padme hum

—-

Thought Experiment – Could a Toltec Fake Science Know-How?

The notion of Men of Knowledge, Toltecs, and the warrior’s path first came into the public domain via the opus of Carlos Castaneda. Many have been on a mission to prove him wrong and label him a charlatan. Unmasking and debagging and disproving generates a lot of clicks and kudos.

“Look at me aren’t I clever, Trevor?”

In his narratives the Nagual don Juan is wise in plant and fungal lore. Juan takes the piss a lot and makes Carlos trip his nads off. He makes him sew together the lips of lizards. Nevertheless Carlos got an Anthropology Ph.D. for his work at a respectable university in California. Juan is part yokel-part shaman. So for him to remain wise in his own context out bush is more acceptable. In general I’ll speculate that things flaky are more acceptable in California than in London or Oxford, old chap.

What would happen should such a being end up in a world top ten university trying to teach fee paying undergraduates? How long could such a charlatan maintain his disguise?

My own personal view is that a true man of knowledge should have a wide subject coverage and that should include “modern” versions of science.

Théun Mares outlines a putative organisational flow chart:

So the not doing of a Toltec might be to act as a mainstream science academic for over a decade, publishing papers, writing grant applications, raising venture capital and filing patent applications.

———

Could a Toltec fake science know how?

Could a scientist fake Toltec know-how?

Would the Toltec be the not doing of the scientist or vice versa?


“Post Mortem” Dream and Going Through the Motions – 25-02-2026

This morning I had a dreaming segment in which a now emeritus British academic came to inquire of me and my ideas concerning some cobbled together science project or other. She is/was a big cheese in UK science and is the sort of person who would get an obituary written. She asked multiple probing questions but avoided the subject as to why I decided to jack it all in way back.  She was trying to ascertain if I had a scientific mind and was sane. The “interview” took place both at current time and twenty five years ago. She also interviewed my ex-wife in the earlier time frame. From the dream it was clear that our lives {ex-wife} were already divergent back then. The big cheese seemed to find that I was not actually insane and that my scientific thinking was OK. She was going to report back to some committee or other. Some review some post mortem as to what happened way back then.

Commentary

It is very typical in both scientific and political arenas to hold a “placatory review” in which an inquiry is launched and a report made, a white paper written. The aim of these charades is to calm things down and appease by giving the impression of actually doing something. Rarely does anything ever happen after these. The recommendations are noted and consigned to some cobweb filled archive waiting for for Lara Croft to find them several centuries hence. It is extremely rare for any such inquiry to err from the status quo. But it gives the impression of listening, caring and taking action. In fact these are just going through the motions, there is no intention or appetite to change anything.

The dream points at the fact that I have made several decisions which were largely unanticipated by others and about which sense making has been difficult for them. Most of these were handled very poorly because of a lack of interpersonal skills held by others. They were very “Basil Fawlty”.  

“Don’t mention the war!!”

There is no point in holding a post mortem if there is no intention to do anything nor learn from events. It just gives a vague warm feeling of responding albeit long after the horse has bolted. It is by way of post hoc stable door closing. There is an illusion of doing something.

The Nature of Consciousness – Roger Penrose Dream 24-02-2026

Here is this morning’s dream had between 4 and 7 AM.

The dream opens with me conversing mind-to-mind or telepathically with another being. We are looking down at a gathering of Tibetan Buddhists, lamas. They are dressed in robes and at the edge of the gathering, very much at arm’s length is Charlie, a nagal’s courier.

I say-think, “unfortunately Charlie is not very bright, not very intelligent. He is not intelligent enough to realise that he lacks intelligence and therefore assumes that he knows correctly a lot more than he does. It is a common problem that people are not sufficiently intelligent to understand their own lack of a well-honed intellect. As a consequence there is adamant assertion without open critical thinking.”

“Yes this is true people assume they know and understand more than they do and can be dogmatic.” Is the reply.

I then look again at the gang or committee of lamas.

“The difficulty with the Tibetans is that they have a vested interest in being the world experts in meditation and consciousness. It is a part of their brand. They may indeed have studied Buddhist texts and the Tibetan canon and may be expert thereupon but their thinking is developed only in one area. They have not a diverse nor modern intellect. They are arrogant and not open to external thinking, they want to incorporate things into their perspective solely. It is not a two way street. They may be intelligent but they do not have a far reaching wide knowledge based intellect incorporating science. In short they are a closed shop and stuck in their ways. They are not approachable in any meaningful way because they must be, in their eyes, the experts. They do not understand that they are insular.”

I go on.

“There is a limit to so-called pure consciousness. It needs grounded and generalised via an expansive and inclusive intellect. The latter word inclusive being of great importance. There is nothing you can do when people do not have the intelligence to understand that their intelligence is limited and closed off. You cannot explain to someone something about which they lack the intelligence to understand or encompass. It is by definition almost, an impossible thing.”

“Yes. Sometimes you can only go so far.”

“There are jhanas, states of consciousness and expansive awareness, past what most of these have ever perceived. There is no way that you can convince an expert.”

The scene changes and I am in a medical / dental consultation in Edinburgh. I am with a man who is slightly older than me, his post doc researcher and a couple of younger graduate students. He is a psychologist – neuroscientist and wearing a white lab coat. He has grey wispy hair and spectacles. His postdoc is Hispanic. She has long very dark hair and is wearing blue jeans and a hoody, hood down. They are making some measurements on my brain using electrodes. I am sat in what looks like a dentist chair.

I am explaining to him that the problem with neuroscientists trying to understand consciousness is that they lack the training in meditative technique. They have no understanding personally of the states  they are trying to measure. They are measuring like blind men who have never been there. It is like making a map of a land which they have never set foot upon. The intellectual understanding of consciousness is limited therefore to rational supposition. Only a truly great intellect could “hold” and understand these states without direct personal experience of being “there”. A mind would have to be very versatile and expansive yet well controlled and quiet.

I say that maybe I should talk with Roger Penrose about the nature of consciousness.  He perhaps might understand and get the gist. If one verbalizes a state of consciousness well one can “take” another mind “there” at least partially. One can build a “picture” which might be partially shared and imagined.

The guy is initially interested.

I ask him that given he is a psych-neuro would he like to collaborate with me and Roger Penrose on a book? He no longer has to worry about his career as he is essentially emeritus.

He  thanks me for the invitation but he does not believe that I can add anything beyond what “they” the neuroscientists already know. He declines. He thinks that I am waffling.

I think that he does not know that he does not know. His intellect will not understand how limited his understanding is nor where his knowledge ends...

I awake; the dream ends.