Tag: Elephant

Bhagavān Institute – Found  – Wembley – Radio – Card – Dream – 22-03-2026

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Here is this morning’s dream

The dream opens in a kind of school assembly hall with a stage and parquet flooring. The stage has theatre stye floor to ceiling curtains. In the main body of the hall are several people milling around. It is a kind of “spiritual” gathering. Marshalling them is a young man who is tall with a white granddad collarless shirt buttoned at the neck. He has long shiny jet black hair and is of a slightly tanned complexion. Each person is sharing their story of how they came to be upon a spiritual journey. I am talking with a young man about his start and it was via martial arts. I explain to him that I first started Zen meditation is karate class sat in seiza.

The man with the hair says, “what shall we call this gathering and that which is to follow?”

I say the Bagvaan {phonetically} Institute. In the dream I know that the spelling has an H also and is Bhag-van. I know that it is a term used in some Buddhist texts.

He thinks that the term refers to us and the society / institutions to follow. I know in the dream that Bhagavān refers to me. The reason that people will come is for me. He does not yet understand that it is I who will organise and bring life.

In the audience / gathering is a younger woman perhaps early forties. She is expensively dressed with dark hair and her bare stocking feet look incongruous against her business suit. She comes over to me and says, “I am so pleased to have finally found you.” She starts to tear up. I reach out to hug her. She withdraws. I explain that I wish to protect her because that is what we elephants do. She lets me hug her and she sobs into my shoulder. The sobs are considerable. She calms. She reminds me of an Australian Southerly Stalker I once knew.

The scene changes and we are in her car driving into North London. The gathering has been in the home counties. We have given another member of the gathering, a man, a lift and will drop him off at a tube station, Wembley Central. On the radio there is a talk programme in which I am mentioned in connection with the growing Bhagavān Institute(s) popping up all over. This is followed by a song in which Bhagavān is the theme.

We get to the tube station and I go in with the man to ensure he knows how to use the ticket machines. He is not British. I show him how to use the machine by putting some coins in and pressing a button. Out of the ticket hole a series of introduction / business cards starts to rapidly pile up like cards in a casino card dispenser shoe. They come out of the machine to make a deck of business cards with my name on and Bhagavān Institute address details. The song from the car is playing over the tube station loudspeaker address system.

The dream ends.

  • I am unsure as to whether to publish the dream or to keep it back. In the end I decide to publish it to go with the flow and see what might happen. I am aware of possible consequences. Where did that come from? Out of the blue.

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Bhagavān, nominative singular of the adjective Bhagavat, literally means “fortunate”, “blessed” (from the noun bhaga, meaning “fortune”, “wealth”), and hence “illustrious”, “divine”, “venerable”, “holy”, etc. Bhagavān is related to the root Bhaj (भज्, “to revere”, “adore”), and implies someone “glorious”, “illustrious”, “revered”, “venerable”, “divine”, “holy” (an epithet applied to gods, holy or respectable personages). The root Bhaj also means “share with”, “partake of”, “aportion”.

The Vishnu Purana defines Bhagavān as follows,

He who understands the creation and dissolution, the appearance and disappearance of beings, the wisdom and ignorance, should be called Bhagavān.

— Vishnu Purana, VI.5.78

“Spiritual” Journeys

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I have used inverted commas quotation mark here because I struggle a little with how words have in a sense become tainted by multiple usage and being bandied about as PR. Spiritual as a word has had its impact and meaning downgraded to the point of near meaninglessness.

I am going to attempt to put into words something which I have hesitated to do. It is close to impossible. This cannot be undertaken without emphasising just how important a few years of my childhood were in my development, in this life. One constellation in particular left its mark deep in my psyche.

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It was by its light during an English language common entrance exam that I foresaw events near two and a half decades later. It was the harbinger and the key of a volte face in life. I left the harbour alone in my coracle adrift upon the Southern ocean lit by its solace. I left Cape Town after being burned on table mountain.

Later I had another foreboding which was also to find consummation over a similar time delay. Each of these were pivotal. That foreboding prevented me making a UCAS university choice against the advice of my school teachers.

When I was young and in an English boarding school as an expat child I got to read the lessons and the prayers in church. While the others sat with parents. It was like a duck to water that I took to the lectern and the prayer “chair” deep in the nave. There I found St Francis of Assisi.

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« Seigneur, faites de moi un instrument de votre paix.
Là où il y a de la haine, que je mette l’amour. »

« C’est en pardonnant qu’on est pardonné,
c’est en mourant qu’on ressuscite à l’éternelle vie. »

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This man was in tune with the Mahayana bodhisattva ideal. His words touched.

Unfortunately those with the skill of a chameleon can adopt any mask, any direction, any character they choose. Believe me I learned how to blend. And in blending one loses authentic essence.

At the end of my schooling I took general studies courses in Buddhism, cooking and Rastafarianism. Ever Jah, ever loving, ever faithful. Rastafari. I read all that I could on witchcraft and alchemy. I made “friends” with the librarian in our town.

The Buddhism was presented in an intellectual descriptive manner in which the various fetters were enumerated for debate. Although I understood, the manner was for me boring and definitional. I sensed beyond that which was being professed. It was during intense meditation sat in seiza at karate that I learned that I had in fact been meditating all of my childhood. I used to sit and observe. I used to wait. I was touched directly by the dreamtime out in the shimmering bush of western Queensland. The aboriginal pointing stick had cleaved something open.

And then when I went to university I mostly forgot. By the time I was doing my Ph.D. research I figured that I had found something I was good at. So maybe this was the future. I enjoyed “pissing about with lasers”. I was to an extent, life and soul of the party. It was only in the early nineties that I started to withdraw, as if driven by a deeper current, out into the hills, the mountains and the countryside. It set up a kind of imbalance. On the one hand was a “normal” life and career. On the other there was silence and quiet. My reading was more intellectual philosophy, science and philosophy of science. I noted that despite mundane academic achievement many of “the greats” struggled with non-salary paying bigger questions.

I was offered a choice. Fort Collins Colorado or Bern Switzerland. One of those would have brought me quicker into contact with things “spiritual” than the other. The Swiss francs were certain, so I saw the Berner Oberland and learned painfully of “qualität”. Something which I tried thenceforth to express.

In the mid nineties at the place of my prior foreboding I was brought to my knees. Despite writing excellent research proposals I was stymied and unfunded. A grudge held by a “competing” senior academic could kill a proposal with a mere word. I had a breakdown. The answer to life the universe and everything could no longer be found in the laws of quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. It seemed there was more. It was around then that my ambition faded and the picture of a life academic dimmed. I began to search in earnest. I opened myself up wide. Again I largely forgot and tried to rebuild a life after breakdown. For some unknown reason money for research and start-up came more easily. I was “successful” for a while.

In the very early part of this century I was tested by power. I had a taste of it and did not abuse. Like Galadriel I refused the ring and was no longer sorely tempted thereby. It was around this time that a series of what might be called micro-renunciations began. In which step-wise I renounced or was forced to renounce the accoutrements of normal life. Each one was more difficult and profound than the last. Slowly life was stripped of all that made it busy and hectic. Until in the middle of 2006 I renounced all and walked off into the metaphorical “wilderness”. Dramatic as that sounds, at face value it looked simple, at core it cleaved and parted, severed and up-ended.

I did not become a wandering mendicant with charnel grounds for abode nor skull cup for beverage. Though adrift I most certainly was. I had already learned as a child, the nature of impermanence. Strangely without accoutrement life did not cease, the world did not implode, nor did it stop.

When you are thrust  from an Outlook calendar ruled life, with hours dissected into segments, with meetings set for you, with each action seemingly accountable, into nothing. The meaning of time changes in an unalterable and irrevocable way. It is no longer a spreadsheet thing. The boxes, the rice paper walls of the day, dissolve.

At end of 2008 I left the map so to speak. I began a series of meditations which went beyond. There was nothing, despite my research skill, which I could find written. These “meditations” continued in the UK in houses close to civilisation yet separate in the English countryside. I can say that the rigor of these was high and they continued for many years. In around 2010-11 I began having Buddhist dreams.

In the early part of the century whilst still teaching physical chemistry I had a series of waking visions in which I had “om mane padme hum” tattooed on my forearms in Sanskrit and with me in monastic robes. These visions were sufficiently powerful to be present whilst I was lecturing Chemical Reaction Kinetics to undergraduates in South Kensington. It was around then that I got to express my compassion for others, to care for them.

Overlaid on a “Toltec” background was a distinctly Buddhist vibe.

All the while I had a seemingly normal life as a married man doing for quite a while “A” level science private tutoring. The outer world and the inner world differed and markedly so.

To me as a member of the elephant dreaming class there is no problem with the scholastic wisdom teachings of Siddartha and the more dramatic Toltec corpus. The latter is a guide, when viewed with clarity, to the navigation of glamour and illusion. There is probably only one truth expressed via many different approaches. The Tower of Babel has a lot to answer for…

This is probably enough for today…

Best Ever Dream – Dancing With Ganesh Dream 20-9-19

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Still a bit shaky. I have just woken from my afternoon nap, which usually results from my midday codeine. It is a few weeks after I broke the head of my femur and had it repaired with a Titanium nail. I was taken to A&E in an ambulance. I am using a Zimmer frame and have a hospital bed downstairs.

Wow! That was the most intense dream I have ever had.

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I arrive at the edge of a walled garden and am welcomed through a large gateway by an upright Ganesh. He has all the typical elephant features, but his gait is that of a human being. He is iridescent blue in colour and has a twinkle in his eyes. I am welcomed into his “humble abode”. He shows me around his palace gardens, gardens that are tropical and scented. There are flowers everywhere. The garden is filled with water features. He takes me to a partially covered courtyard which has red-brown gravel. The pieces of gravel are near perfect spheres. He sits me down and we take tea together brought by his servants. I understand that this courtyard is where he practises his dancing.

A group of Indian musicians file in and seat themselves on the ground. Ganesh signals to them and they start playing. He gets up and starts to dance. His movements are exquisite, and his hands alternate between mudras beautifully and each mudra is exact and precise. He beckons me and starts to teach me some steps of his dance. {In the dream my leg functions fine.} Slowly I get the steps and we are starting to whirl and circle. It is entrancing. He stops suddenly and takes a blue-metallic AUM symbol out of his tunic. He walks over to me and presses it on my Anja centre. Slowly it penetrates and dissolves into me. I am left with a tattoo like impression on my skin. Ganesh smiles radiantly and we continue to dance.

I look at my body and notice that it has somehow taken on the same hue as Ganesh, which pleases me greatly in the dream. He laughs, at my surprise.

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I awake with a start and my first instinct is look at my arms. They are not blue. They are lightly tanned and freckled with a few bruises from all the needles. It takes a while to assemble the reality of the room. I get up and go outside to smoke.

Myeloid Bone Biopsy – Charlie Chaplin Cars – Elephant – Blood Tests Dream 22-06-2025

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Here are last night’s dreaming segments.

The dream starts in a hospital operating theatre. There are people dressed in blue medical scrubs and with face masks and gloves on. On the screen is an X-ray like image of my right hip joint. They are using the apparatus to guide the placement of a long needle like structure into the ball of my femur and what remains of the gap between. I am awake and partially sat up. I am watching the procedure. A nurse is assisting the man doing the procedure others are monitoring vital signs.

He is saying to me that he is taking a tissue and bone sample for a Myeloid biopsy. The word is specific. They are going inside the bone to take this biopsy. It is important that they do this. This Myeloid sample will be sent off to the labs so that they can get a better understanding of what is going on. The scene is in colour and I can sense the cool air-conditioning in the “operating theatre”.

The scene changes and I am now in a black and white film in an urban setting. I am being chased by people driving black old school Charlie Chapin style cars. It is all very slapstick and the film being projected has a few flaws. The chase is semi frantic on the part of the pursuers. It is keystone cops and farcical. There is much skidding around corners. Although they are pursuing me, I am not interested. I am waiting for the results of my Myeloid biopsy. They will not leave me alone even though I am unwell. They are foolish.

The scene changes and, back in colour, I am at the edge of a field. Along the edge of the field is a fence. The other side of the field is a wood / jungle. The field has just been harvested. In the distance the gap between the wood and the field increases. I can see a small baby elephant. It is standing next to some saplings which are waist height to me. As I move towards him he moves, unhurried, off into the jungle. I arrive and there are two short rows of these saplings with green leaves. They are in a line and each row has several plants. I understand that these saplings are medicinal.

I am now on a Caribbean island; there is a sense of windward. The care home / hospital buts up against a white sandy bay and has a promenade. It is tropical. On one side to the left is the ocean and on the other a well-kept dark green lawn. There are water sprinklers going on the lawn. There are coconut palms. I am a little late for my appointment. I enter the building and there are two women dressed in starchy crisp 1950s style nurses uniforms with little hats. They woman on reception welcomes me very warmly. I am a regular and they like me, care for me. One tall nurse who is white welcomes me in a strong Jamaican patois. I respond in a like dialect only mine is play. She says that even though it is her lunch hour she will see me her “favourite” patient. She is teasing me playfully. She takes blood from the vein in my left elbow joint and from the artery on my right hand. She injects the arterial blood into a gas chromatograph. She says that even though I am something of a pin cushion these days she can always find a blood vessel. There is a sense that these blood tests are a very regular occurrence.

The dream ends.

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Notes:

Myeloid tissue, in the bone marrow sense of the word myeloid (myelo- + -oid), is tissue of bone marrow, of bone marrow cell lineage, or resembling bone marrow, and myelogenous tissue (myelo- + -genous) is any tissue of, or arising from, bone marrow; in these senses the terms are usually used synonymously, as for example with chronic myeloid/myelogenous leukemia.

Importance and Priority

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“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

People can deem all sorts of things as important; these can be personal or of a wider more general import. I think it fair to speculate that the majority have a me-centric sense of importance. The things which matter to them concern themselves, their lives and those of family and friends. Things on their agenda are more important than those not.

I am important in the lives of one human being and three cats and maybe some birds which we feed. That is the extent. My priorities are in and around this sphere of influence. My significance to the wider world is very small. In terms of social kudos I have none. My passing is unlikely to impact beyond my circle, my sphere.

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I have just gone and lost a piece of tooth filling. Which is actually both important to me and ever so slightly urgent. I am due to have a titanium implant fitted soon. It is due next to the broken tooth. Unless the tooth is repaired, they may not go ahead with the implant. In my me-centric world this is horizon stuff. We need to know so that we can free up a dental slot by prompt cancellation if that is the case.

The concatenation of various health problems is getting to be boring.

What happens here, in principle, has a wider impact elsewhere. But I doubt anyone in San Francisco needs to fear the butterfly effect from our compound.

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Self-perception has implications. We watched a film last night “The Substance” and surprisingly it had a big affect on me. This is unusual. It was about human folly and the desire to be young / look young and operate in an appearance obsessed society. People go to extraordinary lengths to keep up appearances. I can’t remember being much concerned about how I looked. All I wanted as a teenager / early twenty was for my fairly severe acne to pass. Being called “pizza face” is not a great deal of fun, named after a Margherita.

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In an earlier post I postulated that “face” was one of the most expensive of all human notions, human folly. It appears to be very important to some and they will kill and maim in an attempt to preserve face. Face is behind conflict, face is behind war, face {loss} is causal of revenge. The weird thing is that face is a completely man made illusion. No leopard or tiger would acknowledge your sense of face or kudos in the jungle at dusk. Yum, yum…

As I was making coffee this morning, I noted that although I imagine that I have some knowledge to share. This notion is not widely held. It is not held important on a wider scale. It does not matter what I imagine.

Out there somewhere important people are busy doing things they deem important. They have their priorities whether considered or otherwise. I have never been so disinterested in all the hot air, hype and show which fills the news.

The world has lost its sense of direction. It is heading deeper into petty squabbles over who sells what for what price in the sandpit or behind the bike sheds. The world is arguing the toss about who is or isn’t a fair trading partner.

Thousands of people are dying and the world is focussed on “deals” and “bargains”.

The great car boot sale is on!!

Thousands no longer get antivirals; ordnance efficacy can be tested in vivo in Gaza and Yemen. Let’s boost arms spending hype so we can sell more weapons…

I think the priorities of humanity have been badly skewed and it is not getting better…

Kabwe – Tuskers – Dream Follow Up

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I have not long watched a shaky video on YouTube of someone going into the Tuskers Hotel in Kabwe Zambia. It was weird given that I have not seen the place since well before 1978. But I recognised the restaurant immediately. We went there with a buddy of my father from Mount Isa. A woman moistend her nipple and stuck it in the sugar bowl thence to feed her child. My father’s friend was {apparently} a closetted homosexual and very shocked.

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Here is a satellite image of a part of my old world from Google maps. You can open the image in another tab.

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To the top left you can see a pink flag, Kabwe Safari Lodge. We lived two houses to the left on the opposite side of the street. You can still the vegetable garden which Tembo, the gardener made. Tembo is swahili for elephant.

Bottom left is the golf course where during the school holidays back from school in the UK I played golf most mornings.

It was there that I had Rock Shandies. I have had a few of late. I have just ordered some Angostura Bitters on line.

To the upper mid right you can see a grey flag with a cross in, Sacred Heart cathedral. To the right of that is the convent scool I attended for a few months in mid 1974.

Bottom right is a pink flag Tuskers which was, I think, the Hotel Intercontinental once.

In the middle right is a violet flag, the big tree national monument. A baobab under which people met and held markets. They used to do haircuts there too. I had my hair cut there prior to the photo on the quantum dreamer picture taken at the Lusaka high commission just before my tenth birthday.

Tuskers is only a few blocks from my old house about one kilometre away.

Zambia – Father – Royal Family – Golden Orb – Dreams – Dream 05-02-2025

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This dream came as a series of sleep-wake cycles.

The dream opens in Kabwe Zambia. I have come to reclaim the body of my father who is lying in the “mines” medical facility. He is on a morgue trolley under a blanket. I have to sign a chit for his release so that he can be repatriated. Once I have done this, I can take him away in a wheelchair. I do this and wheel him around town for a last look, during this he appears to be conscious and interacting with the environment. Kabwe is much more metropolitan and modern than I remember. I take him back to the facility so that he can be shipped.

I have a sudden realization that I must get to Lusaka, so I go to the now modern train station. The train leaves at 40 minutes past the hour. I have just missed one. I go into a coffee shop / bar to try to arrange a hotel for when I arrive in Lusaka. Unusually for me I get out a smartphone and look for hotels. I find one. I ask the owner of the bar if she has heard of it. She a white woman with a slight Afrikaans, Cape Town, accent says yes. It is her sister who runs “Tuskers” an elephant themed hotel / restaurant near the train station in Lusaka. It is a sister hotel. I say that I like elephants.  She arranges a booking and offers me curry from the buffet in her bar.

I awake.

A Google search reveals that there is a Tuskers Hotel at Butungwa Street PO Box 80942, Kabwe 60100 Zambia. It is near the Big Tree Monument, and I have been in that hotel as a child when it had another name.

I drift off.

I catch the train to Lusaka. It is modern and there are loads of young people on their devices. I arrive at my hotel and get installed. Prince William the Prince of Wales is there, and he wants me to accompany him on his tour of schools in the area and then to go with him to the Okavango Delta. He has very fond memories of his time in Africa before he had too much responsibility and it all got so complex. William is hyper enthusiastic and gets a great reception at the schools. He asks my opinion on each establishment after we have visited. He brings excitement into their lives. It is uplifting.

I wake up

I drift back off.

I am now in the UK if feels west country maybe Gloucestershire. We are walking along a private path / road on an estate. It is tree lined, and autumnal. William is introducing me to Catherine and George. George is a little intense and kicking leaves. I say that I used to have the nickname George when I was a teenager. He then relaxes slightly. William explains that George has many questions which he would like to ask me. I say that I am happy to try to answer. Back in a drawing room of sorts George goes off and comes back with something in his hands.

He shows me an aspherical golden orb. It is about the size of a large potato and it is like an elongated, squashed sphere. There is an inlay in a darker coloured gold wrapping it in a cross bottom and top and all around the long “circumference”. It is clearly hollow and there is something inside. He asks me to take a look at it and hands it to me to inspect. I know that there are other artefacts in the series and that he is not telling me any background information.

I say that we need to think carefully about how we approach this. He nods.

I awake

I drift off

William, Catherine and I are now once again outside on the path. William tells me that Catherine is still fragile after her ordeal and that her mood fluctuates.  He says that she would like to talk with me about her dreams which have been plentiful. They are linked to George, and she senses they are of the same puzzle. I say to them that I would be very happy to talk about dreaming and dreams, subjects close to my heart. Catherine smiles and sighs in relief. William says that he is very happy for me to do this, in private, but I must undertake to keep him updated on a regular and thorough basis. This is because there are many things pertaining to royalty about which I am unaware. He is more concerned about Catherine than George, because of the blood, implied royal in George.

The dream ends and I think WTF.

Guardian – Elephant – Dream 14-9-13

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In the dream and the dreaming….

I am shown a map. It is a map of Japan. On the East side of Japan there is a place. It is The Gateway to freedom and enlightenment. I am the Guardian of this place.

No-one passes through – except by me.

People are annoyed that there is only one such place. It is not “where” people think it is. Nor can it be found as a physical locality, for it does not have one.

Many seek it, but it cannot be found, except through me.

People think that this Gateway is guarded by dogs or savage beasts.  It is not. It is guarded by an Elephant and that Elephant is me.

Many seek this Gateway but they are all using the wrong methods. I am the Guardian of the Gateway. It is a place and yet not a place.

Dream ends.

Expat Living – Exorcism Dream – 19-08-2024

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Here is this morning’s dream.

I am talking with someone not known to me about living as an expat whilst growing up. I tell them that I was particularly fond of Spider and Tembo in Zambia. I spent quite a bit of time with them whilst my parents were otherwise engaged. They let me sit in on their advice sessions for younger men of a lunchtime. I say that that Tembo in Swahili means elephant and that I am of the elephant dreaming class.

The scene changes to the wooden veranda of a house here in Brittany. It is the veranda of our house. I am standing there. I am approached by several British expat couples They are walking towards me largely unconscious and zombie like. They want me to join them. To ward them off I begin a rite of exorcism, “in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti!”

This has no apparent effect. They get closer and one woman grabs my arm. I shake free. I then will them all to wake up out of their slumber. Slowly one by one they wake up.

In the dream I know that this is a warning not to fall into the customary habits of British expats in France and to stay clear of expat group think.

Dream ends