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.
Dreamyoga 