Tag: Knowledge

Chemistry Degree Course – Knowledge & Compliance Dream 14-03-2026

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is this morning’s dream

The dream opens in a Chemistry undergraduate teaching laboratory. Myself and a dozen or so others are getting back our Chemistry degree first year examination papers. The faculty, all younger than me by decades, are wearing white lab coats. The exam results are generally poor, the idea being to shock us into study. I get my paper back and look at the marking and comments. I can see a couple of proofs which I sketched out but did not finish because I knew the answer from that point. I get to the end and see that my mark is fifty one out of a hundred. Appended is the comment “one of the top marks for this exam”. Various of my peer group have done less well in the exam. I know that reason I have done better is because of my stint teaching “A” level Chemistry. I know that to get marks answers must correlate to the marks scheme provided only. There is no scope for even correct deviance. The people who have answered at “degree” level as it was two decades ago have been marked down and wrong. I understand that this is because the knowledge has changed a bit and that the acceptable answers have become more rigidly defined.

I go to the library and thumb through a modern edition of Atkins  “Physical Chemistry”. I note that it has changed with bizarre “knowledge” boxes and artificially highlighted “take homes”. I am then back in the teaching lab. I ask one of the faculty what text books we need. He hands me a PDF which is entitled “how to pass courses”. It is a guide on how best to give the expected answers to exam questions. He says that the details of how to get the text are on the course materials.

I ask him if the course might accept that it is not right in all cases, that it is a simplification. I explain that I once bought an achromatic lens which was marketed as truly achromatic. I explain that using Nd: YAG wavelengths of 1064 and 532 nm the focal points differed at even moderate laser intensity. The lens was achromatic only at very low laser fields. The manufacturer would not listen to my findings. The faculty member says that this is irrelevant. There are only the accepted answers to the course. He is mildly threatening. “If you don’t answer the questions as we set them and provide the accepted answers, you will not pass the course.” There is an element of coercion and exercise of power over. “If you do not comply you will not pass. You will fail. You will not get the accepted qualification”. He is unaware of my level of knowledge and adamant that he is right. I must comply with him (them) and what they deem right and complete.

In the dream I know that there is a problem. Because of course metrics courses and answers are designed in such a way that they can be measured. The guidebooks on how to pass are there to ensure that students get good grades and thence the course providers and examiners get good teaching feedback. I note that there is a circular delusion about improving standards and qualities. I note also that compliance is a problem when it comes to what knowledge is accepted and acceptable. In the dream I think they are kidding themselves about what they know and about knowledge. I suspect that they are wholly unwilling to accept this.

The dream ends…

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

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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.

Is Knowledge Important ?

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“ The knowledge economy, or knowledge-based economy, is an economic system in which the production of goods and services is primarily driven by knowledge-intensive activities that contribute to the advancement of technical and scientific innovation. The key element of value in this paradigm lies in the increased reliance on human capital and intellectual property as primary sources of innovative ideas, information, and practices. Organizations are called upon to leverage this “knowledge” in their production processes to stimulate and consolidate their business development. This approach is characterized by reduced dependence on physical inputs and natural resources. A knowledge-based economy is founded on the crucial role of intangible assets within organisations as an enabler of modern economic growth.”

Excerpted from Wikipedia

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There are various schools of thought which suggest that in modern times knowledge is a key factor in economic success. That knowledge must be commercially exploitable and can include skills and artisanal know-how. As recent world events suggest, access to natural resources remains of high geo-political importance. Venezuelan oil being an obvious marker.

In my view this schematic is a tad idealistic, it does not mention socio-political barriers and vested interests. One might say that recent changes in US policy have moved away from the notion of a knowledge economy back towards gun boat aircraft carrier diplomacy.

Just like AI has been shown to hallucinate it is a moot point as to whether the so-called AI investment boom is also a group or herd like hallucination among humans. FOMO investments can have bubble-bursts.

The knowledge which has pecuniary value relates only to profit. There is little attention paid to altruistic knowledge. To live only for profit and gain is unbalanced. In the eyes of some there may be more to life and living than that. Not everyone agrees.

One could argue that I am an example of how the so-called knowledge economy failed to make use of a resource. It failed. I failed. Either way I am now retired and doing gardening and DIY.

“You lose what you do not use.”

Is an axiom which has perhaps wide applicability. Knowledge which is not applied and practised can no longer be recalled. The edge of its blade becomes blunted by rust. Slowly like an untended path in the woods it becomes overgrown, deserted and before long nobody remembers that it is there or ever was there. As an older person I have seen how scientific knowledge from many decades ago has to be reinvented because people cannot find it so easily in online search engines. Because search engines are now biased to the fee paying advertiser, much knowledge is now lost in far flung unvisited corners of the internet, there to gather spiders and webs.

It is reasonable to assume that whatever knowledge I may have will die with me. That may not be a great loss but it is an example, of how people may talk a good game. But when push comes to shove knowledge is rarely as important as self-promotion. There is nobody queuing up to learn from me. And by now I am too hermit-like to converse.

There is a danger that human evolution, despite all the advances in technology, is taking a backward step towards a new dark age. An age where image and sound-byte becomes a new Goebbels-reality. An age where short snappy mind numbing mantra replace thought and consideration. An age in which metrics and graphs bury substance and worth in cold clammy tombs. Bullet point thinking is not knowledge and not wisdom.

I think popularity and fame have removed knowledge and wisdom from the mantelpiece above our hearths. Shiny, flashy and chav dominate; viral despite COVID remains a term indicative of success.

It may seem strange but I think that the pool of available knowledge is actually shrinking, it is becoming more standardised and subject to peer approval. Loss of diversity is generally bad for ecosystem; it is an indicator of environmental decline.

I think that genuine knowledge is becoming much less important than claimed or asserted knowledge. The tendency is away from the unfathomable and profound towards the safety of the shallows and the common. I suspect that reputation has become more important than knowledge.

Once diversity has been lost it is very hard to replace. Same is not often best. Clone-think tends to be counter-evolutionary.

Once knowledge has been lost it is not easily restored. Value for money seems to be the main arbiter of which knowledge survives and is nurtured. There is a very short term outlook.

Sometimes we are so stubborn, adamant and omniscient that we can only learn through loss.

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“Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.”

Native American Proverb

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Marcus Aurelius Quotes

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The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

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If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

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Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

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You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

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Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

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Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?

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When another blames you or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort of people they are. You will realize that there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you.

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How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.

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The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.

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You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.

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Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.

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What we do now echoes in eternity.

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Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.

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Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear.

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Man of Knowledge – Science?

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I’ll suggest that I am too whacko for mainstream scientists and not whacko enough and therefore science-phobic for what might be called new agers. As a consequence I inhabit a no man’s land regarded with suspicion from behind the machine guns of each set of trenches.

From my perspective I have met a few people who have harped on that they are men of knowledge yet they know very little about modern science. Seems to me they have a whopping great gap in that knowledge. Call me nit picking but this seems big to me.

I am a “nasty” spoilsport scientist on one hand and a unicorn jockey flaky tree hugger on the other. I have looked into the ”occult” and things like Buddhist philosophy further than most. Those who are experts in these areas do not know modern science to the extent I do. Yet they may imagine they know more thoroughly than I, because I am tainted by science and perhaps not “pure”.

Once people even paid me to teach “science”.

This morning I had an extensive and  highly technical dream concerning the excited electronic states of small single ringed substituted aromatic heterocycles. It looked at the charge distribution among various atoms and how that changed upon optical excitation and what that did for the pKa of various protons. I was discussing this with someone as a means for a targeted and localised change in pH in vivo. There was a time when I probably knew way more than was healthy about such things. One can extrapolate from single to double ringed heterocycles to an extent. If you know why this is interesting, you know..

Quite why I had this dream I do not know. We watched a film “The Exorcism”, Master Chef Australia and Celebrity MasterChef UK  last night. Neither of these would point at configuration interaction in electronic excited states. Nor would it explain Naropa or seraphim.

It is funny that “new agers” and luddites like Trump are suspicious of science and scientists and equally weird that science can glance down the nose at the uninitiated. I have had my vaccinations and can also do Vajrayana chanting. I can solve a two dimensional particle in a box Schrödinger equation {still} and know how to light incense sticks and smudge with smouldering sage, I can do shamanic drumming.

It is all about Garry Glitter really.  People want to know whose gang you are in…what your true colours are…

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Hopefully in a few weeks’ time I will feel a little less crippled.

Groups Souls – Dalai Lama – Cloying Awareness – Exquisite Sculpture – Dream 01-11-2025

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Here are last night’s dreaming snippets. Sometimes when I need a “cheer me up” the dreaming provides.

The dream opens at a sea-side town-village. It is like Tenby or Tobermory with pastel coloured brightly painted houses.

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I am with my group of souls or beings. The place could also be Denmark or Scandinavia. It is impeccably tidy and ordered. The light is light and bright without blinding. We are young in age, children and dressed in colourful togas. We often incarnate together en masse. We have known each other for aeons. This is the group to which I belong. We are beings made out of light each of their own colour witnessed by toga and not skin. There is a sense of primordial innocence to us. We are going in and out of each other’s houses enjoying the fluffy clouds which surround us.

I awake for a loo break a little after 4 AM.

As I drift off I have a strong mental image of H.H. Dalai Lama who fills the entire perceptual field. I sense he is deep in contemplation and sit there in that state with him silently for a length of time about 15 earth minutes. It seems much longer. We are happy and serene in contemplation together. A part of that visual remains as I type now.

I fade out and into sleep.

Sat at a pavement café in central London is a man of roughly my own age whom I had acquaintance of. He has bought me a glass of Coke with ice lemon and a straw. He is sat at a table there. He gestures for me to sit down with him. I cannot. I say that I have nothing personally to resolve with him, nothing to solve. I cannot be near his cloying preserving awareness. It is heavy and seeks to enfold and keep things the same. His awareness is like a cloying quagmire, it is old, ancient, dark and borderline evil. He gestures for me to sit again. I walk past. I have nothing to solve.

I walk off into a part of London I do not recognize. It is early morning, a little after dawn and the restaurateurs and bar owners are clearing up and setting up. It is warm maybe summer. The doors are open. I walk into one pub and put the Coke down on the bar counter. The owner is polishing the bar and tables and is happy to take the Coke. I admire the stained glass windows and period doors. I walk through into the next door pub which he also owns and out of the door back into the street.

I now come upon an Italian style restaurant which has a large ornate orangery-greenhouse attached. The manageress is there in her black and whites with a low apron on. She is organising tables in the orangery. The windows of the building are leaded in, like cathedral windows. The clear uncoloured glass is warped by the flow of age. The lead is painted crimson red. The overall effect is magnificent with interesting patterns of light refracted on the floor. I say to her that the light is truly wonderful. She concurs. She has a clipped English upper class accent. She say that it a pity that “he” the owner keeps rejigging the tables  because she likes the feel of Sicilian palace which it currently has. There are plentiful succulent plants. She is chuffed that I like “her” orangery so very much. It is her labour of love which she does not need to do. She suggests that I should visit the garden out back.

I follow her advice and enter a light walled garden with water features and wall alcoves with plants. In the centre is an exquisite sculpture / water feature. She says that it is OK for me and me alone to climb it. The stairway to the feature is made out of carved open books. The books are carved out of what looks like pewter, there is relief of binding and pages. They are joined together by a single metal rod/rail. Each book is by way of a step. In some the page writing is etched in relief. They are a testament to learning and library. The languages of the books are diverse. The staircase mounts a large globe of the Earth which has all the continents and oceans cut to scale. The globe is several times my size. I climb the “ladder”. Out of the North Pole a drinking fountain flows. Its flow is lightly pulsing and the water trickles downs wetting every side of the world. The water is collected in a fish pond in which the globe sits. The ladder passes over the pond. In the pond are ornamental koi carp. The manageress encourages me up and to taste the water. I do and the water is cool and refreshing nectar like in quality. Some of it runs down onto my white linen shirt. The morning light illuminates the garden and orangery.

The dream ends.

Power and the Intimate Privacy of Death

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It is warm and sunny outside, so perhaps it is safer to write on these things. Although physical plane death may be public there is a private intimate part not shared by the consciousness of the living and those not in the transition. Ostensibly death may be quick brought on by an IDF bullet or a heart attack. It could be a slow drawn out process mediated by an ailing brain or a bleed. One could have a physically easy or a physically painful death. I have had both. These days death under morphine is not uncommon. Many full of bravado are nevertheless fear-full of that tap on the shoulder. It re-presents the time when the croupier of life spins the roulette wheel after shouting,

 « Mesdames et messieurs, faites vos jeux ! »

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For logically we all know we are placing our bets on what may or may not happen when we die. The ball rolls and stops and we find out if we have won or lost.

History tells of many a shit-scared monarch buying papal indulgences on his death bed in an attempt to bribe God.

I’ll state here that I am not the kind of being who tries to use or take advantage of others. It is not my basic orientation. I am more likely to facilitate, to try help. We all have faults and mine is less nasty. I have to the detriment of others allowed myself to be used. I have robbed them in a sense of the battles which they may have faced. Because I have faced things for them. This in a way, although perhaps altruistic, is disempowering.

I have met a number of people losing their battle with power over the years. Caught up in the process they were and would be unable to see or accept that this is the case. Weirdly the power-flame attracts many a moth on the make, only for a singeing of wings. The lust for a share in apparent power is perhaps the most blinding thing which can happen to a being. They see only with blinkered eye the power, and not the consequence both on others and on them. Most people guess they can handle power. Most people are wrong, for it is power which handles them and changes them. Many in the throes of their battle with power present themselves as some beacon of light when they are anything but. Power deludes those hungry for it and their supporters. Power likes to justify.

I’ll make a little aside here. If there is significant influx of first ray “will-to-power” energy the number of people losing their battle with power will rise and a dark, dark, cloud will result. The first ray is very difficult to handle and cope with. Any crack, any latent cruelty, any lust for power over, will be activated.

The individual mentioned in my dream taught me a lot, for which I am thankful. Primarily he showed behaviours which I did not like and did not want to adopt for myself. It was an exemplar of what I did not want to become. At the same time I was interacting with others a tad obsessed with power and in some cases position.  I have never wanted to be lord and master with minions, slaves and serfs. Others like to lord it over; some like to be lorded over. I was not infected by his mood and intent.

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Power in its knowledge aspect is inconspicuous and not ostentatious. It is gathered and stored, rarely is it exercised. Depending on predilection one may gather like a squirrel. Personally I have always been interested in learning.

That time in the very first part of this century I was engaged in what hindsight suggests was my battle with power. Clearly the scale was rather local, but I was presented with many temptations, the trappings of power. Luckily, I was largely able to resist those temptations, those traps and did not become an “A” grade arse. Other people I knew may have been less resilient and perhaps fell to the traps, the whims of power.

The thing is that power and evil have a kind of symbiotic relationship. Power is the lure; the bait of evil who can tie an appropriate fly for whatever fish it seeks. Evil ever the strategist and craftsman can, when and if needed, be subtle.

In modern days the notion of evil has become quasi-taboo which is testament to the guile and skill of evil.

I do not pretend to know the mind of the dark adepts and those drawn to them. The more evolved of them, aware of much, must make a calculation pertaining to death. That calculation at one level must offset the difficulty of transition with the perceived reward of a life of power. Only they would be able to comment if they have struck a good deal, made a good bargain.

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I personally, this afternoon, in the middle of the day, am ready. In a sense I have already embraced my death.

There is a chance that you and I will meet gain at the hour of your death. You can decide for yourself if that is some morbid shit I made up, or not…

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“Don’t know where
Don’t know when
But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day”

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Academic Chemists – Derelict Site – Attack – Honour Dream 11-08-2025

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Here is this morning’s dream had between 5 and 7:30 AM.

The entire dream is in England and not the north or the midlands but south to that from geography and accent. There is some kind of gathering of chemistry academics in the upstairs of a large pub or hotel. There is a vague feeling of conference but it is not quite that. It is more of a social gathering with a problem solving outlook. I am there but largely unacknowledged nor welcome. There is hubbub and people drinking. A man, John, comes in who knows me and says that he has just got promoted. He is a bit younger than me. I congratulate him genuinely. I say that it  is good news for him but that my job is very definitely at risk if not already lost. He concurs. I am spare. I am not entirely sure why I am even at this gathering. I do not belong.

The scene changes and I am walking with a woman roughly my age who works at the place of the gathering. She is a lynchpin for the departments there. She has grey-blonde hair. We are in South London and approaching a very rough neighbourhood. I am not sure where we are going. She says that she has a secret place, there. We come upon a boarded up set of flats that are fenced off and ready for demolition. The site access gateway if closed off with a large chipboard wooden gate together with health and safety signage about helmets and hazards. She unlocks the chain and opens the gate. I ask her if she is sure that she wants to go in. Yes.

I follow her in and we can see several blocks of low rise four storey flats. They are in a bad state of repair but not quite Gaza like. She leads me through the rubble to one building where we are joined by another woman. Together they make their way to the back of one of the ground floor flats, to the kitchen. She has set herself up a snug with teapot, table and bone-china. She boils the kettle to make tea and gets out a plate of cupcakes. She ushers me into her snug but I cannot fit fully. It is as if she and her friend have shrunk as has the flat. I can get my head into the room but nothing else.

Behind me I hear noises. I turn out of the flat and look across the rubble strewn ground between the buildings, the demolition site. I can see half a dozen young black men approaching. They are carrying weapons and acting threateningly. I can feel my wallet in my trouser pocket. They approach and I say to them that I will give them some money. I take out six £20 notes and offer these. The lead man does not want them. He says that they are going to “fuck me up”. I say that they are welcome to try.

He lunges at me and I grab his wrist in a Kotegaeshi aikido wrist lock and swirl him around. I cannot however get full control of his wrist. Others come up and start to beat my back with iron bars which I can feel through my heavy overcoat. I let him go and then shrug the attackers off. They start to give chase and I head to the chipboard gate site entrance. They are following me at pace. I am completely unconcerned because their blows cannot hurt me or injure severely. As they follow me though the gate I head onto a grass verge in front of another block of flats. There is a massive police operation going on with many police in protective vests, armed and with dogs. They see my pursuers and recognise them as people they want to arrest. Half the police break off the search and give chase to my attackers.

I go back into the derelict site and find a white tiled bathroom which is intact. In the flat above there is a large woman who is a giant. She is five times my size and wearing striped tights with massive Dr Martens boots. She is curled up under the ceiling and above my bathroom. She has platted pony tails and is wearing a denim pinafore dress with straps. She is my friend and we go way back.

I turn on the shower and note the complete surround of white tiles which bulge slightly under the weight of the giant upstairs. I take a long hot shower. I need to cleanse, to get clean.  As I finish a young man with blonde hair in white overalls appears. He is the electrician-plumber and is trying to fix the bathroom and the derelict site. I explain to him that it is near impossible because there is no room left in the gaps between ceiling and roof. I have tried but gotten nowhere. He says that he has been given the job of fixing things. I wish him luck. It will be a thankless task.

The scene changes and I am in some kind of meeting with around half a dozen male chemistry academics. They are the “generation” below me and rather full of themselves. They are talking management bullshit about targets and how they are going to fix the problem of which I am a part. Although I am there I am largely ignored. They are arrogant. I know beyond all doubt that they are heading towards a massive mistake, a fuck up. I try to warn them. They ignore me convinced that they know best. They think they have a vision and a solution. They are very badly mistaken and it will go very, very wrong.

They ask me what I have in my wallet. I take my wallet out and pull out first four and then another two £20 pound notes. That makes a total of twelve £20 notes. In the dream I know that money re-presents crystallized power or knowledge. I have in my wallet the jewels of awareness forbearance 12 and honour 20. My honour remains intact no matter what they do.

The dream ends.