Recapitulation of the Waking Dream

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.

Dreaming and Rāja Yoga

“The trick in setting up the dreaming does not lie in looking at things, but in sustaining sight of them when they are no longer in sight. Dreaming becomes real once you have succeeded in bringing into sharp focus anything you bring to mind, for then there is no difference between what you do when dreaming and what you do when you are not dreaming.”

I think it fair to say that I am artistically challenged, I am not good at sketching. In school when there was a class mural for assembly, I was allowed to do the pine trees. I can however visualize well, perhaps very well.

There are many different notions on dreaming but the Toltec aphorism above suggests a visualisation perhaps in a meditative state. Setting up the active dreaming starts with the visualisation of a yellow rose. This is the Western analogue of the Eastern lotus. I have done both approaches. The idea is to open up the heart centre and connect it vis throat to Ajna.

When I am meditating, I look like some geezer sat in a chair with his eyes closed.This is what is going on inside.

In January 2009 I had been meditating on the Caduceus slowly building the form over weeks.  Here is an attempt to sketch what went on in a half hour rāja yoga or active dreaming meditation. If you take you time the form stabilises and becomes reproducible.

There are many models and if you look closely, you can see a re-presentation of kabalistic Otz-Chiim or Yggdrasil of the runic shaman or Asvattha which preceded the Hermetic Caduceus according to Blavatsky.

Attitudes to non-concrete science have changed since the days of Prof. James Emerson Reynolds FRS.

James Emerson Reynolds (8 January 1844 – 18 February 1920) was an Irish chemist who was the first scientist to isolate thiourea and developed the “Reynolds’s test” for acetone.

Reynolds was a member of a number of institutions, including the Institute of Chemistry of Great Britain and Ireland, the Society of Chemical Industry, of which he was president from 1891-91, the Chemical Society and the Royal Society. In 1919 he had a serious accident, which was followed by a stroke. He died at his home 3 Inverness Gardens, Kensington on 18 February 1920. The chemistry department in TCD have his original specimen of thiourea on display.