Tag: Vision

Someone Else’s Mind – Stranger Things

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We have recently been watching the fifth series of “Stranger Things”. We have one episode to go. The worlds of Stranger Things and Henry’s mind might seem a bit odd, fanciful and far fetched to many. I joked with the wife this morning that it is pretty tame compared to our dreamworld. The “upside down” outside our fence and garden gate is full of various unpleasantness. Which leaks through via various news broadcasts and on-line newspapers. There is nasty stuff and are nasty people out there. We live in “the right way up”.

If you read and concentrate upon the dreams in the previous post it is likely to do something to your mind. It will perhaps unsettle. To me it is normal, it is slightly more unsettling for the wife. I am more at home with visionary art and spaced out verbal recollections. I can answer University Challenge art questions if the picture is from William Blake or Hieronymus Bosch.

In a sense this blog is a kind of window into what goes on in my mind, my head. It does not however show the “normal” state of my mind. This is largely silent and thought free. It cannot be written down. What occurs here comes only after I have decided to think or verbalize. I live largely in what I term the place before thought.

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I am entirely capable of having the kind of dreams, which might knock others off kilter, and without a second thought I can put the coffee on to brew. I know when I am dreaming and when I am so-called awake. I can also differentiate waking dreams or visions. I can function “normally” whilst having a vision. An example being the ability to teach Chemical Reaction Kinetics whilst a vision was resident and “in play”.

We rarely get detailed glimpses direct into the mind of others. This is partially because our minds are so god-dammed noisy with internal dialogue, worries and a list of devoirs. We live in our “own little worlds” and often try to fit others into the rules pertaining to how that world is assembled and assimilated in our own “minds”.  Our assimilations may differ. Our versions of observable reality may diverge from one another. More often than not we insist on our own assimilation and sense making. What makes sense in our “the right way up” may be to others the “upside down”. We may be adamant that everybody else has gotten the wrong end of the stick. Only our rules of perception and assimilation apply. Only our interpretation is correct.

The mind of another may unsettle us because of its unfamiliarity.

In a sense the dreamworld presented in this blog is other. If it is only a dreamworld it has no significance at all in the normal “real” world. The dreamworld, however it is produced and wherever it comes from, need not impinge on/in your reality out there in the “upside down”.

There are few portals or gateways between our “the right way up” and your world. They exist tangentially. Only occasionally do we go through to go to the hospital or supermarket. We usually make it back without being attacked by a Demogorgon or two.

The only potential problem arises is when the dreamworld here has a significance which is more significant that just dreams, just a dreamworld…

Waking Dream – Mystical Vision

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If one was to imagine someone having a waking dream or a mystical vision it is unlikely that you would picture an unshaven white man in his sixties dressed in a white t-shirt and army surplus combat trousers who had been around the block a few time. That person would not be technically obese nor skilled in the art of high resolution laser spectroscopy. He would not be a grey. There may be a tint of eroticism to your imagination of a visionary. The person having the vision would either be young and “attractive” like Joan of Arc or Joseph with his groovy coat. There would be some kind of glow or aura perhaps. There could be some CGI graphics and perhaps some pointy elven ears. They could be a Russian mystic blinded at birth. They could be misshapen. They would have some cool sounding foreign name. They would not be called John Smith.

Either that or they could be in a secure psychiatric ward having avoided taking their medication by hoodwinking the staff.

People are likely to have prejudice about how they might imagine a visionary / whacko.

Last night whilst watching a fly on the wall crime drama about crystal meth in Norfolk I had a tremendously strong vision of the Dalai Lama and one other senior figure in Tibetan / Bhutanese Buddhism. That subjective observation has persisted on and off since then. It interfered with one of my normal nocturnal, pre-sleep meditations. This morning I have that subjective experience conflated with people at Stanford university. {They may be inquiring about Phowa practice – my guess.}

There is no logical reason why out of the blue I get a strong visual image of the Dalai Lama to mind and in mind. There is no effort for/by me to have it there. In fact it would be more convenient for it to fade. I can type, do the shopping and in a few moments, I will make a sandwich with these “visions” at the periphery of consciousness.

In the context of my normal CV and life experience it does not make sense. It is illogical and irrational. I have not exactly hung around with Tibetan Buddhists on a regular basis. Nor have I been brooding on either Tibetan or Buddhist themes of late.

After lunch I will start to sugar soap wash the wall by the log burner, then begin the chore of sizing the wood in the garage so that it is ready for use post operation in autumn-winter. We have about ¼ of the mass needed in the garage.  Once tided up, we will order a couple more cubic metres this month before the price goes up.

It is a bit odd but for me not unusual as Mr Jones might sing.

An Unfortunate Lunatic

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William Blake, né le 28 novembre 1757 à Londres où il est mort le 12 août 1827, est un peintre, graveur et poète britannique.

Bien que d’abord considéré comme peintre — il a peint quelques tableaux à l’huile, préférant l’aquarelle et le dessin, voire la gravure et la lithographie —, il s’est surtout consacré à la poésie. Il est l’auteur d’un œuvre inspiré de visions bibliques à caractère prophétique. Artiste pré-romantique, son style halluciné est moderne et le distingue de ses pairs, bien que ses thèmes soient classiques.

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Isaac Newton est représenté assis nu et accroupi sur un affleurement rocheux couvert d’algues, apparemment au fond de la mer. Son attention est focalisée sur des schémas qu’il dessine au compas sur un rouleau. Le compas est une version réduite de celle détenue par Urizen dans Le Grand Architecte (The Ancient of Days) de Blake

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Visions

Malgré sa piété et son inspiration évangélique, William Blake fut longtemps cru fou par ses contemporains et y compris des études tardives. Ce n’est que récemment que ses visions sont devenues les sources légitimes de son inspiration et de sa gloire.

Il aurait eu depuis son plus jeune âge des visions. La première intervint dès l’âge de quatre ans quand il vit Dieu et qu’il hurla de frayeur. Aux environs de neuf ans, il aurait vu à Londres un arbre empli d’anges aux ailes resplendissantes comme des étoiles. En d’autres occasions, il vit également des figures angéliques parmi des fermiers. L’une de ses peintures est l’évocation de la vision du fantôme d’une puce (The Ghost of a Flea, 1819–1820, Londres, Tate Britain)

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To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

William Blake

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Robert Hunt wrote the only printed notice (in the radical family weekly The Examiner) of the exhibition and its Descriptive Catalogue, and through his vilification they became much more widely known than Blake had been able to make them. Hunt described the pictures as “wretched,” the Descriptive Catalogue as “a farrago of nonsense, unintelligibleness, and egregious vanity,” and Blake himself as “an unfortunate lunatic, whose personal inoffensiveness secures him from confinement.”

Britannica on line

The Three Threads

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Out there in the wider world, people are busy with their business. Maybe focussed on whatever it is that may be “important” to them or so they deem. There is very little genuinely spare time, largely because that internal dialogue is rampant. Many have some kind of agenda which they seek to enact, be that as simple as going to the football and having a skin full, or not.

I have been coming around to the idea that fate has little left in store for me in terms of my interactions in a wider world for the end-game of this lifetime. I am pretty much done.

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The {my} world turns inwards and is governed largely by biological health and physical pain. I have managed to get a French rheumatology appointment for September which is contemporary with my next scheduled GP doctor appointment. I have a UK rheumatology appointment next week but they cannot prescribe for French pharmacies. I will probably self-medicate unless things get genuinely unbearable. Any hip operation looks at least a year off.

We have started looking at houses suitable for handicapped living and this is the so-called nanna-thread. The one that looks the most real, the most likely. If we end up in some nanna-accommodation with shared communal facilities, there is a chance that even if I don’t want to, I will end up in some way as spokesperson / organiser for the grey hordes. The nanna thread has UK options in Llanelli with the Scarlets or near Gloucester with the Cherry and Whites.

That is about as far as thinking has gone.

In the background my unpublished dreams provide detail of just how disingenuous and unpleasant various people, allegedly “close” to me in the past, have been towards me. Those dreams have gone beyond what I already knew to be true. I am not surprised, rather thematically bored. I could not be arsed, to recall them, to write them down. Boring.

The Buddhist-thread with Tibetan spices, seems likely to have no physical plane future. I can’t see any trajectory which might make it more substantial or solid. It seems to me “just one of those things”. A possibility in the web of life, unable to manifest, due to the reality of life circumstances. Practicality aborts dream, if you want to be dramatic.

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It may be simply a ghost, an echo, that I need to let fade, to work through my system and to let go of. There is no vicinal or proximal context.

My little dream-world does not impinge exterior. There is no data.

Of late there has been a tiny hint of something I might do were we to have a UK small-garden property. It is the merest hint of a thread. The conceptual difficulty I have is that it pertains to the “leadership” red herring. Someone gaslighted me into this notion, when in reality I have always been more about teaching, possibility and not manifestation. I cannot lead in a socio-political sense because I cannot be bothered with fake niceties and bartering politics.

For some bizarre reason some expect me to do, when I would much rather research, think and speculate. I enjoy planning and envisioning; I don’t fuss if these get binned or forgotten.

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The only thread that I can start to picture is the first. I could see the bathroom of the house we saw yesterday adapted for grip bars in the shower. I questioned whether the tiled stud-wall could support a fraction of my ~100kg. I would need a second look.

For now, these are the three threads in order or increasing tenuousness.

And Now the Darkness Spreads

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The politics of division and separation seem to have won in the USA. This means that for four more years it will be difficult to avoid the sound of Trump’s voice. To my ears his voice and tone is unpleasant.  I had enjoyed the relative respite. That is probably not the worst of it.

At around 5:30 AM this morning I had a dream / vision in which the visual field was slowly filling with very dark ink like substance. What light there was became mostly extinguished. And I knew that the darkness was spreading. The effect was like dropping black ink into water.

If he can remember and act on his rhetoric we are in for a sad time, a dangerous time. Nobody, no Western leader, is speaking out meaningfully about the barbarism in the Middle East, to do so is taboo. The political right will feel emboldened. Already the Trump sycophant-fans and mini-me are hailing the victory. Europe is bracing itself for tariffs. China probably does not care. How will Trump manage rocket man now he is cosying up to Putin? Is he jealous?

People do not understand that he has already lost his battle with power. He is spouting very nasty and evil thoughts. If he indeed pardons the mob, it will set a very dangerous precedent. He is in no way a “light” being.

It is difficult to predict how more power will twist and further drive him into the darkness, the unpleasantness. The next four years could be very retrograde. A climate change denier in charge of the USA will not help planetary warming one bit.

It looks like humanity is heading further down the shitter. The odds of a war against Iran have just shortened.

It feels heavy this morning…

Visions or Visual Hallucinations?

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If I understand it correctly the phenomena of visions plays a role in many religions. Things can be revealed by beings such as angels. Those prone to visions have been prone contextually to dreaming too.  

My general understanding is that angels are rare and play only a very important pivotal role in the religious context. They do not appear to common or garden people despite what many a new age book suggests. Helping you find the man of your dreams is probably not high on their to do list.

{I am generalising widely}.

Yet seeing something that others do not is classed as a hallucination, which can be a symptom of psychosis. Many of the figures in religious history might be diagnosed as having an episode of psychosis today.  They could be locked up and given anti-psychotic medicine.

In indigenous cultures going on a “Vision Quest” might be seen as a rite of passage. Isolated from the day to day and the tribe an individual seeks a vision of the future and his purpose. Visions can be had in caves, on high mountains. Usually, one has to step away from the mundane noise of life, maybe ease off the food.

I have participated in shamanic drumming and gone on a mini-vision quest. I can also use £250,000 femtosecond pulsed optical parametric amplifiers. It is possible that I am unique in this, there may be others. In non-linear optics world it is probably best not to talk about shamanic vision quests it could have a detrimental impact on promotion and employment prospects. So, many may have kept schtum like me.

It could be argued that I have relatively pure Welsh indigenous blood from the matrilinear line based in deepest darkest Snowdonia. As an indigenous it is not so weird for me to do indigenous things.

Anyway, I have had a number of visions over the years including when I lived in Brixton and was an academic. Needless to say, I told no colleagues nor a GP. This primarily because I always knew that I was having a vision/hallucination and was aware of my physical plane surroundings in day-to-day world at the same time. They did not overly impinge, nor were any of them frightening. If you speak to a medic about this kind of thing you could be opening a Pandora’s box and be exposed to pet theories and the latest pharma sponsored medication.

My working hypothesis concerning many of these visions is that most fall in the category of past-life recall. Some might think me whacko or that I have delusions of grandeur. People can have very closed minds.

Back in the mid seventies I used to travel by airplane from Zambia to school in Gloucestershire. There were six flights a year and by the age of 13, in the 1970s, I had 150,000 air miles. I am guilty about my childhood carbon footprint 😉. On occasion there would be a fuel stop at Malta. Each time I landed there I had a massive déjà-vu. Without knowing why, I knew that I had been there before.

This morning around 6 AM I was not sleeping so I started to do a meditation. For whatever reason, I was having difficulty and I started to have a relaxed enjoyable vision of myself in a cowled cloak and chain mail. The setting of the vision was around 800 years ago. I was aware of the vision and the bedroom. I could hear the wife breathing.

Why this is happening now I don’t know. It did point me back to a vision I had in 2003.

The vision last night may refer to “the knights of Malta”, a term used in Brittany for both Templars and the Hospitaliers, Ordre de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem.

I have had many visions associated with this putative life, a French one.

Nearby there is a hospitalier commanderie whose records do not go back past 1313 when the goods of the Templars were ceded to them.

There was also relatively nearby a Templar commanderie and the relics of a small church. The look of which is not far from one I saw in another vision.

What would you do?

Would you tell your general practice GP doctor?

Would you tell your line manager at work?

Would you imagine yourself off your trolley?

Or would you think that the sanest hypothesis was past life recall?

I am quite looking forward to seeing what may or may not happen over the next day or so…

Fleeing / Migration – Dream / Vision 4-10-22

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These last three nights I have had unsettled sleep from around 2AM onwards. In this I drift in and out of consciousness close to the cusp between worlds. This morning I had a persistent dream / vision.

I am standing in an urban landscape near a dock or port. There is a long queue of people. They are all white European / Caucasian. They are in turn checking the contents of their makeshift wooden crates with an official on a podium. When the crate has been checked some workers seal it and print the destination information. People are packing up their valuables and sending them to the destination of their refuge. They are fleeing the conflict, the war. The goods will be shipped and arrive sometime after the owner. There is a sense that this is a slow process. The queue is vast and there is a sense that there are many more like this. There is a sense that the one that I am observing is Russian but also a sense that this phenomenon is not Russian alone.

The scene changes and I am observing people queuing to get into a cattle truck with a sliding door on a long train. These people are fleeing.

The scene changes to a mountain border post and before the border there is a long winding trail of vehicles. The vehicles do not look clean, they are coated with dust and mud. Each vehicle is jammed packed with people and stuff. The queue is very extensive, and the border guards are slow yet through with their job. There is a sense that this is only a part of a mass migration which is getting underway.

The visons do not fade, they repeat. There is a sense that this may be prophetic.

The alarm goes off, we need to get up because the nurse is due soon to vaccinate the wife

The Waking Dream and Visions – Hallucination?

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Modern psychology might have strict views as to the nature of reality. It rests firmly in the “common” sociopolitical construct and uses frameworks like self-image. Deviation from normal becomes an illness or disorder. Having a vision could be seen as a hallucination, something not real. Yet visions and religion are entwined, entangled even. There is a disconnect where psychology might see “religious” vision as psychosis, prophets could be deemed mentally ill in retrospect.

In the limit of Buddhist philosophy, the entire sociopolitical construct held as normality is, suffering. Attachment to status and possessions causes dissatisfaction, apparently many are unhappy about how they look. Is your cognitive assimilation of appearance reality? One could suggest that modern psychology encourages samsara. Whereas Buddhism works at the eradication of the notion of self, psychology seeks to prop it up.

You pay your money and join the club that suits.

I’ll comment that I have had a number of visions, waking dreams if you like. None of these have completely removed the physicality of what might be called physical plane material reality. Though the event flow in vision was markedly different from the event flow on “earth”. I perceived them as an extra overlay with a very different sense of spatiotemporal perception.

I have always been able to visualise, to hold and build images in my “mind’s eye”. I can do this, as I am now, and continue to type reasonably accurately on a different subject. In terms of the Toltec aphorisms on dreaming. I am dreaming and typing at the same time.

As a rule of thumb, I am open minded. I have been meaning to thank someone {on LinkedIn} who nearly forty years ago helped me to open my mind. Initially I thought he was a pretentious prick, it turned out it was me who was the pedant and knobhead. He did me an enormous favour in introducing me to David Lynch.

Writing a business plan could be said to be a visionary practice. In order to plan one has to have, at least in my case, a picture or vision of how things might work or look. It has to be en-vision-ed. A patent application can be seen to be a vision of something not yet real. By concretising it into text and diagrams, one starts to materialise a vision or dream. Is something subjective and not yet real like a patent, a hallucination?

Some of these visions I have had are not of the same time as when I am having them. These visions with a sense of “ago” are explainable by invoking the notion of past life recall. Some come in full smell-o-vision.  Of course, you could just say that I was hallucinating.  My awareness of surroundings, though slightly reduced, remained operable. I was able, for example, to walk along Upper Tulse Hill to catch a bus for work. I did not get run over or walk into a lamppost.

When I dream passively at night, I know that I am dreaming. When I en-vision during the day, I am in control. Some of my visions were not that well controlled but I knew where I was and that something “else” was taking place.

If we call the common sociopolitical construct a samsaric dream, I am aware that I am dreaming it and can participate roughly along the lines of the “rules” of the construct. I have a whole lot less fear of missing out, FOMO, than most people.

In the desire to overly categorize and rationalise things, it is possible that humans “throw the baby out with the bathwater”. Concrete mind can be very concrete and fixated. It can be very wrong, group insanity like Brexit can seize the minds of millions.

I’ll develop this a little more using the same subject header at another time.

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Earth Dawn – Arabic – Hidden Doorway – Rasta Seer Dream 15-09-23

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At 06:45 I had a bathroom break and went to bed unsure if I would get back to sleep. I thought to myself lie here and see what dreams might come.

 I drift off and from space I see a planet isolated in space. It is blue and green and white. I know that this planet is the earth. Around it I can see a bright white disc of light, a corona. This layer, atmosphere of light, gradually thickens until it is around 10% of the planetary diameter. The layer implodes and then explodes into a four pointed star of white light. The earth cannot be seen only the light. The points of the star are sharp and about five planetary diameters long at maximum length. They are at the four cardinal directions, emanating from the North and South poles with an East-West perpendicular. After reaching maximum extension they disappear leaving the planet isolated in space without its white light corona.

I know in the dream that I must meditate on this and re-run the vision of the formation of the four pointed star. The dream coincides with sunrise here in France. I have the sensation that something dramatic has happened for the planet. I consciously rebuild the image several times over.

The image fades.

The next dream starts on a large ferry boat. I am sat in the library of the boat. The boat has been purchased for educational purchases but few of the people are using it thus. They are in the bar and the games room. The captain announces that he encourages people to explore the boat and to see what other facilities there are. Some people come to sit at the same table as me. They try to take a couple of my books. I say that I have already loaned them from the librarian. I show them the front of the books where there is a slip of paper with loans on. The loan slips have my name handwritten in blue-black ink and a date stamp which is current for me. The books are texts of physics and chemistry together with ancient occult treatises. These latter manuscripts are very valuable and rare. I have been studying them a long time. The people are surprised at the contrast. I explain that it is natural to me.

The dream shifts to a country estate. We are letting a landowner onto the property. She is wearing a waxed “home counties” style shooting jacket and has a shotgun split in the crook of her left arm. She warns that they have let the dogs off the leash. There are two yappy black dogs and a border collie. I give the collie my fist and he holds it in his mouth we are playing a pulling game of sorts. The woman remarks that I now have a friend and that she, the collie, is rarely like that with any human outside their immediate family.

We carry on around the property and to the place where it adjoins the sea. The woman and the daughter say that this cove is their favourite bit. I point South. I say that I prefer the view of the massif across the strait. There above the azure blue sea I can see a fortress in the bright Mediterranean sun. We are making our way along a cliff side path. I don’t like having people behind me on the path and I come to a tricky bit on the path. I say that I am going to have to sit down because I am getting vertigo. I am stuck. I say that they can take the higher path on the cliff face and I will meet them on the other side.

I sit down. I then edge along the path and around the corner of a rock. Hewn into the cliff face is kind of terrace. On that terrace is a small single slat wooden bench. There is a wooden door painted in a dark pastel blue. I can see the grains of the wood and the rushes on the seat put there for comfort. The door is of antiquity. There is a metal ring about the size of my fist at waist height to right hand side of the door. I shout out, “look there is a hidden door!”

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A voice answers in Arabic that this is the door of El Shab Abdul bin Shamir or something like that. I cannot recall the exact name but it sounds like this and ends in bin —mir. The woman and two young people, men, are coming in the opposite direction along the path. She is speaking Arabic saying that this is the place he {Abdul} came to meditate and it opens into his garden. In the dream I can understand Arabic because of my crusader-priest life.

They round the corner and sit with me on the terrace. There is a suitable rock of a metre or so on the terrace. As she sits her long hair in corn row dreadlocks falls around her shoulders and reaches to the ground. One of her companions plays with her hair and says that she is Rasta. I smile because I knew some Rastafarians. She is half caste and resembles a young Whoopi Goldberg. She has dazzling blue eyes and I know her to be a seeress of some considerable prowess.

She switches to English and we discuss that from time to time she sees the long dead owner of the garden. I say, “his spirit?” “Yes” she replies. “He is a most unusual being.” “I too come here for solace from time to time.”

Unlike for the others there is no need for she and I to open the physical door. We are suddenly on the other side in a small yet exquisite ornamental garden reminiscent of the Alhambra with water fountains and immaculate planting. We are strolling along and I have the profound sense of having met this woman before. The familiarity if strong.

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The scene changes and I am outside a European castle gate. The country is verdant. We are stood by a weir which controls the flow of water through the castle and to the castle fishponds. These ponds are used to provision the castle folk. Every spring they open the sluices for a while to allow the fish from the river into the ponds and to refresh the water. It is the time of the salmon run. People are dressed mediaeval style. There is much excitement because there is plenty to eat after a harsh and boring winter menu. The keeper of the sluice ceremonially starts to open them. The flow is slow at first. Small fish are swimming up the weir. To one side I notice a large silver male salmon leaping up the weir. It has transformed into its breeding shape.  I shout. Everyone looks. There is much joy because the annual salmon run has begun.

I wake up and feel slightly overwhelmed. It is 8:15 AM. What is only a short time in earth time has seemed like an eternity in dream time.

* I have “memories” of verdant Europe, France and a more scorched Mediteranean. The sense of time is around 800 years ago, plus or minus.