11

Dreaming and the Self

331-58

"When we dream, we experience -- can only experience -- our self, and through our self {through what self?! -- The body is (according to Bauddha Dharma) not the self, yet we must experience any experience through means of this not-self of a body!} ... reality ... ."

{WRONG, false, and delusory! The atman ('self') must always remain non-experienceable, except to the extent that it may be participating in the collective-universal brahman. The material body is not of the atman; for, a material body is provided, for use by a mortal, by the aeternal deities, at the event of that mortal's incarnation; and, a dream-body is likewise provided by deities, for use by a mortal while in the divine dream-worlds. The material universe is (as affirmed in the Upa-nis.ad) maya ('illusion'); whereas, in contrast to the material world, the sempiternal divine svapna-loka-s ('dream-worlds') are the universal realities revealing the natures of imperishable non-self. All suffering must derive from not recognizing this factuality, and from failing to recognize the transcendence of the non-self nature of the aeternal deities; which can be remedied when, along with realizing the illusory nature of the material universe, there must be concommitant consequential submission to their divine will (including during dreaming).}

"all that arises or could every possibly arise in our theater of mind are the operations of our brain's circuitry ... (LeDoux 2002:2-3)." {This supposition concerning such circuitry is, however, based on logically fallacious circular reasoning, where praemises (such as, primacy of a material universe) have been so chosen as to result in an erroneous conclusion.}

{Suppose that the "brain" is simply an illusory semblance of the interconnection among universes of structural awareness-modes : emotion (astral plane), reasoning (mental plane), and ethics (causal plane). Then, although this interconnection might superficially appear to be located in the material universe, it cannot actually be so localizable; but such an illusion of localization is simply an affect illusionarily seeming to be materially ensconced. [written 19 Dec 2017]}

"As I read it, anthropology is presently in a muddle with regard to the self (see also Cohen 1994). The definitions of self vary widely and are frequently ... limited to a single methodological objective, scope of inquiry, or ideology." {But are not all definitions practicably limited in these ways?}

{Any notion of atman ('self') must be either a "muddle" or a paradoxical conundrum; for, there cannot be any particular atman apart from brahman (the structure of collectivity of all instances of atman); for, any atman can be understood only in reference to how it must fit into (according to the specifics of its own peculiar capacities) the interactivity of all other instances of atman. [written 19 Dec 2017]}

p. 332

"There seem to be at least four distinct takes on the "self" used in anthropology ... -- the phenomenological approach, the sociocultural approach, the experiential approach, and the universalist or archetypal approach."

p. 333

"The full realization of the impermanence of the self in Husserl's system amounts to the "transcendental epoche'," and in Buddhist satipatthana practice is sometimes referred to as "lesser sainthood." ...

p. 334

Suffice {it} to say from the post-epoche' standpoint, there is no such thing (... cultural metaphors to the contrary) as a permanent self ... (... Laughlin and Throop 2009)."

"In Margot Lyon's (1995) view, derived from Geertzian interpretive anthropology (Geertz 1973), culture is conceived to be a "complex system of symbols, meanings, categories, models, or schema{ta} that structure experience and action" ( Lyon 1995:244)." ... Most, if not all[,] constructivist accounts ... ignore completely the biological and evolutionary aspects ... (Csordas 1994b). Moreover, what some ... seem to mean by "self" ...

p. 335

is in effect the public face ... -- that little-bitty part of the self that faces the outer world."

"one's experience of self as "an object in a world of objects" ... is a universal ([Hallowell 1955]:75). ...

p. 336

Psychological anthropologist C. Jason Throop (2000), as a corrective to the excesses of the constructivist approach, has developed an experiential perspective that more facilitates Hallowell's balanced view."

"Kohut (1913-1981) ... developed the notion of an intrinsically autonomous, bounded self ... . ...

p. 337

What is routinely misunderstood, however, is that the self never really reaches unity ... ."

"It was my experience ... in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in Nepal, as it was Spiro's, while living in a Theravada Buddhist monastery in Burma, that ... monks ... with regard to the realization of anatta {an-atman}, ... found themselves in contradictory views, still experiencing themselves as seamless entities ... ."

{Such understandings naturally involve ineliminable paradoxes. The deities who (according, e.g., to the Kala-cakra Tantra) pervade every living mortal's body, themselves purposely induce a sense of unity of the purus.a (person) : this is maintained by them for convenience's sake.}

"Engagement with archetypal material in dreams ... "... appears ... in the form of a totality symbol, such as the circle, square, quadratura circuli, cross, etc. ... .

{In ordinary diagrams, a circle may be employed to repraesent a disk-shaped (polar projection) map, a square to repraesent a square map, or whatever. This can be commonly done for convenience in compressed repraesentations (as employed in the waking world by cartographers, architects, etc.); but in the dream-world, where space and labor required are no limitation, anything depicted will readily be depicted entire; so that if forms are seen, they mean just what they appear to be, without compressed symbolism. Jung is, as usual, drastically wrong. [written 23 Dec 2017]}

When it represents a complexio oppositorum -- a union of opposites -- it can also appear as a united duality, for instance, in the form of tao as the interplay between yang and yin ..." (Jung 1971:para 790; see also ... [1951]:Chap 4; 1990)."

{The Chinese characters for "yin", for "yang", and for "tao" might appear to a native Chinese dreamer, who is reading a book written in Chinese in a dream; but would not typically appear in irrelevant symbolic context in a dream. Symbolism is a flamboyant feature of religious art in the waking world, but virtually absent from dreams, which display whatever they care to indicate very plainly-and-openly, without the indirectness of waking-world intricacies. [written 23 Dec 2017]}

"As Krippner, Bogzaran and Percia da Carvalho (2002:150) note, "... certain people and activities achieve salience in the dreams of dreamers worldwide because all dreamers share a common humanity and a common physical body.""

{ALTOGETHER WRONG! Throughout the universe, dreams dreamt by intelligent beings are alike, not because they share "a common physical body" (that sort of commonality they do not share, but their dreams are alike, nevertheless), but because the same networked hierarchy of deities governs every region of the universe, and therefore such deities display themselves similarly in dreams everywhere.}

[quoted from Jung 1958 [1948], pp. 78-9] "Already at the very beginning of our dream series the circle appears. ... It appears in later dreams as ... a perpetuum mobile ... .

The square appears also, about the same time ... . Somewhat later ... appears ... an empty square which itself is rotating, and so on."

{More actually, although the waking-world is replete with repeating design-elements, in the dream-worlds, the variety is so very diverse, that such repetition is conspicuously absent from dreamings, quite generally. As usual, Jung is declaring a generalized untruth.}

[quoted from Kroeber 1902/1907, p. 432] "He saw ... a person seated, dressed entirely in black ... . ... Then this person in black spoke to him. ... He told him ... that they were now on a cloud. Then the informant saw the earth below him ... .

The person in black, who was the crow, then showed him a rainbow extending from east to west, and other from south to north. {"Crossed rainbows" must be a term meaning 'iridescence'.}

{[Lenni Lenape (Delaware) myth] "all of Rainbow Crow's feathers became blackened with soot. ... Crow looked, and he saw many tiny rainbows shining in his black feathers" ("RC(M)").}

The informant was then taken by him to the spot where the two rainbows crossed one another. There he stood, and the crow told him to look up."

{In the Navaho myth "Water Way", "the character Sunlight Boy journeys to the sky on crossed rainbows" (HNAM, s.v. "Rainbow(s)", p. 156). In this same myth, more specificly (M&V, p. 112) "On his grandmother's instructions the hero again goes to the center of the lake and rises on crossed rainbows through the skyhole."} {"The creation of the Navajo people involved "a pair of rainbows crossed like rafters at the zenith of a proto-world so small that the 'heads and feet of the rainbows almost touched the men's heads'"." (PA&C"RIM--OM")}

p. 344

[quoted from Musil 1928, pp. 396-7] "the <At{.}fa litter ..., in which in times of danger the prettiest girl used to be seated in order to encourage ... .

{This term \<at.f\ 'affection, sympathy' is merely an epithet applying to its peculiar employment "in times of danger"; its usual name is \z.a<iynah\ "camel-borne sedan chair for women; a woman in such a sedan" (DMWA, p. 679b). Because proto-S^emitic \z.\ = proto-Indo-Germanic \b\, therefore Irish \ban\ 'woman' would be cognate.}

The commander then understood the dream, ...

p. 345

for once the <At{.}fa litter is lost it must not be used again."

"A Comanche Indian woman (Jones 1972:39) meets a man "who extends his hand while holdng a peyote button in his palm. Once she takes the peyote from his hand and holds it with both hands she feels a tingling sensation through her hands and arms that she idetified with 'supernatural power'" (Tiberia 1981:97).

An Ashanti man in West Africa {specificly, in the Gold Coast} (Rattray 1927:196) dreamed he encountered a "... very tall person with an enormous head. ... This person carried three balls of medicine around his neck,

one was red, one was white and one was black.

{These are the colors of the 3 gun.a-s (namely, rajas, sattva, and tamas, respectively) belonging to the Tri-murti. The word \GUn.a\ is somewhat similar to the word \GUd.a\ 'globe, ball' (Si-ED, p. 164a).}

The dreamer cried out in his sleep and was awakened."

p. 345

"the "selfscape dream" as developed by ... ethnographer, Douglas Hollan (2003b ...) ... are dreams that "... reflect back to the dreamer how his or her current organization ... relates various parts of itself to itself, its body ... in the world" ([Hollan] 2004, p. 172). ... This insight, grounded initially in the concept of

p. 346

"self-state" dreams of Heinz Kohut (1977:109-110; Tolpin 1983), is that systems ... cross-talk and exchange information -- that ... one of the functions of dreaming is ... participating in the ... reorganization and equilibrium of the psyche. As Hollan writes :

[quoted from Hollan 2004, p. 172] In my work, ... I use the term "selfscape" to refer to emotionally and imaginally vivid dreams that appear to reflect back to the dreamer how his or her current organization ... relates various parts of itself to ... other people and objects in the world. ... Such dreams, I argue, provide the mind with an updated map of ... contours and affective resonances : its relative vitality ..., its relative wholeness ..., its relative closeness ..., its ... conscious and unconscious streams of emotions ... . ..."

p. 347

"the dreaming sensorium ... portrays a "movie" {cinema} ... taking the form of a dream ... (Wax 2004).

{This is an utterly inadequate statement. Before it can be sensed by the mortal dreamer's "sensorium", the dream's theatrical-style scenery must be built, in that dream-world, by divine denizens thereof.}

The movie is ... "autonomous ..." -- that is, the movie unfolds of its own accord and does not reflect the wishes of the ego.

{Although the dream-events be generated without reflecting the wishes of the mortal dreamer witnessing them, yet never-the-less those events most certainly do reflect the wishes of dream-arranging deities (Morpheus, etc.).}

Jung's archetypal dreaming is precisely this kind of selfscape dreaming in which the various archetypes ... cross-talk ... . ...

{FALSE and FAKED! In his secret Red Book, Carl Gustav Jung did describe, in detail, how certain dream-deities explained to him that they were the entities arranging the dream to entail whatever it entailed. But in his overt writings, controlled by a realistic dread of governments which do commit to "insane asyla" persons declaring themselves to be in communication with deities, he craftily concealed these very facts under the vague cover-up term \archetypes\.}

p. 348

During selfscape dreams, the ... sensorium becomes in effect a "theater of mind" in which is played out ... portrayal of ... activities."

"Hollan illusttrates selfscape dreams from his own research among the Toraja of Indonesia {specificly, Sulawesi/Celebes} and that of Wolfgang Kempf and Elfriede Hermann (2003) among the Ngaing of Papua New Guinea. ... "... the Toraja are one of those groups of people who believe that certain types of dreams can forethell the future. In fact, prophetic dreams ... are marked with a special term, tindo" (Hollan 2004:175). ... This dream is from an elder ... who was close to death when he recalled a dream he had years before [Hollan 2003b:68] :

One time I dreamed that my throat had been cut! ... A man cut me with a machete and I fell down dead ... . Then my body was cut up and distributed to A and B and C ... . But I could see it happen! I was cut up and distributed ... ." {Now, it would be very odd if the author, an anthropologist, could be quite unaware that this sort of dream is the most typical for traditional shamanry; but the author could readily have been restricted from mentioning such facts.}

{This is the most frequent among the types of dream whereby a candidate can tradittionally achieve shaman-status among Siberian tribesfolk. It is a dream most highly esteemed, honored, and sought, connoting a divine bestowal of praeternatural powers conferring ability to perform miraculous curing. While attaining to such a highly-valued dream, the candidate, due to an attitude thankfulness for arrival at such an esteemed honor, is forthwith granted (in the same dream), a re-constitutioning of the dismembred body (which apparently the Toraja failed to achieve due to arrogant lack of thankfulness) which must accompany an acquisition of praeternatural powers. [written 30 Dec 2017]}

"The methodological problem here is straightforward. ... Hence Hollan's analysis ... is ... tautological. This is almost always a problem with psychological-functional explanations (Hempel 1968)."

{A non-tautological analysis of the same dream could, however, entail a recounting of the functions of spirit-guide activated and of spirit-helpers acquired through such a dream of dismemberment-and-reconstitution of one's dream-body.}