12

Transpersonal Dreaming

359-92

p. 359

"Transpersonal psychology emerged as a field of study n the late 1960s ..., followed soon after by transpersonal anthropology (... see LaHood 2007 for a review). Transpersonal anthropology ... is now represented by ... the Society for the Anthropology

p. 360

of Consciousness, a section of the American Anthropological Association, which publishes a journal, Anthropology of Consciousness. The field is interested in the psychological and cultural dimensions of dreaming, spiritual visions, waking dreams, ethnopharmacology and psychopharmacology, meditation, trance and possession states, mediumship, ... as well as shamanism, mysticism and other spiritual traditions, paranormal, anomalous and psychic experiences, extrasensory percerption (ESP), healing practices and psychotherapies, magic and witchcraft, myth and ritual, etc."

p. 360

"A transpersonal experience almost by definition produces cognitive dissonance in the individual, and sets the psychological stage for self-transformation.

[fn. 1 "Cognitive dissonance is the cognitive and emotional experience produced by trying to hold conflicting knowledge{s} {viz., philosophies or philosophical explanations} about one's self or the world simultaneously."]

The same experience can be transpersonal to one person and normal to another -- ... the first

experience of nirvana is mind-blowing for a meditator, but

{The experience may "blowout" ('extinguish', the litteral meaning of the word \nirvan.a\) an inadequate (because materialist-based) metaphysics in the experiencer.}

is rather ordinary to the enlightened ... . An extraordianry experience encountered by an anthropologist in the field

p. 361

may be transpersonal for the fieldworker, and considered ordinary to his/her hosts ... . Such experiences will naturally create [cognitive] dissonance in the fieldworkers, and may eventually lead to

change in their self-knowledge.

{alteration in their understanding of their own abilities, so as to recognize that they themselves are capable to perceiving transcendent events (occurrences which transcend the bounds of materialist metaphysics)}

More than that, the transpersonal experience may bring their entire set of cultural understandings of self and world into question."

{In abandoning materialist metaphysics, one may well abandon loyalty to the the cultural values based on such materialist metaphysics.}

"Transpersonal experiences may also be paranormal -- that is, they may contain contents that appear to be outside the possibilities allowed by

consensus science. ... Hence, ...

{But whose consensus? -- It well-known that the consensus among established "scientists" may differ from-culture-to-culture, from-nation-to-nation (some national cultures being far less materialistic than others).}

our

{wrong word! : read instead "our adversary's"}

inclination as Western {European-originated}-trained ... intellectuals may be to reject as real anything like

causation at a distance,

{commonly employed in radio-electronics, and prior to radio-electronics in electric telephony, in electric telegraphy, etc.}

backwards causation,

{commonly in play in any plans for the future : the praesent is dominated by the future (i.e., potentialities for the future) in all human decision-making}

or any phenomenon that appears to require such causation -- phenomena like

telepathy, psychokinesis, prescience, out-of-body experiences, remote viewing, mental control of machines, and so forth.

{If (and only if) veritable deities are understood as the intermediaries in all such actions, can metaphysical absurdities be evaded.}

A scientistic reaction will be to ignore such phenomena as irrelevant to science -- scientism being the elevation of scientific theory to the status of

an ideology.

{a system of dogmata, denial whereof is punishable as hairesia}

Ideologies are blind to any evidence that may bring the belief system into question."

{Advocates of so-called "scientism" (i.e., dogmatic materialism described as "science" by its advocates) are, of course, the grossest of hypocrites -- the hypocrity of their defective methodology being outrightly displayed by their wanton ignoring of all manifest evidences.}

p. 362

"transpersonal dreaming, is ... limited. ... I explicitly include paranormal dreaming within this consideration ... . ...

p. 363

For instance, meditators seem to experience more bizarre and archtypal dreams than non-meditators (Hunt and Ogilvie 1988:41)."

p. 365

"Stanley Krippner ... notes, "... Shamanism uses dreams to enhance information transfer to the waking mode, applying this material in healing and other shamanic practices" (Krippner and Combs 2002:80). ...

{Shamans commonly dream about deities : a major deity (serving as the shaman's spirit-guide) and various minor deities (serving as the shaman's spirit-helpers).}

"(Krippner, Bogzaran and Percia de Carvalho 2002). In the introduction to this book, they tell the story of Dolores who dreamed that someone was knocking at her door. She responded and saw a man ... . ...

p. 366

She returned to her bedroom and called 911 and told the emergency operator what had happened. "Oh yes," replied the operator, "... His name is Nisrock." Some days later, Dolores visited her local library and ... was surprised to see a drawing labeled

"Nisrock, the winged Babylonian god who takes the souls of dreamers to the place of the dream" (ibid:1)." {"There is no Assyrian or Babyonian deity Nisroch." (JBL"N&N", p. 68)}

{The deity-name \Nisrok\ is supposed by Parkhurst (M&SBC, s.v. "Nisroch") to have been based on Strong's 5632 \sarek\ 'praesident'. Cognate would be Skt \nisarga\ 'natural state or character, nature', based on Skt \sarga\ 'emergence'.}

p. 366

"Dreams frequently instantiate spiritual entities. This is a fundamental principle n transpersonal methodology, for "supernatural" entities are very often ... directly experienced in both dreaming and waking life -- ... they are real ... . ...

Thus, when we read in an ethnography that this or that people "believe" in river nixies ..., very often the term "belief" signals that the anthropologist has not actually seen a nixie, but that his/her host may well have.

{An ethnographer who is lacking in experience of that which is being recorded about the experiences of other persons, is in effect incompetent, and thus ought to be recused from being involved in further recording of any such.}

Paul Devereux (1993:214-215) notes that most "alien abduction" experiences are very likely lucid dreams ... ." {However, relatively few "lucid dreams" are "dreams of false awaking", which are what most "alien abduction" experiences are.}

{The typical "alien abduction" scenario commenceth with awaking in bed (dreaming of awaking, namely so-called "false awaking"), which may involve such a verisimilitude as to be reminiscent of a projection of the astral body.}

"Douglas Hollan (1996:213-214) emphasizes the fact that the Toraja of Indonesia {their specific island, within Nusantara, being Sulawesi/Celebes} sometimes experience their long-dead ancestors in dreams, and these experiences are taken to be real. When he asked one of his Toraja friends ...,

p. 367

his friend replied, "Yes, ... I've seen my grandmother ... . ...

But ["in the dream"] I think that she's still alive. ..." (ibid:221)."

{There are, however, records of some dreamers who, when seeing entities posing as their relatives who had died, are indeed aware that such relatives have died, and inform their praeternatural impersonators of this fact in the dream.}

p. 367

"Douglas Hollan and Jane Wellenkamp (1996:181) recorded a dream had by one of their Indonesian Toraja hosts ..., who visited Puya, the land of the dead :

I went up a mountain first, and then descended ["the other side"]. I came to a forest and after that there was some barren ground. ... Then I arrived in Puya. ... There was a person who came to meet me ... . ... The person grabbed me, ["saying,"] "If you meet with your father or mother, you will die!" ...

p. 368

Then I left Puya. ... Then I arrived at my house. ...

Consider what a difference it would make ... if one actually were to experience the afterlife -- to know with absolute certainty that life continues after death, and continues in a place one has visited, a place much like one's own, peopled by kin and friends."

{It is typical of quite ordinary dreams (and also of dreams-of-false-awaking) that one may be visiting a praeternatural simulacrum of one's own material-world house, or that one may be encountring praeternatural entities posing as one's material-world human acquaintances-and-familiars (including kinfolk who have died in the material world), but although all such may indeed be instances of the remarkable faculty of dream-deities to construct (for the sake of a particular mortal dreamer), in their own dream-world, simulacra of features in the material world, it may not necessarily be evidence of any sort as to structure of the Antara-bhava (transitional passage between death and life).}

p. 371

""my grandmother ... related to ... the cosmology of her people, the Anishinabe -- meaning 'people of good intentions' -- who are also known as the Ojibway or Chippewa ... my dreaming ..." (Tedlock 2004[a]:183-184). ...

[quoted from Tedlock 2004a, p. 184] One night ... in a dream ... She ... said, "Step where I step." And as I did so the night sky reddened, and I realized what I must be dreaming. ... I awoke ... . Then I

p. 372

realized that she must have died. That morning I stayed ... waiting for the phone call. And ... it came ... ."... Each of the next three evenings I went outside at dusk ... to guide her soul ... to the land of the dead."

"Precognitive dreaming may be more common than one might suppose. ...

Telepathic dreaming is thus not uncommon among Americans ... .

In fact, transpersonal experiences generally are more common than mainstream academics would acknowledge. In 1975, A. M. Greeley published a book-length study of various transpersonal experiences in America entitled The Sociology of the Paranormal. He concluded by asking that

if these experiences were so common, why doesn't sociology pay more attention to them? Why indeed?"

{The answer is every plain and evident and well-known : the ploutokratic ruling-class consisteth largely of greed-maddened extremist-materialists, who concertedly make every effort to suppress all public awareness of the pervasive immaterial reality transcending the material universe, which efforts of theirs include making sure that any-and-every university-professor who may commence calling attention to the greatly-abundant human experience testifying as to that alternative reality, be immediately discharged from his or her university-professorship -- with little or no prospect of any professorship in any other university.}

"Post hoc reasoning, short for the phrase post hoc propter hoc ("after this, therefore because of this") is the fallacy of reasoning back from the conclusion to the premise.

The fallacy is that just because B follows A does not mean that A causes B.

{In this case, the interpretation (which happened subsequent to the dream) did, very likely, contribute to "causing" the tragedy, but only on account of the intransigeant impiety on the part of the "friend". (Piety would have induced a protective caution.)}

Just because Jung's friend dreamed of flying off the mountain does not mean that the dream caused his death." {Actually, in this particular case, it indeed did cause the death, but only because Jung's so-called friend was so very hostile to the dream-deities (contemptuously labeling the covert warning, sent by them, as "another idiotic dream", p. 372 supra) as to be eager to perform the hazardous manoeuvre warned against by them, and to perform it repeatedly until eventually killed by his own defiantly hazardous manoeuvre. The moral of the story :- Those mortals who deliberate defy their own personal divine spirit-guides always meet with self-made calamity (brought about by hubris).}

{Just about the only way whereby a warning dream could conceivably "cause" the possible future event against which it is warning, is for a recognized expert (in this case C. G. Jung) in the interpretation of dreams to rendre (to the person who dreamt the interpreted dream) the explicit warning, and thereupon for the interpretee to defy the warning (as a sort of way of defying the dream-deities who had arranged the warning dream) by deliberately performing whatever it may have been that the dream was warning against performing -- this was, indeed, that which (with fatal consequence) transpired in the case cited (from C. G. Jung's autobiographical account).}

"The very idea of dreams actually foretelling the future flies in the face of ... causation.

... the notion that one can "see into the future" violates the Western {read "ATHEISTIC", not "Western"} commonplace model in which event A causes event B, where A happens before B, and not vice versa. {ALL traditional religions very explicitly admit to divine foreknowledge of events, without ever in any way implying nor claiming that sequential causality is even slightly violated by such foreknowledge; and, furthermore, most such religions do admit to the existence of mortal prophets, residing in the waking-world of the material universe, to whom some of such divine foreknowledge may, under some peculiar circumstances, be revealed. How the author (Ch.D.L.) can thus implicitly deny all-and-any divine omniscience, while simultaneously alleging sympathy for traditional indigenous cultural values (all whereof are very much THEISTIC), must be an unfathomable mystery -- unless, of course, he be a covert hypocrite.}

{There is no violation of ordinary sequential causation involved. Dream-deities, because they all read the minds of the mortals who visit them in the dream-worlds, naturally thereby must very thoroughly-and-well know the plans-for-future-action of all mortal beings; and such extensively-knowledgeable dream-deities can easily disclose, in any dream experienced by any mortal, the intricately-detailed plans-for-the-future kept as secrets by all other mortals, including how such plans may fit together, and what the future consequences of such secret plans must be. The sort of scenario is the only feasible non-causality-violating way for understanding praecognitive dreaming : but the author (Ch.D.L.), so very atheistically intent on denying the almighty omniscience of the communally-networking committees of deities who collectively (i.e., communistically) govern the universes, fanatically is standing in denial of the only means of retaining causality and sanity, and is opting instead for illogical absurdities demanded by the irresponsible anti-system of anti-social capitalism (which, its eagerness to promote self-destructive mutually adversarial competition, must deny the principle of universal divine omniscience). [written 16 Jan 2018]}

Yet, well-controlled scientific experiments have demonstrated ... precognition, or "future sight" (... Ebon 1966)."

"In a series of ingenious experiments, Dean Radin and D. J. Bierman (... Bierman and Radin 1997, 1999) have demonstrated a robust precognition or "presentiment" effect using physiological indicators of "precognitive information" when subjects act before they are presented with a ... stimulus. ...

Results show that subjects tend to respond emotionally several seconds before the picture appears, and the correlation ... is significant.

{The subjects' spirit-guides may have had access (via elemental spirits' penetrating the inner workings of the machine) to knowledge of what the machine would do before it did it, and thus may have manipulated the subjects' emotions correspondingly.}

Bierman and Scholte ... took this research even further by carrying it out on subjects while their brains were being scanned using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. Again, they showed that

the areas mediating appropriate emotion became active before the ... image was shown."

{Besides influencing the subjects' emotions, their spirit-guides may have manipulated their cerebral electrical functions.}

p. 377

"One of the most fascinating types of transpersonal dreaming is the phenomenon of co-dreaming (a.k.a., ... "mutual dreaming"); that is, when two or more people share the same dream content at more or less the same time. ...

p. 378

Shared dreaming {viz., mutual dreaming} is commonplace among the Australian Aborigines. According to Poirier (2003:113) :

[quoted] In the Wirriman area, it was not uncommon for two individuals to say that they had shared the same dream. ... There were ... instances when, as other dreamers dreamed, they decided to enter yet another person's dream

or were attracted to the action occurring in a dream setting.

{This situation would, of course, imply an ability to witness, from outside another person's dream, activity which was occurring within that dream (much like viewing, from the outside through the window of a house, what persons are doing within that house).}

For example, an elderly woman once told me that she feared some male relatives of hers who were sleeping nearby might, during their dreams, have heard her singing sacred-secet songs in her own dream ... .

Love[-]magic songs are another example of ... a space-time of higher receptivity. The beloved will hear a suitor's love song in his or her dreams and thus be attracted to the singer."

p. 378

"Kellogg (1997) reported an experience of co-dreaming he had with his friend Harvey Grady. ...

[quoted] In a sort of archeological dig -- in Mexico -- I see people ... in a sandy Sonoran type desert. ... I go along with the group -- realize that I dream, but don't know if they realize it ... . ... I see [" Harvey Grady"], and tell him to give me a collect call on waking up to WPR (waking physical reality), if he recalls this dream ... . ...

p. 379

The next morning he called Grady and asked for a report of nay dream he may have had, and because it was very similar to his own, asked that Grady write it down and send it to him. This is Grady's dream :

[quoted] I remember ... an expedition to explore for possible archeological records, ... traveling to an arid desert area ... . ... We were searching for ancient artifacts, like (from) Atlantis or Mu. ... In the dream, I felt that we were ... in the astral plane in order to establish energetic templates for the persons who would conduct the search on the p;hysical plane. ... This double level of awareness made the dream more interesting to me."

p. 380

"Dreaming for the Barok ... is an important source of knowledge and spiritual power. This is especially so for "big people" -- those who attain high status because they master the "tricks" or techniques (pidiks) of accessing spiritual power (lolos). Chief among those tricks is the art of dreaming. Among the Barok, dreams

become real and

{viz., become actualized in the material world}

intent is realized

{viz., is achieved in the material world}

when the dreamer

creates the dream images in the real world of conventionalized, ritualized expressions (wuo or wu).

{is able to transport spiritual power from the dream-world into the waking-world by means of ritual performed, along with spells uttered, in the waking-world}

In this case the dream creation changes and transcends the non-dream reality, and this kind of dreaming is what Barok "big people do" ([George 1995a]:30). ...

"Barok big people told me that in order actually to do something important one dreams about it first. ... What happens in a dream has to do with ... clarification of ara>, which is "intent, will ... ." The point of dreaming has to do with having imaginative experiences which express and result in the formation of intent. ... " (ibid:30 ...)."

p. 381

[quoted from George 1995a, p. 20] "Alek and Bustaman then described to me exactly what was in my dream ... . They repeated to me the exact words that Kalerian had said to me in the dream. I remembered everything with absolute certainty when Alek and Bustaman said those same words to me. I suddenly realized that Alek and Bustaman must have witnessed my dream!"

"When she [M.G.] returned to the field a second time over a year later, it was to discover

p. 382

that her sister {honorific term} Kalerian had died. Yet she continued to have dreams in which Kalerian appeared and gave her information :

[quoted from George 1995a, pp. 23-4] ... When I woke up ... Alex ... immediately asked, "Did you understand ...?" I stuttered back, "Oh, you mean what Kalerian was telling me in my dream?""

"Indeed, one of the problems with ethnographic accounts of ... the experiences {e.g., dreaming} that give rise to much of religious symbolism, iconography, ritual and textual material, is that the ethnographer rarely experiences first-hand the very ... techniques geared to incubate such experiences (see Smyers 2002 on this issue) -- that is, they rarely ... ingest the drugs ... or use traditional techniques of dream incubation that drive such experiences."

"information processing would occur at ... structures linked to consciousness and the self ... .

{Any-and-all "structures linked to consciousness and the self" would necessarily exist only in transcendental planes-of-existence (astral, mental, causal), but certainly not in the inanimate, consciousness-lacking material plane.}

The suggestion here is that images arising in one dreaming brain

{Any-and-all objects and persons observed in any dream-world are necessarily prae-existent, and so do not "arise" -- only the illusory material universe can be said to "arise" (out of its own fundamentally illusory character, that is).}

may "cause" images to arise in another dreaming brain ... ."

{The source of causality is the consciousness of deities praesiding over the causal-plane, where there are only absolutes which are neither "images" nor any "arising".}

p. 386

"Edith Turner ... has come to the conclusion that following the "don't go native" rule in ethnography has the very pernicious effect of putting blinders on the fieldworker. ...

p. 387

After having various transpersonal experiences, she came to the conclusion that ethnographic business as usual would not do when dealing with native experiences of the spirit world :

[quoted from Turner 1993, p. 10] ... What is pitiful is the tendency of anthropologists ...

{Why are all such anthropologist-authors so very chary of telling the truth? -- that any unretired anthropologist overtly favoring any other ideology than the crassest of atheistic materialism, would be immediately deprived of employment by any university, and be fired in deep disgrace for daring to contradict the capitalist-enforced dogmata of materialism!}

to defer to the western {read "ATHEISTIC", not "Western"; for, most ordinary Europeans and Americans are actual theists, despite long-standing promotion of atheism by the hyper-materialist ruling-class of trillionaire ploutokrats} view and accordingly hold back from claiming the truth of ... religion. The mission {N.B. university-professors are all thus-commissioned by the trillionaire ploutokrateia} of western anthropologists is to explain the system in positivist {read : "atheist-materialist" -- which is, incidentally, actually entirely negativist, negatively denying even the possiblity of existence of any purpose, meaning, or value} terms at all costs ... is oddly similar to the self-imposed task of the more hidebound religious missionaries {who, incidentally, are also commissioned by the same ploutokrateia} who are also sworn to eliminate their hosts' religion."

p. 388

"With respect to dreaming, the fieldworker's task is to develop the skill necessary to access the dream material one's hosts talk about. When one is doing fieldwork among a polyphasic society, the task ... becomes daunting, but doable."

p. 389

"Some transpersonal dreams may contain information obtained in paranormal ways -- e.g., through telepathy, precognition and co-dreaming ... . ... Wherever possible, the fieldworker needs to privilege the host's ... spiritual adventures. ...

More than that, the fieldworker should leave him- or herself open to such experiences, perhaps even going so far as to learn the skills necessary to approximate the kind of experiences described by their

p. 390

hosts ... . The transpersonal approach to native spiritual experiences is a challenge, especially with respect to dreaming ... ."