Recently, I have had several dreams about Ram Dass (Richard Alpert). I have not read any of his books in years but am feeling drawn toward him lately.
In the first dream, I was with him in India during the 1970’s (I was born in 73). He was a bit lost, struggling with his own issues. We discussed life at length. It seemed almost that I was counseling him.
Last night, I dreamt that I was at a meditation retreat. I was excited that Ram Dass himself was about to guide us in person. But just as everyone was starting to relax, he singled me out. He handed me a basket of rocks and told me to go outside and give them away. I was to find the perfect stone to give to each person that I met. I was disappointed to miss the meditation. But, I took the basket and did as I was told. There was a variety of stones in the basket. Some were plain and gray. Others were crystals or brightly colored stones. There were also a few small figurines. A few or the rocks had small crystal like six sided dice embedded in them. People seemed delighted by the small gifts that I was distributing.
Friday, March 2, 2018
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Dream: the two saddest things
the house that I lived in 7 years ago was up for sale. They were having an open house, so I stopped in to see it. Inside, they had changed out the carpet and painted different colors. I went outside and entered the backyard. My now dead dog Sabastian entered the gate with me. He was so excited to be back in his favorite place.
A voice came to me and said, "think of the two most sad times that you had in this house. Go ahead and let yourself go down there. Then I will fix it and heal you."
This seemed like a good opportunity for self healing so I jumped at the opportunity. First as I watched Sabastian run around the yard, I was saddened by his recent death. Then I remembered an argument that my wife had had. She was sitting on the family room floor screaming about being a bad wife and unable to be a mother."
I awoke with tears pouring out. I felt only pain and no healing. I was angry at myself for having let myself go down there.
A voice came to me and said, "think of the two most sad times that you had in this house. Go ahead and let yourself go down there. Then I will fix it and heal you."
This seemed like a good opportunity for self healing so I jumped at the opportunity. First as I watched Sabastian run around the yard, I was saddened by his recent death. Then I remembered an argument that my wife had had. She was sitting on the family room floor screaming about being a bad wife and unable to be a mother."
I awoke with tears pouring out. I felt only pain and no healing. I was angry at myself for having let myself go down there.
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Dream: Time Travel Lottery Paradox
My employer had invented a time machine. They wanted me to help with a test. I was to go back in time just two days to retrieve an object that I was to bribg back with me. I plotted to turn this to my advantage. So, I got a list of winning lottery numbers. When in the past, I secretly bought a ticket with the winning lotto number. Upon my return to the present, I found that the number drawn was different this time. Apparently random events could turn out differently each time you went back and returned. Only outcomes with strong causation could be duplicated.
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Papa Smurf's Secret Recipe contains DMT
Last night, I took the kids to the drive-in and watched The Smurfs 2. Gargamel, a villain sorcerer, has created some grey smurfs and wants to change them to real blue smurfs so that he can extract their essence to fuel his magic. To accomplish this, he is trying to convince Smurfette to tell him Papa Smurf's secret formula for turning grey smurfs blue. Smurfette eventually gives him the recipe. The recipe consists of a bunch of sappy intangibles such as hope. The only material ingredient was the pulp from a mimosa tree. It is this ingredient that I found so interesting. A powerful psychedelic, DMT can be extracted from the mimosa tree. While over most people's head, I do not believe that this is just a coincidence.
And, of course just about every neuronaut has already made the mushroom connection... Fly Agaric (Amanita Muscaria) looks suspiciously similar to the smurf houses.
And, of course just about every neuronaut has already made the mushroom connection... Fly Agaric (Amanita Muscaria) looks suspiciously similar to the smurf houses.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Time, Space, and the Infinite
The following is reprinted from someone else's website. I found it interesting and wanted to share. The author has a very good perspective on modern theories about the nature of time. You can find the original at http://www.consciousunity.org/Time,%20Space,%20and%20the%20Infinite.html.
... "I" disintegrated in '94 and the Omnipresent Consciousness "filled in the space" where the fabricated identity of the "personal self" or ego had been. Then, from time to time little gems of wisdom would come to "me" (this individual manifestation of the One) and "I" (the One through this one) have shared them through this web site. This is one of those little gems from the Source.... the simple truth about time and space.
What with the great popularity of science fiction about "time travel" and ever increasing theoretical scientific speculation about "distorted" "warped" and otherwise stretched or compressed time and space, it falls to those beyond ego to occasionally blurt out, like the child in the old story, that "The emperor has no clothes!"
When the "great scientific minds of our time" and the most creative fiction writers are playing with models of time and space that allow time travel and jumps through "hyper space", enjoyable as this can be as entertainment and "brainstorming " the possibilities, my calling in this realm is to remind us all that time is simply the concept of event duration, and space still means emptiness. We invented the "fabric of time" and then wove it into all kinds of interesting patterns and textures, but the ultimate reality check is that "there is really nothing there" but our focus on measuring ,reckoning , calculating and theorizing about all kinds of event duration, ...and yet "it" is ALWAYS NOW, eternally and perpetually.!
The confusion about time got more complicated with the advent of relativity theory; specifically the speed limit of light traveling through space and the anomalies of mass increasing as it approaches the speed of light. Einstein's familiar equation, E= MC squared is "ground zero" for the reification of time, i.e., elevating it to the status of a reality in and of itself. It is a marvelous equation relating mass to energy as a function of light speed, but it does not justify the belief that time is some "real stuff" that can be manipulated like silly putty or speeded up, slowed down, and even reversed with some time machine gadgetry.
Obviously events themselves can speed up or slow down in the context of their specific circumstances. Even our most "infallible" atomic clocks will "lose or gain time" when accelerated to a significant fraction of the speed of light. But this does not mean that some actual medium called time was distorted. It means that extreme speed/ acceleration vectors affect the mass and vibration (mass IS vibrating energy) of objects so accelerated.
There is a demonstrated difference between once synchronized clocks when one takes a high speed trip through space and the other "stays home". Our human cells too may age much more slowly as we approach "warp speed" but these are all circumstantial effects upon accelerating "objects" which are made of vibrating energy patterns. Time is event- specific duration measurement. The vibration rate of the cesium atoms of the traveling atomic clock was slowed by extreme acceleration, but the experiment claims that less time actually elapsed for the traveling clock. A quite different conclusion!
Time is always relative to events and points of reference, but the eternal present is absolute and omnipresent.
From cosmic perspective it is "Now" everywhere always, even though it has taken 15 billion years for the light of the "big bang", which happened 15 billion years ago, to reach Earth.
A similar misconception hangs on around "space." Since "black holes" were discovered and cosmic "worm hole" theory caught on in the sci-fi realm, a new wave of belief has developed that space is some medium that folds, bends, warps and does various amazing tricks that might allow, say intergalactic travel without having to go the "real distance", for example.
"Folded" space then might have threads or holes connecting one area of the "fabric" to another without traveling the "surface of the fabric" the "long way around the folds." This fiction helps us visit far away places in our imagination, but space is not really some "thing" that can develop "folds" or warpage anomalies. Space is infinite emptiness without limit, and the manifest cosmos (known and perhaps unknown) continues to expand from the "bang" outward into that infinite space.
Whether or not it will eventually exhaust its outward explosion and reach a theoretical "gravity net" at the outer extreme of entropy and return via gravity back into one primordial ball of matter and explode again... we still don't know.
In fact it all appears to be still accelerating outwardly rather than slowing down, so it is too soon to call whether it is a pulsating explosion/ implosion cycle or will run down to total entropy (energy evenly distributed in infinite expansion.) This individual's "vision", given when ego disintegrated, was identical with the pulsating cosmos theory, but that model has now lost favor in view of the mystery of continuing outward acceleration.
Either way space itself is the emptiness in which all cosmic events happen.
Gravity wells leading into black holes, for instance are NOT "distortions in the space- time continuum" but the attractive force of gravity acting across space in measurable time without either being some "thing" which is bent or somehow distorted.
Here too this observer (albeit in the transcendent realm of the cosmic imagination) was "shown" the birth of stars out of the super compressed matter of black holes. This was revealed as the cosmic dance between gravity and the fusion explosion of matter to energy.
All mass has the potential of becoming pure energy again when "critical mass" is reached through gravitational compression. A black hole is a gravitational vacuum in space drawing in the raw material and then exploding into a new star. Ultimately, if / when all matter collapses back into the original black hole ( all matter before the "bang"}, this is the raw material for the next expansion cycle of the whole cosmos. "My vision" was that our cosmos is not a one time deal, nor is one individual life. And this explains "where it all came from before the big bang"...i.e., from the last implosion cycle. So the "something out of nothing" paradox is solved.
This is enough for now. Maybe too much for some, but it is what this individual expression of the One has to " tell the world" about time and space and the infinite Consciousness "THAT I AM" , that we all are One Being manifesting as each individual.
OM... Amen.
mikIel
... "I" disintegrated in '94 and the Omnipresent Consciousness "filled in the space" where the fabricated identity of the "personal self" or ego had been. Then, from time to time little gems of wisdom would come to "me" (this individual manifestation of the One) and "I" (the One through this one) have shared them through this web site. This is one of those little gems from the Source.... the simple truth about time and space.
What with the great popularity of science fiction about "time travel" and ever increasing theoretical scientific speculation about "distorted" "warped" and otherwise stretched or compressed time and space, it falls to those beyond ego to occasionally blurt out, like the child in the old story, that "The emperor has no clothes!"
When the "great scientific minds of our time" and the most creative fiction writers are playing with models of time and space that allow time travel and jumps through "hyper space", enjoyable as this can be as entertainment and "brainstorming " the possibilities, my calling in this realm is to remind us all that time is simply the concept of event duration, and space still means emptiness. We invented the "fabric of time" and then wove it into all kinds of interesting patterns and textures, but the ultimate reality check is that "there is really nothing there" but our focus on measuring ,reckoning , calculating and theorizing about all kinds of event duration, ...and yet "it" is ALWAYS NOW, eternally and perpetually.!
The confusion about time got more complicated with the advent of relativity theory; specifically the speed limit of light traveling through space and the anomalies of mass increasing as it approaches the speed of light. Einstein's familiar equation, E= MC squared is "ground zero" for the reification of time, i.e., elevating it to the status of a reality in and of itself. It is a marvelous equation relating mass to energy as a function of light speed, but it does not justify the belief that time is some "real stuff" that can be manipulated like silly putty or speeded up, slowed down, and even reversed with some time machine gadgetry.
Obviously events themselves can speed up or slow down in the context of their specific circumstances. Even our most "infallible" atomic clocks will "lose or gain time" when accelerated to a significant fraction of the speed of light. But this does not mean that some actual medium called time was distorted. It means that extreme speed/ acceleration vectors affect the mass and vibration (mass IS vibrating energy) of objects so accelerated.
There is a demonstrated difference between once synchronized clocks when one takes a high speed trip through space and the other "stays home". Our human cells too may age much more slowly as we approach "warp speed" but these are all circumstantial effects upon accelerating "objects" which are made of vibrating energy patterns. Time is event- specific duration measurement. The vibration rate of the cesium atoms of the traveling atomic clock was slowed by extreme acceleration, but the experiment claims that less time actually elapsed for the traveling clock. A quite different conclusion!
Time is always relative to events and points of reference, but the eternal present is absolute and omnipresent.
From cosmic perspective it is "Now" everywhere always, even though it has taken 15 billion years for the light of the "big bang", which happened 15 billion years ago, to reach Earth.
A similar misconception hangs on around "space." Since "black holes" were discovered and cosmic "worm hole" theory caught on in the sci-fi realm, a new wave of belief has developed that space is some medium that folds, bends, warps and does various amazing tricks that might allow, say intergalactic travel without having to go the "real distance", for example.
"Folded" space then might have threads or holes connecting one area of the "fabric" to another without traveling the "surface of the fabric" the "long way around the folds." This fiction helps us visit far away places in our imagination, but space is not really some "thing" that can develop "folds" or warpage anomalies. Space is infinite emptiness without limit, and the manifest cosmos (known and perhaps unknown) continues to expand from the "bang" outward into that infinite space.
Whether or not it will eventually exhaust its outward explosion and reach a theoretical "gravity net" at the outer extreme of entropy and return via gravity back into one primordial ball of matter and explode again... we still don't know.
In fact it all appears to be still accelerating outwardly rather than slowing down, so it is too soon to call whether it is a pulsating explosion/ implosion cycle or will run down to total entropy (energy evenly distributed in infinite expansion.) This individual's "vision", given when ego disintegrated, was identical with the pulsating cosmos theory, but that model has now lost favor in view of the mystery of continuing outward acceleration.
Either way space itself is the emptiness in which all cosmic events happen.
Gravity wells leading into black holes, for instance are NOT "distortions in the space- time continuum" but the attractive force of gravity acting across space in measurable time without either being some "thing" which is bent or somehow distorted.
Here too this observer (albeit in the transcendent realm of the cosmic imagination) was "shown" the birth of stars out of the super compressed matter of black holes. This was revealed as the cosmic dance between gravity and the fusion explosion of matter to energy.
All mass has the potential of becoming pure energy again when "critical mass" is reached through gravitational compression. A black hole is a gravitational vacuum in space drawing in the raw material and then exploding into a new star. Ultimately, if / when all matter collapses back into the original black hole ( all matter before the "bang"}, this is the raw material for the next expansion cycle of the whole cosmos. "My vision" was that our cosmos is not a one time deal, nor is one individual life. And this explains "where it all came from before the big bang"...i.e., from the last implosion cycle. So the "something out of nothing" paradox is solved.
This is enough for now. Maybe too much for some, but it is what this individual expression of the One has to " tell the world" about time and space and the infinite Consciousness "THAT I AM" , that we all are One Being manifesting as each individual.
OM... Amen.
mikIel
Monday, November 12, 2012
Dream: Loosing a tooth
Last night, I had the classic dream of losing a tooth. In this dream, I scratched a back molar with my finger nail and a chunk of it flaked off. Then, I fiddled with it some more and it cracked and then, I pulled it out. The tooth in my hand was about six inches long. The roots on the tooth looked like legs and it was a perfect ivory sculpture of an elephant, although cracked and chipped. On the broken ends of the roots, I could see nerves hanging out of only two ends which made me think that half of the tooth was dead but that it was not totally dead when I pulled it.
Interpretation? My take based on classical dream symbols... teeth falling out could be either insecurity or new beginnings. But since this is not a baby tooth and was damaged, I think insecurity perhaps is more fitting. Elephants typically represent success in one's career. But, since this elephant was damaged and came from my lost tooth, I am thinking that the dream may mean that I am overwhelmed with my career. What was once my wonderful career success, my beautiful elephant, is starting to crumble. I pulled the damaged tooth myself which means perhaps it is coming close to time for me to move on to a new way of making a living.
Interpretation? My take based on classical dream symbols... teeth falling out could be either insecurity or new beginnings. But since this is not a baby tooth and was damaged, I think insecurity perhaps is more fitting. Elephants typically represent success in one's career. But, since this elephant was damaged and came from my lost tooth, I am thinking that the dream may mean that I am overwhelmed with my career. What was once my wonderful career success, my beautiful elephant, is starting to crumble. I pulled the damaged tooth myself which means perhaps it is coming close to time for me to move on to a new way of making a living.
Friday, November 9, 2012
Meeting Timothy Leary
I have always been very interested in religion. I read the Christian Bible from cover to cover when I was about ten years old. then, in middle school, I decided to read the Koran... Anything that millions of people believe is worth reading whether or not you believe it. And then in high school, I started reading about other religions. I read everything that I could get my hands on, from the Tao Te Ching to Hinduism to Buddhism. When I was a senior n high school, I started reading about shamanism. And with shamanism came an interest, purely academic at the time, in altered states of consciousness. just after graduating from high school, many of my friends began experimenting with LSD. Being the geek that I Am, I didn't want To try it until I had a chance to study it. So for a couple of months, I was the baby sitter, shofarring my friends around while they tripped and I didn't. My research, mostly reading, surfaced many mixed messages on psychedelics. Most of the propaganda against it seemed sensationalized and lacking scientific merit, I read some books by Dr. Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, who is now called Baba Ram Das. But, these were academic books from the library, not the hippy dippy crap that they are more famous for. I very confused about the safety of the substance. That summer, the summer of 1992, I was fortunate enough to meet Timothy Leary. We were both staying at the Atlanta Hilton Towers. He was supposed to there to do a virtual reality simulato of some sort. The first day that we met, he seemed to be very intelligent. And, he had an air about him, a certain charisma that was appealing even those who hate what he represents. I thought to myself that this man has done more LSD than just about any person alive and he still has his shit together. He is still smart ans his brain is not fried. Meeting him gave me the confidence to take the leap and do acid for the first time. I can't help but wonder just how many lives have changed by coming into contact win Mr. Leary. I will admit, I was an impressionable kid at the time. Looking back, I don't think he was as cool as I had thought at the time. The reason that I say this is that on day number two, I bumped into Tim a couple of times. At one point, he tried to read poetry but was too fucked o to read it properly. Another time, my friends and I got our picture taken with him and a woman who I think was his daughter. Tim's arm was around my shoulder in the picture. Then, we all got on an elevator together. A couple of floors up, two young teenage girls got on the elevator. They were tripping but had absolutely no idea who Timothy Leary was. As the elevator rose, the girls looked a little scared by the movement. And, Tim said to the girls, "what would happen if the cables holding this elevator would snap right now?". He delighted in freaking them out. Looking back on this, I am very disappointed in Tim. I am amazed that he would fuck with them at a vulnerable moment like that. At the time, I was young and naive. I thought it was funny. But now, after many years of acid experiments, I simply find it hard to believe that Tm would have sunk so low as to play this sort of mind game with these girls on acid. I now have mixed thoughts about Mr. Leary. In some ways, he was a marvelous doctor and neuro naut. He broke new ground and was responsible for much of the mind expansion taking place in the sixties and seventies. But he also sensationalized LSD and I wonder if he is In part responsible for anti drug paranoia and the harsh drug laws that exist to this day.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Acting Out Our Dreams
The other day, I was pondering if acting our my dreams might prove insightful. I'm not talking about acting out my desires, but rather to try to allow the night's dreams to give direction to the following day. So, today will be my first trial run.
Dream #1:
This dream was vague. All I can recall is that I was wearing a T-shirt that had a picture of Bill Cosby.
Actions Per Dream #1:
I don't own a Bill Cosby T-Shirt, but I do have a Fat Albert shirt. It has pictures of Fat Albert, Mush Mouth, and Rudy. Since Bill Cosby created Fat Albert and did the voices, I am now wearing my Fat Albert T-Shirt.
Dream #2:
I was at C. Anna G's House with a large group of people including my wife. C. Anna G is somewhat of a Shaman who lives near Athens Georgia. She is a spiritual leader in her community, hosts moon lodges, and has spiritual workshops for those seeking for a peak into the spiritual realm. At C. Anna G's house, about 20 people had gathered for a role playing game. Masks and dice were passed out. About this time, I heard that it was C. Anna G's birthday. My wife came in and placed my checkbook on the table and said that she'd loaned some money to one of the other guests so that he could give C. Anna G. a present. I asked if she'd recorded it in the checkbook log. She said no. I handed her the book and told her to write it down. She wrote in it and placed the checkbook back on the table. I looked at it and found that she'd written the guy's name and not the amount. I asked how much and she told me $100. I was furious as the guy she'd "loaned" the money to was a young hippy kid with bleach blond hair who obviously couldn't repay it. And, we lived 2 states away so the chances were nil that I'd ever see my money back. I went over to the kid and whispered to him that he could pay me the $100 later this week or just give me $80 in marijuana as it'd been so many years since I'd gotten high. Hi nodded knowingly and I expected him to pay me in this way. Then, another member of the party asked me to come outside with him. We walked over the hill and found the field behind the house to be filled with creators/pits. I jumped down into one of the big ones (about 10 feet across and six feet deep). In it was a rustic chair carved out of a single piece of oak. It sat next to a simple desk on which were displayed many intriguing items carved out of bone or ivory. First, I saw the masks carved out of bone. The man with me pointed out the growth plate lines and said that he thought the masks might be carved out of real human skulls that the kid had dug up (aha! That's what the pits are from). The other items were mostly old buildings and houses carved out of bone. At least one item we were pretty sure was carved out of turtle bones. I commented that the items were absolutely beautiful but that they could never be legally sold being that they were carved out of ivory and bones. But, I wanted one and was hoping that the hippy boy artist could repay me by giving me a piece of art or at least counting the $100 toward my purchasing one for more money.
Actions Per Dream #2:
I live too far to visit C. Anna G. but may e-mail her about the dream. I don't have friends who role play, so that is out. I think that I'll go to a flea market or antique mall to seek out something made of ivory or bone. And, I'll try not to second guess people that I see no matter how simple they appear.
Interpretations:
I'm not at all sure what to think of this dream. I think that it may have something to do with my stinginess with money. Perhaps I should not have been angry with my wife for giving money to this young man and for guessing too quickly that he'd be unable to repay me. But, I also have to wonder about the "treasures" that he made some of which were made out of other people's bones. And, what's with the masks? Are we all hiding who we really are? To me, C. Anna G. represents seeing beyond the mundane physical world and delving into the mysterious subconscious spiritual world which is the foundation for our waking world. So, maybe I should try to look beyond everyone's "ego" mask and find the true persons within. That even the most naive carefree person could present treasures.... but why are those treasures still dependent on the bones of others before him? I'll have to ponder this dream a while. Maybe today's search will shed some light on things?
Dream #1:
This dream was vague. All I can recall is that I was wearing a T-shirt that had a picture of Bill Cosby.
Actions Per Dream #1:
I don't own a Bill Cosby T-Shirt, but I do have a Fat Albert shirt. It has pictures of Fat Albert, Mush Mouth, and Rudy. Since Bill Cosby created Fat Albert and did the voices, I am now wearing my Fat Albert T-Shirt.
Dream #2:
I was at C. Anna G's House with a large group of people including my wife. C. Anna G is somewhat of a Shaman who lives near Athens Georgia. She is a spiritual leader in her community, hosts moon lodges, and has spiritual workshops for those seeking for a peak into the spiritual realm. At C. Anna G's house, about 20 people had gathered for a role playing game. Masks and dice were passed out. About this time, I heard that it was C. Anna G's birthday. My wife came in and placed my checkbook on the table and said that she'd loaned some money to one of the other guests so that he could give C. Anna G. a present. I asked if she'd recorded it in the checkbook log. She said no. I handed her the book and told her to write it down. She wrote in it and placed the checkbook back on the table. I looked at it and found that she'd written the guy's name and not the amount. I asked how much and she told me $100. I was furious as the guy she'd "loaned" the money to was a young hippy kid with bleach blond hair who obviously couldn't repay it. And, we lived 2 states away so the chances were nil that I'd ever see my money back. I went over to the kid and whispered to him that he could pay me the $100 later this week or just give me $80 in marijuana as it'd been so many years since I'd gotten high. Hi nodded knowingly and I expected him to pay me in this way. Then, another member of the party asked me to come outside with him. We walked over the hill and found the field behind the house to be filled with creators/pits. I jumped down into one of the big ones (about 10 feet across and six feet deep). In it was a rustic chair carved out of a single piece of oak. It sat next to a simple desk on which were displayed many intriguing items carved out of bone or ivory. First, I saw the masks carved out of bone. The man with me pointed out the growth plate lines and said that he thought the masks might be carved out of real human skulls that the kid had dug up (aha! That's what the pits are from). The other items were mostly old buildings and houses carved out of bone. At least one item we were pretty sure was carved out of turtle bones. I commented that the items were absolutely beautiful but that they could never be legally sold being that they were carved out of ivory and bones. But, I wanted one and was hoping that the hippy boy artist could repay me by giving me a piece of art or at least counting the $100 toward my purchasing one for more money.
Actions Per Dream #2:
I live too far to visit C. Anna G. but may e-mail her about the dream. I don't have friends who role play, so that is out. I think that I'll go to a flea market or antique mall to seek out something made of ivory or bone. And, I'll try not to second guess people that I see no matter how simple they appear.
Interpretations:
I'm not at all sure what to think of this dream. I think that it may have something to do with my stinginess with money. Perhaps I should not have been angry with my wife for giving money to this young man and for guessing too quickly that he'd be unable to repay me. But, I also have to wonder about the "treasures" that he made some of which were made out of other people's bones. And, what's with the masks? Are we all hiding who we really are? To me, C. Anna G. represents seeing beyond the mundane physical world and delving into the mysterious subconscious spiritual world which is the foundation for our waking world. So, maybe I should try to look beyond everyone's "ego" mask and find the true persons within. That even the most naive carefree person could present treasures.... but why are those treasures still dependent on the bones of others before him? I'll have to ponder this dream a while. Maybe today's search will shed some light on things?
Friday, January 21, 2011
Friday, October 1, 2010
Reprint of As A Man Thinketh by James Allen
The following was written in 1902 and the copyright has expired. This is well before "The Secret".
As A Man Thinketh
by James Allen
Foreword
This little volume (the result of meditation and experience) is not intended as an exhaustive treatise on the much-written upon subject of the power of thought. It is suggestive rather than explanatory, its object being to stimulate men and women to the discovery and perception of the truth that -
"They themselves are makers of themselves"by virtue of the thoughts which they choose and encourage; that mind is the master weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance, and that, as they may have hitherto woven in ignorance and pain they may now weave in enlightenment and happiness.
James Allen
Chapter One
Thought and Character
The aphorism, "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he," not only embraces the whole of a man's being, but is so comprehensive as to reach out to every condition and circumstance of his life. A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.
As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them. This applies equally to those acts called "spontaneous" and "unpremeditated" as to those which are deliberately executed.
Act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruits; thus does a man garner in the sweet and bitter fruitage of his own husbandry.
Thought in the mind hath made us. What we are
By thought we wrought and built. If a man's mind
Hath evil thoughts, pain comes on him as comes
The wheel the ox behind . . . If one endure in purity
of thought joy follows him as his own shadow - sure.
Man is a growth by law, and not a creation by artifice, and cause and effect is as absolute and undeviating in the hidden realm of thought as in the world of visible and material things. A noble and Godlike character is not a thing of favor or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of long-cherished association with Godlike thoughts. An ignoble and bestial character, by the same process, is the result of the continued harboring of groveling thoughts.
Man is made or unmade by himself; in the armory of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself. He also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace. By the right choice and true application of thought, man ascends to the Divine Perfection; by the abuse and wrong application of thought, he descends below the level of the beast. Between these two extremes are all the grades of character, and man is their maker and master.
Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul which have been restored and brought to light in this age, none is more gladdening or fruitful of divine promise and confidence than this - that man is the master of thought, the molder of character, and maker and shaper of condition, environment, and destiny.
As a being of Power, Intelligence, and Love, and the lord of his own thoughts, man holds the key to every situation, and contains within himself that transforming and regenerative agency by which he may make himself what he wills.
Man is always the master, even in his weakest and most abandoned state; but in his weakness and degradation he is the foolish master who misgoverns his "household." When he begins to reflect upon his condition, and to search diligently for the Law upon which his being is established, he then becomes the wise master, directing his energies with intelligence, and fashioning his thoughts to fruitful issues. Such is the conscious master, and man can only thus become by discovering within himself the laws of thought; which discovery is totally a matter of application, self-analysis, and experience.
Only by much searching and mining are gold an diamonds obtained, and man can find every truth connected with his being if he will dig deep into the mine of his soul. And that he is the maker of his character, the molder of his life, and the builder of his destiny, he may unerringly prove: if he will watch, control, and alter his thoughts, tracing their effects upon himself, upon others, and upon his life and circumstances; if he will link cause and effect by patient practice and investigation, utilizing his every experience, even to the most trivial, as a means of obtaining that knowledge of himself. In this direction, as in no other, is the law absolute that "He that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened"; for only by patience, practice, and ceaseless importunity can a man enter the Door of the Temple of Knowledge.
Chapter Two
Effect of Thought on Circumstances
A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.
Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts, By pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master gardener of his soul, the director of his life. He also reveals, within himself, the laws of thought, and understands with ever-increasing accuracy, how the thought forces and mind elements operate in the shaping of his character, circumstances, and destiny.
Thought and character are one, and as character can only manifest and discover itself through environment and circumstance, the outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state. This does not mean that a man's circumstances at any given time are an indication of his entire character, but that those circumstances are so intimately connected with some vital thought element within himself that, for the time being, they are indispensable to his development.
Every man is where he is by the law of his being. The thoughts which he has built into his character have brought him there, and in the arrangement of his life there is no element of chance, but all is the result of a law which cannot err. This is just as true of those who feel "out of harmony" with their surroundings as of those who are contented with them.
As the progressive and evolving being, man is where he is that he may learn that he may grow; and as he learns the spiritual lesson which any circumstance contains for him, it passes away and gives place to other circumstances.
Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions. But when he realizes that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself.
That circumstances grow out of thought every man knows who has for any length of time practiced self-control and self-purification, for he will have noticed that the alteration in his circumstances has been in exact ratio with his altered mental condition. So true is this that when a man earnestly applies himself to remedy the defects in his character, and makes swift and marked progress, he passes rapidly through a succession of vicissitudes.
The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors; that which it loves, and also that which it fears. It reaches the height of its cherished aspirations. It falls to the level of its unchastened desires - and circumstances are the means by which the soul receives its own.
Every thought seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind, and to take root there, produces its own, blossoming sooner or later into act, and bearing its own fruitage of opportunity and circumstance. Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bad fruit.
The outer world of circumstance shapes itself to the inner world of thought, and both pleasant and unpleasant external conditions are factors which make for the ultimate good of the individual. As the reaper of his own harvest, man learns both by suffering and bliss.
A man does not come to the almshouse or the jail by the tyranny of fate of circumstance, but by the pathway of groveling thoughts and base desires. Nor does a pure-minded man fall suddenly into crime by stress of any mere external force; the criminal thought had long been secretly fostered in the heart, and the hour of opportunity revealed its gathered power.
Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself. No such conditions can exist as descending into vice and its attendant sufferings apart from vicious inclinations, or ascending into virtue and its pure happiness without the continued cultivation of virtuous aspirations. And man, therefore, as the Lord and master of thought, is the maker of himself, the shaper and author of environment. Even at birth the soul comes to its own, and through every step of its earthly pilgrimage it attracts those combinations of conditions which reveal itself, which are the reflections of its own purity and impurity, its strength and weakness.
Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are. Their whims, fancies, and ambitions are thwarted at every step, but their inmost thoughts and desires are fed with their own food, be it foul or clean. The "divinity that shapes our ends" is in ourselves; it is our very self. Man is manacled only by himself. Thought and action are the jailers of Fate - they imprison, being base. They are also the angels of Freedom - they liberate, being noble. Not what he wishes and prays for does a man get, but what he justly earns. His wishes and prayers are only gratified and answered when they harmonize with his thoughts and actions.
In the light of this truth, what, then, is the meaning of "fighting against circumstances"? It means that a man is continually revolting against an effect without, while all the time he is nourishing and preserving its cause in his heart. That cause may take the form of a conscious vice or an unconscious weakness; but whatever it is, it stubbornly retards the efforts of its possessor, and thus calls aloud for remedy.
Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves. They therefore remain bound. The man who does not shrink from self-crucifixion can never fail to accomplish the object upon which his heart is set. This is as true of earthly as of heavenly things. Even the man whose sole object is to acquire wealth must be prepared to make great personal sacrifices before he can accomplish his object; and how much more so he who would realize a strong and well-poised life?
Here is a man who is wretchedly poor. He is extremely anxious that his surroundings and home comforts should be improved. Yet all the time he shirks his work, and considers he is justified in trying to deceive his employer on the ground of the insufficiency of his wages. Such a man does not understand the simplest rudiments of those principles which are the basis of true prosperity. He is not only totally unfitted to rise out of his wretchedness, but is actually attracting to himself a still deeper wretchedness by dwelling in, and acting out, indolent, deceptive, and unmanly thoughts.
Here is a rich man who is the victim of a painful and persistent disease as the result of gluttony. He is willing to give large sums of money to get rid of it, but he will not sacrifice his gluttonous desires. He wants to gratify his taste for rich and unnatural foods and have his health as well. Such a man is totally unfit to have health, because he has not yet learned the first principles of a healthy life.
Here is an employer of labor who adopts crooked measures to avoid paying the regulation wage, and, in the hope of making larger profits, reduces the wages of his workpeople. Such a man is altogether unfitted for prosperity. And when he finds himself bankrupt, both as regards reputation and riches, he blames circumstances, not knowing that he is the sole author of his condition.
I have introduced these three cases merely as illustrative of the truth that man is the cause (though nearly always unconsciously) of his circumstances. That, while aiming at the good end, he is continually frustrating its accomplishment by encouraging thoughts and desires which cannot possibly harmonize with that end. Such cases could be multiplied and varied almost indefinitely, but this is not necessary. The reader can, if he so resolves, trace the action of the laws of thought in his own mind and life, and until this is done, mere external facts cannot serve as a ground of reasoning.
Circumstances, however, are so complicated, thought is so deeply rooted, and the conditions of happiness vary so vastly with individuals, that a man's entire soul condition (although it may be known to himself) cannot be judged by another from the external aspect of his life alone.
A man may be honest in certain directions, yet suffer privations. A man may be dishonest in certain directions, yet acquire wealth. But the conclusion usually formed that the one man fails because of his particular honesty, and that the other prospers because of his particular dishonesty, is the result of a superficial judgment, which assumes that the dishonest man is almost totally corrupt, and honest man almost entirely virtuous. In the light of a deeper knowledge and wider experience, such judgment is found to be erroneous. The dishonest man may have some admirable virtues which the other does not possess; and the honest man obnoxious vices which are absent in the other. The honest man reaps the good results of his honest thoughts and acts; he also brings upon himself the sufferings which his vices produce. The dishonest man likewise garners his own suffering and happiness.
It is pleasing to human vanity to believe that one suffers because of one's virtue. But not until a man has extirpated every sickly, bitter, and impure thought from his mind, and washed every sinful stain from his soul, can he be in a position to know and declare that his sufferings are the result of his good, and not of his bad qualities. And on the way to that supreme perfection, he will have found working in his mind and life, the Great Law which is absolutely just, and which cannot give good for evil, evil for good. Possessed of such knowledge, he will then know, looking back upon his past ignorance and blindness, that his life is, and always was, justly ordered, and that all his past experiences, good and bad, were the equitable outworking of his evolving, yet unevolved self.
Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results. Bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results. This is but saying that nothing can come from corn but corn, nothing from nettles but nettles. Men understand this law in the natural world, and work with it. But few understand it in the mental and moral world (though its operation there is just as simple and undeviating), and they, therefore, do not cooperate with it.
Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought in some direction. It is an indication that the individual is out of harmony with himself, with the Law of his being. The sole and supreme use of suffering is to purify, to burn out all that is useless and impure. Suffering ceases for him who is pure. There could be not object in burning gold after the dross had been removed, and perfectly pure and enlightened being could not suffer.
The circumstances which a man encounters with suffering are the result of his own mental inharmony. The circumstances which a man encounters with blessedness, not material possessions, is the measure of right thought. Wretchedness, not lack of material possessions, is the measure of wrong thought. A man may be cursed and rich; he may be blessed and poor. blessedness and riches are only joined together when the riches are rightly and wisely used. And the poor man only descends into wretchedness when he regards his lot as a burden unjustly imposed.
Indigence and indulgence are the two extremes of wretchedness. They are both equally unnatural and the result of mental disorder. A man is not rightly conditioned until he is a happy, healthy, and prosperous being. And happiness, health, and prosperity are the result of a harmonious adjustment of the inner with the outer, of the man with his surroundings.
A man only begins to be a man when he ceases to whine and revile, and commences to search for the hidden justice which regulates his life. And as he adapts his mind to that regulating factor, he ceases to accuse others as the cause of his condition, and builds himself up in strong and noble thoughts. He ceases to kick against circumstances, but begins to use them as aids to his more rapid progress, and as a means of discovering the hidden powers and possibilities within himself.
Law, not confusion, is the dominating principle in the universe. Justice, not injustice, is the soul and substance of life. And righteousness, not corruption, is the molding and moving force in the spiritual government of the world. This being so, man has but to right himself to find that the universe is right; and during the process of putting himself right, he will find that as he alters his thoughts toward things and other people, things and other people will alter toward him.
The proof of this truth is in every person, and it therefore admits of easy investigation by systematic introspection and self-analysis. Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life.
men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot. It rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into habits of drunkenness and sensuality, which solidify into circumstances of destitution and disease. Impure thoughts of every kind crystallize into enervating and confusing habits, which solidify into distracting and adverse circumstances. Thoughts of fear, doubt, and indecision crystallize into weak, unmanly, and irresolute habits, which solidify into circumstances of failure, indigence, and slavish dependence.
Lazy thoughts crystallize into habits of uncleanliness and dishonesty, which solidify into circumstances of foulness and beggary. Hateful and condemnatory thoughts crystallize into habits of accusation and violence, which solidify into circumstances of injury and persecution. Selfish thoughts of all kinds crystallize into habits of self-seeking, which solidify into circumstances more of less distressing.
On the other hand, beautiful thoughts of all crystallize into habits of grace and kindliness, which solidify into genial and sunny circumstances. Pure thoughts crystallize into habits of temperance and self-control, which solidify into circumstances of repose and peace. Thoughts of courage, self-reliance, and decision crystallize into manly habits, which solidify into circumstances of success, plenty, and freedom.
Energetic thoughts crystallize into habits of cleanliness and industry, which solidify into circumstances of pleasantness. Gentle and forgiving thoughts crystallize into habits of gentleness, which solidify into protective and preservative circumstances. Loving and unselfish thoughts crystallize into habits of self-forgetfulness for others, which solidify into circumstances of sure and abiding prosperity and true riches.
A particular train of thought persisted in, be it good or bad, cannot fail to produce its results on the character and circumstances. A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances.
Nature helps every man to the gratification of the thoughts which he most encourages, and opportunities are presented which will most speedily bring to the surface both the good and evil thoughts.
Let a man cease from his sinful thoughts, and all the world will soften toward him, and be ready to help him. Let him put away his weakly and sickly thoughts, and lo! opportunities will spring up on every hand to aid his strong resolves. Let him encourage good thoughts, and no hard fate shall bind him down to wretchedness and shame. The world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations of colors which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the exquisitely adjusted pictures of your evermoving thoughts.
You will be what you will to be;
Let failure find its false content
In that poor word, "environment,"
But spirit scorns it, and is free.
It masters time, it conquers space;
It cows that boastful trickster, Chance,
And bids the tyrant Circumstance
Uncrown, and fill a servant's place.
The human Will, that force unseen,
The offspring of a deathless Soul,
Can hew a way to any goal,
Though walls of granite intervene.
Be not impatient in delay,
But wait as one who understands;
When spirit rises and commands,
The gods are ready to obey.
Chapter Three
Effect of Thought on Health and the Body
The body is the servant of the mind. It obeys the operations of the mind, whether they be deliberately chosen or automatically expressed. At the bidding of unlawful thoughts the body sinks rapidly into disease and decay; at the command of glad and beautiful thoughts it becomes clothed with youthfulness and beauty.
Disease and health, like circumstances, are rooted in thought. Sickly thoughts will express themselves through a sickly body. Thoughts of fear have been known to kill a man as speedily as a bullet, and they are continually killing thousands of people just as surely though less rapidly. The people who live in fear of disease are the people who get it. Anxiety quickly demoralizes the whole body, and lays it open to the entrance of disease; while impure thoughts, even if not physically indulged, will soon shatter the nervous system.
Strong, pure, and happy thoughts build up the body in vigor and grace. The body is a delicate and plastic instrument, which responds readily to the thoughts by which it is impressed, and habits of thought will produce their own effects, good or bad, upon it.
Men will continue to have impure and poisoned blood so long as they propagate unclean thoughts. Out of a clean heart comes a clean life and a clean body. Out of a defiled mind proceeds a defiled life and corrupt body. Thought is the fountain of action, life and manifestation; make the fountain pure, and all will be pure.
Change of diet will not help a man who will not change his thoughts. When a man makes his thoughts pure, he no longer desires impure food.
If you would perfect your body, guard your mind. If you would renew your body, beautify your mind. Thoughts of malice, envy, disappointment, despondency, rob the body of its health and grace. A sour face does not come by chance; it is made by sour thoughts. Wrinkles that mar are drawn by folly, passion, pride.
I know a woman of ninety-six who has the bright, innocent face of a girl. I know a man well under middle age whose face is drawn into inharmonious contours. The one is the result of a sweet and sunny disposition; the other is the outcome of passion and discontent.
As you cannot have a sweet and wholesome abode unless you admit the air and sunshine freely into your rooms, so a strong body and a bright, happy, or serene countenance can only result from the free admittance into the mind of thoughts of joy and good will and serenity.
On the faces of the aged there are wrinkles made by sympathy, others by strong and pure thought, others are carved by passion. Who cannot distinguish them? With those who have lived righteously, age is calm, peaceful, and softly mellowed, like the setting sun. I have recently seen a philosopher on his deathbed. He was not old except in years. He died as sweetly and peacefully as he had lived.
There is no physician like cheerful thought for dissipating the ills of the body; there is no comforter to compare with good will for dispersing the shadows of grief and sorrow. To live continually in thoughts of ill will, cynicism, suspicion, and envy, is to be confined in a self-made prison hole. But to think well of all, to be cheerful with all, to patiently learn to find the good in all - such unselfish thoughts are the very portals of heaven; and to dwell day to day in thoughts of peace toward every creature will bring abounding peace to their possessor.
Chapter Four
Thought and Purpose
Until thought is linked with purpose there is no intelligent accomplishment. With the majority the bark of thought is allowed to "drift" upon the ocean of life. Aimlessness is a vice, and such drifting must not continue for him who would steer clear of catastrophe and destruction.
They who have no central purpose in their life fall an easy prey to worries, fears, troubles, and self-pityings, all of which are indications of weakness, which lead, just as surely as deliberately planned sins (though by a different route), to failure, unhappiness, and loss, for weakness cannot persist in a power-evolving universe.
A man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being. But whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought forces upon the object which he has set before him. He should make this purpose his supreme duty, and should devote himself to its attainment, not allowing his thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings, and imaginings. This is the royal road to self-control and true concentration of thought. Even if he fails again and again to accomplish his purpose (as he necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the strength of character gained will be the measure of his true success, and this will form a new starting point for future power and triumph.
Those who are not prepared for the apprehension of a great purpose, should fix the thoughts upon the faultless performance of their duty, no matter how insignificant their task may appear. Only in this way can the thoughts be gathered and focused, and resolution and energy be developed, which being done, there is nothing which may not be accomplished.
The weakest soul, knowing its own weakness, and believing this truth - that strength can only be developed by effort and practice, will at once begin to exert itself, and adding effort to effort, patience to patience, and strength to strength, will never cease to develop, and will at last grow divinely strong.
As the physically weak man can make himself strong by careful and patient training, so the man of weak thoughts can make them strong by exercising himself in right thinking.
To put away aimlessness and weakness, and to begin to think with purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment; who make all conditions serve them, and who think strongly, attempt fearlessly, and accomplish masterfully.
Having conceived of his purpose, a man should mentally mark out a straight pathway to its achievement, looking neither to the right nor to the left. Doubts and fears should be rigorously excluded; they are disintegrating elements which break up the straight line of effort, rendering it crooked, ineffectual, useless. Thoughts of doubt and fear never accomplish anything, and never can. They always lead to failure. Purpose, energy, power to do, and all strong thoughts cease when doubt and fear creep in.
The will to do springs from the knowledge that we can do. Doubt and fear are the great enemies of knowledge, and he who encourages them, who does not slay them, thwarts himself at every step.
He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure. His every thought is allied with power, and all difficulties are bravely met and wisely overcome. His purposes are seasonably planted, and they bloom and bring forth fruit which does not fall prematurely to the ground.
Thought allied fearlessly to purpose becomes creative force. He who knows this is ready to become something higher and stronger than a mere bundle of wavering thoughts and fluctuating sensations. He who does this has become the conscious and intelligent wielder of his mental powers.
Chapter Five
The Thought-Factor in Achievement
All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts. In a justly ordered universe, where loss of equipoise would mean total destruction, individual responsibility must be absolute. A man's weakness and strength, purity and impurity, are his own, and not another man's. They are brought about by himself, and not by another; and they can only be altered by himself, never by another. His condition is also his own, and not another man's. His suffering and his happiness are evolved from within. As he thinks, so he is; as he continues to think, so he remains.
A strong man cannot help a weaker unless the weaker is willing to be helped, and even then the weak man must become strong of himself. He must, by his own efforts, develop the strength which he admires in another. None but himself can alter his condition.
It has been usual for men to think and to say, "Many men are slaves because one is an oppressor; let us hate the oppressor." Now, however, there is among an increasing few a tendency to reverse this judgment, and to say, "One man is an oppressor because many are slaves; let us despise the slaves." The truth is that oppressor and slave are cooperators in ignorance, and, while seeming to afflict each other, are in reality afflicting themselves. A perfect Knowledge perceives the action of law in the weakness of the oppressed and the misapplied power of the oppressor. A perfect Love, seeing the suffering which both states entail, condemns neither. A perfect Compassion embraces both oppressor and oppressed.
He who has conquered weakness, and has put away all selfish thoughts, belongs neither to oppressor nor oppressed. He is free.
A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain weak, and abject, and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts.
Before a man can achieve anything, even in worldly things, he must lift his thoughts above slavish animal indulgence. He may not, in order to succeed, give up all animality and selfishness, by any means; but a portion of it must, at least, be sacrificed. A man whose first thought is bestial indulgence could neither think clearly nor plan methodically. He could not find and develop his latent resources, and would fail in any undertaking. Not having commenced manfully to control his thoughts, he is not in a position to control affairs and to adopt serious responsibilities. He is not fit to act independently and stand alone, but he is limited only by the thoughts which he chooses.
There can be no progress, no achievement without sacrifice. A man's worldly success will be in the measure that he sacrifices his confused animal thoughts, and fixes his mind on the development of his plans, and the strengthening of his resolution and self reliance. And the higher he lifts his thoughts, the more manly, upright, and righteous he becomes, the greater will be his success, the more blessed an enduring will be his achievements.
The universe does not favor the greedy, the dishonest, the vicious, although on the mere surface it may sometimes appear to do so; it helps the honest, the magnanimous, the virtuous. All the great Teachers of the ages have declared this in varying forms, and to prove and know it a man has but to persist in making himself more and more virtuous by lifting up his thoughts.
Intellectual achievements are the result of thought consecrated to the search for knowledge, or for the beautiful and true in life and nature. Such achievements may be sometimes connected with vanity and ambition but they are not the outcome of those characteristics. They are the natural outgrowth of long an arduous effort, and of pure and unselfish thoughts.
Spiritual achievements are the consummation of holy aspirations. He who lives constantly in the conception of noble and lofty thoughts, who dwells upon all that is pure and unselfish, will, as surely as the sun reaches its zenith and the moon its full, become wise and noble in character, and rise into a position of influence and blessedness.
Achievement, of whatever kind, is the crown of effort, the diadem of thought. By the aid of self-control, resolution, purity, righteousness, and well-directed thought a man ascends. By the aid of animality, indolence, impurity, corruption, and confusion of thought a man descends.
A man may rise to high success in the world, and even to lofty altitudes in the spiritual realm, and again descend into weakness and wretchedness by allowing arrogant, selfish, and corrupt thoughts to take possession of him.
Victories attained by right thought can only be maintained by watchfulness. Many give way when success is assured, and rapidly fall back into failure.
All achievements, whether in the business, intellectual, or spiritual world, are the result of definitely directed thought, are governed by the same law and are of the same method; the only difference lies in the object of attainment.
He who would accomplish little must sacrifice little. He who would achieve much must sacrifice much. He who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly.
Chapter Six
Visions and Ideals
The dreamers are the saviors of the world. As the visible world is sustained by the invisible, so men, through all their trials and sins and sordid vocations, are nourished by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers. Humanity cannot forget its dreamers. It cannot let their ideals fade and die. It lives in them. It knows them in the realities which it shall one day see and know.
Composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage, these are the makers of the afterworld, the architects of heaven. The world is beautiful because they have lived; without them, laboring humanity would perish.
He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it. Columbus cherished a vision of another world, and he discovered it. Copernicus fostered the vision of a multiplicity of worlds and a wider universe, and he revealed it. Buddha beheld the vision of a spiritual world of stainless beauty and perfect peace, and he entered into it.
Cherish your visions. Cherish your ideals. Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.
To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to achieve. Shall man's basest desires receive the fullest measure of gratification, and his purest aspirations starve for lack of sustenance? Such is not the Law. Such a condition of things can never obtain - "Ask and receive."
Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be. Your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.
The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.
Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel within and stand still without. Here is a youth hard pressed by poverty and labor; confined long hours in an unhealthy workshop; unschooled, and lacking all the arts of refinement. But he dreams of better things. He thinks of intelligence, of refinement, of grace and beauty. He conceives of, mentally builds up, an ideal condition of life. The vision of the wider liberty and a larger scope takes possession of him; unrest urges him to action, and he utilizes all his spare time and means, small though they are, to the development of his latent powers and resources.
Very soon so altered has his mind become that the workshop can no longer hold him. It has become so out of harmony with his mentality that it falls out of his life as a garment is cast aside, and with the growth of opportunities which fit the scope of his expanding powers, he passes out of it forever.
Years later we see this youth as a full-grown man. We find him a master of certain forces of the mind which he wields with world-wide influence and almost unequaled power. In his hands he holds the cords of gigantic responsibilities. He speaks, and lo! lives are changed. Men and women hang upon his words and remold their characters, and, sunlike, he becomes the fixed and luminous center around which innumerable destinies revolve. He has realized the Vision of his youth. He has become one with his Ideal.
And you, too, youthful reader, will realize the Vision (not the idle wish) of your heart, be it base or beautiful, or a mixture of both, for you will always gravitate toward that which you secretly most love. Into your hands will be placed the exact results of your own thoughts; you will receive that which you earn, no more, no less. Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain, or rise with your thoughts, your Vision, your Ideal. You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration.
In the beautiful words of Stanton Kirkham Dave, "You may be keeping accounts, and presently you shall walk out of the door that for so long has seemed to you the barrier of your ideals, and shall find yourself before an audience - the pen still behind your ear, the ink stains on your fingers - and then and there shall pour out the torrent of your inspiration. You may be driving sheep, and you shall wander to the city - bucolic and open mouthed; shall wander under the intrepid guidance of the spirit into the studio of the master, and after a time he shall say, 'I have nothing more to teach you.' And now you have become the master, who did so recently dream of great things while driving sheep. You shall lay down the saw and the plane to take upon yourself the regeneration of the world."
The thoughtless, the ignorant, and the indolent, seeing only the apparent effects of things and not the things themselves, talk of luck, of fortune, and chance. See a man grow rich, they say, "How lucky he is!" Observing another become intellectual, they exclaim, "How highly favored he is!" And noting the saintly character and wide influence of another, the remark, "How chance aids him at every turn!"
They do not see the trials and failures and struggles which these men have voluntarily encountered in order to gain their experience. They have no knowledge of the sacrifices they have made, of the undaunted efforts they have put forth, of the faith they have exercised, that they might overcome the apparently insurmountable, and realize the Vision of their heart. They do not know the darkness and the heartaches; they only see the light and joy, and call it "luck"; do not see the long and arduous journey, but only behold the pleasant goal, and call it "good fortune"; do not understand the process, but only perceive the result, and call it "chance."
In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result. Chance is not. "Gifts," powers, material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort. They are thoughts completed, objects accomplished, visions realized.
The vision that you glorify in your mind, the Ideal that you enthrone in your heart - this you will build your life by, this you will become.
Chapter Seven
Serenity
Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control. Its presence is an indication of ripened experience, and of a more than ordinary knowledge of the laws and operations of thought.
A man becomes calm in the measure that he understands himself as a thought-evolved being, for such knowledge necessitates the understanding of others as the result of thought. As he develops a right understanding, and sees more and more clearly the internal relations of things by the action of cause and effect, he ceases to fuss and fume and worry and grieve, and remains poised, steadfast, serene.
The calm man, having learned how to govern himself, knows how to adapt himself to others; and they, in turn, reverence his spiritual strength, and feel that they can learn of him and rely upon him. The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good. Even the ordinary trader will find his business prosperity increase as he develops a greater self-control and equanimity, for people will always prefer to deal with a man whose demeanor is strongly equable.
The strong calm man is always loved and revered. He is like a shade-giving tree in a thirsty land, or a sheltering rock in a storm. Who does not love a tranquil heart, a sweet-tempered, balanced life? It does not matter whether it rains or shines, or what changes come to those possessing these blessings, for they are always sweet, serene, and calm. That exquisite poise of character which we call serenity is the last lesson culture; it is the flowering of life, the fruitage of the soul. It is precious as wisdom, more to be desired than gold - yea, than even fine gold. How insignificant mere money-seeking looks in comparison with a serene life - a life that dwells in the ocean of Truth, beneath the waves, beyond the reach of tempests, in the Eternal Calm!
"How many people we know who sour their lives, who ruin all that is sweet and beautiful by explosive tempers, who destroy their poise of character, and make bad blood! It is a question whether the great majority of people do not ruin their lives and mar their happiness by lack of self-control. How few people we meet in life who are well-balanced, who have that exquisite poise which is characteristic of the finished character!"
Yes, humanity surges with uncontrolled passion, is tumultuous with ungoverned grief, is blown about by anxiety and doubt. Only the wise man, only he whose thoughts are controlled and purified, makes the winds and the storms of the soul obey him.
Tempest-tossed souls, wherever ye may be, under whatsoever conditions ye may live, know this - in the ocean of life the isles of Blessedness are smiling, and sunny shore of your ideal awaits your coming. Keep your hand firmly upon the helm of thought. In the bark of your soul reclines the commanding Master; He does but sleep; wake Him. Self-control is strength; Right Thought is mastery; Calmness is power.
Say unto your heart, "Peace, be still!"
The End
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Friday, May 7, 2010
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Dream - Tornado at Train Depot
Setting: Old buildings, Train Station, Restaurant
Props: Tornado, Train, storm shelter
Characters: Father-in-law, brother, wife, cisc. others
I was with a rather large group of people going out to dinner in an old cow-town-like building. The setting was much like a train museum I visited a couple of years ago in Western Kentucky. I'm not clear on if these were co-workers, family, friends, or a mixture. Out the back door of the restaurant was a train depot. It was some sort of special occasion and they were running an antique train with passenger cars to celebrate. My father-in-law and I were looking a storm shelter across the tracks. He had built it. I was jokingly telling him that the only level part was the roof that I helped build. Then we began looking at the sky. I commented on how fast the clouds were moving and in many different directions. I told him that that this was conducive to produce tornadoes. About that time, my brother called my cell phone. He told me that a Tornado was at their house and that the storm would be in my area in about an hour. We looked at the sky and saw debris flying around (tree limbs, leaves, kites). It was beginning to get dark and windy. The train pulled up and a few people in my party decided to go on a ride. We weren't sure where the train was going nor if it was a round trip but they decided to ride it anyway. I remained with my father-in-law. The two of us were scanning the skyline looking for tornadoes and suddenly a big one appeared and was heading right for us. The train returned and the passenger car containing my associates flipped over, off of the tracks. My wife came to the door of the main building and yelled for us to hurry and get inside. We were running up to the house and I realized I didn't have time to make it inside, so I dove into a corner on the porch, squatted down and covered my head. The wind was beating down on me.
Props: Tornado, Train, storm shelter
Characters: Father-in-law, brother, wife, cisc. others
I was with a rather large group of people going out to dinner in an old cow-town-like building. The setting was much like a train museum I visited a couple of years ago in Western Kentucky. I'm not clear on if these were co-workers, family, friends, or a mixture. Out the back door of the restaurant was a train depot. It was some sort of special occasion and they were running an antique train with passenger cars to celebrate. My father-in-law and I were looking a storm shelter across the tracks. He had built it. I was jokingly telling him that the only level part was the roof that I helped build. Then we began looking at the sky. I commented on how fast the clouds were moving and in many different directions. I told him that that this was conducive to produce tornadoes. About that time, my brother called my cell phone. He told me that a Tornado was at their house and that the storm would be in my area in about an hour. We looked at the sky and saw debris flying around (tree limbs, leaves, kites). It was beginning to get dark and windy. The train pulled up and a few people in my party decided to go on a ride. We weren't sure where the train was going nor if it was a round trip but they decided to ride it anyway. I remained with my father-in-law. The two of us were scanning the skyline looking for tornadoes and suddenly a big one appeared and was heading right for us. The train returned and the passenger car containing my associates flipped over, off of the tracks. My wife came to the door of the main building and yelled for us to hurry and get inside. We were running up to the house and I realized I didn't have time to make it inside, so I dove into a corner on the porch, squatted down and covered my head. The wind was beating down on me.
Note: I have always heard that tornado dreams were a sign of change coming into one's life. And it is the one symbol that seemed pretty consistent in my past dream journals. My wife is expecting another baby. I'm employed in a good job but looking for another job. It does seem that I am about to experience change. The fact that my brother had experienced the tornado before me is interesting. I wonder if he is about to encounter a huge life change as well. And, I found it interesting that my associates who hopped on the antiquated train wrecked. To me this means that they went the traditional route and as a result wound up in trouble.... that perhaps I shouldn't be riding the train to no-where (my current job?).
Friday, July 31, 2009
Metaprogramming & Zen
Today, I am reading "Zen Without Zen Masters" by Camdem Benares. I surprised to find one page that seemed to be pulled almost directly from the great late John Lilly's life work. Here is that page:
WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?
You are the creator of the reality that you experience. Every event that occurs around you takes on meaning when you put your attention on it. During your lifetime you have been exposed to a lot of conditioning, but you have selected what seemed valid to you and made it part of your programming. If reality is getting you down, examine the programming that is in the biocomputer you call your mind. That programming can be changed at any time because you are your own programmer.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
J. W. Dunne's "An Experiment with Time"
Check out: http://www.geocities.com/felixrayman/index.html
THE PUZZLE
Many people throughout history have claimed to have had prophetic dreams which have foretold of future events. Likewise, almost everybody has at one time or another experienced what is commonly referred to as da-ja-vu. If these phenomena were taken at face value, they would entail that our minds go beyond the generally accepted boundaries of space-time. Most of the time such events are considered either coincidence or the mind playing tricks on us. There is no proof that people can see into the future ---or is there? In J.W. Dunne's studies, he has uncovered a common thread in the content of almost everybody's dreams. This common thread may prove that our subconscious minds are in deed capable of seeing into the future. If we look at a dream's content with an open mind, there seems to be an equal number of events which correspond to the recent past as to the near future. The future events in question are generally statistically unlikely to have been guessed and often virtually impossible to have been logically predicted. It should be noted that upon making this discovery, J.W. Dunne did not believe in clairvoyance nor astral-wandering nor messages from the dead or dying. This was because J.W. Dunne was not compelled to take knowledge of the paranormal second-hand from some 'clairvoyant' or 'medium' ---with all the important points left out and a mass of misleading suggestion thrown in. For, the only reason that J.W. Dunne studied and came to believe these phenomena is they had happened, one and all, to himself.
J.W. Dunne assumed that if his dreams were often precognitive, then logically the average person must also have similar dreams. It may be asked how the average person may dream of future events and not even realize it, especially after the event in question actually occurs. The answer to this question is simple. First of all, the vast majority of dreams are forgotten the moment one wakes up. Second, when these congruencies are found, they are usually shrugged off as coincidence. And finally, people simply do not believe that they can see the future and therefore are unwilling to accept that such events have taken place. Accepting the prophetic nature of dreams, after all, would entail that popular science does not fully understand the workings of time in its relationship with mankind. An attempt to prove that this phenomena does indeed exist is the subject of the next chapter entitled, "The Experiment". There you will find that even the average person's dreaming mind is also capable of looking into the future.
The following are some examples of J.W. Dunne's own dreams that first led him to believe that there was something more to dreams than he would have liked to believe. After the dreams of J.W. Dunne are a few examples of personal dreams belonging to the author of this web-site, D. As odd as it may sound, D has found that J.W. Dunne's findings hold true in his own dreams as well.
The solution seemed perfectly obvious. The watch must have stopped during the previous afternoon. I must have noticed this, forgotten it, and remembered it in my dream. Satisfied on that point, I rewound the instrument, but, not knowing the real time, I left the hands as they were.
On coming downstairs next morning, I made straight for the nearest clock, with the object of setting the watch right. For if, as I supposed, it had stopped during the previous afternoon, and had merely been rewound at some unknown hour of the night, it was likely to be out by several hours (In other words, it was extremely unlikely that I should have dreamed of half-past four at precisely half-past four).
To my absolute amazement I found that the hands had lost only some two or three minutes ---about the amount of time which had elapsed between my waking from the dream and rewinding the watch.
This suggested, of course, that the watch had stopped at the actual moment of the dream (The probability of my having dreamed of half-past four at half-past four must be multiplied by the improbability of my having been bothered by a stopped watch on the previous afternoon without retaining the faintest recollection of such a fact). The latter was probably brought about by my missing the accustomed ticking. But ---how did I come to see, in that dream, that the hands stood, as they actually did, at half-past four?
* * * *
In January of 1901, I dreamed that I was at a place which I took to be Fashoda, a little way up the Nile from Khartoum. The dream was a perfectly ordinary one, and by no means vivid, except in one particular. this was the sudden appearance of three men coming from the South. They were marvelously ragged, dressed in khaki faded to the colour of sackcloth; and their faces under their dusty helmets were burned almost black. They looked in fact, exactly like soldiers of the column with which I had lately been trekking in South Africa, and such I took them to be. I was puzzled as to why they should have traveled all the way from that country to the Sudan, and I questioned them on that point. They assured me, however, that this was precisely what they had done. 'We have come right through from the Cape,' said one. Another added: 'I've had an awful time. I nearly died of yellow fever.'
The remainder of the dream was unimportant.
At that time we were receiving the Daily Telegraph regularly from England. On opening this paper at breakfast, the morning after the dream, my eye was caught by the following headlines:
A note in another part of the paper stated that the expedition was led by M. Lionel Decle. I heard or read subsequently that one of the three white men of the party had died en route; not, however, of yellow fever, but of enteric. Whether this was true, or whether there were three white leaders, I don't know.
One or two remarks may be made here.
I had heard, some years previously, that M. Lionel Decle was contemplating some such trans-continental journey; but I did not know that anything had come of the scheme. Certainly I had no idea that the expedition had started.
The expedition arrived at Khartoum the day before the news was published in London, and thus long before I had the dream, as that issue of the paper had to get from London to Alassio, and the dream did not occur till the night before its arrival. This put any 'astral-wandering' business completely out of the question.
There, one night, I had an unusually vivid and rather unpleasant dream . . . about an island which I recognized as an island of which I had dreamed before --an island which was in imminent peril from a volcano. And, when I saw the vapor spouting from the ground, I gasped: 'It's the island! God Lord, the whole thing is going to blow up!' . . . Forthwith I was seized with a frantic desire to save the four thousand (I knew the number) unsuspecting inhabitants. Obviously there was only one way of doing this, and that was to take them off in ships. There followed a most distressing nightmare, in which I was at a neighboring island, trying to get the incredulous French authorities to dispatch vessels of every and any description to remove the inhabitants of the threatened island. I was sent from one official to another; clinging to the heads of a team of horses drawing the carriage of one 'Mounsieur le Maire', who was going out to dine and wanted me to return when his office would be open next day. All through the dream the number of the people in danger obsesses my mind. I repeated it to everyone I met, and, at the moment of waking, I was shouting to the 'Maire', 'Listen! Four thousand people will be killed unless----'
I am not certain now when we received our next batch of papers, but, when they did come, the Daily Telegraph was amongst them, and, on opening the center sheet, this is what met my eyes:
In another column of the same paper was the following, the headlines being somewhat smaller:
There followed the report of the schooner Ocean Traveler, which had been obliged to leave St. Vincent owing to a fall of sand from the volcano there, and had subsequently been unable to reach St. Lucia owning to adverse currents opposite the ill-fated St. Pierre. The paragraph contained these words:
* * * *
. . . The more I thought of the two episodes the clearer it became that, in each case, the dream had been precisely the sort of thing I might have expected to have experienced after reading the printed report ---a perfectly ordinary dream based upon the personal experience of reading. How, then, could I be sure that those dreams had not been false memories engendered by the act of reading?
But there was the watch business to be taken into account. That, certainly could not be made to fit in with the new theory, unless I were a great deal madder than I could bring myself to believe.
I was, however, absolutely satisfied that neither in the Cape to Cairo nor in the Mont Pelee dream had there been any 'astral-wandering', or any direct vision across leagues of space, or any 'messages' from the actors in the actual episodes represented. These dreams had been induced, either by the reading of the paragraphs, or else by telepathic communications from the journalist in the Daily Telegraph office who had written those accounts.
* * * *
Then came a dream which somewhat simplified the matter (1904). For it ruled out definitely: insanity, clairvoyance, astral-wandering, spirit-messages, and telepathy. But it left me face to face with something much more staggering than any of these.
. . . I dreamed one night that I was walking down a sort of pathway between two fields, separated from the latter by high iron railings, eight or nine feet high, on each side of the path. My attention was suddenly attracted to a horse in the field on my left. It had apparently gone mad, and was tearing about, kicking and plunging in a most frenzied fashion. I cast a hasty glance backwards and forwards along the railings to see if there were any openings by which the animal could get out. Satisfied that there was none, I continued on my way. A few moments later I heard the hoofs thundering behind me. Glancing back I saw, to my dismay, that the brute had somehow got out after all, and was coming full tilt after me down the pathway. It was a full-fledged nightmare ---and I ran like a hare. Ahead of me the path ended at the foot of a flight of wooden steps rising upward. I was striving frantically to reach these when I awoke.
Next day I went fishing with my brother . . . my brother called out: 'Look at that horse!' Glancing across the river, I saw the scene of my dream. But, though right in essentials, it was absolutely unlike in minor details. The two fields with the fenced-off pathway running between them were there. The horse was there, behaving just as it had done in the dream. The wooden steps at the end of the pathway were there (they led up to a bridge crossing the river). But the fences were wooden and small ---not more than four or five feet high ---and the fields were ordinary small fields, whereas those in the dream had been park-like expanses. Moreover, the horse was a small beast, and not the rampaging great monster of the dream --though its behavior was equally alarming. Finally, it was the wrong field, the field which would have been on my right, had I been walking, as in the dream, down the path towards the bridge. I began to tell my brother about the dream, but broke off because the beast was behaving so very oddly that I wanted to make sure that it could not escape. As in the dream, I ran my eye critically along the railings. As in the dream, I could see no gap, or even gate, in them anywhere. Satisfied, I said, 'At any rate, this horse cannot get out', and recommenced fishing. But my brother interrupted me by calling, 'Look out!' Glancing up again, I saw that the horse was no dodging fate. The beast had, inexplicably, just as in the dream, got out (probably it had jumped the fence), and, just as in the dream, it was thundering down the path towards to wooden steps. It swerved past these and plunged into the river, coming straight towards us. We both picked up stones, ran thirty yards or so back from the bank, and faced about. The end was tame, for, on emerging from the water on our side, the animal merely looked at us, snorted, and galloped off down a road.
Now, it seemed to me that from this incident one thing was abundantly clear. These dreams were not percepts (impressions) of distant or future events. They were the usual common place dreams composed of distorted images of waking experience, built together in the usually half-senseless fashion peculiar to dreams. That is to say, if they had happened on the nights after the corresponding events, they would have exhibited nothing in the smallest degree unusual, and would have yielded just as much true, and just as much false, information regarding the waking experiences which had given rise to them as any ordinary dream --which is very little . . . they were occurring on the wrong nights . . . They were merely displaced in Time.
* * * *
One morning (in 1912) while in (the city of Salisbury Plain) I dreamed that I was standing in a very large meadow, situated in a landscape which I did not recognize. In this meadow a monoplane landed, crashing rather badly . . . Immediately afterwards I saw Lieutenant B. coming to me from the direction of the wreck. I asked if much damage had been done. He replied, 'Oh no, not much,' and then added 'Its all that beastly engine; but I've got the hang of it now.' The dream was a longish one, all about aeroplane accidents, a common form of nightmare with me, even to this day, and Lieutenant B.'s smash was by no means the worst thing I saw. I awoke ot find the servant by my bedside with the morning tea, from which fact I was subsequently able to fix the hour of the dream as close on 8 a.m. Lieutenant B. was killed between 7 and 8 that morning, falling into a meadow near Oxford. But I did not read of the accident until two days and a night later.
But now, note the following points: 1. Engine failure had nothing whatever to do with the accident, nor could B. for one moment have ever thought that it had. For the monoplane was planting down ---with the engine partly or entirely stopped ---at the time; and the accident was due to the uncoupling of a quick-release gadget in one of the main 'lift' wires . . . 2. B. was merely a passenger in the machine. It was being piloted by another man, a stranger to me, who was also killed. There was nothing of this in the dream . . . 4. The coincidence in time was not really remarkable. Dreams of aeroplane accidents were, as I have said, very frequent with me in those days . . .
* * * *
During autumn of 1913, I dreamed of a train falling off embankment just north of the Firth of Forth Bridge, in Scotland.
On April the 14th of that spring the 'Flying Scotsman', one of the most famous mail trains of the period, jumped the parapet near Burntisland Station, about fifteen miles north of the Forth Bridge, and fell on the golf links twenty feet below.
Examples of D's Dreams (the author of this web-site)
The first dream that I recall coming true was back around 1980, when I was about seven or eight years old.
In this dream, my pet dog, whom I'd grown up with, had injured her foot. Blood from her wound was all over the back patio. My father had tried to put a band aide on the wound to stop the bleeding.
The next day, I awoke to find blood on the back porch just like in the dream. My dog had indeed cut her foot. And, yes ---my father tried to put a band aide around the dog's toe. Unfortunately the band aide quickly came off and would not hold in place, even after repeated attempts.
I had told my parents about this dream and they shrugged it off as if I'd just made the whole thing up. My brother, who is a few years older than me, however claimed to have had the same dream. Only in his version, everything looked like a cartoon, not like a real-life picture. At the time, I didn't believe him. I thought he was just trying to make fun or humor me. But, looking back, I have to wonder. Perhaps next time we see each other, I'll ask him if he remembers the incident.
* * * *
The most vivid dream of a future event which I can recall also happened when I was quite young. This dream took place in 1984 when I was 11 years old. My family was just about to move from Kansas to Texas. It was my first big move and I was worried about who my friends might be in Texas. I prayed with all my might that God might send me an answer.
That night, my last night in Kansas, I dreamed that I was on a school bus. There were only a few kids on the bus and they introduced themselves to me. Their names were Bri, Pat, and Shawn. One was a dark-headed guy with a big belt buckle. The second was thin and blond. The third was kind of big and dark skinned.
A couple of days later, I was in Texas about to start my first day of school. I got on the school bus. I looked around and was dumbfounded by what I saw. The only thought running through my head was, "these are the people from my dream." As I gathered my thoughts, they began to introduce themselves to me. I was going over their names in my head just prior to their introduction. What's more is that these three kids were my best friends for the next five years. I rarely did anything without one of these three by my side. There was no doubt in my mind but that I had been given a glimpse into the future via my dream.
* * * *
While going attending college in Athens, Georgia, I had another such experience. The date was January 16th, 1996 and I was 22 years old. But this time the dream was less personal.
I woke up recalling a dream in which a very small plane crashed in a field close to some houses. I was very bothered by this dream. It seemed so real that I wondered if anyone I knew had been killed. First thing upon awaking, I wrote this dream in my journal.
Later in the day, I saw on the news that a small airplane had crashed in a field somewhere in Atlanta, not too far from where I was now living. The crash was said to have been early morning and two people were killed in the accident. The names of the dead were not at this time being released. To this day, I still do not know if the victims were in anyway connected to me.
The fascinating aspect of this case is that I had recorded the event before I had gained word of the event in question. However, like in some of J.W. Dunne's dreams, the actual event took place at about the same time as when I had been sleeping. It is likely that it was not the actual plane crash that I had caused the dream but rather the news report of the event for which I had foreknowledge.
* * * *
While still in Athens, I had another prophetic dream but this time directly relating to myself. The date was May 20th, 1996. Like the last event, I recorded this dream in my journal upon awakening. However, this time the foreknowledge was a bit abstracted. Still, the subject matter was too surprisingly accurate to be overlooked.
In the dream, a police officer was searching my house for marijuana (belonging to my roommate?). The officer entered my room and rummaged around, overlooking the bag of paraphernalia lying on my desk in plain sight. Repeatedly, he looked at the T-shirt I was wearing, depicting the moon smoking a joint. He appeared to be angry that he couldn't bust such an obvious pot-head. The following day, seven hours after waking up, a message was left on my answering machine. I did not hear this message until later that evening. The message was from my good friend, Rhiannon. In it, she said that the cops would be coming by looking for Tracie and that I and my roommates should hide our paraphernalia. At the time, I didn't know that Tracie was wanted for anything, and I had no reason to suspect that the police would have been coming to my house. This message was totally out of the blue.
There obviously was some correlation between Rhiannon's message and my dream about the police and paraphernalia. The chances of this being a mere coincidence was simply too small. What are the odds: a million to one, a billion to one? Perhaps even higher. The irony of the situation is that the cops never came to my apartment and nobody even questioned me in regards to Tracie. I did however dispose of my paraphernalia just in case.
I hope that this mention of drug use does not lead some readers to suspect mental incompetence. The fact is that many people have experimented with drugs while in college and not had any long term affects. Today, I am a successful professional. My work title is Sr. Logistics Business Analyst and I am working on a very complex global systems project.
* * * *
Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell when a dream is of a prophetic nature. For example: Early in 2005, my wife was pregnant and we had been discussing baby names. My pseudo-prophetic dream was extremely vivid. I was holding a beautiful curly haired baby girl. I called her “Emily Elizabeth”. This was a name that my wife and I had never discussed. Later, we agreed that we both liked it. Soon after, my wife had a miscarriage. We honored the baby with the name from my dream. However I will never hold this baby. It will never be born. And, we will never use the name for another baby.
THE PUZZLE
Many people throughout history have claimed to have had prophetic dreams which have foretold of future events. Likewise, almost everybody has at one time or another experienced what is commonly referred to as da-ja-vu. If these phenomena were taken at face value, they would entail that our minds go beyond the generally accepted boundaries of space-time. Most of the time such events are considered either coincidence or the mind playing tricks on us. There is no proof that people can see into the future ---or is there? In J.W. Dunne's studies, he has uncovered a common thread in the content of almost everybody's dreams. This common thread may prove that our subconscious minds are in deed capable of seeing into the future. If we look at a dream's content with an open mind, there seems to be an equal number of events which correspond to the recent past as to the near future. The future events in question are generally statistically unlikely to have been guessed and often virtually impossible to have been logically predicted. It should be noted that upon making this discovery, J.W. Dunne did not believe in clairvoyance nor astral-wandering nor messages from the dead or dying. This was because J.W. Dunne was not compelled to take knowledge of the paranormal second-hand from some 'clairvoyant' or 'medium' ---with all the important points left out and a mass of misleading suggestion thrown in. For, the only reason that J.W. Dunne studied and came to believe these phenomena is they had happened, one and all, to himself.
J.W. Dunne assumed that if his dreams were often precognitive, then logically the average person must also have similar dreams. It may be asked how the average person may dream of future events and not even realize it, especially after the event in question actually occurs. The answer to this question is simple. First of all, the vast majority of dreams are forgotten the moment one wakes up. Second, when these congruencies are found, they are usually shrugged off as coincidence. And finally, people simply do not believe that they can see the future and therefore are unwilling to accept that such events have taken place. Accepting the prophetic nature of dreams, after all, would entail that popular science does not fully understand the workings of time in its relationship with mankind. An attempt to prove that this phenomena does indeed exist is the subject of the next chapter entitled, "The Experiment". There you will find that even the average person's dreaming mind is also capable of looking into the future.
The following are some examples of J.W. Dunne's own dreams that first led him to believe that there was something more to dreams than he would have liked to believe. After the dreams of J.W. Dunne are a few examples of personal dreams belonging to the author of this web-site, D. As odd as it may sound, D has found that J.W. Dunne's findings hold true in his own dreams as well.
Examples of J.W. Dunne's Dream Content from Part II, THE PUZZLE
The First incident provided a very fair example of what might easily have passed for 'clairvoyance'. It occurred in 1899, when I was staying at an hotel in Sussex. I dreamed, one night, that I was having an argument with one of the waiters as to what was the correct time. I asserted that it was half-past four in the afternoon: he maintained that it was half-past four in the middle of the night. With the apparent illogicality peculiar to all dreams, I concluded that my watch must have stopped, and, on extracting that instrument from my waistcoat pocket, I saw, looking down on it, that this was precisely the case. It had stopped ---with the hands at half-past four. With that I awoke. The dream had been a peculiar one, and the net result of it all was that I lit a match to see whether the watch had really stopped. To my surprise it was not, as it usually is, by my bedside. I got out of bed, hunted round, and found it lying on the chest of drawers. Sure enough, it had stopped, and the hands stood at half-past four.
The First incident provided a very fair example of what might easily have passed for 'clairvoyance'. It occurred in 1899, when I was staying at an hotel in Sussex. I dreamed, one night, that I was having an argument with one of the waiters as to what was the correct time. I asserted that it was half-past four in the afternoon: he maintained that it was half-past four in the middle of the night. With the apparent illogicality peculiar to all dreams, I concluded that my watch must have stopped, and, on extracting that instrument from my waistcoat pocket, I saw, looking down on it, that this was precisely the case. It had stopped ---with the hands at half-past four. With that I awoke. The dream had been a peculiar one, and the net result of it all was that I lit a match to see whether the watch had really stopped. To my surprise it was not, as it usually is, by my bedside. I got out of bed, hunted round, and found it lying on the chest of drawers. Sure enough, it had stopped, and the hands stood at half-past four.
The solution seemed perfectly obvious. The watch must have stopped during the previous afternoon. I must have noticed this, forgotten it, and remembered it in my dream. Satisfied on that point, I rewound the instrument, but, not knowing the real time, I left the hands as they were.
On coming downstairs next morning, I made straight for the nearest clock, with the object of setting the watch right. For if, as I supposed, it had stopped during the previous afternoon, and had merely been rewound at some unknown hour of the night, it was likely to be out by several hours (In other words, it was extremely unlikely that I should have dreamed of half-past four at precisely half-past four).
To my absolute amazement I found that the hands had lost only some two or three minutes ---about the amount of time which had elapsed between my waking from the dream and rewinding the watch.
This suggested, of course, that the watch had stopped at the actual moment of the dream (The probability of my having dreamed of half-past four at half-past four must be multiplied by the improbability of my having been bothered by a stopped watch on the previous afternoon without retaining the faintest recollection of such a fact). The latter was probably brought about by my missing the accustomed ticking. But ---how did I come to see, in that dream, that the hands stood, as they actually did, at half-past four?
* * * *
Then came an incident of an entirely different character.
In January of 1901, I dreamed that I was at a place which I took to be Fashoda, a little way up the Nile from Khartoum. The dream was a perfectly ordinary one, and by no means vivid, except in one particular. this was the sudden appearance of three men coming from the South. They were marvelously ragged, dressed in khaki faded to the colour of sackcloth; and their faces under their dusty helmets were burned almost black. They looked in fact, exactly like soldiers of the column with which I had lately been trekking in South Africa, and such I took them to be. I was puzzled as to why they should have traveled all the way from that country to the Sudan, and I questioned them on that point. They assured me, however, that this was precisely what they had done. 'We have come right through from the Cape,' said one. Another added: 'I've had an awful time. I nearly died of yellow fever.'
The remainder of the dream was unimportant.
At that time we were receiving the Daily Telegraph regularly from England. On opening this paper at breakfast, the morning after the dream, my eye was caught by the following headlines:
THE CAPE TO CAIRO
'DAILY TELEGRAPH'
EXPEDITION AT KHARTOUM
From our
special corespondent.
KHARTOUM, Thursday (5 p.m.).
The Daily Telegraph
expedition has arrived at
Khartoum after a magnificent journey etc., etc.
A note in another part of the paper stated that the expedition was led by M. Lionel Decle. I heard or read subsequently that one of the three white men of the party had died en route; not, however, of yellow fever, but of enteric. Whether this was true, or whether there were three white leaders, I don't know.
One or two remarks may be made here.
I had heard, some years previously, that M. Lionel Decle was contemplating some such trans-continental journey; but I did not know that anything had come of the scheme. Certainly I had no idea that the expedition had started.
The expedition arrived at Khartoum the day before the news was published in London, and thus long before I had the dream, as that issue of the paper had to get from London to Alassio, and the dream did not occur till the night before its arrival. This put any 'astral-wandering' business completely out of the question.
I attempted no explanation.
* * * *
In the sprint of 1902, I was encamped with the 6th Mounted Infantry near the ruins of Lindley, in the (then) Orange Free State. We had just come of trek, and mails and newspapers arrived but rarely.
There, one night, I had an unusually vivid and rather unpleasant dream . . . about an island which I recognized as an island of which I had dreamed before --an island which was in imminent peril from a volcano. And, when I saw the vapor spouting from the ground, I gasped: 'It's the island! God Lord, the whole thing is going to blow up!' . . . Forthwith I was seized with a frantic desire to save the four thousand (I knew the number) unsuspecting inhabitants. Obviously there was only one way of doing this, and that was to take them off in ships. There followed a most distressing nightmare, in which I was at a neighboring island, trying to get the incredulous French authorities to dispatch vessels of every and any description to remove the inhabitants of the threatened island. I was sent from one official to another; clinging to the heads of a team of horses drawing the carriage of one 'Mounsieur le Maire', who was going out to dine and wanted me to return when his office would be open next day. All through the dream the number of the people in danger obsesses my mind. I repeated it to everyone I met, and, at the moment of waking, I was shouting to the 'Maire', 'Listen! Four thousand people will be killed unless----'
I am not certain now when we received our next batch of papers, but, when they did come, the Daily Telegraph was amongst them, and, on opening the center sheet, this is what met my eyes:
VOLCANO DISASTER
IN
MARTINIQUE
TOWN SWEPT AWAY
AN AVALANCHE OF
FLAME
PROBABLE LOSS OF OVER
40,000 LIVES
BRITISH STEAMER
BURNT
One of the most terrible disasters in the annals
of the world has
befallen the once prosperous town
of St. Pierre, the commercial capital of
the French
island of Martinique in the West Indies. At eight
o'clock
on Thursday morning the volcano Mont
Pelee which had been quiescent
for a century,
etc., etc.
But there is no need to go over the story of the worst eruption in modern history.
In another column of the same paper was the following, the headlines being somewhat smaller:
A MOUNTAIN EXPLODES
There followed the report of the schooner Ocean Traveler, which had been obliged to leave St. Vincent owing to a fall of sand from the volcano there, and had subsequently been unable to reach St. Lucia owning to adverse currents opposite the ill-fated St. Pierre. The paragraph contained these words:
'When she was about a mile off, the
volcano Mont Pelee exploded', etc., etc.
* * * *
. . . The more I thought of the two episodes the clearer it became that, in each case, the dream had been precisely the sort of thing I might have expected to have experienced after reading the printed report ---a perfectly ordinary dream based upon the personal experience of reading. How, then, could I be sure that those dreams had not been false memories engendered by the act of reading?
But there was the watch business to be taken into account. That, certainly could not be made to fit in with the new theory, unless I were a great deal madder than I could bring myself to believe.
I was, however, absolutely satisfied that neither in the Cape to Cairo nor in the Mont Pelee dream had there been any 'astral-wandering', or any direct vision across leagues of space, or any 'messages' from the actors in the actual episodes represented. These dreams had been induced, either by the reading of the paragraphs, or else by telepathic communications from the journalist in the Daily Telegraph office who had written those accounts.
* * * *
Then came a dream which somewhat simplified the matter (1904). For it ruled out definitely: insanity, clairvoyance, astral-wandering, spirit-messages, and telepathy. But it left me face to face with something much more staggering than any of these.
. . . I dreamed one night that I was walking down a sort of pathway between two fields, separated from the latter by high iron railings, eight or nine feet high, on each side of the path. My attention was suddenly attracted to a horse in the field on my left. It had apparently gone mad, and was tearing about, kicking and plunging in a most frenzied fashion. I cast a hasty glance backwards and forwards along the railings to see if there were any openings by which the animal could get out. Satisfied that there was none, I continued on my way. A few moments later I heard the hoofs thundering behind me. Glancing back I saw, to my dismay, that the brute had somehow got out after all, and was coming full tilt after me down the pathway. It was a full-fledged nightmare ---and I ran like a hare. Ahead of me the path ended at the foot of a flight of wooden steps rising upward. I was striving frantically to reach these when I awoke.
Next day I went fishing with my brother . . . my brother called out: 'Look at that horse!' Glancing across the river, I saw the scene of my dream. But, though right in essentials, it was absolutely unlike in minor details. The two fields with the fenced-off pathway running between them were there. The horse was there, behaving just as it had done in the dream. The wooden steps at the end of the pathway were there (they led up to a bridge crossing the river). But the fences were wooden and small ---not more than four or five feet high ---and the fields were ordinary small fields, whereas those in the dream had been park-like expanses. Moreover, the horse was a small beast, and not the rampaging great monster of the dream --though its behavior was equally alarming. Finally, it was the wrong field, the field which would have been on my right, had I been walking, as in the dream, down the path towards the bridge. I began to tell my brother about the dream, but broke off because the beast was behaving so very oddly that I wanted to make sure that it could not escape. As in the dream, I ran my eye critically along the railings. As in the dream, I could see no gap, or even gate, in them anywhere. Satisfied, I said, 'At any rate, this horse cannot get out', and recommenced fishing. But my brother interrupted me by calling, 'Look out!' Glancing up again, I saw that the horse was no dodging fate. The beast had, inexplicably, just as in the dream, got out (probably it had jumped the fence), and, just as in the dream, it was thundering down the path towards to wooden steps. It swerved past these and plunged into the river, coming straight towards us. We both picked up stones, ran thirty yards or so back from the bank, and faced about. The end was tame, for, on emerging from the water on our side, the animal merely looked at us, snorted, and galloped off down a road.
Now, it seemed to me that from this incident one thing was abundantly clear. These dreams were not percepts (impressions) of distant or future events. They were the usual common place dreams composed of distorted images of waking experience, built together in the usually half-senseless fashion peculiar to dreams. That is to say, if they had happened on the nights after the corresponding events, they would have exhibited nothing in the smallest degree unusual, and would have yielded just as much true, and just as much false, information regarding the waking experiences which had given rise to them as any ordinary dream --which is very little . . . they were occurring on the wrong nights . . . They were merely displaced in Time.
* * * *
One morning (in 1912) while in (the city of Salisbury Plain) I dreamed that I was standing in a very large meadow, situated in a landscape which I did not recognize. In this meadow a monoplane landed, crashing rather badly . . . Immediately afterwards I saw Lieutenant B. coming to me from the direction of the wreck. I asked if much damage had been done. He replied, 'Oh no, not much,' and then added 'Its all that beastly engine; but I've got the hang of it now.' The dream was a longish one, all about aeroplane accidents, a common form of nightmare with me, even to this day, and Lieutenant B.'s smash was by no means the worst thing I saw. I awoke ot find the servant by my bedside with the morning tea, from which fact I was subsequently able to fix the hour of the dream as close on 8 a.m. Lieutenant B. was killed between 7 and 8 that morning, falling into a meadow near Oxford. But I did not read of the accident until two days and a night later.
But now, note the following points: 1. Engine failure had nothing whatever to do with the accident, nor could B. for one moment have ever thought that it had. For the monoplane was planting down ---with the engine partly or entirely stopped ---at the time; and the accident was due to the uncoupling of a quick-release gadget in one of the main 'lift' wires . . . 2. B. was merely a passenger in the machine. It was being piloted by another man, a stranger to me, who was also killed. There was nothing of this in the dream . . . 4. The coincidence in time was not really remarkable. Dreams of aeroplane accidents were, as I have said, very frequent with me in those days . . .
* * * *
During autumn of 1913, I dreamed of a train falling off embankment just north of the Firth of Forth Bridge, in Scotland.
On April the 14th of that spring the 'Flying Scotsman', one of the most famous mail trains of the period, jumped the parapet near Burntisland Station, about fifteen miles north of the Forth Bridge, and fell on the golf links twenty feet below.
****
Examples of D's Dreams (the author of this web-site)
The first dream that I recall coming true was back around 1980, when I was about seven or eight years old.
In this dream, my pet dog, whom I'd grown up with, had injured her foot. Blood from her wound was all over the back patio. My father had tried to put a band aide on the wound to stop the bleeding.
The next day, I awoke to find blood on the back porch just like in the dream. My dog had indeed cut her foot. And, yes ---my father tried to put a band aide around the dog's toe. Unfortunately the band aide quickly came off and would not hold in place, even after repeated attempts.
I had told my parents about this dream and they shrugged it off as if I'd just made the whole thing up. My brother, who is a few years older than me, however claimed to have had the same dream. Only in his version, everything looked like a cartoon, not like a real-life picture. At the time, I didn't believe him. I thought he was just trying to make fun or humor me. But, looking back, I have to wonder. Perhaps next time we see each other, I'll ask him if he remembers the incident.
* * * *
The most vivid dream of a future event which I can recall also happened when I was quite young. This dream took place in 1984 when I was 11 years old. My family was just about to move from Kansas to Texas. It was my first big move and I was worried about who my friends might be in Texas. I prayed with all my might that God might send me an answer.
That night, my last night in Kansas, I dreamed that I was on a school bus. There were only a few kids on the bus and they introduced themselves to me. Their names were Bri, Pat, and Shawn. One was a dark-headed guy with a big belt buckle. The second was thin and blond. The third was kind of big and dark skinned.
A couple of days later, I was in Texas about to start my first day of school. I got on the school bus. I looked around and was dumbfounded by what I saw. The only thought running through my head was, "these are the people from my dream." As I gathered my thoughts, they began to introduce themselves to me. I was going over their names in my head just prior to their introduction. What's more is that these three kids were my best friends for the next five years. I rarely did anything without one of these three by my side. There was no doubt in my mind but that I had been given a glimpse into the future via my dream.
* * * *
While going attending college in Athens, Georgia, I had another such experience. The date was January 16th, 1996 and I was 22 years old. But this time the dream was less personal.
I woke up recalling a dream in which a very small plane crashed in a field close to some houses. I was very bothered by this dream. It seemed so real that I wondered if anyone I knew had been killed. First thing upon awaking, I wrote this dream in my journal.
Later in the day, I saw on the news that a small airplane had crashed in a field somewhere in Atlanta, not too far from where I was now living. The crash was said to have been early morning and two people were killed in the accident. The names of the dead were not at this time being released. To this day, I still do not know if the victims were in anyway connected to me.
The fascinating aspect of this case is that I had recorded the event before I had gained word of the event in question. However, like in some of J.W. Dunne's dreams, the actual event took place at about the same time as when I had been sleeping. It is likely that it was not the actual plane crash that I had caused the dream but rather the news report of the event for which I had foreknowledge.
* * * *
While still in Athens, I had another prophetic dream but this time directly relating to myself. The date was May 20th, 1996. Like the last event, I recorded this dream in my journal upon awakening. However, this time the foreknowledge was a bit abstracted. Still, the subject matter was too surprisingly accurate to be overlooked.
In the dream, a police officer was searching my house for marijuana (belonging to my roommate?). The officer entered my room and rummaged around, overlooking the bag of paraphernalia lying on my desk in plain sight. Repeatedly, he looked at the T-shirt I was wearing, depicting the moon smoking a joint. He appeared to be angry that he couldn't bust such an obvious pot-head. The following day, seven hours after waking up, a message was left on my answering machine. I did not hear this message until later that evening. The message was from my good friend, Rhiannon. In it, she said that the cops would be coming by looking for Tracie and that I and my roommates should hide our paraphernalia. At the time, I didn't know that Tracie was wanted for anything, and I had no reason to suspect that the police would have been coming to my house. This message was totally out of the blue.
There obviously was some correlation between Rhiannon's message and my dream about the police and paraphernalia. The chances of this being a mere coincidence was simply too small. What are the odds: a million to one, a billion to one? Perhaps even higher. The irony of the situation is that the cops never came to my apartment and nobody even questioned me in regards to Tracie. I did however dispose of my paraphernalia just in case.
I hope that this mention of drug use does not lead some readers to suspect mental incompetence. The fact is that many people have experimented with drugs while in college and not had any long term affects. Today, I am a successful professional. My work title is Sr. Logistics Business Analyst and I am working on a very complex global systems project.
* * * *
Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell when a dream is of a prophetic nature. For example: Early in 2005, my wife was pregnant and we had been discussing baby names. My pseudo-prophetic dream was extremely vivid. I was holding a beautiful curly haired baby girl. I called her “Emily Elizabeth”. This was a name that my wife and I had never discussed. Later, we agreed that we both liked it. Soon after, my wife had a miscarriage. We honored the baby with the name from my dream. However I will never hold this baby. It will never be born. And, we will never use the name for another baby.
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