Monday, March 19, 2007

Avoid the Blue Sleeping Pill (12.20.10)

Forgetting, sleeping, and deathing are all somehow related -- or so we have heard from the wise. The first two -- forgetting and sleep -- are reversible. Our thoughts fall like dead leaves into the unconscious, where they are worked over and composted by the night logic of the unconscious, only to releaf our mourning consciousness. In fact, this may be one of the evolutionary purposes of sleep. We know that it plays an important role in both memory and cognition, but no one knows exactly what or how (as far as I know).

But if we reverse-ungineer the mind and imargin what it would be like without sleep and forgetting, we couldn't function in the human sense. We don't stop thinking at night when we are asleep in our dark forgettery. Rather, all sorts of vital, pitch-blacktivity is going on -- sorting, connecting, rejecting, strengthening, categorizing, synthesizing. This is why "sleeping on a problem" is often so beneficial. Oddly, we can't see or know what our mind is doing with the problem, any more than we can see what Rosie O'Donnell's stomach does with an extra large pizza. We are privy only to the visible and risible effect of the pizza.

I know that this is how I conduct my forensic work. When I evaluate a case, I obtain a mass of information from the patient and from the medical file. Often there is so much data that I cannot draw any conclusions right away. I always let it marinate over night, and by morning time, everything is always more clear. All of the pieces come together in a harmonious way that my conscious mind never could have accomplished, at least not so seamlessly and effortlessly. It is then much easier to compose the report, because my thoughts emanate from the "whole," so to speak. It's an entirely different experience on those few occasions that I must attempt to find and impose order while dictating. Then it becomes work, a word from which this Raccoon recoils.

Tomberg writes that "when the to-and-fro of forgetting and remembering is disturbed, i.e. when one cannot forget, or is unable to call something back into memory, then it is a matter of an abnormal state." He likens the former situation (the "fixed idea") to Ahasuerus, the mythical "wandering Jew" who must eternally walk the earth and cannot die, the latter ("partial amnesia") to Orpheus, who cannot bring Eurydice back from Hades. Likewise, insomnia is the state of being unable to forget and ultimately fall into the embrace of death, while amnesia is analogous to narcolepsy, i.e., being unable to stay awake.

Now, it is human beings who draw these sharp distinctions between asleep vs. awake and conscious vs. unconscious. In reality, they are on a single continuum and are a function of each other. For example, there is actually no bright line -- or any line at all -- between the conscious and unconscious mind. Rather, the whole idea of the "unconscious" is really just a heuristic device, a way to "think about thinking," which is otherwise invisible and inaccessible.

If we take our model too seriously -- i.e., if we begin to confuse the abstraction with the reality -- then we end up in the situation of Al Gore, who is hysterical over some speculative weather models that are stuck in his head. It would be like me obsessing over an "id" that has lodged itself in the human unconscious. I must write a book and make a film, warning human beings about this violent and impulsive id, for this idconvenient truth is the source of so much human misery!

But there is no actual separation between id and ego and conscious and unconscious. In fact, we can never see or know the unconscious directly, only insofar as our conscious thoughts, feelings, and acts are imbued with unconsciousness. In other words, it is more accurate to think of our thoughts as analagous to a... whatever you call those things -- you know, the little pictures which, when turned slightly, produce a different picture. This is essentially what a therapist does: "Al, let's look at your concern about these meteorological models from another angle. Who does this stormy and unpredictable weather remind you of?"

There is a reason why I can only do these posts first thing in the morning. They could never be produced in the wideawake and cutandry consciousness of the day. It is said that "dawn is the friend of the muses," the reason being that we are still close to the night time forgettery of death, where ideas go to die and be resurrected in a new form. At least I hypnot. How about you?

Tomberg notes that we all routinely have the experience of going to sleep in one state of mind, only to awaken in another. A change has taken place, a process of consciousness "whose results and fruits one finds upon awakening." For example, one may go to sleep in a state of depression, or doubt, or uncertainty, but awaken with lightness, or conviction, or certainty. Not only has the night womb "given birth," but something has been "extinguished" -- or at least transformed -- in the process.

What can any of this tell us about death? People routinely say that we cannot know anything of the post-mortem state, since no one has come back to tell us about it. First of all, that's not quite true. Secondly, as indicated by my example about the unconscious, we routinely employ analogies and models in order to deepen our understanding of realms and dimensions that are strictly beyond our ken, thy wilber done, for example.

In fact, we analogize in this way so often that we don't even know we are doing it. There are a number of fundamental "limit cases" that our human consciousness cannot understand at all -- human consciousness being one of them. No one has any idea what consciousness actually is; rather, there are only models and theories which are a product of consciousness.

Likewise, no physicist knows what Energy is, no biologist knows what Life itself is, and no historian knows what History is. History is only known by the telling of it, but the telling is not the thing in itself. It's just a magical abstracadabran. Nevertheless, we must insist that history exists, unless we have swallowed the blue state pill of deconstruction and relativism. Raccoons pound red pills like candy. Some people even say that Toots and Herman invented the red pill in Toots' tool shed, but that's another story. If it were true, Petey says I can't talk about it anyway.

Now, all religions agree that human beings possess something like an immortal soul. Before we dismiss such assertions out of hand as primitive mythology or wishful thinking, let's first stop to coonsider how much preternatural wisdom is embedded in scripture and revelation. I'm now coming up on, what, some 600 posts, probably 75% of which deal with timeless wisdom that was somehow -- we know not how -- possessed and encoded by peoples that were quite primitive by our standards. "How did they know so much?" is a question I often ask mybobself. "How does scripture know so much more about us than we can know about it?" is another. Therefore, if scripture provides a model of death, or a fruitful way to think "beyond the horizon of life," who am I to reject it outright? Let's hear it.

Alternatively, what can the modern philosophies of materialism, or positivism, or empiricism, or scientism, or existentialism, tell us about the subject? Precisely nothing, for they admit this up front. Each of these closed-minded pseudo-philosophies dresses up assumptions as conclusions, thus becoming a graveyard of dead answers rather than a garden of fruitful questions. They are analogous to a behaviorist who spuriously eliminates the unconscious by affirming that only behavior is real, or a feminist who makes her own uncomfortable sexuality go away by insisting that there is only culturally conditioned "gender," or a leftist who magically eliminates human evil by chanting "war is not the answer" while desecrating a Raccoon tail. Blue pill poppers one and all.

Well, I have a long day ahead. Plus, I'm startling to wake, so the naught time is reseeding from my fingertips. As Joyce said, "bleakfrost chills the ravery." Better stop for now, but leave you with some vertical red pill raving by Van Morrison:

Rave on John Donne, rave on thy Holy fool
Down through the weeks of ages
In the moss borne dark dank pools

Rave on, down through the industrial revolution
Empiricism, atomic and nuclear age
Rave on down through time and space down through the corridors
Rave on words on printed page

Rave on, you left us infinity
And well pressed pages torn to fade
Drive on with wild abandon
Uptempo, frenzied heels

Rave on, Walt Whitman, nose down in wet grass
Rave on fill the senses
On nature's bright green shady path

Rave on Omar Khayyam, Rave on Kahlil Gibran
Oh, what sweet wine we drinketh
The celebration will be held
We will partake the wine and break the Holy bread

Rave on let a man come out of Ireland
Rave on on Mr. Yeats,
Rave on down through the Holy Rosey Cross
Rave on down through theosophy, and the Golden Dawn
Rave on through the writing of "A Vision"
Rave on, Rave on, Rave on, Rave on, Rave on, Rave on


*****

These boots were made for bloggin':

45 comments:

Gagdad Bob said...

Does anyone know the secret of how to post here? A number of readers inform me that they have been unable to do so since I changed to bloger beta last month.

Anonymous said...

Since I switched from WEBTV to 'puter I haven't had a problem commenting here, Bob.

I also have a google account (which doesn't require a blog, btw).
Maybe that helps.

Does anyone have a problem commenting on my blog which is also beta blogger?

Anonymous said...

I can't get through most of the time using my username

Anonymous said...

I dunno for sure, but maybe establishing a blog will help.
Like Nomo did. You don't have to blog on the blog but maybe having one will help with the comments.

Where are all the 'putercoons?

Anonymous said...

It does seem to be easier if you at least have a google account, but even with it if your post exceeds the visible box where you type it in (I know there's a word for it but I forget... ; ), you will have to do the word verification at least a couple of times. With a short post, it might come through on the first try.

Could it be a Vista problem?
My mom has a Vista computer, and she has had a lot of trouble staying logged in/ having her password recognized over at Wordpress, where I've had no problems (on a mac).

NoMo said...

Is that what I did? Anyway, yes, if you set up a google or blogger account (its quick and easy), you shouldn't have too much problem commenting. Kind of trial and error. Sometimes, after you post once, it remembers you for the next so that you just have to input the wv (no small task sometimes in itself.

wv: jymbkoz (hey, you asked)

Anonymous said...

In more than 6 months, not one problem, so far (aside from having to renew WV on occasion). I am owned by a Mac.

Anonymous said...

------
Mornin' Coons - I have a mac and use Safari and I don't have problems posting except for the occasional word verify miscomprehension thingy on the part of the operator. nwims, it is today.

Uh oh, nwims means no swims. Before posting I tried logging into my google/blogger acct. which I NEVER use, but just to test which works easier, and then I couldn't remember my password, so I gave up and tried to go back to posting as "other" and guess what - it's a 'no go' situation.

I'll close out - clear the cache and try again.

OK, I'm back, and aftering clearing the cache,
it looks like a lift off.

Before I forget, here's the comment I wrote up in TextEdit, cut and attempted to post before choosing to provide tech support :

In my wonderings yesterday, I too saw the blue bit of blasphemous iconography and I also found and saved this poem - in(sync)anticipation of Bob's post today:


To My Love, Combing Her Hair
by Yehuda Amichai

To my love, combing her hair.
without a mirror, facing me,

A psalm: you've shampooed your hair, an entire
forest of pine trees is filled with yearning on your
head.

Calmness inside and calmness outside
have hammered your face between them to a
tranquil copper.

The pillow on your bed is your spare brain,
tucked under your neck for remembering and dreaming.

The earth is trembling beneath us, love.
Let's lie fastened together, a double safety lock.

Anonymous said...

>>What can any of this tell us about death?<<

Lots, I think. It's my thinking that in sleep we do leave the body, albeit to a very slight degree. In any event, if sleep is the renewing of the psyche after daily experience, death then is the renewing of the spirit after a life's experience.

Of course, we don't really know what a dream state is like, not in our waking state. We can only recall a dream from a waking state perspective, which is far different from actually experiencing a dream. And the deepest, most profound parts of the dream state are generally not remembered at all - that is, if the dream esotericists are correct in their view that we all experience a moment of pure lucidity/transcendence, the "dreamless dream" while sleeping.

As for being a preview of the after-death state, the dream state has features which might suggest the "climate" of post-mortem life: Clearly defined dreams, that is, dreams that are not flickering "cartoons", tend to be either very pleasurable or very discomfiting. Heaven or hell, in other words. The dream is a state of extremity.

Also, in these extremities of experience, we experience feelings, moods, emotions that are generally not accessible while in a waking state. A heavenly dream state can produce a feeling of well-being, of divine transport, of a metaphysical certainty and love that we rarely, if ever, experience during our earthly lives. Likewise, a hellish dream state produces a metaphysical sense of horror and dread beyond anything we encounter in our waking states.

In both heavenly and hellish dream states, there exists a sensation of timelessness. One could fall asleep and stay that way for 200 years and, upon awakening, wouldn't be able to tell that an ordinary night's sleep had not been experienced. Maybe it's dim, unconscious memories of former post-mortem states and this sensation of timelessness that give rise to the idea of "eternal hellfire" - "eternal", of course, being different from "forever".

If such extremity of consciousness can be experienced in our earthly dream states, I don't think we can even imagine the intensity of experience in an afterlife state.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Hmm, if 'dying' can be a form of 'being born', then sleeping can too be a form of awakening, and forgetting a sort of remembrance.

So what, I wonder, distinguishes the remembrance of death from the forgetting of life? In other words, the amnesia from the meditation; or the insomnia from the wakefulness?

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Will: I have fallen asleep for 15 minutes and dreamed for 2 hours.

There's some kind of relation to Narnia here...

Anonymous said...

Qouth the rave on, "evermore."

robinstarfish said...

Does anyone know the secret of how to post here?

clear cache twice each day
take one red pill with no spoon
leap through turing's door

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Anyone know how to get Amazon to ship your books? :P

Items yet to have been shipped:

1 of: Meaning
By: Michael Polanyi

1 of: The Wealth of Nations
By: Adam Smith

1 of: The Art of Worldly Wisdom By: Baltasar Gracian

1 of: The Play of Masks
By: Frithjof Schuon

1 of: Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold
By: C.S. Lewis

.. I think in order to release my books I will have to order Meditations on the Tarot...

Darn you, ole Amazon
Holdin' my books so long
I'll find a way to get
All my stuff yet
Before I'm been dead n gone!

Anonymous said...

It seems that Geckofeeder no longer exists so I am not to enter OC commenting that way. Goggle gives so many doubletalk instructions that this coonfidel cannot comprehend. Taken over by moonbats - makes sense to me.

Quite the way shower you are - I start the day re and end it reading this blog and thanks be to O for it.

Anonymous said...

Funny that you should discuss dreams today. I have noticed that ever since the diagnosis and treatment of my epilepsy, my dreams have become much more more intense and "waking" when I have them. Sometimes they are just the recycled nonsense of the preceding day, sometimes there is a sweeping epic plot, sometimes they are horrible, and sometimes they are absolutely incredible. Invariably, however, they are intensely real while I am having them.

I have recently started keeping a dream journal, if only to help me remember the adventures I have had whilst my eyes move rapidly. I think it will prove to be more useful than that, but only time will tell, I suppose. It feels sort of like keeping tabs on one's own unconscious, which sounds weirder the more I think about it...

Has anyone else here done this? I'm a bit curious to get some outside observations.

Anonymous said...

Let's see if Robin Starfish's haiku kung-fu does the trick

JWM

Anonymous said...

Geckofeeder- I think you and I have to sacrifice our identities to post here. There's a parable (or maybe a pair o' bulls) there. Or maybe a metaphor or five...

JWM

Anonymous said...

Re sleep and dream states: Until just a few months ago, I had never experienced general anesthetic. It was quite a contrast to the ordinary form of sleep, where I've always been somewhat conscious of the passage of time, albeit in "dream time," or in the feeling of recharging/refreshing after a deep REM sleep.

Being put under was more like having a chunk of time and life ripped away. I returned to waking consciousness with my mind and body not aware of the down-time passage of sleep. One moment I was chatting with the oral surgeon; the next, I had numbed cheeks and a mouthful of bloody gauze. I wonder if this is characteristic of the "unnaturalness" of drug experience, in that the chemical fools the body clock and bypasses normal sleep consciousness in order to bring about a greater level of anesthesia (or other altered state of awareness.) What do you think?

Anonymous said...

I usually have dreams about everyday life. Very seldom bad dreams but once in awhile I dream of future events. Usually a couple months in advance of the "real" event. I have trained myself to pay attention to certain dreams where my life is in danger, just in case it happens in "real life". I work in a dangerous occupation, so it pays to be attentive.
I have no trouble posting, but I also have a Mac.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and for the record, no problems posting in Firefox on my Win2k box.

Anonymous said...

Paul -

I have kept dream journals for, let's see...about 35 years now. So I have stacks. The odd thing is, I rarely dream anymore but when I do it's usually some humdinger. Apparently I've learned how to mute the commercials.

It hasn't caused me to fall off the deep end, although my wife might disagree. :-)

Not to step on Bob's toes, but I think journaling dreams and working through them afterwards could save most people from spending their inheritance at the therapist. The more you write, the more you remember, the more lucid the dreams become, and the more amazed you'll be at understanding what makes you tick.

The best rewards come from taking the time to learn the internal language tailored just to you (avoid 'shortcut' dream interpretation books like the plague). Look for visual puns, some of which will make you laugh out loud. Play with some role-playing of each character or object with the assumption that they are all you (borrowed from the old gestaltists). Treat it all lightly though - if there is one thing I've learned through the years, it's that dreams teach with multilayered humor and if you get too serious about it, they don't play along.

Some interesting side-effects may happen, like lucid flying dreams, but I wouldn't go looking for them directly. That's just candy, IMHO, and not a spiritual goal like some teach.

Anyway, that's my six cents.

Stephen Macdonald said...

Aquila

I suppose an overdose of barbituates would induce coma (which is what you experience under general anaesthesia--temporary, induced coma). Most people don't take "recreational" drugs to go into a coma though.

Large doses of LSD are capable of producing states of mind which are wilder and more vividly hallucinatory than any dream I've experienced. LSD also can and often does produce states of truly hellish psychosis, which is why I stopped playing with it 25 years ago.

I've been under general anaestheisia several times as well. It is something worth pondering. We seem to be able to enter a state of nullity or non-being, and then return again. Is that what looms beyond the grave? I don't believe so.

Anonymous said...

Good news, Dear Leader! Your Amazon sales are up by at least one more, as I finally found someone I believe can appreciate your book!

Your approach of "let it marinate over night, and by morning time, everything is always more clear," is almost always useful. Another example of where "taking time" gives refreshing results.

And speaking of "marinating," in anticipation of giving your book to my friend (he is a long-time devotee of Meher Baba, and quite aware of O), I picked up MY copy of One Cosmos and began re-reading it. As I recall, I read it the first time early last December. But WHOOOAAA! With a few months of "marination," and your spicy daily posts in the interim, it now reads...well, let's just say it seems "a-w-f-u-l-l-y precise!"

Van Harvey said...

Does anyone know the secret of how to post here?

Why yes I do! The Secret has come down from poster to poster for netages now, carefuly gaurded, so that only the Right sort of people get through; that is, until NOW!

That's right! Now that with my super seeker coonivision goggles, I, the master of pataphysical science, have observed the depths of the cosmos and have received a revelation that The Secret to Commenting on One Cosmos!

Yes that's right, for just $10.99, and a commitment (backed with a first mortgage or child of either gender) to build your personal pyram... uhm... wealth association to 5 levels deep, YOU TOO CAN HAVE THE SECRET TO COMMENTING AT ONE COSMOS!
Act Now! Don't Wait!

Anonymous said...

Van-
You're the Science Officer not the Sales Officer. LOL!

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

On the other hand we could sell Metaphysical offset credits!

Anonymous said...

Van-
The following msg is from Ximeze:
11pm (eastern)
Debate on Academic Freedom with David Horowitz, author of
"Indoctrination U.,"
and Cary Nelson, President of the American Association of University
Professors (see Booktv.org for synopsis)

She thought you would be interested. :^)

robinstarfish said...

plop plop & fizz fizz
o what a releaf it is
sleep perchance to dream

Van Harvey said...

USS Ben said "The following msg is from Ximeze:
11pm (eastern) Debate on Academic Freedom with David Horowitz, Author of "Indoctrination U.,"..."

Tell Ximeze thanks, gotta love Tivo. Where is she anyway, she having trouble posting? Wish I did know the secr... ahem... Of Course I know The Secret to posting comments in One Cosmos, ya'll just send your $$$ right away & I'll share it with only You!Act now and be the first in your Den!

(Ben! Shhh! Don't you realize this is the Post-Science Science Age? That means Junk Science, and that means SALES!!! Keep it on the down lo, and I'll cut you in for a share of those metaphysical credits)

wv:qduipatv ...see?

Van Harvey said...

By the way, I dropped a few coins in Petey's sad little Amazon cup over the last week or so too... Polyani's Meaning, a Bill Evans Trio CD, Leon Kass' Beginning of Wisdom & Fredrich Turner's Culture of Hope.

So many books, so little time...

Van Harvey said...

Aquilla,
I can second you're anesthesia experience. Had my apendix out at 17, I remember the anesthesiologist having me count down, and then the experience of emerging abruptly from absolute darkness to a body that felt like I'd been hit by a truck. Of course I've no way of knowing, but it felt like returning from death, from an absence of existence. Still remember it clearly & still creeps me out.

I used to spend several minutes reviewing my dreams in the morning, and had several experiences with lucid dreaming. A very interesting experience realizing that you are you in the dream, and also that all of the surroundings, inclucing the very hard marble floor beneath you... must be made of you too. Very interesting indeed.

NoMo said...

Not altogether sure why, but I like this from Walter Brueggemann:

"Dreams concern larger realities and possible futures. There are many voices in the night, not all of them noble. Among them, however, is the voice of the holy God, who "plucks up and tears down" what we have trusted, who "plants and builds" what we cannot even imagine.
We do not forgo the use of reason; but we know in our own troubled context that our best reason has around it -- in, with and under it -- gifts of the "otherness" that make for newness. Our technological achievements require and permit us to learn again what the community of faith has known -- and trusted -- from the outset: there is something outside our controlled management of reality which must be heeded. Sometimes that something turns out to be a miracle of new life."

wv: forxx (in the hernhouse?)

Anonymous said...

I don't like dreams. I never have control over them. To me a dream feels like a roller coaster where you die at the end. I have dreamed my own death a thousand different ways, on a million different occasions.

Anonymous said...

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"On the other hand we could sell Metaphysical offset credits! "

Yeah Chief, but what kind of 'emissions' are we offsetting?! :-P

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

the drive-by sanitation engineer said...
USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"On the other hand we could sell Metaphysical offset credits! "

"Yeah Chief, but what kind of 'emissions' are we offsetting?! :-P"

Why, the toxic emissions of those in denial of Truth, like the Smogfather of smug hisself, Algore.

Anonymous said...

Re: dreams -

Is it not passing strange that we have two existences? That Marvel cartoon character, Dr. Strange, he who had a secret identity as an astral adventurer, who leaves his body to journey through globs of light and glowing smoke rings as he fights metaphysical arch-villains - we're all him, in reality.

Someone once said re dreams that it's a miracle we all wake up sane. But that's a perspective of the waking consciousness which regards the dreamscape as a type of psychosis. Well, it really is a type of psychosis.

And yet while we're dreaming, the dreamscape seems natural to us - we belong there, we are familiar with its rules (or non-rules). I can find my self dreaming that I am on a bus going up the slopes of Mt Shasta, and that the passenger next to me is a talking lion in a purple cape, and . . . . I don't question it! Why, it's a perfectly natural thing to do! Dreams are only "weird" when viewed from our waking consciousness.

As infants, we are unfamiliar with our new life - we have to be taught much, learn much in order to acclimate ourselves to materiality. But who has to be taught to live in a dream? That's immediately natural to us. Isn't the dreamscape more of a natural "home" to us?

Anonymous said...

Van - that was the old anesthesia.

The new, improved anesthesia leaves you with no sense of disruption of consciousness, just a large dollop of "missing time" a la one of those supposed UFO abductees.

It's really pretty neato. Give it a try.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Ah, Dreams. I tell ya, a lot of my artistic/writing ideas from when I was a kid came from dreams (not that I let anyone know.)

I once had a dream where - (usually in dreams you experience slowness or weakness) - I was actually as strong as I 'imagined', I guess that is the candy. Anyhow, I think there was some Musashi-inspiration there, because I was fighting with a sword. It had a sheath I'm aware, because the part I remember most vividly is blocking with the sheathed blade and drawing/cutting through my opponent in one motion.

I've always have vivid dreams and do so nearly every night. My dreams are like an 'other' reality that I enter in. When I wake up I have to 'forget' the dream world, or 'remember' the waking, every time. This is partly why, perhaps, the idea of life as a dream garment makes a lot of sense to me.

Anyhow, isn't this a better slogan?


....

Tired of not being able to comment at One Cosmos?

Had a great thought, but the system won't let you log in?

Did your future SOUL MATE post, and you couldn't leave a message to let them know?

Yes, it is a grievous wrong, we all agree-- and something must be done about it.

What can we do? Is it hopeless? I'm here to tell you it isn't-- nothing is so hopeless, dear friend!

How can I say this? Let me tell you about a secret-- this secret, that others don't want you to know.

Let's not get paranoid here, this secret is just so powerful, so useful, that others hesitate to tell it... but I want to give it to you, because as it is said, "The least you have done unto these..."

Listen, I would love to give this secret away for free, but I'm not going to. Why? Would you give it away for free?

A friend of mine (a Computer guy like myself) wanted to sell it for $12.99 and your firstborn, so you can see that I'm not unreasonable in my assumption.

I, however, want to be not just fair, but more than fair-- and not require your firstborn. In fact, I'm not going to require you even sell this information to others-- like so many other schemes require.

No, instead, for just $25.00 (flat, no gimmicks...) I will tell you everything you need to know about commenting on One Cosmos (and blogger!)

But act now... if I don't find enough interested folks, I'll spend my time doing something far more productive! And that means, no secret for you (or for anyone else!)

Sorry.

So don't delay on this...

Unless you don't mind not being able to even register a peep at this wonderful locale-- to get your eternal questions answered by wisened, fulsome coons?

The choice is yours, my friend.

---

Is that better? :P
Instead,

Anonymous said...

By the way, Van, I too had an appendix adventure with the old anesthesia. What I recall is coming out of it in stages. The first stage that I remember was that of an awareness of sorts, but not being aware that I was aware. I like to think of this as "tree awareness", the awareness that a tree possesses. I wasn't aware it at the time, of course, but in immediate retrospect, it was rather Edenic in a cocoon-y sort of way.

As soon as I became aware of my awareness, whammo, the onrush of pain. (the universal price of self-awareness)

Anyway - my conjecture is that the old anesthesia reduced the consciousness to something even less than tree consciousness - rock consciousness, let us say. It seems to our self-awareness to have been a stretch of oblivion, of utter non-consciousness, and yet I think the thread of consciousness was never really obliterated by the old anesthetic. It was merely regressed, right back to the un-self-awareness of primeval ooze.

NoMo said...

When one of my sons was about 5 years old, he had a recurring nightmare of someone coming after him that he could only describe as "Wheezer man". Not sure where I came up with the idea, but I told him that he should go to sleep with a great imaginary sword and then he could slay the evil one in his dream. Strangely, it worked the first night and Wheezer was vanquished never to be "heard from" again. True story.

Van Harvey said...

Will,

With me the anesthesia just seemed to obliterate me, off - on. But what you describe was very much the pattern I experienced when I was a teen. One summer it seemed as if every time I jumped up from the floor to do something, I'd 'white out', and I had the distinct sensation of a progression of stages, going down or up (passing out or coming back) the tree of consciousness, of fading from ME to something far more basic as I passed out, and then the reverse order going from this base experience and slowly the VAN program would come on line in stages from non-local stuff to localized in a body to sensations, basic self, and then I was back.

It happened over and over that summer and the impressions definitely stayed with me.

Van Harvey said...

Nomo & Jacob C,

My death dream was a repetive dream, I was sitting in a limo and this guy would come walking across the parkinglot towards me, and I knew he was going to kill me and I couldn't fight it. He'd finally make it to the car window, and no moatter how I struggled, he'd reach in, take his knife and cut my throat & I'd die.

Happened over and over. Finally I decided to just let it happen - I figured if I couldn't do anything about it, I'd just go along for the ride and see what happened.

The next time he started across the lot & I just sat there calmly, he reached in, smiled at me, cut my throat & walked on. I died peacefully and awoke.

Never had it again.

Gagdad Bob said...

Here's a guy who could supposedly narrrate his dreams while he was having them.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Will said:
will said...
Re: dreams -

"Is it not passing strange that we have two existences? That Marvel cartoon character, Dr. Strange, he who had a secret identity as an astral adventurer, who leaves his body to journey through globs of light and glowing smoke rings as he fights metaphysical arch-villains - we're all him, in reality."

Will, that was profound!
Maybe reading Dr. Strange comics and the Bible is what gave me the information I needed to wage spiritual warfare in my dreams.

Dreams are very different from the "awake" world, but it is real in every sense.

It takes practice to learn of the powers we have in the dream world, but it is possible.

The "all seeing eye of Agamoto" gnos. :^)

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