The Dream of Peace in Our Nighttime

Speaking of dreams, mine have undergone a profound shift in the last week.

It started when we decided to get a new bed. Aging hippie that I am, I'd been sleeping on a waterbed for some thirty years (a few different mattresses as the technology advanced). I drained, dismantled, and said goodbye to the old friend, but the new bed hasn't yet arrived in the mailbox, so in the meantime we've been sleeping on an air mattress that we use for guests.

This is going to sound like I'm furiously deepaking the chopra, but it seems that sleeping on air instead of stagnant water has some kind of effect on dreamworld. (I'm sure Will will have an explanation.) No other variables have changed, so I can't identify any other reason for the shift. But these dreams are truly better than life.

At least in a sense. I'm not prepared to stay there yet. The problem with dreams is that you seemingly lose control in them, and become subject to the whims of the Dreamer.

But what if you could somehow harness the pneumatechnology of dreaming? I mean, clearly, dream consciousness has potentials that are simply unavailable -- or available in a severely attenuated form -- in waking consciousness.

Daytime imagination pales in comparison to the powers of night. You should see my paintings! During the day I can barely draw a stick figure.

Again, the problem is one of control. Nuclear energy is vastly superior to conventional energy, but not if you can't control it. Then it becomes a nightmare, if you will. Or, what if you give this superior technology to barbarians who can only misuse it?

That goes for both nuclear and imagination power. For when it comes right down to it, aren't the vast majority of human problems caused by the misuse of imagination? By people imagining things that just aren't so, and then acting on them? It's not just stupidity, but stupidity filtered through imagination, which is a farce multiplier.

In the bʘʘK, I tried -- at least I tried, you damn dirty apes! -- to undress this problem: the problem of why man has such a poor track record of managing the content of his own mind.

In no other animal is this the case. Rather, evolution sees to it that there is a perfect fit between animal and environment, with no psychic "remainder," so to speak.

But in man alone there is quite literally this infinite gap between being and becoming, or existence and potential, or "is" and "can be." This "remainder" -- this imarginal space we in-habit at the vertical center of the cosmos -- is everything.

Obviously, a man without imagination is not a man; but a man with imagination is dangerous animal, to be sure. So where does that leaf an upright biped who is downright out of his tree?

Much of history -- and certainly on an individual basis -- has to do with adapting to the exceedingly strange condition of having a mind. Think about it: it is the only organ that has a mind of its own except for the penis.

Only man is not Master of his Domain. To paraphrase Bion, the perennial problem for man is thoughts and what to do about them. But man must first evolve the thinker in this life. Thus, in the words of Don Colacho, Men disagree less because they think differently than because they do not think.

And many -- if not most -- people never reach the stage at which they are able to think their own thoughts and then take them deeper: "Religious thought does not go forward, like scientific thought, but rather goes deeper" (Don Colacho's Aphorisms). Religion is here to (among other things) help us manage our minds and go deeper with them.

But people will do virtually anything to avoid thinking their thoughts, and the very existence of my disreputable profession proves it. No other animal needs a "psychologist" to help it find out who it actually is and to manage what it is thinking behind its back!

The evolution of the thinker involves first and foremost interiorizing what is exteriorized. For most of man's history, he has instinctively projected and exteriorized consciousness, either in toto or in bits and pieces that he cannot tolerate and/or integrate.

Only very gradually has man discovered that consciousness is within. And not only that, for consciousness is withinness as such; the I AM is the within of Being; and I is prior to AM. It's really I → AM → Me, or beyond-being, being, existence.

But man repeatedly makes the error of projecting existential problems into the world and then imagining they can be solved that way. But they cannot be. They are permanent features of human existence. Which is why Social problems are the favorite refuge of those fleeing their own problems (DC).

And not only! For the frustrations intrinsic to life -- to the embodiment of imagination -- are often the very boundaries that need to be respected in order for growth to take place: The barriers life frequently throws across our way are not obstacles for us to demolish; they are silent warnings that divert us onto the right path (DC).

The leftist unconsciously knows -- or unKnows -- that the problem is man, which is why all forms of leftism ultimately redound to the elimination rather than cultivation of man. For the Lie is always parasitic on the Truth which it requires in order to exist at all; the Lie requires a perverse sort of thinker, whereas Truth just is. If no one thinks it, it will still exist. Forever.

The genuine problems that confront man are by no means "solved" by the left, just systematically ignored and obliterated, to man's eternal detriment. In the ideal world of the left, it would be against the law to even talk about the real problem(s); hence, political correctness, which is simply totalitarianism by other means.

It is analogous to the street maps of the old Soviet Union. You could be standing right outside a grand Orthodox church which was nowhere depicted on state-approved maps. Thus, you could be cheek-to-jowl with the Truth, and yet, "nowhere."

It is also possible -- and likely -- for a man to only imagine that he knows: We eventually understand the man who knows what he is saying, no matter how complicated what it is he is saying. But it is impossible to understand the man who merely imagines that he knows [what he is saying] (DC).

The Raccoon knows that the world cannot be explained "scientifically," for this would not only make for a world unworthy of man's presence in it, but would render life completely worthless, not to mention as dull as dirt and tedious as the tenured.

But The expert believes he is a superior being, because he knows what, by definition, anybody can learn. And bear in mind that this is not so much an imaginary world as an abstract one. No one can actually live in the scientistic world, and only a severely autistic person would even try.

The great danger of the scientistic worldview is that it not only allows, but forces, one to think thoughts one never had, and therefore to be something one is not and could never be.

Anyway. Back to Dante's dream, wherein we are finally about to enter purgatory proper. We've been fumfering around the first terrace long enough. Time to be an accomplice to Dante's climb. Let's do this thing!

Monday. Until then, pleasant dreams.