E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c D.r.e.a.m.s Subscribe: electric-dreams-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: electric-dreams-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Subscribe Online: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/electric-dreams o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c D.r.e.a.m.s Volume #12 Issue #1 January 2005 ISSN# 1089 4284 o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Download a cover for this issue: http://tinyurl.com/4ruh3 o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o C O N T E N T S ++ Editor's Notes ++ Global Dreaming News – Harry Bosma ++ Column: An Excerpt From the Lucid Dream Exchange Sleep Paralysis: If You Can't Avoid its Occurrence, Can You Change the Experience? Lucy Gillis ++ Article: Out-of-Body in Bird Form Linda L. Magallón ++ Column: The View From the Bridge A Peace Dream Voyager Olivia Strand ++ Article: Whitehead's Process Theory and Dreaming Richard Catlett Wilkerson ++ Article: Susan Sontag – A Farwell Dream Richard Wilkerson ++ DREAM SECTION: Dreams from December, 2004 Host Kat Peters-Midland XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX D E A D L I N E : January 17th deadline for February 2005 submissions XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Post Dreams and Comments on Dreams to: http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple Send news, events, workshops, conferences& reviews to Harry Bosma Send Articles, news and other items to: Richard Wilkerson: o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Editor's Notes o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Welcome to the January 2005 issue of Electric Dreams, your portal to dreams and dreamwork online. If you are new to dreams and dreamwork, please join us on dreamchatters@yahoogroups.com and we will guide you to the resources & groups you need. To join, send an e to dreamchatters-subscribe@yahoogroups.com This month in Electric Dreams: Lucy Gillis is a guide for students, researchers, authors, film makers and others in the world of lucid dreaming, and publishes research, articles, and interviews in the Lucid Dream Exchange. This month she offers Electric Dreams an except of an article on Sleep Paralysis and how you can use the same techniques that work for lucidity to get a handle on sleep paralysis. A skill set every dreamworker should know. Linda Lane Magallón (author of "Mutual Dreaming") furthers her research on flying dreaming. This month, in "Out-of-Body in Bird Form" Magallón connects flying dreams and Out-of-Body experiences with the art and imagination of cultures from other places and times and ponders how many of these depictions of flying beasts are really an expression of our own imaginal flights. Jean Campbell takes a vacation this month and invites guest speaker, Olivia Strand to fill us in on the activities of the World Dream Peace Bridge. Olivia give here view of the Bridge as a trek across time and space, culture and geography, and how the hope of the world lies in the dreams we dream together. Be sure to read all about this in the View From the Bridge. I'm including in the article I wrote on Whitehead, an introduction to his work and how it may be related to dreamwork. Ever since David Pleasant's presentation at the IASD PsiberDreaming Conference, I have been excited about the revival of Whitehead's process theories and how they may contribute to dreamwork. In the next month or two I plan to add an article on how Whitehead can be applied to dream psi. The current article will act as an entrance to Process theory, or a warning, if this isn't your cup of tea. Susan Sontag, a controversial writer, feminist and left political figure, just died. I had been influenced by her work and am including a farewell note I posted on the IASD bulletin board. Have you seen the Electric Dreams Articles Archive? Almost all the articles from the last decade of Electric Dreams are sorted by author, and now, thanks to Janet Garrett, you can see them listed chronologically by issue as well. You can see her work progress and view hundreds of article on dreams at: http://www.improverse.com/ed-articles/index.htm Finally, I have updated the Search Index, so you can search by topic, author or what- have-you. Harry Bosma has collected dream news, web updates, conference announcement and other events in the world of dreaming and you can read about those below in the Global Dreaming News. If you have any dream news, conferences, books, workshops, and especially any online meetings or events, be sure to send that information to Harry by the 15th of each month at ed-news@alquinte.com A broken hobby horse, the1890's, attacked by snakes and dogs, a call from a strange man. What do they all have in common? They are all dreams from the December Dream Section! Kat Peters-Midland has collected the finest from the month and you can read them all. If you want to send in dreams, please enter them at http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple or join the dream flow at dreamflow@yahoogroups.com (dreamflow-subscribe@yahoogroups.com) -------------------- For those of you who are new to dreams and dreaming, be sure to stop by one of the many resources: http://www.dreamtree.com http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/library Electric Dreams in PDF: (thanks to Nick Cumbo) http://electric.dreamofpeace.net/ -------------------- Wishing you the best of dreams, -Richard Wilkerson /////////////////////////////////////////////////////// G L O B A L D R E A M I N G N E W S http://dreamunit.net/news-en/ January 2005 If you have news you'd like to share, simply email Harry Bosma at his special ed- news@alquinte.com address. I can also publish especially European and Asian dream news on the Dreamers United web log, see www.dreamunit.net if you're curious. Online: - Old / new year dreaming with Dream-ruyaTurkiye - History of Dreams course by Richard Wilkerson - Fourth More Lucid Dreams group Physical world: - Discount deadline of the IASD conference - January: Robert Bosnak workshop, California - February: First meeting Danish association - October: Dream Writing conference, UK Books, movies, research: - Women's Big Dreams by Jennie Hatherley - Personal bible research * * * ONLINE * * * --- - Old / new year dreaming with Dream-ruyaTurkiye --- Our next group experiment will be "Goodbye to 2004 - Welcome to 2005 Dreaming" between 29 December - 3 January. We are thinking of it as a past - future projection, precognitive, psi, lucid, etc. dreaming. We can test the results all next year, as well as look back to last year. Ilkin http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dream-ruyaTurkiye/ --- - History of Dreams course by Richard Wilkerson --- A six week online course about dreams, dreaming and dreamwork from online dreamwork pioneer, Richard Wilkerson. This delightful class gives you both e-mail essays on the the history of dreams and dream sharing, as well as interactive groups to teach you ways of working and playing with your dreams. Modules arrive twice a week for six weeks, and cover dreams from ancient Thrace to Cyberspace. Some topics include ancient dreamwork, dreams and spirituality, dream anthropology, Freud, Carl Jung, Fritz Perls, the Dreambody, Grassroots dreamwork, lucid dreaming, telepathic and psi dreaming, the latest in dream-brain science and much more. Six Week Course: $29.99 (US) Register before the 1st of the month. Registration and additional information at http://www.dreamgate.com/class This is a non-accredited class and there will be no psychotherapy provided. Certificates are available. The dreamwork groups are moderated and you must be at least 18 years old to participate. --- - Fourth More Lucid Dreams group --- Harry Bosma is planning to host a fourth More Lucid Dreams group starting at Saturday, February 5th in 2005. The group will run for four weeks on a password protected online discussion forum. For more information please see the Alquinte website: http://alquinte.com/en/ * * * PHYSICAL WORLD * * * --- - Discount deadline of the IASD conference 2005 --- >From the International Association for the Study of Dreams Discount Deadline for Berkeley Conference in December! Hello everyone - I just wanted to remind you that the conference discount ends 31 December 2004 so please register on-line before that date at www.asdreams.org/2005 if you are thinking of attending the IASD 22nd annual conference June 24-28, 2005 at the Doubletree Hotel in Berkeley, California. The discount is roughly 10% off of our early 2005 rate. Also please send in your responses to the Call for Papers before 31 December if you wish to present. We are going to start processing and scheduling early so please get them to Robert Hoss right away with a copy to Alan Siegel VENUE The Conference will be held on the San Francisco Bay at the Doubletree Hotel adjacent to the Berkeley Marina. The hotel is in a beautiful quiet waterfront setting across the bay from the Golden Gate Bridge, and offers spectacular views of the Bay and marina. The site offers a wildlife sanctuary, and large waterfront park, plus ready access to Berkeley and the 4th street shops and restaurants. The San Francisco Bay Area is an ideal cool and sunny summer vacation spot, and with the 4th of July fireworks displays at the marina the weekend following the conference, it makes for a perfect time to stay and vacation in the Bay Area. For that reason the hotel is offering a special vacation package for the 4th of July weekend in addition to the discounted group rates for the Conference. --- - Jan - Robert Bosnak workshop, California --- Embodied Dream Imagery with Robert Bosnak, Psy A. "In this experiential workshop, participants will learn to use dreamwork techniques that give access to embodied states otherwise unconscious. Through incubation methods, participants will learn to seed their dream life and access material relevant to their intentions. This workshop is designed for therapists, people with physical illness wishing to approach their illness through dreams, and artists who want to deepen their involvement with their art." $350 General Admission Special Prices and Meals available Pacifica Graduate Institute Public Programs 249 Lambert Road, Carpinteria, CA 93013 1-805-969-3626, ext 103 publicprograms@pacifica.edu www.pacifica.edu --- - Feb - First meeting Danish association --- This message is meant especially for people who are Danish or living in Denmark and interested in dreams. We are a group of danes who are establishing a danish "branch" of ASD called "Danish Association for the Study of Dreams" or "Foreningen for studiet af Drřmme". Our first general meeting is going to be held in Copenhagen in February. Anyone who is interested is welcome. You can read the (Danish language) invitation on our web site http://www.ffsd.dk/ or you write to mail@ffsd.dk if you have any questions or would like to join the association. Best regards on behalf of the initiative-group Anders Vogt --- - Oct - Dream Writing conference, UK --- A two-day conference October 15-16, 2005 The University of Kent, United Kingdom We live alongside our dreams, even if it is not to our liking. Not only are dreams recurrent themes in literary and visual representations, but theories of dreams and dreaming permeate all humanities disciplines. The dream is a potent critical tool; we suggest 'dream' could be the name of a new genre, like 'film'. We are surprisingly uncritical of our appropriation of dreams, which are too often taken to mean something else – symbols, manifestations of our psyche, or as a literary or rhetorical device through which truth, otherwise suppressed, slips into the open. This interdisciplinary conference wishes to shed fresh light on our relationship with dream and the mysteries of its allure, in order to redefine our approach to dreams. We will explore how, when, and why dreams come to us within the academic disciplines (or do we resort to dreams?). We wish to read dreams alongside and against psychoanalysis, and to ask to what extent 'dreams write', how much the texts we read and produce in our daily life are informed by dreams, or by our understanding of what dreams are. We seek to bring together different disciplines, practices and genres through the theme of dream writing. Papers are thus sought across the humanities (literature, art, film, history, philosophy, anthropology, creative writing, etc), from specialists and non-specialists of dream theories. We welcome unique approaches to all aspects of dreams and dream writing, pointing to new ways of dreaming through reading / writing / conceptualising dreams. Possible topics include, but are not limited to : * Dreams and writing * Dreams and language * Dreams and psychoanalysis * Interpretation of dreams * The politics and ideologies of dreaming * Translation theories and dreams * Dreams and intertextuality * Dreaming in the different epistemes – the Middle Age, Renaissance, pre-Freudian, non-European dreams etc, their dream theories, and/or their place in our contemporary ways of dreaming. Philosophy of dreams, history of dreaming * Race and dreams: colonial and anthropological dreams, fantasy and dreams as the Other. Postcolonial uses of the dream space, e.g. dreams as the site of identities/ ethnicities * Arts and dreaming: films, photography, sculpture, music, etc. * Architectural dreams * Alternative spaces of dreaming: computer games, drugs and hallucination, utopias, travels, daydreaming, etc. * Geography of dreams, dreamland * Nightmares, fear, panic, sanity * Political dreams, ethical dreams * Dreams and consumerism * Dreams and memory * Censorship and boundaries. Dream as a genre * Dream and literature, dream journals, autobiography, poems, etc. * Dreams and religion: theology; dreaming with God(s), God as a dream. * Sexuality and dreams; gendered dreams * Voices in dreams. Bodies or materiality of dreams * Dream universities Please send an abstract to Kaori Nagai (K.Nagai@kent.ac.uk) by 20 April 2005. For further details and enquiries, please contact : Dr. Kaori Nagai / Dr. Sarah Wood School of English The University of Kent Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NZ, UK e-mail : K.Nagai@kent.ac.uk * * * BOOKS, MOVIES, RESEARCH * * * --- Women's Big Dreams by Jennie Hatherley --- Although trained in various therapeutic fields and highly interested in Jungian thought - my book was more of an exploration of people's experiences based on a simple premise that dreams are a part of our neglected natural intuition. In a world where we are far too busy with the problems of daily survival dreams seem to try and help us reflect on healthier ways of being. They sharpen our intuition and instincts and tell us more about ourselves than any expert could ever reveal. There are some wonderful examples in the book on how everyday people have responded to their dreams - often being moved to change. Although it is titled Women's Big Dreams, it is equally relevant to men. For more details, see Amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0850919193/qid=1101935785/sr=1- 6/ref=sr_1_6/102-1707812-0090562?v=glance&s=books --- Personal bible research --- My name is Elton E. Fonseca and I am E-mailing you in Referance to my Webpage which I originally started in 2001, all of the Info on my Webpage is Verifiable and can be proven through Government Sources who have Copies of my Webpage through the Year 2004, you are welcome to use my Webpage Info for any editorials, webpage address http://community-2.webtv.net/eltonfon. Happy Holidays and hope to hear from you. Sincerely, E.E.F. --- Virtual Reality research --- My name is Barry I am currently studying towards my degree in Virtual Reality. I was wondering if you could spare 5 minutes and fill in a dream related online questionnaire. The questionnaire is to help me in completing my dissertation. Dissertation outlook: Companies spend millions developing ultimate virtual environments that depict a detailed representation of reality to a user. But anyone can make one a 100 times greater than these. Using our minds as the super computer to create the environments and our dreams to display them. With Lucid dreams we are able to control and change our dream environment as we see fit, something Virtual reality simulations are far from achieving. So wouldn't this make our dreams the ultimate virtual reality experience? The link to the questionnaire is http://www.euphemia.net/questionnaire/questionnaire.html This would be extremely helpful in completing my dissertation. Thank you for your time and your help. My appreciation Barry Dowd ------------------------ END NEWS ---------------------- o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o An Excerpt From The Lucid Dream Exchange By Lucy Gillis o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Sleep Paralysis: If You Can't Avoid its Occurrence, Can You Change the Experience? (c) 2004 Lucy Gillis Sleep paralysis (SP) -- a normal, natural, part of the sleep cycle is largely an unknown phenomenon in today's culture. Let's face it, most people are not really interested in the mechanics of the human sleep cycle. During SP (that part of the sleep cycle when all but your eyes are paralyzed during the REM state) the individual is usually unconscious, fast asleep. However, sometimes consciousness can arise during sleep paralysis, so that the individual is conscious, believing himself to be awake, though his body is still paralyzed. But this awareness, though it can feel like your everyday waking consciousness, is not fully awake in the sense that we consider everyday awareness in waking reality. In the "awareness during sleep paralysis" condition the individual can experience visual, auditory, and tactile hallucinations; in other words, dream-like phenomena. Awareness during sleep paralysis may never occur to most individuals; once or twice in a lifetime to some, more frequently for others and, chronically -- nearly all the time -- for yet others. Some people learning to lucid dream or to have out-of-body experiences, will sometimes find themselves in this state. But because they are familiar with (and have an interest in) dreams, they can usually recognize the visual, auditory, and/or tactile hallucinations as "dream stuff." Lucid dreamers, in particular those first learning to lucid dream, use techniques to help program themselves to recognize when they are dreaming. Lucid and non-lucid dreams can be incubated, (programmed) usually with the use of suggestion, repetition, intent, expectation, etc., with excellent results. Many psychologists suggest the use of lucid dreaming to help nightmare sufferers. They encourage their patients to learn to lucid dream so that they can either confront the "monsters in their dreams", conquer them, diminish them, understand them, transform them, etc. This also has proven to have very good results. So, if we can influence our dream experiences by incubation techniques and suggestion, then it stands to reason that the dream-like qualities (hallucinations) seen and felt during "awareness during sleep paralysis" might also be influenced by similar techniques. I'm not talking about trying to induce the "awareness during sleep paralysis" phenomenon, rather, why not try to program, or at least influence, the accompanying experience? For instance, if an individual, unaware of the sleep paralysis phenomenon, suddenly experiences it, he may find it to be a very frightening event. If the process continues over time, becomes more frequent, the individual may come to associate that experience with fearful imagery, noises, sensations, etc. so that these phenomena are then expected to occur when SP awareness occurs. In effect, the individual conditions, or programs, his mind to create these fearful experiences when sleep paralysis is felt. In effect, he is doing what dream workers do when they want specific dreams: he is practicing dream incubation, programming his mind for a particular kind of dreaming experience. What if this individual were to change his expectations and beliefs? Easier said than done perhaps, when one has been suffering sleep paralysis for years. But why not try anyway? What would he lose? For most healthy, normal, individuals this may be one way to reduce the anxiety associated with SP. (For those with mental illness, depression, anxiety disorders, insomnia, etc. it is strongly advised to seek professional medical advice before trying this or any similar task.) Perhaps by "reprogramming" his expectations, beliefs, etc. the individual would be able to effectively create neutral, or at best even pleasant dream-like experiences to occur during SP. If successful, the individual might eventually move beyond his fear and may decide to use the sleep paralysis state to an advantage. He may decide to use the SP state as a means to induce lucid dreams. For in effect, the sleep paralysis "sufferer" already has an edge that lucid dreamers strive for -- awareness during sleep. When the individual discovers he's in SP, instead of struggling to wake up, he could attempt to go deeper into sleep, into the dream state, maintaining his lucidity. From there, he could go on to wonderful, exciting, lucid dream adventures. He could even attempt to continue to program his dreaming consciousness while still in the dream state, to create positive, pleasant SP experiences, or even to minimize or rid the awareness during sleep paralysis occurrence. (Sounds contradictory doesn't it? Programming yourself to use the SP condition to initiate lucid dreaming, and then using the lucid dreaming state to program yourself to not have awareness during SP!!) You may not achieve your desired results overnight (then again, maybe you can!!). Remember that each person's SP experiences, interpretations (of the event), and history are unique. Not everyone will proceed in the same way, or have the same results. But I do believe that with determination and focus, and by changing your beliefs, thoughts, and expectations about SP, and by using suggestion (or any technique you are comfortable with) that you can program yourself for a different, positive, experience. You might then even use the sleep paralysis state itself as a gateway into lucid dreaming, where you can continue your dreaming adventures in a more pleasant, productive, and joyful way. ******************************** The Lucid Dream Exchange is a quarterly newsletter featuring lucid dreams and lucid dream related articles and interviews. To subscribe to The Lucid Dream Exchange send a blank email to: TheLucidDreamExchange-subscribe@yahoogroups.com You can also check us out at www.dreaminglucid.com ******************************** o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Out-of-Body in Bird Form ©2004 Linda L. Magallón (From "How To Fly") o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o According to the most popular presumption, dreams are not what they seem. They stand for something else, so they must be deciphered to discover exactly what it is. The interpretation of dreams has been with us since the dawn of recorded history. However, there's an alternate approach that stretches even further back in time. It's the assumption that at least some sleeping events are literal rather than symbolic. The dreamer exists and travels in an actual world. This perspective is commonly called the OBE, or out-of-body experience. Flying dreams have bounced back and forth between literal and symbolic explanations. They are claimed by both camps: ordinary dreams and extraordinary. Thus, they are uniquely positioned to serve as a transit from one to the other and back again. There are distinct differences between these two perspectives of consciousness. For one thing, with an OBE, the emphasis is on a *body*. And often, more than one. However, that body doesn't necessarily have to be pictured as a human body. After all, a human body can't fly in the waking world, can it? But something else truly can, something we see with our very eyes, talk about and, most importantly, portray for other people to see. When we do picture it, we imply the idea of flight, whether it be the obvious sort or a type that's hidden from physical sight. Picturing the OBE When Calvin Hall used his statistical content analysis technique on a large batch of dreams in mid-twentieth century, it revealed that the most commonly dreamt animal was a bird. That's reasonable, since there are more species of bird than any other animal on the planet. Now, if you were going to depict a human in flight, how might you go about it? If you were writing or speaking about such an experience, you could be quite straightforward. You'd tell your audience, "I was flying." But if you had no written language, or preferred the visual mode, then the best representation would be a picture. A painting that displays an elaborate landscape would do; you could just add a human figure suspended in the sky. However, if you wished to indicate the idea of flight in general, the more appropriate choice would be something succinct, like a sign or logo. The shortened pictorial version of the OBE puts the human shape together with the shape of something that can truly fly in the waking world. And what's the most common flying creature? A bird, of course. There are several ways you could connect human and bird. You might draw a human figure atop a bird or other flying conveyance. Shamans throughout history report that they have ridden eagles, drums, clouds or horses in the sky on their altered state journeys. Even today native peoples like the Carib, New Guinea and Eskimo take these "magical flights." The Chinese preferred to ride dragons, though. The Greeks and Hebrews favored chariots. On the other hand, you could combine the human and flying creature together. One way would be to retain the full human figure, along with arms and hands, and attach wings to the back. This might render the figure more like an insect than a bird. Still, you'd get the idea across. However, if you based your picture on a truly altered state experience, rather than a romantic reverie, it's more likely you would *feel* like a bird aloft. And birds don't have hands. In New Guinea, a man of the Sambia people had a such an experience. "I climb up a pandanus tree...there is a bog below," he reported. "The bog rises...I am scared...then I look at my hands and they turn into bird wings. I fly into the air and land atop a tree. I see the bog and it subsides into place. I awake with a start.' Cross-cultural studies indicate that about 9/10ths of native peoples profess a belief in the out-of-body experience even today. In the past, the ancient Egyptians believed in a "ba" or soul. A painting from about 1250 B. C. shows the unmoving physical body lying prone, while the ba is represented as a second body, with wings spread, hovering above it. Only the face of the ba is human; the rest of the body is a bird. Awareness of two bodies is very characteristic of the OBE. The Egyptians also did just the opposite. They created many images of bodies that had bird heads, while the rest of the body remained human. These figures may have actually depicted priests who donned bird masks as part of a religious ritual. On the wall of one deep cavern from the Upper Paleolithic Age (at least 15,000 B. C.), bird and human are combined this way. In the Lasceaux cave is a painting of a man that specifically portrays the idea of flight in an altered state of consciousness. He is lying down, with an erection, indicating that he is either in trance or is sleeping, and he has a bird's head. In that prone position, he pictures himself bird-like. Because he lies near a wounded bison, there has been speculation that he is a shaman of the hunt, viewing the bison like a bird would, aloft, from an out-of-body perspective. The doubling of bodies is depicted, too. There is no second human body in the Lasceaux cave painting, but there is a second bird. Next to the man with the bird's head is a staff with another bird atop it. Why wouldn't there two human bodies, like in the common image of the OBE? Simple. If the man was a shaman, he had only one human body - the sleeping one. His other body was a winged creature. Shamans are "shape shifters," turning into a bat, bird or insect in order to fly. A medicine man in Central Australia had a "shape shifting" experience that shifted right back again. He dreamt that he went out-of-body. His soul was at first transformed into the shape of a feather and the wind blew it to the west. It "rolled over, disappeared in the sand and went right in under the ground." When he came out of the ground, he looked like himself, in waking life. The medicine man flew up to the Milky Way, to a black hill called Talarara, "where the souls always fly to when they go up to the sky." He flew from one point of the Milky Way to the other before coming back into his body at daylight. Actually, an out-of-body human can be represented as a bird, period. It's pretty difficult to tell if that bird is symbolizing a human aloft and not the physical animal, unless, perhaps, human and bird are depicted together in the same two-dimensional painting. For three-dimensional creations, the two images are usually merged. From archeological digs around the world, there are iconographic representations of humanoid figures with wings, bird heads, bird bodies, bird feet or some other combination. Such images have been sculpted in stone, etched on rock cliffs and baked in clay. It's usually assumed that these were gods, goddesses, angels, demons or other denizens of the inner realms. However, there's reason to believe that some of the depictions were of actual humans, with bird parts symbolizing their out-of-body flight. Excursion of the Spirit "If the sleeper sees things which meet his desires, that is because the soul, knowing all forms, can, when it is purified in sleep from the defilements of the body, float at ease over everything that it desires to possess, although it well knows that in the waking state it could not enjoy such a privilege." So wrote Mas'udi Ali ibn Husayn of Bagdad (946- 974 A. D.). "It is thus that a man sees himself flying in the air, although in reality he does not possess the ability to fly. He really only sees the form of flight, without bodily participation, as he knows it is not executed before his eyes, but his thought, concentrated on this operation, acquires enough force to make it really sensible to him." Besides Mas'udi and the Egyptians, many people have described an OBE as an excursion of the soul or spirit. The idea is that whatever transpires in dreams and nightmares is the soul's actual experience and it is an idea found worldwide. This belief in a soul is supported by very realistic nighttime events. While the physical body remains motionless, the dreaming spirit-body is nonetheless capable of movement. Tribal people as far flung as the Azande of Africa, Cuna of South America, Rigo of New Guinea, Lepcha and Burmese of Asia, the Huron, Seneca and Iroquois of North America and the Pokomam of Guatemala believe that the dreamer's soul leaves the body at night. It roams in different places, near or far, familiar or unfamiliar, as if it can glide on the wind. About half of native peoples who were surveyed believe that only special people, like a shaman or medicine man, can have an out-of-body experience. The other half believe an OBE is a possibility for nearly everyone at some time or another. I vote for the latter choice. Sleeping Travels Where do out-of-body travelers go? Their dreaming bodies visit places near and far, realistic and fantastic, colorful summerlands and bleak grey netherworlds. For the ancient Assyrians, the dead were like birds, covered with feathers. Although the bodies of the deceased may lie as if they are sleeping, yet in sleep dreamers can interact with these individuals as if they were still alive. When the deceased are encountered on the journey, the experience may well engender a belief in an afterlife. In the Kiwai tribe of New Guinea, the land of the hereafter is considered to be an underworld. One tribesman, sick unto death, was told by his people, "You died yesterday." He had dreamt that while visiting the netherland, he was kicked from behind. He flew up and landed where he was lying in the physical world and thus returned to life. Some sleepers travel in an alternate reality, such as to the realm of the gods or ancestors or the after-death state. Others travel within what seems to be the physical world. One Kwakiutl dreamer from the Pacific Northwest stated, "In my dream I flew upwards. It was as though I was going to the place where the stars were showing in the daytime. I saw all around our world. Then I wished in vain to go down again. I was not able to do so. I was very afraid. Then I awoke." The Rar‡muri (or Tarahumara) Indians of the Sierra Madre mountains in northern Mexico seem to fly much closer to the ground. They consider dreams to be the activities of a person's principal soul during sleep. When they are unencumbered by the bodies in which they live, these souls can travel very fast and even fly. The small whirlwinds that speed across the desert countryside are said to be souls in transit. Some cultures draw no sharp distinction between the world of dreams and the world of waking life. After an African chief dreamt that he had visited England and Portugal, he awoke, dressed in Western clothes and described his trip to his people. They greeted him and congratulated him on his safe journey. No matter what the form the dreaming body takes, whether it be human, bird, feather or whirlwind, it is capable of flight. If it's depicted for the rest of the world to see, would the artwork look like a person, an animal, a bird-part or even a simple spiral? Any of these are possible, and more. When we look at pictographs on stone, images on pottery or drawings on cave walls, we are tempted to popular conclusions. But perhaps, with first- hand experience of dreaming flight, we might interpret such images through new eyes, as evidence of humans describing their out-of-body adventures. References Cotterell, Arthur (Ed.) The Encyclopedia of Ancient Civilizations. NY: Mayflower Books, 1980. Coxhead, David & Susan Hiller. Dreams: Visions of the Night. NY: Avon Books, 1975. de Becker, Raymond. The Understanding of Dreams. New York: Hawthorn, 1968. Dentan, Robert Knox & Laura J. McClusky. "Pity the Bones by Wandering River Which Still in Lovers' Dreams Appear as Men." In The Functions of Dreaming, Alan Moffitt, Melton Kramer, Robert Hoffmann, eds. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993, 489 -548. Dreams and Dreaming. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1990. Garfield, Patricia. Your Child's Dreams. NY: Ballantine, 1984. Herdt, Gilbert. "Selfhood and Discourse in Sambia Dream Sharing," in Tedlock, Barbara. Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 55-85. Lincoln, Jackson Steward. The Dream in Primitive Cultures. London: Cresset Press, 1935. Merrill, William. "The Rar‡muri Stereotype of Dreams," in Tedlock, Barbara. Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Psychic Voyages. (Editors of Time-Life.) Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1987. Roheim, Giza. The Gates of the Dream. New York: International Universities Press, 1952. Stein, Wendy. Shamans/Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1991. Talbot, Michael. The Holographic Universe. NY: Harper Collins, 1991. Zaleski, Carol Goldsmith. Otherworld Journeys. NY: Oxford University Press, 1987. http://members.aol.com/caseyflyer/flying/dreams.html (Dream Flights) © 2004 Linda Lane Magallón o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o THE VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE A Peace Dream Voyager December 2004 – January 2005 2004 Olivia Strand o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o For many I guess the image of a bridge suggests one of reaching out, or of closing, or bridging, a gap. When Jean welcomed me onto the Bridge, after last month's DaFuMu dreaming, I instead had a completely different image – I thought of Star Trek! And the more I thought about this simile, the more I liked it. Most of the time it looks as if the crew on the Bridge have an excellent view of space ahead, much as a jet pilot can see through the windows of his cockpit. Only the space ship has no windows, instead the ship's sensors scan the surrounding space, and display what they 'see' on a large screen. At other times the screen acts as a communication link, as the S.S. Voyager encounters alien races on its journey home through the Delta quadrant. My computer works a bit like that, with a 56K modem functioning as 'sensors' and where my flat screen displays messages from, well, not exactly aliens, but dreamers from all over the world. And if you regularly read this column you will by now have figured out that Jean has taken a holiday, and I can tell you that this particular dream view from the Bridge comes to you through the eyes of Olivia. But oh, how busy the past four weeks seemed, on the Bridge! Never before did I belong to a group where so much information flowed between its members. When I first joined, and hadn't checked my email for about three hours, I had 24 messages! If I felt almost overwhelmed at first, I have since found the World Dreams Peace Bridge an interesting group to belong to. Many things get discussed, and I for one have found it refreshing to again share views on topical and political matters. How many of us can go weeks and months without anyone in our family, or at our workplace, ever mentioning the news, let alone the ongoing war in Iraq? In the UK, where I live, coverage of Iraq has become reduced to a mere trickle, since the Black Watch returned home – in time for Christmas, mind, just as Tony Blair had promised – with media highlighting only some of the most violent flare-ups. However, many members of the Bridge have alternate sources of news, often from inside Iraq, and news and links get shared amongst us. The Bridge received new members during the past month, as well, this time adding to the number of Muslims in our inter-faith group, and providing us with more direct links to Iraq. Iraq has seemed very much the focus for the past month, with much discussion and many members sharing dreams, dreams that often seemed as if through the eyes of one of the Iraqi people, as they try to go about their daily business. The subject of dreaming itself came up for discussion, as in whether or not dreams will bring peace and feed the hungry. "No, they won't," seems the simple answer, and yet, if we lose our dreams, we lose a vital aspect of our humanity. The Turkish have this wonderful saying, "You make things come true as long as you can dream," which to me illustrates not only a deep spiritual truth, but resonates with the very reason I joined the Bridge. As I understand it, one of the cornerstones of the work of the World Dreams Peace Bridge, part of its foundation, rests on the principle that only that of which we can dream – in the widest sense of the word – can become a manifest reality in the physical world. Perhaps one of this group's main tasks centres on holding the dreams of peace, and of a just and fair world, alive. Alive, for those who cannot in the moment feel or know peace, love, or serenity, because they no longer have a home to return to, or they have lost those near and dear, and lack even the grim consolation of a grave to visit, or their children waste before their eyes because they can find neither food nor medicine. No, dreams alone will not bring peace, justice, or food, to those in need. Vision needs grounding, ideals require implementation, and many of the members of the Bridge engage with precisely that, raising money, not least. And not only members; a group of eight high school students from Vermont, who found the Peace Bridge by googling "Iraq" and "Children," managed to raise $1,500 for the Seasons Art School in Baghdad by holding an art show at their school. Jean has received a package of photos, articles and quotes, and we will soon add a page to the World Dreams Peace Bridge web site to show what they have done. Thank you, guys! Another main event of the month just gone by saw the launch of the first of the monthly DaFuMu dreaming events. We settled for the 15th of each month, a date easy to remember, but chosen in honour of one of the greatest outpourings of peace ever, as the world rallied against the impending war in Iraq on March 15-17, almost two years ago. The overall focus for the monthly DaFuMus centre on the image of the mandala, and indeed several of this month's submitted dreams echo that theme. http://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org/dafumumonthly2.htm And as I close I would like to come back to the subject of Star Trek, once again. While a great fan of the first four series, I can't quite close my eyes to the fact that, futuristic vision and idealism aside, Star Trek seems permeated with a Western world view, and that "To boldly go where no man has gone before" only too easily can read "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," not least if one takes the war on terror, and the war in Iraq into account. And yet, it represents a dream, and perhaps, if peoples of all nations and faiths join the dream, each adding their images of hope, love and wisdom, we might one day know a sustainable peace. Olivia Strand ----------- o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Whitehead's Process Theory and Dreaming Richard Catlett Wilkerson o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o An illustrated version of this article is available at: http://dreamgate.com/pomo/whitehead_and_dreamwork.htm KEY: AI = Adventure of Ideas MT = Modes of Thought PR = Process and Reality PRr = Process and Reality, revised edition SMW = Science and the Modern World "Music is feeling, then, not sound" Wallace Stevens "The basis of experience is emotional" Alfred North Whitehead INTRODUCTION What is the stuff of which dreams are made? Are they completely mental material, cut off from the rest of matter by the prison house of sleep? Are dreams the final froth of a material brain heated by neurotransmissions? Are dreams more imagination, or memory, and what is the difference? Are dreams part of a third realm of stuff between mind and matter, like Neoplatonic psyche/anima/imagination? If dreams are just mental, or if dreams are psyche, how and where do they touch and influence the ideal above or matter below? The placement of dreams in mind or matter is part of a great debate in Western culture that has deeply divided our thinking and is referred to as dualism, or the mind-body split. Our science has decided to look only at the body, and developed materialism has no place for the subject, only the object. If there is a subject, it says, it will eventually be explained as a kind of object. Even in quantum physics where observation becomes a factor, it is considered a problem and nuisance that we will eventually get past. This goes against the grain of our most direct experience, which is, experience. There is something or someone that experiences these objects which seems quite different than the objects experienced. This intuition is so strong that the opposite view to materialism has also been developed, that all is mind, and all objects are really object projected by our mind, or a great mind behind our mind. The third position, the most popular, is a dualism that holds that there is both experience and experiencer, and the object and subject are two distinctly different things. But just how they communicate becomes problematic. How does an object leap over to the subject? How does the subject's will shift from mental to physical? It is with these problems that Whitehead's process theory becomes so valuable. For Whitehead, there is no matter, no mind. Not initially, anyway. These are both errors of abstract concreteness, where we have confused an abstract idea of something as being the real thing itself. Science, Whitehead says, is quite valuable, and has finally seen that matter is really a set of processes in motion, of events. But what science fails to see is that these processes are creative, experiential processes. Rather, science reverts back to its old notion that processes are just a new container for materials. Whitehead's process theory proposes a radically different stuff of which the universe is made, creative experience, or feelings. This doesn't mean that the world is just a projection of our own mind, but rather that the universe is a process of multitudes of experiencing individuals. While most take experience to mean clear, distinct perceptions and ideas, Whitehead sees these, along with object consciousness, as derivative abstractions from our more basic experience of feeling. Since our bodies are not separate from our feelings, so too the individuated bodies of the whole world pass on their feelings. These feelings are not interpretations of the world, but direct nonsensory passages of subjectivity, of interiority, of what he calls occasions of experience, which can creatively synthesize and pass themselves on as novel feeling/thought/forms to subjects in the present who experience them anew. In fact, the experiencing subject will slip into the past and become this very object-once-subject. What we experience is ourselves that we were a moment ago, along with a synthesis other selves that were experiencing a moment ago. Who Was Whitehead? Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), was an amazing, yet humble and reserved man, who had three separate careers. His first career was in England as a mathematician and teacher of at Trinity College, Cambridge. His interests were more in applied mathematics and mechanics, but his theoretical developments were impressive as well. He came up with a universal algebra, he worked with his student Bertrand Russell on the Principia Mathematica, which attempted to reduce all math to logic, and he developed an alternative relativity to Einstein's, which wasn't dependent on the constant speed of light. In 1911 he moved to the University of London and eventually became an educational reformer and administrator. Instead of retiring in 1924, he moved his whole family to America and became a philosopher at Harvard, where he developed his unique Process Theory. His main biographer was Victor Lowe. PROCESS THEORY Whitehead's theory is a process theory. Though its popular now to assume the world is a process rather than an object, this was really something quite new a century ago. And Whitehead's view is still considered one of the most complex and advanced of all process theories. Whitehead lived during a time when science was rapidly revamping its views of about matter and energy. Einstein's convertibility equation, that matter and energy are one and the same thing, liquefied the universe. The whole idea of hard matter melted before us, as mountains became butter flowing out to sea. Yet the notions of matter and substance persisted. Atoms, molecules, electrons, these all hide in them the older notions of matter that goes bump. Processes were still seen as inert, dead matter occurring in space. Personal experience was seen by the sciences seen as an accidental byproduct. For Whitehead, experience is primary, and precedes matter. Matter and substance, even forces and energy, are for him Johnny-come-lately products of our imagination that we have made up for our convenience and we now confuse with reality. However, his 'experience' is something quite unique and separate from human consciousness, though human consciousness is built up out of his primary experiences. For the moment, its best to think of experience as primitive feeling, or awareness with subjectivity and value, which may or may not reach consciousness. Having experience as the primary unit or process of the world means for Whitehead that the internal or subjective aspect of life is returned to the world, and not set aside as it often is in materialism. All individuals, human or not, have experience. This is called panpsychism (pan = all, psychism = psyche) Whitehead is more often referred to as a panexperiencialist, as for him not everything has experience, only special units of process called 'individuals.' An individual can accept influences from the past as a whole, unified organism. Thus we might see individuals in many forms, as sub-atomic processes, atomic processes, molecules, and other beings/becomings that can take in the influences of the past as a unified whole, and give them a unique spin. Just how unique this spin may be will vary dramatically depending on how long an experience can last for an individual. Subatomic processes may have durations of billionth of a second, while an animal with memories may have experiences that last many seconds or longer. The longer one can maintain an experience, the greater the chance of giving it a unique spin. Obviously this kind of experience that an electron has is not the same as what we could call everyday object consciousness, where we can consciously identify tables, chairs, and people. Still, all individuals are composed of experience and receive previous experiences and creatively produce other novel experiences. I will consider the case of dream entities later, but for now, one might imagine a dream character as an entity being able to have feelings and therefore being able to synthesize unique experiences. Whitehead calls these individual experiences 'actual entities'. They are "the final real things of which the world is made up. . . drops of experience, complex and interdependent" (PRr 27, 28). They are also called actual occasions, and occasions of experience, feelings, and prehensions, terms which will be explained below. A table would not be an individual actual entity, but rather is an aggregate of actual entities. So the table is swarming with a multitude of experience, but not as a whole. You or I have full body responses to the world and so have a dominate actual entity (think mind, but not as ghostly as a mind) as well as micro swarms of cellular and atomic and subatomic actual entities. The next thing to know about actual entities is that they are subjects while in the present, and become objects after they move into the past. An atom (that is, a small actual entity at that level) in the table, for example, is in its present an experiencing individual, but then passes into being experienced. These actual entities pass their subjective feelings, their own unifications, directly into the next actual entity. In this way, subjectivity as well as objectivity is inherited by the present actual entity. We don't just get interpretable data, but we get the subjective feeling itself, primitive feelings that are the stuff of which the whole universe is made. Since all things are made of these feelings, we might say that we get objects directly as well, even if they are built up derivatives of actual entities. Only present time actual entities can experience, only past actual entities can be experienced. What they experience is other actual entities. In other words, we experience the world here in the present, though the world experienced is just past, and we feel it directly, its aim to continue in some particular way, and we also have some degree of freedom in passing on something novel as we are connected to the realm of alternatives and possibilities. Prehension The term prehension was first used by Whitehead in relation with causality. (SMW, Chap 4). He was very unhappy with the notion that causality is seen as the bumping of external objects in space. Rather, Whitehead envisioned each event directly including within itself aspects of the events to which it responds temporally as well as spatially, and that it will react selectively towards these events. This process of response through creative incorporation is prehension. One might say it's the connecting of the actual with the possible in an individual evaluation, and individual event, an actual occasion. Though actual entities are the fundamental stuff of which the universe is made, and can't be further divided ontologically, (can't really be divided) we can discuss conceptually the various parts of the process in terms of prehension. Prehending comes from apprehending, without the ape, or conscious animal mind, [Riker 1976] and refers to the grasping/receiving/synthesizing process of actual entities or actual occasions. What is prehended are other actual occasions, which have moved into the past and become objects (objects for other subjects, never material objects in a void). Note the temporal rather than spatial spin. What is at risk here in using such a word as 'object' is a fall back into external relations, of things going bump into one another. Rather, prehension is a process first, one that first takes an objective datum, which it subjectively unifies with other objective datum, and finally passes a unique datum back into objectivity. As a quick model, we might say that here in the present, we experience a whole universe that influences us, and feel this whole thing as one unified thing. It is a multitude or multiplicity of influence that we synthesize into one new experience. And then when our present passes, we will pass this feeling-now-object on to all (individuals) who are experiencing us. The Three Factors of Prehension. Category of Explanation XI: "That every prehension [feeling] consists of three factors: (a) the 'subject' which is prehending, namely, the actual entity in which that prehension is a concrete element; (b) the 'datum' which is prehended; (c) the 'subjective form' which is *how* the subject prehends that datum." (PR pg.28) Note that each prehension is three feelings in one. There is the feeler, the feeling being felt and the feeling of the feelers reaction to what is felt. As Nobo notes, prehension involves a process "in which the occasion unconsciously grasp the objective reality of earlier occasions as efficient causes of its own existence and as determinants of it own initial ingredient subjectivity. " (Nobo 229) Further, a prehension may be divided into its physical and conceptual sides. In its physical form, the prehension is a datum from a previous actual entity. It is a "feeling of a feeling as felt elsewhere" (Leue, chap2). In this subjective form, the physical feeling is said to be conformal, meaning the subjective feeling is passed to the new actual entity. However, this passage or conformation is never complete. This subjective form of physical feeling/prehension is not a sensation nor developed human emotion, but rather more a direct feeling of a something, along with a sense of attraction or aversion. In its conceptual form, the prehension selects from the many alternatives of the universe to individuate or define itself. There is no pure conceptual prehension. These alternatives, called eternal objects, are prehended as hybrids of physical/conceptual datum. That is, the eternal objects are not floating in space, but always come with each physical prehension. Some interpretations of these eternal objects see them like Archetypes or Platonic forms, but more recent interpretations point out that Whitehead did not see them this way at all and they always need to be discussed in relation to physical feelings. Eternal objects are not part of an ideal realm to which physical feelings conform, but rather are part of the pure world of becoming which is never actual nor complete. I think they are better seen as the time-space folds that alter and mutate in alternatives. That is, alternatives are falsely seen as objects of choice, rather than forces of alteration. The process allows the concressing of conceptual feeling to experiment with relevant alterations before actualizing. The process intuits into and experiments with the realm of possibility and selects the most relevant through valuing up or down. Dreamers often notice this in semi-lucid dreams where they are following their own story along in a dream narrative (I'm headed down to the river with a fishing pole to get some fish.) but notice side alternatives cropping up along the way (No, I'm not really going fishing, I'm going to get the boots I left. No, not the boots, the car I parked.). The final recalled dream will have a particular actual narrative, but these alternatives surround it at every turn. One gets the sense in these dreams that while it seems like we are revising the storyline, the more accurate description of what is happening is that the actual final storyline depends and rests on these alternatives or alternating forces. Finally, the completed actual occasion has an aim. These aims are experienced by the next actual occasion as causes, or as Whitehead calls them, efficient causes. These aims must be addressed, but don't completely determine the actual occasion. Since this aim is the final cause of an actual entity, we might say that the feeling process is one of taking account of the universe and synthesizing a subjective purpose that is passed on. And so the stuff of which the universe is made is a creaturely process, multiplicities of entities prehending the universe and carrying the universe forward in creative droplets of experience. There may be groups of actual occasions within larger actual occasions, as with the subatomic particles in an atom, the atoms in a molecule the molecules within a human being, a human within a society and societies within worlds. How Does This Make Any Difference? Sensory and Nonsensory Perception Sensory perception is derivative from two earlier modes of experience, 1. perception in the mode of causal efficacy (physical prehension in the language of perception) , and 2. perception in the mode of presentational immediacy (sense-like data). Perception in the mode of causal efficacy is nonsensory, primitive feeling directly of the world. Whitehead interpreter, David Ray Griffin, suggests that we, as experiencing actual entities, get this directly from our brain, almost in a psychokinetic way, and thus from the nervous system of our whole body. However it is, it is direct, thus a subjective perception, pre-sensory, a feeling. "In prehending my body, for example, I prehend some of its parts as causally efficacious for my own experience. " [Griffin, World Knot, Pg.133] That is, we directly get the world as being important in the flow of causal influence. This includes pleasures and pains, but also a priori categories and external sensory perception. Extrasensory perception takes on a new meaning as well, as direct nonsensory perception needed be limited by traditional views of causality being the bumping up of material objects and their wave patterns. (see Griffin, Archetypal Process and essays by Dave Pleasants). Whitehead cites immediate memory as an example of nonsensual perception. Not long term memory, which is filled in with abstractions, but something more like the memory that allows me to not forget the point as I complete this sentence. It is the immediate visceral grasp of the world. Perception in the mode of presentational immediacy is similar to sense data and more derivative than casual efficacy. Visually it would include space, shape and colors. We know we see yellow, but not why or from whence it came. Yet it defines an area that separates it from the rest of our visual field. Sensory perception combines casual efficacy and presentational immediacy, and might be termed presentation in the mode of symbolic reference. If we say, "Oh, that's the yellow sun." then we may or may not be correct. It might be something else, and it might be we are imagining it rather than seeing it. I can't be wrong that I saw or imagined yellow, and that I had direct primitive feelings about it, but the symbolic mode introduces interpretive possibilities and errors. Thus, while only more complex creatures may have presentational immediacy and symbolic reference, all individuals, down to subatomic particles, perceive in the mode of causal efficiency. That is, from the most complex to the simplest organism, there is emotional, appetitive, purposive experience. There is no reason not to extend this to imaginal creatures as well. In dreams, the debate as to whether our dream characters are really projections of our selves or autonomous creatures often arises. The question in process theory then becomes somewhat different. Its doesn't matter whether our dream entities are projections or independent residents, but rather what actual entities are operative and dominate. That is, the question becomes whether these entities can feel and experience. If they can, then they are as 'real' as any other actual entity in the universe. How long they exist, whether or not they disappear when we wake up or go on living in their own dimensions is irrelevant. Experiences of subatomic particles may be counted in billionths of a second. The relevant question is just as with other societies, how to best help people fulfill their destinies and actualize their potentials. Panpsychism, Again There is a radical difference in the way we treat objects vs. subject in dreamwork, but these differences all shift when we see the dream as the carrier and unique synthesizer of experience. Of course, one wonders what evidence might exist for experience existing in non-living individuals in nature. The basic argument goes as follows; we never encounter in life a element or piece of life that is just hanging around in the void, separate from experience. Even a dream of a void with nothing, if reported, was experienced. Speculations of objects located spatially beyond experience must all be speculated about from experience. We cannot think about relations without experience. We can deny this aspect of the relation (I'm imagining a void without anyone imagining it) but it remains in every equation of relation. For Whitehead, it follows that instead of assuming that the rest of the world besides ourselves *don't* experience, that it is a more sane assumption to understand that all individuals *do* have experience, no matter how primitive, and that the world is their relation to one another. What is What The fallacy of misplaced concreteness, which was discussed above as when one confuses the processes of the world with more derivative objects, is essential to Whitehead's argument. Or more accurately, this view surrounds the issues that process theory addresses. The only truly fundamental items of the universe are experiences, actual occasions. Notions of force, atoms, photons, electrons and the like are abstract entities that we have created to understand the world, and not parts of the fundamental structure of the world. And for Whitehead, problematic units as well, since they describe realty without reference to experience. It may serve us to not confuse actual entities and the societies they produce with the multitude of objects void of experience with which we have inhabited our world. In dreamwork, this is somewhat more difficult on one side and yet simple on the other. Tables, windows and other aggregate objects in waking life, unable as wholes to respond with any creative unity, may be actual entities in our dreams, capable of very create feelings. On the other hand, dreamworkers are very aware that dreams are already experience. Mind-Body Dualism Because actual entities are subjects in the present, objects in the past, the mind-body issue is dramatically shifted. Instead of wondering how mind stuff over here gets connected with body stuff over there, in process theory, everything is mind in present, and body in the past. The division is not here and there, but now and then. Again, dreamworkers are acutely aware of how the present feeling manifests as a reality in the next moment that can be experienced. Also, dreamworkers are not surprised by dreams enduring beyond sleep in the form of complex images, thoughts and feelings. By focusing on these dreams, the relevancy of their actual occasions allows them to connect directly with life, other dreamers, and the universe. GLOSSARY ------------------ Actual occasion: an enduring moment of experience, a unifying process, a feeling. Also called an actual entity, and sometimes just called feeling, where something is felt, and felt with affective tone. Concrescence: the process by which actual entities prehend other actual entities and then form new occasions. Kline suggests 'concrescence' to mean the internal adventure of becoming of the final real things, and 'concretum' to refer to the objectified actual occasion, the past product of a present concrescent process. Causal Efficacy: The direct, nonsensual prehension of the past. "Sympathy, that is, feeling the feeling in another and feeling conformally with another" (PRr 246). Perception in the mode of causal efficacy is a vague but powerful emotion. " . . . in the silence, the irresistible causal efficacy of nature presses itself upon us . . . the inflow into ourselves of feelings from enveloping nature overwhelms us" (PRr 267). It is "our general sense of existence, as one item among others, in an efficacious actual world" (PRr 271). Eternal Objects: Conceptual objects (rather than subjects) in a state of potentiality. They enter into the actual entity becoming concrete without themselves being actual. Eternal objects (alternative non-actuals) enter into the concrescence of an actual entity through valuation, as a hierarchy. Alternatives are selected, some as more relevant than others, but to become actual, the occasion must become definite. "Potentiality becomes reality; and yet retains its message of alternatives which the actual entity has avoided" (PRr 226). Prehension: The way a feeling or actual occasion grasps the world, at the same time, as an object and a subjective feeling. "The word perceive is, in our common usage, shot through and through with the notion of cognitive apprehension. So is the word apprehension, even with the adjective cognitive omitted. I will use the word prehension for uncognitive apprehension: by this I mean apprehension which may or may not be cognitive."SMW., p. l0l. REFERENCES Easton, T and Keeton, H. (2004). Physics and Whitehead: Quantum, Process, and Experience. State University of New York Press: Albany, NY. Griffin, David Ray (1998). Unsnarling the World-Knot: consciousness, Freedom and the Mind-Body problem. University of California Press: Berkeley. Griffin, David Ray (1989). Archetypal Process: Self and Divine In Whitehead, Jung and Hillman. Northwestern University Press: Evanston, IL. Lowe, Victor, (1990) Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and His Work : Volume I & II Johns Hopkins University: Princeton, NJ. Leue, William Hendrichs (2004). Metaphysical Foundations for a Theory of Value in the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Available online at: http://www.thoughtsnmemories.net/whitehead2c.htm Nobo, Jorge Luis (2004). Whitehead and the Quantum Experience. In Easton, T and Keeton, H. (2004). Physics and Whitehead: Quantum, Process, and Experience. State University of New York Press: Albany, NY. Pleasants, David (2002). Panpsychism, Intersubjectivity and the Nature of Time. Available online at: http://www.geocities.com/dave_pleasants/Panpsychism_and_Intersubjectivity.html Pleasants, David (2003). Transtemporal dreaming: intersubjectivity, precognition, and the physics of time. Presentation at the 2003 Berkeley Conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. Available online at: http://www.asdreams.org/2003/abstracts/pleasants.htm Pleasants, David (2003). Precognitive Dreaming and the Physics of Time. Presentation at the 2003 IASD PsiberDreaming Conference. Online, passwords needed. http://www.asdreams.org/psi2003/psiboard/papers/david_pleasants001.htm Riker, John (1976). Non-Deistic Process Theory of Alfred North Whitehead. Class notes from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO. Whitehead, Alfred North (1978). Process and Reality ,Revised Edition. [Edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne], The Free Press: New York, New York. Whitehead, Alfred North (1933/67) Adventures of Ideas,: Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, MA. Free Press edition, 1967. Whitehead, Alfred North (1938/1968). Modes of Thought. The Macmillan Co., New York. Free-Press edition, 1968. Whitehead, Alfred North (1929). Process and Reality,, The Macmillan Co., New York o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Susan Sontag – A Farwell Dream By Richard Wilkerson o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o I wanted to mention her here due to two of her less well know books. The main one was The Benefactor, a story where a person lived their life *for* their dreams. That is, they would go around and do things to see how they impacted their dreams, a kind of reversal of the way interpretive types approach dreams, as ways of viewing waking life. I also wanted to mention her Against Interpretation, which both irritated and inspired me. While not about dream interpretation, her analysis of intepretation in the arts reveals the power dynamics (the shadow side) of interpretation that can slip into many kinds of interpretive enterprises. "... I don't mean interpretation in the broadest sense, the sense in which Nietzsche (rightly) says, 'There are no facts, only interpretations.' By interpretation, I mean here a conscious act of the mind which illustrates a certain code, certain 'rules' of interpretation. " Though not happy with the impositions of ancient forms of interpretation, she is even harder on contemporary styles: "Interpretation in our own time, however, is even more complex. For the contemporary zeal for the project of interpretation is often prompted not by piety toward the troublesome text (which may conceal an aggression), but by an open aggressiveness, an overt contempt for appearances. The old style of interpretation was insistent, but respectful; it erected another meaning on top of the literal one. The modern style of interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it digs "behind" the text, to find a sub-text which is the true one." "It is always the case that interpretation of this type indicates a dissatisfaction (conscious or unconscious) with the work, a wish to replace it by something else. " "Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories. " "Proust, Joyce, Faulkner, Rilke, Lawrence, Gide . . . one could go on citing author after author; the list is endless of those around whom thick encrustations of interpretation have taken hold. But it should be noted that interpretation is not simply the compliment that mediocrity pays to genius. It is, indeed, the modern way of understanding something, and is applied to works of every quality. " How then, does she envision our encounter with dreams or other works of art? " "What kind of criticism, of commentary on the arts, is desirable today? For I am not saying that works of art are ineffable, that they cannot be described or paraphrased. They can be. The question is how. What would criticism look like that would serve the work of art, not usurp its place? " Susan could have easily said what Oscar Wilde said "It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible." "What is needed, first, is more attention to form in art. If excessive stress on content provokes the arrogance of interpretation, more extended and more thorough descriptions of form would silence. What is needed is a vocabulary - a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, vocabulary - for forms. The best criticism, and it is uncommon, is of this sort that dissolves considerations of content into those of form. " "Equally valuable would be acts of criticism which would supply a really accurate, sharp, loving description of the appearance of a work of art. " Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds from there. This cannot be taken for granted, now. Think of the sheer multiplication of works of art available to every one of us, superadded to the conflicting tastes and odors and sights of the urban environment that bombard our senses. Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life - its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness - conjoin to dull our sensory faculties. And it is in the light of the condition of our senses, our capacities (rather than those of another age), that the task of the critic must be assessed. " "What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more." "Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all". "The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means." "In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art. " Farewell, Susan Sontag. I will miss you irritating and prodding me on to new ground, higher ground, groundless depths. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Dream Section is edited by Kat Peters-Midland _ If you want to send in dreams, enter them at http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple Dream title: none Dream date: not given Dreamer name: dreamer Dream text: I dreamed that a guy that I still have a crush on died. My husband was there and his whole family was too, but they didn't say anything. All I know is that I cried in front of my husband and his entire family. I was saying that I loved him and why did they have take him away and that I loved him so much. Dream comments: I'm married and I want to know, what does this dream mean? Dream title: none Dream date: 10/9/04 Dreamer name: anonymous Dream text: I saw walking along a sidewalk with my boyfriend in broad daylight. I fell into a huge bottomless pit and fell for a while. Then I landed on a sidewalk at a night time scene. Dream comments: none Dream title: hitting Dream date: 9/11/2004 Dreamer name: mouse Dream text: I went up to my sister, who was leaning against a car in my parents' driveway, and proceeded to fist her in the face. One loud smack was heard. I grabbed her and we hugged, not knowing if to cry or not - we just held each other. There was no blood or anything. I could see me holding her, but not her face. After hitting her in the face she asked why I did it, I answered its just the way it has to be. Then the hugging in silence. Dream comments: The loud noise from the smack sort of woke me and that's the only thing I can still hear in my head. Dream title: Snakes Dream date: 12/03 Dreamer name: anonymous Dream text: I am coming out of a house and there are a lot of people standing around. I start walking at the end of walkway and I notice that there are snakes biting me. Not just one or two - there are hundreds of them biting me on my ankle. Dream comments: I have this dream about four to six times a year. I don't know what it means. Dream title: heating Dream date: 11-16-04 Dreamer name: anonymous Dream text: I have always been having dreams lately that my husband is constantly cheating on me. Dream comments: I don't know what it means I wake up crying all the time and mad at my husband why do these mean and why do I have them all of the time? Dream title: End of World #1 Dream date: October Dreamer name: SM Dream text: I was innocent and naďve, just playing in the snow plowed mound just above the bridges' corner. It was the middle of winter. I thought I was safe in all my layers of clothing. All the sudden this yellowish steam comes from the snow as it gets wet. Steam - in the middle of winter. That cannot be good. And it wasn't. Everything started melting. Heat was coming up from under the iced over lake. What about the whole city. That's when "we" (I don't know who "we" were), made a group agreement and we just knew that it was the end of the world. My friend departs and I am running down the stairs of some school. They are cement and hard stairs but they are hot to my feet in the middle of winter. The school appears to feel as if it was in Japan or some Asian country where everything seems to be under this unnatural and quiet control. I am rushing out of the building and mom and I head north. I do not know where Steven was at this time. But we go anyway. As mom fills the car with gas I am terrified watching the huge city across the little lake smoke. The city literally gave off this black smoke and I could see the color of the flames consuming a good quantity of something. It is dying. As for us, we will soon but we are heading north anyway. Even though it is obvious that the whole earth will be destroyed very soon maybe keeping you alive might somehow make things a little bit better. There are so many cars..... We are all going north. But we know what is going to happen. Here in Michigan there is much snow. The glaciers will surely melt and based on how fast that snow was melting we will be drowning going north and being burned alive or cooked by the boiling water that once resembled a frozen lake if we stay. During this crisis we were silly. We stopped to look at some famous Canadian Tree or something. But then again we knew we were kind of delaying the inevitable and just pretending that it's not really going to happen. Then when we do start driving north again we stop shortly after. In the middle of dying we are hungry enough to stop at the car along side of the road that is holding up his trunk and selling much food and supplies from inside his car. We are buying food and flashlights as if we were going to last that long. Dream comments: Several days after having this dream my best friend and cousin both suddenly left to different ends of the country within four days of each other. I like to think it may have been a warning that massive pain and suffering was soon to be endured. Dream title: Only one tooth this time. Dream date: 11/17/04 Dreamer name: SM Dream text: I was forced to wear this retainer inside my mouth. But the funny thing was that I was already suffering with braces on. So the retainers' metal wires wrapped themselves painfully around my braces. Both top and bottom too. It was very slow to put on and hard to sit trough. I was on some secondary mission as well. I was doing two things at once because even although I was concentrating on what was going on in my mouth I was also on a journey walking and going all over the place. Just then it happened. This time I actually saw it happen. It was just slowly slipping down. Before, I had never seen my teeth fall out. The braces weren't there either. The first time two teeth fell and it was horrible. Then two days later all my teeth fell out and I was busy scrambling on the floor looking for them. Frantically I searched as if finding them would fix the problem. I didn't know how it had happened. That was about six months ago and now only one tooth fell out and it was like nothing. Dream comments: I think this came to me because over time hard hits tend to hurt less. We become colder and bitterly attempt disconnecting us from this worlds' society. An oyster makes a pearl to cover up the pain but the problem never goes away. Dream title: headless lady Dream date: 2002 Dreamer name: blue Dream text: I was cleaning the mirror inside a lady's room and saw myself wearing my uniform but headless. I woke up grasping my breath. Dream comments: While having a 3 hour break, I went to my room and had a short nap. I had this terrifying dream. After 2 months I was terminated. I was working in a luxury ship. Is my termination related to my dream? They say it's a blessing that I was terminated because my dream means DEATH. Is these true? Need help. Dream title: Dream date: 11/18/04 Dreamer name: jb Dream text: My friends and I were on a bridge and the bridge was bending over, but not breaking. We got so close to the water without falling in that we could literally taste it. We could reach our hands down and touch it. But the bridge was not broken it was just bending over. And it was a long bridge. Dream comments: none Dream title: Dream date: 11/18/04 Dreamer name: jb Dream text: This dream was about a bridge too. My friends were jumping off a bridge to go swimming. I was down by the side, feeling as if something was wrong. It started to rain, and as I looked down in the water there were sharks that just appeared. I yelled to Travis not to jump "Travis no, stop don't" but he didn't hear me. He and his friend were wrestling and he falls in the water. The sharks didn't eat him but nibbled a little. So I ran on to the bridge and it became very wobbly. There was a kind of porch thing in the middle of the bridge, maybe a foot long. A small fence was dividing the porch and the bridge. It began to rain even harder like a storm. I was so frightened to be on that bridge. I couldn't get off the porch thing. somebody out of the middle of know were came swooped me up, ran to the end of the bridge with me, to where I was before and threw me there was a small piece of a fence that was broken on the ground were he threw me. My face hit the fence and I had the imprint of the fence on my face. I couldn't see, but it stung. Then I see an image coming towards me. Now I'm not married but I ask that image if it is my husband. They respond yes. I ran towards him. I hear in the woods behind me a noise it's a baby bear. I ran onto the bridge and a small door appeared, separating the bridge and the wood. A bigger bear came and there was not way to hold the broken door closed. My husband took off and I said wait "you're my husband your supposed to protect me." So I pulled him toward me and threw him towards the broken door. And I ran. Dream title: none Dream date: 11/18/04 Dreamer name: J Dream text: I had a dream that I was in a train in a black tunnel. When we resurfaced from the tunnel there was a very large hill on the left side of the tunnel and a field on the right. The sky was blue and clear and we were coming close to a two-story farm-style white house that was old and drab. The next thing that happened was there was a large airplane, gun-metal gray, and it started to spin. It looked more like a rocket with boosters than an airliner. It dove straight down behind the house, resurfaced and dove again. The people in the plane could see flames bursting out behind the house and over the hill. The whole time, the train seemed to be completely still! The next thing I knew, the plane came sliding out over the hill and landed right on our train! The train didn't burn and no one was hurt, but the tip of the plane was next to my face, raging in flames. I could still see the flames when I opened my eyes! Dream comments: I have no idea what this means. Dream title: Dog dream Dream date: 18 Nov 2004 Dreamer name: MN Dream text: I was in a park with my partner and two dogs, the park had large rolling hills. I recently just got a new dog which means I now have two, in the dream the dogs were both identical but their personalities were totally different just like in real life one being full of life and the other just plodding along. In the dream I remember going down a lane after one of the dogs and theirs was a large wall I got the feeling like the dog wanted to get over the wall. But I pulled her back the dream skips back to the park and I'm chasing the mad dog all over the park down a large hill. There's a lake and I get the feeling that I have to get away because people are there. Then I'm in a car driving home in a car with my partner and we get a flat. My partner tells me it's a flat. Then we get a second flat but it's a slow puncture, then we get a third flat, and I ask if we're ever going to get there. Then we pull up to a drive and we get out and knock on a door someone opens it and the dream ends Dream comments: none. Dream title: none Dream date: none given Dreamer name: anonymous Dream text: I have dreams of my old boyfriend talking and kissing. Dream comments: In reality we lately haven't talked or anything. What does this mean because I dreamt about him a whole week. Dream title: The swimming pools Dream date: 11/19/04 Dreamer name: anonymous Dream text: I was in the swimming baths. One pool was dirty and the people in it were horrible, pushing and shoving each other. But the sun was shining over the pool and it was warm. The other pool was cold had no sunshine in the shade; however it was clean and new. The people in the pool we nice and friendly. I went in both pools but could not decide which pool to stay in. I wanted to keep warm, but the warm pool was dirty. Dream comments: I thought it meant two situations in my life. One warm and dirty and one cold and new, if that makes sense. Dream title: a baby Dream date: 5 days in a row Dreamer name: C Dream text: I've been having a lot of dreams where I have a baby or I'm taking care of a baby (but most often the baby is mine). So this baby is mine and I love this baby but all of a sudden (and this happens in all of this dreams) my baby turns into a doll. Dream comments: It's really freaking me out – what does this me? Dream title: strange Dream date: this morning Dreamer name: W Dream text: pressure of a saw on my face, I can't see and no blood. Then I woke up. Dream comments: I was just screaming then I woke up Dream title: The meeting. Dream date: Dec 3, 2004 Dreamer name: displeasedidealist Dream text: in the dream, I am at a Walmart type store, as I am shopping (for what, I can't remember). I meet this girl whom I've known for years. As soon as I see her, I hear someone saying "everyone needs to get out!" We go outside the store, where everyone is climbing up the walls, to the top of the store. We follow all these people, and as soon as we get to the top, the sky begins changing colors from blue to red to green, and then combinations of the three. It was like aurora-borealis, except in the early evening, and all over the sky. I said "I hope I get to see you again", and then woke up. Dream comments: The conclusion to this dream comes a week after I had it. As I am in the local mall shopping for Christmas presents for my son, the same girl from my dream comes in. we exchange a glance, but say nothing at all. I pay for the gifts I bought, leave, and haven't seen her since. Hey guys, you are doing a really cool thing here. I've wanted to share this dream with, I guess you'd say, a "professional" for sometime. I don't know if you have ever heard of "Coast-to-Coast am with George Noory", but I shared it with him live on his radio show, and he thought I probably should've spoken to the girl in my dreams when I saw her. I apologize for any grammatical mistakes, and I ask you to please publish this dream. Dream title: none Dream date: none given Dreamer name: anonymous Dream text: about dead family members. Dream comments: none Dream title: conversation with a friend Dream date: 8/27/04 Dreamer name: maidenangel42083 Dream text: I dreamt that my friend, Matt was sitting on a couch and we started to talk. I hugged him in the beginning and then I told him this has to be a dream because you're dead, so this isn't really real. He told me yeah, I was dreaming but that he wanted to hang out with me for a little while. We carried on for a while just talking about stuff but I really don't remember what. At the end I told him "well I gotta go and he said yeah me too, that he was going to help his parents with selling their house. I hugged him goodbye and then I immediately woke up. Dream comments: My childhood friend Matt killed himself in January of this year. He was very close to me and I took his death very hard. The house his parents are selling is the one he killed himself in, what do you think this all meant? Dream title: clear water Dream date: last night Dreamer name: anonymous Dream text: I was sailing a canoe boat swam in the clear water. Suddenly it turned into dense water. I swam and I saw thereafter how clear the water was. Dream comments: Dream title: Don't tell Dream date: 28/11/04 Dreamer name: Charlie Dream text: I had a dream where my boyfriend came round and he was upset and said "why didn't you tell me?" He said someone at school had told him I was leaving for England in 7 months and he was so sad. Dream comments: Truth is in 7 months I do have plans to leave to go back to England and haven't told him. What does this mean? Dream title: Friend to Boyfriend Dream date: 29/11/04 Dreamer name: Jen Dream text: I had a dream about my co-worker kissing me at work. Dream comments: My co-worker has become a good friend and I talk to him about the probs me and my boyfriend have but lately my boyfriend has completely changed and I feel bad for feeling this way towards my co-worker Dream title: none Dream date: none given Dreamer name: anonymous Dream text: I had a dream that someone (a female) ate my child who is 4 years old). Dream comments: Dream title: Dream date: 11/30/2004 Dreamer name: confused Dream text: My dream began with me receiving a phone call from a strange man. He was trying to get a date with me. I was made to believe that my nephew had given him my phone number because he was calling from my nephew's mother's (my sister) cellular phone. Our conversation was long because I was trying to get him to put my nephew on the phone because I wanted to know why he had my sister's phone. My sister and my other family members were in my house with me and they were playing cards. I tried to tell them it was something wrong but they would just say "oh, he's fine". I kept calling the number back and calling my nephew's cell phone. The man answered his phone and I disguised my voice to get information out of him. When I was talking to him I just started to see a lot of dogs that were at the man's house which is where my nephew was supposed to be. There was another man who was being attacked by the dogs. He was letting them attack him (I guess because he felt guilty). A woman came up to that man and slapped him and demanded to know what happened to my nephew. I saw the dogs going into the woods and then I woke up. Dream comments: none Dream title: none given Dream date: 11/29/04 Dreamer name: Db Dream text: I was on a plane with my best friend and I kept looking at the window. It seemed like we weren't moving at all. Finally it was time to land and we began to descend. Next thing I remember is hearing someone with panic in their voice, speaking in terms I do not understand, having to do with the plane. After that I notice that we are going to land on a street, one very close to my old high school. I remember holding on to my friend's back and watching the people in the street panic. Next thing I realize I am on the ground and someone tells me that they have to land vertically. The plane comes out of the sky and lands vertically upright and I run to open the door. An old high school teacher was on the ground and told me I couldn't run to the plane but I did anyway. As I ran over to the plane, and I ripped down the buttons of my high school teacher's shirt in the back. My friends then began to hop out the plane. However, the friend I took out wasn't the one who was on the plane with me. He got out and I found a beer on the floor and I remember feeling guilty for taking it instead of giving it to him. He asked for a Jack and Coke though and my guilt went away. The next thing I remember was going over to my friend who was originally on the plane with me. He was sitting on the hood of a car and I could tell he was about to cry. The last thing I remember was wondering why the plane was not falling over and than it began to, however, the houses it landed on were not breaking Dream comments: Why were my friends in the dream? Why was I off the plane without any explanation? The part with the ripping of the shirt as the plane was standing upright? Dream title: snakes Dream date: 11/21/04 Dreamer name: dreamweeper Dream text: I was walking on the river bank and saw three snakes. One was huge in front of a bar, the other was medium a little farther down from the other, and a small one sunning by the water. They were rattle- snakes of some kind. I was scared of the biggest snake because it was running for me. So I turned my back and ran and I came upon the medium-sized snake which watched me slowly back away from him. A man I don't know or recognize jerks me away from the snake and the snake bites me on my forearm. I could feel the venom going up my arm and slowly through me body. The rest of the dream I continued to try to find help through the crowd of people. Now one could hear or speak to me. They only looked and turned away, even the man that pulled me away from the snake. Eventually I pulled my belt off and put it around my arm. I never made it to the hospital or found any other form of help then I woke up scared. Dream comments: this dream was so real. Towards the end I felt like I was the girl off of Resident evil when she was looking around and everything was empty. The dream was black and white Dream title: Forest of Choice Dream date: 12-1-2004 Dreamer name: wanderer Dream text: I'm wandering through a forest on foot, in low coastal mountains between ocean (where I grew up) and inland valley (where I've lived mostly since). I arrive at a rundown resort of some kind, where there s only a 30-something woman and her young son. She wants me to stay and help her fix up the place, at least for one night. But I realize I don't want to be there and I set out on foot toward the valley below. After I walk for awhile, I see an absolutely straight and very wide highway going down to the valley and out of sight into the distance. First I see it on the terrain and next as on a map, with its five lanes outlined. Then it becomes very bold black and much wider than it would typically be on a map. It seems very much laid out for me. Yet, rather than follow it, I return to the hills and forest. But I still don t want to be there, and I'm thinking of going the other direction toward the coast and my former home. Dream comments: It seems a time of decision and that a part of me knows there's a wide and obvious path to follow, while another part still longs for the apparent 'comfort' of familiarity. Dream title: Someone attempting to kill me Dream date: December 1, 2004 Dreamer name: cal Dream text: Hi, I'm suffering from cancer and I often dream someone is attempting to kill me...That someone is often felt around...I feel he's tied my hands and legs while I'm sleeping and is stabbing a knife in my right eye. Dream comments: What could this mean? I know I might not be surviving too long but what could this mean? I feel some one around always...does it have anything to do with spirits? Dream title: none Dream date: none given Dreamer name: EK Dream text: I've been having these really scary dreams lately, in my dreams I'm laying dead in a coffin and the people attending my funeral are singing my favorite church songs. Dream comments: I've had this dream more than once, what does it mean? Dream title: Boyfriend Dream date: 10/13/2004 Dreamer name: R Dream text: I had dream that I was at a party and guy from my school and my boyfriend were at the same party. My boyfriend was in the other room so I started talking to the guy from school. I told him that I thought my boyfriend was cheating on me, and he said probably. So I asked my boyfriend if he cheated on me. He said yes and laughed in my face. Dream comments: This dream freaked me out Dream title: heart Dream date: 11/10/04 Dreamer name: dinky Dream text: I always have a dream where this gorgeous guy wants me, but I tell him no. He follows me around and tries to hold my hand and kisses me. Sometimes I'll see my boyfriend but he just stares at me. Dream comments: My boyfriend and I have been dating for 2 years, but I don't understand why it bothers me. Dream title: Hiding in locked room Dream date: 12/8/04 Dreamer name: sass Dream text: I'm in a church, but really was a work office. I wanted to go in my office & not be bothered. I kept seeing the door locked. Dream comments: none Dream title: Lost Dream date: 11-30-04 Dreamer name: Amb Dream text: I had a dream that I was a old black man in a school from like the 1800's or something and I was wearing overalls. Then everything just went crazy and there were gunshots and there were young kids from the school running outside. I ran to the edge of the main road from the school and just stood there and I could see myself standing there beside the kids who came out of the school. Even though the person I was looking at was not me, I just knew that that was me in this dream. It was weird. Dream comments: none Dream title: boat Dream date: November 2004 Dreamer name: jh Dream text: I was riding in a boat with I think 15-20 persons in it... we are in a river.... Dream comments: what does my dream mean??? Dream title: snake Dream date: 12-08-2004 Dreamer name: king Dream text: I had a dream that I was eating my pet snake alive. I started by the tail and when about to finish his head was still moving in my mouth. Dream comments: his tongue was moving, I guess its because I just finish watching my snake eat a rodent. Dream title: snake Dream date: snake Dreamer name: anonymous Dream text: I dream of me sleeping with the bunch of snake hugging me. Dream comments: Dream title: 2005 premonition? Dream date: June 2001 Dreamer name: anonymous Dream text: In my dream I realized that I was dreaming. I was excited about having a lucid dream and asked my subconscious what was going to happen in the future. It showed me a deserted playground with a broken hobby horse. I felt cold dread and asked it when this was going to happen. It said Sept 25th. So, of course, the next thing I asked was "what year?" It answered "Sunday". Dream comments: 2005 is the first year that Sept 25th falls on a Sunday since I had that dream. I have had premonitions about things in the past that have come true but not in dream form. Just intense knowings... -------------------- END ISSUE ----------------- -===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===- =---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---= ELECTRIC DREAMS ACCESS INFORMATION =---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---= -===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===- Subscriptions: The Electric Dreams E-zine (issn 1089 4284) is *free* and distributed via email about once a month. 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You can subscribe and send in dreams directly or drop them off anonymously at http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple The archives for DREAM-FLOW are at http://www.mail-archive.com/dream-flow@lists.best.com Post message: dream-flow@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: dream-flow-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: dream-flow-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com List owner: dream-flow-owner@yahoogroups.com URL to this page: http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/dream-flow ================== SUBMITTING ARTICLES, projects and letters-to-the-editor. http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/electric-dreams/publication.htm Electric Dreams is responsive and experimental. If you have articles or suggestions on dreams, dreaming or dreamers - including book reviews, movie suggestions or conferences and meetings, we will publish them. I'm especially interested in creative interpretive approaches to dreams, including verbal, dramatization, and mixed media approaches. Send to: Richard Wilkerson =============== SUBMITTING NEWS and Calendar events related to dreaming. We usually have a deadline at the 15th of each month. Send all events and news to Peggy Coats SENDING IN QUESTIONS, Replies and Concerns about dreams and dreaming. We don't pretend to be the final authority on dreams, but we will submit you questions to our network and other Internet networks. Also, you are free to post special interest requests. Send those to Richard Wilkerson at edreams@dreamgate.com JOINING DREAM GROUPS sponsored by Electric Dreams. If you are interested in joining a group to discuss your dream with peers, contact Richard Wilkerson, rcwilk@dreamgate.com JOINING DISCUSSIONS ON DREAMING. Electric Dreams supports the following discussion groups on dreams and dreaming: -------- DreamChatters dreamchatters-subscribe@yahoogroups.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dreamchatters ---------- The DreamWheel http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dreamwheel dreamwheel-subscribe@yahoogroups.com dreamwheel-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com ---------- DreamShare http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dreamshare dreamshare-subscribe@yahoogroups.com dreamshare-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com ---------- World Dreams Peace Bridge http://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org/index.htm Subscribe: worlddreams-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: worlddreams-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com ELECTRIC DREAMS - DREAMGATE HOME PAGE ON WEB: http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams NEED A COVER for your issues of Electric Dreams? We now provide them and you can download them at http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/ed-covers/ BACK ISSUES OF ELECTRIC DREAMS: WEB: http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/ed-backissues/ ARTICLES BY AUTHOR http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/ed-articles/ Thanks to John Labovitz for putting us on his e-zine list: http://www.meer.net/~johnl/e-zine-list/zines/ electric-dreams.html Thanks to the Dream Network Journal for mentioning the Electric Dreams project. DreamKey@lasal.net http://www.dreamnetwork.net Thanks to the Usenet newsgroups for mentioning us in the FAQ files at alt.dreams and alt.dreams.lucid and for other Usenet Newsgroups for allowing us to continually post messages. Thanks to our many web links! See http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/resources Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z= The Electric Dreams Staff (Current) Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z= Harry Bosma- Global Dreaming News E-mail: ed-news@alquinte.com http://www.alquinte.com Nick Cumbo – Electric Dreams PDF Archive http://www.dreamofpeace.net/community/electricdreams/ Phyllis Howling - Dream Wheel Moderator (eDreams list) E-mail: pthowing@earthlink.net Victoria Quinton Electric Dreams Archives & Reporter DreamChatters Host http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/dreamchatters mermaid 8*) E-mail: mermaid@alphalink.com.au http://www.alphalink.com.au/~mermaid Lars Spivock - Research and Development Director E-mail: lars@dreamgate_remove_to_email_.com Dream Section Editor Kat Peters-Midland http://www.rmdjournal.com/ Archive Specialist Janet Garrett http://www.improverse.com/ed-articles/index.htm Richard Wilkerson - General Editor, Publisher, Articles Editor Subscriptions & Publication E-mail: rcwilk@dreamgate.com http://www.dreamgate.com o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o All dream and article text and art are considered (C)opyright by the writers, artists and dreamers themselves. Anyone other than the authors may use or reprint the text for non- commercial use, but all other use by anyone other than the author must be with the permission of either the author or the current Electric Dreams publisher. o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o DISCLAIMER: Electric Dreams is an independent electronic publication not affiliated with any other organization. The views of our commentators are personal views and not intended as professional advice or psychotherapy. o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o