Recently the ITP faculty attended a workshop that emphasized that students feel more comfortable and work more effectively in courses where they understand the instructor’s philosophy of teaching from the beginning, so here, in a nutshell, is mine.
I always thought I was very lucky and blessed to be able to go to college and graduate school and to make a living doing stuff which, except for some necessary administrative work, was really interesting to me. I sit at my desk occasionally and think “I like to read, to talk, to think, to write, to do research, and to teach – and they pay me to do it! Wow!” By contrast, so many people must work at jobs they dislike or are bored at or make the world a worse place…
I teach this course, even though I’m old enough to retire, because I think its subject matter is interesting and important in making at least a small contribution to our individual and collective psychological and spiritual growth. That you are here at ITP, of your own volition, that you’re taking this course which is an elective, rather than required, allows me to assume that you too are really interested in its subject matter. Thus I don’t have to motivate you to keep up with the readings, to read relevant material beyond what’s required, to contribute both your enthusiasm and doubts and questions in class, and to find it a privilege to write small papers each week to share your own enthusiasm and thinking with me and your fellow students. I bring to class my interest and enthusiasm to share with you, and I’m rewarded by your interest and enthusiasm. Yes, I bing expertise in content too, but that interest and enthusiasm is more important. When I see you grappling with our material, intellectually and experientially, in class or in your papers, I feel I’m a success as a teacher!
If, God forbid, it ever reaches a point where nobody says anything interesting in class and the papers are all nothing but book reports, then it will be time to stop teaching…. I know this may happen someday if I get too old or sick, but I doubt it will happen for lack of student interest and enthusiasm.
Tags: Charles T. Tart, Charles Tart, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, ITP, teaching
Could be, Sandy. Organizing a routine can make a very big difference. My experience lasted about 2 years, fading gradually. None of it frightened me (except the initial realization that I could’ve inadvertently died), but left me pretty haunted. The least of the effects was a constant “white” behind my eyes, and a constant “oceanic his” in my ears. I never had anyone to tell it to, no one would have understood, and I had no idea what in the world such an experience could be for. How could something so incredibly magnificent, so real to me, be just useless?
Eventually I did think to establish a daily routine, which I do to this day. I write down my dreams keeping various intents in mind (the first is to compare with real-time events), and spend the rest of the day “normal” — which over time has incorporated a good number of perceptions people would call “psychic” or whatever. It has, in all, served to create more interesting days at the least.
I feel a little mixed about saying this, since it’s so positive, but as your dream matched what actually happened here in my reality, I also was on the lookout for feeling ill, weary of having to deal with exceedingly foolish things like this (it will take awhile to resolve). I’m almost never ill (also self-taught behavior), but your dream served as a reminder, I took a break, adjusted my attitude, and what felt like was coming on didn’t happen.
Now, the strange “surprise of sadness” I encountered after reading your dream, which may well have heralded the misfortune or death of a loved friend, didn’t happen. I finally located a friend who’s seen him lately. This leaves the rest of your guide’s words in question, and I’ll watch for it.
It’s not going out of my way at all. Had my Turkish friend heeded what I’d dreamed of her, she wouldn’t have been raped. She was too embarrassed to tell me for almost 2 years. I do carry with me daily a kind of caution, also a learned habit, having made my “unusual” choices of perception deliberately with eyes wide open. It’s no burden. It sometimes makes me wonder why so many people aren’t paying attention in this way.
Oh. And also this, also contained in your dream-guide’s words: one of my clients has just been longlisted for the MAN Asia Booker prize. That is spectacular news, and at the same time, is part of the news I’ve been waiting for, from a dream of him a few weeks ago.
Hi Sandy,
Have you looked into the possibility that there might be a subtle secondary condition that is causing you to have difficulty accepting being psychic?
Here is a hypothectical example to illustrate what I mean … if someone had a medical condition that made them irritable, they might start experiencing problems with their relatiosnships. One such condition is hypoglycemia which can cause high levels of stress hormones and low levels of neurotransmitters and one of the symptoms of this is irritability. If this happened the person might not realize they had hypoglycemia and they might go to a marriage councelor to try to get help with their relationship, but what they really needed was to treat the medical condition, hypoglycemia, that caused them to be irritable.
I’m not suggesting you have hypoglycemia or that you are irritable, but maybe there is something going on inside you, besides just the experiences themselves, either organic or cognitive that is making it particularly hard for you to accept being psychic. You mentioned you looked into whether your experiences warrented treatment as hallucinations and you were told that such treatment wasn’t appropriate, maybe you should go back and see if they can find something that might be causing you to have such difficulty accepting the experiences? You do seem to be very psychic, but there are still a lot of people who are psychic and don’t a problem with it.
You wrote:
“I’m really tired of being afraid. I wish I could break out of this cycle of fear, but I don’t know how.”
It is possible that you have an underlying condition that is causing anxiety and being psychic is simply something that becomes a focus for the anxiety. There are also a number of ways to treat anxiety. It might be helpful for you to look into treatment for anxiety even if it is caused directly by your psychic experiences.
Dunno what Sandy would say, but if I had to “accept being psychic” I’d block out everything but how-to-fix-things manuals. Eeek.
“Being a psychic” is a term crusted over with distorted connotations, many negative, all of them pigeonholes. In many perfectly reasonable minds (mine too) it’s synonymous with “being a charlatan.” My sentiment comes from having met many. But the core belief involved goes “now that I am a psychic, I am no longer normal.” It creates unnecessary conflicts that way.
The use of psychic or intuitive abilities may one day be the norm, but it is not now, and there are sensible reasons for that. The sociological aspects have yet to be explored — and if that isn’t in Dr. Tart’s THE END OF MATERIALISM, I don’t know that anyone has yet even considered it.
We may find scholar-quality material for that in studies of African Native Churches — there is a scholar named Anderson at U Birmingham, UK, if I recall correctly, who’s detailed the rise of various African churches in the 20th C. These churches incorporate “psychic” phenomena in their social structure, revitalizing various concepts that were part of early Christianity.
I associated with the Tokoists (tocoistas) of Angola/Congo/elsewhere awhile, doing an editing project. Was even invited to be a pastor. Their structure of organization and their use of intuitive abilities very interesting. But none of their seers’ (vates’
predictions were nearly as accurate as my dreams, a few necessarily pinpoint. I was able to perceive their “cherubim” on a couple of occasions, however, and Simeon Toko himself, as well as his spiritual predecessor Simon Kimbangu, all to useful effects in the project. But the social arrangement still had the flaws as neatly summed up in Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary (my paraphrase abridged):
Clairvoyant, n. One who determines for her client that which he cannot determine for himself, namely, that he is a blockhead.
I’ll keep insisting that an effective scientific method for exploring matters psychic must begin in a study of beliefs, rather than in the apparent results themselves, which can never be anything but apparent — not even when dipping one’s finger into the blood of someone given to stigmata.
@Sandy:
I’m very sorry for my recent posts. My only excuse is that psi really frightens me.
No apology is needed, Sandy! I’m pleased that we can have an honest discussion of fears of psi here – it’s very rare to get it anywhere. I can’t get other parapsychologists, e.g., to admit that they might ever have had a fearful moment with regard to psi.
There’s fear of psi per se and, what I think is more relevant here, fear of social ostracism by publicly admitting to psi experiences. Fortunately you are too smart to run around saying “Look at me, I’m psychic!” so you don’t have actual social problems, just your attitude to work with. You’ve been getting some useful advice from others on that.
There are people who have psychic experiences but, from fear of rejection, never tell anyone about them. They may or may not worry about that a lot. But it may not be as big a deal if we put it in perspective. We’ve almost all had heavy sexual fantasies about others, e.g., but we don’t run around telling everyone we meet who has aroused even an iota of sexual desire how we feel – yet we generally manage to live with that situation. In the scientific circles you run in, strong discretion is a sign of intelligence.
Some scientists will share their psychic experiences with others, but others who are not part of their scientific circles. That’s intelligence and discretion too.
So there’s a realistic component here, indiscretion could be a career buster in your circles. Some people are extremely prejudiced against psi.
When I was young I had an offer of a research job at one of the two leading laboratories working with one of my special research interests. It would have been an advantageous place to work in many ways. But the Director, a prominent psychiatrist, made it clear I could not publish anything dealing with parapsychology if I worked in his lab. He was quite rigid about it, and I turned the job down.
I’ve been relatively up front – that means I’m honest about it, but I don’t rub my unusual interests in people’s faces if I can help it – about my unusual interests in things like altered states and parapsychology, and I’ve paid for it career-wise in terms of denied promotions, unfair hassles and the like, but as an advocate of being more open to this stuff, I didn’t really have the option of complete discretion.
So continue your intelligent discretion, while looking more deeply into how you’ve internalized the negative attitudes of those you want and need acceptance from.
As to fear of psi phenomena per se….that’s a real complicated subject. A friend of mine, e.g., said he has no fear of psi per se: ghosts and spirits do not carry guns or knives, but real people do, so he’s afraid of real people. Somebody/something popping out and saying “Boo!” can scare us, but that can get stale after a while. Whether there’s really anything to be afraid of about the psychic per se….I don’t know, and I’m certainly not going to do research to find out if you can make psi nasty!
It is possible that you have an underlying condition that is causing anxiety and being psychic is simply something that becomes a focus for the anxiety.
When I was in counseling, I was told that constant anxiety is the norm for a grad student. And being a military wife doesn’t help the situation either. So I do come by my anxieties pretty honestly, and yes, that has been a big focus of the counseling sessions. But the fear of psi seems much deeper than just the usual stressful situations in life.
I actually find that I’m most psychic when I’m really happy. That’s when I’m most likely to see ghosts and be able to communicate with them in a meaningful way. When I’m stressed the images become distorted and difficult to understand. When I’m stressed out is also when I have light bulbs going poof and anything electronic needs to be kept a safe distance from me (usually about 2 meters, although most things happen within a meter). Last night my laptop turned on by itself, and the TV malfunctioned (my husband won’t let me touch the remote now).
The electronic stuff going nuts may be a weird sort of defense mechanism. It saved my life once because someone who intended me great harm was frightened away by things turning on by themselves and lights going on and off. He thought that angels were protecting me. I still don’t understand what happened that night. (It was a little more complicated than that, but I am very lucky to be alive). When I’m mad at someone, they often have problems with electronic equipment if I’m nearby (I was annoyed at my husband when the TV behaved badly last night). It may be the ultimate passive/aggressive way of dealing with unpleasant emotions.
I’m afraid that I’ll hurt someone if I get angry. The signal lights on our car malfunction when my husband’s driving scares me. What if I affected something more important that had a really bad effect? I have a lot of fear about precognition too. When I had my NDE, I didn’t just look at the past part of my life. I was told about some of the future parts too. I saw the end of my first marriage and my first husband’s death. I couldn’t do anything to stop those things from happening. I was told about my second marriage and how my current husband will pass away. I actually refused to marry the guy for years because I thought as long as we didn’t get married that he would be safe. I finally relented, but now I worry. He will probably live a long and happy life before his time comes. I was never given the details about time (time wasn’t the same in the NDE place). I’m just really selfish, because I don’t want to be the one left behind. Psi is scary because if it is real, doesn’t that make us much more responsible for what happens in the world? I’m not ready for that kind of responsibility.
Dr. Tart, one of my real-life-lab experiments has been in telling people dreams, in the workplace, here, there, to correspondents. Not bragging of prowess or propounding theory, just watching reactions over considerable periods of time. There is at least a little psychological bridge, in that children still tend to do that. Results: too long to recount. But studying sociological aspects is equally important.
As to what disadvantages openness on the subject has had in my career moves, your account very understandable, but once things appeared to work, fiddle-faddle to you people! I’d never have gotten wealthy had I played the game their way. So can far more enterprising entrepreneurs say the same.
As I’d already been doing it for years from timid first steps, I encouraged one of my dream-group members to try this. She’d dreamed of a woman with an unusual name — just as unusual as “Ronnie Cotton,” to disguise it. She dreamed Ronnie was a teacher who would help her with her poetry and writing. She looked up a Ronnie Cotton on the ‘net, found the head of the English Department at a University well known for its English department of that same name, wrote her “you may think I’m crazy, but…” and they’ve been friends since 1999, Ronnie helping her with her poetry and short stories.
Tellin’ ya.
“Telekinesis” too, Sandy? Well I’ll be darned. Just one experiment for me, fascinating enough, but as you’ve seen, not real practical so far. Maybe one day, with trained groups. My dream-buddy Marcia also made watches stop and lights blink off. One day walking down the causeway of an old shopping center, I said something that disturbed her. The fluorescent sidewalk lights all blinked off and stayed off while Marcia stayed upset — so I noticed. Hmm. So I told her I was just making a joke. She sighed with relief and they came back on instantly. That’s quite a bit of electrical power, isn’t it?
I grew up in a wonderfully ghost-ridden area of upstate New York. Two encounters, myself, several visits to houses locally known for them; very interesting sensations, as though to feel a pervasive medium of uncertainty outside of myself. What we traditionally think of as ghosts — with their stories of a murder or some terribly unrequited thing — may be something like electromagnetic impressions left behind; some may be more sensitive to them than others.
If so, that presupposes an electromagnetic medium in which perceivable phenomena of all kinds exist in different degrees. Maybe “the aether” was not a faulty idea, but taken in a more narrowed direction. It would also imply that this medium is made of the stuff of consciousness.
We are the descendants of civilizations that believed matter was conscious. Evolutionary anthropology ignores this data.
PS Sandy, in keeping my eye out for the last things your dream-guide said of me, I was surprised and saddened yesterday to find out that one of my favorite columnists died on July 19th. His humor did bring a lot of joy.
I’m trying to “hang up” and go do chores, but darn it, one more remark. The “precognitions” of dreams are not necessarily of single events, but of clusters too. Example:
My young friend Udo in Germany wrote me a dream that he was in a movie; in this movie he had to have a car accident, as he wouldn’t realize a certain important thing about himself any other way.
“Watch out, Udo. You’re going to have a car accident if you don’t start thinking about this important thing about yourself,” I replied.
Udo replied with what amounted to intellectual gibberish. I repeated myself. This went on for 3 exchanges of letters.
A a couple of months after I stopped trying to tell him that, Udo wrote me that he had by then had five accidents. One very serious, one a little less so, the other three just fender benders.
“What did I tell you, Udo?” He replied with what amounted to a “duh.”
Whattaya gonna do, Sandy? You can try to talk sense into somebody ’til you’re blue in the face. Intuitive recognition is no different. As to premoniting people’s deaths, understand that most die because they have their inner reasons to do so. None of us are composed of ego alone.
Dr Tart, I don’t find ghosts very scary. I think if it were just a matter of seeing ghosts I’d be OK with that. But I had a very hard time understanding that other people couldn’t see what I saw. That is why it seems crazy. People often react to ghosts that they can’t see. I don’t think that they realize that they do it, but they often do. It is almost as if on some level we all know the ghosts are there, but most of us ignore them somehow. When your friend says he isn’t afraid of ghosts, does he see them? Could the unconscious fear of psi be what keeps most of us from acknowledging the ghosts around us? I know the thought of someone else using psi doesn’t bother me one bit. So if your friend is say, a parapsychologist working with mediums, it should be much easier for him to deal with the ghosts (because he isn’t the medium) than some poor hapless grad student who has to figure out if she is crazy or “gifted”.
When you start to notice psi functioning in the everyday world around you, it can be pretty unsettling. I’m not the only one around here that uses psi, but most people are able to ignore, explain away, or just forget about such experiences. Forgetting is very common. If I hadn’t written down so many of my experiences I would have kept on forgetting them. My adult NDE is an exception to that. For some reason, it is an experience that seems fresh everyday. You always carry it.
I worry that those things that now seem very self evident in how I view the world will not be seen in the same way as my peers. What if I don’t do a good enough job of being discrete? After reading Rupert Sheldrake’s work on Morphic Resonance, I got very excited because it actually helps to make sense of the ways I see colors. It explains why flocks of birds are connected by colors. I thought that if his ideas were true, I should be able to see evidence of it in the geological record. I’ve looked and seen suggestions for such evidence, but my own fears of seeing a truth that can’t be recognized without a price have kept me from looking very closely. I’m afraid that interest in such ideas will lead to me being “outed”. People will know there is something wrong with me. Or they will just think that I’m a bad scientist.
Here’s a couple things, Sandy:
www.thecosmicenergyexperience.com
That’s Hehpsehboah, a friend of mine I haven’t heard from in a few years. She used to call me daily. She’s quite a sweetheart, who has been putting up with an extraordinary psychic talent since she was a little girl, and was used by the Allies in WWII to tell where the germans were going to bomb next. Don’t blame her for how hokey that site looks. She has to depend on the volunteer work of others.
On that site should be the URL for her talk-site at Paltalk Radio, on the internet. You can talk to her yourself if you like. Tell her I still don’t know what to do with her, if you do.
And this is kind of amusing:
http://www.realitysandwich.com.....pshycology
That is, it’s amusing after you get used to what you’ve got. If you’re a graduate student you must be just a kid…
Tom, I’m not quite a kid anymore, although I do laugh when other students ask if my husband is my dad when he picks me up at school. I think the NDE thing makes people seem younger somehow. I went back to school after a car accident that produced the adult NDE. But I had to learn to walk and do other stuff first. So I’m in grad school as a grown up. My step son is old enough to be is grad school too, lol.
Oh, good. Then I don’t have to think back to when I was 24 and remember how all that felt…
Tom,
I really debated about giving this last dream to you. I haven’t had enough of a time out. So I’ll tell you the dream, but don’t give me any feedback. At least not any positive feedback. Or at least put on a spoiler warning so I don’t have to see the feedback if I don’t want to. Although if you want to tell me this is all a load of hooey… go for it! That I could handle. I think this lady talks like a fortune cookie anyway. This stuff is very, very generalized. It could probably apply to anyone.
The punk lady with the ponytail said you were finished dealing with that thorn. She said I should pass this on to you despite my objections. She said you could be trusted. I guess the main point she wanted to make was that you were really focused on a project that you were strongly committed to and that you had to keep the faith that it was going to work out. Even though you didn’t feel like working on it at the moment. But in the end you will find that the integrity of your inner vision will shine through. You’ve learned to be a better person because of recent events. You might just be surprised at the choices you make. You’ll take the high road and be a good person, like a teacher or mentor, and you will feel really happy about it.
Well, Sandy, I, er… was gonna erghmnernwffmm. Fnrrff. Hardfgndrernkphegrkes. Arrrrmfrmrmrmff.
A very good day I had today. Also, I read this review by Roger Ebert and thought of you:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com.....090725/PEO PLE/907279993
It’s a comedy. Judd Apatow, the director, is an old workmate of my wife’s.
And while making no further comment, as you’ve suggested, I’ll say this bit of dream-news: my wife called from Budapest yesterday. She’d had a dream about living there 800 years ago. She said it had something to do with the antique St. John’s Cross medallions we gave each other as gifts when we met, which had something to do with reincarnations. We’d each been carrying one around for years, long before we met.
I didn’t know that Budapest was on her travel agenda. We’d never talked about Budapest before. She called before she’d gotten my e-mail where I’d suggested she keep her eyes open, because I’d had a dream maybe 2 years ago about being in Budapest, and it had something to do with the middle ages and those crosses.
Pretty nifty, eh? But that ain’t nuthin’. We’re on this ranch here that we found very specifically through dreams, no lie. Actually it was me remembering one of hers that did it.
Tom,
Since you were nice enough not to upset me, I thought I would share something about a comment you made about me. You thought of birds. Normally that wouldn’t have meant much to me, but it did have a meaning for the exact time you made that post.
I was in the park where I walk pretty much every day. I had stopped to feed this little chipmunk I call Hoover (because he sucks up the seeds so fast). Hoover has become quite possessive of me and of the handfuls of seeds I hide along this outcrop in the park. He doesn’t like to share, although I always bring way more than one rodent actually requires. At the time you posted your comment, Hoover was busily trying to chase a flock of chickadees away from all the various handfuls of seeds I had put out.
I was looking up at all the birds in the trees and laughing.
Yup, I figured that was a telepathic impression, Sandy. If I “leaned into it” more, right now, it’d serve as a way to sense more — tho’ I’m kind of like you, if everything seems fine, why tune in? In my dream-experiment group there are lots and lots of such occasions recorded.
I’ve been sleeping outside under the New Mexico stars here, and this means the horses wake me up every morning, surrounding the bed and snuffling around for the treats they know I’ve got, and playing with me. That means I forget what I’ve dreamt unless it’s extraordinarily vivid, if I don’t wake in the night and think to jot a few notes down.
I had a very vivid dream in the night, which I woke up to jot down, but was still heavy with sleep and was certain I’d recall in the morning. However, I forgot all but the theme thanks to 4 different noses snuffling me and my blankets. I do remember my thoughts about it.
I was observing a young woman taking lessons in the value of personal integrity — not that she lacked this, but rather, she was being taught advanced lessons, and a certain situation was being used to illustrate it. The teacher was a heavyset old gentleman long well versed in negotiating dream conditions consciously, who, I gathered, lives in a more or less physical form on what we’d think of as another planet in another solar system.
Who the woman was wasn’t specified. She was young (relative to me), with straight brunette-blonde hair, slim. Because a name and identity wasn’t specified, this meant that it represented more than one woman. When I woke it occurred to me that the woman getting these lessons incorporated both you and the woman involved in the mistaken fiasco about which you tuned in. It may also refer to a woman named Marie, a correspondent on Roger Ebert’s blog.
You know how it is when you feel someone is talking about you? Tom was! (He told a story on me and my buddy “Ronnie Cotton”
. So here I am 
Hullo, Doc. Read your philosophy on teaching and give you a hearty slap on the back. But aren’t you in the position of having almost everyone say something interesting?
Ives
Hey, Ives! This is Ives, longtime dream-experiment buddy. “Ronnie Cotton” a darned good pseudonym, eh? Now, I was present to watch Ivey guide herself by way of dream from being an unsuccessful one-legged prostitute to an English Instructor at U Birmingham. Did I get that right, Ivey?
Tom,
This only gets weirder. I was talking to your dream friend, the punk lady, and I woke up. She didn’t stop talking though. I wrote down what I could, but it is much harder understanding these things when you are awake. I might not have interpreted her as well as I could have while asleep, but I didn’t have the issue with remembering everything. I don’t think she’s a ghost, but sometimes people kind of make their own ghosts. I think her name might be Joy. What can I say? This stuff is nuts, but I agreed to pass this along. I’m probably nuts too. Feel free to tell me that this makes no sense, or it is much too generalized to be useful.(Dr Tart, I apologize for getting so far off topic on this weird dream stuff.)
She said you place a very high value on communications as a means of solving problems. She joked that you think a lot of the world’s problems could be solved with adequate communications. The thing is, you’ve been making your points very clearly, but not everything is stuff that you have any real control over. You are trying to provide guidance concerning a project that you are managing, and you have really high hopes for everything in regards to that. You don’t know what to tell people other than to relax and take things one day at a time. You can’t seem to get that through to them.
You would really just like to stay home and relax today.
You are focusing on trying to bring about some big changes. Happy changes. (Maybe the name “Joy” is really just that you are focusing on trying to make everyone happy?) In the end, the people involved are going to take their cues from you and follow your example, but they just aren’t going to do so today. Transformation takes nurturing and support. It isn’t as easy to manage as you might think it should be. Sorry.
Hmmm. Some associative riffing. “Joy” is also an unusual last name I happen to know. Yesterday I got an e-mail from a young woman of that last name. She hailed from upstate New York — which is where one of my college girlfriends was from, whom I haven’t heard from in 25 years. I nearly wrote and asked her whether she was related; the Joy family were blondes, musically and artistically very talented and… nah, I thought. Let it go. Even so, my old girlfriend who might be her relative, named Wendy Joy, was someone I’d dreamed of for years after we broke up; and as it turned out, I’d been tracking her in my dreams all that time — she did indeed move to Alaska as I’d frequently dreamed.
Long story and a complicated thought to relate, associating with who this punk-style lady of your dreams may be. You’d be very surprised to realize how communications in dreams can operate, and I hope some day you settle your mind down enough to realize how fun these surprises can be, much more often than not. Ives’ “Ronnie Cotton” is a nice textbook example, but one of many millions unnoticed I’m sure, how total strangers all around the world relate in their dreams, even arrange “accidental” meetings that way, accidental only because they don’t recall dreaming them.
Maybe I’ll write the young lady surnamed Joy after all… wouldn’t hurt.
What your lady described is pretty much my daily routine and intent. I did at least slack off some today. There’s one project above the others for which I have high hopes and expectations, and that one too is a dream-project, that is, getting practical information about it. I mentioned that one of my clients was just “longlisted” for a very prestigious international literary award — as of Saturday, I think it was. This also matched what you’ve written so far from your dreams.
Your lady may as well have been listening in on a very long phone conversation I had about him yesterday — coming to the same conclusions she related, as you’ve described it.
How far off-topic are we after all? Is this not an educational session? A first-hand lesson in progress? I’m delighted. Lessons like these are unutterably precious, Sandy. And maybe we’re providing a textbook example for Dr. Tart. So do keep going!
I don’t understand why my dreams don’t end when I wake up. There are these experiences that can reach between sleep and awake, but no one ever explains these things and how they work. I’m terrified it means that there is something wrong with me. That maybe the accident that led to my NDE did some real damage that the doctors didn’t find or tell me about.
There seems to be two groups of people I’ve encountered. One group thinks that these experiences are pathological and need to be treated medically, often with some very scary medications. The other group thinks these experiences are exceptional and wonderful, and I must be thrilled to be so gifted. I just want someone to be able to help explain to me what is going on and maybe tell me what I can do to be OK about it. No one does that. No one tells you it is OK to be scared, but things will get better. I’m not some enlightened person ready to experience whatever it is they experience. I’m just a normal person that the universe is playing a really mean prank on. I’m pretty sure this was an accident, or a mistake or something. Maybe the guy driving the truck that sheared my car in half was supposed to be the enlightened one and the universe got its wires crossed. I really don’t know. I just wish there were some sort of middle ground where I could find someone to help me out with this stuff.
Hi Sandy. I’m a friend of Tom’s. I guess I have a different attitude about dreams: to me they are authentic life and all this other stuff (waving my arms expansively to take in all of the physical around me) is unreal. That’s why the images and thoughts in my dreams are as, if not more, important to me than the conscious thoughts I have. And, to me, dreams are not just something that happens when you’re asleep; dreams can happen any time your unconsciousness protudes into consciousness. Hold onto to those images, I say, for this means you are plugged into the stuff life is made of.
Ives
“I don’t understand why my dreams don’t end when I wake up. There are these experiences that can reach between sleep and awake, but no one ever explains these things and how they work. I’m terrified it means that there is something wrong with me.”
It sounds like you are experiencing hypnopompic hallucinations. Usually these are not a sign of anything more serious than a sleep disorder (ie lack of sleep).
You can find out more about this by by searching the internet.
Sometimes it is spelled “hypnapompic”, somtimes it is internchanged with the term hypnogogic or hypnagogic.
Just because they have a scientific name doesn’t mean they do not contain psychic information. If a dream can contain psychic information, then a hynopompic hallucination can too.
“I just want someone to be able to help explain to me what is going on and maybe tell me what I can do to be OK about it. No one does that. No one tells you it is OK to be scared, but things will get better. I’m not some enlightened person ready to experience whatever it is they experience.”
Hi Sandy,
It’s okay to be scared. I used to have a toaster and for some reason I used to check up on it to see if the bread was getting toasted and just as I would look into it the toast would pop up. This happened a few times and it scared the bejeesus out of me. My toaster was haunted! It was influencing me! I stopped making toast for a couple of years until I came to grips with it.
I know someone who sees spirits objectively like you do and at first it scared the @#&
*! out of him too. He wavered between thinking he was crazy and thinking he was being attacked by demons. What helped him is that he got in contact with a reliable medium and started taking classes in mediumship. That helped him to accept his experiences and the spirits started appearing objectively much less frequently. Instead of seeing his ability as a problem, he found meaning in it by helping people working as a medium at a spiritualist church.
Synchronicity?
Fear of toast.
…and just because they’ve been given a latinized label doesn’t mean that will help. Adding “hallucinations” to “hypnopompic” makes it a particularly loaded term. In the wrong hands it might lead to latinized prescriptions that screw people up far worse than a runaway dream ever could. I’m glad you see this.
It isn’t all that okay to be scared, it’s just unavoidable. Otherwise you’re just fine as far as I can see, Sandy. Haven’t I made my own attitude about it clear? It has taken quite a long time to think anything about it but WTF????? But somewhere, somewhere, it HAD to be worth something. I know you’ve got the self-same attitude.
I have a dream for you and an exercise to try out that might ameliorate the problem, with some effort.
Exercise first: sit where you are but don’t relax. Feel your butt on the chair as vividly as you can. From there, a limb at a time, feel your thighs, legs, calves, feet, toes, and back up. Keep the feelings in mind as vividly as you can.
And go upward — feel your stomach, back, chest, arms, hands, fingers, and what they’re feeling, touching the chair or whatever. Feel your neck, head, ears, nose, mouth, the taste in your mouth. Feel yourself breathing. Concentrate on what your eyes are seeing, your ears hearing, skin feeling, everything you can.
Feel everything as vividly as you can. There’s no particular order in which to go. There’s no time limit on this exercise. Feel as you can with the goal of feeling your whole body and all your senses all at once (even if your dream-thoughts continue while you’re doing that).
When you’ve got to that point, reasonably aware of everything in your surroundings and your bodily sensations at once, break your concentration. If say there’s a plane going by, listen to the sound of the plane as intently as you can. Don’t worry if it seems to go through your head, or anything like that. Concentrate with your eyes on whatever’s in front of you. Pay closer attention to something else, your fingers or breathing or whatever. Go around feeling your sensations seperately. You may sense the inner counterparts of these items mentally.
Then once again, try pulling it back together: all of your physical senses and sensations all at once, in one single bodily focus.
Do it as much as you like. Since you’ve had this complaint awhile, it’s going to take some vigor to get back to usual. So be vigorous, and you should probably set some time aside every day to do it. What you’ll be doing is exercising your ability to focus.
Heh. That hasn’t happened to me in quite awhile. Years back I woke myself up from a dream of a gigantic charging snake who loved me very much; it charged right into the room even when I snapped myself awake. I laughed out loud about being so scared of it. The image dissolved very quickly. But I figured I’d have been better off learning the dream-lesson right then and there. Later, I did. In my next snake-dream I’d learned how to make them fly and do my bidding. For some reason the dream took place on an air force base.
The truth is, no one stops dreaming when they wake up. It took me years to realize that. People have no idea how “hypnogogic” they already are, wide awake and in a lively situation at work or whatever.
You’ve always had a habit of charging into decisions too rapidly, I’ll bet, yours or somebody else’s. Anyway, let’s you get back into focus. Do that exercise with vigor, routinely, but don’t strain.
And now my dream: once again, that large old gentleman was involved, and now, the punk-lady guide you’ve described, and yourself seperately. The environment was highly changeable, but comfortable, with images from ancient to modern scenery. This time I was giving a presentation.
I was showing you three how words form reality for people. The large old gentleman didn’t need the lesson, he was just looking on like a teacher watching a student’s presentation.
How I did this was more vivid and fancy than what you’d find in a Harry Potter movie, but not so easy to describe. I’d take a word, which was a concept, which was now encased in a looping energy form — rather like the loops the ancient Egyptians would put around certain key words in their hieroglyphs. The words magically turned into the object or concept they signified. They turned into strings of events.
Awake now, it is easier to describe this way: Do you have any early memories as a toddler? Do you remember learning how to speak, at all?
I remember that charmed and wobbly dreamlike focus; when my dad or mom or brothers would say a word, I’d sometimes see the object intended. They’d say our dog’s name and I’d see the dog — who was most likely outside. My favorite memory was when my mother said “Dad and the boys are bringing in the new kitchen.” What I saw in my 3 year old’s eyesight (which wasn’t so distinct from dreamy inner eyesight) was my father and brothers wheeling in an entire kitchen on a new tile floor, with the refrigerator and stove and cupboards etc. all in place, at once, like a great big toy house.
To this day I love to play with toddlers and watch as they learn to connect language with feelings and objects and objective reality, just as I did. The more precisely we learn language, the more precisely we use our hands as we grow.
In my dream, I was presenting the psychological process as to how this is done directly. We become so habituated to a genuinely hallucinatory reality by later childhood, we forget that the rock-solid physical environment and events we perceive are the results of the habits of thought we are taught.
The large old man observing seemed to be a guide of guides, I think.
@Tom Dark:
>The truth is, no one stops dreaming when they wake up. It took me years to realize that. People have no idea how “hypnogogic” they already are, wide awake and in a lively situation at work or whatever. <
Interesting “coincidence” Tom. Just before reading your comment, I was creating slides to illustrate a panel presentation I will be making at the Parapsychological Association meeting in Seattle next week. I had done one illustrating a point about dreaming that shows a lovely picture of a sleeping baby swathed in colored lights to illustrate dreaming. Then I needed one to illustrate how there’s a world-creation process going on in waking, as well as in dreaming, except in waking the intense flood of sensory impressions from the outside world almost completely drives the process. I was just thinking, shall I leave the baby picture in here but reduce it greatly in size to show that a dreaming-like process goes on even in waking, it’s just normally small and in the background? Hard to see like the stars are hard to see in the day because of the sun’s bright light?
One of the great potential values of insight-type meditation is to make us more aware of that constant background thinking (images and talking to self). With more awareness you can tap it for inspiration at times and/or direct it when it goes in the “wrong” (by current waking needs) direction…
I don’t know how to add pictures to this blog yet, and I’m not sure what the copyright status is on this sort of thing when I’ve pulled the picture off the web, but if anyone wants to see a lovely baby picture try http://sahajapower.files.wordp.....eaming.jpg
This is from an email that I sent Dr Tart earlier today. He suggested that I put it on the blog. I’ve edited it a bit, but I did try to keep the original tone.
Dr Tart,
I’m sorry to bother you. One of my weird dreams talked about you. Nothing bad or anything. I just didn’t know if you would want stuff about you posted on the blog. I don’t expect any feedback; I don’t even expect any of this to be correct. I think people want to believe in psi sometimes to the point where they find meaning in nonsense. Even when people try to be sensible about this stuff, they still really want to believe. I try to be sensible, but I really prefer not to believe.
The dream (the “dream entity/consciousness” was a ball of red and honey-colored light) said that you sometimes wished in the course of your work that you could manage to see the kinds of things that I experience in order to understand it better and so you could be more helpful. It said you were at home. (I hope you aren’t stuck at home because someone is sick.) The ball of light said that you wished people like me could find some fun in the sorts of odd experiences that I have. It said that you even consciously intended that I be happier about psi. You are getting a clearer picture of my experiences and attitudes about psi, and you think that seeing a person going through such a personal transformation is useful. It might help to facilitate this process to help others make these sorts of adjustments. Making that process easier is part of what you wish to give to the world.
The ball of light tried to show me how you think. I though that was kind of funny. I didn’t realize that there were that many different approaches to thinking. You don’t think in a nice sequential 1,2,3, sort of way, do you? It looks random. Like a sort of matrix. If you see the answer and all the steps at the same time, how do you know what order to do things in? Do you just try to do everything at the same time? Working on all the little details of a big picture? Maybe it’s a good way to absorb lots of information really fast? I guess when you worked as a researcher you were probably open to pretty much any outcome for a project. If you were trying to solve one problem, but solved another one instead, that would be OK with you? It looks like you don’t even see time as linear. Yesterday isn’t any more important than 20 years ago. No wonder you seem so patient. (No wonder you became a parapsychologist.)
I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time.
Sandy