[PenultimateManStanding]

MikeB and the Freud debunkers do have a legitimate point to make. It is easy to come up with theories all day long as to what a dream means. It is even possible to convince oneself that a real buried memory has been retrieved (and this had led to a lot of trajedy). Avoidance of self- deception is required. If you can't do that then you'd better leave the effort to understand what makes us humans tick to the folks in the white lab coats with their probes and their quantifiable empirical results. (Of course you won't really know anything so you'll still have the problem of self-deception to contend with)

[EnviroEngr]

What if our so called waking life is yet another layer of dreaming?

[PenultimateManStanding]

I believe in leaving no stone unturned, EnviroMan: what if our dreaming life is but another layer of our counscious life?

[EnviroEngr]

Oh yeah.

I can jiggy with that.

[Seriously though, the dream domain has been getting stranger and yet more 'normal' (pedestrian you could say) in the last 2 years.]

[PenultimateManStanding]

how about if they were both true and not true at the the same time? You know, the Hegelian thesis/antithesis/synthesis thing. I'll bet if we wound you up we could sit back and watch in amazement!

[EnviroEngr]

I'm such an easy mark.

[EnviroEngr]

What do we get to see if we wind you up?

[PenultimateManStanding]

[PenultimateManStanding]

One last thing before I let this go down the memory hole: I heard an interview on Art Bell's weekend Coast to Coast show with some guy who tried psychoactive herbs from around the world, entheogens they are called. You can get them legally via the internet. I tried one from Oaxaca, Mexico - a little relative of our sage brush called salvia divinorum. Really weird stuff which I can't say I liked much and gave it up shortly after trying it. But here's the strange part: these lucid, vivid dreams I had last fall ( and I only listed two of them, there were many others) were a direct result of using this stuff just a couple of times, even though the effects only last about five minutes. It was later on in my sleep when the real wild ride began! I enjoyed these amazing dreams though the next night I worried they would return. My dreams are back to normal now and though I can remember them they aren't so strangely real. Suits me fine.

[rowante]

I hear you, Pen...ing! Salvia was weird. Haven't had any lucid dreams though. Salvia Divinorum= Diviner's Sage. Have you read Dale Pendell?
Amazon (Enviro, I'm guessing you may love! Check it out. To paraphrase the writer, they contain too much science for new-agers and too much art for scientists.) Truly remarkable books!
The active ingredient in Salvia Divinorum is a mystery. It seems to be the first known non-alkaloid hallucinogen. Definitely not one for the simple thrill seeker.
Anybody who grows plants with be intrigued by these books, they shed a completely different light on the human/plant interface.
Baby Peanut, Ulrich Schnauss... sublime.

[k_semler]

Last night I had a strange dream, I think it is strange primarily because of a woman that I never had seen before was in it. In this dream, I pulled into a gas station to buy some burritos and a large pop. The weather was warm, but not too hot, as I was wearing shorts and just a T-shirt, (no protective gear, not even a hat). Anyways, after grabbing my burritos and pop, and having lunch, I decided to go see what they had. So I grabbed my rife out of my car and decided to go check it out. The inside of the gas station was normal, but once I walked around the side of the gas station on the outside, it looked like a convenience store had been set up outside the gas station. I walked up to the first row, and I saw that they had a new flatbed scanner that I was interested in. After looking at that for a while, I walked a few rows back to thier publications section, and I sat on a box, set my gun to my side, and began looking through the books. Once I found a book I was interested in, and picked up my rifle to leave, I was addressed by a good looking lady, (that I have never seen before in real life, or previous dreams), and she asked me when I was going to release the rest of my book. Having no idea what she was talking about, I stupidly asked her, "which book would that be?". She awnsered that the book's name was "Excalibur". I then informed her that I had not published that book. She then inquired about what I have published, and I told her, "I do not have any publications to my name, the most complex thing I have wrote is a couple term papers".. After sounding somewhat disappointed with my awnser, we began to talk about which books we were interested in. I then was walking with her accros the isle to the section with the chairs so we could talk in private, and then I woke up.

The lady in the dream stood about 5'9", had short cut black hair that was curly, she had ear rings on, and she was somewhat tan, but it was obvious that she did not spend much time in the sun. It was bad, (or good), that once I woke up, I was actually disappointed that my fantasy world had dissappeared, as that was the best conversation I ever had with a woman. If only I was that comfortable with women in real life. Any idea what this means?

[PenultimateManStanding]

According to the Doktor with the cigar, all dreams represent some sort of wish fulfillment. Obviously Eros is involved with this one. I particularly enjoy having these kinds of dreams. You wake up feeling like something cool happened and you want more. I might as well use this opportunity to say about the book Interpretation of Dreams that it made Freud famous for good reason, it is not written in a technical, dry manner but actually is well written for a wide audience. It goes into great detail about all the clever ways of deception and distraction that our minds use to manage the the potentially sleep-depriving influence of strong passions.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Rowante, I haven't heard of the author you mentioned but I like theosophical speculations about plants. Plants are a wonder. Salvia seems to be a plant with some kind of strange intelligence. People have likened it to a curandera of some kind and there have been reports of conversations with a feminine being making herself known to salvia users. There are also other very scary reports too. Caution is advised.

[threadbear]

You salvia dudes should read Daniel Pinchbeck's "Breaking Open the Head". He's a superb writer and has some fascinating insights about these entheogens. Penultimate, this is who you may have heard on Art Bell.

There's another book by Richard Straussman called, The Spirit Molecule. It's clinically interesting, novel ideas, but poorly written. Guy's a psychiatrist, not a writer. Written from a doc's perspective.

Penultimate: This is what I was going to PM you about, but there's no real need to. Your salvia trip with the very real quality, casts doubt on the idea that life consists of either the real or the imagined. This may be a false dichotemy. Life, as we live it, may actually be on some kind of continuum, ranging from the conscious mundane through to the imaginal and into dream states. Our minds may be bi-locating to parallel universes as our bodies sleep, or piggy backing onto someone else's mundane conscious life on this planet or within our own universe.

Ergonomically speaking, entheogens make good sense. It is really expensive to travel back and forth by plane, car, bus. It's actually a peak oil driven idea, to my way of thinking. Doesn't it make sense to use substances that take you beyond the known universe and back again, without requiring you to even pack a bag?

[PenultimateManStanding]

Yes, Pinchbeck was the guy on Art Bell. What a fascinating interview that was! Think I'll get that book. I'm not opposed to metaphysical speculation but I don't personally find much nourishment in it. Is Pinchbeck's book in that vein? I had a couple of lucid dreams in the week after smoking salvia 5X twice in one day. Prior to that I had smoked 5X once. Before that had tried plain leaf and not much happened. I don't remember the timing now since it was last fall but at some point less than two weeks after that last time I hit the lucid dream motherlode with a whole string of them lasting for hours where I would wake up from one, astounded, then go back to sleep only to have another one.

[PenultimateManStanding]

The memories of some of them are fading now.. Many of them had a common theme: I would 'wake up' in a life that wasn't mine. I was still 'me' but everything was different as though my life had taken a turn in some other direction long ago. These particular dreams all had a certain shock at the beginning when I would look around at all the 'stuff' that was mine but 'I' had never seen before. In one of these dreams I had college roommates in this house I was living in. I tried to tell them about salvia and how this was a lucid dream I was having and that when I woke up their existence would be over for good. They laughed at me and one said, 'dude, sounds like a drug issue!' It seems funny to recount it but the feeling in the dream was of sadness because I couldn't get it across to them and because I knew how short their existences really were. In another one I woke up thousands of years in the future. This was sort of an epic dream with a lot that happened. Much of it has faded from memory but I remember finally getting the people of this other time to talk to me and I asked them if any had any knowledge of the early part of the 21st century. No one knew a thing about our very important time.

[threadbear]

Penultimate, If you found the Pinchbeck interview interesting, you should find his book astounding. He is attempting to go beyond metaphysical speculation and have the reader entertain the possibility that entheogens are a way of experiencing personally what quantum physics express mathematically. He does this simply by describing his own experiences and his own thoughts about them. He is a much better writer than speaker, so I would definitely encourage you to pick up the book.

When I was a kid I used to have some great dreams, would wake up in the middle of the dream, think up an ending I thought would be fun and then go back to sleep and dream it. It was fun. I'd like to be able to do this again.

The repeating dream I have is fuzzy in detail, but clear in it's overall feel and location. It seems like I am living in another place and perhaps time, concurrently with what I know of my life in what I call the here and now.

BTW, Dream symbolism is very specific to the dreamer, thought there are a few archetypical images that persist generally. Freud thought houses represented images. Jung thought houses with different stories represented different level of consciousness. I personally find Freud idiotic, his psychoanalytic theory was very limited, neurotic in itself and only partially suitable for his type of personality, during his time. He set neurological research that would have helped psychotic illnesses back 100 years. A fool.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Whatever floats your boat is fine! Maybe someone will read his Interpretation of Dreams and see the value in it that I did. I don't go in for doctrines and dogmas - its whatever seems true to me that I find helpful. And remember, before Freud, nobody did much of anything of any use at all regarding dreams. Freud's Dreams book is down to Earth in many ways and worth looking into as I expect Pinchbeck's book will be too since I plan to read it.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', ' ')I personally find Freud idiotic, his psychoanalytic theory was very limited, neurotic in itself .

[threadbear]

Pms, I thought it was Jung's book you were referring to, not Freud's. Sorry. Didn't realize you had respect for him or I wouldn't have knocked him in the way I did. He was the father of psychology, for that he should be honoured, I guess.