Pages

Friday, February 4, 2011

A Simple Explanation of Dreams

If you haven't read the Basic Principles articles from the column to the right of this page, this might be a good time to do so. You should at least be familiar with the articles Units of Consciousness and Memes.

The Simple Explanation proposes that our personalities are largely defined by the memes we cling to. These memes, and our reactions to them, contribute to our behaviors and subsequent karma.
In a previous article on Transpersonal Memory, the Simple Explanation suggests that memes constitute "vibratory patterns held in the zero-point field, and accessed through our minds. Furthermore, apparently personal memes are actually harmonics of collective memes and are shared in common with all who hold onto that meme. The particular shadings of one person's meme differs slightly from the next person's, as is to be expected among fractal replications  of a single phenomenon, but all who hold it recognize its pattern and are affected by it."

The Simple Explanation of Dreams boils down to this:

Dreams are nothing but the night time resonances of memetic patterns.

These meme patterns are stimulated by the thoughts, encounters, and emotional reactions experienced during the day, transformed into symbolic imagery, and enacted while you sleep on the stage of your mind. Meme bundles stirred up by the day may be dealt with again and again until the emotional reactions associated with them are resolved. If not resolved, these memes will continue to bedevil dream after dream, guised in one form after another.

In sleep we are open to the leading of the Universal Unit of Consciousness to an extent not available during waking. Our ego in sleep relinquishes the control it exerts over our waking lives. When our hearts are quieted in the hush of sleep, our governing UCs are better able to commune with the Universal UC.
**********************

This receptive state is addressed in a scholarly article I wrote that is published in the journal Janus Head. You may read the entire article at the Janus Head site if you care to. From that article:

Richard Palmer paraphrases Richard Rorty's "From Epistemology to Hermeneutics" in his own essay, "What Hermeneutics Can Offer Rhetoric," when he describes a nonfoundationalist, hermeneutical style of thinking that is "radically at variance with the modern Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm of conclusions whose certainty is based on clear demonstrations" (110). It is this hermeneutical style of thinking, one that allows for the figurative slippage of rhetorical cognition referred to earlier by Farrell, that liberates dream analysis from the terministic strictures of rigidly authoritarian interpretive systems. One problem with theoretically-based dream interpretation systems is that calculative thinking may be prematurely applied to a hermeneutic process in need of a continuation of the more receptive frame of mind characteristic of meditative thought. Palmer hints at another alliance between dreams and hermeneutics when he describes Rorty's conceptualization of language as the matrix of all thought. Dreaming provides a nightly opportunity for engaging in a hermeneutic activity originating prior to the conditioning matrix of language. Perhaps this is the reason so many inventors and artists find creative inspiration in dreams, for by escaping language radical new possibilities can emerge. As such, dreams provide a virtually untapped site for studies of rhetorical invention.

(Ropp, Cyd C., A Hermeneutic and Rhetoric of Dreams, Janus Head,Cyd-C.-Ropp.pdf (janushead.org)
)

6 comments:

  1. My brother who practices Past-Lives hypnotherapy, recently pointed out to me the similarity of dreams to hypnotic trance states. In discussing this on the telephone, we realized that the "past life" a hypnotized client experiences is compatible with my definition of dreams: a past life memory is the resonance of the meme bundle held at that earlier time by the current personality. The memes last forever. They are there to pick up in the first place, and they are still there long after you pass away. During hypnosis, a person can review any former meme bundle. If the old meme has not been laid down, it may be affecting the person's current life. My brother takes clients to past lives so they can discover the holdover memes that may be affecting the current life. Once observed and realized during hypnosis, the client is freed from that old meme.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I perceive dream as a hazy, if not hasty math. We perceive a phenomenon, literally unamed. Your ‘natal’ interpretation of my little-light dream is as close to my concurrence as any phenomenon might be. So, pre- or post-, or any other unimagined temporality, may that name fall into array.

    Thanks again.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This was as tedious to write as it is to read. If the style I intend does not reproduce, I apologize. In premise, it is to point up the importance of… direction.

    I dream: vision daydream reverie nightmare hallucination delusion trance reality(antonym): horizon: prospect possibility perspective sphere scope.1

    Horizon is the archetypal: model epitome prototype standard prime example original classic:, standard: normal typical average usual set ordinary regular customary: dream. It, and dream, does, and does not exist: live be survive continue living stay alive subsist be real be present: at the same time.

    It is important children, soldiers, and dogs remember; “Do not rush over a hill”.

    I dream black sea: ocean the deep marine maritime aquatic: beneath grey sky: the heavens the skies the blue the firmament atmosphere. Shadows and echoes of moving objects and stopping motions, respectively, are projected; from some point-source of energy, through matter on the other side of the horizon, through its cast upon the sky, to be a reflection on the eye.

    So, what is happening is apprehended by the senses inverted, upside-down, and likely inside-out, too, then processed and “put in order” by an organism’s neurons; then presented to consciousness. So, the original signal has gone a long way through many different things to get there.

    I dream pulsing: pulse: beat throb pulsation rhythm pounding thump pulsate pound: black and white rainbows: colorful multihued mottled dappled flecked monochrome(antonym): emanate (Radiate: give out give off emit glow with exude* spread out branch out: or Wave: gesticulate gesture signal beckon sign brandish flourish wield): above: on top of over higher than below(antonym) more than greater than beyond exceeding: a point: tip end top summit peak position spot dot: on: on top of resting on lying under(antonym) happening taking place going scheduled ([on]): the horizon.

    Now, I write what I see. This is why I call the bows, “The Time O’Clock O’Doom News”. And I say, without reservation… bullshit.

    *Exudate < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exudate >: It is said, in translation, that Christ poured “water” from his wound(s). The significance I take of that, is… sometimes, in aversion to the truth, homo lexicus chooses to… delay its arrival. If a modern EMT had come upon the crucifixion, then our saviour might have been saved. Instead, his contemporaries chose to wait for the inevitable.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Okay. It took many readings to catch the rhythm of Greg's dream (5-8-11 comment). Now that I've entrained with the style, I find it quite lovely and dynamic. Thank you for putting in the effort on our behalf.
    To my eyes, you've written a description that I can picture this way: standing at the center point of a very large toroid, with the horizon hitting the inner surface of the far wall of the toroidal surround. The black and white rainbows--projections cast from light on the far side over the horizon--seeing the colors on the outside surface from the inside. Marking their movement as they slide from the horizon upward toward the big rim where the upward flowing patterns crest the rim and begin to flow downward and upside-down into the increasingly constricted funnel as it approaches from the future to now.
    Yes, a stretch perhaps, but maybe this is how the Universal UC reveals itself to you and through you to me.
    What "bows" are the Time O'Clock O'Doom News"? "bows"?
    Would the saviour have been the saviour had he been saved?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Say the horizon is the subliminal impingement avoidance. Say the bow-figure off the horizon is a neutral degree of desensitization. Say all my figuring is a half-grasp of how to keep my finances in good order.

    Say, Cyd: Can I erase my stuff when it’s worn out?

    PS: If I could talk to Freud, he’d have likely said, “Ya. It’s a cigar.”

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi Greg. I don't think there's a way for commenters to delete their comments. If one is really bothering you, let me know which article and which date, and I can delete it for you.

    ReplyDelete

If you leave sincere comments for the blog, you will be answered by the author.