Hypnagogic Hallucinations: Had Any Lately?

[Derek]

TKL,

Making a joke is not "fucking with you." Reading Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut or Robert Anton Wilson would help you to see that.

And as anyone else reading this thread certainly knows, the fact that I haven't spent time reading your pet authors has no bearing on whether or not I'm well-read.

Lighten up, Enlightened One... none of us has all the answers—not even Mantak Chia (although his sex life is probably better than mine).

Can we get back to hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations, please? Or is this just another thread that's going down in flames?

[Sounder]

Great to hear from you Derek. TKL, it’s the weekend, try to relax. (Is that relevant advise or am I fucking with you; your call I guess)

Great topic Derek, I will add my two-cents later.

[theeKultleeder]

Well, sorry Derek. I felt like you were fucking with me. Like with your "pet authors" and "enlightened one" comments.

So, don't fucking condescend to me.

And yeah, I have encountered a sexual entity in a hypnogogic state, but it was a male, so it was an incubus.

I was sleeping in a tent on a hilltop in Nova Scotia, spitting distance from a Vajrayana retreat encampment. As I opened my eyes I saw a large black form on top of me, turned away and hunched over my crotch. It seemed to sort of run away and vanish at the same time.

Since those Tantrists do all sorts of rituals like feeding hungry spirits and so forth, it seems natural that this entity would appear in a rural place populated by practicing Vajrayana Buddhists.

Peace

[lunarose]

not sure if this fits entirely, but might be interesting nonetheless.

i was living for a couple years in a tibetan buddhist meditation center, headed by a rinpoche. a couple of different women told me they had a dream where the rinpoche came up to them and said 'if you have sex with me i'll give you spiritual enlightenment and social standing in the meditation center'. one in particular asked me 'what do you think it means?' (!) and i said i think it means if you have sex with rinpoche he'll give you spiritual enlightenment and social standing.......don't know if either took him up on it but a woman who had ended up pretty miserable and not too enlightened by it. one of the 5 main guys in the relig. heirachy of T.B. knew about it, they basically figured with all the pressures of being rinpoche he needed support, etc.

i'd had a dream where rinpoche came into my room, i just woke myself up - it was like closing a door. after that he gave me a lot more respect, asking me to help set up initiation ceremonies materials, etc. even though i hadn't been initiated and rarely sat for meditation, etc.

i still can't believe that lady was asking 'what do you think it means?' but i guess it goes to show one way in which dreams can impact life, and that you can train for more dream mastery.

[theeKultleeder]

^^^Interesting.

It's a problem of institutionalizing sex cults. Lama Tshonkhapa came along and saw all the corruption in the system, in all three of the then existent sects, and tried to reform the system with his writings and the founding of the Gelug school. The Tantras were meant for rebels and outcasts, like Untouchables in India or the great Milarepa in Tibet. You know, Milarepa was black magician who came from a very dysfunctional family. Marpa Lotsawa treated him pretty harshly, but in the end Mila went on to become a wandering folk-singer, spreading easy to understand Dharma throughout the countryside.

On the other-hand, Householder linages, where the Tantras are passed among friends and family, are far less hierarchical and subject to corruption.

I see there is a movie about Milarepa (probably the first movie about Tibetan Buddhism made by a Tibetan):

http://milarepamovie.com/

The only initiation I've ever taken has been from the Sambhogakaya...

[lunarose]

per kult:
"It's a problem of institutionalizing sex cults"

i don't know if it's that exactly - he wasn't offering sex in terms of a tantric practice, more of a quid pro quo. i think it was more of a situation where a person cultivates paranormal abilities at a faster rate than they are cultivating their moral and compassionate sense, so they feel free to use said paranormal abilities to manipulate people. obviously, approaching someone with that type of deal in a dream offers a way out, 'oh you were just dreaming', yeah right........

it's funny, you read all sorts of texts and they talk about watching a peron's behavior for years before taking them on as a guru, but people seldom do.

anyway, my point in the post was to highlight the interplay between waking and dreaming, within a person as well as between persons, and the possiblity of cultivating these abilities, and the moral issues involved.

[philipacentaur]

Philip,

I'm somewhat taken aback by your untowardness. While I think it's friendly and fun to find out what other people hallucinate, both hypnagogically and hypnopompically (are those real words?), I would never want to infringe on your right to privacy.

That's the NSA's job.

It's just that I don't choose to broadcast the contents of my subconscious (or my interpretation of some "greater" consciousness). As someone who has been plagued by these since as far back as I can remember, I associate negative emotions to sharing these experiences because they are hard to relate, and most people don't understand. I consider it a curse of biochemical disposition, that sometimes serves me well -- if I use it wisely. It is fascinating though.

[Derek]

Hi Sounder,

It's nice to see a friendly username. I'm looking forward to your thoughts. The blog was getting a bit too crazed, even for me, with all those counterfeit Jeffs posting, so I decided to duck in here. My reward is TKL slapping me with his big, swinging Tibetan Buddhist, um... library.

TKL,

I wasn't condescending to you, exactly; I was mirroring you, based on your previous post to me. Peace be with you, too, brother. Your encounter on the hilltop in Nova Scotia was a great example of what I started this thread to discuss.

I had an out-of-body experience a few years back in which an entity, much like the one you described, knocked my astral feet out from under me and tried to drag me under the bed. I hit it with a blast of white light and hurled myself back into my physical body in the blink of my opening eyes. It made me realize that my body, which I've often thought of as a prison, is more like a safe house--at least until I learn to navigate the astral realm better.

BTW, I may have met you last night in a dream.... I was in a mechanic's garage with a group of men celebrating the successful completion of some semi-sleazy enterprise. I was slightly embarrassed even to be seen there. Glasses of red wine were being passed around and as the waiter handed me a glass he fumbled, and in catching it I spilled some wine on a jacket draping a chair nearby. A short man with a mustache came over and said, "You've ruined my jacket! That cost me $5,000!" I offered to compensate him for it, because that's the kind of generous guy I am. But as I started waking up, I realized the jacket was a cheap polyester blend and the guy with the mustache was just trying to scam me.

TKL, was that you, or somebody else? (Don't take this too seriously....)

[theeKultleeder]

Nahh, I'm a silk and wool kind of guy, unless I'm going "leather" that night.




You sound like you navigate pretty well. I have interesting dreams all the time, but I don't keep a journal. Sometimes I post my dreams to this board. I think the last one was in the "clusterfuck video game' thread.

"Blast of white light"? Heh - too much DragonballZ for you! Whatever works, though, right? I have used red pentagrams and also the name of the Lord.

Oh, and years ago I was trying to create a servitor, but the operation was botched and the entity was retarded. When it attacked me in a dream in the form of a wild dog, I dispatched it with a Phurbha dagger thrust through the top of its head. After that, I ritually buried its physical talismans.

[Derek]

"Blast of white light"? Heh - too much DragonballZ for you! Whatever works, though, right? I have used red pentagrams and also the name of the Lord.

"My master Liao K'ung said: 'When the golden mechanism (of alchemy) begins to move and gives out flashes of light that hall of voidness (hsu shih, i.e. the heart devoid of feelings and passions) will be illuminated by a white light which reveals the mysterious gate (hsuan kuan), the presence of which does not mean emptiness.'" —from Taoist Yoga: Alchemy & Immortality

Red pentagrams and the name of the Lord are a bit too Catholic for my tastes....

[barracuda]

I had an experience in the state between sleeping and waking occassioned by a bout of three day wakefulness brought on by the use of stimulants. At the end of the third day, I had run a bath to try and relax myself of the nervous qualities endemic to such stimulant usage. The storefront I inhabited at the time was without electricity due to a dispute with the power company, but hot water was running, so I took to the clawfoot tub by the light of a candle. As I began to drift in and out of consciousness, listening to my thoughts and the slight gurgle of the water, I found myself looking out over a room filled with naked writhing bodies everywhere. But only for an instant. In the next instant, I was once again in the tub watching the ripples and wave crests formed by my slight movements within the tub. At that moment, the moment of transition, I noticed with utter clarity and certainty that each figure in the orgiastic scene of my dream was exactly and perfectly an anamorphic overlay of the ripples in the water. The closest visual references I can give you are Dali's masterpiece, Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire or the "hidden face" works of Archimboldo.

An aspect of this revelation is the brute force nature of memory and conciousness in general. As the brain looks from object to object or from scene to scene, does it overlay a huge series of similar mental images looking for a correlative match, and in the process stumbling upon near misses which are shocking and grasped upon by the near concious mind entering or leaving the dream state?

The visual cortex as the center of conciousness is discussed in great detail in Sir Francis Crick's book, The Astonishing Hypothosis. He makes a good point that the eyes are really an outgrowth of the brain and are the only fully externalized parts of our brain. Images seen in the drowse of near waking can take on a powerful reality as the mind scutters through its roladex of memories looking for a thought to rest upon.

[theeKultleeder]

Just found this on youtube: Coast to Coast's George Noory interviewing an author/teacher on lucid dreaming:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpRU4bOpzD0


William Buhlman is a leading expert on out-of-body experiences. The author's thirty years of extensive personal out-of-body explorations give him a unique and thought provoking insight into this subject. During the last eight years he has conducted an international out-of-body experience survey that includes over 16,000 participants from 32 countries. The provocative results of this survey are presented in his latest book, The Secret of the Soul. As a certified hypnotherapist, William incorporates various methods, including hypnosis, visualization and meditation techniques in his workshops to explore the profound nature of out-of-body experiences and the benefits of accelerated personal development. Through lectures, workshops and his books the author teaches the preparation and techniques of authentic spiritual exploration. William returned to share the latest observations and developments in out-of-body experience (OBE) research. During these experiences a person moves into an astral body realm which is actually another dimension of existence, he explained. This type of 'travel' can have a number of benefits. For Buhlman, it gave him verification that consciousness survives outside of the body, and during such states a person can receive healing energies. Many alien abduction reports may actually be misperceived OBEs, he said, noting that when a person leaves their body, they attract attention from a variety of beings that wish to communicate. The notion of form is quite fluid in this realm-- Buhlman said he often perceives of himself as a ball or teardrop of energy. The key to achieving an OBE is persevering with a selected technique for a period of at least 30 days and to practice it on a couch rather than a bed, he noted. Incan shamans may have had to prove their OBE skills by identifying the Nazca Lines animals (which can only be seen from an aerial perspective), he added.
April 2nd, 2007

[Derek]

...I found myself looking out over a room filled with naked writhing bodies everywhere. But only for an instant. In the next instant, I was once again in the tub watching the ripples and wave crests formed by my slight movements within the tub. At that moment, the moment of transition, I noticed with utter clarity and certainty that each figure in the orgiastic scene of my dream was exactly and perfectly an anamorphic overlay of the ripples in the water.

That's the thing about dreams: they can be so much better than internet porn....

Stan Gooch talks about his succubus encounters in a way that makes you think his real sex life must pale in comparison (probably true, since Great Galactic Ghoul informs us that Gooch lives in a wagon in some remote patch of Wales).

Thanks, Barracuda, for providing us with a vision that most of us probably wouldn't mind encountering in our own hypnagogic hallucinations (so long as our significant others weren't keeping a close eye on us...).

Your mention of Francis Crick reminded me of the following passage from Gooch's The Origins of Psychic Phenomena:

"On my early mornings I awake awestruck, dazed, and transformed by the events through which I have lived that night. It is not simply a matter of mere events, arresting though they can be. It is the sense of affect (emotion), the insight into the working of a mind, of "someone else's" mind, as well as my own.

"For an hour or more, on waking, I wander back through the new life I have just lived. And it will stay with me through the day, another chapter from an inexhaustible dream volume. So many, many personalities contained within each human being, like the millions of eggs in a single fish. And most of us only realize and live just one of them. Yet each of us, I believe, can potentially reach and actualize that inner store....

"The foregoing material, and indeed the whole of this book, exposes as complete nonsense the standard scientific view of dreams as some kind of poisonous or incoherent by-product of normal consciousness. The typical views of Francis Crick, an establishment scientist and Nobel Prize winner, are especially pathetic. He considers dreams to be a process whereby useless mental material picked up during the day is disposed of by the brain. He writes in conclusion: 'the practice of remembering dreams should be discouraged.' How well this statement reveals the desperate, frozen paranoia of the Western scientist toward dreams and the unconscious generally. In this area modern science can justifiably be said to be both repressive and fascist—that is, psychologically disturbed and politically despicable. It was, essentially, this same attitude that led to the burning and torturing of so many unfortunate wretches who dared in former times to proclaim the validity of our human 'secret life.'"

As for our eyes being the only fully externalized parts of our brain, Gooch has this to say a few pages later:

"Reverting to the evolutionary history of the cerebellum, astonishingly, this organ did once, in our pre-mammalian past, possess its own eyes. The additional pair of eyes was located on top of the head. In the course of further evolution, these eyes sank down into the brain, fused together, and became our pineal gland. Can there be any possible association between this former pair of eyes, now a single gland, and the staring single eye perceived in some demonic manifestations? The ancient Hindus, at any rate, referred to the pineal gland as 'the third eye,' and as such it is known to present-day mysticism."

I didn't know that about the pineal gland being the cerebellum's former eyes, did you?

[Sounder]

My brother and I took a trip from Michigan to California in the late 70’s. I had broken away from teachings of the Worldwide Church of God a year or two earlier and my brother was doing the same during this trip. We lived/ crashed in the apartment of two young men, members of and students at the Churches Pasadena campus.

I got work doing remodel repairs on a flop house/hotel on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. Strange but true, two months in L.A. where my only job was at the central intersection of Babylon.

While young, a most basic question that I asked was what do I know? My conclusions centered on the notion that my knowledge was mostly made up of conventions and hearsay. I toyed with the idea that in fact, I “knew” nothing. This led to an obsession to better understand the nature of reality. To this end I formed a mental experiment or prayer really, that said; “Dear Lord, please let me see reality as it is, independent of my preconceptions as to the nature of that reality.” This prayer was repeated for several years, two or three times a week as I was going to sleep. I had heard that there are several seconds between waking and sleep where the conscious and unconscious minds can connect more freely.

As I was going to sleep, I found myself above my body seeing my surroundings as shimmery outlines around the building materials. My impression was also that time was compressed into the images in front of me. As this was quite disconcerting, I quickly returned to the body and woke up. At this point I chided myself for being scared of something that I had requested for quite some time. So I determined to return to this space and did indeed quickly return. Hard to describe something with so little correlation to waking consciousness. At any rate I decided that there was good reason for the barrier between ‘normal’ perceptual functioning and this hyper-perception that may result from the clearing of preconceptions and/or consensual representations. After this event, I have had no desire for and indeed no further (significant) hypnogogic events. Instead, I orient my psyche towards learning to match potential with impedance. (Feel free to savage my allegory, I don’t care much for it myself.) I must learn to ‘ground the charge’, before I can become (safely) open to greater potential. The event was important for my growth, but it should not be seen as a game to be played for fun. Even if you are playing for real, you may find yourself quickly in over your head.

In the end I came to feel that all understanding is mediated through form, and we need a new criteria for understanding in order that we may bring greater substance to our forms.

[Derek]

Hi Sounder,

I'm not quite sure I know what you mean by "learning to match potential with impedance," but I've found in my own life that the more responsibilities I shoulder in the material world, the deeper I'm allowed to penetrate into the dream world, or the astral realm, or whatever you want to call it.

I've also found that if I try to ignore what my unconscious mind (or Alternative Consciousness B) is trying to tell me, I tend to get into trouble. I've always had incredibly vivid dreams and, as I mentioned earlier, more than my fair share of hypnagoic and hypnopompic hallucinations, but I think of them as a boon, rather than a curse or something to be avoided.

I'm convinced the language of dreams is the voice of Psyche, so to speak. Sometimes that voice tells me things I don't, consciously, want to know, but I'm almost always better off when I listen to it. Six years of Jungian analysis has helped me to understand the language better and find my way around more confidently in that infinitely fascinating realm.

I'm hoping my improved dream language fluency and astral navigation skills will come in handy when I die—but, of course, there's no way to tell about that yet, is there?