Are There At Least Two Major Modes of the Dreaming Mind?

"There are two views with regard to the different states of the soul. One of them makes a distinction between the waking and dreaming states while the other regards them as having no real distinction. Another state of the soul,  viz, the state of dreamless sleep or deep sleep, is the state in which the individual soul becomes identical with the Absolute."

  -from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad

One of the most interesting subjects in life for me as always been dreams. Not goals and desires, but the actual dreaming mind. Dreaming cannot help but be a major influence on my creative and visionary understanding of myself and the world. I know a lot of artists would say the same thing. Not just artists, but thinkers in all walks of life benefit from the power of the symbol based workings of the inner mind.

But speaking directly to the quote above I think it is talking about two aspects of the dreaming mind. One aspect is the personal symbol based one, of which the subconscious mind plays out the desires, fears, thoughts about daily life, etc. The second one, the one that is identical to the absolute, is the state in which the soul actually leaves the body and visits an objective reality. What some could call the astral plane. The deeper reality that is beyond this waking one.

I have had dreams where I am in old building where I used to live or inhabit often. Many times in these dreams, especially in the dreams about places I've lived, I specifically notice that familiar objects are not there. The room is the same, the dimensions are the same, but the desks that I called mine, the bookshelves, gone. Replaced with strange and unfamiliar items. Is this the soul-state interacting in real time with the waking world? The world that is identical to the absolute as described in the Upanishad? It's interesting to think about. Why would I dream about a former home, complete with correct dimensions, but see new unrecognized objects where I know old ones should be? Strange objects which have no identifiable correlation to myself in any way?

Sometimes I think strong events cast a shadow. Like the shadow of an oncoming storm-cloud, or the eery green stillness before a great storm. Dreams can be the way that we perceive this stillness, this shadow, psychically. I think that there is an absolute realm that is less dense than this one, like the levels of reality as described in the Cabala. And it's possible that important events in life happen in that realm first. Or it's possible to see events in this reality from that perspective. So it seems like you are seeing the future. Like seeing the same spot from different points in a coil. The way of perceiving reality completely linearly is an illusion, physics tells us this is true.

Many of the symbols in my paintings are directly from my dreaming mind. The interplay of the visual language of the mind is endlessly fascinating. Even if the implications of a possible absolute realm accessible through the dream state is a reality or not, the dream state remains an awe-inspiring tool.

The Thin Vertical Line of Light, Transcendence, and Freedom

We have what we call a mudroom at our house. It's the room that leads to the backdoor and has stairs that lead down to the basement door. There is a glass door on the top level of the mudroom that leads to the backyard. Usually when not locked, this door sits open about a quarter or half inch or so. On the other side of the room are the stairs to the bottom level of the mudroom.

From the kitchen door you can watch the mudroom and see out into the backyard. Sometimes I will stare outside and watch my dogs play or just think. Once in a while, flies or even wasps will get inside the mudroom when letting the dogs in or out, and then not be able to get back outside.

But there is a way back outside. It's the vertical quarter inch gap that the glass door sits open when not latched. So in all the space of the mudroom, there is only that think vertical line in which to escape back out. The chances of the flying insect finding that path out is slim.

As I was contemplating this one day it occurred to me that the situation of the flying insects trapped in the mudroom is not unlike my own search for enlightenment and evolution. I seek to evolve and understand and transcend what I perceive to be 'ordinary reality'. Watching Star Trek The Next Generation last night, in season 2's first episode, Captain picard talks about what death is, when asked by Commander Data. He responds basically that he would like to believe that beyond death and beyond our current understanding and concepts, is a greater reality that our existence is a part of.

This is the thin vertical line in our lives. That thing we are trying to find. It's hard to see, hard to get to, hard to understand, but it is definitely there.

We spend time flying around in vain smashing against clear glass windows, or even flying downward into a dark bottom level of a room filled with spiders. To take this elaborate metaphor even further, the flying insects in the mudroom will sometimes journey down the stairs to the bottom level of the mudroom. A dank, dingy room filled with massive spiderwebs in the corners. (I leave them alone because spiders kill termites etc). So some of these insects, rather then finding the thin vertical line to transcendence and freedom, might end up as a meal in a spider's web. Taking wrong turns in dark places and ending up trapped. (Unless of course I let them out, which I usually try to do).

This metaphor reminds me once of an experience I had at an art gallery near the river market in Kansas City. There was a sculpture set up that involved a figure on a wheel that would balance on a wire. There was a motor and a chain that would cause the figure to go back and forth on the wire. I was staring at the chain in a moment of sublimity I thought was only mine. There was a real bug, no relation to the scultpure, who had found his way onto the chain that was in motion. He was trying to crawl upwards but only managed to stay in place, because the chain was going the opposite direction. I stood mesmerized by this strange microcosmic event when another man behind me also saw what was happening. He verbalized that it was like all of us, trying to make our way and only staying in place. Like the grand sculpture was the universe and we, humans, were the little bug.  We agreed it was an interesting and strange thing.

Do I have a message in these strange metaphors? Only that maybe we should continue to search for that thin vertical line. Even when it seems like you're only barely managing to hold yourself in place, keep trying. Remember that the soul is only being housed in this body temporarily, so take advantage. Look for what Hendrix called the Axis. It's the thing that can cause you to evolve. It could be the greater understanding of the universe. It's a more true reality. What Picard said is beyond our current concepts of understanding in this world. Don't stop looking for it. It does exist. We can evolve.

An Idea to Meditate On

This quote from German philosopher Rudolph Eucken reinforces the knowledge that this world we call reality is but a train stop if you will, on a much larger map. This is a good quote to meditate on, it brings to my mind so many different things I don't know where to start. Feel free to comment on what comes to your mind when you read it.

"Man is the meeting-point of various stages of Reality."

- Rudolph Eucken (1846 - 1926)

The Eye of the Creative Tiger

What more is there to say about inspiration after the quote below from mystic Evelyn Underhill? Nothing comes to mind, and no words could say it better. I can merely state again that Evelyn Underhill's book Mysticism is a masterpiece.

"This humble receptiveness, this still and steady gazing, in which emotion, will, and thought are lost and fused, is the secret of the great contemplative on fire with love of that which he has been allowed to see."

-Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism, London, 1911.

I really do find this quote irresistibly inspirational. It describes that moment in the creative process when I am lost in the moment fully, no worries, no fears, no distractions, just my will, my emotion, my spiritual eye open and creating, painting, letting the energy roll through me, and knowing I am blessed that it does. Nothing is more sublime than those moments, and no words describe it better than Evelyn Underhill's.

Plato on Reincarnation

One of the greatest minds of ancient or modern civilizations; Plato in this quote talks about "forms of the spirit":

"The only thing one can do for another is reintroduce him to those forms of the spirit, the memory of which was lost at birth."

-Plato, Timaeus

I am a firm believer in reincarnation, and know that our bodies are hosts to our souls. The spirit body can move separately from the physical body, and will live on long after it is gone. Pain is ephemeral, we are ageless.

Henry David Thoreau's Walden

For me, there are few wiser writers than Henry David Thoreau. I particularly enjoy his (what is commonly called) Civil Disobedience and also Walden. Let's look at a quote from Walden:

"It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What every body echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can."

-Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862), Walden.

His words ring brightly as true today as when they were written, like a shining beacon for all to hear. In the preceding passage he says, "No way of thinking or doing however ancient can be trusted without proof." A lot of religions boast faith has a necessary attribute, and this is precisely the problem. My spiritual wisdom comes from a place that needs no faith. I know it exists and can not tell you the way, but can show you the door that you can open to see the truths for yourself. No faith required.

Music, Art, and Mysticism

The following quotes are from Evelyn Underhill's book Mysticism published in 1911. (Considered a classic by many in the realm of the study of spiritual consciousness.) What's interesting, is that in 1910 Wassily Kandinsky wrote his theoretical study, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, in which he examines the psychological effects of color with analogies between music and art. Music was a strong influence in his art, having learned piano and cello at an early age.

"The Earthly artist, because perception brings with it the imperative longing for expression, tries to give us in colour, sound or words a hint of his ecstasy, his glimpse of truth. Only those who have tried, know how small a fraction of his vision he can, under the most favourable circumstance, contrive to represent. The mystic too, tries very hard to tell an unwilling world his secret. But in his case, the difficulties are enormously increased. First, there is the huge disparity between his mind and the mind of the world. His audience must be bewitched as well as addressed, caught up to something of his state, before they can be made to understand."

(-Evelyn Underhill, p. 76 - Mysticism, London: Methuen, 1911.)

Another paragraph and a half down the page she goes on to say -

"Yet of all the arts music alone shares with great mystical literature the power of waking in us a response to the life-movement of the universe: brings us - we know not how - news of its exultant passions and its incomparable peace."

To Underhill, music was the closest form of expression to mystical literature, so it makes sense that Kandinsky, a painter heavily influenced by music, created the first formal nonrepresentational painting. (The same year he wrote his aforementioned study.)

My point is that abstract expressionism is a valuable form of mystical expression, more closely in tune with musical expression than classic painting depicting physical reality. Had Evelyn Underhill wrote her book a few decades later has abstract expressionism really begins to take root, I feel she would be inclined to agree with me.

Universal Rhythmic Flow

Thomas Wilfred started experimenting with the concept of light has art in 1905, so when I read this quote; I was amazed that it came from so early in the 20th century, -

"Shall we . . . use the new art as a vehicle for a new message (and) express the human longing which light has always symbolized, a longing for a greater reality, a cosmic consciousness, a balance between the human entity and the great common denominator, the universal rhythmic flow?"

(-Thomas Wilfred, quoted in Art & Physics by Leonard Shlain, p. 263)

The universal rhythmic flow is part of what I try to express with my painting, and in my mind this ties in with the concept of transcendentalism expressed through art. Dictionary.com defines transcendentalism has:

2. Also called transcendental philosophy. any philosophy based upon the doctrine that the principles of reality are to be discovered by the study of the processes of thought, or a philosophy emphasizing the intuitive and spiritual above the empirical.

To me, this is the concept that the artists' work is the process for revealing and understanding the true nature of reality, not disregarding science, but adding to it. Some of the roots for these ideas can also be found in the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Thoreau, and William Blake to name but a few.