December 11, 2012 by oeith

On Dreams and Architecture

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, ‘Appian Way’, frontispiece for ‘La antichità romane’ (1756).

As I lay awake, I began to feel
that my body’s image from my body
had detached. It’s not entirely pleasant,
this sensation, yet tends to descend
only if I’ve slept too deep for too long
which, these days, is a sure-fire guarantee
I’m not affected by it too often.
This morning when it came – or, namely, when
the mind’s own notion of its body
had stronger than the body grown in strength,
with eyes shut I made an experiment:
moving the mental body a quarter-turn.
When this I’d done, it felt so fully real
(as if I’d made the movement actually)
another virtual quarter-turn I took,
so in my mind my head was resting now
where physically should have been my feet.
Set neurophysiology aside!
Always, in this state, imagination rules.
For of the brain, we have no direct sense;
but, of the mind, it is experience!
Far be it from my intent to argue
that ‘the soul’ departs to disport abroad;
or even that a portion of the brain
(the part, perhaps, that bears within itself
a picture of the body’s pose and motion)
has o’erstepped its mark at times like these,
assuming prominence more than usual.
All I know is this: that having turned about
in the bed an imaginary body,
I opened now imaginary eyes
and found a room not unlike that recalled
from childhood, where my younger sister slept
when we both were kids – excepting its size:
the ceiling high, the walls widely parted,
which – for a child’s room – gave a curious feel
of uncluttered and more than ample space.
A remembered room, so, remembered too,
its bigness perhaps by my childish eyes.
I knew full well that I was in a dream
and stared about in wonder, to discern
what light I saw by. I knew with eyes shut
in reality I lay. And yet I saw.
What kind of seeing is this, lit somehow
by lightless impressions from inside?
Of objects there are none within to see,
nor of reflected rays to see them by.
It is my habit now when in this state
to make a thorough survey of what’s sensed,
inspecting how this seeming-seeing fools
us with a semblance of solid things.
Under applied attention it unweaves.
Look for colour and you will find none; look
for touch, there’s none there either to be found;
nor taste, nor sound, nor smell; yet it presents
as something having each and all of these,
but in the nature of the thought of them,
rather than external things revealed.
In the mysterious night-world of sleep
seeming is semblance enough for being;
light’s mere concept is enough to see by;
memory’s furniture fills the void;
and body is surplus to requirement.
Needed only are body’s sensations
to make a sense of separateness between
impressions from one side or another.
Is mind a place? Milton’s Satan thought so
and built of it a Hell in Heaven’s despite.
But had he looked at what he took for mind,
and paused before assuming it as his,
he might have glimpsed the gaps between the weave
and grasped the awesome truth: that even here,
in our deepest, most interior recess,
we’re no more with ourselves than anywhere,
for self is God’s only, spending, spending,
promiscuously always and forever.

Piranesi, ‘Interior of the Patheon’.

Architecture is human habitat,
but in imagination comes to speak
of what is given and of what surrounds.
Buildings in a dream perform no function,
need no plans nor labour of erection,
so, freed from all material constraint,
they can assume forms close to an ideal.
The cities of my dreams throng with structures
cleaving to imaginary purposes.
Gasometers or giant cisterns haunt
the skylines of these imagined townscapes.
Beneath a columned dome last night I walked,
with distant birdsong in autumnal light,
between funeral monuments interspersed
with landscaped gardens, waterfalls, fountains –
yet it was the quality of that light
which seized my heart tightest by its beauty:
golden radiance, seeming to collect
in the porcelain summit of the dome
then raining down, like diagonal mist,
onto the shining tombs and epitaphs.
I stared until light became thought only,
growing in beauty as it grew unreal.

Piranesi, ‘Ruins of a sepulchre on the Appian Way’ (1764).

Thoughts by their nature arise un-unique.
To re-think is to think exactly again.
In dreams, place partakes of this nature.
On having woken, often there’s a sense
we visited nowhere new but returned
to an instance of a former idea.
‘The same place, but a different guise’ is
common in dreams, impossible awake.

There is a vast clock tower, its timepiece
long-broken, or sounding spasmodically.
With weeds the rusted face is overgrown.
Underfoot, debris crunches as we climb
mouldering concrete stairs to its apex.
The dim, dank air is musty with a scent
familiar, of old, abandoned spaces
that dates back somehow to the seventies:
a place in the old house, under the stairs,
where my parents hung coats and stored the shoes,
so much in use and never decorated.
Why the tower should smell like this inside
I cannot fathom, yet each time I dream
of it,in one of a myriad forms,
this odour is a constant that betrays
something hinting at commonality –
but what it might be lurks in mystery.

Piranesi, ‘Ancient altar, with other ruins’.

There is one other place I’ve visited
so many times, I cannot hope to count.
So often and so many times, perhaps
of all the dreams I’ve dreamt this is the one
my mind tends towards above all others.
A dual place it is, of two clear parts:
linked cemeteries, one old, one new.
The newer one is bright and clean and fine.
The dead lie hidden, decently arrayed.
It’s modern, or else sometimes dating back
to the nineteenth century: regal, sombre,
melancholy – for sure – but well-controlled,
unlike its older twin, which breeds nightmares.
Ancient and decayed, the soil here threatens
to crumble, crack, like mouldy honeycomb,
exposing rancid vaults, mottled coffins,
or – worse – the putrid freight that hides inside.
This place, sometimes, deep-most at its core
resolves to an effigy of decay:
a hunk of oozing scalp, with hair attached;
or severed member, nothing else beside;
as if the place were pointed all at that.
Often, in the prelude, I am firstly
by the newer graveyard, where all is well,
except – already – a faint foreboding.
Inevitably, mischance will intrude:
a wrong turning, a moment’s confusion,
or sometimes an ineluctable pull,
collecting me into the old graveyard’s
slow-motion aura of threat and terror.
‘It dates back to the eighteenth century.’
Prosaic-sounding, yet inside a dream
details can unlock a store of horror.
A serif font ne’er did anyone harm,
yet in the chiselled script upon these stones
the evil genius of this place cavorts.
In curlicue and italic flourish
a brooding evil grins malevolent.
Duped by this place, or having stumbled
within its orbit by my own neglect,
the machine-like demon that here presides
let’s fly the shutter, and up it snaps,
and behold: oozing death and rank decay!
So predictable, that over the years
dreaming is become like recognising,
and as or just before the trap springs shut
often I wake myself by will alone.

September 19, 2012 by oeith

The Effects on Lucid Dreaming of Galantamine and Alpha-GPC

Inspired by the work of Thomas Yuschak, previously I tested the effects on lucid dreaming of the dietary supplement alpha-GPC, with some positive results. I have now been able to test a combination of supplements Yuschak suggests is even more effective: alpha-GPC and galantamine. The latter is available in the UK only on prescription, but I was able to obtain some from a supplier in the US.

The variety I used is a plant extract from the red spider lily (lycoris radians). Synthetic forms and extracts from other species of lily are also available.

The technical part

Galantamine is an inhibitor of acetylcholinesterase, which is the substance that breaks down acetylcholine in the brain. As described briefly in the previous article, acetylcholine has been demonstrated to play a role in dreaming. Galantamine, by interfering with the brain’s ability to break down this substance, seems to extend and strengthen the neurochemical process that underpins dreams. Galantamine reaches its peak effect quickly (in about 1 hour). It has a half-life of 7 hours, but takes approximately 48 hours to clear from the body.

(4aS,6R,8aS)- 5,6,9,10,11,12- hexahydro- 3-methoxy- 11-methyl- 4aH- [1]benzofuro[3a,3,2-ef] [2] benzazepin- 6-ol

The chemical structure of Galantamine.

Because galantime prevents acetylcholine from breaking down, rather than actively raising its level, Yuschak recommends combining galantamine with a choline salt (of which alpha-GPC is one of the most efficiently absorbed). This supplies an added boost of acetylcholine, in addition to the action of the galantamine.

I went to bed at 10.15pm and fell asleep as normal. At 3am I got up, went to the toilet, and took 4mg galantamine with 300mg alpha-GPC. Instinct advised me to use plenty of water. I returned to bed, but took a long time to fall back asleep – at least an hour. I also got up once more for the toilet, which may have been due to the water.

It’s not working

I lay awake for so long I started to wonder whether the effects would wane before I’d even started to dream. But then I noticed my mind slipping into fugue-like meanderings, where I was neither quite asleep nor awake. I was homeless and cooking a pan of rice outdoors. Then I realised I’d lit the gas but had forgotten to add water. I rushed around, trying to find water before the rice burnt, but problems and obstacles kept springing up that I had to deal with first.

Even though it seemed that I wasn’t, actually I was sleeping – and dreaming too, but non-lucidly. Things suddenly seemed very, very clear, and I wondered if the night had started at last. I lay for quite some time, assessing whether I was dreaming or awake. But when the room around me remained steadfastly normal, I concluded I must be conscious. Nevertheless, I took the uncertainty as a promising sign.

Later, I became aware of absolute darkness, but I was fully aware within the darkness. I felt vibrations throughout my body. At certain moments, my body would shoot off in a particular direction at huge speed. There was no sensation of rushing air, or any motion sickness, just pure movement in a straight line, either behind or to one side.

I was struck by the total lack of imagery. I seemed to sink down into a place that was completely black and silent. The thought arose that I had descended to the lowest point of Hell, but thankfully I was aware that it was only a thought.

It’s interesting to note that the plant from which galantamine is extracted (red spider lily), is supposedly described in Chinese and Japanese translations of the Lotus Sutra as ‘ominous flowers that grow in Hell’, guiding the dead into their next reincarnation. (This is according to Wikipedia, at least, but I should say that searching English translations of the sutra didn’t turn up any more details, or anything to support this assertion.)

Red spider lily (Lycoris Radiata). A flower with funereal and autumnal associations in China and Japan.

A couple of times, I ascended from Stygian darkness into a place lighter, but still dim, where rudimentary imagery began to form. There were vague outlines of a room and of a couple of people I recognised. There were erotic sensations in the body. But the imagery seemed ‘made-up’ and I was unimpressed by its level of realism.

‘This is still not working,’ I thought.

At one point, having returned to the absolute darkness, I tried to move my limbs and realised I couldn’t. I recognised this as sleep-paralysis and was not perturbed by it. I couldn’t physically move, but I still had the sense of my body, so I ‘moved’ this instead, in the hope that I might leave the physical behind and finally get the show on the road.

I moved my astral limbs, and pulled up my astral body a little, but as soon as I tried to roll completely out of the aura of my physical body, I was roughly pulled back.

This part of the night’s adventures came to an end with an unexpected return to waking consciousness, and a feeling – somehow – of the closing of a definite phase. I sensed that a window for what might have been the night’s most powerful experiences had now closed.

The long, straight track

The way now seemed clear for some orthodox lucidity. I was walking with my partner through sunny winter scenery. The landscapes and architecture were dazzling and intricate, including a curious housing estate of mock Tudor dwellings, with beams that connected the buildings themselves to form ‘meta-mock Tudor’ patterns. There were also endless lagoons, reflecting the cold, golden light.

We walked a fixed, straight path that sometimes led through narrow doorways in and out of houses and shops. People politely stood aside and let us through, as if they were accustomed to giving priority to travellers on this route.

Not entirely convinced I was lucid, I made an effort to recall my previous intent to witness the raising of Lazarus. Immediately, by the side of the road, a wooden cross appeared and a passer-by announced that Lazarus would soon be raised onto it. This struck me at the time as somehow not quite right. In any case, we didn’t seem able to stop, so the cross receded behind us as more scenery and more of the road ahead came into view.

Later, the walking ceased and a new principle had taken hold: that there was an undiscovered basement in the house, rarely used, although we found some evidence – in the form of displaced objects and the remains of meals – that, unknown to ourselves, we sometimes spent time down there. Again, I decided to take the opportunity to find out more about Lazarus.

On a table before me a small blue-grey statue appeared, of a woman suckling two male children (who, it must be said, looked a little too old for breast-milk). The statue had a Grecian look, but seemed a little primitive and unformed. A commentary spoken by an unseen woman began: ‘Lazarus and Jesus were sons of the goddess Moong. They were born in 1356BC. After they had grown to young adulthood, they travelled together in Italy.’

Then a woman with a professorial appearance (she reminded me a little of Mary Beard), came in and said: ‘Those dates are far too early, and they never would have come to Italy. It’s just too far west.’

I reflected that, even so, this might make some kind of mythical sense. The idea that Jesus and Lazarus were brothers and the progeny of a primal goddess was certainly interesting.

Romulus and Remus — either that’s a very big wolf, or they’re not shown to scale.

After waking, the suckled brothers and the reference to Italy brought to mind the myth of Romulus and Remus, who were raised by a she-wolf and became founders of the city of Rome. Like Jesus, according to some versions of the myth, Romulus ascended to Heaven after his death – he became the god Quirinus (the divine personification of the Roman people). Christianity itself, of course, ultimately became the religion of Rome. But the fate of Remus, like the fate of Lazarus after his revival by Jesus, is uncertain. In some versions of the myth Remus simply disappears, although in most he is killed – often by Romulus himself. Jesus and Lazarus, like Romulus and Remus, are ‘rivals’ in the sense that both of them lived on after death, but true divinity belonged to only one of each pair. The other died (and also, in the case of Lazarus, was brought back from death) in order to legitimate his rival.

Returning to the dreams – later still, the council had closed the offices of a Pakistani businessman implicated in all kinds of malpractice, but Conservative Party activists had forcibly reopened the building. They accused the council of racism and of harming the local economy.

The likelihood of Tories defending the rights of the oppressed appeared to me rather slim; this crook was probably one of their donors. Their angry and tight-lipped response to my allegations confirmed my suspicion.

‘Why am I dreaming this?’ I wondered. In waking life I’d noticed recently a growing tendency in myself to express what I think is true, even though it might not go down well or present me as likeable. ‘This is good practice,’ I decided, and continued making a nuisance of myself to the Tories.

Debrief

The lucid dreams were similar in quality to those I experienced using alpha-GPC alone. However, they seemed to last longer and – when I awoke – gave the impression they would have continued indefinitely if I’d chosen to sleep on.

Side-effects and unusual physical sensations were more pronounced with the galantamine in combination with alpha-GPC. My stomach seemed a little perturbed, and a ghostly nausea surfaced once or twice, but it was too insubstantial to attract much attention. More noticeable was a throbbing sensation inside my skull, at a specific point to the left and slightly to the rear from the crown of my head. It was semi-painful, a bit like a headache, but came and went and was mild enough to remain mostly in the background.

Pro Galantamine. This brand is extracted from the red spider lily. Other kinds are available.

Having checked some brain diagrams, the affected area might have corresponded with the left superior parietal lobule, which has been related to the function of spatial orientation. (I’m not qualified in neurology, so this is just my observation.)

I noticed another peculiar sensation, partly dizziness, partly muscular weakness, that became especially evident when I climbed the stairs for the toilet, and made me extra watchful, because I felt as if I were slightly not in control of my body. It seemed as if awareness were so much focused in my head that the rest of the body wasn’t quite so available as usual to attention. This dizzy feeling remained in the background for several hours after waking and whilst going about my normal tasks.

I would certainly use the combination of galantamine and alpha-GPC again, but I would not be inclined to increase the dosage. I would try to focus more on the out-of-body phenomena that dominated the earlier part of the night (because this seems to be galantamine’s unique contribution) and I would try to ensure that I fell asleep much sooner after taking the pills.

Taking alpha-GPC on its own is pretty much like taking vitamins. The effects of galantamine are more noticeable, however, and I would advise anyone thinking of using it to do some thorough research and make sure they are fully aware of the risks.

September 3, 2012 by oeith

The Effects on Lucid Dreaming of Alpha-GPC (Glycerophosphocholine)

In Advanced Lucid Dreaming: The Power of Supplements (Lulu, 2006), Thomas Yuschak describes how a combination of galantamine and alpha-GPC (glycerophosphocholine) can help induce powerful lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences, and how other substances can be used to support this.

Unfortunately, galantamine is now available only by prescription (in the UK, at least), probably because it has been found effective in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, so my experiment was limited to alpha-GPC alone.

The following is a simplified description of how alpha-GPC effects dreaming. To anyone seeking more detail and ideas for further experiments, Yuschak’s book is likely to be of interest.

The technical part

Alpha-GPC crosses the blood-brain barrier and acts as an acetylcholine precursor. Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter that research has linked with the ability to think, learn and remember. It also plays a major role in the regulation of sleep: its levels gradually rise during the night, in tandem with decreasing levels of serotonin.

[(2S)-2,3-dihydroxypropyl] 2-trimethylazaniumylethyl phosphate

Chemical structure of alpha-GPC. (A source of Choline, which is supposedly good for you — in appropriate doses.)

Our sleep consists of alternating phases of deep, dreamless sleep, and of relatively lighter, dream-filled sleep – also known as ‘REM sleep’. As the night begins, the phases of dreamless sleep are longer at first and the phases of REM shorter. This relationship gradually reverses as morning approaches. REM sleep is therefore associated with lower levels of serotonin and higher levels of acetylcholine, whereas in deep, dreamless sleep the ratio is reversed.

I went to bed at 10.30pm and fell asleep as normal. Then, at 3.40am, as my acetylcholine levels were naturally beginning to rise and the phases of REM naturally growing longer, I took 600mg of alpha-GPC and returned to bed. I had some difficulty getting back to sleep, and after about 30 minutes I got up again for the toilet.

The fun begins

Some time later my landlord came in to say he was taking his niece out for the day. I heard him explain, ‘Duncan is testing the effect of supplements on dreams’. But then I remembered I was at my partner’s house – so the appearance of my landlord could only mean one thing…

‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ I exclaimed.

It was totally indistinguishable from being awake. It didn’t feel at all like I was dreaming; I only knew, logically, that this had to be the case. When I looked closely at articles in the room (some coloured chess pieces near the window, for example) I knew they didn’t exist in reality – and then I noticed how other items were in different places from where I knew they really were.

Still a little nervous that I might be making a huge mistake, I drew the curtains apart and forced myself through the glass. It gave way like jelly.

So now I was certain – and I recognised it had to be the drug, making the dream more vivid than usual. As I floated to the pavement, the dream showed no sign of breaking apart. The concrete under my feet was as solid as reality.

Beforehand (for reasons I won’t explore here) I’d set myself the task of visiting the gospel scene where Christ raises Lazarus. ‘Take me to Lazarus!’ I shouted at the sky, spreading my arms. Darkness rushed over me and I sank into the ground. But then, disappointingly, I awoke.

Back in again…

Hoping to regain the dream, I lay still with my eyes shut. But whilst awake, I was becoming conscious of the effects of the drug. The mind felt fluid, in a state of rapidly rolling forward. For a time, there was hypnagogic imagery of a printing press. Black characters on white scrolling past. The typography and arrangement of letters was gorgeous: isolated characters, sometimes in combinations, as if to draw attention to their beautiful shapes.

This gave way to some internal dialogue, which immediately detached itself and became an external character: a tall woman, hair in a black bob, wearing a floral-print dress. My reaction to this also split off and became a person. In an instant, there were four of them, distinct personalities, all gabbling away in conversation on the effects of the drug.

The next I remember, I was at my parents’ old house, helping my mother stack food in the cupboards, our long-dead cat weaving between our feet, looking as scraggy as she had during her final months. I was holding a sack, and when I bent to sniff inside, discovered it was full of huge cornflakes, each a couple of inches wide. Making sure Mum didn’t see, I let some drop near the cat, who wolfed them down gratefully.

I’m not sure I was always entirely lucid. It seemed that four or five times during the night, I realised I was fully conscious, threw myself out through the window, and tried to realise my Lazarus goal. But the drug wasn’t particularly improving my habitual shortcomings when it comes to lucid dreams: either I wasn’t quite lucid, or – when I was – it lasted only a short time. The drug was heightening the intensity and fluidity of my usual experience, but it wasn’t fixing its usual problems.

'Advanced Lucid Dreaming', by Thomas Yuschak.

Yuschak’s book is self-published, but available from usual outlets.

After a couple of failures, I gave myself a break and simply enjoyed the scene from the window. My partner lives on one of Brighton’s quirkier shopping streets. The architecture was now augmented, upwards and outwards, with hardly any sky or road between the facing buildings. Everywhere were ramshackle stalls and entrances, giving the place a third-world feel.

When I jumped down, someone told me that two Buddhist monks had come to work on a neighbouring stall. I grabbed some cartons of lychee juice – which seemed an appropriate gift. The two monks had shaved heads and dark-red robes. As we chatted, it became clear they were more concerned with the rules and culture of their tradition than in mastering meditation and gaining insights. Still, they were nice guys, and it was interesting to talk about their travels.

In fact, everyone, everything, seemed to want to talk. The mind itself was in a state where it felt far easier than usual to discourse at length, to spin out stuff in a swift and ceaseless stream. But it was a problem to make any of it stick. It seems I have forgotten a great deal. I had to make a conscious effort to rescue these fragments.

Deep stuff

Things other than dreams were occurring. Before bed, I’d read an email from a friend about working with spirits. She was wondering how supplication of spirits or gods relates to that deeper level of religious insight, in which we recognise all is well – right now – just the way it is. If the goddess Yemaya gives us something that isn’t this all-pervading sense of wellness, then what is Yemaya?

I didn’t have an answer until, between the dreams, one arrived. It said: ‘The question is wrong.

Icon of the goddess Yemaya. In Santeria, she is the mother of all living things.

‘Yemaya isn’t anything. This is the realisation that everything is well. But if we can’t help having to take something from her, then with the infinite compassion of nothingness, the goddess will give.’

I made another tilt at Lazarus. Transitions in lucid dreams between scenes and states are always tricky, and can often chuck you out into waking consciousness. Yuschak describes a technique he calls ‘seeding’ (p. 163). Whilst falling asleep, we drop into our mindstream conscious images which, if our timing is on, will grow into our desired scene as we slip into dreaming. The challenge is to do this lightly enough. If it’s too conscious, we won’t fall asleep. If it’s too lax, the images will grow in unintended directions.

Of course, I failed. Despite picturing myself outside the tomb, hoping Christ might show up once I’d dropped off, I was too loose. My images took on their own life and meandered far, far away. Somehow, I ended up sitting on the floor beside four people on a sofa, explaining what I was trying to do. A plump girl in glasses, with curly hair, seated closest to me, kept talking across everyone. Finally I realised it might be good to shut up and actually listen to her.

‘There was a phone call for you,’ she said.

‘Who was it?’

‘A beautiful voice. Can you imagine,’ she went on, ‘picking up the phone and hearing this most beautiful voice reciting the most beautiful passages?’

‘What were those passages?’ I asked.

‘Captain Pigeon.’

‘I’m sorry?’

She repeated the name.

‘I don’t know who Captain Pigeon is,’ I apologised. ‘We don’t have him where I come from.’

The people on the sofa stared in amazement and pity.

‘Of all the TV programmes,’ the girl explained, ‘Captain Pigeon is the only one with no death or violence.’

I smiled, because although I hadn’t made it to the tomb of Lazarus, this felt like some kind of sign. The pigeon or dove is an important Christian symbol for the Holy Spirit, for peace, and for John the Baptist. If I’d been awake, this might have been a synchronicity. But I wasn’t awake, so it was only a dream of one.

Piero della Francesca, 'The Baptism of Christ' (c. 1448-50).

Captain Pigeon, a.k.a ‘The Holy Spirit’ or ‘the dove from above’. (Francesca, The Baptism of Christ, c. 1448).

In a synchronicity, mind and reality come into alignment: a girl dreams of a golden scarab, and the next day a golden beetle flies through the window. I had wanted to see Christ raise Lazarus, but instead I’d had a phone call from Captain Pigeon. This might have been a synchronicity inside the dream, but – I realised – outside the dream it would not be meaningful at all.

‘Wow,’ I thought. ‘In here, I have absolutely no terms of reference.’

And then, bizarrely, the meaninglessness suddenly assumed an intense and paradoxical meaning. The non-synchronicity became one. Because Captain Pigeon, by drawing attention to his own senselessness, had transcended the dream. It felt like a message smuggled from another dimension.

Debrief

I woke at 7.04am, when the drug would have reached its peak and was starting to decline. I could tell I wouldn’t sleep again, so I took the opportunity to examine the remaining effects in a more conscious state.

Its basic quality was that state when we’re consumed by an activity and cannot let it go; the feeling of being interested in and happy to work away at something all night. The label on the jar promised ‘mental acuity’. I’m not sure I quite agree with that. It seems to provide momentum rather than focus.

I can also confirm Yuschak’s observation (p. 71) that dreams under the drug seem inclined to feature music. At one point, from no visible source, I heard a funky piece played on a harpsichord; and whilst sitting by the people on the sofa, I heard trashy, but oddly light, dubstep being played. Whenever the music played, it was loud, which created an odd effect: because it was not actually sound, but a mental image of sound, it was possible for it to play at an ear-splitting volume, yet I could still ‘hear’ perfectly well (at the same time) conversations and other events in the dream.

Alpha-GPC is available from health shops. (Other brands are available.)

Reported side effects for alpha-GPC include insomnia and nausea. At 600mg I experienced none of the latter. The former was mitigated by ensuring five hours sleep before taking the drug. After this, indeed, my sleep felt rather light and brittle. After waking at 7am, I was fine at first, but 3-4 hours later started to feel tired. I also felt a little low and irritable as the effects wore off, but I’m a miserable git anyway, so this was nothing extraordinary.

I’ve seen numerous posts on forums from people who tried alpha-GPC without results. This is not surprising. It’s a diet supplement, not a psychedelic; it only enhances the conditions for lucidity and does not directly induce it. Combining psychological techniques with alpha-GPC makes it more likely to trigger lucidity, and it’s absolutely necessary to time the dosage correctly. A few hours of sleep should always be taken beforehand, not only to guarantee some rest, but also to ensure maximisation of effect during the later stages of the night (or early morning), when the REM phases are at their deepest and longest.

I shall definitely be using it again – sparingly, so as not to build tolerance. But I won’t be following the directions on the jar to use it as a dietary supplement and chug a couple every day. However, as I make my living mostly from writing code, it struck me that it might occasionally prove handy in this context.

July 3, 2012 by oeith

Where the Dead Live

Fast forward to the moment of your death: as the body fails, with a varying degree of rapidity, your perceptual and cognitive faculties shut down. Seeing stops. Then tasting, hearing, smelling and feeling. So too, thinking. In Buddhist traditions, supposedly hearing goes last. And at some point, presumably, consciousness.

But don’t worry too much about that last one – consciousness vanishes for a good part of every night. Sometimes, during the day as well. It comes and it goes and is no more ‘you’ than anything that arises within it. Even with consciousness completely gone, we wake up in the morning and recall stuff that seemed to have happened. Weird stuff, often. We call this stuff that happens to us in the absence of consciousness, dreaming.

Heraclitus said, ‘The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own’ (Fragment 89). Because dreams are so private and unique, we are – in a sense – closest to ourselves in the absence of consciousness. But what is this intensely personal stuff that continues to unfold in us, even in the absence of consciousness and volition? One word for it is karma.

The karmic traces are like photographs that we take of each experience. Any reaction of grasping or aversion to any experience… is like snapping a photo. In the darkroom of our sleep we develop the film. Which images are developed on a particular night will be determined by the secondary conditions recently encountered. Some images or traces are burned deeply into us by powerful reactions while others, resulting from superficial experiences, leave only a faint residue… We string them together like a film, as this is the way our psyches work to make meaning, resulting in a narrative constructed from conditioned tendencies and habitual identities: the dream. (Tenzin 1998: 32-3)

So claims Tibetan Buddhist dream yogi, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. Before we write this off as exotic claptrap, consider the similar conclusions of a western dream yogi. Sigmund Freud preferred the term ‘unconscious wish’ (Freud 1976: 200-213 [Ch. III]) instead of ‘reaction of grasping or aversion’; Tenzin’s ‘secondary conditions recently encountered,’ Freud called ‘the day’s residues’ (Freud 1976: 247-76 [Ch. V (A)]); and ‘the way our psyches work to make meaning’ was precisely what Freud believed had been uncovered through his exploration of dreams, to which he dedicated the rest of his career. (He preferred to describe it as, ‘the dream-work’ [Freud 1976: 381-651 (Ch. VI)].)

The end of consciousness is not the end of karma. Indeed, in the absence of consciousness, karma thrives. But what about the end of life? ‘What dreams may come?’ Is death the end of karma too?

I’ve used my limited abilities as a lucid-dreaming yogi to interrogate angelic and demonic entities, and to scry the Enochian aethyrs. In December last year, my father unexpectedly and traumatically died. Since then, whilst grieving for him with other members of my family, cautiously and carefully I’ve tried to use dream yoga to explore his vicissitudes after death.

28th February. To see him was lovely. A vivid sense of his presence. He sat in the chair watching television. Yet as soon as interaction was attempted, things turned problematic. He stood against the wall, frozen and immobile. No response. His eyes opened and stared blankly, like they had in the intensive care unit.

6th March. I went into the kitchen and he was getting ready for work. He looked younger and healthy, but seemed stressed. ‘You’re looking well,’ I said to him. ‘You know that’s because you’re dead now, don’t you?’ He seemed bewildered and unsure. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I feel poorly. Every time I walk into a room, I –’ Unfortunately, just then the lucid state dissolved.

‘But these are just dreams,’ is the obvious criticism. They were lucid dreams, but other than that I do not disagree – except to point out that our experience of others is always of their behaviour: the way they look, speak and move; the choices and reactions they make. In an encounter with a dead person in a lucid dream, all of these present themselves to consciousness. Phenomenologically, there is no difference from an experience of the person in waking life.

Yet in these dreams, when the dead person is called upon to react to their current situation, the interaction breaks down, because what is missing is not karma, but life. As far as I’m aware, there is no scientifically feasible definition of life that doesn’t point instead at karma. So far, life has not been defined as what it ‘is’ or ‘has’, but only in terms of actions and behaviours – as karma, in other words.

DNA, certainly, is a substance that living things have, but that having is made possible only by a doing: the self-replicating and recombining action of the DNA molecule. It appears that life itself is not the being or having of something, but a continuous unfolding, somehow beyond these, to which being and having are responses, rather than the driving force.

The karma of the dead might persist in various forms, the strongest of which is probably memories and effects upon the living. But although the karmic simulacrum left by the dead is to all extents identical with what they were, in the experience of others, that Grace by which (when alive) they were able to change, develop and respond, has withdrawn.

25th March. I couldn’t find him, but then I went into a pub and saw him. He looked normal but, on inspection, was like a hollow, metal ornament. His eyes were closed and his face dead. Inside him was black ash and soot. Still in the lucid state, I began to meditate. This way I could find him, because he had abandoned the physical representation of himself. Where he was now, he was in a kind of focused repose. No thoughts. Very peaceful. He was collecting himself quietly, focussing in on himself, with no thoughts or perceptible changes.

The karma of the dead unfolds in the living. Their vicissitudes after death are dependent on us, because they are done with developing and unfolding. Grieving is no isolated event in an individual mind, it is the dreaming-out by the dead (through us) of their karmic remnants. Our mourning is the unfolding of love or antagonisms they left behind. The dead can suffer or cling to life, depending on their dreams, woven by our grief.

3rd April. He seemed neither dead nor alive, but I sensed I could force the issue, so I walked quickly up to him and spoke loudly into his ear, ‘Dad!’ ‘Eh?’ he mumbled. ‘Love you,’ I said. ‘Uv oo,’ he replied, then lapsed back into a stillness, from which I knew he would next time be even harder to rouse.

I found it both difficult and helpful to meet him in this series of dreams. It’s not a technique I’d recommend for anyone with complicated issues concerning the deceased. There are bereavement counsellors who can guide us more safely if this is the case. It was difficult because there he was, completely back again, even though I knew full well he had gone. It was helpful because it showed me directly, painfully, how all that remained of him was karma. What had allowed that karma to unfold had now disappeared, maybe back to where it came.

Dad and me in a slot-machine arcade (probably Blackpool). Late 1970s Polaroid.

This last encounter alerted me I was clinging on too tightly. As time passed, he was moving ever further away, becoming more difficult to find. Reaching out was pulling him back toward a state in which he no longer belonged. It also exposed how, really, we’d said to each other all that needed to be said. It was selfish to continue.

1st May. In the garden at night, I pointed out to him the Pleiades star-cluster. Then I realised I wasn’t looking properly: the whole sky was filled with stars like the Pleiades, packed and dense. Suddenly, he was gone. Vanished from sight, like a jump-cut in a film. Mum and I were in the garden, looking up at the stars and remembering him.

References

Freud, Sigmund (1976). The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated by James Strachey. Harmondsworth: Pelican.

Heraclitus (2012). Fragments. http://bit.ly/MToVOM (wikisource.org).

Tenzin, Wangyal Rinpoche (1998). The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep. Edited by Mark Dahlby. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications.

January 30, 2012 by oeith

The Vision of PAZ (Aethyr 4)

There comes over me the ‘buzzing’ state that heralds an out-of-body experience, but although it fails to develop, neither does it fully recede. It settles into a pulsing rhythm, quite unpleasant, but I decide to put up with it. My body is guided to a specific place, as if I were floating feet-first. This state does not feel deep. I wait for it to stabilise. It seems as if the cat is scratching my bedroom door. I decide to abandon this working, because the cat is bound to distract me, but then I realise there’s no evidence the cat is really there. If I am experiencing sights and sounds, then these cannot be distractions from the state – they are the state. And so I ask for admittance to the aethyr. I ask three times, because each request seems to strengthen the state.

[I was staying at my mother's. She was able to confirm that the cat really had been scratching at my door.]

Killer Bob. A demonic spirit from the Black Lodge. (Twin Peaks, Season 2, Episode 7.)

There are two spirits who spout all kinds of sententious-sounding stuff. But it’s nonsense. They take the form of a small aluminium pan and a plastic food container – which betrays their nature. Then I see a procession of things, which I repeat verbally to ensure I will remember. Yet I have forgotten them all. They seemed meaningful. It is only in the next moment, when the vision feels as if it has changed into a different mode or was drawing to a close, that my memory of it properly begins.

[Was there really stuff that I have forgotten? Or was this the vision's way of saying, 'You have forgotten everything that came before because you changed to another mode'? In a vision there is no boundary between experience and symbols.]

I am in a small room with patterned wallpaper, bare except for a bed against one wall. In the same wall is a big window onto absolute blackness. In the forgotten part of the vision, I was in the same room, but it had no window. Now, I stare through the glass, and briefly see my reflection on its surface. My reflection is replaced by a manic, seething face with long hair and bushy eyebrows. The face seems about my age – perhaps a little younger – but strikes me as very different from my own.

[The room reminded me of the one Ken Wilber's reported during a near-death experience [1]; and of the climax to Sapphire and Steel, a supernatural sci-fi drama, in which the heroes were trapped for eternity in a very peculiar motorway café [2]. The face is very much like the psychopathic spirit ‘Bob’, who possesses Leland Palmer when he kills his daughter, Laura, in the TV series Twin Peaks. [3]]

Fiji Mermaid and 'baby' from Eraserhead.

Above: Fiji Mermaid. Below: Nightmarish 'baby' from the film Eraserhead (1977).

I turn around and behind me, on the bed, is a woman dressed in a blue-grey smock with a pointed witch’s hat. She seems frumpy and ill-at-ease in her body. I realise that the face in the window is not my reflection, but hers. I am between them, but I have no image. I have a strong feeling that this is a joke. Someone is making fun, at my expense.

Then I feel again that the vision is changing mode or about to end. I am suddenly alone, until my sister appears. ‘Well, that’s it, brother. Weird, wasn’t it?’ she says. As she sits on the foot of the bed she transforms into a small wizened creature. It’s about two feet tall, totally paralysed, with round, staring eyes, and matted hair that fans out around its head like seaweed.

[The creature reminds me of a Fiji Mermaid [4] and the baby-creature from the film Eraserhead (directed by David Lynch, 1977).]

As I stand, staring, it transmutes into an inanimate object: The Ace of Wands, as depicted in the 1JJ tarot deck. Then the vision falls apart.

Sapphire (Joanna Lumley) and Steel (David McCallum). Trapped for eternity in a kind of cosmic Scratchwood service station.

[The next day, I happened to read this: 'The garbha-grha, or womb-chamber, is the enclosed, windowless room where the deity is kept in a Hindu temple' [5]. This synchronicity perhaps offers a key to an interpretation of the vision. The room is the womb. Early experience is forgotten because there is no reflexivity or ‘window’. Self is an illusion created by the window, from a position between the body (the woman, ‘witch’) and spirit (the man, ‘Bob’). In the vision, this process is presented as something uncanny and potentially ‘evil’. The womb is an emptiness, a void, and yet it is the space in which everything arises. ‘Sister’ is the one (who is not ourselves), who is made, spliced together (like a Fiji mermaid) in the womb. Again, the symbolism turns the generation of life into something grotesque and frightening: the horrifying baby from Eraserhead. In the garbha-grha is the image of the deity; here, the womb-chamber contains the Ace of Wands, a very conspicuous phallic symbol. The vision seems to be showing that whether the womb is empty or filled (by the father’s phallus, or by the deity) we can never find or position ourselves within it. If it is filled then we are displaced; if it is empty then we are not there. Like Sapphire and Steel, we are always already floating in eternity, lost forever.]

Notes

The Ace of Wands from the Swiss 1JJ tarot deck. It's certainly got wood. What's with all that yellow shading?

[1] Wilber described it as: ‘[A] really strange room of blue and pink pastels.‘

[2] Sapphire and Steel was created by Peter J. Hammond and aired between 1979 and 1982 on the UK’s ITV network.

[3] Twin Peaks was created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. It first aired between 1990 and 1991 on the USA’s ABC network.

[4] An object presented as the mummified body of a mermaid, which was actually the remains of a monkey and a fish, spliced together. (See picture, above.)

[5] Sarah Caldwell, ‘Margins at the Center: Tracing Kali through Time, Space and Culture’, in: Encountering Kali: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West, edited by Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), p. 265.

November 27, 2011 by oeith

The Visions of DEO, MAZ and LIT (Aethyrs 7 through 5)

The visions of the aethyrs are becoming subtler, harder to attain, and yet – surprisingly – more mundane and personal, as I approach the end of this five-year working. (Or has it been even longer?)

The Vision of DEO (Aethyr 7)

I’d not had a lucid dream in ages, so this working was an experiment: I opened the temple with the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram; read the Enochian Call of the Aethyrs and opened Aethyr 7, reciting the names of the governors; and then, without banishing, I then went straight to bed. I had decided that whatever occurred between opening the aethyr and rising in the morning, I would accept as the vision of DEO.

Waiting to fall asleep, a spirit in the form of a young boy came and asked questions. ‘How do you open an Enochian aethyr?’ he kept pestering me. Earlier in the evening, whilst performing other operations, I had sensed a presence behind me, but it had not identified itself. I had banished afterwards, even though the working hadn’t required it. I wondered now if the young boy were that same spirit returning. There was something vexatious in his questions – because if he were a spirit of the aethyrs, why was he so interested in knowing how to open one? And besides, the spirits were there to answer my questions.

Eventually sleep came. The weather was breezy. Something, somewhere, made a slight, intermittent bumping sound that kept me partially awake throughout the night. Maybe this accounted for the paucity of dreams, yet it also provoked a consistent emotional state: not quite anxiety, but certainly a suspicious watchfulness that endured whilst the aethyr was open, and which I decided was one of its attributes.

At 4.19am I woke, got up, and sat in meditation until 5.10. I saw a headless being, composed of white, squirming limbs. Apart from the wind, the night was quiet, and I was reminded of my stint last year in the haunted prison cell. Fear took hold, several times. Watching the fear and its sources, at one point I entered a state where the presence of my mind was the cause of its fear. The mind was frightened just by the weird, ghostly fact of itself. My surprise that such a state could exist immediately put an end to it.

Usually, getting up to meditate and then going back to bed is my sure-fire method for obtaining a lucid dream. I lay on my back (another lucidity aid) but finally turned on my side and slept.

I was in my parents’ old house, sleeping in the room I’d had as a small child. Fra X was staying as a guest, asleep in a room upstairs (although, in actuality, there is no room above). Fra X liked listening to show tunes when he rose in the mornings, and it seemed I heard these, but soon the music stopped and Fra X had still not appeared.

[I hate show tunes. I were asked to nominate someone whose lifestyle was completely at odds with ordinary, family life, then I might nominate Fra X.]

It was still dark, and in the meantime I heard my father get up for work. As he moved about, making his breakfast to the news on the radio, it struck me how agile he sounded. ‘His hip must be better,’ I thought.

[The sounds of my father in the morning are memories from childhood. His bad hip is a reference to the present. By confusing the sequence of time, the past is enlisted to heal the present.]

Then I heard my mother get up and leave the house. I was curious and anxious where she might have gone. I found her at the bus station, waiting with a group of characters from my home town, looking the way they’d appeared in the 1970s. Sitting nearby was my grandmother with her next-door neighbour. This puzzled me, because I knew they were both dead. I missed an opportunity to become lucid at this point, yet they all looked so happy, chatting together whilst waiting, and having reassured myself my mother was okay I decided to leave them all to it. ‘You are all far too early in the morning for me!’ I laughed, and walked away.

A bus queue in Bedford, 1970. An image of the afterlife?

['Waiting for a bus' can feel like 'forever', and here is used to symbolise eternity. 'You are all too early' is a reversal of how the people waiting are actually 'late' – in the alternative sense of 'dead'. I am anxious for my mother because really I am afraid that she will die. I am able to reassure myself that it is not she who is dead but the others, and – anyway – they are all having a nice time, but evidently this is a fragile reassurance.]

Later, my sister came to visit. Fra X was still upstairs, but that was fine. If he ever got up and came down, it would be great to see him.

[Again, this rings false. If Fra X is the 'anti-family' then when he 'gets up', the family ceases to be.]

I had an electronic gadget that made quiet but distracting sounds – such as the noise of squelching food. I demonstrated it to my sister, at first without telling her. It drove her nuts. She couldn’t fathom where the noises were coming from. But when I showed her the device she found it very funny. She said it was exactly the kind of thing she supposed I would have.

[When we were kids, my sister was a noisy eater – which used to drive me nuts! The animosity of our childhood is forgotten here, the roles reversed, and the source of annoyance made into a toy, a novelty, that is a source of humour.]

Then there was a tiny, enclosed space, perhaps underground. As I was squeezing into this space, our long-dead family cat squeezed past me and ahead. My face was buried in the warmth of her fur, so what might have been a horribly claustrophobic episode was instead reassuring.

['Underground' suggests a grave. The family cat is buried in the garden. Regressive sexual imagery is combined with the deathly connotations. 'Cat' = 'pussy'. I'm pressing my face into the entrance of the womb! As a strategy for escaping death and separation, this is obviously rather flawed.]

The Vision of MAZ (Aethyr 6)

I am walking in a windy place with a childhood friend, thinking, ‘It would really impress him if I could fly.’ Realising that I am dreaming, I conclude: ‘Why not?’ And I do. But then I wonder, ‘Is there enough time to scry an aethyr?’

The state has become unstable, but I concentrate and it becomes more steady, and I state my intention: ‘I wish to enter MAZ, the sixth aethyr!’ Indeed, I state this so powerfully and clearly that I’m sure I’ve spoken it aloud in my sleep. The lucidity begins to fade again, but I reinvigorate it by spinning around and around.

I am on a mattress without blankets in a room that reminds me of my sister’s room in my parents’ old house, except it has an exceedingly high ceiling. My girlfriend is asleep next to me, and next to her is an identical aspect of herself, with a scarlet pentagram on her forehead at the third eye. She says something, which I do not remember and may not have been verbal anyway, but I recognise who she is: the part of my girlfriend that is childlike, mystical, and loving towards everyone.

[The amalgam of sister's room and partner suggests (again) the mystical sister, soror mystica, a personification of the male alchemist's 'female half' who assist in his quest. The pentagram is a symbol of earth and humanity. 'Scarlet' recalls the 'Scarlet Woman', the shakti, or tantric partner. The magickal practice of placing symbols on the forehead of the partner, charging them as sigils through orgasm during lovemaking, is also suggested here.]

'He meets his shakti Tuesdays, / Down the launderette. / They go behind the driers / And invoke Baphomet.'

At the foot of a mattress, high up against the wall on a ladder, a large naked man is fixing a red cube to the wall. ‘Who’s in charge?’ I call up to him. He laughs, but not derisively. ‘You’ll never see him around here,’ he says.

[Red cube: another symbol of earth and matter.]

There was a second part to this vision, which has faded from memory, in which it now seems that I did see and meet who was in charge. But whether there were images and I have lost them, and that’s why only the purport of it remains, I can no longer tell. Yet I know that the person in charge gave me something. Because he was angelic it was something very subtle and fine, so he showed me how to mix it with what is gross and disgusting, in order to make it usable in everyday experience.

[This suggests the magickal techniques of tantra and the Left Hand Path.]

Earlier I’d dreamt non-lucidly that Edgar Allan Poe decided to take his own life. He rode on his beloved horse to the edge of a cliff, then took out a handgun, intending to blow out his brains. It was the horse that swayed him. Poe couldn’t bear the thought that his horse might come to harm, and – realising a source of genuine love in his life – the urge to commit suicide faded. Instead he went home, and dined alone with gusto on a meal of roasted rats.

[Poe's lack of love contrasts with the compassionate nature of the mystical sister. The horse represents the bodily or animal nature of the rider. What we might have here is a view of the Right Hand Path from the perspective of the Left. Poe's 'spiritual practice' is to blow out his brains, rather than to use his connection with the 'horse'. The rat traditionally symbolises observation and intelligence – mental awareness, rather than bodily. In Poe's story 'The Pit and the Pendulum', the narrator is tortured by the Inquisition, but escapes after rats gnaw through the ropes that constrain him. The rat, in this instance, is perhaps a symbol of 'liberation by mental means'. Poe, of course, was an intensely cerebral character.]

'They swarmed upon me in ever-accumulating heaps...' Illustration for The Pit and the Pendulum by Byam Shaw, 1909.

And so the person in charge mixed the subtle thing he gave me with cooked, minced rats. And although Poe ate with relish what was actually disgusting, the mixture of the subtle thing and the rats was really quite palatable. Only when I thought of the ingredients did I feel disgust, but then only weakly, because it came from thinking and was not a bodily reaction.

[This suggests a way forward in my current practice.]

With this second scene, if there ever really was one, the vision ended.

The Vision of LIT (Aethyr 5)

I’m at a magickal moot. There’s a theatre performance, and also we’re all doing our rituals on the stage. There’s a large, dark guy who’s in an aggressive mood and keeps shoving me. I get angry and we start to fight, but we’ve only shoved each other a few times before the magickal brothers and sisters crowd in and calm us down.

[Are my magickal brethren really doing me a favour by preventing the fight between me and my shadow?]

It’s dawn and I want some breakfast, so I step outside and discover I’m in the main street of my home town. Mum and Dad aren’t far, but I doubt they’ll have the kind of breakfast I need. I could just buy a cup of tea, but realise I have no money. Then I remember there is both breakfast and tea back at the moot. It has begun to rain, so I decide to run back to where I came. A feeling of discontent arises at that thought and, noticing it, I also become aware that – anyway – I’m dreaming.

[The moot hasn't taken me far from home, but I seem to realise that it's still where I'm more likely to find appropriate 'food'.]

I look up at the sky and ask to enter LIT, the fifth aethyr. My words sound slurred, so I say it again. Beautiful coloured lights appear, swirling above me. When I look back to earth it’s as if my gaze drags the colours down – the lampposts and houses are festooned with bright decorations made of organic stuff, circular membranes of vivid colour. Everywhere I look more of the stuff appears, but I decide it’s all a bit ‘trippy’, so I head into the town centre to find something interesting.

Where the roads meet is a small café, which somehow I know offers divination. The sign above the window reads QUILITY FRINDS. The premises are very small: candlelit tables for two crammed closely together. At each table sits a woman, waiting for a customer. They are mostly quite short in stature, homely looking, with their hair tied up as if they really were workers in a café or bakery.

[QUILITY FRINDS ('QUALITY FRIENDS'?) = 75 = Five-Pointed Star.]

One of the women with her back to me turns around, sees me, and seems to take an instant dislike. ‘I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to help you,’ she says. But on my left is a woman who looks more friendly. She’s inside a kiosk, and it takes her a while to squeeze out. Another woman occupies the chair where I am supposed to sit. She squeezes out also, to share the seat with the woman from the kiosk. As it turns out, the second woman does most of the talking. The woman from the kiosk merely nods and says a few words.

‘Can you give me some information about the fifth aethyr?’

Next time you're in a lucid dream, visit QUILITY FRINDS. (Hopefully, their cakes are better than their divination.)

‘Well, yes,’ the second woman says, ‘although there are certain things about it we’re not permitted to tell. And anything I do say, you mustn’t take as an official representation. There are lots of beings here, so it’s just my view.’

‘Okay, that’s fine. What can you tell me?’

‘Something’s going to happen, but I’m not allowed to reveal it. It’s not good and it’ll come about on November 16th.’

Of course, on hearing this, I was determined to squeeze more details out of her.

‘Is it to do with my family or with health issues?’

‘No. Nothing like that.’ She sighs, and seems to give in. ‘It’s a bit of a rip-off, really. You’ll buy something and it’ll turn out not to be worth it.’

‘But hang on,’ I realise, ‘where I’ve come from, it’s November 21st. The 16th has already passed.’

[I had got up to meditate shortly before going back to bed and obtaining the vision. I had noticed the date whilst setting the alarm for the end of the meditation.]

The two women stare at each other as if this were entirely unexpected. ‘Then you’ll be able to look back and work out what it is,’ the first woman responds.

This seems to have broken our concentration – theirs, and also mine, because at this point the vision breaks up and fades.

[Looking back to November 16th, I have so far found nothing to support or illuminate this retrospective 'prediction'.]

September 12, 2011 by oeith

The Vision of ZIP (Aethyr 9)

I am having a non-lucid dream that my bed is in the office at my place of work. I have an appointment with Sally, to train her in some software I have written. She turns out to be quite personable, but I realise I’m wearing only pyjamas and wonder if they’re clean. I mention this to Sally but she just climbs into my bed, readying herself for the training. I take this to mean that she doesn’t mind and she is trying to put me at ease by being informal too.

[Neurotic stuff. 'Sally' suggests 'Aunt Sally': a figure intentionally placed to divert attention from a more pertinent issue.]

I go downstairs to fetch something. A voiceover explains how my room was designed to embrace contrasting varieties of space. ‘There is the cave,’ the voice says, which is where my old bed is located, where I tend not to sleep any more, ‘and there is also the promontory,’ the voice continues, which is the bed in which I sleep most often these days.

['Downstairs', 'cave': these suggest the unconscious. I have been recovering from a prolonged period of illness, during which I slept in a different bed ('the old bed'). Since starting to recover, feelings of depression caused me to look up Hamlet's speech 'What a piece of work is man' (Act II, Scene II), which includes the words: 'this goodly frame the Earth, seems to me a sterile promontory.' The 'old bed' is illness; the 'new bed' is depression.]

Just for fun I go into the cave. I’m not entirely sure there isn’t a stranger sleeping there. When I reach out, it seems a hand grasps mine, but it isn’t clear whether this is really happening. This ambiguity alerts me that I’m dreaming, so I demand admittance to the 9th Aethyr, ZIP. It isn’t granted at once. I repeat the request: ‘In the name of the governors of the aethyr,’ I add, wishing that I’d taken the trouble to learn the governors’ names. But then the lucid state approaches; the scene changes and the vision begins.

[I've wondered whether, magically speaking, my scrying of the tenth aethyr may have played a part in falling ill. Here we see that escaping from or confronting the grip of illness is what leads to the opening of the ninth aethyr.]

I am looking up at the ceiling of a high room, like the classrooms I remember from early childhood. There is a picture stuck to the ceiling. The writing is upside-down, so I turn myself around, and read something like: ‘WOO! WONKY DUNKY!’ Beneath this are cartoon drawings of myself with absurd expressions on my face: amazement, bewilderment, consternation.

A red telephone box. Loved by nostalgic Brits and archangels.

[Mockery of my depression and self-pity.]

I go to the window. Outside, small children in school uniforms coloured white, red and black are at recess, playing on the grass among wooden benches. Examining the scene, I think: ‘Well, this is not so different from what is outside my room in reality.’ But that’s not true. Looking again, now on the right is shining, calm blue sea. On the left, the lawns of a cliff-top give way to a seafront road with traffic and shops. The children have gone and before me now is a steep, grassy mound: ancient earthworks.

[There is subtle imagery concerning mortality here. In Iron John, Robert Bly proposes a highly condensed model of human development based upon the colours red (passion), white (obedience) and black (ironic transcendence of rules). Men, Bly argues, typically develop from red to white to black; women from white to red to black. These colours together therefore suggest human life in its entirety. There are also quiet echoes here of Emily Dickinson's poem, 'Because I could not stop for death': 'We passed a school, where children strove / At recess in the ring... We paused before a house that seemed / A swelling of the ground...' The seaside also suggests death: the place where rivers meet the ocean; the locality that people retire to when they are old.]

Alan is with me. We are both standing at the large window, looking out. I am very attentive, keen to soak up every detail of the vision.

An old man approaches the window, jeering. He waves his fist then turns and walks away.

The Archangel Michael, by Guido Reni (1636). The hexagram and the colour red are among his traditional attributes.

[The old man is perhaps Father Time, the Grim Reaper, Cronos. He is upset, as if he has been dislodged or forced to move on by the figure that subsequently appears.]

Stepping out from one of those classic, old red telephone boxes, another man approaches. He is old, but there is something young and alert in his eyes. He wears a medallion, which is not entirely clear, but seems to be a hexagram. Alan and I ask him questions, but he either ignores them or gives equivocal responses. Then I ask him an innocent, chatty question about how he likes to spend his time. ‘I keep coming back to earth to collect mink,’ he says.

[The telephone box suggests communication. The archangel whose symbol is the hexagram is Michael, the protector of the righteous and defeater of the Antichrist. According to Rudolf Steiner, Michael is the spirit that presides over our current era, which began in 1879 and will end around 2199. The mission of Michael is to elevate human beings to a new level of understanding, defeating the Ahrimanic forces of materialism that currently hold sway.]

A mink. WTF?! (I know enough about minks now to identify this as a European mink.)

This reveals that he is not an earthly being, and that he is drawn here by a specific desire he finds hard to resist. I repeat his words back to him, and can tell from his expression that he knows he has said too much. He gives a smirk and a shrug, and walks away. As the vision fades I realise that this is all I’m going to get.

[Despite my best efforts, I haven't found a satisfactory interpretation of Michael's comments about mink. It remains pleasingly weird and ambiguous.]

June 20, 2011 by oeith

The Vision of ZAX (Aethyr 10)

I am walking on grass, approaching the house where I go on retreat, and I’m full of joy to be back. The feeling that I have come home is so strong that I become conscious. There is a huge field, ringed by trees. I call up at the sky, ‘I wish to scry ZAX, the tenth aethyr!’

[The field ringed by trees is an exaggerated version of a part of the local recreation ground where I played as a child, which often features in my dreams as a backdrop to soaring emotion.]

I am fully aware, however, that this aethyr is accursed and inhabited by the demon Choronzon.

The scenery wavers and distorts. The trees shrink and assumed stunted shapes. I am not at the retreat centre after all, but back at university as an undergraduate.

Gormogon - the mysterious serial-killer from the third season of the TV series, 'Bones'.

Then I wake up and lie in stillness, watching my mind. I wonder if I’ll re-enter the dream, but instead I enter a state where there is no thought, only bodily sensations. Then I see an image of my body under the bedclothes, but still there is no thought and no vision. Slowly, another state takes over that provides the vision. It is not lucid, but not entirely non-lucid. I am not conscious, yet somehow I know that the things before me are symbolic.

[Perhaps I was dreaming that I was having a vision. In which case, both the scenes and their interpretation within the vision are dreams. My undergraduate years were generally an unhappy and difficult phase.]

So here I am, not on retreat but a student again. It is impossible to remember the order in which things appeared in the vision. It was not so much a narrative, but more like an awareness that certain things were the case.

My girlfriend from university, L., is still here, just the same, so I enter back into a relationship with her. I’m older and more experienced, so none of the things that were so embarrassing back then are a problem. We have sex over and over, yet the relationship somehow still returns to its old, negative groove. I hardly notice it at first, but then I realise that although she has an orgasm every time, I never do. But she keeps me bound to her with promises of satisfactions that never arrive. There is only her tiny student room, and the two of us in it, and the realisation I never receive anything from her – not even conversation.

[Choronzon has manifested as an ex-girlfriend! L. herself, of course, is simply a woman, and there neither was nor is anything inherently demonic about her. Choronzon's presence, however, is betrayed by the sluggish ignorance, dragging me into the past, even as it seems that my problems are resolved and the circumstances are changed. But just because issues are fixed that were a problem back then, that's no good reason to return to the past, nor a guarantee that the past could have turned out differently. Luckily, I seem to realise this in the vision...]

Once, I thought we were out on a date, but L. has joined the student branch of the Nazi party. What I thought was an outing turns into a flash mob, in which she and her Nazi friends line up in the street to sing ‘Radio Ga Ga’ by Queen, doing the movements, hitting the chest with the right fist twice, then raising the arm in a Nazi salute.

Queen performing in the video of 'Radio Ga Ga' (1984). Trying not to look like Nazis.

['Radio Ga Ga' was a 1984 hit by Queen. The video featured the band saluting a crowd dressed in white uniforms, but the salute consisted of holding the arms up in a wide V, fists clenched, then clapping the hands twice over the head. L. was not a Nazi, yet she was certainly a Tory – but, hey, this is the second half of the eighties we're talking about...]

I play along, but I can’t coordinate my movements to the song. Yet surprisingly, neither can the Nazis. They are very inexperienced.

[The banality of evil.]

There is a pond in the woods near the campus, a dangerous place, into which many had fallen and some had drowned. But now a strong metallic netting, so fine it is almost invisible, has been stretched over the pond and has made it safe. I realise that this is a metaphor for the Abyss. ‘What a squalid image,’ I think.

[Parochial, yes. But if something is parochial then that's because it is familiar. If the Abyss is just a pond then it has become known and made safe.]

Then there is something else, which is the hardest of all to remember, but it must be important because it sends L. livid with rage. It is told to me by an adrogynous magician, old and wise, who comes in especially to pass on the information.

[A message from the Holy Guardian Angel.]

I hardly understand what it means, and much less why it has such an unexpected effect on L. But it goes something like this: that there was a man we all knew some time ago, who was rather naive and easily-led, and became obsessed with a serial-killer called ‘Gormogon’. He decided to take ‘Gormogon’ as his name, and kept it even after he’d realised the error he’d made in falling under this person’s influence.

['Gormogon' (= 50 = 'abomination', 'infinite') is indeed the name of a serial-killer in the third season of the TV series Bones. He leads astray one of the main characters, called Zack (ZAX?), and persuades him to commit a murder. The Gormogons were also an obscure 18th century society whose aims are historically uncertain, but who seem to have been dedicated to undermining and ridiculing the Freemasons.]

But now it transpires that this man had a daughter, or a wife, who for a long time had forgotten her identity, but who was a victim of his evil actions during the time he was under the influence of the serial-killer Gormogon. Now, the magician tells me, this woman has realised who she is, and is coming to terms with her ordeal.

[This daughter / wife is the soror mystica, or 'mystical sister'. The male alchemist unites with this personification of his 'female half' and together they seek the Philosopher's Stone. In more neutral language, this represents the realisation that the part of the mind that looks for truth (the alchemist), and the part of the mind that is revealed by the looking (his mystical sister), are fundamentally joined. Separate, both remain unaware of their true nature. Together, they realise they are fundamentally joined and can then grasp something far deeper than both of them.]

The alchemist and his soror mystica collect the morning dew. (Mutus Liber, France, 1677.)

What has particularly impressed the magician who is telling me this story, which surprises me, but which absolutely outrages and disgusts L., is that this woman too has decided to take the name of Gormogon as her own.

[L. was an easy symbol for Choronzon to assume, because there are loose ends from that relationship still hanging painfully around in my mind. These are emotional hooks that could easily drag me backwards. Gormogon, perhaps, represents chaos magick and its institutions. Both the alchemist and his sister have realised that Gormogon was an error that kept them from the Stone, and yet Gormogon was also what brought them together. In the same way they have both retained Gormogon's name, I've retained my allegiance to magick. I renounced my attachment to L., because it wasn't truly worked through, and so Choronzon was able to drag me right back there in the vision. So what really pisses off L. / Choronzon about the man and the woman retaining their 'Gormogon' link is that they can't be haunted and confused by something they're not pretending has died to them.]

May 3, 2011 by oeith

The Vision of ICH (Aethyr 11)

I was walking a complex route to another part of the city when I realised I was dreaming, so I cried up at the sky: ‘I wish to scry the eleventh aethyr, ICH!’

I didn’t wake, but carried on with my journey, noticing that the route now seemed to be trending downwards. There was a series of forbidding-looking buildings, vast and ruinous, including a domed structure, like a mosque or a derelict gasometer. A spiral staircase led down into the dark. I followed it, until I began to think: ‘Well, no harm can come to me, so why don’t I just do it?’ I threw myself into the central well of blackness, but instead of falling I hung in space, consciousness suspended. I’m not sure if it was a jhanic state, or if I lost self-awareness, but after a time it became boring so I willed myself back to the stairs and climbed outside.

Alan was there, yet although I didn’t explicitly acknowledge it couldn’t really be him, nevertheless in what followed I took care not to listen too much to what he said, nor let him follow his own lines of questioning with the spirit that was about to appear. We found a grassy area between the buildings and sat chatting until a gangly young man hurried towards us and sat down.

A beautiful Viennese gasometer.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

He muttered something that began with ‘H’.

‘Was that Hyperion?’ ['Hyperion' = 56 = Choronzon.]

‘If that’s what you want it to be then that’s what it is,’ he remarked grumpily.

Maybe something went wrong at this point. I recollect talking for a long time with Hyperion, but I remember hardly anything. Something tells me Hyperion himself may be responsible for this. I think we may have argued and actually come to blows. What I definitely recall is becoming thoroughly sick of him and deciding to banish.

‘I’m not leaving,’ was his response.

‘That’s not because you can refuse to,’ I pointed out, ‘but because you didn’t give me your true name. So tell me now: what is it?’

‘Hincapie,’ he admitted. ['Hincapie' = 47 = 'Man of Earth'.]

On confessing this, his appearance changed. He wasn’t quite so tall, although he retained the same basic features, hair and clothes. We continued talking, but – again – it feels as if something has been erased. The gist of Hincapie’s talk, however, was that everything humans do is incorrect or inferior. His whining diatribe quickly became tedious again.

In my dreams throughout that night I repeatedly felt hungry, and had frequently dreamt I was eating. Alan and I had some chocolate that we proceeded to share. I offered some to Hincapie, and he complained how poor it tasted. But then it struck me he was simply complaining too much. I took the flesh of his face between my thumb and forefinger and gave his cheek a tug.

‘I realise what’s happening,’ I told him. ‘You just love humans and our food so much you can’t keep away from us.’

This pierced Hincapie to his roots. No matter if he’d managed to mislead us or erase parts of the conversation, it felt like I’d discovered the truth of him. It seemed he didn’t want to part with what he told us next.

‘There are lots of spirits like that throughout the aethyrs,’ he said. ‘Many are the ghosts of shoes.’

The spirit didn't look completely unlike professional US cyclist George Hincapie.

It never occurred to me that objects intimately connected with humans might take on a spiritual dimension by association, but Hincapie had revealed that many spirits are like this. Their nature is petty, circumscribed, because it depends entirely upon human beings, and so the understanding of these spirits cannot penetrate beyond or even as far as everyday human consciousness. Or is it just a mocking pun? Are ‘the ghosts of shoes’ really just ‘lost soles’?

The vision ended at this point.

I’ve debated whether this vision is legitimate. I’m not convinced this vision isn’t an instance of false lucidity – i.e. merely dreaming, unconsciously, that one is lucid. One of the ways to spot the difference between true and false lucidity is the presence of ‘day’s residues’ in the dream. This was Sigmund Freud’s term for elements appearing in a dream that are obviously based on experiences from the preceding day. A dream from the unconscious consists of a large proportion of day’s residues (because our consciousness, during sleep, has no other material to work with). A lucid dream doesn’t, because it constructs itself instead from the idea that one is awake.

In the vision, I could indeed easily identify a lot of day’s residues. For instance, during the day my partner had remarked that if she had a lucid dream, then she would use it to eat chocolate all night; an episode of Doctor Who I had watched earlier in the evening involved a race of aliens that could erase memories of themselves from human perception; and I had also watched an episode of the drama series Afterlife, which included a scene where a psychic medium, in order to keep persecutory spirits at bay, occupied herself with re-organising her shoes.

However, I’ve come to the conclusion that a vision arises from the intention to have a vision, and that the state in which the vision is received – whether it’s the waking state, a naturally or chemically-induced trance, a lucid-dream or a false lucid-dream – doesn’t matter; it’s simply the means of manifestation.

Looking up the English Qaballah equivalents for ‘Hyperion’ (Choronzon) and ‘Hincapie’ (Man of Earth) seems to have provided further validation. The next aethyr up is No. 10, which, according to tradition, crosses the Abyss and is home to the demon Choronzon. Perhaps the influence of No. 10 is already being felt in Nos. 12 and 11!

Certainly, I ran into some further spooky overspill, talking with my mother. ‘I had such a weird dream on Saturday night,’ she mentioned. This was the same night that I scried the aethyr. My mum hadn’t been able to sleep, so she’d tried meditating in bed. ‘I found myself in something like a dream, only it was real,’ my Mum explained. ‘I got out of bed and went downstairs, and found you in the kitchen making toast. You kept saying you felt really, really hungry.’

April 8, 2011 by oeith

The Vision of LOE (Aethyr 12)

I am looking through a window at the rain. Realising I am dreaming, I haul myself through the glass and shout the evocation at the sky: ‘I wish to scry LOE, Aethyr Twelve!’

I feel my body dissolve and I wake. But I sense the lucid state is still close, so I make myself still and re-enter. It’s the same place: an urban garden between derelict buildings. A man wheeling a bicycle comes towards me. He is wearing yellow waterproofs and looks an earthy type, like a gardener. I ask him where I can obtain the vision. He mumbles something about telling me later. No joy there, so I walk on.

[The figure of the man reminds me of the sinister stranger in 'The Two Faces of Evil', an episode of Hammer House of Horror first broadcast in 1980, which scared me rotten when I was a kid. That yellow mac should have set alarm bells ringing! The story also includes a 'doppleganger' theme.]

Scary yellow-macked stranger from the Hammer House of Horror TV series (1980).

Set into the side of one of the derelict buildings is a stone cat. It can move, but only across the walls. I watch for a while, wondering if it is really an independent creature or only a part of the building.

[Maybe this is a missed signal concerning the dream state itself. A lucid dream feels real because we can differentiate our surroundings from our consciousness of them. But of course this is an illusion, because the surroundings are an aspect of our consciousness with no material basis. In a lucid dream we are all like the stone cat: we appear to ourselves independent, but the 'self' is really only a part of the 'building' of our dream.]

I wake up, but the lucidity is still at hand, so I re-enter and am in my parents’ garden at night. I look into the sky and ask the Enochian angels to come down. They don’t, but their celestial city appears in the sky, glowing and distant. Nothing else happens so I decide I must travel upwards. I launch myself into flight and discover their city is a huge, metallic structure, bristling with towers and buildings, riddled with interior chambers.

[Unlike the other Enochian visions, there is a sense that I am taking or hunting for the vision, rather than receiving or accepting it. Does being in the lucid state make this inevitable?]

I fly at random towards a spiky part of the structure that looks like the crown on the Statute of Liberty. Inside is someone’s room. I sense I must work out whose room it is and this person’s function.

On the desk and on shelves around the room are ceramic ornaments. All are variations on the basic form of a pair of fishes. ‘Pisces,’ I realise. A small yellow card has suddenly appeared on one of the shelves with the word ‘AUTHOR’ scrawled on it. From this I realise that I am being watched and that someone is feeding me clues, or perhaps trying to manipulate me. It’s clear I am being prompted to conclude that the man who works in this room is a writer, and that the ‘ornaments’ are a metaphor to describe the kind of writer he is.

[The symbolism of Pisces is two fishes, usually swimming in opposite directions, their mouths joined by a silver cord. The upper fish represents spirit (or 'the astral'), and the lower, the soul (or 'the etheric'). Spirit is independent of matter, but soul is strongly influenced by it. The Piscean is someone who is habitually detached from the material world, but struggles with the duality of soul and spirit instead. Note how the card is yellow, like the yellow mac. Perhaps a warning signal, the way that red objects function as warning signals in the film The Sixth Sense (1999).]

The symbol of Pisces, from a woodcut made in 1451.

There is a large mirror in the room and I go to look at myself. I am wearing a striped, light-grey, buttoned-up shirt. My hair is greyer in the reflection than it is in waking life.

[The suggestion is that the author who inhabits this room is me.]

There was perhaps more at this point, but I seem to have forgotten it. Things take a darker turn. The next I remember, I am lying at night in a bedroom with a large window. A ghost is known sometimes to appear on the window’s other side. But sometimes the window is a mirror. I look at my reflection again. Sometimes my image is single and sometimes multiple. Some of the multiple images of myself appear in a way that seems manic or insane.

[In 'The Two Faces of Evil' the stranger in the yellow mac attacks a family in their car, causing an accident. When the mother of the family awakes she discovers the maniac is physically identical to her husband. One of them is dead – but is it really her husband who has survived? In my experience, the multiplication of the self is generally a regressive and paranoid manoeuvre, and is unlikely to have a happy outcome.]

When I ask for more information, suddenly me and my reflections find ourselves saying uncontrollably, explosively, the word ‘BARGAIN’. It is very physical and sends spasms through me each time I say it. There is something not healthy about this word, but it also has useful powers: to connect, jolt and make physical.

[Very much descending into the etheric here. BARGAIN = 34 = vision, pleasure, beautiful, destroy.]

I lie down again and look at the window, again sensing that a ghost may come. There is a human skeleton in the room made from hard plastic. It doesn’t seem to be alive, but somehow looks friendly. Then it falls down suddenly across me in the bed.

It starts to move. Its head is near my crotch. It becomes warm and heavy and I sense a strong female presence. I am being suffocated, my energy slowly but aggressively being sapped. I realise this is a succuba attack. I fend it off with pentagrams. But I wake up shocked, because nothing like this ever happened to me before in an Enochian vision.

Succubas, I think, don't look quite like this, but can de-spunk you just as thoroughly as if they did.

[I've evidently descended at this point to such a shitty level of consciousness that I'm attracting attention from the nasty etheric spirits that inhabit it.]

The vision seems to have ended, but I am still in the remnants of the lucid state. I am in an astral version of my actual room. I perform a full, astral Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, but have a difficult job turning around in my astral body to do the four quarters. In the state I am in, it seems impossible to attain a representation of physically turning around.

[In short, it would appear that remaining in the lucid state is not the best way to receive an Enochian vision, because it puts us in a position of having to find, seek out or force the vision, rather than receiving it from the angels in the usual way. In the lucid state there is a diminished sense of the vision as a 'message', and an increased sense of undergoing it as a direct 'experience'. This could be compared to people who confuse the significance of a spiritual experience with the experience itself, and come away with a mistaken idea that (for example) enlightenment means being in a constant, blissed-out state. However, there's a strong sense of something trying to warn and guide me during the vision, whose message (despite the way I ignored it at the time) I can perhaps take away as the significance of this aethyr.]

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Occult Experiments in the Home

personal explorations of consciousness, reality and magick

Tag Archives: lucid dream

On Dreams and Architecture

The Effects on Lucid Dreaming of Galantamine and Alpha-GPC

The technical part

It’s not working

The long, straight track

Debrief

The Effects on Lucid Dreaming of Alpha-GPC (Glycerophosphocholine)

The technical part

The fun begins

Back in again…

Deep stuff

Debrief

Where the Dead Live

References

The Vision of PAZ (Aethyr 4)

Notes

The Visions of DEO, MAZ and LIT (Aethyrs 7 through 5)

The Vision of DEO (Aethyr 7)

The Vision of MAZ (Aethyr 6)

The Vision of LIT (Aethyr 5)

The Vision of ZIP (Aethyr 9)

The Vision of ZAX (Aethyr 10)

The Vision of ICH (Aethyr 11)

The Vision of LOE (Aethyr 12)

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The Vision of DEO (Aethyr 7)

The Vision of MAZ (Aethyr 6)

The Vision of LIT (Aethyr 5)

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