Bruce Charlton's Notions

[Fiver:] Well, there’s another place - another country - isn’t there. We go there when we sleep: at other times too; and when we die. 

El-ahrairah [the rabbits' god] comes and goes between the two as he wants, I suppose, but I never could quite make that out, from the tales. 

Some rabbits will tell you it’s all easy there, compared with the waking dangers that they under- stand. But I think that only shows they don’t know much about it. It’s a wild place, and very unsafe. 

And where are we really - there or here?

[Hazel:] Our bodies stay here - that’s good enough for me.


I am re-reading Richard Adams's novel of genius, Watership Down, for something like the fifth time in the past decade; and it strikes me as even-better with each re-reading.

One of my favourite characters has always been the seer or 'shaman' rabbit, Fiver; whose trance states and clairvoyant visions guide the chief rabbit Hazel in the big decisions that need to be made.


(The fact that Fiver is meant to be a shaman is confirmed by the heading of chapter 26 which is a relevant quote from Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces. Adams was significantly influenced by Campbell's work on anthropology and mythology, and the two men later became acquaintances - Adams speaking ("the proudest moment of my life") at a celebration of Campbell's 80th birthday that is recorded in The Hero's Journey book and video.)


In the above passage Fiver describes the source of his visions; which is the 'underworld' or what Ancient Egyptians termed the 'dwat' - and which was redescribed in would-be scientific terms by Jung as the Collective Unconscious. The world of gods, the spirit aspect of sleeping mortals, spirits of the dead, and perhaps other beings such as angels and demons.

Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield had many interesting things to say about the changing, developing relationship between our conscious and waking minds in our mortal, incarnated (embodied) lives; and this underworld.

The first stage is when men (or rabbits, perhaps) were pure spirits, not incarnated. In this state there is no distinction between the Waking-world and the Underworld.


The second stage is after incarnation, when there is a distinction between the Waking-world inhabited by bodies, and the Underworld which can only be visited by the spirit part of Men (and rabbits) - while 'Our bodies stay here' - i.e. in the Waking-world - as Hazel says.

At this second stage there are 'specialists' in crossing to the Underworld, those who modern people term generically shamans - like Fiver. To do this, the spirit must be separated from the body, in a trance, sleep or some other 'altered state of consciousness'. But this crossing generally needs to be done by an act of choice, and perhaps by means of a learned skill; and is a hazardous business.

There is a personal price to pay for most shamans - in terms of such as illness, disability. alienation, social hostility and so forth. Fiver, for example, was a 'runt', smaller and weaker than average male rabbits and of a more nervous disposition.

The first stage seems to be normal when Men lived before agriculture and settled dwellings; as nomadic gatherers and hunters. When men had access to stores of food, they settled and developed specialised occupational hierarchies.

Direct contract with the gods incrementally faded, and a 'professional' priesthood (in charge of myth, ritual, sacred objects, scriptures etc.) displaced shamans.


As the second stage continued in Man's history of consciousness, it became harder and harder to cross this boundary, until (in the past few hundred years) more and more people become unable to cross the boundary, and attain the experiences of the Underworld which are the basis of knowledge of the gods, the dead and other such matters.

Religion became less spirit-experiential until it became almost wholly material-procedural. 

Thus we reach third stage, which is materialism - the assertion that there is no spirit, not Underworld, no gods, and no dead.The fact that extreme changes in consciousness are required to have even a chance of shamanic experiences; means that the content of such experiences are hard to recall accurately; and allows experiences of gods, the dead, clairvoyance etc. to be relegated to the realms of pathology - delusion, hallucination, delirium and the like.


The fourth stage if what Barfield terms Final Participation - it is when experience and knowledge of the Underworld comes directly into the Waking-world - during normal consciousness. So, knowledge of the gods, the dead, angels and demons, and so forth are woven-into the stream of conscious, awake-thinking.

An analogy with the shamanic era is that this integration of the Waking- and Underworld is an act of choice. The Underworld must be believed, regarded as significant, attended to and taken seriously - all of which stands in stark opposition to the materialism of the third stage era.

When the fourth stage happens during mortal life it is a temporary foretaste and learning experience of post-mortal resurrected, Heavenly life; when this becomes the usual nature of consciousness. But our mortal experience of the fourth stage is probably mainly intended to give us a Heavenly understanding of our mortal situation - so that we can learn the significance of our own lives, and the main phenomena in the world around us.

A question that recurs to me, is how top conceptualize (visualize, imagine) the 'location' of inner world concepts. The ancient Egyptians had a core and vital concept of the 'dwat' or underworld, where lived gods and the dead. Every living being had dealings with the dwat, and indeed it was the ultimate reality. 

Yet it has become very difficult to imagine the reality of something with such properties as the dwat - something which is 'inside' everybody, and yet also everywhere. 

A more recent example is the collective unconscious of Jung; a realm of universal archetypes, which is supposed to be accessed in dream and artistic creation, to be expressed in myth, and to emerge during insanity. 

I found it very difficult to imagine how the collective unconscious was supposed to work - where it was located, how we could get access to it...

Such difficulties are compounded when one wants to add that each of us as individuals are capable to changing the content of the dwat, or the collective unconscious. It is easier to imagine merely observing a kind of diffuse sea of mythic archetypes and gods floating around and doing things - of coming to 'know' the contents of such inner worlds or underworlds. 

But that you or I might potentially alter this collective reality; and to do so my some 'inner' act of ours, such as thinking... well it seems difficult to imagine even how such a thing might work (leaving aside the secondary issue of whether it is possible or plausible). 

I find, when pressing on this problem; that the whole thing has a tendency to become very abstract and detached, and unconvincing to myself. 

My conclusion is that there are very deep and difficult-to-eradicate assumptions in my way of reasoning that block a kind of basic human understanding, which was once widespread. 

For instance, it brings-out the extent to which we moderns almost 'cannot help' imagining our thinking as going-on in our brains and inside our skulls - with no possible way of really interacting with any kind of universal domain.  

It also brings-out the corresponding assumption that thinking is cut-off from the world; so that we cannot imagine our own thinking affecting the world... Except, maybe - in a crude sci-fi sort of way - as something like a 'telepathic beam' of 'thought energy' that affects matter (which we don't believe actually happens, or else it would be detectable and measurable). 

It seems, it feels, 'obvious' that the contents of 'my' thinking is something cut-off from the world; such is the nature of our alienation.

And yet I can recall young childhood when it seemed equally obvious that my thinking could be known to others, and that it could affect the world. For example, fear on my part could attract the attention of bad beings, bad events - and in that sense could make things happen. 

Or my secrets could be 'read' by others - I could not contain them 'inside my head', even when I wished; but they could only remain secret if I was able to 'forget' them.

Thus in early childhood, I naturally understood the way in which all Men (and god/s, spirits, angels, demons, the dead etc) could indeed be both within and also everywhere - albeit I could only envisage this as a passive and one-way process. 

I could not imagine - or believe - that I myself could, by my own thinking, affects this 'collective spiritual underworld'; including affect it for the better. 

I am talking here of the way of thinking variously termed positivism, materialism, scientism or reductionism; and the problematic phenomenon I describe above is what Owen Barfield called RUP - meaning the Residue of Unresolved Positivism which modern Man has as a deeply-ingrained habit; and which is so very difficult to eradicate even among those who - theoretically - fully-recognize the incoherence and evil of positivism. 

It is not too difficult to detect RUP in other people; but a far more difficult/ impossible prospect to eradicate it from our-selves. 

My best guess and hope for doing so is to try and re-discover, learn and extend ways of thinking that correspond to the 'animistic' thinking of ancient history and early childhood - that is, a world populated by intentional, conscious, living Beings - in a web of relationships. To try and translate the positivistic conceptions into these terms. 

But I still tend to 'feel' this in a passive fashion; and have not succeeded in achieving a way of understanding that corresponds to the active and creative engagement of the individual with The World that is Final Participation.    

Although I believe Final Participation is real, and I recognize when it is happening/ has happened; and it is a major aim in my life - it is certainly a disadvantage Not to be able to think-about or conceptualize it in a way that I find both convincing and comprehensible. 

Work yet to do...

From Speaker's Meaning by Owen Barfield (1967) - edited from pages 71-72:

It is generally supposed that the 'public' world which we have in common with others consists entirely of what we perceive; and the private world of each person consists of what he thinks. 

Yet the exact opposite is the case: It is the thought content which we share with others, while our perceptions are private to ourselves. 

The above formulation (which I have condensed and slightly rephrased for clarity) shows the radical nature of Owen Barfield's philosophy - it is so much in conflict with mainstream modern thinking as to seem just plain bizarre, or crazy; yet the contention is justified across hundreds of pages of argument and evidence in Barfield's main works.

It is easy, and in a sense uncontroversial - despite being ignored in everyday life, to point-out that our perceptions of The World are private, 'subjective' - because it is recognised that everybody sees, hears and feels things differently, and that such perceptions have been manipulated and disrupted by many illusions, technologies, drugs, diseases and just from individual and cultural differences. At another level, we all know that the world described by science - especially physics - is utterly different from the world we perceive.

What is hard for modern people to grasp or believe is that we share our thought content with others.

This does not mean telepathy; it does mean that when we think, this is happening in a shared, universally-accessible realm. It is this world of thinking that unites people - and not the world of perceptions.


It is strange to modern people to suppose that there is or can be a shared world of thought - mostly we can't even imagine this. We moderns suppose that thinking is restricted to our own heads, our own brains - but for thought to be universal, then thinking must be located in some state or place that is universally accessible.

Yet in the past it was apparently taken for granted that there was a spirit world, an 'underworld' - e.g. the Ancient Egyptians' Dwat. This was not located elsewhere, but within - apparently people had no trouble in supposing that the Dwat was within everything, and also everywhere - it was a kind of unbounded space that was inside everything - and also from-which everything perceptible came, and to which it returned.

In more recent times, Jung posited a 'collective unconscious', of myths and archetypes, which shares some of these aspects and was supposed to be accessed in dreams and trance states. Yet for Barfield this world of thinking is conscious as well as unconscious.  


Perhaps we can think about this, imagine it, only if we understand the world of thinking to be primary - and the perceptible world to be secondary. The world of thinking is therefore everywhere; and it is the perceptible world which is restricted and located - as it were 'within' the world of thoughts.

Everything began as thought - and the perceptible world was condensed and concentrated from it.

We actually live in the world of thinking; but have partly learned, partly developed the habit, of cutting ourselves off from it - because that is how we became free agents.


Now that the process of becoming free agents is complete - we can, and should, voluntarily and deliberately, return to engage with, participate-in, the world of thoughts - but this time with freedom, agency, and awareness of what we are doing. (In the past we just took it for granted, were unaware of it - passively lived-by-it.)

First we need to recognise that our thinking is in a universal realm - and then we may exercise our freedom within this realm of thinking - not just understanding it, but changing it.

This conscious participation in the realm of universal thinking is the ultimate in creativity - indeed, the only true creativity; because it shares in the divine.

God created what is and wished for us to share it - not merely passively, but as co-creators, to work with God and to develop and enhance creation in the loving spirit it which it was made.

Note: I'm afraid I can't be bothered to provide full links today - if any of the terms are unfamiliar, and you are interested in finding out more, just use the Blogger word search facility in the top left corner of this page. Just to note this post is an extension of the idea of undulation.

1. The morning is the time for Primary Thinking - Final Participation. I rise at 5.30 typically; and if any time is going to be possible on a given day to attain this highest (and most divine) of consciousness states, then it is mornings: up until about 10.00 or so. That's when I do my best thinking, by far (assisted by note-taking, the notes generally being discarded soon after) - and when I sometimes feel consciously that I am thinking from my Real Self. This is the time for Intuition (coming from within).

2. From around noon to the evening I am in the mainstream, modern Consciousness Soul state - that is, I am conscious mainly of my-self and more-or-less feel cut off from the world, from other people. And the self I am conscious of is not the real-self but one or another of the superficial and functional selves, learned by interaction with experience, inculcated by The World.

3. In the evenings I tend to sink into the Original Participation - that is an un-conscious, passive state of immersion in The World. I may respond strongly to external situations, arts and people, but in a kind of trancelike and only semi-conscious sort of way. A somewhat 'shamanic' and imaginative state of affairs - and perhaps a time for Inspiration (coming from without).

4. Deep sleep is, of course, wholly passive and completely cut-off. There is no consciousness at all - it is a kind of vegetable life. This is absolutely necessary; but what really is going on, I don't know. To come-out from deep sleep is to feel its importance - clarified, refreshed, re-booted!

5. Dreaming sleep is conscious, but in another place altogether, and another time - a time in which vast amounts of experience may be compressed into very little time-as-measured-during-awakeness. This is a mostly passive consciousness, but in the 'underworld' (something like Jung's collective conscious, or the Ancient Egyptian 'dwat') - and it seems to provide necessary experiences that otherwise I would not have.

As dreaming sleep comes to an end, presumably having done its work, the dreams become repetitive and I then awaken; and it is best if I immediately get up and awaken fully. Dozing on beyond this point is boring, pointless; and sometimes leaves me too dulled ever to properly awaken the next day.


I seem to be stuck with this cycle of activity, purposive consciousness declining through the day, then the two types of sleep; and it is futile and indeed counter-productive to try and fight against it.

Best just to make the most of it...

The following edited excerpts are from a lecture by Rudolf Steiner from 1919, which was later gathered into a collection called Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, and which I saw in a recent collection called The Incarnation of Ahriman. 

This lecture has a great deal of interest, and I have therefore excerpted and commented on several passages (above). 

It seems to fit a pattern that Steiner gave better lectures to better audiences. This one was in Bern, and I have seen other good ones from Zurich; but the great mass-majority of lectures from Dornach (the headquarters of Anthroposophy) are the worst; probably because that was the centre of cultic worship, and because Steiner's faults were therefore amplified. 

Even in this lecture there are tractlike repetitions of his 'crazy' (and wrong) micro-detailed theosophical schemas of vast sweeps of world history and future, and tediously vague, prickly, straw-man defensiveness against those who disagreed with him; and assertions that the colossally-massive ultra-systematised complexity of the 'facts' in his later work, was a sign of its superiority - implicity contradicting with other assersions that nothing of his was valid for another person unless intuitively checked.

(It would take several full-time, full-span lifetimes intutively to check every detail of the sheer bulk of what Steiner spouted in his later years!). 

Reading Rudolf Steiner (beyond his first three or four philosophical books) is therefore sifting for gold among dross - but there is real gold to be had - especially in his books and the lectures delivered outside of Dornach - and plenty of it!    

 

The nature of pagan culture can best be understood if we realize that it was the outcome of knowledge, vision and action born of forces much wider in range than those belonging to present earthly existence. this pagan culture was such that people felt themselves members of the whole cosmos. 

Human beings living on earth within the old pagan world felt themselves membered into the whole cosmos. They felt how the forces at work in the movements of the stars extend into their own action, or, better said, into the forces taking effect in their actions.

(What later passed for astrology, and does so still, is but a reflection — and a very misleading one at that — of the ancient wisdom gleaned from contemplation of the stars in their courses and then used as the basis for precepts governing human action.)

People living on the earth in those ancient times had a kind of instinctive soul life, in a certain respect more akin to the soul life of animals than to that of present-day human beings. But it is a very one-sided conception of human life to say that in those ancient times people were more like animals. 

Those human-animal bodies were used by beings of soul and spirit who felt themselves members of the super-sensible worlds, above all of the cosmic worlds. People made use of animal bodies as instruments rather than feeling themselves within those bodies. 

When they were awake, they moved about with an instinctive life of soul like that of animals, but into this instinctive life of soul there shone something like dreams from their sleeping state, waking dreams. And in these waking dreams they perceived how they had descended, to use animal bodies merely as instruments. 

People would say to themselves: When I am outside my body at night I belong to the forces of the cosmos, of the starry heavens; when I wake in the morning I make use of animal instincts in an animal body.

Then human evolution passed, figuratively speaking, into a period of twilight. A certain dimness, a certain lethargy, spread over the life of humanity; the cosmic dreams receded and instinct gained the upper hand.

The attitude of soul formerly prevailing in human beings was preserved through the Mysteries, mainly through the Asiatic Mysteries. The Mysteries were there, into which, through the powerful rites and ceremonies, the spiritual worlds were able to penetrate. And it was from these Mystery centers that human beings received continued illumination.

 

Note: I found that Steiner's description people felt themselves members of the whole cosmos struck an immediate chord of validity. This captures what I understand of the underworld 'dwat/ duat' of the Ancient Egyptians; and it also points at what is lacking from the Collective Unconscious concept of Jung - which is about archetypal human, instinctive and animal contents - and the 'cosmic' aspects are disregarded. 

The modern ideas of draem and the unconscious - from Freud, through Jung and more recent writers; almost always devolve to being 'therapeutic' - to making people feel or function better; to reconnection with the instinctive... 

But the cosmic aspect is lacking. I think that even now (albeit weakly and unconsciously) dreams - and deep sleep more generally - have an effect of reconnecting us with the totality of being; our place in the universe. 

A further aspect of this 'astral' quality of dreams, is that it directly refers to living among moon, planets, sun, stars, and other heavenly bodies such as comets - when these are known (as they were to the  ancient, and truly are) as Beings. 

Indeed, Steiner elsewhere usefully suggests that during sleep, we 'leave behind' the living physical body; and our 'astral' or conscious self travels to a different realm along with our personal 'ego' self of human self-consciousness. Thus, that part of our-total-self which is self aware and conscious of others leaves behind the alive but insinsible, unaware body; and 'travels' in an 'astral realm' - which goes beyond the personal. I find this a broadly accurate and helpful way of thinking.  

In dreams, therefore, ancient man primarily - and perhaps even now to some small extent - we experience, we know, the comos to be 'made of' living, conscious, purposive Beings; and we live among them and in relationship with them. 

This personal and nightly experience was, I infer, the basis of The Gods of ancient man; albeit imperfectly recalled and with personal and cultural distortions. But it explains why there always were gods, why they tended to converge on certain types, and why their importance was recognised. 

And it perhaps explains the detailed, functional angelic hierarchies of the early medieval era (e.g. Dionysus), when this kind of thinking (and dreaming) still had considerable influence - esepcially in association with 'mysteries' of monastic and eremetic (hermit) life.  

And this further seems to account for the uncanny effects that the night sky (in particular; but also the sky in general) has upon people - even now. We are being reminded of what we have experienced sometimes in sleep. 

 

There is no mystery about this, it isn't complicated, we all know the answer from personal experience.

The realm of universal reality was the same as we were immersed-in as children - which we knew as children; but which we were not conscious of until we began to separate from it. There is creation, and we are in creation. And creation is a process, dynamic, continuous... alive, conscious, purposive.

We lived in that realm; but as children it was unconscious, spontaneous and we did not influence it - we simply were swept-along by it, in it.

So where was it? This was the realm of spirit, and it was everywhere - inside things; alive, conscious, purpose - and we could have relationships with its manifestations.

It was multiple, many-centred, pluralistic, with concentrations but also everything linked.

The spiritual reality was unseen, unperceived, but everywhere and in everything - and between things too; and initially we did not need to seek access to it - we were just in it...


Well, not completely in it, not equally with everything unbounded, since we are incarnate beings - we have bodies - and when things are solid, there is a concentration and something of a boundary...

(This is also the same universal realm inhabited - seemingly - by the most ancient form of hunter gatherers; like the Kung San and the Hazda; but not, for example, the Australian Aborigines who were totemists, and accessed this spirit realm via specific gateways. The Ancient Egyptians called it the Dwat and underwent special rituals and used special objects to be able to get access to the spirit-underworld - they were becoming more separated and more autonomous in their agency.)


So, universal reality began as the inner and spiritual aspect of everything - there was change, and this change was the nature of transformation at a perceptible level (Men, animals, plants, landscape features were inter-changeable over time). Underneath everything was fixed in amount and did not change, and the surface changes were cyclical; indeed a re-cycling of Real Life. The (divinely planned, destined) future ought-to-be that we choose to return to contact with the inner and spiritual aspect of everything. We need to rediscover that universal reality is everywhere and in everything. But having lost contact and then returned to contact, having become self-aware and come to know that we know... things have changed - new possibilities have emerged.  


So, it is always there:

1. First we take it for granted, we know it but don't know that we know. We are simply a-part-of creation...

2. Then it becomes known, as we begin to separate our-selves from the universal background. We began to know it only as we began to lose contact with it...

3. Then, as we become fully-aware of our-selves as autonomus agents... we lose contact with it. This is the current mainstream Western situation, the alienated adolescence of the individual.

4. From now we need to regain contact with it - but because we are now fully-aware of our selves, we will be explicitly conscious of it...

And, therefore, we can (from now) both know-it and participate-in-it. We are part of creation, and also autonomous from creation - we experience this and know this; thus we can take-part-in creation.

(To the extent we participate-in creation - we are thus-far divine, God's collaborators in the work of creation.)

 

I've changed my mind on this topic several times, over the course of this blog. It is an important issue, and one where I think we probably need a coherent answer to avoid spirituality being sabotaged by corrosive doubt.  

The general question has many specific versions. One is to ask where exactly Heaven is located - especially considering that Christians believe in resurrection, so that the vagaries of spirits being everywhere (and nowhere) are denied us. 

Is Heaven (inhabited by the resurrected dead, walking-around...) up in the sky, outer space, a remote planet? All answers seem either evasive or absurd.

Another version is the Underworld (the Dwat), or the world after death (Sheol, Hades), the 'Inner World', the Collective Unconscious - or Collective Consciousness... people talk as if these are locations, or domains - but where? Why can't we detect them?

Then there is Faerie, Elfland - is that under a mound, in or through a forest, across the seas - or maybe on a different plane of existence through-which we must travel? 

It is easy to reduce answers to absurdity; in a modern world where we assume we have explored the whole planet, and that 'scientific instruments' allow us to detect anything that is real. 

I suggest here that, as so often when a question seem unanswerable - this is because we are asking the wrong question. We are assuming that The World is reality, and our knowing of that world is secondary (and optional) thing; an essentially passive matter of recognizing reality. 

In other words, we are assuming that our minds have no significant role in the existence of reality, except to fail to notice it or to distort it - we assume that real reality (Kant's das Ding an sich: the thing-in-itself) is out there and 'solidly real', even when unthought, unperceived, unknown. 

Yet this almost universal habit of thinking about reality is incoherent - therefore wrong (as demonstrated by, amongst others, Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfeld). Instead, a coherent understanding of reality must include the consciousness of the knower.

(Without the knowing-consciousness of a being, there is only meaningless disorder - literal primordial chaos.)

This is Not to say that consciousness simply makes-up any reality it wants, a reality without any reference to anything out-there, because there is nothing out-there (ie. philosophical 'idealism') - it is instead to say there is no knowing, no knowable, without consciousness; so that consciousness and reality cannot be separated.

We may notice that this question "where are other worlds?" was Not regarded as a problem in much of the past in human history. The answer seemed obvious, or else an answer was not requested or required.

And the question was not a problem because people knew other worlds, people once perceived these other worlds for themselves - either on an everyday basis, or (later) in special states of consciousness induced by religious ritual, dreams, trances - or whatever. 

That which is perceived is not regarded as unanswerable. 

Therefore I conclude that the question is a product of changes in human consciousness. 

We ask where other worlds are located because Modern Man no longer spontaneously perceives other-worlds, and has mostly lost the ability to perceive other-worlds. 

In other words; Modern man cannot know the location of 'other worlds' because he has developed a mental block. 

The other-worlds are still 'there', where they always were, but Modern Man is blocked from perceiving them by a change in his consciousness*. 

Indeed, the other-worlds can still be perceived, but only in altered states of consciousness that, to some extent, undo the recent changes of consciousness - and diminish our level of consciousness. 

Inner-worlds no longer impose on Men, that is why they are not perceived. To know inner-worlds for has become for Modern Men a matter of knowing, not perceiving. 

A matter, that is, of direct-knowing.  

We should not strive to 'see through' the blocks, nor to dissolve them away - because they are there for good reasons; instead we can think over and around the blocks.

In other words: Final Participation.  

Then we will know where are other-worlds...

And the answer is: in this same world... 

Where they have always been. 

(*The reason for this change in consciousness is another matter, dealt with extensively elsewhere in this blog. In a nutshell, the mental block has the positive function of increasing freedom, agency; by removing us from the former state of automatic/ habitual, unavoidable and unconscious subjection to God's created reality. The mental block gives us the freedom positively to choose to align-ourselves with divine creation. In other words the block both imposes and gifts Modern Man's with personal responsibility for his spiritual affiliation.) 

There are three types of consciousness we experience: Deep Sleep, Waking and Dreaming.

The relative rate of Time runs differently in each state. While inside each state, time is experienced as if running at the same rate - because our thinking can only be at the speed of thinking. But a huge amount of subjective experience can be fitted into a dream of a few minutes; while hours of Deep Sleep may pass without any awareness of time having passed...

To use an audio analogy; from the perspective of our Waking consciousness, playing a vinyl LP recording at 33 revolutions per minute (rpm); Deep Sleep sounds something like it was recorded at 33 revs per second - so at 33 rpm everything is so slowed-down, that it sounds like almost nothing happening except low groaning noises... Whereas a Dream sounds as if it was recorded at 33 revs per day - so that when played at 33 rpm the audio is so fast as to be incomprehensible gabble.

Or, with a video metaphor - from the Awake state, Deep Sleep is so slow that it is like a still picture, a photograph; while Dreaming is on ultra-fast-forward.


A Being living in Deep Sleep would see our Waking life whizzing past in a blur. (This looks to be what is happening when a waking person tries to interact with a sleep walker - who is in Deep Sleep; the sleep walker stares uncomprehendingly in response to blurringly fast movements and sounds). Whereas a Being in Dreaming time would see our Waking lives in slow motion; every moment 'dissected' into a sequence of tiny sub-components; like the super-slo-mo action-replay, analysing the precise details of releasing a cricket ball from a spin-bowler's fingers...

It is this difference in the relative speed of experience in Deep Sleep, Waking and Dreaming; that probably explains why we cannot recall Dreams, and why nothing seems to happen in Deep Sleep.

If that observing Being was divine, and was intervening to affect our lives; a Deep Sleep Being could only affect the broad outlines and shapes of our lives, and after a delay; whereas a Being in Dreaming Sleep time would be able to affect many detailed things in Waking life, almost instantly.


If we then consider the purpose of our three states of consciousness, in terms of our mortal lives having the purpose of giving us experiences from which we may learn that which we (personally) most need to learn; it seems likely that Dreaming has a very important role in our lives - because in Dreaming we can experience a far greater range of experiences than in waking life.

Since dream experience feels pretty much the same as Waking experience, but we can fit (say) 100 times more into an hour of Dreaming than an hour of Waking; and since furthermore Dreaming is not constrained by material limitations, but can provide any experience that can be imagined; it may be that most of our experience of life is achieved in the Dreaming State.

Perhaps in Dreaming we get the greatest breadth and quality of experience; but the experience is not as powerful as Waking experience - which is narrower, deeper and simpler; and is dominated by external, sensory input.

And then Deep Sleep provides experiences that are extremely simple and relatively few; experienced derived via inner sources - but perhaps the most powerful experiences of all.

Perhaps - in other words - there is a trade-off between the speed of time, and the depth of experience; such that the three states of consciousness - between themselves, and overall - provide each person with what they need to experience, in ways suited to their capacity for learning.


Note: I think that Deep Sleep, Waking and Dreaming all continue all of the time; to varying degrees - and consciousness moves between them. So, as we are awake, as you read this; Dreaming is ongoing, and also the slow motion of Deep Sleep. For instance' when we 'nod-off' to sleep, our consciousness can suddenly 'drop-into' an already on-going Dream, or the on-going process of Deep Sleep.

The sources of experience, the source of 'content' of these states of consciousness, is likely to differ; although probably this is a difference in emphasis rather than absolute. For example it seems likely that Waking States are dominated by the senses, and perhaps especially vision. Dreams seem to be in the universal realm of consciousness - the underworld, the 'dwat' of the Ancient Egyptians, the realm of what Jung misnames the Collective Unconscious (because it is actually as Conscious as we ourselves are conscious in dreams). Deep Sleep probably derives its content from emotion; that is from our inner world of organs and vegetative functions.

So Dreaming, Waking Deep perhaps broadly correspond to our persepctive on universal reality, immediate external environment, internal environment. 

I've been reading Rudolf Steiner and listening to his ideas being expounded; and realise that a fundamental problem is that Steiner tended to end with abstraction. Although he stated that reality consisted of living Beings; these were explained in their nature and effect using abstractions.

The opposite of abstraction - and the nature of reality - is experience (i.e. the experience of Beings) - thus reality is within-time, and happens through time; experience is process not category. 

Abstraction (as in my sentences above) is usually the fate of human discussion and exposition, since these are conducted in language, and language is abstract. We can use language to point-at experience, to describe the context of experience; but of course this will be secondary.

It is perhaps this that makes people sake that mystical experience is ineffable, un-expressible - but that is true of all experience, so the property of ineffability is not distinctive to the mystical. e.g. We cannot capture being-in-love - or any other emotion - in language.

Behind all abstraction, language and any other form of interpersonal communication there is direct, unmediated experience, a 'knowing' that is potentially a shared experience of Beings. And this is going-on all the time, in all of us - but nearly always unconsciously.

In other words, our true and divine self is always there; even when it is never attended-to. Because the real self is not inside us, so much as a perspective on reality. Reality is universally accessible, but each of us has a perspective on it; and we can only come to know reality in a linear and sequential fashion.

So, in a way, the real self is like a peephole opening onto the totality of reality (the underworld, the dwat, the collective conscious and unconscious...). Of course it is more than just a peephole; because the real self is also the source of real freedom; and a producer of (uncaused) thought; and potentially the mans of our participation in divine creation.

But in terms of our ability directly to know, we might imagine it as a peephole through which we can incrementally discover everything there is to know, eventually (but of course, that everything will keep growing, and we may contribute to it)- but always from our unique perspective.

There is an abstraction for you! A crude and simple abstract model of reality - looking through a peephole at the ocean of reality that is always everywhere and within... As such it is certainly false - both ridiculously partial, and seriously distorted. What, then is the point of it?

By my understanding, much of our learning - nowadays in this mortal life - is a matter of becoming conscious of something that is already happening, but beyond our awareness. Thus, the abstraction is helpful if or when it draws attention to some neglected reality that we may then - by experiencing it in our thinking - come to know for ourselves.

However, probably only when we come to know it for ourselves. Abstractions at the level of abstraction - and locked into that level by the need for language in public discourse - are a lethal tyranny for the soul.

And all public discourse, all institutions and organisations, operate solely at the level of abstract language or other symbolism; and so are always partial and distorted - always false. This is a big lesson that we need to learn - it is one of the big lessons of our time.

And our learning is assisted by the fact that our institutions and their leaders are so obviously corrupt and increasingly evil that we are quickly learning that they are wrong - and the abstract laws, rules and guidelines by which they attempt to control us are also wrong.

And if we want to know what is right we can derive it only from that which is validated by direct personal experience. and we are wrong.