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That's Abe Maslow's heirarchy and life's not like that. Abe did all his research amongst well paid white ( still racially segregated workplace ) Detroit automobile production line workers way back in the late 60s of the last century. Maslow's work hangs around as it's in colour and a triangle hence nice to look at and seems to make sense. However it has that 'production-line based mindset' that insists that each component is in place so that the 'product' can move forward (' upwards') to the next level. Now we all know that is BS as we've all met 'self actualized' people who are potless or homeless or victim-martyrys or whatever. Maslow is ' Mom, home and apple pie', if the 'American Dream' ( circa 1969) is all in place, according to Abe; then you are at the top of the tree. That never ever was, nor is; the necessary case.

I'm not going to get involved with the blame game and which country has the most morons (although it is a good one because we all win!)...Howeverrrrrr... I did have a dream about giant black transdimentional spider-like things tearing up the world...about 3 months ago I guess. Still, I'm pretty sure that one was just a regular dream.

You know, I have to ask myself... I wonder if you really see auras. I mean, it sounds like you see something, like I used to see.. I could see the whitish aura that extended from my fingers. I could see very pale pastel colors around people' s bodies. I would practice allot at school. I thought I could see auras. Then one day when I was into kriya yoga and kunlun, my third eye opened up. Something that resembled a yellow orange eye with a dark blue center appeared just beyond my forehead and I found that I could push my inner vision through it and look at the outer world. I could see through it even with my regular eyes closed. I could drive my car with my eyes closed. When I looked at people through this eye, the auras did not look at all like they looked when I was looking with just my inner awareness. Most people's auras look like flames the start at the navel and extend upwards. Most people's flames are black with some red on the outer rims. The flames are usually about 1 to 2 feet high and about 8 inches wide. That's it. There is no finer color or mist light beyond that. Probably 80% of the people I saw were like that. So I have to ask myself, what do you see and why do you think that you actually know what you are seeing is authentic? I'm not trying to be rude or destructive, but it seems to me that you are stuck in a kind of dream vision or inner sight that is more imaginary than anything else. Maybe a kind of etheric vision coupled with visualized projection? The other thing I was going to mention is that demons are real, they do exist and mostly they like to disguise themselves and come and visit you while you are just falling asleep. They whisper things to you and try to influence you while you are in that pre-sleep hypnagogic state. They are very good at disguising themselves and can appear as most anyone. The thing to remember is that they are all empty and that your mind is constructing them out of past karma, so it is more of an indication of a need for realization and cleansing than anything else. So there you go. Now you have something to ponder...

Stosh, During the dream state your brain wave frequencies will be mostly in the alpha range, in fact not that far removed from waking consciousness. However, as we all know, dreams are typically rather chaotic - this is because they are not bound by the logic of the rational mind but reflect subconscious non-linear, associative processes. Certainly your awareness is moving in a psychological zone closer to the subconscious during dreams. Conscious awareness doesn't necessarily stand in contradiction to instinctive behavior; nature wisely looked to it that when we happen to touch a turned-on hotplate we withdraw our hand reflexively rather quickly! The linear functioning of the conscious mind is just too time-consuming to handle such situations. But this doesn't deprive the conscious mind from its real purpose. Without a doubt, the latter does make us a very successful species in many ways. Indeed, the expansion of awareness seems to be what all of existence is longing for. Which ties in with your final question: Could direct awareness of the subconscious ever happen? This is a tricky one! The conscious personality or ego emerges from the subconscious but needs to shut out lots of internal and external data in order to maintain its stand. A lack of "linear boundaries" is synonymous with confusion, even psychosis. Certainly the conscious mind can learn to tolerate more such data input, in a step-by-step process, most of all if it sees the meaningfulness of this information. This is the aim of many meditative practices. Ideally, the conscious and the unconscious mind, the Yang and the Yin, the Sun and the Moon will exist in a balanced state of unison at the end of a process of inner Alchemy.

Good answer! This seems to imply that both wake and dream awareness are both conscious , both the result of subconscious calculation which we are unaware of because its "non linear". Now if a person can compute a threat and physiologically react before they are conscious of it, what would be the need for awareness at all? Could direct awareness of subconscious ever happen?

People often wonder if they can find someone who will demonstrate psychic powers. An example would be having an idea that you'll go to some location and a wonderful, amazing, magnetic person at that secret location will start to do strange things. In this case you might think of yourself as a passive observer and the person you want to observe as the doer of psychic powers. And people also wonder if others can observe and confirm certain manifestations. For example you're meditating and you viscerally feel that your body is lifting off the floor. You feel the sense of weight and pressure are lost and your body appears to hover 1 foot off the ground. Then you wonder if you weren't alone in the room, what would a stranger observe? Would they see you hovering? Or would they see your body sitting on the floor even as you subjectively experience yourself hovering? And the answer to this can be anything depending on what's called "karmic vision." Briefly "karmic vision" is a type of experience you are most likely to experience based on your commitments, habits, expectations, hopes, fears and so on. Below I will talk about how this visionary process relates to the visionary processes of other beings. First, I assume you already understand that the mind is a primordial capacity to know, to experience and to will. I assume you understand that the mind doesn't originate in the brain and is not started at the birth of the human body. If you don't get why that is so, you'll probably be confused by what I will say next. So this post is not for everyone. Now, those who are still with me, you should realize that people are not things. This means that people are not concrete objects that exist definitively from their own side. People exist more as possible points of view. Because the possible points of view are infinite, we say that the sentient beings are infinite in number. This applies to others and to oneself as an individual being. But at the same time, everyone who sees this post is more than just a point of view. What is this "more"? It's a capacity. So you can think of yourself as a capacity which can potentially know, experience and will anything at all, but right now your experience is primarily occupied by this post and the associated thoughts, imagery, hopes and fears. And because individual capacities are not things, and they do not have existence that can be concretely parametrized, the relationships between them are not established in any kind of objective sense. I see my own human body and I know my inner being. Then I look around and I see bodies similar to mine. Then I assume those bodies which resemble mine have inner subjectivities similar to mine because I know I could, in principle, be experiencing from that other POV. So if I am in the "same" room as Sally, and we both look at the "same" table, I know that in principle I could be where Sally is, I could have had Sally's parents, Sally's thoughts, Sally's hopes and fears, I could be looking at the table from Sally's angle, and so on. In other words, in principle, my subjectivity could have been Sally's instead of my own. But currently it is my own as goldisheavy. Then Sally looks at goldisheavy and thinks the exact same thing but in reverse. At the same time goldisheavy and Sally can talk and they will understand each other, so while they are different, they're not so different that they can't even talk. So there is both an element of communion and an element of differentiation in that setup. This is why the mind is ultimately uncountable. If we are unwilling to make assumptions, we cannot say definitively whether there is one mind or many. There are very good reasons for both positions, and there are reasons to maintain that the mind completely escapes counting and is open to experiencing in different modalities. Thus regarding the various individuals as having their own minds is only a convention. But if we maintained that only one individual had a mind, that too would be only a convention with exactly the same amount of substance as the first one: none. That's what it means for the mind to be "open." The mind is radically open and it can experience itself as a lone being, or as a being among beings, as everything, or as nothing, among a few possibilities. And without resorting to some sort of personal preference there's no way to affirm any of these modalities as the modality. But the sublime view is knowing that all these modalities are possible and that if it were not for bias they would all be impossible to compare in terms of which modality is more true. So if you understand this abstract explanation, then a couple of practical implications should become evident. 1. Whether or not you meet people with amazing powers depends as much on you as it depends on the other people. Crude analogy: if I want to meet a mountaineer, then my chances increase if I move away from the planes and into the mountains. You know how a lot of people who hold physicalist commitments demand "show me some magic as proof"? This is like having a commitment to living on the planes while demanding that someone demonstrate some mountain climbing. Well, before you witness real mountain climbing, even if you can't scale the highest peaks yourself, you need to move into the mountains somewhere and then you can watch people climb. So typically mountain climbers are the people who are most likely to witness other people doing mountain climbing. This is a crude analogy that should not be taken literally, because I am using materialistic language to explain something that is profoundly immaterial. 2. Whether or not others can see you perform magic depends on whether or not you've involved (or allowed) other people into your mentality. This can be called "joint commitment." 3. Subjectivities converge and diverge all the time. When the person's body dies, that person's subjectivity diverges from our waking experience. When the person's body is born, that person's subjectivity converges with our waking experience. Dreaming subjectivity diverges from waking subjectivity during sleep (but converges with other subjectivities that are present in the dream as dream characters at the same time). Subjectivity can diverge in meditation during absorption. Subjectivities diverge when the human bodies disperse geographically. However living in close quarters is no guarantee of subjective convergence. It's possible to live in proximity with others and yet mentally be a loner who lives in one's own universe. Weirdly it's possible to be very far away from someone else, but remain in a convergent state with that someone else (most often this happens with the newly separated lovers). Subjective convergence can be arbitrarily weird, and so, for example, you can have dreams that you share with the people you know from the waking experience. This converging and diverging is not an all or nothing proposition. It is gradual and it comes in degrees. With enough subjective convergence it's possible to read the thoughts of other people and sense their desires, because these people are so close to your own subjectivity. And another mind-blowing idea is that subjective convergence doesn't have to be completely reciprocal. So for example, if I am witnessing someone on Earth while in an astral body, that someone may not see me -- there is weak reciprocity in this case, assuming I identified some features of that person's waking experience in a way that the other person agrees with (otherwise there'd be no convergence at all). So the most basic joint commitment we have here is that we share the planet Earth. This level of convergence by itself is not sufficient to guarantee anything other than we can bump into bodies that look like ours while walking around the planet. To experience a connection more meaningful than bodies bumping into each other in space, deeper levels of convergence are necessary. So in our case, besides all of us favoring Earth, we also all like Buddhism, for example, and thus we are here together. So, if your mind is flexible enough to generate an extraordinary perception that subjectively feels real and visceral, and you have friends who believe such things are possible, and are joined with you in your commitments in a deep way, then these friends can observe you doing miraculous things. So besides the joint commitment that results in a very close convergence of subjectivities, some mental flexibility is needed for both beings, the performer and the observer. The observer is not passive even while appearing passive, but is actually creating the experience from his or her side by maintaining an allowing and affirmatively expectant mind. And the performer should realize that while subjectively they do everything, if they want to think of the other person as a true and worthy individual, then they have to allow that the other individual is a participant and not a passive receptacle. If you think that beings are like things or objects, then what I said will appear paradoxical. But if you understand that a being is not actually a thing, there is no paradox.

It is the experience of becoming a stream enterer. Before the experience I had spent an hour in the bush, meditating from the heart. Then I spent 1/2 hour moving my sight every half second and loving every leaf, branch and beautiful scene, not giving the conceptual mind enough time to grasp.. It was pure delight. Later, about 1/2 an hour, I had to go shopping for food. When I walked into the supermarket, the whole world dissolved. The principle behind the practice is that when you first look at an image, scene or object, it takes a second or two to grasp. If you don't give the mind enough time to grasp by changing your field of perception, and add a little love (which really stops the mind), you can stay in a non conceptual state for a long time. But beware, you don't want to be driving a car or doing something dangerous when the world dissolves away. Actually, the world exists in a little bubble. Your past lives exist in little bubbles that are found around the navel. Dreams are also little bubbles and they pop when you burst them. You can actually hear them pop once you realize that you are in the dream and then quit grasping at them. Pop, pop, pop,... Tiny little pops.. Bubbles and pops.. That is the reality of it. Those are good meditations...

We should also consider that perhaps we are not born into this realm at the same time the body emerges from the woman's womb. It's possible that some mindstreams literally take their place in this realm as functioning children, and then in that appearance they can learn of "past history" without personally having experienced this in a legitimate way because they weren't in this realm at all at that time. Let me give you an example of what I mean. When I dream I appear spontaneously in an adult human body most of the time (I'll ignore the exceptions here, because I've had a few weird dreams as well). Now, if I were to go around in the dream world and ask about my "past" and the past of the dream world, the dream characters will give coherent and believable answers. This doesn't mean I was actually subjectively there in the past of this dream world. However, if I decide to take the dream world seriously, I will need to accept (at least to some degree) some of the things dream characters tell me about myself and about the world. In this way I can acquire "personal past" which I may have never subjectively undergone. And this waking life is no different from a dream in that regard. It's possible to be in a pre-Earth realm and suddenly appear here as a 4 year old and lo, people will tell you how you were born, show you pictures, blah blah, tell you about world's history and so on. All this is basically an illusion if you take it literally, and most people do. I agree with some of your suspicions, but all possible modes of mentation are latent in the mind and it can't be any other way. So just as the refined state of mind you envision is latent in your mind, similarly, othering, labeling, and symbolic interaction with the others that have been othered is all latent in the mind as well. Everything the mind can learn is already internal to it in a latent form. Nothing truly foreign can ever enter the mind. The spells recoil when one is fully relaxed. To relax fully means to know what one's will really is. Once you know what your will is, you will know that you don't need to work yourself over to achieve anything at all. This then is called "spontaneous achievement." This is quite literally magic. When people enter this mode, they do not cognize in an ordinary way. To them other beings are not truly "other" and not "beings" either. The way such person sees oneself also changes. Such people don't see themselves as people. They see themselves as minds, and the mind is only a capacity to know, to experience and to will. Because of this, the mind can develop a weak or even a non-existent commitment to humanity, to the idea that one is a being who lives among beings, and all manner of conventional thinking. When such a mind then relaxes, something strange happens. Or let me put it this way. If you cast a spell on me and I find myself afflicted, the way it happens is that I am afflicting myself by participating with you in sharing some of your assumptions about myself. It means I am actually self-afflicted, and whatever you do from my POV is merely ornamental at the deepest level of insight. That's pretty much all cultures on this planet. If you do anything differently people will treat you differently. If you want broad social acceptance then you're hamstrung as a practitioner of the esoteric arts. Of course since most of us here have human backgrounds, we tend to crave validation from others, so please don't take it personally as if I am singling you out. I am not intending to single you out. In Daodejing there is a passage of being different from the norm and being OK with it (I'm dark, others are bright, etc.). Same in Zhuangzi (like the guy who didn't grieve at the funeral, for example).

I had a....similar but different dream some years ago...the following year was not good....for most of the world...

Oh dear, unless this dream was about me (it could be), then, the world is in troubles. Everybody in this vision was telling me a storm is approaching. This storm turned out to be a mechanical, Godzilla size spider being camouflaged by layers of storm clouds. Is menacing.... This spider has the ability to kill all living beings as soon as they come in contact with it.

I have been under some "influence" as a result of this incidence. I think I am over it now. BTW, expecting something big will come out from the Kremlin because last night I dream I was in Russia or something to do in a Russian university. Something was happening in this university and everybody was expecting to see a show or something. Then, I think I dream of seeing the Russian Czar? As a Dharma warrior, I have done my part to shed some light and penetrating thoughts into this incidence. Few bad players in the world stage exploiting this incidence to further advance their political agenda to wage war on Russia. And FB, Youtube, and Twitter evidences are credible enough to settle international, geopolitical conflicts. Hahahah.... The world did not care about the Ukrainian conflict until some Europeans are caught in it. All of a sudden, people around the world begins to realize there is actually a war going on in Ukraine. The only precognitive dream I have about this incidence was seeing a passenger plane attempting to land. There was something about 6000 ft. I saw this plane's nose pitched up. I didn't see it land instead this plane changed to a car and landed as a car. I thought the symbolism here is just metaphors. Sight, there are so much sadness in Ukraine. I can't take it anymore....

I have no experience with the Western magic version. There are daytime practices but not so much trance related, there are practices related to intention, visualizations, specific sleeping postures. Not so much trying to look at the hands sort of thing or trying to wake up - it either happens or it doesn't I think. Once you do wake up you work to get some control of that and use it to help support your cultivation and growth. One goal is to help us loosen our feeling of our daytime existence being "solid" and "real." This helps with developing the view of impermanence and emptiness. It's also very helpful with making fundamental changes in our lives and helps prepare us for the Bardo (if you're into that sort of thing)... It's a very good book, BTW/IMO. Lot's of other dream practices out there and from what I've heard some are simpler and easier. I like this because it fits well with my other practices.

Is it similar to the Western magic version of such things? (which can be summed up as write down your dreams, tell yourself when drifting off to sleep you will become lucid, practice during waking hours with trance states, try to "wake up" or look at your hands during all dreams.... all to help have lucid dreams way more often, or every night...... then get to the point where you start to do your practice consciously during the dream (instead of just the fun ones where it happens as a surprise without you trying)? I'm figuring it likely comes from a different angle and has some other neat aspects . Hmmm there's a book on it too, hmm.

Dream yoga requires a fairly serious commitment, day and night. It's fairly easy to integrate into one's life, however.

Yes, the workshops cost real money - this one is, I think, 4 weeks with multiple video teachings, online forums where Rinpoche participates and answers questions, etc... It's not cheap but you get a lot for your money. The alternative is to simply work from the book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Tibetan-Yogas-Dream-Sleep/dp/1559391014 That's what I've done for the past 6 months. You get more from the online workshop but the book is enough for the right student (dovetails into our concurrent discussion, no?). If you decide to work with it and have questions or want to share notes, contact me. PS - I think that he will be teaching a 2 week workshop on dream yoga next summer in Virginia.

Yep, $350 for the online workshop. Fortunately I live in a place with many in person teachings, so I might just look it up. Also I'm borrowing an... er preview copy... of that dream yoga workshop to see what I think .

What are you referring to? The Dream Yoga workshop?

Dream yoga is intense! I've been working on it for about 6 months. It takes a lot of dedication but it works...

Oooohhh dream yoga

Thank you, Daeluin. I agree, and especially your emphasis on "gray" vs "black/white." Without going into detail (time, complexity), the past 4 years has been very crushing and painful; life and realizations. Various Western pathologies which I finally "saw through" (which is not to say the West is entirely bad). Ongoing (feeding upon itself) social- and self-defeating patterns which Westerners try to help each other out of...which is like sick people trying to "doctor" each other. Unfortunately! I do not say this judgmentally, but SADLY. The Bruce Lee dream was significant because (I take Jungian psychology, [significant] dreams, and synchronicity seriously), this was a "tap on the shoulder" of Hey...remember Tao? I do not believe the spirit of Bruce Lee visited me. The dream was symbolic of course, and he (and Brandon) the most fitting motif. I was like, "Wow. That's why 'dragon' and 'pearl' welled up from the unconscious shortly before the dream." The dream signaled: Remember Tao? Here is where you're meant to be; now you're truly ready (maturity, hard-gained wisdom) to embrace Taoism. Definitely am reading. Also, husband and I plan to take a trip to San Francisco in 2015 or 2016, to visit its Chinese district.

Try www.kungfupandalawsuit.com and to find the Lachance videos, go to Youtube, and just search for "eat your panda, michael lachance, dream works"...and you should get to this link: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=eat+your+panda+lachance+dreamworks which displays all the testimony of this fellow made under oath.

Really? I found the dream significant, and two people are making fun? Ha ha...Elvis and Buddha! I'll do some reading around this board, and then decide if I'll continue on.

Thank you, Grandmaster P. I'll share my Bruce Lee dream. Occurred early last week. I'd been on a (Western) Pagan path for some time (along with recent major personal upheavals, insights, etc). I'm also well-read in Jungian psychology. A synchronicity recently occurred of a specific name (Maud[e]), a dragon, a pearl, and the Child archetype. I figured this was all within a Western context (and didn't then know the English story of "Maud and the Dragon"). What a surprise, then, to dream last week of going into my local public library, sitting, and soon noticing someone nearby. Bruce Lee! I was understandably shocked. We talked, and I told him that Brandon's death had saddened me. Bruce is the Dragon. Brandon is his Child. After "seeing through" various Western pathologies, I understood that my unconscious mind was signaling me to embrace Taoism. And here I am.

Hello. I briefly read about Taoism in the late 1990s, but at the time was ... younger, dumber, scattered. A recent toss through a 4-year rump-kicking machine straightened all that out - majorly. After truly 100% seeing through my previous social and religious conditioning, a string of synchronicity, and a cool dream about Bruce Lee ... I knew it was time to embrace Taoism. Am re-reading "The Tao of Pooh" by Benjamin Hoff, and now dipping into "The Lunar Tao" by Ming-Dao Deng. I've also subscribed to "The Empty Vessel." Oh does it feel good to be HOME. And I'm older/wiser now, to appreciate. I'm late 40s, married, work medical, am a writer working towards publication (hopefully within the year), reside in the desert SW, amateur astronomer. I look forward to interactions here.

Yes,...we like to believe that the religious hero's we were indoctrinated into were all "gnowing,"...even though the facts show otherwise. If we play pick-n-choose with theo-beliefs,...sure,...Jesus was a remarkable person,...if we look at all the facts,...Jesus' purpose to fulfill his God's law (Matt 5:17)....the laws of his clearly murderous, pro-slavery, vacillant, petty, racist, conditional God. And amazingly, a God who is so insecure, that it demands to be worshiped, obeyed and prayed to. There is much to be said about gnosis however. Gnosticism, the original form of Christianity, arose from a Greco-Egyptian philosophical fusion, as mentioned above. Gnosticism was an important part of the neo-Christian construct. Gnosis was not an outgrowth of neo-Christianity, as revisionists suggest. Today’s Christian persuasions are a product of Gnostic Christianity, not the other way around. We could say that Christianity was built on the DNA of Gnosticism. This neo-Christian fabrication from Gnosis and Krst, from gnowledge and the Anointed One, can also be substantiated through the Book of Enoch, from which over a hundred phrases were introduced into the New Testament. Enoch was written before 170 BCE, and several Aramaic copies were purportedly found among the Dead Sea fragments of the Gnostic gospels from Qumran. These Gnostics, from the time of the Julian clan of emperors, maintained that Christ was not a man in human form, as claimed in the gospels, but an individual goal of an initiate to realize a Christ Consciousness, the Logos. The Logos represents a mystical rebirth without sexual union, an awakening to a reality beyond duality, a palingenesis from the dream of perception. Duality is inherently a sexual reality, in which consciousness is fragmented. Christ Consciousness is an unfragmented consciousness, in which there is neither hope nor fear. The Jesus as defined in the gospels could not have been a Christ. Neither Paul nor his followers could grasp gnosis, that is, to gnow themselves through the heart of essence. Like many today, frozen in their conceptual experiences, Paul needed a more physical, hope-driven, fear-based path. The ignorant respond to hope and fear. Thus, from the expectations infused through the Pauline church, the concept of a personified Christ grew and entered the groupthink of the anti-Gnostic Paulines and those, like the Roman aristocrats, who wished to exploit it. Before 95 CE, when history suggests that Apollonius died and rose from the dead, there is no mention of a personified Christ or the four gospels. There is no known contemporary scriptural record of the life and times of Jesus/Yeshua. For neo-Christians, so fond of quoting Bible babble, what wasn’t said in the first century that which is curiously missing, is as interesting as the fabrications and contradictions of what was said then. For example, in the writings of Clement Romanus, the Pauline bishop of Rome circa 95 CE, there is not even a tinge of gospel references. Yet Luke 1:1–2 specifically implies that many eyewitness followers had already been writing. Adding to the intrigue, Clement, whom Tertullian and Jerome suggest was the direct successor of Peter, was also said to be a Flavian, that is, a relative of the men who were then the emperors of the Rome. Sciolistic Christians vaunt that the historian Josephus, in two remarks that have been taken out of context, verifies that Jesus/Yeshua existed. Today, however, even conservative scholars agree that those quotations from chapters 18 and 20 of the Jewish Antiquities, a history of the Jews, were later Christian interpolations. Such conclusions are consistent with Origen, an ante-Nicene father, who in the third century CE indicated that such a declaration from Josephus of a Jesus Christ did not exist in his copy of the Jewish Antiquities. Furthermore, no one else before the fourth century CE ever mentioned such an important reference from this often-cited source. Another claim by neo-Christians as to Jesus Christ’s historicity comes fromTacitus’ Annals 15.44, the comment of how Emperor Nero persecuted Christians after Rome’s fire of 64 CE was actually about Gnostic Christians, worshipers of Sarapis, not followers of Jesus or Paul. It was these Christians, the original Christians, whom the author of the second-century Gospel of Matthew called false Christians. Neo-Christians appropriated the name Christianity, as they lifted terms from most of the cultures that they absorbed. Note: That in his (circa 110 CE) letter to the Consul Servianus, Hadrian (71–138 CE), who was the governor of Syria under Trajan, called the Sarapian leaders “bishops of Christ.” Up until the beginning of the Second Century, the Egypto-Greek Sarapians, including those in Syria, called themselves Christians and bishops of Christ. There was no reason for Rome to kill the followers of Paul and the Gospels which arose from Mark.