Theos-Talk Archives (July 1995 Message tl00094)

> > Keith: I am thinking about Lucid Dreaming! It is my favorite
topic and I wish I could do it everynight., but it is kind of a
gift, like grace or something.  It happens to me usually when I
am deprived of sleep.

> Kieth - have you seen Don DeGracia's book on OBE'S and lucid
dreaming ?

> peace -

> john mead

Lucid dreaming is a gift if you come by it naturally, but it can
be learned like anything else.  It took me many years to learn
it.  I agree with John, you should take a look at Don's lucid
dreaming material (it is excellent).  BTW, Don was the first I
heard to use the term hypnogogic, but I recently came across the
term in several books.  The idea is to stay in the semi-sleep
state as long as you can.  I have found that I do this naturally
now, more than I want to.  I often feel like I am not sleeping
and can't get to sleep, but later my wife will tell me that I was
sleeping away like a baby.  Physically you sleep (your body
rests) but mentally you are semi-awake and know that you are
lying in your bed and so on.  It allows you to consciously direct
your dreams rather like a movie director.  Because of this, you
can easily stop nightmares before they start.  You mention "lucid
nightmare" but as faar as I can see, you would have to want to
have the nightmare in order to have one - I used to have terrible
ones years ago, but thanks to lucid dreaming I have eliminated
them altogether.  Whenever one starts, I just say NO, and then
change the direction of the dream content to one that I would
prefer.  This has worked well for years.

Keith: < But how far can we take these to mean travel to other
dimensions or to the past or the future? Are the beings in them
"real" or coherent in the same way we are?>

Good question.  Remember HPB's warning about the astral world
being mayavic.  I am not at all sure that the future and past are
"places" to visit anyway.  I think that both only exist in a kind
of quantum probabilistic sense and that only the present is real.
To visit _the_ future is really to visit _a_ possible future, one
of many possible futures, and yes, we can do this.  To visit
_the_ past is also really to visit _a_ past.  Your question about
the reality of the people that we encounter is the same as the
one I get asked about with Enochian Magic: Are the gods and
angels real? I believe that I have already answered this one
several times.  The beings we meet in dreams are as real as those
we meet with in rituals and in meditations.

Keith: <Crick who helped map DNA believes that life was spored
from another place in the galaxy.  That the age of the earth and
the complexity of life are not compatible with evolution as it is
currently taught (without involution).>

First of all, scientists are only guessing at the age of the
Earth, and their guessing changes all the time.  Also, modern
chaos theory has addressed evolution and given it some new and
interesting views such as how complex systems self-organize, and
that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.  Also, a new
view of evolution is growing in scientific circles that rejects
Darwin's survival of the fittest and instead looks at symbiosis
or mutual cooperation as the key ingredient for how living beings
evolve (the key scientific players here are women, BTW).

Keith: <So would we need physical DNA (with organic molecules) to
carry life or could it be reduced to some binary code and
transmitted over light waves or something?>

I am reading a fascinating new book by Klaus Mainzer called
THINKING IN COMPLEXITY (Springer-Verlag, 1994).  Mainzer
describes a chaos model approach to the human brain and
consciousness.  He also points out that DNA cannot possibly carry
all of the instructions needed to form a working brain nor could
nature have had time to single out the complex choices that are
being made given the awesome number of possibilities that exist
("The DNA molecule that comprises the total genome of a single
bacterial cell represents one or a few choices out of more than
10 to one millionth power alternative sequences.  Obviously, only
a minute fraction of all such alternatives could have been tested
by nature." p.  86).  One of his conclusions is that "emergent
effects of the whole system are system effects which cannot be
reduced to the single elements" and then he goes on to criticize
both bottom up (DNA, neuroscience, biochemistry, etc) and top
down (cognitive systems) methods as doomed to failure.  In short,
the scientific community studying the human brain and
consciousness have not yet reached any degree of success.

To answer your question, No, DNA is not necessary, and No, I
don't think that life can be transmitted over light waves.

Keith: <Are our dreams a way or at least a reminder of how we are
really not limited beings but part of something that is going on
in parrallel universes not so much as a past or future but a
potential past or future? Thus meeting are talking to aliens,
Masters, elementals, devas, angels, archetypes is not that rare,
but we just aren't able to do it consciously when we want to all
the time.  It seems like systems of Enochian Magic and the Kabala
are attempts to control this intercourse.>

I agree with your assessment here and would answer yes to all of
the above.

Keith: <I have heard it said that THE SECRET DOCTRINE is less an
archeological or historical document than an attempt to induce a
meditation or open the intuitive eye of the reader so as to gaze
into new areas of thought and experience.>

IMHO, it is historical and archeological, as well as
meditational.

Jerry S.