Posts Tagged Aristotle
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it – on Thinking
Posted by Kim Graae Munch in Buddhism, Esoterics, Materialism, Politics, Rosicrucianism, Science, Thinking on January 5, 2012
Nothing is such a joy as to learn something new, so enjoy each time you are wrong, you get wiser.
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumoured by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything on the authority of your teachers and elders.
But after observations and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason; conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. (Chop Wood, Carry Water p. 281)
Buddha was once asked, “What is truth?” He replied, “Truth is that which can be used.”
[ What can be used? See truth as a puzzle piece, it fits together with other puzzle pieces and together they create the full picture. A lie is a piece that don’t fit. ]
Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth will proceed by loving his own sect of church better than Christianity, and end by loving himself better than all.
The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him. 1897
Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.
Every formula of every religion has in this age of reason, to submit to the acid test of reason and universal assent.
Faith… must be enforced by reason… when faith becomes blind it dies.
Those who know how to think need no teachers.
And, not least
Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.
Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.
Unknown author
Lie, n. :
A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one discovered to date.
Sometimes we have to spend more time trying to understand, instead of pretending that we already do. Katherine gm
William Blake
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.
To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.
Beware the man of one book. 
Truth is the equation of thing and intellect.
A judgment is said to be true when it conforms to the external reality.
14, 6: I am the way and the truth and the life.
Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
The truth is a trap: you cannot get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.
The reason I cannot really say that I positively enjoy nature is that I do not quite realize what it is that I enjoy. A work of art, on the other hand, I can grasp. I can — if I may put it this way — find that Archimedian point, and as soon as I have found it, everything is readily clear for me. Then I am able to pursue this one main idea and see how all the details serve to illuminate it.
Knowledge resides in brains that are filled with the thoughts of others, but wisdom resides in the souls of those who attentively listens to their own thoughts.
Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though ’twere his own.
Oblivion is full of people who allow the opinions of others to overrule their belief in themselves.
First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.
Common sense is the genius of humanity.
Few people have the imagination for reality.
We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
A person hears only what they understand.
Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.
Not to keep from error, is the duty of the educator of men, but to guide the erring one, even to let him swill his error out of full cups — that is the wisdom of teachers. Whoever merely tastes of his error, will keep house with it for a long time, … but whoever drains it completely will have to get to know it.
It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
I have the courage to be mistaken.
Sokrates could save his life if he renounced his teachings, but he said: “I think it’s better to have my lyre or a chorus that I might lead out of tune and dissonant, and have the vast majority of men disagree with me and contradict me, than to be out of harmony with myself, to contradict myself, though I’m only one person.”
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
Understanding a question is half an answer
The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
Know thyself.
Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.
To find yourself, think for yourself.
Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.
The unexamined life is not worth living
There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.
I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.
He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.
If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.
Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.
Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.
In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.
The word “belief” is a difficult thing for me. I don’t believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it – I don’t need to believe it.
Truth never triumphs — its opponents just die out.
It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him.
New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment.
I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.
No matter where and how far we look, nowhere do we find a contradiction between religion and natural science. On the contrary, we find a complete concordance in the very points of decisive importance. Religion and natural science do not exclude each other, as many contemporaries of ours would believe or fear. They mutually supplement and condition each other. The most immediate proof of the compatibility of religion and natural science, even under the most thorough critical scrutiny, is the historical fact that the very greatest natural scientists of all times — men such as Kepler, Newton, Leibniz— were permeated by a most profound religious attitude.
Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.
I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.
E. F. Schumacher
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
Reserve your right to think.
For even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.
Consequently he who wishes to attain to human perfection, must therefore first study Logic, next the various branches of Mathematics in their proper order, then Physics, and lastly Metaphysics. He, however, who begins with Metaphysics, will not only become confused in matters of religion, but will fall into complete infidelity.
Dalai Lama XIV
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.
Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.
Being wrong is erroneously associated with failure, when, in fact, to be proven wrong should be celebrated, for it elevates someone to a new level of understanding.
What we are trying in all these discussions and talks here, is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind. *Not accept things as they are* – but to understand it, to go into it, examine it, give your heart and your mind with every thing that you have to find out. A way of living differently. But that depends on you and not somebody else. Because in this there is no teacher, no pupil. There’s no leader, there is no guru, there’s no master, no savior. You yourself are the teacher, and the pupil, you’re the master, you’re the guru, you are the leader, you are everything! And, to understand is to transform what is“.
You must understand the Whole of life, not just one little part of it.
That is why you must read,
that is why you must look at the skies,
that is why you must sing and dance,
and write poems,
and suffer,
and understand,
for all that is life.
The more one knows, the more one simplifies.
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.
If you can’t answer a man’s argument, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.
If you live by what I say, you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And do not marvel for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
So, you have full responsibility for what you believe!
You are the light of Presence, the awareness that is prior to and deeper than any thoughts and emotions.
If the root be in confusion, nothing will be well-governed.
When making a mistake, do not be afraid to correct it.
We journalists… are also extremely impressed with scientists, and we will, frankly, print just about any wacky thing they tell us, especially if it involves outer space.
It sounds paradoxical to say the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.
“If only the sun-drenched celebrities are being noticed and worshiped, then our children are going to have a tough time seeing the value in the shadows, where the thinkers, probers and scientists are keeping society together.”
To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.
Mark Twain
A lie can travel half way around the world before the truth gets out the front door.
Nevertheless, one feature, at any rate, we have in common with the scientific method of investigation. We take nothing on faith, and we go beyond and higher than any dogmatic religion or materialistic physical science, since our motto—“There is no religion higher than truth” is followed by the principle enunciated by Arago: “outside of pure mathematics never pronounce the word impossible.”
I speak “with absolute certainty” only so far as my own personal belief is concerned. Those who have not the same warrant for their belief as I have, would be very credulous and foolish to accept it on blind faith. Nor does the writer believe any more than her correspondent and his friends in any “authority” let alone “divine revelation”!
Intellect may arrive at certain inferences, but intellect is an unconscious phenomenon. You are almost behaving sleepily. Intelligence is awakening, and unless you are fully awake, whatsoever you decide is bound to be wrong somewhere or other. It is bound to be so, it is doomed to be wrong, because it is a conclusion arrived at by an unconscious mind.
To bring intelligence into activity you don’t need more information, you need more meditation. You need to become more silent, you need to become more thoughtless. You need to become less mind and more heart. You need to become aware of the magic that surrounds you: magic that is life, magic that is God, magic that is in the green trees and the red flowers, magic that is in people’s eyes. Magic is happening everywhere! All is miraculous, but because of your intellect you remain closed inside yourself, clinging to your stupid conclusions arrived at in unconsciousness or given to you by others who are as unconscious as you are.
Savita, intelligence is certainly creative because intelligence brings your totality into functioning — not only a part, a small part, the head. Intelligence vibrates your whole being; each cell of your being, each fiber of your life starts dancing, and falls in a subtle harmony with the total. That’s what creativity is: to pulsate in absolute harmony with the total. That’s how one becomes a Buddha, Christ, Zarathustra. These are the real creative people.
Beinsa Douno (Peter Deunov)
Wise persons do not need long speeches, what they need is a short, but sensible and comprehensible talk.
Rudolf Steiner stated that the primary function of education is to exercise the students’ faculties of thinking, feeling and willing. These basic human qualities manifest in civilization as the “eternal verities” of truth, beauty and goodness, and these in turn in science, art and religion.
To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world.
there’s something else that lies between believing and disbelieving, and that is listening without prejudice
Many people think that they’re working for the good of mankind from morn till eve, but this is questionable.
A clairvoyant can see that efforts coming from materialistic thinking have the wrong effect, and it may lie in some people’s karma that they should wait until they can do certain things. Then a higher being can whisper such a task in his ear, so that it’s not induced by outer circumstances. Life is a destructive process for someone who only devotes himself to outer sense impressions. A meditating esoteric doesn’t let his life be determined by outer circumstances as much. One who makes repeated meditational efforts isn’t exposed to astral confusions at night and makes himself ready to receive the instructions of spiritual beings. And it’s very necessary that we be instructed in this way.
The fact is, no art of any kind can be mastered without humour, especially the art of dealing with human beings.
This means that part of the art of education is the elimination of ill-humour and crossness from the teachers, and the development of friendliness and a love full of humour and fantasy for the children, so that the children may not see portrayed in their teacher the very thing he is forbidding them to be.
Nevertheless one will sometimes have great trouble in controlling the children’s liveliness. You will succeed in controlling it if you possess a thing not sufficiently appreciated in this connection, namely humour.
The teacher must bring humour into the class room as he enters the door.
Essentially, there is no education other than self- education, whatever the level may be. […] Every education is self-education, and as teachers we can only provide the environment for children’s self-education. We have to provide the most favourable conditions where, through our agency, children can educate themselves according to their own destinies.
That is what you need – an enthusiasm in the experience of truth. This enthusiasm is an absolute sine qua non.
For years it has been so terribly painful to me, the way the members of the anthroposophical movement stand there as if they were rooted to the spot – and the young too, almost as much as the old. But now consider what it means, that they can stand there so impassively.
Look at Nietzsche! What a different sort of fellow he was – even if he did get ill from it! He made his Zarathustra become a dancer. Can’t you become dancers – in the sense Nietzsche meant it?
Why, you should be leading lives of joy – deep inner joy in the truth! There is nothing in the world more delightful, nothing more fascinating than the experience of truth.
The right attitude for raising oneself into the higher world is never a sentimental one. Mere sentimentality is of no use for the man who wants to toil up the spiritual heights, in the right way, for it always smacks of egoism. You know how often, when the highest spiritual subjects are being discussed, I mix with our considerations something not designed to take you out of the mood, but simply to banish any egoistic sentimentality from it.
A genuine ascent to the spiritual must be undertaken in purity of soul (which is never destitute of humour), not from a motive of egoistic sentimentality.
Theosophists also often tend to turn away from the outer world. But a loving interest in our surroundings is absolutely necessary if one wants to make progress. One doesn’t have to neglect what one is striving for theosophically thereby.
Love is higher than opinion. If people love one another, the most varied opinions can be reconciled. Hence it is deeply significant that in Theosophy no religion is attacked and no religion is specially singled out, but all are understood, and so there can be brotherhood because the adherents of the most varied religions understand one another.
This is one of the most important tasks for mankind today and in the future: that men should learn to live together and understand one another. If this human fellowship is not achieved, all talk of occult development is empty.
The Lost Art of Caressing the Soul with Words
The kind words spoken to us have a direct effect on us, just as color affects our eyes directly.
The love living in the other’s soul is borne into your soul on the wings of the words.
This is direct perception; there can be no question here of interpretation. […] We live with the souls of others just as we live with colors and sounds.
Anyone who does not realize this knows absolutely nothing of our inner life. It is very important to understand these things.
The mood of meditation should not be: I will inwardly lie down in a warm nest, which must become warmer and warmer for me.
Rather, our mood must be that we are about to dip into reality, to grasp something real.
Devoted attention to little things, indeed to the least thing, is what it comes down to.
“Never should the phrase be heard that truths are accepted simply because I have voiced them!
We should sin against the truth were we to say any such thing. One thing or another may be grounded on confidence; but that can never be made into a principle.
Someone else may perhaps be better able to tread the path; but the rule to which every individual should adhere is this: not to accept things on authority, but to put them to the test.
…
Truth has to conquer its domain with complete disinterestedness. That is why, at bottom, nothing is more hated than the truth, the unvarnished truth. And so there may be many adherents here and there who actually cherish hatred deep down within them. No wonder that this hatred sometimes cuts through the force that builds a wall against it — cuts through this force because the hatred has been accumulating for so long. Such hatred is far more widespread than is imagined and it is a factor that must be reckoned with.
The occultist will never dream of imposing dogmas.
He is one who tells what he has seen and tested in the astral and spiritual worlds or what has been revealed to him by trustworthy and reliable teachers.
He does not desire to convert but to quicken in others the sense that has awakened in him and to enable them to see likewise.
The Rosicrucian way, which leaves the pupil with the greatest possible independence. … When we are on the physical plane, we perceive with the physical senses only what is to be found on that plane. Astral perceptions are valid for the astral plane; devachanic hearing is valid only in Devachan. Thus each plane has its own specific form of perception.
But one activity — logical thinking — goes through all worlds. Logic is the same on all three planes. Thus on the physical plane you can learn something which is valid also for the higher planes; and this is the method followed by Rosicrucian training when on the physical plane it gives primary attention to thinking, and for this purpose uses the means available on the physical plane.
A penetrative thinking can be cultivated by studying theosophical truths, or by practising mental exercises. Anyone who wishes further training for the intellect can study books such as Truth and Science, and The Philosophy of Freedom, which are written deliberately in such a way that a thinking trained by them can move with certainty on the highest planes. Even a person who studies these books and knows nothing of Theosophy might find his way about in the higher worlds.
But, as I have said, the teachings of Theosophy act in the same way.
The first condition is the cultivation of absolutely clear thinking. For this purpose a man must rid himself of the will-o’-the-wisps of thought, even if only for a very short time during the day – about five minutes (the longer, the better).
He must become the ruler in his world of thought. He is not the ruler if external circumstances, occupation, some tradition or other, social relationships, even membership of a particular race, the daily round of life, certain activities and so forth, determine a thought and how he works it out.
There is, in truth, no difference between esoteric knowledge and all the rest of man’s knowledge and proficiency. This esoteric knowledge is no more of a secret for the average human being than writing is a secret for those who have never learned it. And just as all can learn to write who choose the correct method, so, too, can all who seek the right way become esoteric students and even teachers….He must begin with a certain fundamental attitude of soul.
In spiritual science this fundamental attitude is called the path of veneration, of devotion to truth and knowledge. Without this attitude no one can become a student.
The disposition shown in their childhood by subsequent students of higher knowledge is well known to the experienced in these matters. There are children who look up with religious awe to those whom they venerate…. Only it must not be thought that this disposition leads to submissiveness and slavery. What was once a childlike veneration for persons becomes, later, a veneration for truth and knowledge.
Experience teaches that they can best hold their heads erect who have learned to venerate where veneration is due; and veneration is always fitting when it flows from the depths of the heart. … If we do not develop within ourselves this deeply rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find the strength to evolve to something higher.
The initiate has only acquired the strength to lift his head to the heights of knowledge by guiding his heart to the depths of veneration and devotion. The heights of the spirit can only be climbed by passing through the portals of humility. You can only acquire right knowledge when you have learned to esteem it. Man has certainly the right to turn his eyes to the light, but he must first acquire this right. …
A person who darts from one impression of the outer world to another, who constantly seeks distraction, cannot find the way to higher knowledge. The student must not blunt himself to the outer world, but while lending himself to its impressions, he should be directed by his rich inner life.
…
This life of the soul in thought, which gradually widens into a life in spiritual being, is called by Gnosis, and by Spiritual Science, Meditation (contemplative reflection).
This meditation is the means to supersensible knowledge. But the student in such moments must not merely indulge in feelings; he must not have indefinite sensations in his soul. That would only hinder him from reaching true spiritual knowledge. His thoughts must be clear, sharp and definite, and he will be helped in this if he does not cling blindly to the thoughts that rise within him. Rather must he permeate himself with the lofty thoughts by which men already advanced and possessed of the spirit were inspired at such moments.
He should start with the writings which themselves had their origin in just such revelation during meditation. In the mystic, gnostic and spiritual scientific literature of today the student will find such writings, and in them the material for his meditation. The seekers of the spirit have themselves set down in such writings the thoughts of the divine science which the Spirit has directed his messengers to proclaim to the world.
For through his I the human being attains to control of his sensations, feelings, thoughts, instincts, passions, and desires. Perception and thought cannot be left to themselves in the soul. They must be regulated through attentive thinking.
It is the I that employs these laws of thinking and through them brings order into the life of visualization and thought. It is similar with desires, instincts, inclinations, and passions. The ethical principles become guides of these soul powers. Through moral judgment the I becomes the guide of the soul in this realm.
If the human being now draws a higher I out of his ordinary I, the latter becomes independent in a certain sense. From this I just as much of living force is withdrawn as is bestowed upon the higher I.
Let us suppose, however, the case in which the human being has not yet developed a sufficient ability and firmness in the laws of thought and in his power of judgment, and he wishes to give birth to his higher I at this stage of development. He will be able to leave behind for his everyday I only so much thought power as he has previously developed. If the measure of regulated thinking is too small, then there will appear a disordered, confused, fantastic thinking and judgment in the ordinary I that has become independent. Because the new-born I can only be weak in such a personality, the disturbed lower I will gain domination over supersensible perception, and man will not show equilibrium in his power of judgment in observing the supersensible world.
If he had developed sufficient ability in logical thinking, he would be able, without fear, to permit the ordinary I to have its independence.
This is also true in the domain of the ethical. If the human being has not attained firmness in moral judgment, if he has not gained sufficient control over his inclinations, instincts, and passions, then he will make his ordinary I independent in a state in which these soul powers act. It may happen that the human being in describing the knowledge he has experienced in the supersensible is not governed by the same high sense of truth that guides him in what he brings to his consciousness in the physical outer world.
With such a demoralized sense of truth, he might believe anything to be spiritual reality that in truth is only his own fantastic imagining. Into this sense of truth there must act firmness of ethical judgment, certainty of character, keenness of conscience, which are developed in the lower, first I, before the higher, second I becomes active for the purpose of supersensible cognition.
Reality
In earthly existence we live in a world that is but a copy of true reality [Astral world transformed holographically through the wisdom of the Etheric world into the physical.]
Indeed, we only understand this physical world aright when we realize it to be this copy of reality. It behooves us, however, to feel the true reality within us [Astral world]; we must be aware of our connection with the spiritual world. And this is only possible if the bond that links us with pre-earthly existence remains intact.
This bond is strengthened by a love of truth and Integrity. Nothing establishes man’s true and original sense of existence so firmly as a feeling for truth and truthfulness.
To feel himself in duty bound first to “prove all things” he utters, to set due restraint on all his words — this helps to consolidate the sense of existence that is worthy of his being.
To be aware of the spirit within the physical body — with this, indeed, the sense of being is connected. There is, in effect, an intimate kinship between the physical body and this ideal of Truth.
Word Thinking
After Atlantis was destroyed by water, continued evolution resulted in our contemporary fifth race, during which deductive reasoning was a special achievement. This enabled the human race to bring art and science to a high level of development, which previously had not been possible.
Feelings
People think often enough that it is unnecessary to talk about the principles of man’s being, or the evolution of humanity or the different planetary evolutions, they would rather acquire beautiful feelings, they do not want to study earnestly.
Nevertheless, however many beautiful feelings one acquires in one’s soul it is impossible to rise into the spiritual worlds by that alone. Rosicrucian theosophy does not try to arouse the feelings, but through the stupendous facts of the spiritual worlds to let the feelings themselves begin to resound.
The Rosicrucian feels it a kind of impertinence to take people by storm with feelings. … It is only an empty phrase to say one should address oneself direct to the feelings, that is just indolence. Rosicrucian theosophy lets the facts speak, and if these thoughts flow into the feeling nature and overpower it, then that is the right way.”
…
Rosicrucian Theosophy does not wish to revel in feelings, it wishes to bring the facts of the spirit before your eyes. The pupil must take part, must let himself be stimulated by the facts which have been described, feelings and sensations must be aroused in him through them.
In this sense Spiritual Science should become a powerful impulse for the sphere of feeling, but at the same time be that which leads us direct into the facts of supersensible perceptions, which lets them first arise as thoughts and then leads the seeker upwards into the higher worlds.
Abstract Thinking
Just think how abstract modern thinking has become when it uses abstract words for something which, in its reality, is not understood!
Reality is not contained in the abstract concept; it is, however, contained in thoughtful observation, which does not one-sidedly consider either concept or percept alone, but rather the union of the two. PoF
The abstract intellectual knowledge of the human being that is common to-day does not lead to this other kind of knowledge. Thought must vivify itself from within so that it becomes imaginative.
Nothing whatever can really be grasped by intellectualistic thinking; with it everything remains external. One looks at things and forms mental images of what one sees.
But thinking can be inwardly re-enforced, it can be made active. Then one no longer has abstract intellectualistic thoughts but imaginative pictures which now fill the soul in place of the intellectual thoughts.
Freedom
Our highest endeavor must be to develop free human beings who are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives. The need for imagination, a sense of truth, and a feeling of responsibility—these three forces are the very nerve of education.
Fanatism and Objectivity
How does a fanatic behave? He wants to convert people as quickly as possible — while they, as a rule, do not want to be converted. Everybody is expected immediately to believe what the fanatic wants them to believe and he is angry when this does not happen.
In our day, when someone sets out to expound a particular subject, people simply do not believe that his aim may be not to voice his own views but something quite different, namely, the thoughts and opinions of the one of whom he is writing. For many years I was held to be a follower of Nietzsche because I once wrote an absolutely objective book about him.
People simply cannot understand that the aim of a writer may be to give an objective exposition. They think that everyone must be a fanatic on the subject of which he happens to be speaking!
Imaginaire Thinking – Memory
The pupil now, however, begins to perceive his etheric body more directly. The most striking change that takes place in the etheric body, which many do not appreciate at all, and which is not recognised as a change in the etheric body, although it is such, is that as a result of esoteric or theosophical development it becomes very distinctly evident that the power of memory begins somewhat to diminish.
Through esoteric development, the ordinary memory almost invariably suffers diminution. At first one’s memory becomes poorer. If the student does not wish to have a less efficient memory, he cannot undergo an esoteric development.
Especially does that memory cease to be strongly active which may be described as the mechanical memory, best developed in human beings in childhood and youth, and generally meant when memory is alluded to.
Many esotericists have to complain of the diminution of their memory, for it soon becomes perceptible. In any case, this depreciation of the memory can be observed long before one perceives the more delicate things which have just been explained. But as the student, by pursuing correct theosophical training, can never suffer injury in his physical body — in spite of its becoming more mobile — neither will his memory be injured for long. …
Now, as regards the memory, we must also do the correct thing. We lose the memory belonging to the external life: but we need suffer no injury if we take care to develop more interest, a deeper interest in all that affects us in life, more concern than hitherto.
We must especially acquire a sympathetic interest for the things which to us are important. Previously we developed a more mechanical memory, and the working of this mechanical memory was fully reliable for a time, even without any particular liking for the things observed; but this ceases.
It will be noticed that when undergoing a theosophical or esoteric development it is easy to forget things. But only those things fly away for which one has not a sympathetic interest, which one does not particularly care for, which do not become part of one’s soul, as it were.
On the other hand, that which appeals to one’s soul fixes itself in the memory all the more. Therefore, the student must try systematically to bring this about. The following may be experienced. Let us imagine a man in his youth, before he came to Theosophy when he read a novel he was quite unable to forget it; he could relate it again and again. Later, when he has come into Theosophy, if he reads a novel, it very often vanishes from his mind; he cannot recount it. But if a student takes a book, of which he has been told — or tells himself — that it might be valuable, and reads it through once and then tries directly afterwards to repeat it mentally, and not only to repeat it, but repeat it backwards, the last matters first and the first last; if he takes the trouble to go through certain details a second time, if he becomes so absorbed in it that he even takes a piece of paper and writes brief thoughts on it, and tries to put the question: — what aspect of this subject especially interests me — then he will find that in this way he develops a different kind of memory. It will not be the same memory. By using it, the difference can be accurately observed.
When we use the human memory, things come into our soul as remembrances; but if, in the manner just described, we systematically acquire a memory as an esotericist or theosophist, then it is as though the things thus experienced had remained stationary in time.
We learn to look back into time, as it were, and it really seems as though we were looking at what we were remembering; indeed, we shall notice that the things become more and more picture-like and the memory more and more imaginative.
If we have acted in the manner just described — for instance, with a book — then, when it is necessary to bring the matter to mind again, we need only meet with something in some way connected with it, and we shall look back, as it were, at the occasion when we were studying the book, and see ourselves reading it.
The remembrance does not arise, but the whole picture appears. Then we are able to notice that, while previously we only read the book, now the contents actually appear. We see them as at a distance in time; the memory becomes a seeing of pictures at a distance in time. This is the very first beginning, elementary to be sure, of gradually learning to read the Akashic Record.
The memory is replaced by learning to read in the past. And very often a man who has gone through a certain esoteric development may have almost entirely lost his memory, yet he is none the worse for it, because he sees things in retrospect. He sees those with which he himself was connected, with special clearness. I am now saying something which, if it were said to anyone not connected with Theosophy, would only make him laugh. He could not help laughing, because he could not form any idea of what it means when an esotericist tells him that he no longer has any memory, and yet that he knows quite well what has happened, because he can see it in the past. The first man would say: ‘What you have is in reality a very excellent memory,’ for he cannot conceive of the change that has taken place. It is a change in the etheric body that has brought it about.
Then, as a rule, this changing of the memory is connected with something else, viz., we form, we might say, a new opinion about our inner man. For we cannot acquire this retrospective vision without at the same time adopting a certain standpoint as regards our experience. Thus when at a later date a man looks back at something he has done, as in the case described above about the book, for instance, when he sees himself in that position, he will, of course, have to judge for himself whether he was wise or foolish so to occupy himself.
With this retrospect there is closely united another experience, viz., a sort of self-criticism. The pupil at this stage cannot do otherwise than define his attitude towards his past. He will reproach himself about some things; he will be glad he has attained others. In short, he cannot do otherwise than judge the past he thus surveys, so that, in fact, he becomes a sterner judge of himself, of his past life.
He feels within him the etheric body becoming active, the etheric body which — as may be seen by the retrospect after death — has the whole of his past within it; he feels this etheric body as included in himself, as something that lives in him and defines his value. Indeed, such a change takes place in the etheric body that very often he feels the impulse to make this self-retrospect and observe one thing or another, so as to learn in quite a natural manner to judge of his own worth as a man.
While in ordinary life one lives without being aware of the etheric body, in the retrospective view of one’s own life it can be perceived, and this gradually rouses in the student an impulse to make greater efforts when he undergoes an esoteric development. The esoteric life makes it necessary for one to pay more attention to one’s merits and demerits, errors and imperfections. [GA-145]
Thinking in Words
Our ordinary thought life reaches only up to the astral world. No matter how brilliant our thoughts may be, thoughts that are not sustained by feelings go no further than into the astral world; they have no significance for other worlds. You will certainly understand in this connection what is said in regard to external science, dry, matter-of-fact external science.
No man can by means of thoughts not permeated by emotion affirm anything regarding other worlds than the astral realm. Under ordinary circumstances, the thinking of the scientist, of the chemist, the mathematician, runs its course without any sort of feeling. This goes no further than just under the surface. Indeed, scientific research even demands that it shall proceed in this way, and for this reason it penetrates only into the astral world.
Discussions
Where knowledge exists, knowledge is imparted and there is no particular desire for discussion.
Where there is desire for discussion, however, there is as a rule no knowledge of the truth. Discussion begins only when there is a lack of knowledge, and it is always and everywhere the sign of a decline regarding the seriousness of a subject when it is discussed. Disintegration of a particular trend is always proclaimed by discussions. It is important that in spiritual science we come increasingly to understand that the wish for discussion may really be taken as a sign of ignorance.
On the other hand, the opposite of discussion, the will to learn, the will gradually to comprehend what is in question, should be cultivated.
Wordless Thoughts
Only when delight or repugnance are associated with the thoughts of the research scientist is there added to these thoughts the element needed in order to penetrate the world of Devachan.
Only when emotions enter into thoughts, into concepts, when we feel one thing to be good and another evil, do we combine with thoughts that which carries them into the Heavenly World. Only then can we get a glimpse into deeper foundations of existence. If we wish to grasp something belonging to the world of Devachan, no theories help us in the least. The only thing that helps us is to unite feelings with our thoughts. Thinking carries us only into the astral world.
To say something that is incorrect is not the worst thing that can happen, for the world itself will soon put one right about it; but it is really serious to regard a one-sided truth as the absolute truth and to persist in so regarding it.
Again and again one can listen: this is my opinion, I think this or that… As if it matters, what one or the other thinks! The point is much more to what the truth is!
KGM: “When Rudolf Steiner made the first Goetheanum, an artist asked if he could design the doorknobs. Steiner said “Yes, but you’ll have to design the whole of Goetheanum around them”.
All of our reality is an integral whole, and that includes good art. So when we study esoteric science we should look for the whole pattern, and not draw conclusions out of details.”
Old Souls
Compare the soul of an average European man with the soul of some of the people Darwin came across on his travels. The soul of contemporary man has a sense of right and wrong, of good and evil, of true and false.
Darwin wanted to explain to an aborigine, who was still cannibalistic, that one should not eat fellow human beings, that it was bad to do such things. The aborigine looked at him strangely and said, “How can you know that, you have to first have eaten him. Only if we have eaten him can we know if he was good or bad.”
That is how an imperfect soul understands the world; it will develop through time, becoming more and more perfect. Our individual souls do not arrive in the world like new-born babies but each soul has developed first through many imperfect incarnations in which at first it understood nothing more of right and wrong, than the pleasant or unpleasant taste on the tongue and the like.
Stage by stage the soul has evolved and only through many incarnations has it learned to get to the level it has reached at present.
‘The more often a human being incarnates, the stronger becomes his character and his moral sense, and the more numerous and greater the talents and abilities.’ GA 55 VIII.
Thinking… is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.
I have changed “ego” to “I” in Steiner’s texts as it’s a better translation of the German “Ich”, as “ego” is used in modern New Age to describe the Sentient Soul.
Dream Interpretation in Esoteric Work
Posted by Kim Graae Munch in Buddhism, Dream Interpretation, Esoterics, Rosicrucianism on May 1, 2010
Dreams in Esoteric Work
A Neglected Discipline
I grow up in a Rosicrucian family and my mother gave me a few rules about dream interpretation she had learned from her teacher. When I began dreaming some serious dreams around 49 it irritated me that there wasn’t any good esoteric theories for dream interpretation. The psychoanalysts had some theories, especially around C.G.Jung, but there was no immediate relation between Jung and the esoteric traditions.
I started a research to find that information and I found out that Jung took his starting point in the chtlonic religions, the elemental kingdoms, what relates to the subconscious, where the esoteric traditions took their starting point in the super conscious, the higher ‘I’, but Steiner had also a description of the subconscious and the Chthonic world. I found what the archetypes like anima, animus, false ego’s, I and the teacher also existed in the esoteric tradition of man, and in dreams.
Some years later I found a file on the internet describing old Christian (and Hebrew) dream interpretation, with thousand of years experience, and found out it was the same method as I had found.
I read Fritz Pearl’s dream interpretation and it confirmed my findings, just as also Erich Fromm did. Erich Fromm also told that man could interpret his dreams under hypnosis, but he lost the understanding after awakening. The dreams are sent to the astral body, physically represented by the limbic system, the subconscious, and from there we sometimes become aware of the dreams when we wake up. It seems to be a rest of an old communication channel from the super-conscious to the subconscious from before we developed our left brain hemisphere and our ‘I’.
Erich Fromm tells that this dream language are the same we find used in old fairy tales and in the Bible as parables, that these texts have more than one level of information, that our subconscious understand the deeper level where our conscious brain only understand the upper layer, just as in dreams.
The subconscious uses the dreams to influence our conscious thinking indirectly, but when we interpret our dreams we can increase our progress immediately where the subconsciousness takes a long time to reach the goal, if ever.
Jung concentrates on the feeling’s in dream interpretation where the other concentrates on the symbols, like Chinese characters, Logograms, as concrete guidance from God or the higher ‘I’, depending on context.
By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all the hosts of them by the breath of His mouth … For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.
The LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed.
In the first part I have references to esoteric texts, in the second part a table relating the technical terms within different traditions including Jung, Steiner, Aristotle, and Kabbalah, and in the third part practical dream interpretation.
Esoteric views on Dream Interpretation
The Language
The Talmud says: “Dreams which are not interpreted are like letters which have not been opened.”
Rudolf Steiner has this general advice about the understanding of the spiritual world (GA156):
The only way we can experience anything from the spiritual world is to understand that we must take what it offers us as letters and words, which we must learn to read. That is it. And not to learn, to believe that we can spare ourselves learning to read the esoteric script, would be just as clever as someone taking a book and saying, “There are fools who say that something is expressed in this book. I thumb from page to page in it and see only pretty letters.” those who cannot read the letters absorb only what they see and are unconcerned about what is expressed.
He states that we should learn to understand the messages from the spiritual world, they are there to collect.
From the Content of the Esoteric Classes we have the following around the methodology:
One gradually notices that one’s dream life takes on a more regular character. The spiritual world flows into this at first. Meditation is the occult key for this. One should get a notebook and briefly write down characteristic dreams in the morning. Thereby, one gets practice in retaining what flows to one from higher worlds. That’s the first elementary method to later get to bringing spiritual experiences through, that is, that they break through into bright day consciousness… Only the symbolism is of value here and not the dream’s content. For the symbolic form is initially used by the spiritual world to introduce us to the forces of higher worlds. That’s why one must pay attention to the fine points of this symbolism.
I would add, get a notebook and write the dreams down each time you wake, there can easily be more than one message a night. Even the bible recommends taking notes, Dan. 7.1:
… Daniel had a dream, and visions passed through his mind as he was lying in bed. He wrote down the substance of his dream. See also Dream Interpretation: A Biblical Understanding.
You are everything in the dream
The persons who appear in dreams are all part of you, with few exceptions, if a person hinders you in the dream, it’s an aspect of yourself that are the cause (GA156), this is vital to understand, as it’s all too easy to project the dreams and problems onto others:
If, for example, one person fights or wounds another, you experience yourself as the inflictor of the wound and also as the soul that is wounded or attacked. You are everything in these images. You are utterly within them. If you had an image in front of you in which a beheading is depicted you experience yourself at the same time as the person who is beheaded and the person who does the beheading. That is how you experience yourself within this very fluctuating world of images. You yourself are every image and every movement in it.
Following Bobby Matherne is Fritz Perls dream interpretation (Gestalt Therapy) a good representative for this methology:
Fritz Perls taught people to interpret every component of a dream as a part of their own self. If you are driving a car and some one is skating in front of you slowing you down, you are both the driver of the car and the skater. If you then encounter a woman whose pickup truck is broken down, you are both the truck and the woman seeking help.
The Hebrew and the Christians have worked with dream interpretation for many thousand of years, so it is no surprise that they are much more concrete than the abstract psychoanalysts, and when I found their description I saw that they matched my experiences.
From Christian Dream Interpretation
Discerning Dreams About Yourself
At least 95% of your dreams will be about you – your inner self, your current situation, your relationships. Your dreams come from your heart and will express the things that are important to your heart.
The most common area your spirit will reveal will be your emotional, heart struggles and sanctification issues, expressed symbolically. Body and health issues are also important to your spirit, so they may be revealed, again in a symbolic way. Your relationships to other people are important to your heart, so these may be conveyed in signs and symbols. And the circumstances and events that surround your life, ministry or vocation are also important to your heart, so these may be portrayed symbolically in your dreams.
The source of the dreams
Steiner have the following, about dreams and the students relation to the higher self, From the Content of the Esoteric Classes, 10-26-’09:
Anyone who has a hidden opposition to his teacher will find that this feeling soon breaks through and adversely influences the effect of meditation. In an esoteric’s daily meditations he should keep it in mind that he’s mainly trying to get through to his higher self, and he should reflect on what this higher self is. He shouldn’t think that he’s supposed to bring something to this higher self — he should have an expectant attitude towards him and expect everything from him. Usually there are three ways in which it approaches a pupil on his path. The first way is a rather flitting one and it requires the attentiveness that an esoteric should have for all things. Namely, this is in a dream, and what happens there is what one calls a doubling of the ‘I’. For instance, one has a problem or wants to do something. Then someone appears to one in a dream who tells one what to do or who solves the problem, one who is better and cleverer than oneself. One should pay attention to such dreams.
The cleverer is what I later call the teacher. As most dreams are rather depressing, they tell where we go wrong and that we should do something to change it, it is very easy to get a somewhat strained relationship to the teacher, but the dreams are created in love to us, but the dream interface is so primitive that it can’t be done in a more gentle way.
Edgar Cayce is another well known source on dream interpretation:
Cayce reports that most dreams fall into the daily recapping and assessment category, with your higher self serving as the dream maker. In these dreams, you are given the opportunity to see how your thoughts and actions compare to your ideals – the person that you truly want to be. Study the basic theme of your dreams to discover if they reflect a theme or behavior in your life. If they are intense or recurring dreams, it may indicate an area of your life that demands your attention. Very often you will find clues to positive change right within the dreams themselves. Just remember that in most cases, your dreams are for your benefit…providing insights into ways in which you can change and grow. Understanding My Intense Dreams
And here on the three main actors in the soul of man, subconscious (astral), consciousness (I), and super consciousness (higher I):
According to Mr. Cayce, the most common influence impelling a dream is our subconscious and superconscious attempting to correlate life events and decisions to eternal, spiritual ideals. On one occasion Cayce modified the word correlation to “co-relation of subconscious and superconscious forces manifesting through the developing mind of the entity.” He frequently sought to remind us that we have three levels of consciousness, and they need to co-relate in order for us to have better integration of body, mind, and soul, each sharing in our life’s events, relationships, and decisions. Co-relating
In Job’s book (33:1-18), which is a description of “The Dark Night of the Soul” also called Metanoia, it says:
Why do you complain to him that he responds to no one’s words?
For God does speak—now one way, now another— though no one perceives it.
In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber in their beds, he may speak in their ears and terrify them with warnings, to turn them from wrongdoing and keep them from pride, to preserve them from the pit, their lives from perishing by the sword.
It continues telling that those who don’t hear the message of the dreams becomes sick, as they don’t heed the warnings.
Jung and Steiner
If both Jung and Steiner were right, they had to have a common ground. I don’t describe precisely what Animus and Anima are, as it’s explained better by others, but I show where they fit into the seven layer model of man, and how they fit into the model of Steiner, Aristotle and Plato. It may extend the understanding of both models.
- Orektikon, Eros, Sentient soul represents Anima for men and Animus for woman,
- Kinetikon, Logos, Intellectual soul, also called Heart and Mind soul, represents the Lower ‘I’/Persona/Ego, and
- Dianoetikon, Thumos, Consciousness soul, represents the Higher ‘I’.
The last soul component is the least developed, but we are currently working on it.
This table relates the Jung symbolism to various esoteric models, especially the model of Plato/Aristotle/Steiner:
| The Bodies of Man |
Steiner Aristotle/Plato Hebrew |
Age From – To Chakra |
Feminine associations | Usage In Dreams | ||
| Man | Woman | |||||
| 1 | Physical body Malkuth |
Physical Body | 0 – (7) Root |
|||
| 2 | Etheric body Yesod |
Ether or Life body Threptikon |
(7) – (14) Generative |
Lilith | Anima | Animus |
| Sentient body Aesthetikon |
(14) – 21 Solar Plexus |
|||||
| 3 | Astral body Hod Kama New Age Ego |
|||||
| Sentient soul Orektikon/Eros Nephesch |
21 – 28 Heart |
Maria Magdalene | ||||
| Lower I The Persona |
||||||
| 4 | ‘I’ Netzach Nous Monad |
Intellectual soul or Heart and Mind soul Kinetikon/Logos Ruach |
28 – 35 Throat |
Maria, Cleophas wife | ||
| Consciousness soul or Spirit soul Dianoetikon/Thumos N’schamah |
35 – 42 Brow |
Virgin Sophia | Higher I The Divine Child |
|||
| 5 | Manas Tiphareth Transformed astral body |
Spirit self | 42 – 49 Crown |
The Teacher The Wise Man or Woman |
||
| 6 | Buddhi Chesed Transformed etheric body |
Life spirit | 49 – 56 | The World Mother | ||
| 7 | Atma Geburah Transformed physical body |
Spirit body | 56 – 63 |
|||
Karma and Dreams
My experience is that dreams 99,9% of the time has to do with the previous day. They are not good to tell you deep spiritual truth or intricate stories about the future, so it’s only in rare cases dreams contain other than help for your daily life.
When you go through the events of the day, just before you sleep, you may recognize situations where you created karma, and by understanding what you did wrong, you may correct the error in the current life, instead of postponing it for future incarnations.
Dreams have a similar function, they try to instill your subconscious to evade the situation if or when it would happen again, but if you understand your dream, you can work consciously on it also, sparing yourself from many depressing experiences.
A few Examples:
If you dream that your car is broke or you can’t find the key’s, it means that you don’t do the right things.
If you jump on a trampoline it means you do a lot of work without getting anywhere.
If you are too late for the train, you didn’t take an oppurtunity which fate had set up for you.
If you start in kindergarten, you have behaved childish.
All of these dreams is a reference to the day before.
If we don’t react on the dreams, and handle the problems, the dreams may become nightmares.
I think dreams get more intense with age, as the possibility to understand and change the situation grows with maturity. You should see the dreams as messages from your Higher I telling you where you went wrong. These dreams are usually depressing as they tell you to correct things, but if you do well, you may get a dream in between where you fly on a private jet, move up to a higher class in school, even a chaste kiss for particularly good work in a complicated situation, and so on, showing progress.
Dream Symbols and interpretation
Anima/Animus
Anima/Animus represents the base unconscious Feelings and the Ether body, and are female actors in mens dreams and male actors in women’s dreams, for example your husband/wife, friends, colleagues, classmates, old girlfriends/boyfriends, or an unknown person.
As it concerns feelings, you seldom speak with your Anima/Animus, it’s mostly some kind of action, Love or some affection, or the opposite to that, showing the state between your feminine and masculine side.
Animus/Anima can in real seldom situations represent your physical body, maybe in connection with health problems. Remember, it’s the opposite of your own gender.
A.Andrew Gonzales,www.sublimatrix.com
Ego, Persona or Lower ‘I’
The Ego, the Lower ‘I’ represents Thinking, the dreamer in the dream. One of the goals is to unify the Lower ‘I’ with the corresponding Anima/Animus, that is Feeling and Thinking. Related to the Chymical Wedding.
Shadows or False Ego’s
There can also be other actors (Shadows), playing the role of False Ego‘s . Typically friends, classmates, colleagues, or less common, typically in groups, unknown players. These persons sometimes characterize traits which tells what the dream is about, but in all circumstances it’s easier for the “dreaming facility” to use an existing person than to create a new personality.
The Shadow’s I see as debris flowing around in the unconscious mind blocking the Chakras. They are the background for the plot of the dreams.
The False Ego’s are the persona’s we set up when relating to other people to hide us behind, protect our selves, or to impress other persons. Their role in the dreams are to show that they are there and to remove them you have to recognize them. There can of course be persons in the dream which is only extras just to give the background, but then they will be out of focus, they will be difficult to remember.
A friend of mine dreamed that she was playing on a tin drum in a concentration camp, followed by many anonymous people walking in ranks. It showed that her fear for other peoples views made her entertain a lot of false ego’es to please everybody, but it was a virtual hell for her soul.
Higher ‘I’, The Divine Child
The Higher ‘I’ represents the Willing, and is usually represented by a child, or teenager in the dream. Whatever happens to the child is a result of your life. The more the child prosper the better. The goal is to become the Divine Child.
The Wise Teacher
One more role is the Teacher, which I presumes represents the Spirit self, and in dreams usually is shown as your Father, Mother, a Teacher, or Chief from life, who you have some respect for. In dreams they often come down from upstairs or leave upstairs. Can be of both sexes, but I it’s mostly of the opposite gender.
Dream Symbols
Three other symbols which are paramount in dreams are your House, various Schools, and Transport Vehicles:
In dreams the House usually represents your physical and psychical state of development. Is it clean, is it in chaos, are you building on your second or third floor, is it finished? Working on the first floor tell’s about work on the higher consciousness, and windows or a television tell’s about spiritual vision.
The schools tell a little about how it is going, are you in a kindergarten, school, High School, or the University? Do you have a table? Have you forgotten your books? And so forth.
If you are reading Donald Duck or other zines you are wasting your time with inferior reading stuff.
Big golden or old looking books is about your collected wisdom, precisely what it means depend on context. It could be related to a chakra.
In dreams transport vehicles tells about how your journey is progressing. If you are riding a bicycle you are not doing especially well. Your car can go out of gasoline, or you can’t find the keys, you may have lost your ticket for the bus, come late for the train. If everything is going as it should, which is more seldom, you may get a first class ticket for the airplane, or the train is waiting for you at the central station, saying that you have done right and you are on the track, even that a new period is started.
Numbers
It is extremely seldom to remember numbers in dreams, as it normally have no meaning. It’s like reading a book in a dream, without remembering the text, where the reading is vital not the text. If you remember a number it’s important to write it down quickly. What the number signifies depends on the context; it could be the number of days, time of day, number of hours, a specific date, and so forth.
Names
It’s also seldom to hear Noun’s in dreams, so when you hear one, try to find out what it stands for. Names in dreams can be quite humorous, but still contain vital information.
All the time my wife have been part of my dreams she had played the role of my anima, and other woman have also played the role, depending on the archetype needed in the message of the dream.
Anonymous dream persons
Actual people from the real world are played by anonymous players, you have to use the context to decipher the real world implication.
The times where the dream have involved my wife or other real world people, it has been played by an anonymous character.
Periods
The table show seven-year periods connected to various chakras. Each period handles a given set of problems each person have to work with, and the chakras describe these. Cycles of Seven.
Here and Now
Most dreams are rather concrete, and they accentuate specific problems from the day before, and these problems are typically waves of underlying currents, life themes, waiting to be handled.
What makes dreams difficult to understand are that we live in the middle of our problems, that we can’t overview our own situation; but our dreams can, and if we learn to interpret our dreams it will help us to understand our own situation.
Dream Interpretation and Chakras
From time to time there are dreams telling about your progress or in which areas you have problems; here some symbols and colors related to the Chakras.
The Figure are the symbol of the Chakra, hold the cursor above the symbol, a short text maybe with a word in UPPERCASE, tells what which part to look for, as an example is Muladhara’s symbol a Square. Clicking on a symbol opens a Vortex of Light description of the Chakra. The Crown chakra has no dream symbol as I am aware of.
| Chakra | Color | Animal | Figure | Comments |
| SahasraraCrown | Purple | Moon | ||
| Ajna Third Eye Pineal |
Indigo |  |
Clairvoyance, psychic abilities, imagination, dreaming, Venus. | |
| Vishuddha Throat |
Blue | White elephant |  |
Pressure when you are not communicating your emotions properly, Mercury. |
| Ahanhata Heart |
Green | Birds, animals with antlers |  |
Lack of compassion, Sun. |
| Manipura Navel Solar Plexus |
Yellow | Sacrificial animal |  |
Personal Power, anger or a sense of victimization, Mars. |
| Svadhistana Sacral Hara |
Orange | Water animals |  |
Emotional problems or sexual guilt, Jupiter. |
| Muladhara Root |
Red | Elephant, horse, and other big and heavy animals |  |
Earth, survival, grounding, stillness, Saturn. |
Literature
Dreams
Dream Interpretation: A Biblical Understanding
Af Herman Riffel:
Many believers read the scriptural accounts of dreams and never think it could happen to them. Today, though, many are realizing that God has never ceased using dreams and visions to guide, instruct, and warn. This book will give you a biblical understanding of dreams that you never had before!
Christian Dream Interpretation:
A short but very well written text on dream interpretation.
Discerning Dreams About Yourself
At least 95% of your dreams will be about you – your inner self, your current situation, your relationships. Your dreams come from your heart and will express the things that are important to your heart.
The most common area your spirit will reveal will be your emotional, heart struggles and sanctification issues, expressed symbolically. Body and health issues are also important to your spirit, so they may be revealed, again in a symbolic way. Your relationships to other people are important to your heart, so these may be conveyed in signs and symbols. And the circumstances and events that surround your life, ministry or vocation are also important to your heart, so these may be portrayed symbolically in your
dreams.
Myths-Dreams-Symbols
based on Eric Ackroyd1 & 2 and Edward C. Whitmont.
The Individuation Process: The Shadow, Anima/Animus, Mana personalities, the higher Self.
Site directory.
A Step-By-Step Approach
This Step by Step Approach describes Dream Interpretation in a way usable with my terminology. It also has descriptions of how to combine the I Ching with Dream Interpretation:
I find that a very useful guideline for dream interpretation, especially at first, is to take everything in the dream to represent an aspect of the dreamer.
For example, if the dream involves the person travelling in a car with their uncle, then the car represents some aspect of the person’s life, and the uncle also represents a part of the person. This isn’t the only way to interpret dreams, but it’s a very good starting point, I think.
Here’s the step-by-step approach that I use.
I hope that by going through the example and then trying the exercise you’ll start to get a feel for what’s involved in trying to interpret a dream, whether it’s your own or someone else’s.
Dream Encyclopedia
Example: The House in Your Dream
…..
Each dream image holds enormous data, emotional response, and created patterns of behaviour. So in considering the house in your dream you need to remember you are in touch with a full surround databank of fantastic information about you, your past and your possibilities. You can interact with this information by exploring it in the right way. And to help with this let us look at and question some of the possibilities your dream house might hold.
…..
Contains many interesting and usable entries about the Archetypes used in dreams.
Dream Dictionary
Example with House:
Seeing a house in your dream, represents your own soul and self. Specific rooms in the house indicate a specific aspect of your psyche. In general, the attic represents your intellect, the basement represents the unconscious, etc. If the house is empty, then it indicates feelings of insecurity. If the house is shifting, then it suggests that you are going through some personal changes and changing your belief system. Dreaming that you are cleaning your house means your need to clear out your thoughts and getting rid of old ways. You are seeking self-improvement. Seeing an old, run-down house in your dream, represents your old beliefs, attitudes and how you used to think or feel. A situation in your current life may be bringing about those same old attitudes and feelings. Alternatively, the old house may symbolize your need to update you mode of thinking. Dreaming that your house is broken into, suggests that you are feeling violated. It may refer to a particular relationship or current situation in your life. Alternatively, it indicates that some unconscious material is attempting to make itself known. There are some aspects of yourself that you have denied. Dreaming of a haunted house means unfinished emotional business, related to your childhood family, dead relatives, or repressed memories and feelings. Dreaming that a house disappeared, indicates that you are not feeling grounded. You feel uprooted by a particular circumstance or relationship in your life.
This entry looks quite ok, I havent checked other entries.
Dreams and Dreaming:
From Dreams and Dreaming:
Dreams as not really nonsensical, but a lot of them are crypted somehow. Major psychologists have studied how dreams work and why they appear, and whether they occur according to patterns, and which patterns. Carl Jung, Medard Boss, Calvin Hall, Montague Ullman and others have decreed that dreams do carry meanings, but you need to understand how dreaming functions. Dreams functions on their own terms. Through the basics of dream interpretations to get a hold on many of them.
Some dreams reflect mind content that pertains to tasks and problems and other issues the mind gets deeply involved in. And parts of the jumbled “video clips” within may just present “left-overs” from days before. Dream interpretations need to be tentative, perhaps open-ended too. Consider the deep feelings and messages involved in the recurrent and most impressive dreams you have had.
Decode and interpret the flows of various icons, images, scenes, actors, happenings, concomitant feelings so as to arrive at tentative or putative postulates about what impressive dreams could mean. In such work there is help in mulling over single, outstanding ideas or episodes inside the stream or flow of a single dream. Take notes of them and learn to draw special illustrations that serve you in a log book. all of it could help, but it may be time-consuming work that had better be done for the whole life. In short, you have to learn to assess well.
Carl Gustav Jung on Dreams:
Here we come upon something of the utmost importance for the applicability of dream-analysis: the dream describes the inner situation of the dreamer, but the conscious mind denies its truth and reality, or admits it only grudgingly.
More on Carl Jung’s Archetypes.
Jungian dream interpretation: a handbook of theory and practice
Catching the Thread:
Sufism, Dreamwork, and Jungian Psychology
Aristotle
In Greek Sculpture and the Four Elements J.L.Benson references Steiner on Aristotle’s description of the soul of man:
Aristotle distinguishes in man the vegetative soul, by which he means approximately what we call ether body, then the aesthetikon or sensitive soul, which we call the sentient or astral body. Next he speaks of orektikon which corresponds to sentient soul, then comes kinetikon corresponding to the intellectual soul, and he uses the term dianoetikon for the consciousness soul.
J.L.Benson writes in Greek Color Theories and the Four Elements :
To my knowledge Steiner, working closely with concepts from Goethe’s scientific work, is the only modern thinker to give full weight to the macrocosmic aspect of the microcosmic foursome. Above the physical body (which Aristotle dealt with en passant : de An. 411a he uses the term etheric body for Aristotle’s threptikon or nutritive soul, astral or sentient body for the aesthetikon or sensitive soul and ego for nous.
Rudolf Steiner
On dreams:
One gradually notices that one’s dream life takes on a more regular character. The spiritual world flows into this at first. Meditation is the occult key for this. One should get a notebook and briefly write down characteristic dreams in the morning. Thereby, one gets practice in retaining what flows to one from higher worlds. That’s the first elementary method to later get to bringing spiritual experiences through, that is, that they break through into bright day consciousness. Dreams that are only reminiscences from daily life or that are based on heart disturbances, headaches or other bodily conditions are only of value if they’re clothed in a symbolical form, for instance if the thumping heart appears as a cooking oven, or the painful brain as a dome into which animals creep, etc. Only the symbolism is of value here and not the dream’s content. For the symbolic form is initially used by the spiritual world to introduce us to the forces of higher worlds. That’s why one must pay attention to the fine points of this symbolism. In your case — according to your capacities — it’ll also be good if you compare the dreams that you become aware of with the experiences of the next day. For your dreams may soon take on a portentous character. If this happens we’ll say some more about how this thing can be made productive for your spiritual life. Please give these indications a try and tell me how things are going in about eight days.
The Essential Nature of Man from Theosophy.
Chakras
This site offers an abbreviated introduction to the Chakra System, applications for meditation and healing using this system, and its relationship to other healing systems.
Visual appealing page on the Chakras.
Contains information on a deeper Esoteric level
Paracelsus in “The Life of Paracelsus” by Franz Hartmann
“If we desire to enter into communication with the spirit of a deceased person, we may make a picture representing that person, and write his name and the questions we wish to ask him upon it, and put that picture under our head after retiring to rest; and during our sleep the deceased appears to us in our dreams and answers our questions. But the experiment must be made in a spirit of unfaltering faith, full of confidence that it will succeed, else it will fail, because it is not the picture that brings the spirit, but our faith that brings us into communication with it; and the picture is only made for the purpose of assisting the imagination, and to make it more powerful (Philosoph., v.).
Previous version of the text
The earlier version: What are the feminine and masculine sides we all talk about? My goal was to find the relation between Jung’s vocabulary and esoteric terminology, together with hints on dream interpretation, there are written much wrong on the subject.
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Esoteric History of Man
Posted by Kim Graae Munch in Esoterics, Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism on March 17, 2010
The Planetary Cycles
Our Earth have gone through a number of incarnations, each incarnation alternates between pralaya, a cosmic night and manvantara, a cosmic day, just as we alternately pass through day and night, life and dead. Pralaya is the non-physical, preparatory stage and manvantara the physical or lower spiritual development stage.
Man have gone through three planetary Earth incarnations (æons) before Earth, and are going through three after Earth before we have finished the complete development cycle. These seven Earth incarnations are called Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and ending with Vulcan. The emanation of Sephira’s in the Kabbalah tree of life corresponds to these planetary cycles.
The Earth development phase is split in two parts: Mars, before the Son incarnates, and Mercury after this incarnation. In a seven pointed star it looks:
The sequence of the planetary development,
Mars is first part of Earth and Mercury last part of Earth development.
Just start with Saturn, and follow the arrows. It follow the week days:
| ♄ – Saturn | Samedi, Samstag, Lørdag | Saturday |
| ☉ – Sun | Sonntag, Søndag | Sunday |
| ☾ – Moon | Lundi, Montag, Mandag | Monday |
| ♂ – Mars | Mardi, Dienstag, Tyr – Tirsdag, or Tiu | Tuesday |
| ☿ – Mercury | Mercredi, Mittwoch, Odin – Onsdag | Wednesday |
| ♃ – Jupiter | Jeudi, Donar – Donnerstag, Tor, Torsdag | Thursday |
| ♀ – Venus | Vendredi, Freya — Freitag, Fredag | Friday |
Until the middle of Earth round, all development have been made under strict guidance from higher hierarchies, first with the development of sentience on the Earth, through the lower ‘I’ is it possible for man to enter the development consciously.
You will not find a human being as he is today on Earth on any other planet. Beings, yes — but not human beings. The Earth exists in order that “I”-conscious human beings could be created. Through the first four Rounds the kingdoms of nature evolved in order that in the fourth man could be made a self-conscious being, who could reflect himself in his body. He will rise to higher levels of evolution, something that few can understand correctly. In the next, the fifth Round, the mineral kingdom will disappear. All mineral matter will be transformed to vegetable matter. Then the vegetable kingdom will reach its culmination and in the next Round the animal kingdom will form the lowest kingdom. During the seventh Round the human being will achieve his highest level of evolution. He will have become what planetary evolution intends. RS
The development of man in these first four phases goes through the four states as described by F.W.J. Schelling:
“Mind sleeps in stone, dreams in the plant, awakes in the animal and becomes conscious in man.”
Old Saturn
The first seed of man was created on the Earth incarnation called old Saturn, and it’s remnants is the Saturn of today.
Planetary seal of Old Saturn
Old Saturn was a planet which was made of warms. The creator is known as Saturn or Cronos or in Christian terminology, The Thrones [Binah].
Saturn – Cronus
The first seed of minerals were created here. At this time man created unconsciously the seed of what would become it’s Spirit Body (Atma). Man had at that time mineral-consciousness.
Man is the first-born of our creative process. But Saturn-man was very different from the man of today. He was for the most part a spiritual being; he would not have been visible to physical eyes. It was a kind of primal mineral, with no etheric body round it; hence we can say that man passed through the mineral kingdom; but to think of it as anything like our present-day mineral kingdom would be quite wrong. On Saturn there was no kingdom other than the human kingdom. From “Evolution of the Earth”
Old Sun
The old Sun was a planet of Light, where a great part of the minerals of man was connected with the etheric, creating a higher life form with plant-consciousness.
If one looks at how after a pralaya old Saturn changed into old Sun with the spiritual gaze that moves over the planets one notices that Saturn’s warmth atmosphere condenses into air. Man gets an etheric body on the Sun. He is a shining being. Spiritual beings work through the Sun’s astral atmosphere upon the etheric body, ignite it and thereby make it shine. One calls this the sulfuric process.
Planetary Seal of Old Sun
Some of our development wave of Saturn didn’t connect to the Etheric, so they stayed on the mineral-level. Man creates here, under guidance, the seed for the Buddhi layer of the later development. Zeus is connected to the Old Sun.
Old Moon
The Old Moon is a watery planet, with earth like living plants. Here is man connected with Astral stuff, acquiring animal-consciousness.
When the Sun passes over to the Moon, air condenses to water. The Moon’s body is a water body. We notice something very strange about this water body. Single water drops change their position in an extremely lively manner and race around with inner mobility. In some respects one can compare this property of the water drops with mercury. That’s why one calls this principle that’s added on the Moon the mercurial principle. The parts are put together into forms by sounds, somewhat like Chladni’s sound figures. First two came together, then two pairs made four, etc., just as one still finds in new plant, animal and human forms. That’s the female principle. The male principle only arose later from pure earth forces. From “Esoteric Lessons“.
Planetary Seal of Old Moon
Some of our brethren from the Saturn development wave didn’t connect to the Astral so they stayed at the plant-level. Here creates man under guidance Manas. The Old Moon are connected to The Mother, Sophia, or Cthlon.
Earth
On this Earth we have, besides man, the minerals who stayed back on the Old Saturn, the plants who stayed back on the Old Sun, and the animals who stayed back on the Old Moon.
When the moon passed over to the earth, water condensed to earth. The precipitating salt process took place on the earth for the first time through the interaction of fire and water. Man arose from female and male and began to dissolve things again through thinking so that evolution could continue. Man received the erring I on earth. From “Esoteric Lessons“.
The Earth development phase is split in two parts: Mars, before the Son incarnates, and Mercury after this incarnation, which takes place in the middle manvantara..
First half of Earth called Mars
In the first part, called Mars, mankind descend into the Physical, into the dominion of the Cthlonic powers, through a kind of repetition of the first three planetary rounds.
Planetary Seal of Mars,
first part of Earth
Here Man acquires the seed of the Ego, which is needed to become a sentient being. See the table in Dream Interpretation in Esoteric Work
Second half of Earth called Mercury
Planetary Seal of Mercury,
second part of Earth
In the second part of Earth, called Mercury, we ascends again to the spiritual world, and we have been working on it for two thousand years now.
In the second part we develop what we previously have created the seed for together with the Gods, that is Sentient soul (Orektikon), the Intellectual soul (Kinetikon), and the Consciousness soul (Dianoetikon), The three aspects of Isis/Sophia. Those who don’t unite with the spirit, stays back.
New Jupiter
Planetary Seal of New Jupiter
The New Jupiter is known as the New Israel, or New Jerusalem, Paradise or Shambhala, which already exist in embryonic form. Here we will develop Angelic Consciousness. All creation of Old Saturn are one Wave, and it’s our responsibility to get every creation of Saturn, from mineral to man, with us in the development. And this is part of our task now and in the future, and it is a result of the work toward this goal, transforming our astral body to Spirit Self, Manas. The minerals of Earth is transformed to vegetable matter.
New Venus
Planetary Seal of New Venus
On Venus we are transforming the etheric body to Life Spirit or Buddhi, and on Vulcan we are transforming the physical to Spirit Body, Atma. On Venus the lowest kingdom is the animal kingdom and on Vulcan the lowest kingdom is the human kingdom.
This cycle of seven planets are bound to the Chakras, where Earth corresponds to the Heart, to Christ, who transformed Earth, gave it life, for the new future, called New Jerusalem, the New Jupiter.
The Creation are described by Steiner in “From the Akasha Chronicles” and Max Heindel in “The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception or Mystic Christianity“.
In each of these Earth-incarnation man develops a higher level of consciousness as described:
There are seven grades of human consciousness: trance consciousness, deep sleep, dream consciousness, waking consciousness, psychic, super-psychic and spiritual consciousness. Actually these are in all twelve stages of consciousness; the five others are creative stages. They are those of the Creators, of the creative Gods. These twelve stages are related to the twelve signs of the zodiac. The human being must pass through the experiences of these twelve stages. He ascended through the trance, deep sleep and dream consciousness up to the present clear day consciousness. In the succeeding stages of planetary evolution he will reach still higher stages. All those which he has already passed through he will also retain within him. The physical body has the dull trance consciousness as this was gained by man on Old Saturn. The human etheric body has the consciousness of dreamless sleep, as this developed on Old Sun. The astral body dreams in the same way as one dreams during sleep. Dream consciousness derives from the Old Moon period. On our present Earth, man achieves waking consciousness. The ego has clear day-consciousness. RS
What are the feminine and masculine sides we all talk about?
Posted by Kim Graae Munch in Buddhism, Dream Interpretation, Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism on January 17, 2009
We all talk about our feminine and masculine sides without really knowing what we talk about.
I read Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Rosicrucian literature, Jung, Fromm, and other psychoanalysts, adding to my intuitive understanding, but I still didn’t grasp it fully.
Many interesting, partly frustrating, experiences gave finally a long searched result. I will not describe precisely what Animus and Anima are, as it is explained better by others, but I will show where they fit into the seven layer model of man, and how they fit into the Steiner and Aristotle model.
I will take it a little further by explaining a few but basic rules around Dream Interpretation and the Roles of the participating figures.
Jung and the Aristotelian model of the Soul
The model of Steiner/Aristotle split in three groups, the Body, the Soul, and the Spirit. Each part can again be split in three, the body as Physical, Ether, and Sentient body, and the soul as Sentient, Intellectual, and Consciousness soul, and the Spirit as Spirit self, Life spirit, and Spirit body. The model is described in The Essential Nature of Man.
Age contains the periods where each body and relating chakra is developed. (7) signifies change of teeth and (14) start of puberty. The Crown with 49 is by grace not through work. Following the Hebrew’s a person was first adult at 50.
| The Bodies of Man |
Steiner Aristotle |
Age From – To Chakra |
Feminine associations | Usage In Dreams | ||
| Man | Woman | |||||
| 1 | Physical body Malkuth |
Physical Body | 0 – (7) Root |
|||
| 2 | Etheric body Yesod |
Ether or Life body Threptikon |
(7) – (14) Generative |
Lilith | Anima | Animus |
| Sentient body Aesthetikon |
(14) – 21 Solar Plexus |
|||||
| 3 | Astral body Hod Kama |
|||||
| Sentient soul Orektikon |
21 – 28 Heart |
Maria Magdalene | ||||
| Lower I The Persona |
||||||
| 4 | Ego Netzach Nous Monad |
Intellectual soul or Heart and Mind soul Kinetikon |
28 – 35 Throat |
Maria, Cleophas wife | ||
| Consciousness soul Dianoetikon |
35 – 42 Brow |
Virgin Sophia | Higher I The Divine Child |
|||
| 5 | Manas Tiphareth Transformed astral body |
Spirit self | 42 – 49 Crown |
The Teacher The Wise Man or Woman |
||
| 6 | Buddhi Chesed Transformed etheric body |
Life spirit | 49 – 56 |
The World Mother | ||
| 7 | Atma Geburah Transformed physical body |
Spirit body | 56 – 63 |
|||
In Dream Interpretation
The three Soul components:
- Sentient soul represents Anima for men and Animus for woman,
- Intellectual soul represents the Lower ‘I’/Persona/Ego, and
- Consciousness soul represents the Higher ‘I’.
Anima/Animus
Anima/Animus represents the base unconscious Feelings and the Ether body, and are represented by female actors in mens dreams and male actors in womens dreams. It can be your husband/wife, friends, colleagues, classmates, old girlfriends/boyfriends, or an unknown person.
As it concerns feelings, you seldom speak with your Anima/Animus, it’s mostly some kind of action, Love or some affection, or the opposite to that, showing the state between your feminine and masculine side.
Animus/Anima can in real seldom situations represent your physical body, if there is something which should be taken care of. And remember, it’s the opposite of your own gender.
Ego, Persona or Lower ‘I’
The Ego, the Lower ‘I’ represents Thinking, and is represented by the dreamer in the dream. One of the goals is to unify the Lower ‘I’ with the corresponding Anima/Animus, that is Feeling and Thinking. The relation is connected with the Chymical Wedding.
Shadows or False Ego’s
There can also be other actors (Shadows), playing the role of False Ego‘s . Typically friends, classmates, colleagues, or less common, typically in groups, unknown players. These persons sometimes characterize traits which tells what the dream is about, but in all circumstances it’s easier for the “dreaming facility” to use an existing person than to create a new personality.
The Shadow’s I see as debris flowing around in the unconscious mind blocking the Chakras. They are the background for the plot of the dreams.
The False Ego’s are the persona’s we set up when relating to other people to hide us behind, protect our selves, or to impress other persons. Their role in the dreams are to show that they are there and to remove them you have to recognize them. There can of course be persons in the dream which is only extras just to give the background, but then they will be out of focus, they will be difficult to remember.
Higher ‘I’, The Divine Child
The Higher ‘I’ represents the Willing, and is usually represented by a child, or teenager in the dream. Whatever happens to the child is a result of your life. The more the child prosper the better. The goal is to become the Divine Child.
The Wise Teacher
One more role is the Teacher, which I presumes represents the Spirit self, and in dreams usually shown as your Father, Mother, a Teacher, or Chief from your real life, who you have some respect for. They can in the dream be connected with the next floor upstairs. Can be both sexes, but I think it’s mostly of the opposite gender.
Dream Symbols
Three other symbols which are paramount in dreams are your House, various Schools, and Transport Vehicles:
In dreams the House usually represents your physical and psychical state of development. Is it clean, is it in chaos, are you building on your second or third floor, is it finished?
The schools tells a little about how it is going, are you in a kindergarten, school, High School, or the University? Are there room for you, have you forgotten your books, and so forth.
In dreams transport vehicles tells about how your journey is progressing. If you are riding a bicycle you are not doing especially well. Your car can go out of gasoline, you may have lost your ticket for the bus, come late for the train, or you got a first class ticket for the airplane.
Numbers
It is extremely seldom that numbers in dreams are remembered, as they normally have no meaning. It’s like reading a book in a dream, where the reading is remembered not the text. If you remember a number it’s important to write it down quickly. What the number signifies depends on the context, it could be the number of days, time of day, number of hours, a specific date, and so forth.
Names
It’s also seldom to hear Noun’s in dreams, so when your hear one, try to find out what it stands for. Some of these names can be quite humorous, but still contain vital information.
Anonymous dream persons
Actual people from the real world will be played by anonymous players, you have to use the context to decipher the real world implication.
Here and Now
Most dreams are rather concrete, and they accentuate specific problems from the day before, and these problems are typically waves of underlying currents, life themes, which should be handled.
What makes dreams difficult to understand are that we live in the middle of our problems, that we cant overview our own situation; but our dreams can, and if we learn to interpret our dreams it will help us to understand our own situation.
Dream Interpretation and Chakras
From time to time there may be dreams telling about your progress or in which areas you have problems; here some symbols and colors related to the Chakras.
The Figure are the symbol of the Chakra, hold the cursor above the symbol, a short text maybe with a word in UPPERCASE, tells what which part to look for, as an example is Muladhara’s symbol a Square. Clicking on a symbol opens a Vortex of Light description of the Chakra. The Crown chakra has no dream symbol as I am aware of.
| Chakra | Color | Animal | Figure | Comments |
| Sahasrara Crown | Purple | Moon ? | ||
| Ajna Third Eye Pineal |
Indigo | |
Clairvoyance, psychic abilities, imagination, dreaming, Mercury. | |
| Vishuddha Throat | Blue | White elephant | |
Pressure when you are not communicating your emotions properly, Venus. |
| Ahanhata Heart | Green | Birds, animals with antlers | |
Lack of compassion, Sun. |
| Manipura Navel Solar Plexus |
Yellow | Sacrificial animal | |
Personal Power, anger or a sense of victimization, Mars. |
| Svadhistana SacralHara | Orange | Water animals | |
Emotional problems or sexual guilt, Jupiter. |
| Muladhara Root | Red | Elephant, horse, and other big and heavy animals | |
Earth, survival, grounding, stillness, Saturn. |
Examples
The Tin Drum
A friend of mine had a dream where she was going in front of a group of girls in a concentration camp playing on a tin drum.
The group of girls were her false ego’s, she put up whenever she met any of her friends, family, and so forth. She was trapped like in a concentration camp by that behavior. She understood the dream herself.
To met a person again.
I walked on the platform going to get a train. I met a young girl, but walked on. I then sat down between two girls, where one of them was the same I passed earlier, but older.
Or
I were in a discotheque and met a girl, I then continued walking around before i ran into her again.
Both dreams was preparing the same meeting with an old acquaintance, and contained in the small group of dreams about the future.
A real short dream
Saw a Trampoline.
The person had the previous day done a lot of work without coming anywhere; if the dream theme is recurring a change in the theme of life is needed.
Literature
Dreams
Myths-Dreams-Symbols
based on Eric Ackroyd1 & 2 and Edward C. Whitmont.
The Individuation Process: The Shadow, Anima/Animus, Mana personalities, the higher Self.
Dream Interpretation: A Biblical Understanding
Af Herman Riffel
Many believers read the scriptural accounts of dreams and never think it could happen to them. Today, though, many are realizing that God has never ceased using dreams and visions to guide, instruct, and warn. This book will give you a biblical understanding of dreams that you never had before!
A Step-By-Step Approach
I find that a very useful guideline for dream interpretation, especially at first, is to take everything in the dream to represent an aspect of the dreamer.
For example, if the dream involves the person travelling in a car with their uncle, then the car represents some aspect of the person’s life, and the uncle also represents a part of the person. This isn’t the only way to interpret dreams, but it’s a very good starting point, I think.
Here’s the step-by-step approach that I use.
I hope that by going through the example and then trying the exercise you’ll start to get a feel for what’s involved in trying to interpret a dream, whether it’s your own or someone else’s.
This Step by Step Approach contains a description of Dream Interpretation which is quite usable with my terminology. It also contains descriptions of how to combine the I Ching with Dream Interpretation.
Dream Encyclopedia
Example: The House in Your Dream
…..
Each dream image holds enormous data, emotional response, and created patterns of behaviour. So in considering the house in your dream you need to remember you are in touch with a full surround databank of fantastic information about you, your past and your possibilities. You can interact with this information by exploring it in the right way. And to help with this let us look at and question some of the possibilities your dream house might hold.
…..
Contains many interesting and usable entries about the Archetypes used in dreams.
Dream Dictionary
Example with House:
Seeing a house in your dream, represents your own soul and self. Specific rooms in the house indicate a specific aspect of your psyche. In general, the attic represents your intellect, the basement represents the unconscious, etc. If the house is empty, then it indicates feelings of insecurity. If the house is shifting, then it suggests that you are going through some personal changes and changing your belief system. Dreaming that you are cleaning your house means your need to clear out your thoughts and getting rid of old ways. You are seeking self-improvement. Seeing an old, run-down house in your dream, represents your old beliefs, attitudes and how you used to think or feel. A situation in your current life may be bringing about those same old attitudes and feelings. Alternatively, the old house may symbolize your need to update you mode of thinking. Dreaming that your house is broken into, suggests that you are feeling violated. It may refer to a particular relationship or current situation in your life. Alternatively, it indicates that some unconscious material is attempting to make itself known. There are some aspects of yourself that you have denied. Dreaming of a haunted house means unfinished emotional business, related to your childhood family, dead relatives, or repressed memories and feelings. Dreaming that a house disappeared, indicates that you are not feeling grounded. You feel uprooted by a particular circumstance or relationship in your life.
This entry looks quite ok, I havent checked other entries.
Dreams and Dreaming
Dreams as not really nonsensical, but a lot of them are crypted somehow. Major psychologists have studied how dreams work and why they appear, and whether they occur according to patterns, and which patterns. Carl Jung, Medard Boss, Calvin Hall, Montague Ullman and others have decreed that dreams do carry meanings, but you need to understand how dreaming functions. Dreams functions on their own terms. Through the basics of dream interpretations to get a hold on many of them.
Some dreams reflect mind content that pertains to tasks and problems and other issues the mind gets deeply involved in. And parts of the jumbled “video clips” within may just present “left-overs” from days before. Dream interpretations need to be tentative, perhaps open-ended too. Consider the deep feelings and messages involved in the recurrent and most impressive dreams you have had.
Decode and interpret the flows of various icons, images, scenes, actors, happenings, concomitant feelings so as to arrive at tentative or putative postulates about what impressive dreams could mean. In such work there is help in mulling over single, outstanding ideas or episodes inside the stream or flow of a single dream. Take notes of them and learn to draw special illustrations that serve you in a log book. all of it could help, but it may be time-consuming work that had better be done for the whole life. In short, you have to learn to assess well.
Carl Gustav Jung on Dreams
Here we come upon something of the utmost importance for the applicability of dream-analysis: the dream describes the inner situation of the dreamer, but the conscious mind denies its truth and reality, or admits it only grudgingly.
More on Carl Jung’s Archetypes.
Jungian dream interpretation: a handbook of theory and practice
Catching the Thread:
Sufism, Dreamwork, and Jungian Psychology
Aristotle
In Greek Sculpture and the Four Elements J.L.Benson references Steiner on Aristotle’s description of the soul of man:
Aristotle distinguishes in man the vegetative soul, by which he means approximately what we call ether body, then the aesthetikon or sensitive soul, which we call the sentient or astral body. Next he speaks of orektikon which corresponds to sentient soul, then comes kinetikon corresponding to the intellectual soul, and he uses the term dianoetikon for the consciousness soul.
J.L.Benson writes in Greek Color Theorie and the Four Elements :
To my knowledge Steiner, working closely with concepts from Goethe’s scientific work, is the only modern thinker to give full weight to the macrocosmic aspect of the microcosmic foursome. Above the physical body (which Aristotle dealt with en passant : de An. 411a he uses the term etheric body for Aristotle’s threptikon or nutritive soul, astral or sentient body for the aesthetikon or sensitive soul and ego for nous .
Rudolf Steiner
On dreams:
One gradually notices that one’s dream life takes on a more regular character. The spiritual world flows into this at first. Meditation is the occult key for this. One should get a notebook and briefly write down characteristic dreams in the morning. Thereby, one gets practice in retaining what flows to one from higher worlds. That’s the first elementary method to later get to bringing spiritual experiences through, that is, that they break through into bright day consciousness. Dreams that are only reminiscences from daily life or that are based on heart disturbances, headaches or other bodily conditions are only of value if they’re clothed in a symbolical form, for instance if the thumping heart appears as a cooking oven, or the painful brain as a dome into which animals creep, etc. Only the symbolism is of value here and not the dream’s content. For the symbolic form is initially used by the spiritual world to introduce us to the forces of higher worlds. That’s why one must pay attention to the fine points of this symbolism. In your case — according to your capacities — it’ll also be good if you compare the dreams that you become aware of with the experiences of the next day. For your dreams may soon take on a portentous character. If this happens we’ll say some more about how this thing can be made productive for your spiritual life. Please give these indications a try and tell me how things are going in about eight days.
The Essential Nature of Man from Theosophy.
Chakras
This site offers an abbreviated introduction to the Chakra System, applications for meditation and healing using this system, and its relationship to other healing systems.
Visual appealing page on the Chakras.
Contains information on a deeper Esoteric level
Kim Graae Munch
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