Extra Dimensional Dreams, Influence and Processing.

In The Memory of Boris Sidis, Ph.D., M.D.

"In the province of the mind what one believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits. These limits are to be found experimentally as well as experientially. When so found these limits turn out to be further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind there are no limits. However, in the province of the body there are definite limits not to be transcended."
-Dr John Lilly




More Questions Than Answers

"The hypnoidal state precedes and succeeds sleep."
Dr Boris Sidris An Experimental Study Of Sleep

One of the most tragic ironies that occur over the passage of time is that some of the most courageous and prodigal geniuses who probe realty, make discoveries and create theories that predate their acceptance in a distant future they will never experience. Nikola Tesla comes to mind. They are forgotten, unrecognised and become ghosts which haunt the unclaimed territories they had discovered.

Dr Boris Sidis was one such person who discovered by experimentation, the connection between suggestibility and waking consciousness. In Gurdjieff's words, the study of psychology is the study of abnormal psychology. When William James, one of the founders of psychology, published "Does Consciousness Exist?, Sidis published a response,which makes for an interesting read. http://sidis.net/fnapapp1.htm
What is also an facet of Dr Sidris's work is his study of a filtering mechanism of necessity that acts as a judicious chancellor, who weighs the import of the subconscious against the functioning imperative of the conceptual, consensus reality we inhabit to a great deal, however it seeps through like water through shale.

The recognition of this skewed suggestive and semi-hypnotic influence on perception, makes one consider that if this is so in our waking state, then in a dream state, perhaps if an external agency could delve even deeper into this state, as in the case of the abduction phenomenon and it's cousin the vivid dream, and beyond, the extra dimensional dream, we are but passive receptacles akin to puppets under the influence of suggestion, meaning that, in the truest sense, do not exist beyond the reactive behavior stimulated by influence. Are we but a single receptor as if one were merely a single portion of a global aggregate, a sympathetic nervous system nested in a larger hierarchy? Meaning, value and effective behavior are perhaps a triad that is a more specific and esoteric definition of a well known purpose. The end result being a process of integration that leads to a potentiality of "On Earth, as it is in heaven." This is not a free floating game of associations in one sense, it is a science perhaps. If you doubt this, follow this link;

http://www.sufienneagram.com/overview.html

"There is nothing closer to you than yourself. If you don't know your self, how will you know others? You might say, "I know myself," but you are mistaken.... The only thing you know about your self is your physical appearance. The only thing you know about your inside (batin, your unconscious) is that when you are hungry you eat, when you are angry, you fight, and when you are consumed by passion, you make love. In this regard you are equal to any animal. You have to seek the reality within yourself.... What are you? Where have you come from and where are you going. What is your role in the world? Why have you been created? Where does your happiness life? If you would like to know yourself, you should know that you are created by two things. One is your body and your outer appearance (zahir) which you can see with your eyes. The other is your inner forces (batin). This is the part you cannot see, but you can know with your insight. The reality of your existence is in your inwardness (batin, unconscious). Everything is a servant of your inward heart."
-Al Ghazalli

If the mind is a reflection of a non local point of observation,as some physicists suggest, that we, as sentient creations occupy a unique position between worlds, we ask; Does communication from an external agency within the dream state occur? One considers this in the light of the work of our good Dr Sidris, is this an attempt to do an end run around our tendency to be pulled by consensus reality as if it were a phenomenological gravity field? Let's yank it the other way? If so, does it require a unique physiology of biochemistry? Is there a purpose? If so, what is it? These are some of the questions I have asked myself. This post is a recounting of my own experiences and the next describes my attempts to process and integrate this phenomenon.

Provocations

There are what I term extra dimensional dreams, which combine the clarity of vivid dreams with real time sensate inputs, especially keen body awareness, refined control of vision, speech and touch. As an example of this level of refinement,you are aware of squinting when exposed to a bright light. You feel warmth and cold, wind, etc.
Waking from such a dream is extremely abrupt when compared to a run of the mill dream cycle which is gently progressive in its fading and transition to waking consciousness.You instanaeously wake in a split second, eyes wide open. There is an immediate dissociating sense akin to being stunned physically as well as having or being two places at once in a clear cognition of bi locality. There is a alarming and chilling, recognition that what you have experienced is literally impossible, which is disorientingly upsetting. Your body is extremely rigid and stiff, and is somewhat irritating to move, as if your muscles have atrophied. You feel as if a heartless trick has been played upon you as you can neither share this experience nor provide proof of it either to yourself or others that you were both here and there.
You play a game of devil's advocate with yourself and you are aware you must not lose your sense of context. For several days you experience daily life with a sense of dislocation which you bury out of necessity. You tell your wife and no one else. She is open-minded but much to your relief is a skeptical counterweight. A grounding yet indirect participant. She is used to this by now and grudgingly accepts it.


Then there is the mother of all differentiation in the classifications catalog of dreams that no amount of self serving dithering will obscure, which haunts you....there were choices, free will of one's own volition to participate or not.
You chose on several occasions not to proceed, only to be returned to be in the same place and given the same choice once again. No one forced you. This is a play of sophistication which bides it's time with patience. However, free will has its limits, you did not choose to be invited into this game in the first place.
From whence does it arise?

While rare in occurrence,you are keenly aware that you will never know when it will occur. When they do, you have some very real trepidation afterward, of falling asleep, of losing control. You read books at night to get your mind off of this potential.You have to sleep.

A Game of Chess

You always awake on a pathway, whether it is a tunnel, a road or a field or a structure. Human nature does not allow for standing in place for prolonged periods of time. You resist movement, the temptation to explore, to make what is a pathway by the decision to move forward. If you do you will participate in this game.You acknowledge to yourself this is a created situation in which lacks subtlety inasmuch you feel like a laboratory animal. An equal proportion of fear and anger is with you. You demonstrate a sense of self pity, of this cruel injustice. The response is silence. Then it dawns upon you. If you do not move forward, perhaps you are trapped here. It is what it is, no more, no less...your move. What's your decision?


Try this on for size. Pick a location and stand there for a minute. Look around you. What if what you see and where you are are absolutely foreign to you?
This is a game of metaphysical chess. Its your move.

Extra Dimensional Dream Experience As An Influence

You awake on your hands and knees upon the sidewall of a dark cylinder lit in a faint light which is some distance ahead of you. You feel gravity pulling from behind. So you logically assume by experience that you must be located in a vertical structure.
However you see the dim silhouette of someone else, also on their hands and knees, roughly fifty feet from your location. He doesn't see you. After what seems like an eternity which is afew moments, he makes a decision to stand up. He laughs "Look at this this is crazy, I can stand up!" After a subdued jig, he begins walking to the source of light. He's playing this game. You do not want to remain there so you follow and feel as though you are the subject of a cattle drive.

You follow him and find others, uncomfortable, embarrassed, and speaking among themselves. They look at you with the same pity they reserve for themselves. They have nothing to say because we are all in a significant state of disoriented paranoia mixed with inescapable awe. Deja Vue ensues in me whilst observing the scene. If you want to experience this for yourself, you can. Go to a classroom on the first day of kinder garden and observe children. That was our little group.

The question we discuss is why we are here. Theories abound. We are in a dream. We are dead. We have been abducted by aliens.Then the topic changes. Are we prisoners? The lady with the blonde hair becomes indignant. "What do you think?..of course we are...!"

We don't like this topic. Topic changes again. I miss my children. I miss my wife. Now we feel instantly relived there's someone else to talk to.

I am impatient with talk now, and so I decide to do the obvious. I congratulate myself that this idea has occurred to me. I walk toward the glass windows to look out. Everyone notices this and follows me.


What we see is a supernaturally beautiful light that seemingly has empathy and sentience that illuminates or rather permeates the most vividly lush forest landscape I have ever been privileged to look upon.
Topic change again. Oohs and ahhhs. Unbelievable. This is beautiful. We must be in heaven. That means we are dead. Silence, We gathered there at that window, quiet,in the thrall of this place, whatever and where ever it was, we were no longer in the grip of anxiety in the anticipation of being either marooned or prisoners.

Just at that moment, a woman quietly and gracefully entered our room and asked us to gather by her. She was middle aged, but had white hair pulled back that fell along her back. She was dressed in a white cowl with some sort of blue tunic over it. She had penetrating empathetic,irradiating blue eyes that I will never forget. I cannot discuss what we spoke about simply because I lack the courage to do so. In essence, we were told that we were there to be taught. We would return home. We would come back again. One day, we will have to go on a journey for five days. One guy in a rumpled business suit blurted out; "Can we tell our families?" Yes. of course.

We departed one by one, but I hesitated and went back to the window. She approached me and came very close in front of me. I was emotionally overwhelmed and compulsively asked, 'Mother, tell me something that is true.." She took her hand and drew me closer by pulling me closer by a gentle grasp of the back of my neck.She wanted me to pay attention to her words.

"There was once a young nun in training in a cloistered convent. It was a fast and no one was allowed to eat. Another young novice into the kitchen to take some food because she was hungry. The Mother Superior was told there was food missing. She called all the young novices together and demanded to know who had taken the food. I knew who did. I lied and told her it was me."

I awoke with the fierce volition of a rifle bullet.

I have no idea to this day who this woman was as to either her identity or purpose, or role. I have tried in vain thinking perhaps she is a saint to locate her in some historical biography. Not being a Catholic was a disadvantage, but then I thought why would she necessarily be Catholic?

In short, I gave up long ago, any attempt in trying to verify anything about her, to somehow prove to my own skepticism, this was something I could test. Right.

In other extra dimensional dreams I was guided through not one but several heavens each existing for the conceptual basis that the dead had created as a defining attribute toward themselves. The dead became what they loved.

On the first visit was the locus of the sense of occupation, of place, of
family, of unresolved longing which was their dream transposed upon our existence as ghosts.

On the second visit, was a locus of activity akin to but not corresponding to a enormous mall, the pursuit of art, the gathering of books, the browsing of a infinite library and museum, in endlessly conversing crowds and groups and yet, they had no sense of the strangeness of this existence.

On the third visit, I saw seriously the disturbed, the angry, the shouting, the calamity of tortured souls each followed in dialog by what appeared to be attendants
assisting their rampant confusion into an integrated effort to heal them.

What all of these extra dimensional dreams had in common, was that all these individuals regardless of their domain, as it were, was generously supported according to their own self conception in a locality, whilst each was given an opportunity regardless of their state of location,by their own efforts,to progress.
Perhaps the afterlife is a continuation of process, not an end goal wherein we sit around and sip mint julips having congradulated ourselves...on what?
These experiences began to radically transform the meanings, values and behaviors I positioned in relation toward my life.
In another series, I was presented with a neighborhood wherein there was an old park with a gravel pathway winding behind some trees. On the second visit, I followed it up to a hill and saw two gate pillars on either side. On the third, I was there again. I chose not to enter. On the fourth, I entered and walked down the other side of a hill and saw a distant village. I chose not to continue. Each time I was returned to the same locale and the same set of choices.

Processing and Integration of Impossibility

I have asked myself many times as to the value, influence and purpose of these experiences. I have processed them in the background like a subroutine of a larger view. Did I create them or were they created outside of myself and presented to me in a recognisable form? Or, is it that both are true? Or, none?


In a future post, I will share some preliminary theories I have arranged toward integrating these experiences in a positive light, rather than becoming hopelessly conflicted. My main consideration in writing this is the possibility that I am not alone in this apparrent maze.

I also successfully thwarted their continuance, at least that's what I tell myself when I am whistling past the graveyard