More on Dreams

My dreams display a total absence of connective fulfilment.

When was the last time you were mesmerized by music in a dream? Ever??

My connective fulfilment occurs exclusively in the waking state, drug-enhanced or otherwise. I would say that any connective profundity appreciated by the Cosmic Deity which is sourced in our human activity occurs only in our waking life.

My use of the Oracle of Love also indicates that it only ever refers to my waking reality. Never have I had an oracular conversation that pertained to a dream, no matter how traumatic or revelatory a dream was.

I am not discounting the revelatory value of dreams, only pointing out that their revelations will likely be architective. Yes, I often wake up in the morning and have connective insights, but that is because my connective sentience has been refreshed by sleep. The connective insights did not originate in the sleeping state. Yes, I wake in the middle of the night having had an insight in a dream, but that insight is invariably architective.

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It does not pay to take a psychedelic trip when one is tired, for the architective dominion is more powerful when tired, and likely to give our Planetary Deity the upper hand, resulting in a challenging trip.

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We are obviously not vigilant when asleep. Are we not vigilant in our dreams too? I don't mean fearful, for there is much evidence of fear in our dreams. Dr Iain McGilchrist attributes a state of vigilance to the right brain hemisphere which corresponds largely with connectivity, which I reckon is largely dormant when we sleep, so it is not likely present in our dreams.

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Sometimes in the dream stories I am a character in the story. Other times I'm a passive witness, as if watching a movie.

As either a character or a witness, I am not able to bring my understanding of connectivity to bear in my dreams because in that state I have no (or very little) comprehension of connectivity.

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When dreaming I still have a body-identified subjective experience, and the experience is overwhelmingly architective, but I do not maintain the same body identity that I have when I am awake.

As I am waking from sleep I often wonder who I will find myself to be when I wake up; as if the Mike Abramowitz identity that is writing these words is some ongoing waking narrative that any dreamer can wake into.

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By meditating, I calm frenetic waking activity (of both modes) with the aim of letting the subtlety of of the Cosmic Deity become detectable, but sometimes I fall asleep rather than meditate - which allows our Planetary Deity to step in instead.

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Connectivity is responsible for our motivation to move, and sleep recharges our connective metabolism. Our architective metabolism is based on structural stability rather than energetic movement and so has no need to rest.

It's as if our connective metabolism is battery powered, running down when we get tired and needing recharging; while our dreams, being predominantly architective, run happily on low charge.

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I'm playing with the idea that, in the context of human communication, architectivity tends to be expressed in images, symbols and stories while connectivity tends to be expressed in feeling sensations.

Does this mean there is a paucity of sensation in our dreams?

Do we feel pleasure or pain in our dreams as if physically, or only as some kind of mental gratification or anguish?

Could it be that that our Planetary Deity thinks in images? Which is why our dreams are so image rich?

When I sleep, I lose the feelings and go into the visions. (And when I meditate I lose the visions and go into the feelings.)

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Our waking senses are disabled when asleep because our connective sentience becomes dormant. But I continue to have a sense of 'I' in my dreams, so according to the Physical Spirituality definitions I am conscious, which means I am sentient of my sentience in my dreams, and if architectivity is so dominant in our dreams that consciousness is architective.

But of what am I architectively conscious? Certainly not of my external reality. Is it then a different reality I am perceptive of in my dreams? One peopled with my personal waking perceptions? Not likely. It must be a reality that my brain is imagining. It's as if our imagination kicks in as we lose our waking perceptions, providing an imagined reality in which our consciousness can continue, at least architectively.

I have been suggesting that the dream reality somehow leaves room for our Planetary Deity to enter and direct the show, and even provide content; that it's not only one's own brain that is doing the imagining. Could this apply to imagination in general? That our Planetary Deity contributes to our waking imagination as well? Our imagination kicks in whenever we close our eyes for any length of time, asleep or awake.

I'd also like to propose the idea of somagination - a connective equivalent of imagination - by which feelings can come into our consciousness in the way that imagined images come into our consciousness; and that the Cosmic Deity (or its visages) can contribute to our somagination - most likely when we are awake - as a feeling.

Could these non-personal contributions to our imagination and somagination be the artist's muse? the sources of our intuitions? I think these faculties of imagination and somagination are special in a way that we have not yet begun to conceive.

I experience a good example of somagination when I am meditating - or at least when I regard my meditation as successful. When meditating I specifically focus on my feelings (rather than any thoughts or images), and these can be quite mundane - breathing and heartbeat for example. But after some time (if successful) subtle variations in these feelings appear, and the variations become the center of my attention. This process can expand into an ongoing music of feeling that I am not consciously directing (other than by holding my attention to it) and it is through such involuntarily music of feeling that I experience somagination.

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Architectivity cannot relate across a gap. It can bind and close a gap, but if it cannot bind, the gap remains and all its tools are in vain. As long as it is able to reconfigure itself, a processional narrative can continue but when it comes to crossing across a gap it is lost.

I think this could explain the progress of dreams: while a processional narrative continues the dream makes sense, but as soon as it comes to a gap that must be crossed connectively the dream takes a random turn and all sense is lost.

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While asleep and dreaming I wrote something down so that I would remember it when I woke up. But of course, the piece of paper that I wrote on doesn't exist so ......

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Our human capacity for consciousness is dependent on the functional architective processes in our brains, so when we die, it ends.

However, while alive we have the capacity to constellate our connective consciousness with that of the Cosmic Deity, which, if we manage to achieve this at death, allows our connective consciousness to continue without architective capacities.

Our capacity for dreaming, on the other hand, being so overwhelmingly architective, dies with us.

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Being so strongly architective, our dreams do not have an infinite reach, neither in extent nor in resolution, not in space, not in time.

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When asleep and so when dreaming we have no access to infinity. This makes me think that unless I am in great pain I do not want to die asleep. Returning to cosmic integration could be a joyous occasion - providing one has recourse to connectivity.

Even if one's integration at death is not particularly welcome from the Cosmic Deity's point of view, it is fabulously meaningful from our human point of view. For us, death - reintegration with the cosmos - is a hugely significant connective event, not to be done when we are connectively incapacitated. It is a once in a lifetime event, not to be missed.

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Hamlet's “To die, to sleep, perchance to dream.....” is wrong on so many counts. My encounter with it at school falsely coloured my perception of death for many years. Death is a freedom from dreams - which perhaps explains why many PTSD sufferers commit suicide.

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Every night, when I go to sleep, I effectively sacrifice myself to our Planetary Deity, knowing that my body needs sleep and that sleep restores my connective energies, but I look forward to my dreams with the same enthusiasm that Ford Prefect (in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy") looked forward to listening to Vogon poetry.

"Resistance is useless!"