The Science and Art of Dreaming: Book Review

 

★★★★★ I really can’t do better than point the would-be reader to the publisher’s description at the top of the book page, because from reading and thoroughly enjoying The Science and Art of Dreaming by Mark Blagrove and Julia Lockheart, “it [really] does what it says on the tin.”

This book is a blend of rigorous documentation of scientific research and theory from dreams researcher Mark Blagrove, and more intuitive appreciation of dreams that are presented, with Mark guiding discussion with the dreamer (primarily using the eminently practical Montague Ullman dream appreciation method and free association, which we can all use at home or in groups), and the resultant and inspired artwork by Julia Lockheart (performed live on camera as each session progresses), which brings the process full-circle from the original dream imagery back to the visual; wonderful artwork that the dreamer gets to keep for further exploration by them and with friends and family.

The Imaginal Veil, by H. M. Forester

 

The first draft of The Imaginal Veil by H. M. Forester is now available for free download.

You can preview or download it at The Internet Archive

or download it at the Sher Point Publications, UK web site (just scroll down the page).

There's also an entry at Goodreads.

First draft edition, 12 February 2023, 268 pages.

Enjoy!

This Post-Enlightenment Era of Post-Trust, Post-Truth, Post-Rationality, Post-Honour, and Post-Chivalry

We are so far down the wrong rabbit hole here, people

There's something gravely amiss with, and missing from, a post-Enlightenment society that elevates rich, charismatic, unempathic and sometimes sociopathic, narcissists to positions of power in society, even though that might risk a fall into a rigid, divisive, violent and authoritarian regime. This often employs viral iconography and near-deification of a supposedly 4D-chess-playing pseudo-messianic cult figure come to save us all – or at least come to save the Real Patriots or True Believers who surround the leader and form a protective thought-bubble around the beloved leader, insulating him or her and themselves from a more objective and realistic reality. What makes matters worse is that this movement is feeding into religious narratives such as the fight between good and evil during these Christian End Times – at the very time that benevolent communion with traditional establishments such as the Church is most needed. And what makes matters far worse is that such leaders find themselves advised by people who really want to “bring it on!”: not only keyboard warriors but self-appointed and zealous Agents of Chaos, sometimes backed by adversarial foreign states. This, on top of the influence the latter or the leader's regime have on compromised public figures.

Resistance and Submission to Necessary Change

 “Once one is on this mystical path – not merely talking the talk, but actually walking the walk – self-change can become at length dire necessity, because as synchronicity becomes more and more evident in one's life, as well as presenting welcome facets it also takes on dangerous aspects, resonating with one's inner state, thoughts, and actions. Or inactions.

Finding Our Books

Etienne de L'Amour's books:

1. The Lost Treasure of Roth Nagor.*

2. Life on the Flipside (or In Two Minds).**

3. Escape from the Shadowlands.

4. In Search of Destiny.

5. The Lucian Uprising.

6. Time and Time again.

7. The Gift.

8. The Host and the Guests.

9. Whisperings of Love.

10. The Insiders: Exploring the higher realms of possibility.***

* Historical prequel.

** Prequel (You can start at book 3, if you like).

*** A response to Rafael Lefort's The Teachers of Gurdjieff.

Philip K. Dick's Lateral Worlds: A Glimpse of Track C

In “If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others”, an essay delivered as a speech at the second Festival International de la Science-Fiction de Metz, France, in September 1977, science faction author Philip K. Dick talks of his experiences in alternate realities, which resulted from the sodium pentothal (colloquially known as a “truth drug”) administered to him before dental surgery; experiences which gradually began to unfold over a period of weeks.

Dick asks “what if there exists a plurality of universes arranged along a sort of lateral axis, which is to say at right angles to the flow of linear time?” That is to say, in branches of alternative history that are imminent, penetrating our own, yet not discernible, nor experienced, by all, since most are largely confined to the everyday consensus reality of the masses. That is, the predominant worldview which is generally agreed to be reality, based on a consensus view, but not the only possible reality, and quite probably a rather lowly conception of reality, due to the low levels or crudity of consciousness of we beleaguered citizens of dear Mother Earth.

Knowledge of the End Creates the Means

A Framework for New Knowledge 

“The desire for an 'awakening', often used as a technical term, may or may not be accompanied by the information and experience essential to precede this stage. The Teaching, for its part, is carried out — and is able to cross ideological boundaries — because of a knowledge of the objective: an objective which is at worst postulated as an assumption that it exists; at best glimpsed: and thenceforward is the subject of repeated attempts to devise a means to recover this glimpse.

“The working hypothesis or traditional framework provides the structure by which the would-be illuminate attempts to approach this goal. In the case of the School, knowledge alone provides the basis upon which the structure can be devised.

“‘Once you know the end, you can devise the means.’ The end does not justify the means - it provides it. The means, employed in this sense, is the structure referred to in some literature as ‘The Work’.”

~ Idries Shah, Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way.

[Book at Goodreads]

Image: Cycle of mystical development / Esowteric /

Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Click to enlarge image.

Freedom, Resistance and Change: Ursula K. Le Guin

“I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality ...”

“... Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”

~ Ursula K. Le Guin, Speech at the 2014 National Book Awards.

Image: Ursula Le Guin / Marian Wood Kolisch / Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0.

The Scent of Reality and other short stories, by H. M. Forester

 “A number of people find themselves at a strange and unexpected meeting in the back room of an English pub with an elderly lady, Gladys Merrywether, and tell their stories about why they are there and what led them there.

“The shrewd lady opens their eyes to all manner of possibilities – some of which are welcome, and some decidedly not.”

The Matter with Things: Book Review

★★★★★ I've just finished reading the first two parts of The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, by Dr Iain McGilchrist, and begun part 3 in the second volume. This book follows on from his earlier epic work, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.

Rather than attempt to summarise the voluminous, varied and rich content of the book (and fall far short of doing it justice), let me simply say that this work does not simply talk about science, reason, intuition and imagination (among so many others), but is masterfully crafted by an author who has much life experience and insight to offer and clearly embodies the best of such paths and qualities.

“If we want others to understand the beauty of a landscape with which they may be unfamiliar, an argument is pointless: instead we must take them there and explore it with them, walking on the hills and mountains, pausing as new vantage points continually open around us, allowing our companions to experience it for themselves.

“Such, at any rate, is my intention in this book.” ...

“What I hope for my readers is that, if they are willing to accompany me on this adventure, they will never see the world the same way again; that they will have a Gestalt shift ...” 

God 4.0: Book Review

★★★★★ Psychologist Robert Ornstein and Sally M. Ornstein published God 4.0: On the Nature of Higher Consciousness and the Experience Called “God” on 15 October 2021 and you can find it worldwide in affordable paperback, ebook, and audio editions, and at Goodreads.

According to the publisher's blurb, the work is “A stunning unification of science and tradition for a revolutionary new concept of spirituality to address the challenges of the modern world.” It follows on from Robert Ornstein's pioneering research laid out in The Psychology of Consciousness, and The Evolution of Consciousness, among many other works, and draws on modern research "from neuropsychology and religion, to evolutionary psychology, anthropology, archaeology, and genetics".

Followers of the Sufi thinker and author Idries Shah, and fans of Robert Ornstein, Sally Ornstein and the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge (ISHK) will lap this book up, as will those with an interest in spirituality, those hesitant to dip their toes into spiritual waters, and like-minded heretics (ie "free thinkers").

God 4.0 is quite sharply focussed, whereas Iain McGilchrist's magna opera The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, and The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, which explore similar and other topics, are panoramic in scope.

The critical path here is the gap between the theory (“know what”) and praxis (“know how”) of nurturing and developing higher consciousness. Things like immersion in Sufi teaching stories and in poetry (among other arts, crafts, and creative and imaginative endeavours) that stimulate the right hemisphere of the brain (and promote holistic experience – though with the left brain a faithful servant of the right) can hopefully bridge that gap and provide a new pathway that is available to the many, rather than how it has been in the past only open to a select or elite few largely under the direct physical guidance of teachers.

In this age of ever-increasing escalations in our societal and global woes and crises, there is a desperate need for change before it's too late to act – change that must come first and foremost from within each of us. And this is where this work can make a useful and timely contribution.

On this basis, I unhesitatingly give the book 5 stars.

The Winds of Change in the Twilit Hours: A Poem

The winds of change
are blowing a gale,
rattling my old sash window frame,
and a draft is sneaking past
the sleepy door snake
guarding my humble parlour.  

A wayward leaf,
its short life spent,
flutters against the window pane —
a timely reminder that
like most things in this life,
this sojourn, too, shall pass.

.