ben's interweb

...this is a first, quick note to the few email addresses I have.

I have just finished reading: The Oracle of Night by Sidarta Ribeira

It's a book about dreaming - the history, archeology, science and future of dreaming - with quite an interest in psychedelics; and in harnessing the power of dreams (which he says, and I agreee, has been cut out of modern society compared to its importance in the past).
A great book, I believe - written by a Brazilian and translated into English... he was on BBC R4 Start the Week not long ago...
He also, btw, uses the term 'meme' in its academic meaning (partly meaning that it is something that passes stuff on, like a gene)...and I wonder if we can't extract some memes from what Ben has left us...

Sidarta says (as I recall - the book is at home and I am looking after Emily tonight) Have a notebook and pencil next to the bed, and think about remembering your dreams before you go to sleep - that is where he suggests we all start...


Que haya luz! (Hope I got that right, Yael: I wanted 'Let there be light')

Karenza ha yeghes da!

Andrew x

Hello Andrew,

...
I am sending this email in response to your email regarding dreams and the book you recently finished, before i read your email i had made some notes of recent dreams, the most prevelant was this morning..

I was at a beach with someone else who i cannot remember and a Native American. Exploring the sands we found a little cove/cave and went inside, only to realise that the big Indian was to get stuck in this place, there was a small hole in the roof of the cave but it wasn't big enough to climb out of, i ran out to the beach and found a big granite rock we could use to smash the slate and widen the hole to allow the Indian to climb out but the tide was coming in fast.

Im not sure why i could run in and out of the cave/cove and the Indian could not, the only reason being was that the Indian was really big/tall.
I was pretty panicked at the situation that lay a foot and was searching for a way we could save him, however, the Indian spoke and said he would have to stay in the cove and accept his fate. I found this response difficult and carried on thinking of ways i could allow him to escape. For him staying stuck here, would mean he would drown as the tide and water would eventually fill in the area. But he was adamant to stay there and accept this position.

The water was rushing in and pushing sand with it so the escape was becoming smaller, there was water at our feet and eventually i had to escape before it was too late for me also.

I was disheartened at the outcome and waited in a car i think until the next day, returning to the cave i found no remains.

There was some other bits and bobs regarding some clothes that were left. I started to awake at this point...


[My reply:]

That's a lovely dream - you are very lucky to be able to remember it all so well and in such detail.  I used to be able to recall the last parts of my dreams, but over the past few years I haven't - it is not that I don't remember anything...more, perhaps, that I tend not to wake straight up, but lie in a semi comatose state (usually with Radio 4 on quietly) dipping in and out of sleep...so the details of the dreams fade...

...when I was a teenager, I was very taken with Jungian therapy, particularly using dreams.  A book called Man's Search for Himself, by Rollo May (which I have just discovered was published the year I was born - 1953) was very influencial - it had a particular approach to dreams (patients' dreams form a big part of the book) which involved working things through from the immediate life and concerns of the dreamers.  May insists (as I remember it) that every character in your dream is an expression of a part of you: if you dream about your mother, that character in your dream is not directed by your actual mother, but is rather your projection of your mother; the part of you, perhaps, that follows or is influenced by your experience of her.  So, May would say that the very tall Indian represents a part of you - a part of your personality - rather than an actual person (although, I suppose, it could also relate to an aspect of someone else that your dream is representing as a very tall (and trapped!) Indian.

There is something that I do remember about most of my dreams: I am nearly always with someone - a woman - in the things that are happening...but I never quite identify who that woman is: it is not identifiable as any of the women in my past.  I do wonder if this is influenced by another of Jung's ideas: the animus and the anima: I understand this to refer to the way that all of us have a 'female' persona, and a 'male' persona - the anima and the animus. 

(slight detour, here: Traditional romantic love (in this story of the world) comes from a person searching for a partner who IS their anima (in a man's case, or their animus in a woman's case).  So, people recognise aspects of their ideal partner (their opposite sex persona) in someone, a potential partner, and then, when they 'fall in love' with them, they expect that person to fulfill all of the other aspects of their own animus/a.  In fact, what they do (again, in this story) is to not look at the partner as they are, but see them as a more (or more likely, less) good approximation to their ideal - and are therefore disappointed (or worse) when the partner doesn't live up to their expectations.

I tried to apply this idea in a potential relationship I had - I tried to separate my anima, my projected perfect woman, from how I saw this particular woman.  The relationship with the woman didn't materialise (hopefully for other reasons..!) but what I then did was try to develop a relationship with my own anima.  I picked a picture of a woman I found particularly attractive - someone I would never meet - and I wrote emails to her (i.e. me) which I then tried to answer as her (i.e. me!).  It was an interesting experience, because it meant that I wrote down some really intimate things that I would never have discussed with anyone else...because I was writing to myself (even if it felt like I was writing to the attractive blonde I had chosen to represent my ideal woman!).

Explaining it all sounds rather tortuous, but I suppose I am telling you all this because I think that dreams, and how they allow us to look inward, to address issues, is really powerful and useful - the Brazilian guy who wrote the Oracle book clearly rates the potential of dreams.  Ben would have  been interested in his descriptions of the use of psychedelic substances under traditional shamanic control, as a way of accessing the power of dreams through psychedelically induced dream states.  I was more interested in his advice of how to capture our own dreams - and possibly also learn how to do lucid dreams...

Goodness, I have gone on a bit!  I don't know how much of this stuff I would want to share on BenWeb [Ed: most of it!]...but it is quite nice to be able to talk in a way like I might have with Ben.

...

Do keep in touch.

Andrew xxx