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[5:55:54 PM] *** Group call *** [6:42:23 PM] Thuan Thi Do:
CHAPTER 10 DREAMS
Consciousness and activity in the astral body are one thing: the memory in the brain of that astral consciousness and activity are a totally different matter. The existence or the absence of physical memory in no way affects the consciousness on the astral plane, nor the ability to function in the astral plane with perfect ease and freedom. It is, in fact,not only possible, but also by no means uncommon, for a man to function freely and usefully in his astral body during the sleep of the physical body, and yet to return to the physical body without the slightest memory of the astral work upon which he has been engaged.
The break in consciousness between the astral and the physical life is due either to un-development of the astral body, or to the want of an adequate etheric bridge between the astral and the dense physical matter of the bodies.
This bridge consists of the closely-woven web of atomic matter, through which the vibrations have to pass, and which causes a moment of unconsciousness, like a veil, between sleeping and waking.
The only way in which memory of the astral life can be brought through into the physical brain is by sufficient development of the astral body and by an awakening of the etheric Chakrams, one function of which is to bring forces from the astral to the etheric. In addition, there must be active functioning of the pituitary body, which focuses the astral vibrations.
Sometimes, on awakening, there is a feeling that something has been experienced of which no memory remains. The feeling indicates that there has been [Page 94] astral consciousness, though the brain is insufficiently receptive to receive the record. At other times the man in his astral body may succeed in making a momentary impression on the etheric double and the dense body, resulting in a vivid memory of the astral life. This is sometimes done deliberately when something occurs which the man feels that he ought to remember on the physical plane. Such a memory usually vanishes quickly and cannot be recovered: efforts to recover the memory, by setting up strong vibrations in the physical brain, still further overpower the more delicate astral vibrations, and consequently render success even more impossible.
There are some events, too, which make such a vivid impression upon the astral body that they become impressed upon the physical brain by a kind of repercussion (see page 242).
In other cases, a man may succeed in impressing new knowledge on the physical brain, without being able to convey also the memory of where or how that knowledge was gained. Instances of this, common to most people, occur where solutions of problems, previously insoluble, suddenly arise in the consciousness, or where light is suddenly thrown on to questions previously obscure. Such cases may be taken to indicate that progress is being made with the organisation and functioning of the astral body, although the physical body is still only partially receptive. In cases where the physical brain does respond, there are vivid, reasonable and coherent dreams, such as occur to many people from time to time.
Few people, when in the astral body, care whether the physical brain remembers or not, and nine out of ten much dislike returning to the body. In coming back to the physical body from the astral world there is a feeling of great constraint, as though one were being enveloped in a thick, heavy cloak. The joy of life on the astral plane is so great that physical life in comparison with it seems no life at all. Many regard the daily return to the physical body as men [Page 95] often do their daily journey to the office. They do not positively dislike it, but they would not do it unless they were compelled.
Eventually, in the case of highly developed and advanced persons, the etheric bridge between the astral and the physical worlds is constructed, and then there is perfect continuity of consciousness between the astral and the physical lives. For such people life ceases to be composed of days of remembrance and nights of oblivion, and becomes instead, a continuous whole, year after year, of unbroken consciousness.
Occasionally, a man who has normally no memory of his astral life, may unintentionally, through an accident, or illness, or intentionally by certain definite practices, bridge over the gap between astral and physical consciousness, so that from that time onwards his astral consciousness will be continuous, and his memory of his sleep life therefore be perfect. But, of course, before this could take place, he must already have developed full consciousness in the astral body. It is merely the rending of the veil between the astral and physical that is sudden, not the development of the astral body.
The dream life may be considerably modified as a direct result of mental growth. Every impulse sent by the mind to the physical brain has to pass through the astral body, and, as astral matter is far more responsive to thought-vibrations than is physical matter, it follows that the effects produced on the astral body are correspondingly greater. Thus, when a man has acquired mental control, i.e., has learned to dominate the brain, to concentrate, and to think as and when he likes, a corresponding change will take place in his astral life; and, if he brings the memory of that life through into the physical brain, his dreams will become vivid, well-sustained, rational, even instructive.
In general, the more the physical brain is trained to answer to the vibrations of the mental body, the more is the bridging of the gulf between waking and sleeping [Page 96] consciousness facilitated. The brain should become more and more the obedient instrument of the man, acting under impulses from his will. The dreaming of ordinary events does not interfere with astral work, because the dreaming takes place in the physical brain, while the real man is away attending to other matters. It does not really matter what the physical brain does, so long as it keeps itself free from undesirable thoughts.
[6:42:27 PM] Thuan Thi Do:
Once a dream is started, its course cannot usually be changed: but the dream-life can be controlled indirectly to a considerable extent. It is especially important that the last thought on sinking to sleep should be a noble and elevating one, as this strikes the keynote which largely determines the nature of the dreams which follow. An evil or impure thought attracts evil and impure influences and creatures, which react on the mind and astral body and tend to awaken low and earthly desires.
On the other hand, if a man falls asleep with his thoughts fixed on high and holy things, he will automatically draw round him elementals created by similar efforts of others, and consequently his dreams will be lofty and pure.
As we are dealing in this book mainly with the astral body, and phenomena closely associated with it, it is not necessary to attempt to deal exhaustively with the somewhat large subject of dream consciousness. Nevertheless, in order to show the proper setting of the part which the astral body plays in the dream life, it will be useful to give a very brief outline of the main factors operative in producing dreams.For a detailed study of the whole matter the student is referred to that excellent textbook, Dreams by C.W.Leadbeater , from which the following facts are extracted. The factors concerned in the production of dreams are: -
1- The lower physical brain, with its infantile semi-consciousness, and its habit of expressing every stimulus in pictorial form. [Page 97]
2- The etheric part of the brain, through which sweeps a ceaseless procession of disconnected pictures.
3- The astral body, palpitating with the wild surgings of desire and emotion.
4- The ego (in the causal body) who may be in any state of consciousness, from almost complete insensibility to perfect command of his faculties.
When a man goes to sleep, his ego withdraws further within himself, and leaves his various bodies more free than usual to go their own way. These separate bodies: (1) are much more susceptible of impressions from without than at other times; and (2) have a very rudimentary consciousness of their own. Consequently there is ample reason for the production of dreams, as well as for confused recollections in the physical brain of the experiences of the other bodies during sleep. Such confused dreams may thus be due to: (1) a series of disconnected pictures and impossible transformations produced by the senseless automatic action of the lower physical brain; (2) a stream of casual thought which has been pouring through the etheric part of the brain; (3) the ever-restless tide of earthly desire, playing through the astral body and probably stimulated by astral influences; (4) an imperfect attempt at dramatisation by an undeveloped ego; (5) a mingling of several or all of these influences.
[6:45:52 PM] Thuan Thi Do: We will briefly describe the principal elements in each of these kinds of dreams.
1- Physical Brain Dreams. - When in sleep the ego, for the time, resigns control of the brain, the physical body still has a certain dim consciousness of its own: and in addition there is also the aggregate consciousness of the individual cells of the physical body. The grasp of the physical consciousness over the brain is far feebler than that of the ego over the brain, and consequently purely physical charges are capable of affecting the brain to a very much greater extent. Examples of such physical changes are: irregularity in the circulation of the blood, indigestion, heat and cold, etc..[Page 98]
The dim physical consciousness possesses certain peculiarities: (1) it is to a great extent automatic; (2) it seems unable to grasp an idea except in the form in which it is itself an actor: consequently all stimuli, whether from within or from without, are immediately translated into perceptual images; (3) it is incapable of grasping abstract ideas or memories, as such, but at once transforms them into imaginary percepts: (4) [6:46:07 PM] Thuan Thi Do: 58
every local direction of thought becomes for it an actual spatial transportation, i.e., a passing thought of China would transport the consciousness instantly in imagination to China; (5) it has no power of judging the sequence, value or objective truth of the pictures that appear before it; it takes them all just as it seems them, and never feels surprised at anything which may happen, however incongruous or absurd; (devil) it is subject to the principle of association of ideas, and consequently images, unconnected except by the fact that they represent events which happened near to one another in time, are apt to be thrown together in inextricable confusion; (7) it is singularly sensitive to the slightest external influences, such as sounds or touches, and (music) it magnifies and distorts them to an almost incredible degree. The physical brain thus is capable of creating sufficient confusion and exaggeration to account for many, but by no means all, dream phenomena. 2. Etheric Brain Dreams. - The etheric brain is even more sensitive during the sleep of the body than it is during ordinary waking consciousness to influences from outside. Whilst the mind is actively engaged, the brain thereby being fully employed, it is practically impervious to the continual impingement of thought from without. But the moment the brain is left idle, the stream of inconsequent chaos begins to pour through it. In the vast majority of people, the thoughts which flow through their brains are in reality not their own thoughts at all, but fragments cast off by other people. Consequently, in sleep life especially, any passing thought which finds something [Page 99] congruous to itself in the brain of a sleeper, is seized upon by that brain and [6:50:25 PM] Thuan Thi Do: appropriated, thus starting a whole train of ideas: eventually these fade away and the disconnected, purposeless stream begins flowing through the brain again. A point to notice is that, since in the present state of the world's evolution there are likely to be more evil thoughts than good ones floating around, a man with an uncontrolled brain is open to all sorts of temptation which mind and brain control might have spared him.
Even when these thought-currents are shut out, by the deliberate effort of another person, from the etheric brain of a sleeper, that brain does not remain completely passive, but begins slowly and dreamily to evolve pictures for itself from its store of past memories.
3. Astral Dreams -These are simply recollection in the physical brain of the life and activities of the astral body during the sleep of the physical body, to which reference has already been made in the preceding pages. In the case of a fairly well-developed person, the astral body can travel without discomfort to considerable distances from its physical body: can bring more or less definite impressions of places which it may have visited, or of people whom it may have met. In every case the astral body, as already said, is ever intensely impressionable by any thought or suggestion involving desire or emotion, though the nature of the desires which most readily awaken a response in it will, of course, depend on the development of the person and the purity or otherwise of his astral body.
The astral body is at all times susceptible to the influences of passing thoughtcurrents, and, when the mind is not actively controlling it, it is perpetually receiving these stimuli from without, and eagerly responding to them. During sleep it is even more readily influenced. Consequently, a man who has, for example, entirely destroyed a physical desire, which he may previously have possessed for alcohol, so that in [Page 100] waking life he may feel even a definite repulsion for it, may yet [7:03:09 PM] Thuan Thi Do: frequently dream that he is drinking, and in that dream experience the pleasure of its influence. During the day, the desire of the astral body would be under the control of the will, but when the astral body was liberated in sleep, it escaped to some extent from the domination of the ego, and, responding probably to outside astral influence, its old habit reasserted itself. This class of dream is probably common to many who are making definite attempts to bring their desire-nature under the control of the will. It may also happen that a man may have been a drunkard in a past life and still possesses in his astral body some matter drawn thereinto by the vibrations caused in the permanent atom by the drunkenness. Although this matter is not vivified in this life, yet in dreams, the control of the ego being weak, the matter may respond to drink-vibrations from without and the man dreams that he drinks. Such dreams, once understood, need not cause distress: nevertheless they should be regarded as a warning that there is still present the possibility of the drink-craving being reawakened. Ego Dreams - Much as the nature of the astral body changes as it develops, still greater is the change of the ego, or real man, that inhabits it. Where the astral body is nothing but a floating wreath of mist, the ego is also almost as much asleep as his physical body, being blind to the influences of his own higher plane: and even if some idea belonging to it should manage to reach him, since he has little or no control over his lower bodies, he will be unable to impress the experience on the physical brain. Sleepers may be at any stage from that of complete oblivion up to that of full astral consciousness. And it must be recollected, as already said, that even though there may be many important experiences on the higher planes, the ego may nevertheless be unable to impress them upon the brain, so that there is either no physical memory at all, or only a most confused memory. [Page 101]
The principal characteristics of the consciousness and experiences of the ego, whether or not they be remembered in the brain, are as follows: -
(1) The ego's measure of time and space are so entirely different from that which he uses in waking life that it is almost as though neither time nor space existed for him. Many instances are known where in a few moments of time, as we measure it, the ego may have experiences which appear to last for many years, event after event happening in full and circumstantial detail.
(2) The ego possesses the faculty, or the habit, of instantaneous dramatisation. Thus a physical sound or a touch may reach the ego, not through the usual nerve mechanism, but directly, a fraction of a second before even it reaches the physical brain. That fraction of a second is sufficient for the ego to construct a kind of drama or series of scenes leading up to and culminating in the event which awakens the physical body. The brain confuses the subjective dream and the objective event, and therefore imagines itself to have actually lived through the events of the dream. This habit, however, seems to be peculiar to the ego which, so far as spirituality is concerned, is still comparatively undeveloped. As the ego develops spiritually, he rises beyond these graceful sports of his childhood. The man who has attained continuous consciousness is so fully occupied with higher plane work that he devotes no energy to this dramatisation, and consequently this class of dream ceases for him. (3) The ego possesses also to some extent the faculty of prevision, being sometimes able to see in advance events which are going to happen, or rather which may happen unless steps are taken to prevent them, and to impress the same on the physical brain. Many instances are recorded of such prophetic or warning dreams. In some cases the warning may be heeded, the necessary steps taken, and the
foreseen result either modified or entirely avoided. [Page 102]
[7:09:01 PM] *** Thuan Thi Do added hanhhoa123456 ***
[7:26:20 PM] *** Call ended, duration 1:30:21 ***
[7:26:25 PM] *** Group call ***
[7:30:19 PM] Thuan Thi Do: http://blavatskyarchives.com/inner/innerno7.htm
Meeting No. VII: December 17, 1890
Present: I.C.-O., E.K., W.R.O., C.F.W., E.T.S., A.L.C., G.R.S.M..
H.A.W.C., L.M.C., C.W., A.B.
Auric Fluid:
The Auric Fluid is a combination of the Life and Will principles, the Life the Will being one and the same in Kosmos. It emanates from the eyes and hands when directed by the will of the operator.
Auric Light:
The Auric Light surrounds all bodies; it is the “aura” emanating from the whether they be animal, vegetable, or mineral. It is the light e.g. seen round magnets.
The three Logoi:
Atma-Buddhi-Manas in man correspond to the three Logoi in Kosmos. They not only correspond, but each is the radiation from Kosmos to Micro-Kosmos. The third Logos, Mahat, becomes Manas in man, Manas being only Mahat individualized, as the sun-rays are individualized in bodies that absorb them. The sun-rays give life, they fertilize what is already there, and the individual is formed Mahat, so to say, fertilizes, and manas is the result.
Buddhi-Manas is the Ksetrajña.
There are seven planes of Mahat, as of all else.
Here H.P.B. drew two diagrams, illustrating different ways of representing the human principles. In the first:- the two lower are disregarded, they go out, disintegrate, are of no account. Remain five, under the radiation of Atman.
In the second:-The lower quarternary is regarded as mere matter, objective illusion; and there remain Manas and the A.E., the higher principles being reflected in the A.E.
In all these systems, remember the main principle, the descent and re-ascent of the Spirit, in man as in Kosmos. The Spirit is drawn downwards as by spiritual gravitation.
Seeking further for the cause of this, the students were checked, H.P.B. giving only a suggestion on the three Logoi:
1. Potentiality of mind (Absolute Thought).
2. Thought in germ.
3. Ideation in activity.
Variation:
Protective variation, e.g. identity of colouring of insect and of that on which it feeds, was explained to be the work of Nature-elementals.
Form:
Form was on different planes, and the forms of one plane might be formless to dwellers on another. The Kosmocratores build on planes in the Divine Mind, visible to them, though not to us. The principle of limitation – principium individuationis - is Form; this principle is Divine Law manifested in Kosmic matter, which in its essence is limitless. The A.E. is the limit of man, as Hyranyagarbha of the Kosmos.
Kriyäsakti
The first step towards the accomplishment of Kriyäsakti is the use of the Imagination. To “imagine” a thing is to firmly create a model of what you desire, perfect in all its details. The will is then brought into action, and the form is thereby transferred to the objective world. This is creation by Kriyäsakti
[7:53:11 PM] Thuan Thi Do: http://thongthienhoc.net/ [8:47:57 PM] Thuan Thi Do: Akasa (Sanskrit) Ākāśa [from ā + the verbal root kāś to be visible, appear, shine, be brilliant] The shining; ether, cosmic space, the fifth cosmic element. The subtle, supersensuous spiritual essence which pervades all space. It is not the ether of science, but the aether of the ancients, such as the Stoics, which is to ether what spirit is to matter. In the Brahmanical scriptures, akasa is used for what the Northern Buddhists call svabhavat, more mystically adi-buddhi (primeval buddhi); it is also mulaprakriti, cosmic spirit-substance, the reservoir of being and of beings. Genesis refers to it as the waters of the deep. It is universal substantial space, and mystically in its highest elements is alaya. As universal space, it is also known as Aditi, in which lies inherent the eternal and continuously active ideation of the universe producing its ever-changing aspects on the planes of matter and objectivity; and from this ideation radiates the First Logos. This is why the Puranas state that akasa has but one attribute, namely sound, for sound is but the translated symbol of logos (speech) in its mystic sense. Akasa as primordial spatial substance is thus the upadhi (vehicle) of divine thought. Further, it is the playground of all the intelligent and semi-intelligent forces in nature, the fountainhead of all terrestrial life, and the abode of the gods. Akasa is the noumenon and spiritual substratum of differentiated prakriti, otherwise the seven or ten prakritis, the root or roots of all in the universe. These prakritis are not merely in akasa, but are the manifestations of akasa in its various grades or degrees of evolutionary development. All the ancient nations mythologically deified akasa in one or another of its aspects and powers (cf IU 1:125 for a descriptive listing of the many names anciently used for akasa). It is the indispensable agent in all religious or profane magic: occult electricity, the universal solvent, in another aspect kundalini. “Akasa is the mysterious fluid termed by scholastic science, ‘the all-pervading ether’; it enters into all the magical operations of nature, and produces mesmeric, magnetic, and spiritual phenomena. As, in Syria, Palestine, and India, meant the sky, life, and the sun at the same time; the sun being considered by the ancient sages as the great magnetic well of our universe” (IU 1:140n). Sometimes the astral light is used as a convenient but inaccurate phrase for akasa. In clarifying the difference between these Blavatsky says: “The Astral Light is that which mirrors the three higher planes of consciousness, and is above the lower, or terrestrial plane; therefore it does not extend beyond the fourth plane, where, one may say, the Akasa begins. “There is one great difference between the Astral Light and the Akasa which must be remembered. The latter is eternal, the former is periodic. The Astral Light changes not only with the Mahamanvantaras but also with every sub-period and planetary cycle or Round. . . . “The Akasa is the eternal divine consciousness which cannot differentiate, have qualities, or act; action belongs to that which is reflected or mirrored from it. The unconditioned and infinite can have no relation with the finite and conditioned. . . . We may compare the Akasa and the Astral Light . . . to the germ in the acorn. The latter, besides containing in itself the astral form of the future oak, conceals the germ from which grows a tree containing millions of forms. These forms are contained in the acorn potentially, yet the development of each particular acorn depends upon extraneous circumstances, physical forces, etc.” (TBL 75-6; also IU 1:197). The astral light is the tablet of memory of earth and of its child the animal-man; while akasa is the tablet of memory of the hierarchy of the planetary spirits controlling our chain of globes, and likewise of their child, each spiritual ego. The astral light is simply the dregs or lowers vehicles of akasa. Gautama Buddha held only two things as eternal: akasa and nirvana. In the Chandogya Upanishad (7:12:1-2) akasa (ether, space) is equated with Brahman. [9:41:29 PM] TrúcLâm: Tôi đang nghe. [9:41:37 PM] TrúcLâm: Rất thú vị. [9:44:50 PM] Thuan Thi Do: ok anh TL [10:34:14 PM] *** Call ended, duration 3:07:48 ***