Session 720

Unknown Reality, Session 720

Now, if you take a physical camera with you today and snap pictures as you go about your chores, walk, or talk with friends, then you will have preserved scenes from the day’s activities.

Your film, however, will only take pictures today, of today.  No yesterday or tomorrow will suddenly appear in the snapshots of the present.  The photographer in the dream world, though, will find an entirely different situation, for there consciousness can capture scenes from entirely different times as easily as the waking photographer can take pictures of different places.  Unless you realize this, some of your “dream albums” will make no sense to you.

In waking life, you experience certain events as real, and generally these are the only ones that can be captured by an ordinary photographer.  The dream world, however, presents a much larger category of events.  Many events may later appear as physical ones, while others just as valid will not.  The dream camera, therefore, will capture probable events also.

When you awaken with a dream photograph in mind, it may appear meaningless because it does not seem to correlate with the official order of activities you recognize.  You may make one particular decision in physical and waking consciousness, and that decision may bring forth certain events.  Using your dream camera, you can with practice discover the history of your own psyche, and find the many probable decisions experienced in dreams.  These served as a basis from which you made your physical decision.  There is some finesse required as you learn to interpret the individual pictures within your dream album.  This should be easy to grasp, for if you tried to understand physical life having only a group of snapshots taken at different places and in different times, then it would be rather difficult to form a clear idea of the nature of the physical world.

When you take a physical photograph you have to know how your camera works.  You must learn how to focus, how to emphasize those particular qualities you want to record, and how to cut out distracting influences.  You know the difference between shadows, for example, and solid objects.  Sometimes shadows themselves make fascinating photographic studies.  You might utilize them in the background, but as a photographer you would not confuse the shadows with, say, the solid objects.  No one would deny that shadows are real, however.

Now, using an analogy only, let me explain that your thoughts and feelings also give off shadows that we will here call hallucinations.  They are quite valid.  They have as strong a part to play in dream reality as shadows do in the physical world.  They are beautiful in themselves.  They add to the entire picture.  A shadow of a tree cools the ground.  It affects the environment.  So hallucinations alter the environment, but in a different way and at another level of reality.  In the dream world hallucinations are like conscious shadows.  They are not passive, nor is their shape dependent upon their origin.  They have their own abilities.

Physically, an oak tree may cast a rich deep shadow upon the ground.  It will move, faithfully mirroring the tiniest motion of the smallest leaf, but its freedom to move will be dictated by the motion of the oak.  Not one oak leaf shadow will move unless its counterpart does.

Following our analogy, in the dream world the shadow of the oak tree, once cast, would then be free to pursue its own direction.  Not only that, but there would be a creative give-and-take between it and the tree that gave it birth.  Anyone fully accustomed to inner reality would have no difficulty in telling the dream oak tree from its frisky shadow, however, any more than a waking photographer would have trouble distinguishing the physical oak tree from its counterpart upon the grass.

When you, a dream tourist, wander about the inner landscape with your mental camera, however, it may take a while before you are able to tell the difference between dream events and their shadows or hallucinations.  So you may take pictures of the shadows instead of the trees, and end up with a fine composition indeed – but one that would give you somewhat of a distorted version of inner reality.  So you must learn how to aim and focus your dream camera.

In your daily world objects have shadows, and thoughts or feelings do not, so in your dream travels simply remember that there “objects” do not possess shadows, but thoughts and feelings do.

Since these are far more lively than ordinary shadows, and are definitely more colorful, they may be more difficult to distinguish at first.  You must remember that you are wandering through a mental or psychic landscape.  You can stand before the shadow of a friend in the afternoon, in waking reality, and snap your fingers all you want to, but your friend’s shadow will not move one whit.  It will certainly not disappear because you tell it to.  In the dream world, however, any hallucination will vanish immediately as soon as you recognize it as such, and tell it to go away.  It was cast originally by your own thought or feeling, and when you withdraw that source, then its “shadow” is automatically gone.

A stone’s physical shadow will faithfully mirror its form.  In those terms, little creativity is allowed it.  Far greater leeway exists, however, as a thought or feeling in the dream world casts its greater shadow out upon the landscape of the mind.

Moods obviously exist when you are dreaming as well as when you are waking.  Physically the day may be brilliant, but if you are in a blue mood you may automatically close yourself off from the day’s natural light, not notice it – or even use that natural beauty as counterpoint that only makes you feel more disconsolate.  Then you might look outward at the day through your mood and see its beauty as meaningless or even cruel façade.  Your mood, therefore, will alter your perception.

The same applies in the dream state; but there, the shadows of your thoughts may be projected outward into scenes of darkest desolation.  In the physical world you have mass sense data about you.  Each individual helps form that exterior environment.  No matter how dark your mood on any given sunny day, your individual thoughts alone will not suddenly turn the blue skies into rainy ones.  You alone do not have that kind of control over your fellows’ environment.  In the dream world, however, such thoughts will definitely form your environment.

Stormy dream landscapes are on the one hand hallucinations, cast upon the inner world by your thoughts or feelings.  On the other hand, they are valid representations of your inner climate at the time of any given dream.  Such scenes can be changed in the dream state itself if you recognize their origin.  You might choose instead to learn from such hallucinations by allowing them to continue, while realizing that they are indeed shadows cast by your own mind.

If you are honest with your thoughts and feelings, then you will express them in your waking life, and they will not cast disturbing shadows in your dreams.

You may be afraid that a beloved child or mate will die suddenly, yet you may never want to admit such a fear.  The feeling itself may be generated because of your own doubts about yourself, however.  You may be depending upon another such person too strongly, trying to live your own life secondhandedly through the life of another.  Your own fear, admitted, would lead you to other feelings behind it, and to a greater understanding of yourself.

Unencountered in waking life, however, the fear might cast its dim shadow, so that you dream of your child’s death, or of the death of another close to you.  The dream experience would be cast into the dream landscape and encountered there.

If you remembered such a dream, therefore, you might think that it was precognitive, and that the event would become physical.  Instead, the whole portent of the dream event would be an educational one, bringing your fear into clear focus.  In such cases you should think of the dire dream situation as a shadow, and look for its source within your mind.

Shadows can be pleasant and luxurious, and on a hot sunny day you are certainly aware of their beneficial nature.  So some dream hallucinations are beautiful, comforting, refreshing.  They can bring great peace and be sought after for themselves.  You may believe that God exists as a kindly father, or you might personify him as Christ or Buddha.  In your dreams you might then encounter such personages.  They are quite valid, but they are also hallucinations cast by your own thoughts and feelings.  Dreams of Heaven and Hell alike fall into the same category, in those terms, as hallucinations.

Now: The physical shadow of a tree bears witness to the existence of a tree, even if you see only the shadow; so your hallucinations appearing in dreams also bear witness to their origin, and give testimony to a valid “objective” dream object that is as “solid” in that reality as the tree is in your world.

In physical reality there is a time lag that exists between the conception of an idea, say, and its materialization.  Besides that, other conditions operate that can slow down an idea’s physical actualization, or even impede it altogether.  If not physically expressed, the thought will be actualized in another reality.  An idea must have certain characteristics, for example, that agree with physical assumptions before it turns into a recognizable event.  It must appear within your time context.

In the dream world, however, each feeling or idea can be immediately expressed and experienced.  The physical world has buildings in it that you manufacture – that is, they do not spring up naturally from the ground itself.  In the same way, your thoughts are “manufactured products” in the dream world.  They are a part of the environment and appear within its reality, though they change shape and form constantly, as physically manufactured objects do not.

The earth has its own natural given data, however, and you must use this body of material to form all of your manufactured products.  The dream world also possesses its own natural environment.  You form your dreams from it, and use its natural products to manufacture dream images.  Few view this natural inner environment, however.