Transpersonal Lessons in Philosophy of Science from an 11-Year Reoccurring Dream

TRANSPERSONAL LESSONS IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
FROM AN 11-YEAR REOCCURRING DREAM
Mark A. Schroll, Ph.D.
rockphd4@yahoo.com
The problem most of us have when we listen to stories of transpersonal experience is that believing them requires a tremendous leap of faith. Even in our wildest and most conceptually vivid moments of imagination stories of transpersonality seem abstract and inconceivable. This is because most of us have never experienced the kinds of privileged states of consciousness that transpersonal psychology refers to and talks about. Consequently transpersonal psychology seems to be one of those scholarly pursuits that have little or no practical relevance outside the classroom. This essay will challenge us to reconsider this frequent complaint. Every night many of us have access to and commune with transpersonal states of consciousness through our dreams. Here again, this ability to experience transpersonal awareness elicits another frequent complaint: I do not remember my dreams! Remembering our dreams can be difficult, and applying the information that we learn from them to the arête’ of living is another matter entirely.
In an attempt to provide an illustration of what I mean by a transpersonal dream, and to offer various examples of how to interpret your dreams, this essay will,
1. Provide suggestions on how to remember your dreams.
2. Offer an example of my own transpersonal dream and how it has influenced my own life. And,
3. Provide a method of how I have interpreted and analyzed my own transpersonal dream.
Most important, in offering this transpersonal dream experience as an example, I did not intentionally seek it; instead it came to me. This means any of us are equally capable of experiencing similar kinds of transpersonal insights if we simply allow our self to become open to the possibility.
Remembering Our Dreams
One possible explanation as to why we do not remember our dreams is that we block this ability by actually telling our self, and others, that we do not remember our dreams. This block to remembering our dreams could be a way of protecting our self from the experience of nightmares. Psychologists refer to this kind of self-protection as a defense mechanism, and refer to this particular kind of block to our remembering as repression (Fadiman & Frager, 1994). A complete discussion of this problem goes beyond the purpose of this essay and is only offered as a possibility that some of us might wish to consider. Indeed even if we are not repressing them, by their very nature dreams are fragile and fleeting. Thus recalling them can be difficult.
David Feinstein and Stanley Krippner illustrate this elusive nature of dreams by saying that, “a dream is like a tiger—if you catch even a trace of it, you have it by the tail and can pull it into view, stripe by stripe” (Feinstein & Krippner: 241, 1988). In their book Personal Mythology: Using Ritual, Dreams, and Imagination to Discover Your Inner Story (1988), Feinstein and Krippner offer several useful suggestions for remembering our dreams. Just before falling asleep, the easiest technique for enhancing our ability to recall our dreams is to repeat several times our conscious intent that: “I will remember a dream when I wake up” (Feinstein & Krippner: 240, 1988). Upon waking, be prepared to remember your dream immediately by placing a pen and paper or a tape recorder beside your bed (Feinstein & Krippner, 1988).
There are two additional methods that Feinstein and Krippner suggest that might also assist us, but caution that they are more intrusive. First, reminding us that alcohol and most drugs tend to reduce dreaming, they go on to suggest that vitamin B-6,
. . . is believed to increase dream recall. If there are no contraindications to your using B-6, occasionally taking between 50 mg and 250 mg with dinner (do not take more without medical supervision) may facilitate dream recall (Feinstein & Krippner: 241, 1988).
Second, they suggest setting “an alarm clock to go off early so [that] you will be more likely to awake mid-dream” (Feinstein & Krippner: 241, 1988). Waking a few minutes earlier than usual also provides us with additional time to work with our dream before we need to attend to whatever events in our day that demand our time and attention.
Finally for those of us that tend to be too demanding of our self, and expect that these, or any technique is going to provide instant results, Feinstein and Krippner caution us not to become, “disappointed or self-critical if you do not remember your dreams” (Feinstein & Krippner: 241, 1988). Nor should we worry if the initial meaning of a dream eludes our understanding. Some dreams, like the one that I provide in my example, require years of reflection and analysis to understand. Even after several years of reflection and analysis of my 11-year recurring dream, I am continuing to find deeper, more profound, and more integrated meaning. Last but not least Feinstein and Krippner’s most important advice speaks to not only in working with our dreams, but too our overall approach to the arête` of living: “simply set aside a few protected minutes upon awakening and remain alert for whatever comes” (Feinstein & Krippner: 241, 1988).
Dream Recollection
Nearly once a week, from 1973 to 1984, I experienced the following recurring dream.
I arrive in the morning at my Junior High School and go to my book locker, repeatedly trying to open it, but I cannot seem to remember the proper combination to my lock. After several failed attempts to dial in the correct combination, I eventually conclude that I must be trying to open the wrong locker. I then begin to wander through the halls of my school, searching for my locker. Eventually I come to a locker that seems familiar. Dialing in the lock’s combination it opens to my thankful relief.
I get out my books and go off to my first hour class. But after sitting a few minutes in this classroom, I come to the conclusion that this is not where I am supposed to be. Excusing myself, I leave to begin searching for the right classroom. Wandering through the halls, I stop at various rooms where classes are being taught. Yet none of these classes is the one that I am looking for. After checking every classroom on the first floor, I continue this journey to find where my class is being taught by climbing the stairs to the second floor. Following the same procedure, I wander from classroom to classroom, listening to the teachers in each of these rooms and inquiring about the lessons being taught. After checking every classroom on the second floor, I again conclude that none of them are where I am supposed to be. Eventually I decide to look in the library for my class, where I discover several students who are reading and studying. Witnessing this, I am motivated to begin searching throughout the library for a book that can help further my own quest for learning. But to my dismay, I am unable to find any book that speaks to my concerns or can in any way serve to answer the questions I am asking. Again I am sent wandering.
Because my Junior High School has only two stories, and having now checked every room on each level, I decide to investigate the rooms of the basement. Walking down the two flights of stairs, I find the doorway to the basement and go in. The basement is poorly lit. Slowly I begin to grope around the labyrinthine corridors, struggling to see clearly in the near darkness. I have no idea where I am going because I am totally unfamiliar with everything I am experiencing. I begin to ask myself. Is this eerie dark place really where I am supposed to be? What is this class I am looking for? What is this crazy journey I am on?
All of a sudden I sense something in the near darkness, which is followed by hearing a faint noise echoing throughout this underground chamber. I stand perfectly still and try to discern this noise. Soon thereafter I hear the noise again, only this time its sound is much louder and more near. I now discern that it is the sound of heavy breathing and footsteps on the basement floor. This noise grows in intensity. Just at this moment, in the near darkness, I am able to see a large hairy creature running toward me. It is six-foot tall, has hairy human-like arms and legs, a human torso and the head of a bull with huge horns. 1
Seeing this frightful creature I quickly turn and run down the dimly lit corridor to the stairs leading out of the basement and up to the ground floor. In a total state of panic I burst through the doorway and continue running down the hallway. None of the hall lights are on. It is already night and there is no one else in the building. Close behind, still chasing me, is this huge man-beast. Terrified, I continue running for my life. At last I come to an exit at the end of the hallway and run outside into a small courtyard, with the creature right on my heels. Its hairy arms are outstretched, trying to grab hold of me. My heart is pounding in my chest, with my mind racing to think of any means of escape. I conclude that my only place of safety is to run back to my parents’ home. This is what I do, running as fast as I can. Reaching my home, I quickly go inside and lock the door. The creature comes right up to the door and looks into my parent’s house through several small windows in the door. Thankfully it is unable to get inside and it eventually leaves.
Preliminary Psychological Analysis of This Dream
My initial relief from this nocturnal nightmare came shortly after the weekend of January 22-23, 1984, when I participated in a workshop with Krippner titled “Myths, Dreams and Shamanism,” at the Interface Conference Center in Newton, Massachusetts (near Boston). Krippner holds the Alan Watts Chair of psychology at the Saybrook Institute in San Francisco and, among his impressive legacy of honors, awards, and 40 years of research, has served as past president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. In addition to his book with Feinstein, Krippner’s books investigating the study of dreams include an impressive list of titles:
1. Dream Telepathy: Experiments in Nocturnal ESP (with Montague Ullman and Alan Vaughan) (1989).
2. Dreamtime and Dreamwork: Decoding the Language of the Night (1990).
3. Dreamscaping: New and Creative Ways to Work with Your Dreams (with Mark Waldman) (1999). And,
4. Extraordinary Dreams and How to Work with Them (with Fariba Bogzaran and Andre` Percia de Carvalho) (2002).
During one of the many experiential activities that weekend, Krippner asked us to divide ourselves into small groups and to work with the symbols of any dream we could recall, adding that a particularly powerful source of archetypal knowledge would be any reoccurring dreams we might be having.
Krippner then invited us to spend some time talking a walk on the grounds outside the Center and find an object in nature that represented one of the central elements in our dream. During my walk my attention was drawn to a sprig of evergreen that I felt at the time helped to symbolize the continually reoccurring patterns of my dream.
Returning from our walk, Krippner asked us to draw pictures of the central images or characters that frequently appeared in the dream we were working with and to give these pictures names. I drew two pictures; one of myself, which I named “the good,” and a second picture of the creature, which I referred to as “the demon.” We were then invited by Krippner to discuss our dreams, beginning with the people in our small group and later with the rest of the workshop participants.
Once all of the participants had been given an opportunity to discuss their dreams, Krippner invited us to create a healing mantra that could help us reconcile any conflicting elements in our dream. For those of you unfamiliar with the word mantra, it refers to a phrase or verbal formula that is to be recited or sung. Mantras are a method of aligning the energies of our individual self with the cosmic energies of the universe and thus a means of coming into harmony or communion with these cosmic energies of creation. These verbal formulas are also capable of establishing a healing resonance within the body. This resonance vibrates parts of the body and activates our natural healing properties.2 Reflecting deeply on the images I had been working with, I created the following mantra. The dance between the demon and the good shall bring wholeness.
Krippner then asked us to briefly discuss the meaning of our mantra. I explained, on the one hand, that the image drawn of “the demon” represented the shadow elements within my personality; aspects of me that I did not want to consciously recognize and, thereby, kept hidden in the basement of my unconscious. On the other hand, the image of “the good” represented my conscious ego. The public persona I use to pilot myself through the daily activities of my waking existence. Thus my mantra’s emphasis on the dance between the demon and the good is an attempt to synthesize these alternate states of consciousness into a more encompassing awareness of psychic wholeness, while at the same time recognizing their relative independence. This was the kind of awareness that I at least hoped this mantra would help me achieve.
Following this didactic reflection on our mantra’s, Krippner invited all of the workshop participants to join hands and, moving in a circle, asked us to collectively chant the mantra’s we had created. This was a very powerful and psychologically moving experience. I felt what seemed to be waves of energy resonating through me and experienced within my body a state of relaxed calm following the exercise.
Deepening the Analysis of My 11-Year Reoccurring Dream:
Remembering the Dance of Psychic Wholeness
Throughout the past several years since this workshop with Krippner first took place I have continued to reflect and deepen my analysis of this perplexing dream. I am also beginning to realize that the analysis presented here resembles the investigation of matter or physical reality by EuroAmerican science. In other words, the analysis offered in this section continues to be nothing more than an understanding of the structural elements of this dream or what Plato referred to as “appearances of reality.” Bohm refers to this as the explicate order. This represents the first part of my journey. The deeper analysis of this dream that I have yet to fully understand and bring into the conscious awareness of my persona is the meaning beyond the symbolic structures that belong to the realm of Spirit or Plato’s idea of forms. Bohm refers to this aspect of reality as the implicate order. This represents the second part of my journey; an analysis that continues to be on ongoing process of self-examination and self-confrontation as the awareness gained by integrating the shadow elements of my personality reveals itself to me.
* * * * * * * * *
In the first part of this dream, I arrive at my Junior High School and discover that I cannot seem to remember the proper combination to my lock, which leads me to conclude that this is not my locker. Consequently I am sent on a quest in search of my locker. In other words, I do not have the proper key (or the proper epistemology) to gain access into the domain I am wishing to enter. I am instead forced to look elsewhere.
In the second part of this dream, having finally found and opened my locker, getting out the books I need for my morning classes, I am unable to find the location of my classroom. Whereby I begin to search for its location; that is, I am sent on a journey in search of the proper ontological domain that I am seeking to study, as well as its epistemological means of inquiry.
This journey has two phases. During its initial phase, I am sent wandering throughout the rooms and levels of my school asking questions, eventually ending up in the library in search of a book to help further my quest for knowledge. This phase symbolizes our rational mind’s investigation of the physical universe. To put this another way, this phase symbolizes the epistemological methods of inquiry that are associated with our normal, usual or consensus state of consciousness. This thorough investigation, unfortunately, ends in failure.
It is at this point in my dream that the second phase of my journey begins, when I realize the need to explore the basement. This phase symbolizes our need for intuitive wisdom. More precisely, this second phase symbolizes our need for recognizing the existence of ontological domains beyond the perceptual threshold of our rational mind, whose exploration is made possible through the use of alternate epistemologies or alternate states of consciousness. This is why in my dream I do not recognize the basement, because my rational mind is totally unfamiliar with these alternative states and stations of transpersonal awareness.
We are not only unfamiliar with these uncharted worlds and landscapes of the mind, we are also afraid of them. Because of our fears of the unknown these alternate ways of being and knowing have remained hidden within the subterranean chambers of our awareness. Moreover, because of our prejudice of cognitive familiarity with consensus reality or normal consciousness, we have often characterized these visions as visitations from dangerous creatures and demons that are out to do us in, instead of privileged glimpses into rare transpersonal mindscapes and alternate states of consciousness.
Thus, while the creature in my dream does chase me, it never causes me harm. It merely wishes to come up from the depths into the light of conscious awareness, to become integrated with my public persona and be remembered. Upon seeing this demon, because of my fear and mistrust of the unknown, I have always run away. Chased by this creature right to the very doorstep it waits, asking to be invited in for a cup of tea, a warm meal and some honest dialogue. It simply waits to be embraced, to be welcomed home. Uninvited, unrecognized and unloved, it eventually leaves, symbolizing our persona’s rejection of the shadow and our fading memories of these rare glimpses of transpersonal states of awareness.
In sum, this dream is a metaphor of my life, mirroring my own exhaustive intellectual journey of Euro-American science and its predominantly rational investigation of nature and the universe. My continuing contemplation of this dream has led to my increasing investigation of methodological issues, specifically problems associated with properly assessing, defining, and describing transpersonal states of consciousness. These pursuits are typical of the first half of life, which assist us in defining who we are or who we think we are in this world. Harking back to the meaning of our cover design, these pursuits are those that motivate us to strive for and reach the top of the mountain. But the fullness of life’s meaning, our yearning and biological urge toward wholeness that Jung recognized and defined as individuation, only truly begins in the second half of life. Whereby the process of individuation is only truly recognized as we begin the process of exploring the basement, confronting and integrating the shadow, which is symbolized as our journey back down the mountain.
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On October 17, 2007, I dream about working on this dream. I am in a classroom at a small college somewhere. I make several additional connections to literature, looking up several definitions. I also make connections to our social and ecological self, as well as connections with feminism and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs model. Then the bell rings for the class to end. Looking around for my book bag, I discover that someone has taken it and all I have left is the notebook in which I have made these latest additions to this dream. I check around the room looking for my book bag, but do not find it. I go back to the desk where my notebook was lying, but now it too is missing. I leave the classroom with a great sense of personal loss and then I decide to go back to the classroom, knowing that at least my notebook must be there. Going in to the classroom I discover a student is reading my notebook. Seeing me standing over him he gives it back. I take the notebook and leave the classroom and then I wake up.
Notes
1. Within Greek mythology, this description of the beast in my dream resembles the image of the Minotaur. John Woodcock has suggested I could deepen my understanding of this dream by exploring the myth of the Minotaur and the meaning of a labyrinth. Telling me: “To get at what the Minotaur means in one’s life, I think one could perhaps study the life of Picasso who was fascinated with this Being; and since Dr. Schroll missed this almost self-evident aspect of the dream, it is reasonable to assume that the labyrinth and its inhabitant are still unconsciously affecting his life and work” (Woodcock, 2001). I am grateful to Woodcock for his assistance in my analysis, whose suggestions I plan to explore as I continue to examine the meaning of this dream.
2. This approach to healing has been investigated by Larry Dossey in his book Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine (1993). We do not, however, think of a mantra or healing resonance when we hear the word prayer. Mainstream Christianity has distorted, trivialized and transformed prayer into meaning a submissive act of begging or petitioning God to heal us, or in some way show us favor in the form of miracles (Dossey: 5, 1993). This concept of prayer is not what Dossey is talking about and, for this reason; I wish he would stop using the word prayer. Actually Dossey does refer to his research on prayer as transpersonal medicine and that its ability to heal is non-local (Dossey: 41-45, 1993). Dossey’s views of transpersonal medicine support my discussion in (Schroll, 2005) concerning the act of communion and a signa-somatic tradition of mystical experience. Dossey’s view of transpersonal medicine also lends support to what Krippner and Alberto Villoldo refer to as healing states (Krippner & Villoldo, 1986; Villoldo & Krippner, 1987). Transpersonal medicine’s non-local aspects were explored in terms of Bohm’s implicate order in Dossey’s book Space, Time and Medicine (1982), but he failed to fully discuss this in Healing Words (1993). Finally, the idea of a mantra as a healing form of resonance needs to be further examined as a possible demonstration of Rupert Sheldrake’s concept of morphic resonance (Sheldrake, 1988). This discussion exceeds the limits of the present essay. (See Schroll, 2007).
Bibliography
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Schroll, M. A. (2007, July 1). Ullman’s new abode: Psi dreaming, sacred places, Bohm’s holistic physics and ecopsychology’s vision. 24th Annual International Association for the Study of Dreams Conference, Sonoma State University, Santa Rosa, CA. CD available from www.conferencerecording.com.

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