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©2007 Rita Dwyer There are no unnatural or supernatural phenomena, Caveat: This presentation is intended as a story of gradual unfoldment into the reality of psi dreaming which touches upon life experiences, my own and those of other seekers. It does not stand up to the rigors of the “hard science” I once practiced, but it does lead to a lowering of those boundaries and an opening into the sacred space which encompasses us all.
I cite this example to show that even 50 years ago, scientism existed and still does. Charles Tart discusses this in his excellent book, Body, Mind, Spirit. Scientism is the term he uses to define that inability of many scientists to accept phenomena that don't fit current paradigms or theories that have been proved true, but that have hardened into facts that create boundaries that curb possible new ways of looking at our world. I'm not easily stifled, and eventually came to work for this company as a research chemist, the only woman in an all-male chemistry department, I used my intuitive skills as well as the scientific techniques I had learned to synthesize new compounds, earning patents but then paying a price for doing the work I loved. An explosion of an experimental rocket fuel almost blew me into outerspace. Though I was never to become the first woman on the moon, the dreams of Ed Butler, my friend and co-worker, saved my life and led me into the exploration of inner space, and eventually to the international Association for the Study of Dreams (then ASD, now IASD). While I started off trying to understand how a person could dream precognitively, I soon became fascinated with all psi phenomena. For years, I took an ongoing course called Consciousness Frontiers, being privileged to hear some of the early researchers in that field. More than a decade before IASD was founded, I belonged to another ASD, the American Society of Dowsers, based in Vermont, drawn to the group by Dr. Zaboj Harvalik, a brilliant physicist who actively researched how dowsing works. I will share a bit of what I learned from that ASD where there were many open-minded thinkers who weren't victims of scientism, but were rather advocates of pragmatism...if it works, even if you can't explain it, don't doubt it, use it! Some of it fits with my personal observations about dreams and sacred space.
Space-Time and a Multidimensional Universe: How does dowsing work? If everything in this universe (and possibly others) is composed of the same basic chemical components--carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, and a few other trace elements thrown in--we can tune ourselves into earth energies physiologically and psychically. We are so egocentric that many of us have lost our connections with what is outside of ourselves and our human bodies which limit us with constraints of space and time. Linear time is one of our faulty constructs. I recently reread the classic A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engel, a work of fiction but soundly based in esoteric thinking. For example, Mrs. Whatsit, one of the women/good witches who help the protagonists, a young girl and two boys, demonstrates to them how space travel can work. She has one of her friends, Mrs. Who, pick up a portion of her voluminous skirt in each hand, holding her hands apart. ”You see, if a very small insect were to move from the section of skirt in Mrs. Who's right hand to the section in her left, it would be quite a long walk for him if he had to walk straight across.” Then Mrs. Who swiftly brings her hands together, still holding the skirt, showing that without linear time, the imaginary insect in her right hand would be at his goal in the left in no time at all. “Now, you see,” Mrs. Whatsit said, “He would be there, without that long trip. That is how we travel.” Thinking linearly is the long way to get to the right place when there are short-cuts, including dreams. Some of us also think we are superior to lower life forms, but everything is alive with energy, and when we learn to connect with that energy in respectful and cooperative ways, we are capable of experiencing all sorts of psi phenomena, which are really natural human abilities. We can also connect with all of creation which is sacred and has purpose. I believe in panpsychism/ecopsychology, in interspecies communication and cosmic consciousness. I can't defend all of my beliefs in this short position paper, but I'll try to hit some high spots. Sacred Space and Sacred Sites: Paul Devereux, one of the co-authors of Stanley Krippner's excellent research paper, “The Use of the Strauch Scale to Study Dream Reports from Sacred Sites in England and Wales”, was one of those dowsers I met back in the 70's. His interests included finding ley lines, paths of energy which were thought to cross at places that had been used as sacred sites. He seems to have changed some of his thoughts on ley lines as evidenced by a lecture he gave on misunderstood sites and the ancient mind at the Rollright Stones in UK, but his Dragon Project has been ongoing for years with a great team of helpers in the UK. I recommend his book, Symbolic Landscapes, particularly Chapter Two, ”Dreaming the Earth”. He cites Jung who believed, as we know, that archetypal material doesn't come from our rationally-conscious minds, but rather from the Collective Unconscious. He suggested that dreams are private myths and myths are tribal dreams. He writes, “Taking a loose, general consensus, then, we can view myths as having dream-like qualities, their own dimension of time—at once ancient and present—and deriving from other sources of consciousness than the rational-type of waking awareness we moderns possess. They may also reveal neurological functions common to all humanity. High or serious myths represent deep realities of mind and nature.”
Devereux also considers landscape as a gateway to the mind, and many “holy spots” are unusual in their formations and may have strange energies, radiations, noises, apparitions, lights, natural ionization (waterfalls) etc., that have attracted primitive peoples to them where they have then enacted rituals. It is they who invest the landscape with symbolism and sanctity. It is their consciousness that impregnates a place and renders it a sacred site, though I might argue that they are really only enhancing natural sacred space, tuning it up a notch through their focus and intent.
Weakened sacred sites or loss of focus? He also found by accident in the Dragon Project “that areas of heightened natural radiation seem capable of precipitating spontaneous, but fleeting altered states of conscious of a very vivid nature in certain people,” such as shamans. Although these people of the past are no longer with us, their spirits may well be present. It is we who have distanced ourselves not only from them but from other species. Is it true, as has been reported, that the energy of a sacred site appears to weaken after time? Or is this only true in linear time? Perhaps it is not so in the Dreamtime where we can access the Collective Unconscious and all the memories of the past. As for some who did not dream of a sacred site on the first days there, as reported by Stanley Krippner, Paul Devereux and Curtiss Hoffman in their papers here and at the 2007 IASD Sonoma Conference, perhaps clearing one's slate of personal issues to paint the bigger picture correlates with studies that IASD member Dr. Frances Menezes did some years ago in India with a group of chemists, hoping that monthly dream sharing would increase their creativity and productivity. It ultimately did, but not until the men had worked out various interpersonal issues, such as working conditions or ill feelings towards each other or a Big Brother sort of management. Major breakthroughs arrived in dreams only after personal issues had been addressed. After visiting a sacred site, our dreams of it will fade because our focus is no longer there, having been replaced with all of the other stimuli of busy days and lives. I believe that having once made the connection with the place, it will appear again in dreams when it is needed, possibly triggered by a current event, or even a future one. Important question for psi dreamers? However, do we really need to be at the site to connect with its energy and dream of it? In his book , Dreaming True: How to Dream Your Future and Change Your Life for the Better, Robert Moss describes a trip made one evening by his regular dream circle, in which they were to go on a group excursion to the Bay of Naples to take a look at Vesuvius and the ruins of Pompeii. Twelve dreamers undertook that dream trip and brought back significant information about the site and each others' experiences. Ruppert Sheldrake and Morphogenetic Fields: Devereux's ideas are very much in keeping with Ruppert Sheldrake's theory of morphogenetic fields. In his book Morphic Resonance and the Presence of the Past-The Habits of Nature, Sheldrake fully explains his theories relating to morphogenetic fields, which he considers “non-material regions of influence, the medium of action at a distance”. He shows how they are in some ways related to other fields which cannot be seen, yet are real, such as the gravitational field which encompasses our universe and quotes Einstein who said, “It (gravitational field) is not in space and time, but rather is space and time.” “Space-time is not a bland background abstraction; it has a structure, which actively shapes and includes everything that exists or happens within the physical universe,” Sheldrake asserts.
Morphogenetic fields contain an inherent memory that leads us to the idea of causative formation in cosmic evolution, if we study various morphic fields, such as those in animal societies and in human societies and cultures. Myth and ritual play a large part in these latter, as does the collective unconscious. Sheldrake also points out that for the most part the nature of life and consciousness have not been taken into account in theories of physics, though a huge change has come along with David Bohm's Theory of the Implicate Order. Montague Ullman's invited address at the 2006 IASD Conference in Bridgewater, MA, “The Dream: In Search of a New Abode,” was a masterpiece in incorporating Bohm's theories with a newly expanded way of looking at dreams and dreaming. Dr. Claude Swanson is an MIT and Princeton-educated physicist who sees changes in the making. His book The Synchronized Universe-New Science of the Paranormal describes the scientific revolution he believes is underway. Quoting from his web site, this book " reveals that the tapestry of modern science is showing a few tatters...There are many things modern science cannot explain, and yet they occur anyway. This includes phenomena in the 'hard sciences' as well as in the paranormal. These effects are now being proven in the laboratory, even though they defy present scientific theory. These unfolding mysteries point the way to a new, deeper science, a science which no longer denies spirit and consciousness, but acknowledges and embraces them." Interspecies Communication: Sheldrake's latest edition of Seven Experiments That Could Change the World : A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Revolutionary Science contains updates on the results of experiments which he proposed years earlier as ways of exploring the unexplained, some that anyone could do, scientist or not, with suggested protocols to follow. They are: 1/ Pets Who Know when Their Owners Are Returning, 2/ How Do Pigeons Home? 3/The Organization of Termites, 4/The Sense of Being Stared At, 5/The Reality of Phantom Limbs, 6/The Variability of Fundamental Constants, 7/The Effects of Experimenters' Expectations. We've probably all read of examples of the first experiment, Pets Who Know when Their Owners Are Returning, a very commonly experienced phenomenon that can be explained only by some kind of telepathic communication. The second How Do Pigeons Home? piqued my interest way back in my earlier forays into dowsing. Some think the pineal gland of pigeons plays an important part in their navigational skills and not simply memory of home. In some explanations for dowsing, the pineal gland was thought to be a source of contact with the sought object or substance—but it has atrophied in humans, much as the appendix....what was its real purpose ages ago when tribal communities had to find their way without all of our high-tech navigational systems?
An amazing example of this can be found in an earlier 2007 PDC presentation by Judy Gardiner of her dream experiences, “Circling the Cosmos on a Dream.” Thoughts on Connective Energy Fields: In The G.O.D. Experiments: How science is discovering God in everything, Gary Schwartz ) touts “How Contemporary Physics Often Unknowingly Takes Us to G.O.D.“ (which he defines as a Guiding, Observing, Directional Force.) He references Lynne McTaggart's reader-friendly book, The Field; The Quest for the Secret of the Universe. McTaggart not only presents the latest theory and research on magnetic fields, biophotons, and the Zero Point Field, but she also shows how “this research leads to the conclusion that an energy field connects everything in the universe, and we ourselves are part of this vast, dynamic network of energy exchange.''
This viewpoint is not so far from that expressed more than 50 years ago by Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest, paleontologist and philosopher who believed that the universe was continually evolving and that “the consciousness of each of us is evolution looking at itself and reflecting upon itself”. He considered Matter to be the Matrix of Spirit and Spirit a higher state of Matter. He coined the term Noosphere which he thought of as “the living membrane which is stretched like a film over the lustrous surface of the star which holds us. An ultimate envelope...a setting or cementing together of a thinking mass of humans.” He suggested, “Thus we must build, starting with the most natural territory of our own self, a work, an opus into which something enters from all elements of the Earth.” He believed, as I do, that ”Love is the most powerful and still the most unknown energy of the world....Because the world is always growing and ahead of us, always unfinished, to achieve our love we are engaged in a limitless conquest of the universe and ourselves.” As a teenager, I attended a private academy where I was taught by Sisters of Charity. Their motto was “Deus est caritas” or “God is love.” Caritas is not love of the romantic, sentimental variety, but rather of an inherent natural quality we possess, purposeful, vital, that makes it possible for us to respect and revere others and to live together in harmony in this magnificent universe we inhabit. I value the excellent academic lessons I learned, but even more those about selfless service as demonstrated by my teachers.
Challenges for Cosmic Connections: A recent edition of the American Dowser , Fall 2006, VOL 46, No. 4 (18) contained an excellent article on Interdimensional Cooperation, by Atala Dorothy Toy (pp. 39-42), which could pertain to dreaming as well. She wrote, “We can learn to communicate with all life forms throughout the universe via a type of body dowsing that permits a person to locate, identify and communicate with any form of life....This is an area where spirit and science are merging quite well...(First, there is the) necessity to break from our civilization's common perceptions, and second, to understand that, if all existence comes from one source, this is the location where all of us are able to communicate with each other at the deep source-level. Third, we need to exist in a state of Ahimsa, (non-injury or refraining to cause harm to any living creature.) “When we start this type of dowsing,” (and dreaming, I would add) “each of us has an affinity for certain families of life forms...We find that everything is alive. It does not matter whether it is another human, an animal, plant, tree, rock, or manufactured life forms such as a cell phone tower or a chair, extraterrestrial , angels or so called dark forces. “Our world is changing in frequency. It is elevating and we're beginning to know more and more clearly that there are other worlds intersecting with ours. Once only the highly esoteric traditions could communicate with other realms. Now more and more people are spontaneously experiencing these crossovers. We can facilitate these communications with dowsing,” Toy writes, but I personally believe this is also possible with dreaming. Toy writes, but I personally believe this is also possible with dreaming. Interdimensional Communities: Toy adds, “We find that not only are we not alone in this universe, not only capable of communication with all life, we are part of larger interdimensional communities with whom we have made peace pacts, long-term or short-term to assist one another.” This can also include those who no longer dwell on this planet in physical form, as we have learned from our studies of dreams of the deceased, psychopompic dreams. The topic was covered in earlier IASD conference panels and PDCs, and while communication from those in spirit was once thought the stuff of charlatans, especially in the early days of spiritualism, we now know that one need not be a medium to connect with those who may have moved to other dimensions of space and time. The book Experiencing the Next World Now by Michael Gross is full of examples.
Some spirits of the past may well be drawn back to the sacred sites where they performed their rituals, creating a morphic field as Sheldrake suggests. It seems to me that sacred places are not only composed of the energies of the site and those who worshiped there centuries ago, but also with our own thought forms and belief systems...somewhat like the sheep and the goat analogy used so often to show why some experimenters get better results than others. We can touch into and amplify these energies through focused thought and intent. It's as if we are re-entering an old dream, but re-energizing it , creating our own Divine Milieu. Thought has form and can be powerful. So can can dreams and love! I welcome your online responses to my reflections or at DreamRita@aol.com © 2007 Rita Dwyer REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS Bird, Christopher & Tompkins, Peter (1989). The Secret Life of Plants. New York: HarperCollins. Devereux, Paul (1992). Symbolic Landscapes: The Dreamtime Earth and Avebury's Open Secret. Gothic Image. Gallagher, Blanche (1988). Meditations with Teilhard de Chardin. Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Company. Grosso, Michael ((2004). Experiencing the Next World Now. New York: Paraview. Katra, Jane & Targ, Russell (1999). The Heart of the Mind. Novato, CA: New World Library. Kellogg, Ed (2004). “Psychopompic Dreaming: Visits with Those Who Have Passed On?” L'Engle, Madeleine (1962). A Wrinkle in Time. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. McTaggart, Lynne ( 2003)The Field; The Quest for the Secret of the Universe. HarperCollins. Menezes, Francis (2005) Dreams and Their Interpretation, Lotus Press. Moss, Robert (2000). Dreaming True. New York: Pocket Books. Nollman, Jim (2002) The Man Who Talks to Whales: The Art of Sentient Interspecies Communication. Radin, Dean (1997). The Conscious Universe. New York: HarperCollins. ___________(2006). Entangled Minds:Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantuum Schwartz, Gary (2006). The G.O.D. Experiments: How Science Is Discovering God in Everything, Including Us. New York: Atria Books. Sheldrake, Rupert (1995). The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press. _______________(2003). The Sense of Being Stared At and Other Aspects of the Extended Mind. UK: Arrow Books. _______________ (1995, 2000). Seven Experiments That Could Change the World: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Revolutionary Science (New Edition). Rochester, VT: Park Street Press. Swanson, Claude (2003) The Synchronized Universe: New Science of the Paranormal. Poseidia Press. Tart, Charles (1997). Body Mind Spirit. VA: Hampton Roads Publishers. Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1960). The Divine Milieu. (English Translation) London: William Collins & Sons, New York: Harper and Row. Toy, Atala Dorothy, “Interdimensional Cooperation”, American Dowser , Fall 2006, VOL 46, No. 4, pp. 39-42. Close window to return to the bulletin board
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