Re: dreams

From: Nils Weinander <nilsw_at_ibm.net>
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 21:29:39 +0100


Alex:
>
> > A couple of years ago, the dragon-dream connection
> > prompted the idea that dragonewts are so weird because
> > they are simultaneously dreaming and fully awake. The
> > idea may not hold water nowadays though.
>
> At the risk of being annoying, I'm inclined to ask at this point,
> "In what sense?" Are we talkingh about dream as a state of
> consciousness, as a mytho-magical 'place', or...?

This was "way back when", so it was dream world as a mytho-magical parallell place.

> > The dream magicians of the East Isles probably do have
> > an opinion about Kralorela and draconic stuff in
> > general. I guess it's on the line that the Kralorelans
> > do stuff with dreams, but that they aren't aware that
> > that's what they are doing. They are thus not quite in
> > control, playing with fire...
>
> I shall assay an opinion about the converse situation; or maybe just
> pontificate about mysticism in general, you can take this either way: I
> think the Kralori, and/or many 'conventional' mystics would associate
> dreaming with levels of consciousness, in the particular sense of levels
> of apparent reality one can 'wake up from'. They would point out the
> commonplace phenomenon of seeming consciousness/reality in sleep
> (dreams) as being an instance of, or a metaphor for, the ultimate
> unreality of the mundane world. While such experiences are not wholly
> unrelated to the 'real' world, they're just fragmentary, scrambled
> misperceptions of it -- in either case.

I agree that's the official mystic view. Dreams are rather far down the Consciousness scale.

> So back in the original example, I'd say that the Kralori probably
> don't regard Dream Dragons, or indeed the Emperor, as being 'dreams'
> in a strongly literalistic sense -- or at least, not in any more
> than is everything else. Perhaps less so, since a dream dragon, and
> certainly the emperor, is a higher/more fully realized level of
> (draconic) consciousness than Jobo Longs in the street.

Could dream dragons be seen as the result of interpreting dragonhod (a spiritual state) in material terms?



Nils Weinander | Everything is dust in the wind nilsw_at_ibm.net | http://www.geocities.com/nils_w/

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