Outline of contents of book on Dream Progressions:

Through Dreams to the Higher Realities

Types of dreams outside the scope of those studied by Psychoanalysis.

Many of these types are useful not only in the handling of problems of daily life but also in the attainment of insight and perspective on the meaning and purpose of life and the building of stature.

Some are related to the deeper and higher nature.  These can develop contact with rays of influence from the higher objective realities.  Religious faith regarding these realities is to be superseded by knowledge, in keeping with the scientific spirit of the new age.

Among the types of dreams illustrated and interpreted are:

Psychological-Philosophical.  The word philosophical, as applied in this research, is based on its root meaning, the love of wisdom.  That wisdom is found in the traditions of all the great races, on their esoteric rather than their exoteric side, and pertains to the evolution of the soul.  Its relevance to the life of the individual becomes clear through the tapping of the deeper layers of subconscious life.

Alchemical.  The philosophical alchemists were interested in the nature of man and its progressions, not in the literal making of gold from baser metals.

Metaphysical.  Concerning energies and substances beyond those of material science.

Animal symbolism.  The values of the lower nature in a rounded development.

Heritage of the soul.  A better understanding of the Eastern concept of karma.

Realizations and insights of the higher mind.

Mystical experience.  Tests of its validity.

The book is prefaced by an explanatory chapter outlining the research from which it is extracted.  This research covered a period of more than twenty years and was directed by the late Mrs. M. B. Mayer, a great teacher, widely and profoundly versed in the wisdom-lore of East and West, and a psychologist of many years’ practice.

The survey seeks to indicate the progressive nature of the material reported, in respect of the primary human faculties of sensing, feeling and thinking; also of others, such as imagination and memory.  This is a distinctive quality, reflecting a process of further reach than the more strictly psychological.

Thirteen types of dreams are included in the survey.  Each type is preceded by a description of its main features.  Then come the illustrations, or examples, five or six in most cases.  Each example is followed by its interpretation, including explanation of the symbolism employed.  These explanations in themselves lead to a new appreciation of symbolism as the universal language of planes of experience beyond the third dimension and the psychic life oriented to it.

Explanatory Preface

     Dreams have fascinated people down the ages.  But universal as the interest has been, and still is, the levels of concern have varied greatly, ranging from superstition to profound insight.  The object of the group research presented here is to contribute to the emergence of order out of the chaos prevalent even today.

     The ordering, however, requires the inclusion of many categories of dream material not ordinarily considered.  These are germane, in part, to the well-being of the dreamer in his daily life, but, perhaps more valuably, to the development of his potentials as a soul in evolution toward that which the Wisdom-teachings of all the great races claim as its ultimate fulfillment.

     Thus, the material in this collection is a sampling of some of the types of dreams that reach beyond the scope of those dealt with by psychoanalysis.  It may include elements corrective of persona trends but, broadly speaking, those are already being modified in the behavior patterns and ideals in the conscious, waking state, of the students contributing to this survey, and belong to earlier, purgative stages.  The present material represents extensions of feeling, thought, sensitivity, cognition, psychic and spiritual development arising from the cultivation of ulterior ground in the being.  In other  words, it reflects growth in the potentials of the soul rather than, or in addition to, a happier adjustment of the psyche, to the world and to the physical organism.

     The research behind the present culling was conducted over a period of nearly thirty years under the leadership of a great teacher, Mrs. May Benzenberg Mayer, known to her students as MBM.  Including both individual and group exploration, it demonstrates that this less investigated life is not only a great part of our selfhood, but that it contains beyond the memories, conditioning, repressed aspects, traumas, fixations, etc. of the present three-score-and-ten, much that belongs to the past history of the soul, the permanent nucleus.  In that “much” are embedded also dormant potentials awaiting our interest and concern.  The stimulation of these into expression, into exercise in the current life, was seen by MBM as part of the ancient wisdom pertaining to the science of the soul.  The dreams of the earnestly seeking, trained dreamer consistently prove themselves the royal road to the purpose of that science, namely, contact with the deeper and higher self; and, from time to time, with higher planes of life outside the self – hence, lead to a greater wholeness in the being, and aid in furthering the evolution of the soul.

     That evolution is fostered both in the waking life and in the sleep state.  It requires the building of stature in terms of powers and qualities — ultimately, a condition in the being that is called, in the Christian tradition, “the house not built with hands.”  The more the powers and qualities revealed in the deeper terrain of the subconscious can be assimilated into waking consciousness and daily living, the more is stature augmented.  The whole process — and it is indeed an awesome, inspiring process — is implied in the injunction of the Delphic Oracle, “Man, know thyself.”

“Knowing thyself” encompasses far more than the identification with the attitudes and characteristics of the personality.  That takes in but a small part of the self.  It exiles much of the capacities of heart and mind — that is, of emotional, mental and spiritual life that is also entitled to its day in the sun and its opportunity for growth through the activity, the testing, the sometimes ardent struggle of the soul in the flesh.  Dr. Jung recognized, to a certain extent at least, the need for a wider inclusiveness when he spoke of the “shadow,” the subdued, neglected possibilities, held back because other avenues had been favored and built into the persona.  Yet, favored or not, all these energies — that is, all this life, so far as it could be harnessed, was to be in service to the physical and social worlds, to achievement in and adjustment to, their rightful demands.  This is the field in which the psychologist and the psychiatrist work — the wilderness of emotional conflict, of the mind grappling with the problems of the philosophic Elements of Earth and Water.

     Any therapeutic work in this field, in the straightening of a path through this wilderness, is to the good.  It is the best psychology has to offer, and it is all most people, troubled by the pressures of life, seek; but it is not really a philosophic psychology, though it is sometimes called by that name, if it recognizes merely a broader spectrum of human interests and aspirations than the instinctual drives and material and emotional needs.

     The wisdom-teachings of the great races have spoken of four philosophic Elements, not just two: the forces trending downward and outward.  Earth and Water, the two lower ones, have their place — their crucially contributive place in the human evolution.  Without them there could be none of the training, learning, strengthening, drawing out (i.e. educating) or sustenance and support for the two higher Elements, Fire and Air.  Fire is the life of the emotions rising, reaching, longing, seeking; — at its height, questing for the eternal verities, the “things that are,” the Larger Realities, the radiations from the light and life of higher planes.  These are not the neighboring planes, now becoming more widely familiar through the study of paranormal phenomena and so-called “spiritist” communication.  Like its analogue, –  fire on the physical plane, — the fire of the psyche gives out heat and a certain light — the warmth of aspirational desire and the light afforded by heightened sensitivities and more delicately attuned perceptions.  The cultivation of this Fire is the special strength of the mystic, and through its penetrative powers the greater mystics have indeed ascended to lofty pinnacles of experience.

     The fourth philosophic Element is Air, and, like the air of earth, it rises higher than fire.  It is the Element of mind.  Not the mind by which we manage our practical, everyday business and social interests, nor that of the scientist or the intellectual.  These stages still belong to the “training school of earth.”  They help develop such powers as discernment, respect for facts, control, disciplined thinking — all valuable, to be sure, in both the close-up and the more remote perspective.  The Element of philosophic Air begins with insight and understanding — a “standing under” the laws and principles operative behind manifestation in the material worlds.  It advances, ideally, toward the noetic mind, toward an actual looking in on planes beyond the human evolution.  Of these areas, the realm of Spirit is the nearest to earth.  It is symbolized by the sun, the focal point of our physical universe.

     The completion of development in all four of the philosophic Elements is the goal of the human evolution.  It is the age-long journey of the soul, and is represented in the racial traditions, on their esoteric side, by either an ideal of “four-ness” or “twelve-ness.”  The Twelve is still the Four, but with each constituent viewed in three different positions.  In philosophical astrology the signs of the zodiac are associated with the characteristics, or types of activity of the twelve.  In the Greek mythos, we have the Twelve Labors of Hercules; in the Hebraic, the twelve sons of Jacob; in the old Egyptian, the twelve sections of the Tuat; in the Christian, the twelve disciples of Jesus.  In the condensed form of the Book of Genesis, the underlying pattern is limned as the four rivers out of the Garden of Eden.  That “garden” is not at all objective but is, rather, a state, an enclosure, a condition — the Edenic, or psychic plane, which precedes the material, or the bodies of flesh, the “thick coats of skin.”

     In this coded form we have part of the philosophy of number, which is one of the nine main branches of symbolism as the universal language of wisdom lore.  Symbolism of this order is necessary to the conveyance of some kind of useful concept of profundities.  Its content pertains mainly to the subtler, intangible realities, subjective and objective, rather than to those of the third dimension; but if material realities are used in discussing them they provide an aid to comprehension.

     In the present stage of the human evolution the major development is in Earth and Water, including the practical mind, devoted to the management of these streams from the soul.  The life of Fire and Air is largely latent.  This is the situation in both the waking state and in the sleep state, where the so-called unconscious is more readily studied.  For this study, dreams provide the best material, and it was on this field that MBM’s empirical research was focused.  True, there are other means of looking into life on the other side of being — hypnotism, fantasies, word association, drugs, psychedelic lights and sounds; but all have their dangers or drawbacks and none have the possibilities for our “knowing ourselves” as have dreams, nor for mental, moral and spiritual growth in and through the transliminal self.  Dr. Herbert Silberer, in his treatise, “Problems of Mysticism and its Symbolism,” touched on these progressions from our Earth-Water nature into that of Fire-Air, but only as based on an old medieval parable.  The collection of dream material here offered illustrates some of the steps as they occur in a present-day group of normal, earnest, intelligent students.

     There are many layers of subconscious life, constituting, as does that life, actually the greater part of our selfhood.  In it are the traces of all we have accomplished and all we are still waiting to accomplish, of the four philosophic Elements.  The top, outer, more readily accessible layers, contain the memories of our present life, the lessons learned, the blocks and fixations, the roots of habits, and the unsolved problems – all of which falls within the general field in which the analyst works.  But there are levels more hidden than these.  They belong to the history, the heritage, of the soul.  Not merely the memory of previous lives in the flesh, so exciting to the imagination of our young people today, and so taken for granted in the karmadoctrines of the East, but records of a still more deeply buried history.  That history concerns  the origin and primordial state of the  soul.  It is treated in a division of Wisdom-lore known as the involutionary process, the Descent, or the coming down from the Royal House (in the Aramaic, it is the story in the “Hymn of the Robe of Glory”) for living and learning in the lower worlds, as a seed is planted in the earth for growth to flower and fruit.

     Our attention will normally be more on the growth side – the evolution, the filling full, the ascent, than on the descent.  And it is there that the exploration of the depths and heights extending further than the outer, or present status layers of life, can be of extraordinary interest and value.  It is there that we can best cultivate the potentials of Fire and Air in us.  It is there that we come upon the store of knowledge, experience, resource already garnered, in essence, in our individual heritage.  It is there that we come to realizations that give us that longer, grander perspective and that aid us, through our own experience, to answer such questions as, Where did I come from?  Where do I go?  What is the nature and purpose of life?  So we become more conscious in our evolution, can accelerate our evolution, can so conduct both our “inner” life and our activity in the world that we add to our stature in the abilities and qualities that hasten the ascent and make for the fulfillment.

     The fact of a layered structure in the subconscious does not mean a rigid differentiation among the layers.  Here we are dealing with subtler stuffs and images — those strangely plastic, rapidly changing forms, defying the laws of time and three-space, which tell us, if and when we can read them, of that greater part of our life extending below and above our outer-directed consciousness.  How deep go its roots?  How much of thought and feeling, knowledge and power, perceptions and intuitions which we have not as yet tapped does it contain?  Much indeed, as MBM demonstrated in her long research with individuals and groups of students.  It is no wonder that she found all such terms as unconscious, subconscious, subliminal, unsatisfying and misleading.  There is nothing un, or negative about these recesses in our organism.  Nor are they subin any pejorative sense.  She therefore called this whole territory the transliminal — including, that is, all it encompasses of the self beyond the limen, or threshold, of waking consciousness.  In this territory are both debris and seedbed.

     Dreams are not illusions, escape mechanisms, or mere reflections of the physical and material, once we are past the periphery, but dramas of the psyche, and MBM would have liked to use for them the word psychodrams.  However, dreams and the dreamer are more convenient terms, and will be used in this study.

     Many analysts have entered the outer reaches of the transliminal, and, where they have been successful, have traced in these the causes of various psychological difficulties.  A purgative clearing-up in this “wilderness” of earth and water, is most desirable for all who would venture into the development of their fire and air potentials — the effort toward whole-seeing and wholeness in the self.  That is the work of synthesis, of building, of augmenting stature.  It is the supplement — indeed, the complement, of analysis.  It loosens the bonds to the persona and the earth—bound self, paving the way toward those deeper and higher experiences of the becoming Great Self.  The Wisdom-teachings of India tell us that the Great Self “is the friend of the (lesser) self,” and the East has widely sought these experiences.  Their methods, however, are not really compatible with the Western temperament and its scientific attitude, and they lack the discriminative tool of the modern psychology, and the pragmatic testing of attainment in the conduct of earthly life.

     The great mystics have all, in their own way, cut their path through thedomination of earth-water.  The fervor and devotion in them “burned it out” — burned out their attachment to the things of the material and sensual; paradoxically, it freed them for vigorous, often outstanding, service in the world.  In the lesser mystics there was sometimes the obstacle of repression, which blurred the purity of their visions; and that flaw has been responsible for considerable misunderstanding of mysticism among psychologists.

     Dreams have fascinated the minds of men from time immemorial.  Pharaoh’s dream in the Old Testament, of the fat and the lean kine, which so raised Joseph in his esteem when he interpreted it, was embedded in the oral Hebraic tradition for centuries before its inclusion in the Septuagint.  Foretelling as it did the coming of seven lean years after seven more prosperous ones, it exemplified a fairly large class of paranormal experiences occurring in both waking and sleep states.

     There are many kinds of paranormal, or supranormal occurrences beside pre-cognition.  There are those involving telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience.  They may involve discarnate entities.  MBM’s research in the field of dreams brought together large numbers from among all these types.  Of the many different types of dreams recorded by her students those classified as paranormal, represented five of the more frequent.  Such types were considered of interest, and were examined critically, at a time when such recording and study were far more in advance of their day than they would be now.

     But such experiences were not the aim of the work.  They were incidental — useful in revealing subtler capacities, of a different nature from the purely psychological, but not of a higher psychic, much less of a spiritual order.  They were seen as instances of extended consciousness, concerned with the phenomenal, not the noumenal worlds; with matters human not of the Cosmic, the realm of Spirit, the Larger Realities.  They represented the exercise, the youngish exercise, in the next octave of our sensory potential; and they showed forth the next steps in the development of our great sensation, or sensing, faculty.  They were etheric in nature.  (However, a few instances of this kind of material are included in this collection, under the heading Metaphysical, because they illustrate varying degrees of understanding and control on the part of the dreamer.)

     This is not the place to discuss the etheric constituents in our makeup.  That might require a good sized volume, though it might give more than one clue to the nature of life in both the physical body and the psyche.  Suffice it to say here that all extrasensory experiences come through the subconscious.  Indeed, those who cultivate them consciously know that they must put aside their ordinary waking consciousness state as completely as they can if they would obtain such impressions.

     MBM pointed out that the whole transliminal was etheric in its stuffs, its substance, its form side.  The psychologists have worked with some of its energies, seeking to re-direct those less conducive to the physical and mental wellbeing of their patients, but they have not come to grips with the kind of substance out of which are molded the visual and auditory images with which they deal.  The great religions, of East and West have, on their esoteric side, recognized this supersensory substance (see “The Doctrine of the Subtle Body” by G.R.S. Mead) but they have lacked the scientific method of approach.

     To what extent are the images a reflection of outer circumstance or a figurative presentation of psychological reaction?  To what extent are they formed by energies — that is, life forces — in the dreamer that are not the wishes, hopes, fears, biases, complexes, etc.  of an Earth-Water orientation?  Are the images and the dream situations capable of dramatizing interest, desire, effort, achievement in another direction?  Are they capable of registering progressions in insight and understanding beyond Earth-Water and into Fire and Air?  Can they report the touch of rays from the Larger which so transform the perspective and the functioning or the mystic?

     It sometimes occurred among MBM’s students that even in their first individual sessions, while sifting through the debris of the surface areas of transliminal life, there would be an occasional infiltration from the deeper areas.  It might be in some such guise as a white serpent mounting a lofty staircase.  (To reduce such an image to phallic symbolism, considering its color and the general context, would be absurd.)  Or it might be a glimpse of two lights, one encased in a glass bulb, like our ordinary electric lights, the other still brighter, and more powerful in its radiation, suspended in air, without any form to contain it.  In the first case, the serpent is the life force moving up the steps of a process of growth, moving toward a fulfillment (white, comprising all the colors).  In the second case, the dreamer is made sharply aware of the difference between man’s knowledge and control, and the knowledge, understanding, Light, that is of other origin.

     The symbol of the horse is among those which appear in many contexts and on various levels.  These range from the physical to the spiritual.  The image-making faculty as already indicated, is one of the eight faculties native to the soul, and in various states of growth.  They are particularized functions and powers of the life-force, called by MBM, collectively, the psychenergy, and all aid in the maturing of the soul and its education to its completion in spiritual stature.  She termed this equipment the eight seedlets, implying their capacity for development to many levels.  She would have liked to use the word libido for psychenergy, but it has been preempted in a too narrow application to the instinctual and sex.  To note the advancement in power and quality in these eight is one of the excitements and priceless rewards of tapping their resources in the transliminal.  Including as it does the exercise of mind as well as heart, in both masculine and feminine aspects, it replaces the austerities of the mystic of an earlier day.

     Evolution in the eight from primitive and feeble dynamic to the peaks of their potential is an age-long journey, but it can be accelerated — consciously accelerated, in the present lifetime, with a saving of much trial and error and waste energy.  MBM worked out the stages of this development, the “ladders,” or qualitative milestones on the road, and it is one of her unique contributions.  A more extensive and intensive consideration of the nature of man himself, as against that of nature objective to him, will be a characteristic of the Aquarian Age.  Psychology to date, including depth psychology, has but scratched the surface.  Esoteric religion has probed a little farther, but tends to lack discrimination, to “lump together” all sorts of metaphysical experience, from the humble and close-up to the rare and far-off.  The great racial Wisdom-teachings have more respect for the evolutionary process and the laws and principles undergirding it.

     From the beginning of a systematic study of dreams it is necessary to recognize that they will express meanings in images, symbols, allegories, dramatizations, figures of speech, even the comments and suggestions of a pun.  The transliminal is wonderfully dextrous in selecting the most apposite of these indications to sound the voices of the eight as they balance, correct, stimulate, foreshadow, reveal and inspire.  People and situations in daily life are changed from their objective reality to intimate conditions in the self and its subdued aspects, often unknown to the personality.  Later these images become less personal, more abstract, more universal.  They become more true-d to the noumenal realities and to the transmission of mystical experience.  That shift in the nature of the images is a normal accompaniment of the access to the deeper self and is an aid on the way to the higher self — that Great Self, so longingly envisioned in the East.

     But if the soul is in the human evolution it needs to balance, as far as possible, the realizations and insights of the other side of being with its activity in the.world. This is the “hearing and doing” enjoined upon the seeker in the Christian tradition.  It is Western in its pragmatic outlook — “one arm pointing to heaven, the other to earth.”  It involves a lessening of psychological blocks and fears, which are of the persona, and a rejection of the passivity and the neglect of the physical and material, which is still largely characteristic of the Eastern way.

     As already stated, many experiences that are merely extended consciousness, and of the next octave, the etheric octave of the sensory faculty, are deemed mystical by people, or even “seeing God.”  On the other hand, as MBM pointed out, even a common type of supranormal experience may qualify as mystical if it leads to a greater awareness of our meta-physical environment and a constructive change in the conduct of our life.  The experience may be some evidential communication with a friend or relative out of the flesh.  Or it may be the hearing of a voice, whether subjective or objective, calling for the reversal of some undesirable behavior pattern.  In any case, such “close-up” events may well have greater claim to mystical experience than much that is so identified by the “turned on” community.

     Only a few of the many varieties of transliminal experience can be reported in the present brief sampling.  But an attempt has been made to illustrate, through these, progress in the education of the soul; that is, in the leading forth (Latin, e-duce) of some of its potentials: the gradual overcoming of weaknesses, the emergence of new realizations in regard to both self and not-self; the fighting of “dragons” that block the becoming hero; the use of the more abstract, non-personal type of symbolism toindicate the next steps in the process, taken and to be taken, by the dreamer; the increasing true-ing of the imagination to the realities of higher space and higher planes of life and intelligences.

     The material comes mainly from men and women in their ‘thirties and ‘forties, all working in business or professions, and normal in intelligence and so-called “mental health.”  The sex of the dreamer makes little difference after the outer, or personal, areas of the subconscious have been passed through, and is therefore not mentioned in the interpretations.  It may be inferred, sometimes, from the experience itself.  The interpretations are, in most cases, verbatim as given by MBM in her classes and in the research groups she conducted with her more advanced students.  In a few cases they are paraphrases by the editor, for clarity and to compensate for the lack of the surrounding context.

The categories represented in this collection are not mutually exclusive.  The images in the section on Animal Symbolism, for instance, appear also in several other sections, and the same is true of those related to Steps in a Process, Alchemy Realizations, and Soul Node material.  The classification is on the basis of the main theme.

     How the progressions are to be assimilated into the perspective, attitudes and life in the workaday world cannot be described here.  It requires practice in control, but also in relaxation, and considerable trial and error in the three-fold man of body, heart and mind, in his earthly living.  Also helpful are exercises in meditation, involving conscious and subconscious, and the masculine and feminine attributes of the mind — and in this respect differing somewhat from the usual Eastern type.

     All veridical growth requires change.  In the case of a conscious evolutionary development there must be change in the being, not only in the persona, and not only in awareness.

     Each is responsible for his own stature, but striving in a like-minded group provides a testing ground.  Such cooperation was inherent in MBM’s method.  That method was actually the scientific method of hypothesis, observation, experiment, conclusion, but now applied to the intangibles — the living, vital intangibles of the human organism.  It brought in both analysis and synthesis: examination of parts and the building of a structure — not a wholeness, not a completion or a perfection, but an advance, conscious, systematic, and grounded, with “feet firmly planted in earth” – toward an ultimate spiritual Goal.

     The dream material selected for this sampling had to be restricted to those illustrations which expressed their intent most clearly and briefly.  Many, of greater instructiveness for the dreamer, or more impressive in their accord with the laws and principles of the evolutionary pattern, had to be omitted as requiring too extensive an explanation.  (A sub-group of this category is the fragmentary memories of past lives, which came up rather frequently.  They were considered useful as validating the fact of the continuity of individual life, and as sometimes containing a lesson for the present, but not as necessarily educative.)  It is hoped, however, that the material included will give some suggestion of the leveling up from the wholly psychological, still immersed in the struggles of Earth-Water, to the psychological-philosophic, with its movement toward Fire-Air, and wholeness in the being; and finally to contact with influences, or rays, from higher planes, objective.

     The comment introducing each set of examples is intended also to show how symbolism is employed as a universal language, rich in a content of thought and feeling, sensitivity and realization, that speaks for that greater, but less evolved part of us which is non-physical, supersensory, and capable of experience, learning, growth in many planes of life.

     The research behind this survey is grounded on the thesis that individual life extends far beyond the three-score-and-ten; that the evolution of the soul can be accelerated, to the elimination of much fear, ignorance and waste energy.  The full implications of this thesis cannot be clarified in this small collection of transliminal activity records but it may at least suggest that there is a source of experiential knowledge of deeper and higher reach than that which is yielded up by the outer layers of subconscious life.

     Is it selfish, this cultivation of powers and qualities “four-square, according to the nature of the soul?”  No.  It is a way to the larger self, and is epitomized thus in the Bhagavad-Gita: “The Self is the friend of the self of him in whom the self by the Self is vanquished.”  Included is right living with others, for, again, the larger includes the lesser.  It is not the only way, and its goal has been sought, through the centuries, in the greater and the lesser Mysteries of various peoples, and in certain types of Yoga.  However, these ways, for the most part, bypass the “temptations” offered the psyche by its life in the world, or seek to crush them out by repression.  The Western way seeks no escape from the pulls and pushes of the natural law, but cleaves a path through them, under the searchlight and guidance of the laws of mind and spirit.  In an ascending curve, the radiations from the soul node, the nucleus of being, becomes the mainspring of the conduct of life in a material world.  Here is beneficence to the outer self, and to that world.  The individual cannot change the world – very few can do even a little of that — but he can lift himself “off the shoulders of Atlas,” and that is a valid contribution to the well-being of the whole as well as to his own fulfillment.  His course is in alignment.with the laws and principles of the human evolution beyond the physical, some of which are stated in the platform of the school founded by MBM:

All men are souls in evolution.
The continuity of individual life,
Each is responsible for his own stature.
Some advance more quickly than others.
Help is given by divine beings.

     After the passing of MBM in 1952 the school she founded was discontinued but the research went on by some of her more advanced trainees.  These have contributed a few of the examples in this collection but the majority are from the time of MBM’s leadership.

     The underlying aim of all the research was to show that there is indeed a sequential and progressive use of the dream experiences to the benefit of both the earthly life of the student and the longer career of the soul; that the venture into the deeper areas of the transliminal is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, the human can undertake; that the quest for the deeper, and later the higher self, is in accord with the Aquarian influence now beginning to ray upon the earth.  The mind, in its power of both analysis and synthesis, is to turn to the nature of man himself and not only to the control, through technology, of the objective natural world.  The modern psychology has made some headway in this direction but a more profound study, using the scientific method, is before us.

     Among religionists, too, there is increasing avowal of the need for salvaging more of the life and light within the being of men and women.  Concern for the world, they see as right for the church, but also that there is the danger of being engulfed by it.  They are therefore stressing anew that, as one writer put it, “Strengthened inner resources are essential to any clear, valid directions amid the world’s muddled motivations.”^[1]

     Though our collection is limited in scope, and intentionally omits the more popularly discussed types of dream, we have sought to illustrate some of the laws and principles, the patterns and progressions, upon which the less well known, but still accessible, types are based.

                                              The Editor.

     MBM characterized images in dreams as psychic stuff of limitless scope.  She added that “this faculty of image-making is really the faculty which leads man from this world to larger worlds, and that without it he cannot go.  It accompanies all the other major faculties: sensing, feeling, thinking, and provides replicas, mainly of physical and emotional life.  It can also make abstract symbols, more related to the laws and patterns pertaining to the evolution of the soul.  When stripped of the biases and predilections of the personality, it can be trued to the noumena1 realities – an advanced state of development.  Even in the neighboring etheric planes, if you cannot imagine well you will have a bad time, perhaps difficulty with your clothes.  It is the more disciplined use of the imagination which becomes both tool and pathfinder to the higher realities for the student who has cultivated the faculty.  It is to this progressive use toward growth of stature and acceleration of the evolution that the transliminal is especially conducive.”  – Gerald W. Cornell, in Kansas City Star, Nov. 22, 1970

 

Early Steps Into The Transpersonal

     The material included in this chapter is representative of early penetration across the border of the personal subconscious.  The dreamer has been occupied in clearing up the psychological difficulties he has met in his adjustment to the physical and social worlds, and in making a better accommodation to himself and his environment; and in this he had been aided by the compensatory, corrective, stimulating energies, residing in even the outer layers of the “other side” of his being.  Under the guidance of his teacher he is coming to appreciate that he is more than his persona, more than his psychological type; that his transliminal contains not only the “debris” of his old conditioning but also the seed-bed of new flowering.

     He has learned to cope with his personal problems, if not to master them fully.  He has passed through the purgative stage, or the bulk of it, for psychic purgation continues, though in lesser degree, and is salutary on all levels.  A considerable amount of “ordering” has been done; a putting of things in their rightful place, as, for instance, the drives of sex and the appetites generally; the revaluing of old ideas and fixations; and the beginning of what MBM called “the filling out of hollows and the smoothing out of bumps.”  On the whole, the work thus far has been mainly analytic, but always, and indeed all through the further work, and into whatever heights and depths the dreamer is able to reach, analysis has been linked with synthesis.  Synthesis is the advance toward integration and wholeness in the being.

     From now on, the symbolic language of the transliminal will be increasingly of a universal nature.  The personal type of image-making — the use of friends and outer situations to illustrate meanings in the psychic personal life of the individual — will be lessened and the analogies and figures of speech of the timeless wisdom teachings will convey the new insights.

     The examples in this chapter have been selected for the incisiveness of their encounter with superpersonal realities.  These students have demonstrated emergent experiential knowledge of powers and resources beyond the horizon of their Earth-Water practical concerns.  Perhaps they are on the way to an ulterior type of the “practical.”  The steps they are taking are humble beginnings of the journey of the soul in consciously accelerated evolution.  The demand is, of course, for assimilation of the new realizations into waking consciousness – that “marriage” of outer and inner self, that produces a more advanced state.  As in walking, we use left foot and right foot, never one foot alone.

Illustration

     Cleaning out my closets, first with a brush, then with wet cloths, and finally with an acetylene torch.  This however I reserved for the little recesses that opened out in the walls.  It seemed that the torch was needed both to show where the recesses were and to free the dirt that had been incrusting them for years.

Interpretation

     Closets are one of the standard symbols for the subconscious.  Cleaning: the purgation motif, here involving the debris of the Earth-Water memories of which the dreamer has become aware, and which he is leaving behind.  The torch implies both light (understanding) and fire, the upward moving desire.  The recesses imply a move to further search and cleansing.

Illustration

     Writing Miss M. or discussing with her, the lengthening of a cable which now, apparently, went only as far as Europe.  S.E. proposed this lengthening as a means of paying his debts.

Interpretation

     Cable: Rope, cable, snake, frequently represent the life-force, or psychenergy (MBM’s term).  By no means limited to sex symbolism.  The implication here is the stretching of the life force through the deeper waters of the transliminal to places in the “higher space” of the higher and deeper self beyond the “belt” of the personal subconscious.  Miss M., a musician, is associated with the idea of harmony, the making of harmony as against conflict in the psyche.  S.E. is a relative living in the dreamers home, and so connected with the dreamers household of selves.  The “debts” of those aspects of the dreamers life not yet “redeemed” or made good, or “paid in full.”

Illustration

1. and I. had new stockings in our hands.Hers seemed to have rows of little pearls closely set together, near the top.  Mine had diamonds or rhinestones, not so thickly studded.

Interpretation

     L., a fellow student.  Pearls and diamonds are both stones that are used symbolically.  Pearls are translucent, diamonds are transparent.  The diamond refracts the light, and that is the important thing; the pearl has the colors on it, and that is the important thing.  In any case, they represent treasures gained, something of power attained.  Stockings here are a surrogate for shoes (ways of walking through life) and must be used for the future.

Illustration

     I was among farmers, in a house in the country.  They were gathering the wheat outside, and I was told they were gathering it into bundles, with twine, and that there were great balls of this twine in the field.  Some of the wheat seemed to be growing in the house, too, on the floor right under my.feet, and I began gathering it.

Interpretation

     Wheat is the preliminary to the making of bread.  Bread is the work of man (manas, mind) upon nature, here upon his own nature — the constructive labor of the mind.  Bread, the “stuff of life,” the nourishment for the developing powers of the soul.  It should be noted that the symbols used by the “I” are becoming less literal, rational.  A characteristic of the deeper areas of the transliminal is that it is not a replica of the third dimension.  Here the dreamer is coming nearer to the quality of a new rhythm.

This page should be added to the …  Dreams to the Higher Realities” in the chapter on Mystical Experience, beginning with offset number 130214.

G.B. 6/97

Illustration

     I was in a long rectangular room that seemed to be divided by a white curtain running lengthwise from one end to the other.  I walked right through the curtain and found myself standing before a figure in a flowing white garment, who lifted me bodily off the floor with arms, apparently, around my waist.  I did not see the face of the figure.  The whole episode was over in a flash, and I awoke with a momentary feeling of alarm.  But this was followed immediately by a feeling of awe and joy.

Interpretation

     This is an early mystical experience.  The rectangular room is the Training School of Earth, the rectangular “floor” of esoteric Masonry.  Here the dreamer notes the (metaphysical) dividing line between the lower Elements, Earth and Water, and the higher, Fire and Air — and breaks through it.  The contact with the figure dramatizes this step. The response of the dreamer is further confirmation, and it is wholesome.  She has been developing in heart and mind, on both sides of being.  “Lift yourself up, and let yourself be lifted.”

A Philosophic Psychology

     In the material presented here progressive changes in the self are registered, as in the previous chapters, but the emphasis now is more on a perception of the two natures in man (lower and higher; exoteric and esoteric), the contrast between them, and the striving for a reconciliation that will do justice to both.  There is a quickening awareness, if not yet a clear consciousness, that the dreamer is actually contacting strata in his own being that are related, somehow, to drives that transcend his earthly pleasures and pains, problems and triumphs, loves and hates, ideas and concepts.  However tentatively, he is building for wholeness in the self, developing his latent higher potentials, coming gradually nearer to the state of “four-squareness according to the nature of the soul.”  That is also the acceleration of his journey toward the fulfillment of the soul’s evolution.  He is not seeking escape from the demands of earth.  He must respond to these more effectively.  They will become less burdensome, the more he can bring to them of his Fire and Air experience.

     Arrived at this stage of his venture into the supersensory and meta-psychic areas of his transliminal, the dreamer will often come upon abstractions — the laws, principles, and the patterns behind the myriad forms of manifestation of the phenomenal worlds.  This is exemplified in the dream about the learning of “key signatures.”  These are mental realizations, testifying to the insight of the growing philosophic mind, the beginning of true Air.  In the ultimate, that power of mind becomes spiritualized, freed from all that is below it, however active it may be in that which is “below.”

Illustration

     I was at New York University.  I went on the roof of one of the buildings, to avoid the crowd — evidently a chapel, because I could hear the bells.

     While there, I saw before me a picture of four animals, like a sculpture come to life.  It seemed the animals had been left with my aunt F. after a fire, and I thought it was a shame to burden her with them any longer, even though the lion, the largest and topmost figure, was tamed.  With that, the lion turned over on his back and fell down near me out of the air, apparently dead.  I let the other animals out of the window.  They looked like little black dogs, but I thought of leopard.

Interpretation

     This material pertains to the handling of the animal nature, the natural man, especially the “dragons” of pride (the lion) and lust (the leopard) in the light of the higher learning (the University) — here, the philosophic perspective, not academic learning.  The dreamer had become aware in the conscious of a tendency toward arrogance and superiority, with their compensation in the subconscious of insecurity and inadequacy; with something of a similar failure to find the “middle road” in regard to sex.  He has conquered the lion dragon, at least to a fair degree “tamed” him and is therefore right in consigning him to his aunt F., an elderly lady representing the past.  The leopard is to become more like the dog, tamed, domesticated.  The fire has something to do with purification.  The sculpture suggests the lower nature in the stable, idealized condition.

Illustration

     A Japanese couple who seemed somehow related to me, brought back gifts from the Orient.  They had a lovely square of embroidery for their woman servant and fashioned it into a hat for her, which was to have three tiers when finished.  The embroidery was in gold flowers on a rose background on one side, and on the other had a gold background.  The servant was already richly dressed.  The gift the couple had brought me was not yet unpacked.

Interpretation

     The gifts are values which are to be brought back from the farther reaches of the transliminal to this world.  China and Japan are often used as the more distant, deeper-reaching parts of the transliminal.  The servant gets the beautifully worked square, that is, those who serve that which is beyond, or foreign.  The dreamer has not been serving that sufficiently, so that his gift is not yet unpacked.

     With the hat in three tiers is implied the higher levels of functioning, which have the leadership in the mind; it might be the higher physical, psychic and mental.  As the dreamer serves, or as the servant serves, he becomes as the master; that is the philosophical idea behind the story about Jesus washing the feet of Peter.  The servant is richly dressed, because the dreamer has already done good work, but he not yet polarized with the servant.

     The hat here has nothing to do with the phallus.  Such symbolism is usual in analysis, because many people, in their transliminal, are struggling with matters of sex.

     Three is often used to represent the three-fold man in the flesh; two, the psyche.

Illustration

     Was visiting with an Italian family.  They had with them some relatives, who were now going home, and I understood they had no food in the house.  Going to their home, with the daughter of the house, I had asked if they would like to have some fish.  Was going to buy a fish but found I already had one in my hand.  It was white and about five or six feet long, more like a serpent than a fish.  It had a hard beak, like a bird.

 

Interpretation

     This material includes a glimpse of the archetypal dragon. MBM’s verbatiminterpretation follows:

    The things the dreamer has drawn out of the tragic experiences of the long history of the soul are now taken back to the place where they thrive, namely, the South, and where it is necessary to take them.  The South, where the sun is, is often used to indicate the place, or rather the condition of the growth of the powers of the soul.

    The fish, which is long, suggests something that belongs to the secret teaching of the Sea Serpent.  It is a symbol of power to the one who knows how to deal with it.  If he is not strong, it attacks him.  Here the image is of a super-dragon, beyond the five human ones: greed, pride, lust, and the “father and mother dragons” of authority and inertia, respectively.  All the dragons have gold to guard for the “hero” who battles them; but it demands courage and stalwartness, and all the things that go into the making of man-fiber.  That is why this creature is long.

    The dreamer presents a synthetic – picture — the things that belong, or which also belong to the Sea.  He has the beginning of the making of a synthetic dragon.  The archetypal dragon is, but, from the point of view of each individual, it is being made.

    In proportion as we are trued to it, we see aspects of it.  We must know the difference between the dragon which is the archetypal pattern, of which we may have a vision, but which is objective to us, and what we will call the evolving of that thing within us.

 

Illustration

     A procession of nuns passes by.  The crowd throws money to them and I see three two-dollar bills on the pavement.  I pick them up and hold them till the nuns send for them – or until they should send for them.

Interpretation

     Nuns, here, are the symbol of introversion – active introversion, those who had given themselves to the work of the soul.  The three two-dollar bills probably represent the work of body, heart and mind to the service of the soul.  Nuns represent the eternal values of life, returned to the soul, a willingness to give the values of life to the service of the soul.

Illustration

     In a great underground crypt, of polished stone or marble.  At one time I met a few noisy young people there.  There was also a table with small souvenirs, of which I remember only some tiny glass pitchers.  Thought of getting one.  Felt the warm pressure of an embrace over my arm and shoulders.  There was no one visible, but I knew immediately that this was of a reassuring, protective kind, and I was most happy over it.  It was repeated once or twice more.  A little later a woman in red, with flowing hair threw herself down on my bed in a completely discouraged attitude.  I thought she was the mistress of Caesar, and pitied the pathetic little figure.  She drew a sad contrast between the embraces she had received and the one I had experienced, which she seemed to know about.

Interpretation

     The crypt of polished stone, man made, represents the work already done in the transliminal.  The noisy children are a misuse of the crypt.  Souvenirs: social ways, or intellectual ways, of taking souvenirs from the understanding that Aquarius implies.  The pitchers are associated with Aquarius, against the Water-bearer, but the water from above; the superficial as against profundity.  The protective hand suggests the protection against this infusion of superficiality.  The dreamer should not be affected by the young people, the philosophical adultery which the dreamer is leaving behind, and which was associated with power – power more than that of a king — the power of the world, and the way of the world.  (There is a great difference between sexuality and adultery.)

     Caesar was the powerful figure.  The figure in red represents the helplessness of the soul when it does not have the cooperation of the conscious behavior; it suffers, a sickness.  The woman in red is the mistress of a worldly power, as Kundry in the story of Parsifal, when she is under the spell of Klingsor (worldly power) and is a pathetic little figure.

     The other aspect of the soul, the contrast, is dramatized by the embrace of those parts of the life of the soul that have already felt the higher arms.  This is a process of a lifetime, and you see it underway, where part of the soul is the harlot and part is under the protection of the Larger.

     Note the affect on the dreamer, the difference it illustrates between intellectual and experiential knowledge.

Illustration

     Ann and I had been traveling in a foreign country.  She was carrying a large valise, and it was heavy. … Later we were learning our key signatures (for different musical scales) all over again.

Interpretation

     Ann, a much-loved sister, is a soul figure.  The dreamer had studied key signatures in childhood, but had given them little thought since.  Though music had been used earlier in the transliminal work, it served then to register the increase of harmony in the psyche.  It is now used differently, abstractly, music being the expression, in harmony or beauty, of the divine order.

 

Illustration

     In the northwest, mountainous territory — perhaps the Dakotas.  With a man.  His wife came in with a large basket of beets, and reproached me for not helping her more in carrying them.  Sang songs with this man.as if we had known them before.  Later went off into a little side room to sleep.

Interpretation

     The red beets suggests a gathering of the fruits of the earth.  The distant country, toward the North: In order to come to the distant country you have to extract the values of the earth experience.  In a sense, the Martha side does it, but ideally Martha does not have a conflict with Mary.  Still, to distinguish that there are two sides, they have to speak in this fashion; if Martha had not complained about Mary, the contrast would not have come out.

     The Mary side of the ego is singing songs with the masculine aspect — a point of activity between the wife, who is Martha, and the other side, which is like Mary.  The “I” principal, is in between Martha and Mary, a point of balance.  If it preserves that point of balance, it is correct, but woe unto the ego if it loses that position.  (The ego is the essential self, whose growth is like that of the trunk of a tree.)  From that point it can arbitrate for the good of both, and so keep peace in the household.

     That it should go to the side room to sleep is also correct, because it should keep itself isolated; and the more visible man has to do likewise, by giving it sufficient exercise in meditation and prayer — not be mixed with the Martha, but be in contact.  Caesar and the gods.  The visible man has to set the pattern.

Experiences of and in the Etheric Body

The material in this chapter reports instances of consciousness, in the sleep state, of the etheric body and of activity in that body.  The etheric is the life-side of the physical body and has been known to all the great traditions under a variety of names: the vital body, the spiritous (not spiritual) body, the eidalon, the double, the hylic body (Hermetic), the ka (ancient Egyptian), the nefesh (Hebraic).  In the Hindu tradition it was known as the densest of a sequence of seven subtle bodies.  MBM called it “the binder,” the integrating energy and substance animating the physical body.

     In the sleep state, and sometimes in the waking state, too, that vehicle can be separated to a certain extent from the physical.  If fully separated the death of the physical ensues; the silver cord, which is not a physical but an etheric cord, is broken.  A separation, though not complete, takes place in several forms of mediumship and in such Eastern practices as walking on a bed of glowing coals and the whirling of dervishes.  The functioning of the physical body in the sleep state, is at its lowest ebb and the etheric body is less closely bound to it.

     Now we come to the question of consciousness.  Can we be conscious in the sleep state?  Aren’t we then unconscious to everything around us as we lie there, motionless, inert?  Yes, we can be conscious in the sleep-state, we can be aware of all sorts of changes in the self, and sometimes outside the self, i.e. on the subjective side and on the objective.  In other words, our consciousness, like a lamp we hold, can move in our transliminal as well as in our waking life.

     Most of the people, things, situations, appearing in our dreams are subjective, that is, they are energized by our thoughts and feelings and sensitivities, and occasionally by our more profound cognitions and perceptions.  They are the form-side of the life behind them.  Ordinarily they are subjectively molded; they are within our own “lampshade”, as MBM put it, but they may also be thrown on our screen by life, intelligences, objective to us.  It may occur that the objective source is malevolent and this is one of the dangers of a lack of discrimination or of mental or emotional weakness.  We cannot go into this matter here except to say that the objective contacts when made by a trained dreamer, the trained student, are practically always benevolent.  They are particularly helpful in teaching him something of his own metaphysical equipment and helping him to learn greater control over it.

     Actually, the entire transliminal is of etheric stuff.  And that stuff is with us in both waking and sleep states.  We dip into it, for instance, every time we revive an old childhood memory or draw upon something we have learned and bring it to bear on something new to us.  But its powers to correct, to balance, to warn, to foreshadow, to offer us strength and resource from its more hidden storehouse, are superior even to these other more readily apparent virtues.

     Instances of consciousness of, and in, the etheric body were fairly numerous among MBM’s students.  Sometimes they included a transition state from waking consciousness, like going through a corridor, a shaft, or a tunnel.  In all experiences of the etheric body, any contribution to the maturing of soul power and quality could be assessed only with regard to the dreamer’s response — to his actions, his observations, the affect upon him.  In other words, experiences of the subtle body can be on several levels.  Those in the present sampling were selected mainly because they indicate differences in awareness and control, and offer lessons on the side of content as well as form and substance.

     Subtle body experience is not, in general, a mark of deeper or higher consciousness.  It belongs to the next octave of our native sensory equipment, but familiarity with it is appropriate to a study of the nature of man that includes his supramaterial endowment.

 

Illustration

     In the course of a short afternoon nap the dreamer found himself kneeling on the floor beside the couch, with his hands resting on its edge, but attached, at the head, to his prone body.  The instant he made this discovery, that is, became aware of the separation of his physical and etheric body, he was back wholly in the physical body and awoke.

Interpretation

     Consciousness for a moment was with the etheric body but could not be maintained there for further observation or action, hence the swift transition of consciousness to the physical.

Illustration

     I was in a car, in the air, above a huge traffic jam.  The car was not only weightless but translucent and gray and two-dimensional, a ghost car.  I looked down on the traffic jam and knew my way of traveling, my swift traveling, was all right.

Interpretation

     This student was still occupied largely with the outer, or more personal subconscious, but was nevertheless able to recall, with precision and clarity, certain characteristics of etheric body experience: the weightlessness, translucence, speed, and sense of the body (here the car) which are typical; and the description is apt.

     Usually, there are also individual variations, colored by hopes, fears, wishes, that is, by psychological as well as metaphysical factors.  With this student, we note the traffic jam, a situation, which sometimes caused her tension in the waking state.  But, basically, her consciousness in the etheric body, her observation regarding it, and her response, or “affect” that this traveling was “all right” are unusually good.

Illustration

     I felt that my father was around (he had passed on 15 years ago) although I could not see him and that he was pushing, or trying to push me, out of the bed.  In fact, all of my body except my head seemed to have been rolled out and was half on the floor and half on the bed.  I resisted.  I was considerably excited, feeling sure it was my father but not seeing him.  His presence seemed to be indicated by a soft singing sound around my ears.  I asked if it was he and he answered yes by his usual clicks in my ear.

Interpretation

     This material demonstrates a considerable degree of awareness of what is taking place with the etheric body, and a partial control of the situation.  The “I” is active, first, in noting an unseen presence, then observing the position of the body in relation to the bed, and resisting an exterior force that was drawing it out.  Then came the feeling of certainty that it was indeed the father.  The hearing faculty in the vital body was evidently more responsive than that of sight.  Identification of the presence was at first tentative.  Through the “singing sound” causing the dreamer to put the question — really a request for evidence — and receiving a reply which supplied it, the “clicks in the ear” involved the tactile sense of the vital body.  No doubt the “feeling of the presence” did also, but in a more generalized way.  The affect of excitement is a subjective confirmation of both the objectivity of the experience and its challenge to the dreamer.

Steps In A Process

     Whether the resources of the transliminal are tapped only to aid in a better adjustment to the physical organism and the world outside, or for that and something further, related to growth in the quality and power in the self, it is necessary to watch what is done by the “I” principle.  The actions and attitudes of the “I” become less and less reflective of the objective circumstance and more and more a mirror of conditions in the self, including both debris to be sorted and “seed-bed” to be cultivated; more and more obedient to the injunction of old, “man, know thyself” more and more helpful in the augmenting of stature; more and more conducive to success in the quest for the Greater Realities.  These realities are of the universal, the eternal, the things that are.  They are symbolized by the sun – in the higher mystical experience by radiations from that transcendent sun, Spirit.

     Man, in his age-long evolution, moves toward a lofty destiny.  The Wisdom-teachings of all the great races speak of that destiny, however varied the scriptures, epics, myths, the coded language of which it is the content.  The religions of both East and West all have some concept of that goal and foster aspiration toward it.  On their esoteric side these religions are more perceptive in regard to the “tasks” to be accomplished by the soul reaching toward it.  In this they are supported by philosophy (philosophia, meaning the love of wisdom) – love implying doing as well as hearing, practice as well as profession; experiential knowledge superseding faith, though without the heart, and its courage and devotion, little can be achieved.

     In our modern day, the West has an advantage over the East in the quest for the Larger Realities and the journey of the evolution, by its inclusion of the contribution made by psychology, notably the psychology of the subconscious.  The East has, in the main, bypassed this area of investigation and has attempted more direct contact with spiritual objectives.  This method may work well with their people, or with those who have a genuinely spiritual motivation, but it is not as well suited to the West.  Our subconscious in the West, is too crowded with the conditioning of a busy, commercial, social, material life to respond readily to the call of the supersensory within and outside of us.  But MBM has said there is no more genuine spirituality in the East than in the West.

     Actually, the exploration of the transliminal, even if it goes no further than the outer, or personal layers, can be a fascinating and exciting adventure.  Not only can it help in the solution of the problems of daily life, loosen us from obstructions to happiness and better functioning all around, but it can lead to the discovery and exercise of new potentials and the nurture of our development in the higher philosophic Elements.

     Broadly speaking, what we do in the transliminal is as important to our evolution, once our orientation is to a perspective more inclusive than Earth-Water interests, as what we do in the conscious waking state.  We must ponder it, assimilate it into waking consciousness; must make a marriage of the two sides of being.  Thus we come to the product of that marriage, a new and wiser state.  In MBM’s words:

From a larger point of view, what you do in the dream state is to be seen as contributive, and in its own way as binding, as in the waking state.  In the experiences that unfold as you go on you must be literally on guard for the moral it has for your entire being.  Your waking state is subconscious to your state in the body’s sleep.  The more you go on in the development of consciousness the more you have of metaphysical and mystical dreams; the more the one has impact on the other.

     There is not rigid separation between the “belt” of the personal subconscious and the strata below, and above it.  There is, rather, interpenetration with the subtler stuffs and energies of the deeper and higher aspects of our nature, and without it these aspects could not he as helpful as they are in “rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to God that which is God’s.”  The obligation is in both directions.  And so are the forces which draw us on.

     The pull toward the deeper and higher may be long buried in our souls, dormant, but it is lodged in our innate equipment and will make itself felt in some way, as soon as we begin, in earnest, to “mine and climb” into the more extensive ground of our selfhood.  This is the work of developing wholeness in our being instead of the partial representation which is the personality.

     The material in this chapter is typical of early, but distinctive, steps in the meta-psychical (meta, meaning beyond) layers of the transliminal.  The images and allegories are no longer dominated by their association with the experiences of the dreamer in the world, though they sometimes “take off” from these circumstances.  The sleep state now offers greater opportunity to those ranges of our faculties – especially sensing, feeling, thinking, memory, volition, imagination, consciousness.— to express the life of our higher psychic potentials, the developing powers that are of the soul rather than those dreams from the soul turned to earth that are now generally understood by the term psychic.

     The soul has its node, or habitat, in the higher psychic, where water becomes steam and fire and, like their material analogs, rises heavenward.  The soul is the nucleus of our super-physical life.  Its nucleolus is spirit.  In the fulfillment of the soul’s potentials is the completion of the human evolution – that which the Christian tradition calls the Thirteenth Man.  It is a long labor — in the Greek mythos, the accomplishing of the twelve labors of Hercules — and though it is not done in one lifetime, nor all of it in a body of flesh, it can be consciously and purposefully advanced in the here and now.  And that was a leading aim of the research of MBM and her students in the deeper area of the transliminal.

 

Illustration

     Several of us, fellow students, had been away and were now going back home over a way that was difficult.  It was steeply uphill and only the toes could get a foothold.  But it was a happy trip.  When we got to the top we found we could no longer travel on foot but had to take a plane the rest of the way.  We could have taken an easier road but had chosen this one because it was more exiting.

 

Interpretation

     Setting out, in the transliminal, on the ways of the higher.  The steep hill, the difficulties of the way home.  It is an enormous journey, of which the present effort is a little part.  The dreamer is not at the top, except, as in Olive Schreiner’s allegory of the Hunter, where the finding of a feather is a direction-pointer to the location of the quarry, the Bird of Truth — the eternal realities.  You have to take a plane — not in terms of earth, but a likeness.  The latter part of this journey is not made by earthly means.  It requires powers of mind beyond the earth-bound rational; and of the heart, beyond affection, empathy, ethics, duty.

Illustration

     That MBM’s daughter was at the house.  Ann knew she was there and recognized her before I did.  The daughter was a musician.  Then I went to Washington, to a summer camp.  Was in a dancing class there, and was taught to breathe more correctly in the upper register.  Had been holding my head too low.

 

Interpretation

     MBM had no daughter.  The daughter is the fruit of the MBM work in the dreamer, the development in the waking and sleep-states of the super-personal potentials of sensing, feeling and thinking.  Dancing is movement according to law: right living and harmony.  Law relates to truth.  There is a challenge here to these aspects in the dreamer: to keep in rhythm, keep in pitch, implementing the laws, especially when outer conditions are stressful.  Not being disturbed despite the troubles.  Upper register concerns the upper psychic here calling for calmness, assurance, whatever happens.

Illustration

     A little silver talisman in my hand, representing the three Wise Men, but part of it was still covered up.

Interpretation

     A challenge to more extensive knowledge of the self.  The dreamer has been working in areas that are strange, areas not yet conquered.  A certain amount has been conquered and has been gradually transformed, but many of the intrinsic values are still covered over, as indicated on the silver talisman.  Silver is one of the symbols associated with the soul more than with the psychic.  It takes wisdom to get to the things of the soul.

Illustration

     In India.  I see a man pounding on or at a small bread, or perhaps a large roll, in a wire tray.  He does it with a silver instrument like a rod.  I had a sense that it was the ancient Indian method (of grinding?) and that it was meant to impress upon me the slowness of the process.

Interpretation

     India, one of the places that has not yet submitted to the rule of mind; symbolic therefore of territory which man (manas) must conquer, so as to be useful to the soul, and eventually to spirit.  A long work before the transmutation, hence a challenge to patience.

Illustration

     A river flowing rapidly below me, or rather rapids in the river, and I could see the white lines of foam all the way across.  Yet people seemed to have built a town right in the midst of the current, having had to rescue the land from the river to do so.  I seemed to be walking on one of the roads they had built in this way and felt quite safe in spite of the rapids.  It seems I had passed this river once before, when I was traveling, but now I was in the town, on a visit.

Interpretation

     A river is either an obstacle or a stream of some kind of life.  When you have a river with rapids, the suggestion is obstacles.  It is difficult going, to reach that city.  The city, or town, motif has to do with organized life, here a center surrounded with difficulties.  It is where the dreamer must make his next polarization.  In this dimension one crosses a river literally; in other dimensions, you cross it in part, only part of you goes, some of your selves. You must wait until the majority of you passes before you accomplish the idea, withstanding those rapids.

 

Illustration

     That I had a new job, apparently in a theatre, and one of my tasks was to get the stage ready for an Irish act.  First there were pictures on a screen, then the dancing figures seemed to become flesh and blood, and I was among them.  They were doing an Irish jig, but although it was a lively dance, it seemed more like a Mayday dance, around a central figure.  There were men and women in it, but mostly men, but I believe the central figure was a woman.  One of the dancers carried a sort of round harp, with which he touched the head of another dancer for a moment.  Then I too seemed to be going around and playing the harp, and my fingers and hand felt the vibrations as I plucked the strings vigorously.  The woman in the center was so moved that she could not go on with the part of the dance she was supposed to do alone, but fell over on the shoulder of someone else.  I caught just a glimpse of her, and she was very beautiful.  She had golden hair, large blue eyes, and wore a red costume.

Interpretation.

     The Irish express emotions.  Here an expression outward, in this motive with the dance, which, on the physical level, is an expression of the whole body, not just a part.  The path of the soul’s evolution includes, first, the “dance” according to the body, then the heart, then the mind, and later spirit.  The dreamer’s major figure in this material is not yet quite able to do it.  She is the ideal figure.  According to Jung, she should be masculine, this being the dream of a woman (one who in the persona type did not sufficiently express feeling).  Here the soul image is feminine.

     The dance according to air is symbolized by the harp touching the head — airvibration instead of the lower red vibration (earth body).

     The dream is.recapitulative and represents a movement in accelerated evolution.  The experience was probably intensified by her participation in the Lenten cycle, observed by students in training, by conscious purgation and the making of order in all areas of being.  The recapitulation theme often appears after a certain stage of advancement, in both outer and subjective life.

     The theater:  more and more the stage of life on which the dreamer is to play her part — more and more consciously.  The picture is first on a screen, then three-dimensional, then the dreamer becomes it.

Soul Image and Soul Node

 

     Once the student has passed through the reflective and persona-conditioned levels of his subconscious life, and has made an opening for the trans-personal, he is likely to meet the soul image.  At first that image may emerge as a sister, especially one who is close to the dreamer, or a brother who is sympathetic and understanding.  Both are used because of their physical blood relationship, as surrogates for a “blood relationship” on another, still more intimate plane.

     This is not the compensatory soul image which Jung noted in his patients, and which he called the anima, if feminine, and the animus, if masculine, the sex in each case being the opposite to that of the patient himself.

     The soul image in the philosophic, in contrast to the psychological picture, often paves the way to the exercise of life in and through the higher psychic, the philosophic element of Fire.  The energies, of sensing, feeling, thinking, volition, memory, are no longer wholly concerned with the problems and pleasures of life in the physical worlds. These are handled better, with less emotional involvement, and probably more wisdom.  But the movement is now toward the more veridical self behind the persona, which has been so largely formed, unconsciously, by the pressures of the outer.  That self includes more than the trends less favored by the psychological type of the persona, as for instance, when a feeling dominance represses, and so under-exercises, thinking.  It includes all the faculties, to whatever extent they have been developed, and now is to give special care to their newly revealed capacities.  Ordinarily, their weaker ranges are in the upward moving energies of fire — the seeking, questing, yearning, aspiring, delicately sensitive reaching toward the Larger realities, the eternal truths, the Things that Are.

     The first breath of influence from the Larger will probably come to the sincere, progressing student, through the soul image.  The element of Fire is the one in which the mystic is the outstanding practitioner.  It belongs to the making of wholeness in the being, and like physical fire, thrives best when infused by currents of air.  Supported by the insights of the higher mind, it can become a radiant power indeed.  But the constrictions of the lower mind, even if it has become logical, dextrous, intellectual, can quench the flame.

     The material presented below has been selected for the incisiveness and beautywith which the soul image appears, the different forms it may take, and the standard symbols of the influence from the soul nucleus.  The first two are from a woman whose soul image is of her own sex, a well loved sister.  The third shows a loftier, regal image affecting the dreamer deeply with its beauty and power.  It also marks awareness in the transliminal of the centrality of the soul node to all members of the household of the self.  The fire-red coloring and the richness of its surroundings are further indications of its name.

     The fourth example stresses the symbol of silver, which, like the moon, is sure to be used by the dreamer advancing toward a knowledge of his deeper nature.  It also brings in too, something of the higher-mind understanding, which belongs to that “prize to be won” through the development of the potentials in the soul.

     Experiences of this kind are both exhilarating and sobering; stimulating and comforting; expanding of horizons and sharpening of the focus of consciousness on the need for aligning of one’s acts and attitudes with the pattern of fulfillment to which the experiences point.

 

Illustration

     Ann and I traveling in the West.  At or near to our destination we became separated.  She left the train at a stop to get a porter, but I remained on it and it moved on toward the town.  It was on a hill.  I saw water below us and sat tight.  Went to a house in the town.  After a while I saw Ann through the window, hailed her, and she joined me.

 

Interpretation

     Ann, in the objective, is the sister closest to the dreamer, and was often used by her as the soul image.  The influence she represents has become separated in the earth traveling, and indeed will be subject to this separation even after the work of purgation and ordering has been largely done in the personal subconscious.  Paradoxically, the soul image gets away, and here the effort is to “get a porter” to help with more psychenergy to draw from.  The porter should have appeared with the dreamer.  The water, in this context, represents dangers.  The loss of Ann represents the loss of vision, temporarily.  But we have to carry on just as well during that period as when Ann is there.

Illustration

     Ann.and I were doing a dance together around the walls of a cellar.  We seemed to be keeping perfect step, our hands clasped and feet touching rhythmically.  The whole thing had to do with an initiation.

 

Interpretation

     This material, from the same dreamer, but a little later, shows a closer approach to the soul node, and the movement of the “I” principal in rhythm and harmony with it.  It is a wonderful thing to have attained that experience, even for a few moments.  And it is a step in initiation, which is a process, not a sudden revelation, as often claimed by the users of drugs and other means to speedy results.

Illustration

     After a meeting with college friends of some twenty years ago, one of whom showed me old photographs, I went upstairs to a castle-like apartment where members of a family were meeting in various rooms, and arguing about money, their inheritance.  There was one lady central to all the groups.  She went from group to group and was important to each.  She had her living quarters here.  These were beautifully furnished, in contrast to the crude rooms in which the meetings were held.  There was a break in the meetings and I went with a friend of mine to the lady’s apartment.  The furnishings were of a rich red-brown wood, with red carpet on the floor, and red damask wall coverings throughout.  The lady was cool to me and I left.

Interpretation

     This is the dreamer’s first contact with the soul image as dramatizing the trans-personal, or deeper self.  That self is unfamiliar to the outer self, hence it is “distant” at this point.  Yet the momentum toward it is unmistakable.

     The castle, here the castle-like apartment, is associated with kings and queens, and is often imaged as the home, or base, of the psyche as soul.  That the soul node is the nucleus and powerhouse behind the selves of the household of selves is being recognized by the dreamer in her statement that the “Lady” visited all the groups, was central to them, and was important to them all.

     The richness of the furniture is a hint of the wealth in power and quality in the treasury of the soul, as is the red damask wall covering.  The red is the red of fire, the higher psychic, that can reach toward the sun of spirit, not the red of the sensual or the life-side of the physical body.

Illustration

     MBM had a wonderful silver statue made, to the accompaniment of music, and kept it as a surprise for us students.  On the left as I faced it, was a great tankard, or pitcher, square-shaped, and at least three feet high.  On the right were the almost life-size figures of two or three leading musical conductors.

Interpretation

     Now we are coming to a place of deep concern with regard to the soul.  Before this there had been themes indicating activity in service to the philosophic work, which brought the dreamer nearer to the soul node.  There had also been confirmation in the form of a silver ring, given to the dreamer with the injunction that it should never be taken off — suggesting that it signified a pledge.  Subsequent material speaks of more direct relationship to soul values, powers, and needs.  That is why silver is so emphasized.

     Music here pertains to something abstract.  Music is more elusive than any other art.  What is implicit in music, in this abstract sense, is the flow of life: vibration according to laws and principles, to make beauty.  Beauty needs to be a very important part of this student’s life, one of the places to be filled out – more emphasis on beauty, warmth of heart, tenderness — plus the need of self-discipline.  This is the future of the soul development.

     As for the silver statue with the large pitcher beside it, that is a perception that MBM’s work is of Aquarius and that she is a “water-carrier” (whose water is from above, the water of the higher understanding).  The statue therefore is not something MBM has made but that she is “making” according to abstract principals and laws; it is beautiful and it surprises her students from time to time.  The one who makes the statue is a musician-molder — an abstract molder under laws relating to the beauty that must be in the life of the student – laws that he must live.  The musical conductors indicate that other operators are to come into this picture.

A Few Animal Symbols

     As the progressive movement in the transliminal gains, and the dragons of taboo and inertia (the father and mother dragons) are dealt with, and other fetters in the persona are loosened, the new life rising up is often expressed in relation to animal symbols.  Birds, for instance, are especially adaptable as signals of growth in knowledge and understanding — they fly in air.  Birds run the gamut from the barnyard fowl, with their closeness to earth, to the eagle, who soars nearest of the feathered creation, to heaven.

     The serpent is a standard symbol of the life force, and is by no means associated only with the sex drive.  In nature objective to man, the serpent appears to be pure energy, slithering as he does, without legs; in the higher animals, he is like the horizontal spine; in man, like the erect spine, when he is seen in the ideal position.  Then he is leading to the brain, and in that position points to the governance of the household of the self by the philosophic, and in the ultimate, noetic mind.

     The fish, broadly speaking, stands for values to be gained from the experiences and lessons learned in the sea of life.  The dog may be, at first, a symbol of the earthy, and sometimes promiscuous desires, but later the practical mind, the companion of man.

     The horse is a symbol of power.  Even on the physical level we speak of power in the engine as horse-power.

     There are also animals that indicate dangers in the philosophic elements of Earth and Water – the octopus and the crocodile, for instance, and wolf and the pig.  (The pig, not because he is supposed to be dirty, which is actually not true, but because he roots in the earth with his strong snout, and is therefore a sign of materialism.)

     It is the action of the dreamer, vis-à-vis the animal, or his response to it, that counts.  Thus, the canary, in the last example following, betokens a distinctly more developed state, one more tinctured with spiritual tendencies.  In contrast, is a bit of material from another dreamer, a woman student who was dismayed to find a canary so entangled in her window curtains that he was unable to struggle free of them.  This woman was still excessively attached to her housewifely role.

Illustration

     I had already given my dog tongue that day, and was going to give it to him a second time, but felt uneasy about doing so.

Interpretation

     The dog here represents the lower, practical mind.  He is the companion of man, mind, but not the mind in its higher, super-rational state, beginning with insight and understanding.  The progression in the development of mind, as associated with Air is: facts, knowledge, understanding, wisdom.  The practical mind is as the forecourts of the philosophic mind.

     The student should not have given the dog tongue; that is not a fitting food for the animal.  This student was battling through the dominance of the lower, rational, analytic mind, the earth mind, toward its Fire and Air potentials.  This does not mean in any sense the abrogation of the practical mind, or even a lessened assessment of it, but rather an application and honoring of it in its place.  The dreamer was right in feeling uncertainty in regard to giving more tongue to the dog.

Illustration

     I was moving to a new apartment and sorting out my possessions.  Some things I knew I would want in the new place, others I was through with and would discard, and still others I was not certain about.  One of these was my cat.  I am fond of her, but would she be happy away from my present home?  As I turned this over in my mind, she came running toward me, jumping up and down, as she touched my foot.

Interpretation

     This is early material and the first use of the cat symbol.

     The cat nature is comfort-loving, has a kind of self-centered independence, and lacks the friendliness and companion ability of the pet dog.  But it sees in the night.  In the old Egyptian tradition the cat goddess, Seket, stood high in the pantheon of the gods.  She represented that power of the mind at lofty stature that penetrated the darkness, ignorance, of all that is below it.  So the cat, like the bird, and indeed many of the animals, runs a long gamut in the meanings it conveys.  Here the cat has to do with certain traits in the dreamer not yet subordinated, but “up and down.”

Illustration

     Was looking down at a canary in a little enclosure, not a cage.  Gave him a silver ring “to hold on to.”  He grasped it tightly in his beak.  I held him in my hand and marveled at his strength.  Was he trying to fly away?

Interpretation

     The canary is a bird symbol often used to indicate a movement of the soul toward its fulfillment in spirit, however remote that fulfillment may be.  The canary is yellow, which color, like gold, is associated with that which is in the direction of, first, the deeper self and, later, the higher consciousness.

     Here the bird is seen by the dreamer and held in his hand, with an awareness of strength that could not be found in the objective bird.  This material came at the end of an active rhythm, the winter season in the physical world, and the season of the more progressive world, especially in the mental development, for man (mind).  It symbolizes a child, or product, of the rhythm, and its meaning must, of course, be assimilated into waking consciousness, pondering, assessment.  What have been the constructive changes in the dreamer’s life in the world, through his experiences in the transliminal: the loosening of persona bonds, a greater appreciation of his potentials, degrees of “filling up hollows and smoothing out bumps,” new reaches of sensory, emotional and mental life in its depths and heights.

Alchemical Symbolism

     Alchemical Symbolism is one of the nine main branches of Symbolism as a universal language and is especially adapted to expressing changes in the complex picture of the evolving soul.  It is preeminently a coded description of processes, from the lead of earth fixations to the goal of the higher stature.  We speak of course of philosophic alchemy, whose subject is man and his upward transformation, for which the use of such terms as alembic, salt, sulphur, mercury, elixir, were merely cover words, employed at a time when these were necessary.  This was especially the case in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  There were, to be sure, physical alchemists, working on the material substance of minerals, but to the philosophical alchemists, these were the “sloppy workers”.  (Alchemy means the chemistry, from the Arabic definite article al.)

     Among the other main divisions of symbolism as a universal language are: nature, including plants and minerals; jewels; animals, including those inhabiting earth, water and air; building, mainly the house, its parts and its construction tools; number, not numerology, but relating to cosmic processes from above, and to man developing from below; body, in all the richness of the external and internal organism; and geometrical, the most abstract.  Biblical figures and gods of the old mythologies and the racial traditions are also widely and, in the wisdom teachings, consistently used.

     All the branches of symbolism seem to be available to the transliminal, even though the dreamer has had little or no contact with them in the conscious, waking state in his present life.  Some could no doubt belong to what Jung terms the collective unconscious.  Whether they do or not, their value in a process of development is in accordance with what the “I” does about them: his observation, action, response, and the affect upon him.  What he does rightly in connection with alchemical symbolism, its marking of deep going changes made, and to be made, in his being, is to be reflected in his outer life.  Perhaps this branch of the language of wisdom lore, serves more intimately than any of the others in activating the higher consciousness and the higher nature.

 

Illustration

     We have a new stove or range in our school’s dining area, and must all know how to regulate it.  It has been installed by MBM.  Mussolini seems to be with us and runs the danger of being fined for not closing the oven door properly.

Interpretation

     Mussolini is a symbol for dictatorship.  That fire in the stove is increasingly valuable when you have the stove in the place, or condition, where you can control the fire.  If the heat is let out it cannot bring about the alchemical change.  This is an illustration of how important it is to keep the heat at home.  (This student was battling with a persona tendency of occasionally lashing out.)  Wherever you find places weak, or out of key, in your behavior patterns, make of them an exercise.

The oven, a place for alchemical change.  The heat must be kept in the central position instead of escaping.  The soul has to learn how to contain the heat, in order to obtain light.  Part of the transition is indicated here.

Illustration

A college class in botany.  After it was over the professor sent for some wine and told us his life story, with the implication that, according to the ordinary rules, he should have been killed several times — in other words that there was a life content behind the facts.

Interpretation

     Botany can be said to be a story of life growth.  The dreamer is learning from stories of life growth.  Wine is the implication that there is “wine” in it — the change of the natural juice to the juice that is fermented — an alchemical story of a transformation.  Major themes, like those of transformations will he repeated through variations, often an enrichment and delight to the soul, as music to the ear.  There are many sides of the mountain, and it may be seen in different lights.

Illustration

     I noticed a small stone holder, reminding me of a Japanese garden lantern.  It was partially open to a view of the interior.  There was a clay bird in it – not an ordinary one but an unusual species.  A fire was burning in the vessel, with a piece of meat visible in the flame.  I lifted a sort of lid, and the bird popped out.  He was completely wet with perspiration from the heat.  Then he dropped to the floor and broke.  I went to look after my animals and found they were all right.

Interpretation

     The fire and the heat in this psychodram are related to the “sulphur” of the process with which the old philosophical alchemists were concerned.  The term is a cover word, one of many they used similar to the minerals of the material alchemists (for they had need of secrecy) but meaning the upward rising flame of the heart’s desire — that Fire so necessary to the making of the “gold” of spiritual stature.

     The clay bird is the literal- and material-mindedness to which the dreamer tended, but which is now undergoing change, through heat.  The clay is repeated in the meat(flesh of earth) seen in the flame.  The holder is the soul as container (form side) the bird as the life side.  Birds are usually associated with thoughts, sometimes mental activity in general, and they range from the barnyard fowl to the eagle, who soars to the heights.

     The vessel is of stone, pointing to enduring values.  That which furthers the unfolding of powers in the soul furthers the making of “gold”, the goal of the human evolution.

     The shattering of the bird is an exaggeration, or rather, an underscoring of a certain freeing from an old type of mental bondage.  The bird is unharmed by the fire of the supra-personal emotional life.  The other “animals”, or the rightful place and use of the earth-water life, are also unharmed.

     To reduce material of this kind to sex symbolism would be absurd.  This student had no problems in that respect.

Transformations

The material presented here centers upon the theme of constructive changes going on in the being, or the upward transformation of .psychenergy.  Something of a new condition is registered in the transliminal, whether generalized, as in the example of a victory through fire destructive of psychic build-ups of the past, no longer useful (fourth example) or, more specifically, as in the dreams reporting conquest of certain fears through a reliance on health from the other side of being.  In either case, the elements of an old condition are being transcended.  This is always an aid in the loosening of bondage to the ways of the persona, developed so dominantly under the influence of the outer environment, and building the individuality, which calls now upon the treasure of knowledge and resource in the transliminal.

     But of course the pointers from that other, and greater, side of being must be taken to waking consciousness – and assimilated.  Their lessons and their values must be honored and, augmented by pondering and in the conduct of life in the world.  So do we bring into practice the product, the child of the mating of conscious and transliminal, for the third dimension, the realm of time and space, is the dimension of manifestation.  It is what Jesus meant when he said:  By their fruits ye shall know them.

     Yet these gains, valuable as they may be, are still only the short-range rewards. The greater gains and of longer range, are to the permanent part of our organism, the soul.  The changes made, however humble, add to its strength, fineness, skill, capacity — draw out at least some aspects of its latent powers.  It is not by accident that the soul image (here the widow in the fifth illustration).appears so prominently, and that the activity and success are hers.

     But attainment of the change is not enough.  It must be maintained, and that is where its application in daily life is necessary.  If the student is participating in a like-minded group, in which there is caring one for the other, and cooperation in furthering the common purpose, each can advance more rapidly in stature, in the philosophic life.  It is hoped there may be many such groups in the coming age.

Illustration

     Visiting a woman in a room with a green carpet on the floor.  Another woman makes a fire in the fireplace.

Interpretation.

     Getting on top of the emotional world — the polarization is getting up into the fire.  Becoming a one instead of an intellectual persona and repressed feeling — becoming more devoted now to the cause of the Larger in all things; standing above earth and water and using them.  (The green carpet, in color symbolism is related to feeling.  Blue is related to mind.)

Illustration

     I was in a big hall, at a political meeting, all men.  I am holding a blue ribbon in my hand, and it gives me an idea for a speech.  Later I am called upon by the chairman to make the speech, and I go up a flight of stairs to do so, speaking from a gallery.  When I got up to talk I knew only the beginning of what I would say, but further ideas came and I seemed to have no fear.  I spoke briefly, and to the point, and it went alright.

Interpretation

     The blue ribbon is the thread of mental thought, or language which serves the dreamer.  If you have no fear, the flow continues.  Remember, that fear, like a scissors, could clip the flow of the blue ribbon.

Illustration

     I was wearing glasses, the lenses of which were topped by the little gold crescent-shaped ornaments on my dress.

Interpretation

     Here the dreamer is looking at things through the eyes of the soul, for the purpose of spirit.  The glasses are the symbol for seeing (understanding) more clearly.  The crescent-shaped ornament is a soul symbol.  The crescent and the crescent moon are frequently used in this connection.  There are many reasons for the analogy, one of the chief being that the moon implies the idea of growth toward fulfillment.

     Gold, the metal that is pure, does not tarnish and, in its philosophical use, is connected with eternal values.  For the consciously evolving soul gold represents the work of that “filling full,” under the leadership of the higher mind and the supporting heart, which advances the soul toward spirit.  So we have here the suggestion of mind, soul and spirit — the three in combination.

Illustration

     Some town celebrating a war victory.  At the same time there was a great fire in the town, or many fires.  A vivid description of it was given by someone who has lived through it, but I also seemed to be there, looking down on the town.  High above the flames were a steadier kind of red lights, which I thought signified the victory.

Interpretation

     The flames are destructive.  The dreamer is first given a description of what is taking place, then takes the experience to himself as one who has “lived through it.”  The fire-energy is here associated with war, with a conflict, and the radical tearing down of something that has been build up – the town, or part of a city in the dreamer – old ideas, perhaps attachments no longer constructive.  The reason he is looking from on top is because his view is from the mind.  Yet nothing has been permanently destroyed. Many things go through transformations, and those elements which are not to remain are left behind.  But the essence remains.

Illustration

     A widow with a little girl of four had come into this work.  I described her to someone else as “spry, lively, and capable.”  She supported her father and mother as well as her little daughter.  She was a large tall woman, but not fat, and was dressed.in black.

Interpretation

     The widow is a soul symbol, appearing often at a certain stage of a student’s development.  She is that which has departed from, left behind, that which is undesirable on the male, or outer side, but has the child from that mating.  The parable of the widow’s son is important.  The large figure of the woman in this material, and her capability and self—reliance indicate that the soul is growing in powers and qualities.  The student implies that the widow is good for this work — the transforming of the self as it becomes in service to the soul.

     That is what the dreamer is to do.  It is what the “I” and the self in manifestationmust do that is an aid to the soul; that is, accelerate, consciously, the evolution of the soul.  The soul cannot do it.

     A little later this dreamer again used the figure of the widow, but this time she had a son.

     Note: In interpreting this dream, MBM referred to the story of Parsifal as a poetic illustration of the rise of the soul, represented by Kundry, from its dark and abject state to its strength and beauty, through the work of the hero-knight.   Editor.

Soul Heritage

     Broadly speaking, heritage comprises the whole history of the soul before coming into the present body of the flesh.  More specifically, it is that which the individual monad has made of itself, in terms of strengths and weaknesses, powers and qualities, skills, sensitivities, and so-called native “gifts.”  All this is the product of innumerable causes and effects, distilled, as it were, in a certain momentum the soul has gathered.  Yet that product can express only in part in a given life, because it is limited by the persona, which in turn has been molded, in the main unconsciously, by the environment (teachers, churches, peer groups, climate, etc.) and the influences of the national, racial, and family stock.

     The lineage of the soul is recognized in all the great religions, though, as a rule, on their esoteric side only do they give due consideration to its evolutionary nature.  For still clearer insight we must turn to some of the “pagan” philosophic systems, notably the Platonic and Neo-Platonic, and to the great myths and epics, legends and sagas of heroic characters, like Homer’s Odyssey and the story of Gilgamesh, from old Mesopotamia.  All are in code, so that their inner meanings need to be deciphered; but when deciphered they reveal a basis agreement with regard to at least some of the stages of the soul’s evolution.  A few include both the involutionary and the evolutionary aspects of its age-long journey from its origin as a “light spark” from the Forge of Creation to its completion and fulfilled, evolved Return — its progression “from the acorn to the noble oak.”

     This majestic progression is the distinctive subject matter also of philosophic alchemy and philosophic astrology — neither having much to do with its mundane namesake.

     The business of the soul in its earthly sojourn is to draw out and to cultivate its potentials: to exercise and bring to fruition those talents and abilities it has already grown to some extent, and to overcome as far as possible its weaknesses.  The challenges and struggles of earth are well adapted to serve this education, this leading forth (e-duco), but much depends on how they are met.  As Socrates said, it is not the circumstances that count but the way we meet them.  He meant, count toward the evolution, the building of stature.

     When the East speaks of Karma it is referring to heritage.  But the concept of Karma, at least in the popular mind, has in it much of gloom, of heavy burden and pain, to be borne without complaint, because they have been incurred by guilt in a former life – without complaint and without healthy struggle for alleviation and remedy — the fatalist view.  The Western attitude is more active, more combative, more willing to make effort, particularly through science and psychology, to change undesirable conditions in the self and in the world.  The East will no doubt move nearer to the Western position, and the West to the more subjective practices of the East, as with various types of Yoga exercises.  But, as MBM pointed out, there is no greater spirituality in the East than in the West.  And it is the West, especially with its contribution of a systematic study of life in the unconscious, that is helping to a synthesis including the advantages of both sides.

     In the matter of the soul’s heritage the researches conducted by MBM have gone further than even those of Dr. Jung.  The latter did indeed tap areas below the surface of waking consciousness that brought to light trends, memories, archetypal figures, a conditioning markedly different from the traits of the persona.  Called collectively the “shadow,” these discoveries were frequently useful in promoting the emotional, and even the physical, health of his patients.  Jung sensed that the “shadow” was of further depth, infinite depth, perhaps, but confined his study to the more readily accessible areas within it that served his therapeutic purpose.

     The “bumps and hollows” accumulated by the soul in his long history lie beyond these areas, and a philosophic education seeks to smooth them out and fill them up.

     Occasionally analysts touch on memories and experiences not of this life, sometimes “peak experiences” of a religious nature, which Jung called the numina.  These were valued but whatever of this nature emerged was directed only toward a more constructive adjustment of the patient toward the self and toward the world.  This is the aim, and a most commendable aim, of all good psychotherapy.  But it is only a forerunner, a pre1iminary, in MBM»s work.

     A frequent contact with heritage among her students was through transliminal memories of previous lives.  These were sometimes vivid and moving, but they were also fragmentary and were often mixed with modern elements.  The details of the experience might seem familiar to the dreamer, yet unfamiliar; only from time to time did they impact upon him as clear memories.  Sometimes they were instructive as an antidote to false pride; or an illustration of the courage of which that soul was capable of in facing danger and privation; or they might report instances of cruelty or vain ambition; or a passing through the moment of body’s death.  They could be helpful in broadening and deepening the perspective on the soul, in weighing obstacles to the ascent that needed still to be rooted out, and in offering useful lessons from the past.

     Yet MBM did not place special value upon these fragments, except perhaps as an interesting, first-hand verification of the continuity of individual life.  The incidents of former lives erupting through the transliminal are, of course, not the measure of what the past has contributed to the maturing of the soul.  There may have been little awakening of the latent life in the philosophic elements of fire and air. The nearer we can come to the emanations from the soul node — the further we can penetrate below the “belt” of the personal subconscious — the closer is our reach to the deeper self, the higher consciousness, and mystical experience.  As MBM reminded her students, the nature of life is to flow, and the flow is toward a destiny in an ultimate goal.

     The demands of life in the world are not to be neglected or depreciated but are to be seen in a longer perspective.  And therein lies much freedom.  Also much revaluing.  Whatever we do for the less developed potentials of our soul-nature, for its “four-squareness” we do for its maturing toward spirit.  In that sense, soul growth can truly be called spiritual.

     If the soul node is our nucleus, the seed of spirit is its, our, nucleolus.  And it is the carrier of our heritage from above.  It is the dynamic behind all soul growth, but we are each responsible for that growth.  In that growth is the potential of our ultimate spiritual stature.

Illustration

     I was a warrior in Troy, ancient Troy.  The arrow struck my head.  A sharp trust of pain.  Then I was lifted out of my body and found myself walking in a circle around my body, lying on the ground.  The sensation of being lifted was pleasant.

Interpretation

     This is a clear recall of the moment of passing out of a previous life in the distant past.  This student was in a male body but had had memories of a previous life in a female body.

Illustration

     My sister and I in a rowboat.  She was rowing but I was sitting in the bow of the boat, and bent forward, using my arms as oars, apparently to make the boat go more swiftly.  A figure whom I called “the mother,” but who had no resemblance to my physical mother, was rowing in another boat nearby.  She was moving more quickly than we, and I thought it must be because she was going with the stream.

Interpretation

     The “mother” represents the motive power inherent in heritage – the mother, in the stream of life, is the touching of heritage, the momentum of the past; and that is why she is moving more rapidly.  The sister is a symbol of the eager in the dreamer, whose more intellectual type personality had been doing the work.  The “I” is coming closer to the dynamics of growth in stature, and is actively helping.  When that becomes the dreamer’s major, the sister will do the helping.  If the dreamer goes with the “mother” he will go more quickly, because he will be going with those things in the past that are aligned with the law.  The good that has been accomplished is never lost; it is stored up against the time when we can again take it – the momentum when working with the laws. Previous material from this student indicated a strong trend toward metaphysical and philosophic studies.  The impulsion was now to do something more about them, both in the learning and the application in service to others.  When this was done, the “I” would be doing the rowing, instead of only helping, and would be in even pace with the “mother.”

Illustration

     A child (a boy) in a garden eating big dark grapes from a high vine or tree.  The top of the grapes was softer than the bottom, as though they were slightly over-ripe.

Interpretation

     Grapes are fruit already grown.  Therefore the new in the dreamer, that which is as a child, and therefore receptive to the new, must profit by the old.  The present living unit whom we call by the dreamer’s name is at a place where it must profit by its heritage.  The heritage is “over ripe;” that is, it is high time he begin to profit by his heritage.  The high vine suggests the difficulties of attainment.

The Quest Motif

     The motif of the Quest is not likely to occur in the early stages of the work with the transliminal.  It is outside the aspirations of the persona and the mundane earth~water orientation of the psyche.  The reach of the Quest is toward the Eternals, the Cosmic, the Larger, that begins with the realm of Spirit.  It takes many different forms, but all imply that changes had been made in the self — in heart and mind, sensitivities and will – and that old authorities, fixations and biases have been overcome, together with the limitations of the intellectual mind – the things that have “gone to the death.”  Rather, they have been transformed.

     That seeking, searching, is sometimes called the quest for Truth.  MBM avoided use of that term, for, as she put it: “Truth is a diamond of so many facets that to claim Truth for any few of them is to speak falsely.”

     Castles, kings, knights, appear often in the imagery of the Quest.  These are faint, distant echoes in the awakened soul of the seeking of the Grail, aglow with the life and light of Spirit.  That the questing of the dreamer is valid is indicated by the active, undaunted, self-reliant part he takes in it.

Illustration

     A lovely waterfall, at least 100 feet high.  Spray falling about.  Impaled on a bush along the edge of the pool, a large fish.  Avidly tearing bits of flesh and eating them in big gulps was a peregrine falcon.  Oddly, I could see only the head of the bird.  It was attacking the fish desperately but it was much, too much.  It couldn’t eat that much, that fast.  It had to stop and rest between bites.

Interpretation

     This material is philosophical in nature.  It is an early quest motif, and it brings in the hunt, the hunter and the game, the big fish.  The big fish represents the lessons, the food, the nourishment of the sea of life and of the experiences which come out of the great sea.  The falcon, symbolizes the hunt and the hunter.  Here he signalizes the beginning of the hunt for the Larger realities.  We have a tableau: the “twin” in the unconscious is presenting this drama  for the dreamer, giving him the suggestion to learn by going through experience — not through any hurried, aspirational cult approach, that  flies over the woods instead of going through them.

     Note the setting: Waterfall (a hint of the water from above, i.e., insight and understanding); fish, the life of the sea; bush (the growth of earth-water).  The fish is on top of it.

Illustration

     We were dressed as knights — women knights, and we lived in a convent in the woods.

Interpretation

     Knights symbolize action in the world; the women knights and the convent, action in seclusion — here a convent in the woods.

     The transliminal is presenting a balanced picture between the centrifugal and the centripetal movements; not in an ordinary, psychological sense, because the knight is on a mystic journey.  Both knight and nun are on a mystic journey.  Both parts of the dreamer, outside and inside, are related to a mystic journey.  The whole being should be involved in that journey, as suggested in this material.  The real quest is the Quest for rebirth into the Spiritual.

Illustration

In Holyrood Castle.  Saw the Stone of Scone by the roadside — a raised, flat, triangular stone, with the apex side rounded like the apse of a cathedral – and a coffin on top of it, or rather, a marble sarcophagus, beautifully carved.  I walked through the great, wide halls of the castle.

Interpretation

     The Quest motif again, a little more developed — the motif of the resurrection by the death of the lower man, the full transformation.  The quest for birth into the spiritual would be death, i.e., transformation, of the three-fold man.  On top of the laws of three-fold man is the goal of the Quest.  It is the beginning of that West that Columbus was seeking, on the physical plane.  It is not a seeking of the psychic.  It is not a seeking of the mental, though that is necessary; but we are seeking the thing to which the mental gives birth.  It is the Son of Man, the spiritual.  If you build three-fold man according to laws, then you come to the fulfillment of man; and the fulfillment of man is, again, death to that stage, and birth to the spiritual.  That is the progress through the Tuat, in the Egyptian tradition.

Note: The Tuat, with its twelve sections corresponds to the twelveness, or completion, we find in other great traditions: in the Greek, the twelve Labors of Hercules; in the Hebraic, the twelve sons of Jacob and the twelve tribes of Israel; in the Christian, the twelve disciples of Jesus.

Realizations of the New

     Realizations are of many types and many degrees of impact.  Some are mainly of the mind in its venture into new territory.  Some are mainly perceptive, through the feelings, a kind of divining preliminary to a clearer cognition.  Some are arrived at rationally, in the waking state, some emerge from the transliminal, perhaps in a sudden flash of insight.  Then, there are those which have been given conscious thought but are now reverberating across the threshold of consciousness in an unfamiliar manner, in a new setting, and in connection with some act of the dreamer which intimates their meaning forthe dreamer.  Above all, these resonances have deeper roots.  They have significance for his development, in a more impressive and more enduring way for the soul than perhaps any realizations he may come to about himself in everyday life and reasoned soul searching.

     An example of this kind of realization is the episode with the silver ring in the fifth illustration below.  There, the “I” principle, is active in a progressive way, leading a group in “hymn singing”, with the pledge implied in the ring occurring immediately after.  Of course, much effort had been given in the conscious to the leading of groups (in this case classes) not in singing, but in coming into harmony with the laws and principles of the human evolution.

     Again, the dreamer may be speaking, explaining some concepts, as in the sixth example, where the discussion is about the nature of love.  This is no intellectual exercise; rather, it is a poignant mental judgment, a far more, comprehensive understanding in the deeper self than in the personality, and it calls for adoption by both.

     In most of the other dreams in this section the student observes rather than acts, but what he sees has no three-dimensional connotations; indeed, is an inkling of the ways of higher planes.  In the bit about the singer who “could condense” we have a hint of the nature of time on these planes.

     Sometimes the observation reflects a realization or a new state in the self, as in the first illustration.  This is an important step in advancement, though it must be pondered and implemented in waking consciousness.  Some bonds of captivity to the old self have been sundered, some aspects of new life, dormant in the soul, have found their place in the sun.  There is a verification here of the wisdom of the old Chinese sage who, when asked by a pupil what was the greatest thing a man could do, replied: “The cultivation of the self in reverential carefulness.”

Illustration

     In the street where I lived as a child.  There were now three new houses on the site of our old one, or next to it.  All were taller than the others in the street, but one of the three was taller than the other two.

Interpretation

     The old house, that is, the old state, or condition, of the self is replaced by three new houses—regeneration in the three aspects of man: body, heart and mind; or at least changes in that direction, reported in the transliminal.  Rebirth, or regeneration, is not a sudden, or a single event; it occurs in stages.  This dream came on the last night of the old calendar year, December 31, and speaks of a newness to come, and to be furthered in the new year.  The image of a “taller building” is usually associated with the idea of growth.

Illustration

     Something about a great bird, black on the outside, that is, back and wings, but with a white breast.  He was as large as a man and was to be the seam of a great wine glass.

Interpretation

     The great black bird is the plane of the Larger, which is as yet dark to the dreamer, but which is becoming light, through the heart, the breast — which is right. Wonder is the beginning of philosophy.  Wonder is the rung on the ladder of the heart development beyond the midpoint — the reaching of the heart toward realities beyond Earth and Water.  The Cosmic bird is not yet the White Swan, Spirit.  The dreamer is not speaking of an ideal, but experientially.  The white breast indicates that the dreamer is not wholly ignorant.  The sign of the bird marks it as related to human, not animal, life.

     The seam is a place of joining.  This bird is the seam of a great wine glass.  The bird is like the firmament, which is the seam, or line, where the Cosmic and the human meet; the boundary beyond the human evolution; between this side of it and what Myers called Yonder.  (F.W.H. Myers in “The Road to Immortality.”)  This is the dawn in the dreamer of more profound realizations.  The wine glass is the great Cup of Life.  This student has been given a kind of talisman from that boundary line.  She had been working on this kind of boundary line condition in her self.

Illustration

     A teacher of singing hearing a new singer.  This singer could condense.  Very few could to that.

Interpretation

     This material contains the quality of another plane, where time begins to cease, and in which, as time begins to cease, there is condensation or simultaneity.  The singing which the dreamer is “condensing” has to do with the many Ideas that are implicit in it – not human thoughts but Ideas, in the Platonic meaning of the word.

Illustration

     A serpent of vocal power. …  A new suit made for me by Lord and Taylor.  Saw these names in large gilt letters on a plate glass window.  The suit was of blue-gray.  Came out walking in the rain.

Interpretation

     The power of speech or song that is the serpent erecting himself — the speech that, when it becomes trued to the Larger worlds, is song.  The serpent, the life-force, is rising in the dreamer and moving to the goal of the Uraeus, the power which is becoming articulate — of course, in proportion.  At true pitch, the dreamer is the serpent attaining vocal power.

     The dreamer has made a pun on the name of Lord and Taylor — the lordly, or more elevated in himself, in fashioning the garment of his conduct and attitudes in the world, as they begin to come under the laws of the Larger.

     The Uraeus is the representation of the serpent that has risen upward, and has come out at the head, forehead on the statues of the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt; the forehead symbolizes the mind in its noetic and divine powers.  The suit made for the dreamer is by Taylor an outer garment, for functioning in the world.  The rain is the water from above, that makes things to grow.

Illustration

     I was preparing to give a program of hymns in the school chapel, but there always seemed to be some delay.  In connection with my preparation a silver ring was placed on my fingers, with the injunction that it must not be removed once it was on.  I rehearsed the program, which was to be given in the early afternoon, and it was already twelve o’clock.

Interpretation

     The silver ring is the bond of loyalty to the soul.  If the student were going under the old type of initiation we would say it was the first initiation, or to the soul, or the Lesser Mysteries.  And, of course, there are years of preparation, or preamble, to that.  You come nearer, and you think you have it; and it fades; and presently it takes place.

     The silver ring has in it the sense of finality.  For a long time one may have a sense of finality with the work of developing the powers of the soul, but it must link with other planes in the self and with forces on other planes, objective.

     Initiation is not of this plane.  It means we have to make our life ready, then our transliminal ready, and then have to wait on what is called the will of God.  Those are the steps, seen scientifically.  To the great mystics of old it was: make clean the life, then long discipline.  The process corresponds to our transliminal, but ours goes deeper.

     Here the dreamer is aware that it is time for the “program,” – that he should bestir himself.

Illustration

     A woman who came to see me, saying she had been told about expanding our classes on a basis of love.  I told her we did not use the word love in a worldly sense, that ordinary expansion did not imply love.

Interpretation

     When you have gone to a certain stage you begin to see love in every thing.  It is the sustained and sustaining power of the Spiritual world in all things.  Or, love is the foundation of all the universes, the underlying structure.  It is not obvious, but it comes into the smallest thing.

     This student has come up in her subjective development, where her realizations of these things inwardly corresponds with the outer truth, and she is taking on responsibility toward the school founded by MBM.

     As the desire force — Eve, “the mother of all living” — is to individual man, so love is the mother substance of all creation.

     Once you come to know that this world of desire is the very crux of things of the human, and that therefore the biggest stage of life is when desire begins to turn upward; if that is taking place in our evolution, we have come far enough to understand that the very guiding principle of the universe is love; and that therefore to work with it, to be in alignment with it, is to have gotten into the flow of this stream; is to be able to work in a swift, strong, effectual way, wholly different from earlier stages.  It has a transforming character that is akin to what, on psychological levels, is called conversion.  It is akin to what Saint Paul means when he says: in the twinkling of an eye we shall be changed.  There is no end to the realm of the dynamic force of love.  To be able to use it is to be able to work a thousand times more effectively.

Some Types of Mystical Experience

     Mystical experience that is genuine involves a reaching in the soul to the Larger, to the noumenal world as against the phenomenal, to the Cosmic forces behind manifest Creation, to what is all too readily called God.  It requires a powerful dynamic of the heart — a seeking, yearning, questing, quite outside the ability of the rational, earth mind to understand.  At least, so it has been with the typical mystic of the past, and great have been the deeds some of these rare ones have done in the world under that impetus.  In the inner tradition of ancient Egypt the experience was symbolized by the lotus, when it has grown out of the mud, has raised its stem through the water, and, with its petals spread in the four directions, has opened its golden heart to the sun.  In the Christian tradition, the rose and the rose window are similar in their occult meaning.

     In our modern day, even with its scientific and material emphasis, we recognize the validity of mystical experience if we have made any study of the subject, but we see the need for more discrimination in regard to reports concerning it.  Many an analyst has come across instances of the mystical, which he may call “peak” experiences, but he has usually, and rightly for him, excluded them from his scrutiny, sensing no doubt that they are not within the field of the personal problems in which he serves.  If they occur, they are, as it were, flukes, apart from the better adjustment of his patients to the physical and the world, for which he is striving.

     In the work with the transliminal as conducted under the leadership of MBM, mystical experience was not a “fluke.”  It was a normal, sequential result of psychological preparation and a sincere and earnest desire.  Paving the way, was the loosening of persona fetters hampering the release of other, potentially more salutary and more enlightening aspects of individual life.

     Actually, the achievement of a mystical experience was probably the most exhilarating and exalting reward to the student for his effort, on both sides of being, in that “cultivation of the self in reverential carefulness” which a Chinese sage termed the greatest thing a man could do.  The reward includes: first, a liberation of the self from old and outworn biases, opinions, dogmas, taboos, and from the excesses and inadequacies of the sensuous and emotional life; then, the development, through direct, experiential cognition, of latent capacity beyond the conditioning of the present life.  The seeker has begun to live “four—square according to the nature of the soul,” not merely in the two earthward trending philosophic Elements.  He has exercised something of the super-rational, philosophic mind, so that he can appreciate how his development is following the evolutionary pattern inherent in the timeless wisdom teachings of all the great races.

     In this he is in advance of the mystics of the past, whose seeking, however devoted, was through the heart, and, especially, with the lesser mystics, was sometimes impaired by the products of psychological repression.  With MBM’s students, the cleansing and ordering in the personal areas of the transliminal replaced the severe discipline and privation so characteristic of the old mystics.  There was always respect for the body and for the natural law affecting the three-fold man in the flesh – respect implying control and direction by the increasing mind.

     Withdrawal from the world was also the usual way for the fervent Christian mystics. It is still often the way of the East in certain Yoga practices – the aspiration being to cut off desire.  That way is less suited to the West, which is, normally active in the world and copes with obstacles, within and without, instead of trying to bypass them.  It is with these obstacles that psychology deals, particularly the psychology of the subconscious; and here again the Western method is the more appropriate to the seekers of the West.

     Contact with influences from higher planes may come in the waking state, as it often did with the old mystics; but with men and women taking their part in the work of the world, as were MBM’s students, it was more likely to come in the sleep state.  In any case, an important factor in becoming receptive to that influence is the desire of the heart.  Eve, the desire force in the old allegory of Genesis, is still the “mother of all living.”  If we do not have the fire, and do not “feed the fire,” if we are lukewarm, we are “spewed forth.”  (In the philosophic picture, the native habitat of the soul is in the upper psychic area sometimes called the fire of the water.)  And, as physical fire increases with the aid of air, so does the fire of the upward-moving, super-personal emotional life, fanned by the air of the mind-stretching soul.

     On the basis of her thirty years or more of research, MBM claimed that the mystical experiences of some of her students were more interesting than those in the older records, including the attempts at description in the Book of Revelation.  Probably the mental factor had something to do with this.  On the other hand, those of old were often more forceful, and even shattering.  The mental preparation of the students tended to give a gnostic coloration to their experience and their evaluation of it; and this was in line with the gnostic character of the work in general.

     The examples in this chapter were selected partly for their succinctness and partly because they lend themselves better to description than others of a more dynamic nature.  All mark a stage of growth in the dreamer’s stature and perspective, and in an extension toward “whole-seeing,” subjectively and objectively.  They produce an imprint on the soul that can always be treasured, a sense of security come what may, a bit of that “good that can never be lost.  For “the Larger includes the lesser.”

     These mystical experiences are a modern counterpart of the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece — the “silver,” or Lesser Mysteries, or those of the soul.  (They are not the Greater Mysteries, which are of the “gold,” or Spirit, and of which nothing is recorded by those who participated.)  Some of the greatest minds of Greece took part in the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Illustration

     At an Airport, driving around looking for a specific hangar.  Looking up into the sky, there was a most spectacular sight: a light from below the horizon, bluish, which picked up a group of planes headed toward the zenith.  The planes were outlined with a white halo as the light flowed through the sky.  It was beautiful.  I picked up a phone to call mother and tell her that I was all right and would get home whenever I could.  I tried to describe the sky to her but could not encompass the sight.  I had such a feeling of awe in relation to what I was seeing!

Interpretation

     This is an early mystical experience, and is less free of material associations than later ones of the same student (airport, phone, the mother).  Nevertheless, the orientation is to the Larger, and the impact of influence from a higher plane is registered in the awe-inspiring effect on the dreamer of the extraordinary light in the heavens.  The flight of the airplanes and the bluish tints in the light both indicate that elements of the supra-rational mind, as well as the upreaching, questing heart, are involved.  The experience had been earned.  Note, too, its quality of ineffability.

Illustration

     On waking from a short nap in the afternoon.  A desert, golden sands; a stream leading off to the horizon.  In it were golden boulders, water-worn and smooth.  The banks of the stream were lined with rock walls, also yellow, golden boulders.  The sky was blue; everything else yellow and gold; even the water reflected this color.  It seemed to be a living, moving color.  One could feel it.

Interpretation

     The desert images the material earth life, but now seen in a golden light, the emanation of the sun of Spirit.  The river is the stream of the life of Spirit coming through, or permeating, ruling behind, the natural law.  The vista “to the horizon” suggests Infinity; the stone walls and the water-worn golden boulders, enduring values.  The living, moving color, which the dreamer feels, is a token of the affect upon him of being touched by a ray from the Larger.

     The experience came, not in the sleep state, but on awaking, and probably in the etheric, or in-between state.

Illustration

     High on a mountain – the tan, rocky, sunlit kind, very old.  I am young and gay, singing happily as I make my way down a path.  It is made of rectangular blocks of stone, not particularly thick.  Time and weathering have tipped some askew.  It occurs to me to take off my shoes.  It would be safer as I run and skip down the path, and the sun-warmed stones will feel good on my feet.  It was a delightful feeling.

Interpretation

     This is an experience in higher consciousness.  Mountains in such a context indicate higher consciousness.  Very old is an attempt to suggest timelessness.  The dreamer, physically in her forties, experiences youth, lightness, gaiety, which are the refreshing power of an influence from higher planes on the soul in the flesh.

     The sun ray element comes out strongly: the sunlit, rocky mountain and the sun—warmed stones.  The rectangular stone blocks pertain to man’s labors, as he evolves toward the completion of the soul’s journey.  They belong on the path to the Heights.  (Those Heights involve far more than consciousness alone for one thing, tremendous activity, and without errors — no more trial and error.)

Illustration

     I was standing on a hill, from which I could see a vast expanse: plains and hills. The scene was in beautiful shades of dark blues and purples.  Suddenly, there was a single flash of lightning, vertical, right in front of me.  It seemed to be both at a great distance, down through the sky to the horizon, and also immediately in front of me.  Then a huge old tree fell to the ground in front of the spot where I was standing, and I knew this was because of the lightning.

Interpretation

     Lightning, as in this material, is often the sign of a breakthrough, or interpenetration, from the realm of Spirit.  The vast distances are, of course, not geographical but relate to extension in higher space — here also with the coloration of the receptive higher mind.  The paradox in the location of the lightning flash – its simultaneous appearance both near and far from the dreamer, is typical of many mystical experiences; it reflects the concept of “that which is above the opposites.”  The huge old tree that fell is all the fine,   large growth of learning and experiencing in the earth life of the student that fails in the contemplation of this “otherness.”

Illustration

     A sheet of flame inside my window, covering its entire space.  Its colors of orange, red, blue and white were vibrating strongly and constantly, yet the impression was of stillness, and no tongue of fire flared out into the room; as if the whole sight was from a smooth, self-contained plane of fiery nature.  At first I was frightened, but immediately I recognized that the fire was not a physical fire, that there was no danger; and I felt calm, assured and happy to have had this touch of a higher power.  The whole experience lasted but a moment yet had a long after-effect.

Interpretation

     Here again we have a paradox: motion yet stillness.  The fire is not subject to the natural law governing the fires of earth.  The connection with the window is interesting, as implying something of understanding on the part of the dreamer — the window being that through which we “see,” or understand.

     The whole has a beneficent influence on.the dreamer, as indicated by the affect upon her of calm and happiness.

A More Extended Early Mystical Experience

     The more extended drama of the psyche to which this chapter is devoted has been included in our survey as an example of the confrontation of the rational mind with the supra-rational, the personal subconscious with the trans-personal, and the consequent opening up to influences from supra-mundane forces.

     It is an early mystical experience, still marked, in part, by “homey” imagery, and it takes place in connection with the dreamer’s psychological family, i.e., her own household of selves.  But that is merely the setting — and an appropriate setting — for the emergent awareness of life and light from higher planes.  The dreamer demonstrates throughout the right attitude and the right response, and this brings the right, the constructive, result.

     The progressive, instructive nature of material of this kind is a concomitant of growth in the latent powers of the soul.  What is accomplished in the transliminal, if it is maintained, is as important to the building of stature as what may be done in the waking consciousness.

     The material also illustrates a certain advance in the “true-ing” of the imagination, the image-making faculty, in the direction of the larger, the noumenal, realities.

 

Illustration

My family was visiting some friends and were sitting in the living room when I looked out the window and saw two luminous bodies.  They were about 30 degrees above the horizon and I thought at first that it was the sun and moon side by side, they being at an angle in which the moon, often when full, looks larger and similar to the sun when setting or rising.  But even so, it was amazing that they should be together.  I was very excited and went to the window to look closer and noticed that to the right of these bodies was a crescent, obviously the moon, but with a circumference as large as the other two.

     Now that I was sure of the identification of the moon, one of the other objects was a mystery.  As I watched, the center one began getting closer and I decided it must be a meteor or comet, on a collision course with the earth.  Other people in the building became upset, but I thought that I was not afraid to die, and watched as the object approached, a huge ball of fire.

     Suddenly the object slowed and with the decrease in speed no longer flamed; it was now seen as a great dome-shaped space craft, glowing yellow-white.  People disembarked and I knew they were from some place other than earth, although they looked no different.  I went to the front door of the house and met a young man and woman who were singing a lovely song, like a ballad, all of which I can remember is the message: “We come in peace and love.”

     Others from the craft were also singing at the other end of the building (it was of a long rectangular shape.)  The woman wanted to know where the children were and I told her to look in the window.  She was delighted with their beauty.

     From the other end of the house I heard shouting and shots and knew that some of my people were hostile to the newcomers.  I ran back through the house, hoping to get to them in time to stop.  They were firing from a darkened room at the end of the house and I found I was screaming “Stop, Stop!  Father!”  Then I was quiet and all was silence.  Several of the visitors were in the next room, wearing some sort of uniform and with strange weapons.  One said gently to me, “They can’t do any more harm.”  I know that they were dead.

     The visitors and I began to cry quietly, not because my father was dead but just that it was sad that people wouldn’t listen and accept the peace and love offered.

 

Interpretation

     The two luminous bodies, associated by the student with the sun and moon, bear earmarks of a projection from an objective etheric plane upon her consciousness in the transliminal.  The vision is clearly from without, exerting a strong impact, which is why she is so excited and goes to the window to see it better.  Her deeper nature has been activated or she could probably not have received this impact nor played the part she did in the episode that followed.  So we have here both the subjective and the objective factors that belong to mystical experience.

The anomaly of sun and moon in proximity is resolved by the third body, the crescent within a circumference as large as that of the other two.  The moon, and especially the crescent moon, is one of the universal symbols for the soul in the language of the wisdom teachings.  The circle is another: with the point at the center, it stands for the sun, spirit; without that point, it stands for the potentials.

     The luminous bodies appear 30 degrees above the horizon.  They call to aspects of the trans-personal nature, above the horizon of the earth-water orientation of the three-fold man on – and in earth.  The window to which the dreamer runs is the window of her developing philosophic mind, through which one “sees,” understands, with the mind of in-sight behind appearances, and in a larger, a cosmic, framework.

     She notes the rectangular shape of the house.  In geometrical symbolism the rectangle is the area of experience and learning, to the development of the “twelveness,” the mythological Labors of Hercules, for the final becoming of the “Thirteenth Man,” the Son of Man.

     The heart of the dreamer is stirred; no cold, critical evaluation here about astronomical requirements.  Super-rationally, the moon, as soul, does indeed move closer to its consummation in Spirit as it is moving on in its evolution.  Without that emotional response there would have been no welcome to the life from the heavenly bodies, the people who came to the house from the space craft — and no eager cooperation with that life.

     The singing of the man and woman who came to the front of the house, with more singing at the back, betokens an increasing harmony in the life of the dreamer, on both sides of the self.  The beauty of the children in the house is in key with the music heard.  They are not the physical offspring of the dreamer or her friends; they are the new young trends in the psyche, which are to grow.  One of the values of such material is that it stimulates the “wonder which is the beginning of philosophy.”

     The “love and peace” offered by the newcomers are indeed some of the qualities of the matured soul, but in no sentimental sense.  Peace is of the essence won only after much struggle with, and finding the right place for, the lower nature, the “pull of gravity;” love, a near ultimate, implying wide and lofty service under spiritual law.  This student is coming to an appreciation of what these qualities mean, and is coming to a rapport with them in her own being.  That is why she, and the newcomers, quietly weep when the “hostile ones” resist them.

     The resistance is from “a darkened room” — the darkness of ignorance, inertia, egotism, etc., and the resisters personify the inevitable conflict in the household of the self which is met by the advancing soul.  The opposing forces have been called “the forty thieves,” those who would rob the soul of the good that awaits it, or “the dragons” which must be subdued to gain the treasure they hide.  In this case, the “father” stands out among the hostile forces.  Not, of course, the physical father, who had died when the dreamer was an infant, but the “father” in the self – the old ideas, attitudes, intellectual criteria — the old generally.  The dreamer rejects it vigorously – and hears that it “cannot do harm any more,” knows that it is “dead.”

     No, it is not dead.  We do not leave behind, in summary fashion, the things which have held us.  We are not through with them “just like that.”  Nor should we be before we have had sufficient exercise in them and they have yielded their essence to the growth of the soul.  There is no death, but a process of change, of transformation and transmutation, and it is not accomplished in a single lifetime.  It stretches over many lifetimes and many environments.  But it can, and should be, accelerated.  That requires intelligence and battling, and the enlistment, wherever possible, of the two sides of being.

     The dreamer, in this poignant little drama, is taking a conscious and active part in accelerating her evolution and adding to her stature in the here and now.

Through Dreams to Higher Realities

Series of seven classes by MBM

Lecture I

February 15, 1940

     This report is not full but I have tried to include the main laws and principles as MBM pointed out their manifestation in the progressive use of dreams, or psychodrams (dramas of the psyche.)  She had asked the notetakers not to transcribe the actual dream material which had come to her from students and trainees and which she used as illustrations, so I have omitted these in most cases, though I did try to give either a brief summary or an indication of the leading theme.  In the case of Lecture IV, which MBM asked me to take verbatim as far as I could, I did take down most of the dream material as well as her comment. G.B.

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We are coming nearer to the challenge of Realities.  (Here MBM read a dream of a student in which a particular country was used as a symbol for difficulties not yet solved but in which “distant laughter” (wellbeing) also appeared.)  Illustrating the point that a country or a situation may be used as an outward sign of something else; that the tendency is to pass over the difficult and the challenging.  The “laughter” in this series will come as a result, not as a beginning.

We are in days of almost rapid change, catapulted into circumstances that strip life naked; where ultimate issues must be faced.  Teas and clothes and business are gone (re the material.)

I am going to talk about the use of the sleep state to higher development.  Through dreams to the higher realities – that is the challenge of naked life coming closer to each of us.  Let us follow that challenge, not too somberly but with purpose, and dare to face those things which remain when life is stripped bare.

The way to higher realities is via those powers and qualities that make the higher man.  But here is an opportunity, close to everyone of us.  Sleep is the natural way to higher realities.  Many techniques have been used, meditation, drugs, etc, and all the while, day after day, there is with man that opportunity of sleep.  When the psyche is freed from the psyche.  Psychoanalysis is not the measure of the dream world.  It scratches the surface; works its way into the damp ground of memory, hate, fear and frustration, but beyond that it knows nothing.  Yet it is just beyond that area where the power of life begins.

The process removes the debris which clutters the life force.  The pleasures and hates of the small self must be passed through, transcended.  And if they are transcended, then there opens a new chapter.  It requires effort, just as the achievement of anything in this world of physical fact.

We live in two worlds at one time.  The gods gave man sleep.  Only a few know what can be done with sleep.  Part of the old science of the soul.  It has many possibilities in it.  (The sleep state) must be consecutively built up as are the circumstances of this world.

The dreamer meets tests.  The values of the one world against the other.  Rhythmic pulse.  Here MBM reads a dream of Priestley, with overdetermined symbols.

Dreams are psychic energy, lost for the majority in the reservoir of memories, hates, fears, doubts, but some energy must, and can, make its way through that wilderness to the realm where Reality begins.

In the techniques proposed by consciousness to tap these realities, it has, as it were, made an artificial way.  It will therefore never find the other world as it is.  It will find those realities, those conditions beyond itself, conditioned, in turn, by the atmosphere which is taken along by the conscious self.  It must break through the cocoon to know larger Realities.  One of the first steps is to build a certain kind of consecutive movement in the sleep state.

(Material illustrating a reflection of the personality in the sleep state.)

Pythagoras says dreams are an index to the soul.  To one who knows the language of dreams, a dream can tell more than anyone with the greatest insight could report about themselves in a month of consecutive speaking.

The five dragons (greed, pride, lust, father, mother) keep the personality.  (Here an illustration,.from material, of how certain symbolic or deeply laden concepts appear in the material of the merest novice.)  (Something on the symbolism of the five loaves and two fish.)  Symbolic use is like a magnetic line of force shaping the trend.

Part of the task of the self in this other world is to gradually understand its meaning, its language.  It is an area of functioning which has nothing to do with literal facts but is working with ideas.

(Material about a “cat with babies for wheels.”)  If there is new life in the four: earth, water, fire, air, you are under way.  The process is started in you.  The personality cannot be dropped by an act of will.  It is a process.  The pathos of the personality is that it is so limited, that it keeps out the wonder of the self.  It cannot be overcome by an act of will but by a process.

Dreams cease being fantasies after a time and begin to be something else.  The higher realities are available only to those who do the work.  And beyond that work unfold, little by little, the strange and wonderful experiences that unfold the powers in the self, gradually spreading their power.  And what seems in the beginning to look like a Herculean task becomes a series of very wonderful steps.  The faculties used in the sleep state become strong and sure, in the same way as those of the body; so that you can rely on them.

The science of the soul is foolproof.  Stresses and strains act and react on each other and pull out, as the rubber band, that which is hidden.

Through Dreams to the Higher Realities

 

MBM Lecture II

February 22, 1940

Introduction: comment about one or two dreams of George Washington, relative to the history of the country.  (Did not take down. GB)

Some dreams come involuntarily, moving perhaps, but which you can’t control.  On the other hand there is a process which will surely lead you to such experiences where hazard is taken out of the picture.  If you are doing the things required of you you will attain certain experiences; a condition in which these unusual experiences are not haphazard but are connected, sequential, and lead to development.

Something like mining is part of the process.  The iceberg simile, with its main bulk beneath the surface.  The call: Man, know thyself.  Does not mean just the persona, but the rest of the self.  You meet what is your Book of Life: an etheric reality.  The “iceberg”, like a living cell, has a nucleus and a nucleolus . The nucleus is the soul, the moon; the nucleolus is spirit, nous.  The overcoming of the feelings (dominating power of wishes, fears, doubts, etc., leads to a gain of strength; gives you the quality, or power, to make the further journey.

Influences that come upon the self when a coherent process is started.  (ans to question)  You can’t do it alone.  But it is important to know that such things can occur, because even if you don’t yourself go through the process and have these experiences, you know that that is a reality.  There are many things we don’t know experientially.

An important reason to know these experiences are a reality is that it will change your whole idea of life, and of yourself, and your neighbor.

(Some dreams of Helen Keller.)  She saw and experienced what she had never experienced in this dimension.  What you know in your dream experience is not necessarily dependent upon any previous experience in the flesh.

You get attuned to the language by which dream experience speaks.  (MBM gives a few examples.)  The gestures which the psyche makes, and which seem so strange, because so unlike the things of the flesh, don’t mean that they are foolish, irrational or stupid fabrications, or (all?) fantasy; but, in a process, there begins to appear, a strong coherence, a repetition of motifs; because this other side of being seems to perceive that the self is now genuinely interested in the other part of being, and begins to respond.

If there is a genuine response in you to what you are undertaking it is absolutely assured that there will be a response in the other part of being.  The measure of the movement to the right is the measure of the movement to the left – a measure of the result you will awaken, and which will come towards you during body’s sleep.

If the dreamer does progressive things in the sleep state they are as definitely an accomplishment — more so — as anything in the material world.

(material) “Walking in a forest in a mass of people, crowding me.”  The natural state is not yet conquered; the dreamer is in the midst of difficulties.

Remember: the dream events are realities.  What is a reality?  Something that follows the rules and conditions of the plane of life to which it is unique.  That means: we have physical realities, spiritual realities, psychic realities, etheric realities.  They are distinctly conforming to the laws of those various planes.  If you don’t know those planes you haven’t the right to deny them.  Proof that it is a reality is that a consecutive process can come about, showing search, victory, progress.

There is struggle, the recurrent motifs of what must be done, the strange experiences which, as it were, are penciled in to the process.  (here MBM reads 18 bits from the same dreamer, beginning with “I am repairing a road and straightening it.”  If there is a process and higher realities and laws governing the evolution of the self, and liberation of the soul, and its development, then those laws must function, and will work as definitely as any chemical law you ever saw functioning in a laboratory.  It is done in an etheric laboratory.  Everybody must do it at some time or other.

Why don’t you put the lower self by?  Because it is a process, and no one can do it except by a process.  It is climbing a mountain.  It is straightening a road.  If you try to do it by the conscious self you haven’t affected your root system at all.

This physical world is the least accurate of any of the planes.

What is a rhythm?  A coordination of pulses. . . . .

Everyone who aspires to higher things talks of spirit, nous, sun.  Here (in the material read) is a corrective of that in this other world, this dream state — not by me but experientially to that person.  (material)  “Day sinks into the west and its flaming colors.”  Soul comes before spirit.  So the sun, and its flaming color, turns pearly, and now it is a rising moon.  Coordinate your life according to laws.  That is dancing (re material); the dreamer is walking in rhythm around the rectangle.  (in geometry symbolism, the area of man’s work. G B.)

The square is the perfection of the circle — differentiation.  The circle is the undifferentiated, undeveloped.  As soon as a thing begins to develop, or differentiate, it leaves the;circle . The square is the fourness, the four classic elements.

When you have had a look at things and know you don’t want them, then you are through. You have got to know for yourself; the advantage of living and learning, and in two worlds simultaneously.  And you learn much faster in the other than in this one.

(material about exile, or a sense of being in exile.)  Tests to be passed before you get home.

All things that you learn you must take into your being, and change your being with them, and give evidence of your changed being.  Otherwise you haven’t done anything.  (material about “swallowing the beads.”)  Beads are often used as the chain of the past, past experiences.  Swallowing.means taking in, assimilating, at least in degree.

None of us can go forward in terms of the old personality.  That is good enough for this world, and in a superficial fashion; but if you want to live consciously, and achieve and do work in this other world, you will have to rid yourself of it, overcome the animals, fighting off the father and mother.  Then comes a general symbol which carries the idea a little more vigorously.

Conclusion

     These 18 bits show changes in the deeps of being that must be done by everyone moving toward higher realities.  The way is the same.  It may be done in different colors or forms.  Actual activities.  Your own private, sacred scripture, which destroyed the old and built the new: “Except a man die he cannot be born again.”

Through Dreams to Higher Realities

 

MBM Lecture III

February 29, 1940

Group psychology and fear, the main reasons why the imperishables are not more known.  We all should move out into the Larger.  That is part of growth.  A plant does it.  Let us put aside our inertia and fear.

Imperishables?  The story of Hercules and his labors, for instance.  One of the labors which applies definitely to this work is the cleaning of the Augean stables.  Do you know what Hercules really did?  This is a marvel that is right in your midst.

The story runs like this: (MBM tells the story of Hercules and his labors.)  For Hercules, read the symbol of man consciously perfecting himself, and doing those things necessary to complete his human evolution.  “Thirty years,” “thirty thousand oxen.”  Thirty is the full number of the stature of humanity, hu-man; 33, the symbol of the completed, the perfected man, the 3-part self.

The Augean stables are the deposits that every man makes; as he forges forward he leaves his deposits behind — his book of life: his memories, the unfinished, not thought-through situations, unfelt-through situations.  They are the stables.  Hercules, ideally conscious and purposive, must clean them.  That is part of the work of tutoring; starting the work of cleaning the Augean stables.

Those Augean stables are of the memory deposits.  They are far below the reflective areas.  Those must be cleaned up.  Hercules does it by turning two miraculous rivers into those stables.  In one day — a period of time.  I will show you some of the work of cleaning those Augean stables.

There are many steps involved in getting rid of the personality.  You don’t want to, in the beginning.  You have sympathy for it, you like yourself.  It is familiar; the friendliness of knowing how you are; something you don’t want to lose.  But after a considerable amount of work it does not look so desirable any more.  (Here MBM read material concerning a fabric formerly admired by the dreamer but now no longer found desirable.)  This is the material of the self.

(material about traveling in a boat.)  From far back, the self has been seen as traveling in a boat.  The boat is derived, partly, from the motif of the moon: traveling in that influence.

(material in which dreamer is on a porch.  In a passage way.  Playing with a child.  Porch, extension from the house, or ordinary condition.)  The language is symbolic.  When you understand these processes, the symbolism there is as intelligible as the sounds my voice is making now, which I trust are intelligible.

(Material about being in a boat whose bow was dipping into dirty water.)  The front of the boat, bow, represents volition.  That goes down into “dirty” water.  That is how it (the subconscious) looks and is presented to the waking self.  You (the dreamer) would probably not have listened before.  The other side of the self can now present these ideas.  It will take a time before the fact will take its effect on the waking self.

(Material: series about one who was held back by circumstances in the world that she was afraid to break away from, yet wanted to.)  The incidents represent the struggle between the progressive movement and the regressive movement.

As in mining, I pick out the desired ore….  Before we can correct a thing we have to realize that it is wrong.  The deeper side of being, which is influenced from below, is giving the directions to the conscious self.  The conscious self learns for a long time at the knees of the state in which you are when you gradually become conscious in body’s sleep.

However beautiful the earth is, it is still to be left behind……  In many cases the MBM motif is akin to what the MBM is teaching, in the tutoree; it is the MBM in the tutoree.  The MBM, external, is the tutor who is trying to awaken soul consciousness, and free this being from its earth holds —t he journey which the self must make to come to the soul.  And a little of that has now reached the deeper self in the tutoree, and so the response is there.  The other side of being has a great ease in using symbology correctly when it is free to express.  Not in the reflective areas.  …It is nature nurtured by philosophical concepts.  Those are Realities, as Plato says.

In the movement of going forward into the deeper areas there is the experience of larger contacts.  (Material about meeting a noble faced old man wearing sandals.)   Here the old man (a wisdom figure. GB)  And it is through this understanding which the old man symbolizes……Sandals = openness.  Through wisdom comes the learning of a new way of living.

The idea and the symbol it is using gives you the action that is taking place.  You are getting the impact of something else, that you cannot touch: my idea world, my mind, but through the sounds I am making you are able to follow somewhat the stream that is pushing out.  The same thing here (re the old man and the sandals.)

The dismemberment motif:  The soul is dis-membered – one of the places where religion is correct.  (MBM may have referred to the teaching of Jesus when he said the seed must disintegrate, be dis-membered, before it could grow. GB.)  You fly into many pieces.  The story of Humpty Dumpty, that no man can put together again.  Only nous can put it together again — with action.  That is you.  You are the egg.

(Material about many youths working together)   The many aspects of the self.  The statues of Buddha with the many hands: dismemberment brought back to integration.  Not unity.  Many youths, but all working together.

(Material about the dreamer, on his knees, looking up through a swamp and seeing a goldfish “which had lost its way.”)  It is only when we are on our knees, looking through the old green swamp — earth conditions — that we see — when we really are trying.  And then, on that site (or side) we see something that is like the story of the Prodigal Son.  That is what this goldfish is, what the Prodigal Son is.  The “fish” has come into earth….involution.  It loses its way; becomes dead to the philosophical.

Nearly all New York inhabitants are dead, philosophically speaking — those who are not aware, actively, of any larger planes.  I do not mean the etheric and psychic.  They belong to earth-water, but any of the larger worlds.  To them they are dead.  But once this fish is put back into the stream, finds his way again, it comes to life.

A reference to the “grapes of wrath.”  (in material?)  How do you suppose grapes change into wine?  It is a process: one step after another.  The three here (in the material) represents the potentials you may bring back from the body, heart and mind.