nature of dream space and astral space

Once a couple of years ago when dreaming and had a vague awareness of some other minds nearby. These seemed to pigeonhole me as 'one who is not aware of space'. I thought about this afterwards, and yes, its true that when something enters my mind for the first time I have almost no feeling for 'where' it is except for what I extract from 'what' it is. So I figured those other minds must have some understanding that I lack, and since then I've been trying to find this implied awareness of space.

Now, as a result of having read on this sight about how other people dream, I think that I misunderstood. All they were saying was that I did not share their spatial awareness within the dream, making me oblivious to whatever video-like game they were playing.

So what is the meaning of 'where' in a dream? In the experience that I assume is being referred to as 'astral projection', space in the dream is the same as space in the waking life. But maybe not everyone's talking about the same thing. A person can also fly around in an imagined space that looks just like a memory of the real world. And since there are relationships between the forms in the imaginary world and forms in the real world, current information about real things can also appear in that imaginary world. I'm assuming that this kind of imaginary world is what people most commonly dream in, and that the body in that world is what people are calling the dream body.

Is space in that dream-world shared between different dreamers? It seems to me that its shared only as a kind of consensus of imagination. It doesn't seem to me to be connected to the physical world as closely as what I've been calling the 'astral' world. The dream world is real in the sense that its forms are spun from real feelings and thoughts, but the 'space' in it is more hypothetical. In a vivid dream, the space in the 'dream world' looks real, but it feels more dreamy somehow. And I've noticed other things such as that I don't have as much peripheral vision, as if I don't have enough imaginative power to generate all of that. The 'astral' world, in contrast, is like being awake in the physical world, but more intense.

Is there any actual 'matter' in either of these other worlds, or is the experience all generated using the physical matter of our world? If there's no actual 'finer matter', then it seems that the 'astral' world must depend on the matter of our physical surroundings, whereas the 'dream' world is simulated more within our brains. Matter of other 'parallel' physical worlds elsewhere that are related to our world could also be involved. In other words, in what sense does either the astral or the 'dream' world have a real physics, and in what sense is it an internally generated cartoon that has connections with physical worlds? Are there 'higher realms', or is there just the one realm, and we're just ignorant of most aspects of how it works?

As I mentioned elsewhere in relation to auras, I'm pretty sure that color is astral or 'dream'; physical objects don't have color. Light has frequency, and wavelength, but we superimpose the color involuntarily when making a picture of what we see. Sound is like that also. There are vibrations in the air, and we imagine sounds and probable locations for the sounds based on our sensing of those vibrations, but sound is not in the external physical world.

I'm interested in your own insights and experiences about these sorts of things.

I don't completely understand what your saying, but i like the vibe of this post. It seems like the way see dreams sort of. Other posts normally have a vibe of either its all in your head and its not real, or all mystical and paranormal kind of.

the way I currently see it:
astral plane: what you see on the astral plane is your minds interpretation of the energy of physical objects
dream plane: the energy of your thoughts and emotions as well as other peoples thoughts and emotions being interpretted into a experience that is presented in a way like waking life or anything else.

Astral body: the underlying energy body of the physical body. Regulates flow of energy through physical body.
dream body: Is made out of your expectation of it being there. Is much less dense than astral body.

I don't like labeling things, or acting like I understand. I don't like looking at things logically. I don't like descibing things. I am closely connected to the energy. I am not trying to understand it. This is just a conclusion I've drawn based on what I see. actually I haven't even drawn any conclusion until now. So don't don't take what I say to seriously. Understanding it is not important. It is more complex than what I've descibed here also.
Intent is everything. You give a command through your crown chakra into infinity. Then infinity puts the energy occordingly where commanded it too.
Other entities intend for you to have dreams, often sending you messages. Spirit guides, the earth, other entities. You intend things in dreams that happen in waking life. you intend things in waking life that happen in waking life, or in dreams. You intend things in dreams that happen in dreams.
You see into the future or past reaching into infinity. You see your past ingraned into your soul. You tap into your spirit animal energy.
The symbolism represent the energy. That is why people see the same thing differently in shared dreams, because they are interpretting the same energy differently. People who think similarly have dreams that sychronize better.
Time does not matter in dreams. You can have a dream that last thousands of years. You can have a dream the lasts infinity. You can share a dream with someone now, and they can have that same dream a different night in the future. But you cannot share a dream with somemone in the past, unless it already happened in the past.
Like I said it is much more complex than this. But you don't need to understand it. All you need is intent.

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Originally Posted by saltyseedog

I don't like labeling things, or acting like I understand. I don't like looking at things logically. I don't like descibing things. I am closely connected to the energy. I am not trying to understand it. This is just a conclusion I've drawn based on what I see. actually I haven't even drawn any conclusion until now. So don't don't take what I say to seriously. Understanding it is not important. It is more complex than what I've descibed here also.

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Thanks for your insights.

The key here, as I currently see it, is to avoid mutilating the experience by trying to make a description of it that is inadequate. To whatever the extent that something is undefined or unknown, its better to leave it that way for the time being, rather than deciding something about it and precluding deeper discovery.

At the same time, it seems to me that the experiences that we are capable of having are to a significant extent circumscribed by what people understand. Even if we don't personally have strong thoughts about astral planes and whatnot, other people do, and there's a history of those ideas. Most of this is closely related with past quasi-scientific theories that have been abandoned because they don't quite work. And the limits of those ideas limit the kinds of things we experience presently. So yes, our flawed attempts to understand things limit our experiences, but in the long run these efforts are also essential if we are to deepen that experience. Even where are experiences flow from our own deep strengths which we brought here from other worlds, so to speak, at some point its time to extend that further. And our thoughts about things like reincarnation or personal energy limit the kinds of extensions that we're able to make. For example, the idea that we have 'past lives' seems to me to be a caricature of the reality of this. My idea of this is also a caricature, and its incomplete, but it allows me to deal with more than I would be able to deal with if I had to interpret all my experiences through the reincarnation paradigm. Insofar as I can get a sense of what other people are aware of, my awareness extends in that way fairly easily. But trying to extend a little bit in a direction where other people in my immediate thought world haven't gone takes a lot of work.

Of course words and images can not substitute for what they represent, and we all tend to get confused in that regard. But I also think the limitations of language are often overstated, or misunderstood. Our words don't quite work because our language isn't quite right, because our thoughts aren't quite right. But as our thoughts improve, we can develop language, and an interpretation of it, that is appropriate for the subjects we wish to discuss. The descriptions still don't replace the deeper realities, but they are aligned with them, true reflections. Deeper realities really can be spoken into sound, and reflected in form. If there is an inherent limitation to that, its not what I'm up against currently. I struggle with the limitations of my human body, which seem to be related in a more ultimate sense to an abuse of these capabilities.

Your comments about will are also interesting to me, and I'll respond to that later.

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Originally Posted by saltyseedog

Intent is everything. You give a command through your crown chakra into infinity. Then infinity puts the energy occordingly where commanded it too.
Other entities intend for you to have dreams, often sending you messages. Spirit guides, the earth, other entities. You intend things in dreams that happen in waking life. you intend things in waking life that happen in waking life, or in dreams. You intend things in dreams that happen in dreams.
You see into the future or past reaching into infinity.

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This 'intent' or desire seems to me to be the active side of feeling, which is like the pool or womb that all the images come out of.

In waking life, a lot of problems are caused by people desiring without understanding the things they are desiring about. Hence the 'be careful what you wish for' cliche. For this reason I think that feeling and thinking are important also, along with desire. I think I need more awareness of how to be constructively active with desire.

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Originally Posted by saltyseedog

Time does not matter in dreams. You can have a dream that last thousands of years. You can have a dream the lasts infinity. You can share a dream with someone now, and they can have that same dream a different night in the future. But you cannot share a dream with somemone in the past, unless it already happened in the past.
Like I said it is much more complex than this.

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Yes, dreams are in a higher or more abstract kind of time that's not tightly coupled to the physical clock kind of time.

Most of the time, what's thought of as the 'past' is anything that's causally consistent with the present. But there are also other pasts that aren't causally consistent with the present. I don't understand the sense in which those pasts are real, but it is possible to intend in relation to them also, and to use them to change the present. I don't make a practice of this, and it seems potentially dangerous, but I've seen it demonstrated in waking life by something akin to a dream guide.

When sharing a dream with someone who is dreaming a couple of days in the future, are they dreaming in the future of our world, or are they in the present of some other world that is very, very similar to ours and a couple of days ahead of it? It seems to me that its another very similar world. It seems to me that our world doesn't actually have a 'future' except insofar as its related to those other worlds. But I know I'm seeing only a very incomplete part of this, and would like to understand it better.

I'd like to better understand this waking life dream guide I speak of also. It doesn't seem to be a being. It seems to have intelligence and a will independent of my own, but when I ask it about its identity, I get something very impersonal or abstract, as if its the dream world itself. And if I ask it about what it experiences, it gives me experiences of other people, as if it doesn't have its own or does not want me looking in that direction.

My spirit guides name is Arthur. He talks to me telepathically, and sometimes I see him in dreams. I've asked where he is, and he put images of a futuristic looking city with hover car things flying by in the background behind him, and he was sitting lotus floating.
I've also met him in dreaming like 15 times.

Interesting. How much information can he give you that comes from outside our world? For instance, are the images of his world constructed from appearances that you are familiar with in your world? My 'guide', such as it is, can pull in images from my own future and from other people's thoughts. And sometimes there seems to be an understanding there that transcends what anyone in our world is individually aware of. But if I ask about something that's beyond our reality, I get something like silence, as if I'm being answered but I can't hear or see or feel the answers unless it can be expressed in metaphors from my own past or future sensate experience.

interesting. well he doesn't always answer my questions. But, pretty much most things he does. I ask him alot of yes and no questions telepathically. Kind of like playing 20 questions. I can get more complex answers but it all depends on my receptivity at the moment.
If he gives you silence he might not want to answer it for your own good, because sometimes having those questions answered can interfere with your life path.
Anyways, I think we are going through very similar experiences, communicating with guides and feeling energy and trying to make sense of it and its nice to know that we're not crazy, because sometimes I feel like I'm the only one and that I'm going nuts.

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Originally Posted by saltyseedog

I ask him alot of yes and no questions telepathically. Kind of like playing 20 questions. I can get more complex answers but it all depends on my receptivity at the moment.

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I typically ask questions before sleep, and answers come in metaphor while dreaming. I can think actively while sleeping, but this is restricted to certain avenues by whatever creates the dreams. That's true while awake also, though on that side of the cycle I'm limited in a slightly different way. As I experience it, my 'muse' is broader and more universal than a dream guide, in that its also fate, coordinating all kinds of things in my waking reality, not just in dreams.

Arthur is like Author which is like muse, and Authority is like fate, and speaker of truth.

That trivial little play on words right there is an example of one way it communicates.

The sights and sounds come in through the eyes and ears, and truth comes in from the other side, and they dance and find agreement in the middle. (1)

I think a person can make themselves nuts trying to read meaning into everything, as if the metaphors themselves are gods, and we are merely slaves. Experiences have multiple possible interpretations, some of them opposite. But when you perceive a little truth through something, without puffing it up as an intoxicant or hardening it too much into a judgment, that truth is its own witness, supported by its own virtue, denying nothing. Ultimately the oracle doesn't answer 'should I do this' or 'should I do that' questions, or even 'is this true' or 'is that true'. Even if it answers, like a tutor or training wheel, that's still not how you know. You discover and create the understanding yourself, relating it honestly with your experience in your mind and heart, then you know what you should do because its what you want to do.

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Originally Posted by saltyseedog

Anyways, I think we are going through very similar experiences, communicating with guides and feeling energy and trying to make sense of it and its nice to know that we're not crazy, because sometimes I feel like I'm the only one and that I'm going nuts.

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I think that for everyone the power and understanding that is gained in life is a blessing, but to the extent that our motives are wrong, it is also a curse. And insanity is one possible outcome for a lot of people. I think one requirement of success is a willingness to honestly touch and deal with the things that are most important for us to deal with. That straightens our motives and tends our lives towards health.

Some of us have to deal with stuff that we don't see most other people dealing with in quite the same form. I don't think that this is necessarily anyone's fault individually, its just the way it is. They are part of us and we are a part of them, but we have different roles to play. When we fell apart, not all the pieces fell to quite the same condition, because we were different pieces. (2)

If we try to find unity with other people by being more like them outwardly, it leads us away from our true inward unity. We are like counterweights. We are like far away stars, lost to our vision when we try to play in the sunlight.

Guru/sage ego trips make me want to puke. People are neither more important nor 'more advanced' than other people. If you know more about 'higher truths' than some other people, as if you're a recent arrival from heaven, is it because you're here leading the way up, or are you the last and most deeply corrupt on the way down? Its a matter of perspective.

The statements I labeled '1' and the '2' seem to be from your guide Arthur, sort of, filtered through me. There's a third feeling too, but I don't know if I understand it well enough to state it at all clearly. Its an image like marrying something that's foreign, but less foreign than what one would fall in with otherwise, following the loss of one's closer consort.

Aside from dreams and everyday experiences I've recently found some food for thought in science fiction stories by Alastair Reynolds and Neal Asher. In the past I've also gotten a lot out of several 'metaphysical' books, though I have mixed feelings about this since even the best of it is plowed through deeply with bullshit. H. W. Percival is exceptionally strong stuff (http://www.thewordfoundation.com/PDF...13th_ver10.pdf). Other favorites include A Course in Miracles (A Course In Miracles-INTRODUCTION TO MIRACLES-Chapter 1,Section 1), Gospel of Thomas (THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS), and Laotse (Lin Yutang's translation, recently back in print for $6.)

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Its an image like marrying something that's foreign, but less foreign than what one would fall in with otherwise, following the loss of one's closer consort.

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Can you explain this more?

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Originally Posted by saltyseedog

Can you explain this more?

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I'll try. Suppose you grow up with your buddies, and they're in some sense fundamentally close to you, like cousins. Suppose that when you reach a certain age, they all get into drugs, but that's not right for you. Its not that you're better than them, its just that you're all a little different, like different pieces of a puzzle, and you're different in a way that makes you see that its wrong. If you were entirely strong and complete within yourself, then it would be no problem, but everyone needs some community with other people. So you find a friend who also does not do drugs, perhaps a Muslim immigrant, which isn't your background. Then you're close to someone who you wouldn't be close to otherwise, and who is a foreigner to you in some sense. As another hypothetical example, suppose you're European and grow up Christian, but you can't be Christian, because its wrong for you, so you marry an atheist Asian. In a way she is more similar to you than the Christians, but is also very much not similar to you in some ways. Why do you belong in this world, instead of in another one? Maybe it is something like this. Both of my examples here are with different kinds of people, but I think that aspects of ourselves are like that also, and that similar things can be said for the way feeling gets torn away from reason.

As another way of asking the question I tried to answer here: when Satan fell, did pieces of him fall farther than others? The thought, from Arthur or wherever its from, suggests something like 'don't try to answer from what other people say, such as in scripture, but from what you can find and understand directly, reasoning in relation to your experience'.

It seems that everything has two sides, but somehow we can only see one side at a time. Breath goes in, and then out. Can a river flow in two directions at once? When water flows out of the lake, what keeps the lake full? What is the nature of the division between night and day, and between internal and external, and how will it look when we are sane? This question is another piece of the same question.

If this a girl I know exactly who you are talking about. When I met her, her friends seemed different, which made me question being with her. I do feel like that. All these dark people I am surrounded by. I am not one of them. I am one with her. we are the light in the darkness. we come from different places, but I feel I am not one with these people from my place. I cannot be dark. I cannot group together with people who are like this. These people do not want to change. I do not want to be that. I want to be pure. I want to help people out of the darkness.

I agree that a person can't try to live like other people, or satisfy other people's corrupt desires, you have to follow your own heart.

I know a man who has a remarkably deep intuition about 'spiritual' things, and who sees himself as being nearly alone in his desire to change, to be pure, and to help people. This man is kindly, very intelligent, and psychically powerful. In the more than 15 years I've known him, he's changed remarkably little, and time has revealed a stubborn viciousness and treachery hidden behind his obsession with purity. In some ways he has undoubtedly helped people, but he has undeniably hurt many people also. It is as if his awareness of light makes it too painful to acknowledge his own darkness, so he hides it from himself, almost paralyzing himself in avoidance of dealing with who he really is.

For the same period of time I've known a second man who has been less concerned about purity, but who has been as concerned with transformation, and who also sees himself to be miles beyond the other people in this world. This man is also highly intelligent and psychically powerful, but also appears to be almost incapable of learning or changing. He has sunk paralyzed into another kind of cesspool. Outwardly, most of his attempted help has not been heeded either. These men know each other well, but can't get along and haven't learned much of anything from each other, or from anyone else that I have seen.

Both of these men have had relationships with women which they perceived to be higher and purer than the relationships that are possible between them and other lesser people. Those relationships ended very painfully, both for them and for the women. Furthermore, the walls that they put up within themselves, in denial of their own darkness, and between themselves and 'common' people, was what destroyed their love relationships. I'm not saying that will be your fate, since you're not them, and you may be able to rise to your similar challenges differently. I'm also not saying that those men have done worse than what they were capable of doing. I'm still up against my life challenges also, the same one's I've had from the beginning. I'm just relating some of what I've seen in the event that it might be relevant or helpful to you.

Am I light in the darkness? I don't see it that way. At the very least I am the darkness also: cruel, hateful, cursed, ignorant. But I am speaking to you as honestly as I can.

No I'm accepting of people and I try to live in balance with them. Its just this girl is the only person who I really felt understands me and loves me. And it seems like nobody else does...

I wish you the best.

I know what it feels like to be not understood by anybody, and not loved except as tool to be sacrificed for other people's gain. I think this is actually a fairly common problem, though recognizing that other people experience also doesn't magically fix it, at least not immediately.

As I see it, a primary challenge in life is finding a career that works for very long before it runs into trouble. This is especially true for people who don't care much about career or money. A big part of the problem is how corrupt the world is - almost nothing lasts for very long before it dead ends and dies. From the outside, something looks like it might work, then you try it for yourself, and eventually you find that you have no practical way out of it again, and yet staying with it requires to go against what you know is right. No matter how much a woman thinks she loves you at the beginning, its very hard for her to stay supportive 10 years later if your life isn't working well for you.

My suggestion, based on my own experience and observation of other people, would be to do everything you can to make your education and job future work well, even if that's not entirely where your heart is at. It will almost certainly be a big problem eventually. I'm proceeding under the assumption that if I face up to and deal with my own bullshit, then that's my best chance through it. I can see that the problem isn't just 'the world', its my own personal destiny also. But we'll see what happens.