Adventures through the RAS Gate
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, 02-16-2018 at 01:27 PM (328 Views)
Afternoon of February 16, 2018. Friday.
This is a compilation entry, though simplified, based on many key dreams which designate a door or doorway as neural gating of a specific type, typically under the subconscious self’s choice in both non-lucid events to apex lucidity (though in apex lucidity, the true conscious self identity is far more extant and viable). A door as rendered in either a non-lucid dream or lucid dream has always solely served as either the exit point of the dream state or, in some cases, to augment and stabilize the precursor to apex lucidity. Note that the summary for each dream does not reflect the entire dream.
Dogpile, from February 19, 1972. I had entered apex lucidity (in my final dream of this date) with my dream rendering the correct time; early morning after sunrise. I see the bony remains of a dead dog halfway between the railroad tracks and the edge of our backyard. I notice that a smaller dog seems to be guarding the remains. The dog (of which is facing me, though at a distance) soon notices me and begins to growl menacingly. The ghost of the other dog rises up from the bones and seems to pose a threat as well. They both run toward me. My position had been the easternmost end of the Cubitis carport. I deliberately run and jump through the doorway of the Cubitis house to wake myself.
Both RAS and the emergent consciousness factor “chase” me into consciousness. As my lucid dream self, I recognize this common autosymbolic event and its meaning while still in the dream state but I do not attempt to contest it. Instead, I choose to find a doorway to jump through to purposely leave the dream state. I manage to jump and fall halfway through the doorway, anticipating the sensation of the dogs biting my heels (anticipating the common hypnopompic kick as a result), though there is no sense of pain in liminal space. RAS was often rendered as an aggressive dog of which challenged my will to control the dream state as a child. This is based on two factors, my dream potentially “obeying” my lucid dream self’s will and a dog being the closest analogy to that, and the RAS factor being influenced by having seen “The Hound of the Baskervilles” (1959 version) a few times, which designated a dog as being an attack factor. (I had no fear or concern of dogs in waking life, as much of what occurs in a dream is based on the dream state itself in its autosymbolic transitions, not waking life unless prescient or “received” from loved ones.)
The emergent consciousness factor as the ghost dog, as divided from RAS, is based on known dynamics. The remains were where we had bonfires in real life, thus designate the recurring Phoenix Factor as symbolizing re-emergence into full consciousness via biological RAS gating. Additionally, it appeared as a ghost due to the dream self identity not being the complete conscious self identity.
Catlike Shadow Creature and Shopping, from September 10, 2016. A non-lucid but vivid sequence features a cat shadow as my emergent consciousness precursor (not a waking factor of which the common checkout autosymbolism was eventually rendered as the waking transition in this dream). Upon approaching it, it leaps impossibly into the top of the closed door and somehow slides through the narrow gap between door and door frame. The Shadow is my conscious self identity. As the conscious self identity cannot exist within unconsciousness, it has often been rendered as either a cat or shadow (or in this case, both) in my dreams since early childhood. As such, it is a liminal space denizen for several reasons. One, it is associated with “always landing on its feet” relating to the falling sensation that occurs as a result of vestibular system ambiguity, a biological factor of the waking transition. Two, its being associated with sitting on a fence, a fence as autosymbolism for liminal space division (between dream self and conscious self). Thirdly, a cat by popular myth “having nine lives”, is like the Phoenix Factor of returning to whole consciousness. There is an additional very curious factor which had been influenced by the ending scene of “The Flintstones”, which I am even aware of in this particular dream in the specific movement of the cat creature. This is where Fred picks up the sabretooth cat, puts it outside, and the cat goes back in through the window and then puts Fred out. There have been a number of endings of various television shows that were borrowed for RAS mediation (typically only as dream state end markers and waking precursors or at least transitions of levels of unconsciousness).
The Old Shack, from August 24, 1970. As with Dogpile, I use a virtual doorway to deliberately “escape” the dream state. In this case, threatening flight as a vestibular system ambiguity dynamic, a pterodactyl, chases me across a field. As I dive through the “doorway”, in this case the ruins of an outdoor rose trellis linked to an old fence on each side, I see the pterodactyl that I was concerned about turn back into a sparrow, as it falls upside-down from the sky. In this case, I perceived my emergent consciousness (the shadow on the ground, of which the pterodactyl cast) as somewhat ominous, a viewpoint that rarely occurs as an adult due to having learned so much about the dream state.
Ocean Beyond the Doorway (with Kenneth Hill), from February 9, 1975. In this dream, I want to find my “dream girl” (the precognitive form of Zsuzsanna long before we met in reality). My dream ends with me standing on Kenneth’s left. (RAS usually modulates from the right side of my dream self in dream self to conscious self mediation due to me sleeping on my left side with my right side more exposed to my real environment). I sadly tell Kenneth that “It didn’t work” when opening a fictional door in the Cubitis hallway (west side) and seeing the ocean in afternoon light. Although the ocean also represents the transpersonal nature of unconsciousness, in this case, it was also a rendering of the fact that Zsuzsanna lived across the ocean from me in real life at the time. There were a number of other dreams where I was “blocked” by the ocean. The ocean usually only occurs in my last dream of a sleeping period (due to it also representing circadian rhythms dynamics and the nature of sleep in relationship to consciousness as an analogy to the tidal factors of the world), whereas lakes and rivers occur in all stages of sleep until water lowering waking symbolism becomes a key factor.
Batwing Doors, from October 22, 2017. In this dream’s final scene, Zsuzsanna is eventually standing directly behind fancy batwing doors. The doorway waking symbolism included the RAS hybrid factor of vestibular system associations (“return flight”, a factor of over one in five of my dreams).
A door as the potential exit point of a dream (in fact, the main symbol for this precursory event) differs only slightly from the fence feature. That can be seen in the following dream:
Through the Fence, from April 17, 2014. In this dream, I move between a narrow gap in the high wooden fence (in our present backyard or what resembles it) as if it was a door. A group of Aboriginal Australian girls move from near the front of their house, coming to talk to me (perhaps because I am seen by them as trespassing). The final scene involves an older Aboriginal female of about seventy, with white hair, asking me if I have seen her husband. In this case, the RAS gating is rather curious. I suspect that I was “seeing” a much older version of Zsuzsanna, though rendered as an unknown RAS character, especially as she asks where her husband is, though it may also be seen as random transpersonal communication with someone else’s unconsciousness.
Three Keys and the “Unfair Advantage”, from March 22, 2014. In this dream, I effortlessly transformed into a snake and back again, in other words, taking on the essence of RAS itself (very rare other than in apex lucidity at times). I eventually deliberately vivify my dream by opening a door; a large and difficult old wooden blue door, to such an extent that the vividness of the scene I stepped into seemed realistic beyond belief, even for me. It almost seemed as if I entered Alexander Siddig’s unconsciousness (though of course, unlike with Zsuzsanna, there is no way to validate this event). There have been other dreams with this implication.
In a dream I had shortly after my brother-in-law Bob’s mother died, I found myself approaching a door. I willed it open and was looking into an unfamiliar room. After time passed, I became aware that I might be intruding upon someone else’s privacy. Bob’s mother is sitting in an armchair, talking with her husband, who had also died. She approached the door while looking annoyed and slammed it in my face. (I had rarely ever even seen her in real life and this was my only dream of her.)
There are thousands of other dreams in which RAS mediation as a doorway scenario was a key factor of the waking precursor. Sometimes there is audio, including the knocking on a door or a door closing, depending upon which level of unconsciousness I am entering or leaving.