tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post600086159412405122..comments2024-03-28T21:32:26.550+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: Dreaming Sleep and Death/ Hades/ SheolBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-29548127888280465422018-04-17T21:54:40.970+01:002018-04-17T21:54:40.970+01:00@Lucinda - Dreams are of increasing interest to me...@Lucinda - Dreams are of increasing interest to me with age` - although my actual dreams are often extremely boring and frustrating! I have almost no influence over what I dream, which gives me the feeling that the content is important to waking thought in a complementary fashion (i.e. the things that need thinking through/ experiencing, but are being neglected). Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-57045963649541699972018-04-17T21:40:36.270+01:002018-04-17T21:40:36.270+01:00@Wm - Ok, in that case I had indeed misunderstood ...@Wm - Ok, in that case I had indeed misunderstood Dunne!Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-65684289107890023052018-04-17T20:38:02.265+01:002018-04-17T20:38:02.265+01:00I had the chance to have a dream recently where I ...I had the chance to have a dream recently where I was non-passive and acted courageously. There was still a lot of confusion dimensionally, but there was no mistake that I was going against the social pressure that I usually just bow to in my normal nightmares. Bad guys came after me because of my good actions. It was scary. I almost never have dreams where my life is threatened, because I usually just go along with people in my dreams, and this was the first time I'd ever had people after me because of something I'd done, as opposed to just being in an inherently threatening situation. <br /><br />After that, I had a dream that showed me something important about how to move forward with a particular decision for my children. I had already made the decision, but the dream was like a confirmation, encouraging patience and signaling what to look forward to.<br /><br />I bring it up here because it was from this blog that I began to think there might be something significant to learn about myself in dreams. And I appreciate it.Lucindahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01834799557675879450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-61032309657463682132018-04-17T19:44:17.029+01:002018-04-17T19:44:17.029+01:00I think "simultanous time / all times at once...I think "simultanous time / all times at once" is a very serious misreading of Dunne, whose whole theory is built on a determination to take seriously the fact that time is fundamentally something sequential, something that <i>passes</i>, and to work out the ramifications of that. This does lead him to conclude that there is an "eternity" of sorts, a realm in which "a rose that blooms once blooms forever," but his eternity is never a timeless one, never anything along the lines of Boethius.<br /><br />Granted, nearly everyone who reads Dunne <i>does</i> seem to misunderstand him. One could never accuse him of being a particularly clear writer, and unfortunately the theoretical portions of <i>An Experiment with Time</i> show him at his most opaque. His later books (the even-more-opaque <i>Serial Universe</i> excepted) step back from all the graphs and algebra, and even from the idea of "dimensions," and try to present his core insight from a variety of other angles in the hope of getting through to the average reader -- with, in my opinion, a considerable degree of success. (At least, they helped <i>me</i> a great deal.) But I suppose most readers start with <i>Experiment</i>, find it incomprehensible, and are thereafter disinclined to sample the rest of his oeuvre.<br /><br />Reformulating Dunne in a way that I hope will be more readily understandable (one can dream, right?) is an ongoing, very long-term, project of mine. I may be posting bits of it from time to time.Wm Jas Tychonievichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07446790072877463982noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-8224739524361982632018-04-17T17:45:17.469+01:002018-04-17T17:45:17.469+01:00@Wm - I have forgotten that aspect of Dunne. I can...@Wm - I have forgotten that aspect of Dunne. I can't be bothered, these days, with anything along the lines of simultaneous time/ all times at once etc... <br /><br />I tried to accept this for fair while (because so many other people have claimed to believe it for such a long time), but in the end I conclude that it 'explains' by reference to something utterly incomprehensible and never-experienced. <br /><br />So it is no kind of explanation at all - more like an anaesthetic (or a blow to the skull). <br /><br />BTW Geoffrey Ashe's The Book of Prophecy would be of interest to you, I think. His general approach to this kind of thing seems similar to yours. He discusses, and critiques, Dunne among other things. Ashe's basic model for many kinds of genuine prophecy is that somebody in the future communicates (with, typically, only partial success) with somebody in the past - he got the basic idea from Olaf Stapeldon's Last and First Men. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-20111580874757609362018-04-17T17:18:51.833+01:002018-04-17T17:18:51.833+01:00As you probably know, Dunne theorized that what ha...As you probably know, Dunne theorized that what happens to the mind after death is in fact precisely the same as what happens to it during dreaming, and that the primary purpose of sleep is to prepare us for death, lest we find ourselves lost upon death in a wholly unfamiliar mode of existence. Wm Jas Tychonievichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07446790072877463982noreply@blogger.com