Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 17:14:56 -0700 From: George Sherwood <search-research-AT-worldnet.att.net> Subject: Re: Be done simone du boudoir At 03:06 PM 9/20/00 -0400, you wrote: > >So what do they say? "Hey, woman, let's hit us a pig for supper!"? >Ooops, perhaps they are kosher. And this "careful training" of children, >is it not a form of violence? Can one "train" without doing violence to >whatever it is that the training is meant to replace? Decide for your self (From "The Shaman's Doorway* by Stephen Larsen): The Senoi, like the Iroquois, have public dream interpreting ceremonies, but also use them as a part of the daily household ritual. Breakfast time functions as a "dream clinic"; dreams of the previous night are told, compared, interpreted. Working with dreams is a vital part of child education and a major area of communication between children and their parents. In our culture the usual response to a child's nightmare is to say, "Don't worry dear, it isn't real." The Senoi do otherwise. The child is rather told that the dream is real but partakes of a different reality from the waking world. And the child is encouraged to go further with the dream, not to repress it or flee from it. Kilton Stewart reports: <paraindent><param>left</param>The simplest anxiety or terror dream I found among the Senoi was the falling dream. When the Senoi child reports a falling dream, the adult answers with enthusiasm, "That is a wonderful dream, one of the best dreams a man can have. Where did you fall to, and what did you discover?" He makes the same comment when the child reports a climbing, travelling, flying, or soaring dream. The child at first answers, as he would in our society, that he awoke before he had fallen anywhere. "That was a mistake," answers the adult-authority. "Everything you do in a dream has a purpose, beyond your understanding while you are asleep. You must relax and enjoy yourself when you fall in a dream. Falling is the quickest way to get in contact with the powers of the spirit world, the powers laid open to you through your dreams. Soon, when you have a falling dream, you will remember what I am saying, and as you do, you will feel that you are travelling to the source of the power which has caused you to fall. "The falling spirits love you. They are attracting you to their land, and you have but to relax and remain asleep in order to come to grips with them. When you meet them, you may be frightened of their terrific power, but go on. When you think you are dying in a dream, you are only receiving the powers of the other world, your own sprifitual power which has been turned against you, and which now wishes to become one with you if you will accept it." </paraindent>In this remarkably sophisticated piece of education, the child learns three important things: first, that the terrifying forms of the dream are in reality his own thought-forms; second, that he may operate as an active as well as passive participant in the process of dreaming; and third, that he may relate to these inner powers in a creative dialogue. Thus the child is instructed in behavioral strategies for dreaming as well as waking consciousness, and his dreams, unlike ours, are cultivated, not allowed to grow wild. When Stewart visited among the Senoi in 1935, he reported some astonishing things about these highland folk, living in their bamboo-stilt thatched longhouses. According to elders of the tribe, there had been no violent crimes or intercommunal disputes for hundreds of years. There were few or no psychological problems, and everyone seemed remarkably well adjusted and happy. The Senoi did not practice black magic like so many Malaysian tribes, but did allow neighboring tribes to believe that they were extremely powerful magicians, thus making sure that outsiders had little desire to invade, a remarkably wise psychological strategy. There were few formal rules and little political structure among the Senoi, as Stewart tells us. Study of their political and social organization indicates that the political authority in their communities was originally in the hands of the oldest members of patrilineal clans. . . . But the major authority in all their communities is now held by their primitive psychologists whom they call halaks. The only honorary title in the society is that of Tohat, which is equivalent to a doctor who is both a healer and an educator, in our terms. They have then, no professional politicians-praise the Lord! The secular authority is grounded in a technician of the sacred, and fortunately he is no priest with a dogma to enforce, but rather a shaman, psychologist, astral traveler. The interpretation of dreams is so widespread that the halak may not hide his psychological incapabilities behind a mask ofprofessionalism, as do so many therapists in our culture. He has the same skills everyone else has, only more highly developed. Stewart says of the development of these halaks, "The cooperative reverie (or trance state) is not participated in until adolescence and serves to initiate the child into states of adulthood. After adolescence, if he spends a great deal of time in the trance state, a Senoi is considered a specialist in healing or in the use of extra-sensory powers. 1121 Like the shaman, the halak personally enters the mythogenic dream realm, to deal there with the dream forms in their natural, protean state. The basis of the Senoi psychological system is simple enough, and Kilton Stewart explains it clearly. While the Senoi do not of course employ our system of terminology, their psychology of dream interpretation might be summed up as follows: man creates features or images of the outside world in his own mind as part of the adaptive process. Some of these features are in conflict with him and with each other. Once internalized, these hostile images turn man against himself and his fellows. In dreams man has the power to see these facts of the psyche, which have been disguised in external forms, associated with his own fearful emotions, and turned against him and the internal images of other people. If the individual does not receive social aid through education and therapy, these hostile images, built up by man's normal receptiveness to the outside world, get tied up together and associated with one another in a way which makes him physically, socially and psychologically abnormal. Unaided, these dream beings, which man creates to reproduce inside himself the external socio-physical environment, tend to remain against him the way the environment was against him, or to become disassociated from his major personality and tied up in wasteful psychic, organic and muscular tensions. With the help of dream interpretations, these psychological replicas of the sociophysical environment can be redirected and reorganized and again become useful to the major personality. In this theory the Senoi have captured some of the deepest and most valuable insights of psychoanalysis. Particularly impressive is the notion that nonconscious, uncultivated experiences and memories can become psychologically destructive. These "systems of tensions" which Stewart describes seem quite analogous to the theory of "complexes," an important cornerstone of Jungian theory. The meaning of these destructive systems becomes apparent, not to the consciousness of the waking state, but rather to that of the dream. And in the dream, present in symbolic form, the dreamer is to dialogue with them, unravel their tensions, use them. Once again we see the functional power of a technique that is willing to experience the dream, not simply interpret. "Cooperative reverie," a major technique of working with dreams in a trancelike condition, seems remarkably similar to the Jungian technique of "active imagination," or the guided fantasy techniques used in Gestalt, or Psychosynthesis. And what would Freud have thought of this little sleight of hand with sexual sublimation? Dreams of sexual love should always move through orgasm, and the dreamer should then demand from his dream lover the poem, the song, the dance, the useful knowledge which will express the beauty of his spiritual lover to a group. If this is done, no dream man or woman can take the love which belongs to human beings. If the dream character demanding love looks like a brother or sister, with whom love would be abnormal or incestuous in reality, one need have no fear of expressing love in the dream, since these dream beings are not, in fact, brother or sister, but only have chosen these taboo images as a disguise. Such dream beings are only facets of one's own spiritual or psychic makeup, disguised as brother or sister, and useless until they are reclaimed or possessed through the free expression of love in the dream universe. Thus, too, these remarkably insightful masters of symbol shortcircuit the compelling power of the incest taboo (a technique Freud might have thought not quite "proper, " perhaps). The fatal attraction is, the Senoi realize, a symbolic, psychological one and should be treated accordingly. The Senoi, like the Iroquois, value the enactment and making public of messages contained in their dreams. The dreamer is ever to gain from his dreams, or the beings involved in it, a song, a dance, a poem, to be presented to the group. As with the Iroquois, if someone appears in a hostile form in a dream, one is to go to the actual person to see if there is any problem between them. Stewart says, <paraindent><param>left</param>A child dreams that he is attacked by a friend and, on awakening, is advised by his father to inform his friend of this fact. The friend's father tells his child that it is possible that he has offended the dreamer without wishing to do so, and allowed a malignant character to use his image as a disguise in the dream. Therefore, he should give a present to the dreamer and go out of his way to be friendly toward him, to prevent such an occurrence in the future. </paraindent>The dream here is trusted as being valid on two levels. First, in that the dream presents a real psychological situation which needs the attention of the dreamer. His enactment of attention to it on the outer level also carries a symbolic message to the inner. Second, the dream is considered to have at least a possible objective validity. That is, since the dream playwright chose the form of this or that person to carry a conflictual content, perhaps it is because there is an objectively real problem: between the dreamer and that person. The dream is thus credited with transpersonal perspective, a clairvoyant view of a situation between two people. One might go on describing the wonders of the Senoi dream psychology, from which we so obviously have much to learn. But I refer the reader rather to Kilton Stewart's brief but highly informative monograph, Dream Theory in Malaya. Relevance to the list is this: "It's a dream, well then, I shall go on dreaming!" (BT, paraphrase?) It seems Nietzsche was capable of lucid dreaming, which not only enhances the personal psychological power of the dreamer, but also connects the Apollonian with the Dionysion. To my knowledge, no one has yet considered this possibility. George >-m > > > --- from list nietzsche-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- > > "As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect" -- Ralph Waldo Emerson. Fav book: http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/books/aint/ --- from list nietzsche-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005