Hi Stephen,

Your questions regarding light in dreams are beyond my ability to answer, but it is a wonder to wonder about. There was a NightLight experiment done some time ago that focused on an aspect of the "light phenomenon". For those who are interested in reading the research report, check out NL5.2: "Testing the Limits of Dream Control: The Light and Mirror Experiment" (excerpts from NightLight at http://www.lucidity.com).

On a slight tangent, I can recall two occasions (both WILDs) in which it seemed to take awhile for the scenes to become "colorized". The progression from black and white to full color was similar to the effects many of us have seen accomplished with certain film techniques. Still, it was quite interesting to observe this in a dream.

May you bask in the sweet light of lucidity, Keelin

Hi All,

Hmmm... tough questions, Stephen. I started thinking about this a few days ago, but was then distracted. To keep this manageable, I'll avoid the science-of-light discussion, and instead turn to your question as to whether light is a creation of the mind. I don't claim to know, mind you, and am merely speculating along with you.

I should note that my first impulse is to suggest that rather than the light itself, it is the perception or interpretation of it which originates within our minds. However, this doesn't really resolve the question.

My second impulse is to note that accepting the hypothesis that light originates within the mind requires resolution of what I informally refer to as a many-to-one conflict. That is, who's mind is it originating within? Does it originate within an individual mind, and if so, does it have any consensual meaning? Or do we all really experience something qualitatively different, but lack the language to make the subjective differences clear?

There seems to be a conflict, unless nobody but you can perceive the light which originates in your mind (tell THAT one to the doctor and see where you wind up!). If light originates in your mind, is it possible that it also originates in my mind? That is, could the same light that originates in your mind also originate in my mind? What would be my experience of light that originated in your mind - would it be objective, as opposed to subjective?

What a tangled web...

Scott

Hi Friends!

I'm sure you guys knew this topic was bait for me! I wanted to get off to bed and see about having some dreams, but I can't help but try to make some sort of response to Stephen B's question.

To begin with, I agree with one of Scott's first points. That is, light as we perceive it is clearly a product of our minds. But please don't misconstrue that to mean that I am taking a solipsistic stance. (Solipsism is "the philosophical position that holds that the only thing of which one can be certain is one's own personal experience and, by extension, that one's experiences represent all of reality-the outside world existing only as an object of one's consciousness" (Penguin Dictionary of Psychology).) I fully believe that electromagnetic radiation exists all over the universe whether I perceive it or not! Still, the only contact we ever have with light is through our senses, particularly sight (though we can also feel it as warmth). And our senses are registered through the brain, which somehow, almost "magically" transforms the firings of photoreceptors in the retina into the sensation of "light."

Given, however, that light can only be experienced through our senses, and our senses do their work through the medium of the brain, the experience of light during dreams is no different than the experience of any other dream perception. Indeed, all vision is mediated by light reflecting off of various objects into our retinas and being transformed by the brain into perceptions of those objects. And to the extent that we have any "visual perceptions" while dreaming, one may then turn around and ask the question, "Are our perceptions during waking reality any different?" Or are our waking perceptions simply illusions, just like our dreams?

The answer is both simple and complex. The simple answer is to say that waking and dreaming perceptions are clearly different because waking perceptions are very much constrained by the inputs we receive from external objects and forces in the real world, whereas dream perceptions are generally not. However, the complex answer must take into account the fact that the brain can construct fully believable perceptions (i.e., dreams) in the absence of any input from the external world. This shows that such externally driven input is not necessary for perception to occur! That is, our brain is fully capable of tricking us into thinking that external events are occurring when they are not, because, in fact, we are only dreaming.

This again raises the question, then, if waking perception is simply illusory. The answer I would give is, "For the most part, no." That is, most of our waking perceptions are not illusory in the sense that our dreams are. If they were, then we would probably not have survived very long as a species! However, knowing what powerful perceptual machinery we have in our brains, and the potential that it has for fooling us as when we are dreaming, it should come as no surprise that we are occasionally tricked while waking as well. A simple example that most of us have probably experienced more than once should show that this is true. Have you ever been driving down the road at night and seen a dead animal on the shoulder, only to realize as you got closer to it that it was in fact a piece of rubber from a truck tire, or perhaps a piece of cardboard? Or, have you ever seen a cat lying on the couch, only to realize a moment later that it was in fact a crumpled sweater? Such misperceptions, which are phenomenally quite vivid, exemplify the dream-like quality of perception even when waking. Notice, however, that in such cases, the perceptual system is able to correct the original misperception on the basis of more input from the external world. The "road kill" is later correctly perceived to be "cardboard." Thus, we see how input from the external world is used to constrain waking perception. Nevertheless, I also wonder how many misperceptions I have had throughout my life that I simply never noticed? (BTW, catching yourself in such a misperception is probably a great chance to do a reality test!)

I hope this helps shed a little light on Stephen's question!

Lucid Dreams!

Les

Contribution from Roberto. - My only experience of dream "enlightenment" happened many years ago, before my being interested in studying dreams. I dreamt that I was in front of an airport fence by night. It was dark and the only feeble light came from the bulb of a lamp-post. Suddenly the bulb blew up and this place was flooded with light. I woke up with a start and found myself sitting on my bed. It was such an unbelievably strong explosion of light that--after so many years--I'm still astonished when I remember this old and short dream. It is to be said that I'm not a buddhist and am not interested in metaphysical interpretation of this "electric enlightenment". Certainly I didn't become an "enlightened one", a buddha. Illusory light? Real light in man's brain? I don't know. Anyhow--on the basis of this experience--I think that there's a lot of "seemingly real" light hidden somewhere in man's brain which almost never is lit up. Unfortunately, this was my only strong experience of this kind. Best Regards, Roberto.

So, if light is intrisically part of a form in the Dream world, should it be difficult, then, to change light levels? For instance, If we increased the lighting of an object, say a chair, by turning on the spotlight that happens to be near by, that will illuminate the chair even more. What if we have never seen that chair under a spotlight...where did our minds get the image of the highly illuminated chair?

How about if we turn on a red light onto the chair...ah, what then? ;) (Besides that obviously being a sign from your NovaDreamer :P )

Ryan Yokley

What Dreams May Come?

The additions to your theory make sense to me. I think also think the brain is capable of making some improvision when it comes to situations like this. Just like you can predict what will happen in a situation you may have had some prior experience with, you brain can predict, and therefor project, what it thinks a red spotlight shinning on the chair would look like. It's like seeing a friend you know very well in a dream, and they start cursing at you and doing things they don't normally do. You have never witnessed this behavior from that friend, but your brain can predict what it would be like. Am I way off mark here?

Light in Dreams & Visualizing Things Never Seen Before

What a stimulating discussion!!

I like Stephen B's idea of light being intrinsic to form. And I must say that I was buying the basic claim (and which I may also have made before in the forum) that all mental imagery must be based on previous perceptions stored in memory. However, I was taken aback by Ryan's comments regarding the possibilities of visualizing things that one had never seen before. I have taken a while to respond to this discussion because I wasn't sure what to say. Thus, I decided to check the source I most respect on issues related to mental imagery, the writings of Stephen Kosslyn. Dr. Kosslyn is probably the world's foremost authority on mental imagery, and through his efforts it has gone from being a little known area to a booming domain in psychological research and theory. Thus, I was forced to take another stab at reading (parts of) his 500 page tome, "Image and Brain" (1994).

In that book (chapter 9: "Generating and Maintaining Visual Images") he argues that there are several approaches the brain may use to generate imagery. To begin with, he argues that all mental images are "projected," so to speak, onto the "visual buffer" which is located in the visual cortex. It is noteworthy that the visual cortex uses topographic mapping. That is, "points in space are represented in the neural tissue in a spatially related manner" (Coren, Ward & Enns, 1994, p. 101). More specifically, adjacent points in the visual cortex are mapped to adjacent points in the retina, which is fundamentally a screen illuminated by the world through the lens of the eye. So, the metaphor of projecting images onto the visual buffer is not as strange as it might sound. The only difference is, with mental imagery, the projection comes from higher visual centers, not from lower centers such as the retina. To make another analogy, it is like either projecting live images from a video camera onto a monitor, or projecting previously recorded or on-line fabricated images onto it.

Among the methods for generating mental images that he describes, three involve calling up either generic or specific image memories (from the temporal lobes) and projecting them onto the visual buffer. These can be single images (e.g., a book), composite images involving multiple levels of resolution (a boat with both near and far parts shown), or unique combinations of familiar parts (e.g., Charlie Chaplin riding a zebra). He describes mechanisms in the brain for looking up information on an object (prefrontal cortex), accessing that information (posterior superior temporal cortex), specifying the spatial relations between parts of an image (parietal cortex), and disengaging, moving, and engaging attention on parts of complex images in order to select those parts wanted (posterior parietal cortex, superior colliculus, thalamus, anterior singulate, and frontal eye fields). (By the way, I only mention all the proposed anatomical locations involved for two reasons: 1) in case anyone reading wonders where these things are actually supposed to take place, and 2) to show that Kosslyn's theory is quite detailed and specific, i.e., empirically testable.)

Kosslyn also posits two other methods of generating mental images that do not involve activating visual memories. Instead, these involve specifying a set of spatial relations, and using these to guide attention over the visual buffer, thus "painting" it by selective activation. A analogy would be to "paint" a monitor screen by selectively activating regions of adjacent pixels. This movement of attention (the "brush" in the buffer) can either be accomplished in discrete steps, or through continuous movement. This speaks directly to the question of whether it is possible to create mental images without using visual memories. According to Kosslyn, the answer is clearly "Yes." It also speaks to the question of how "light," without any object being lit, might be generated in dreams. According to my reading of this theory, attention applied to the visual cortex (in the absence of external input) would seem capable of generating the sensation of light.

By the way, Stephen B made an interesting point that bears on this. He conjectured that "although Light is formless, its distinguishing characteristics (intensity, color, contrast, etc.) allow it to be treated by our brains in similar fashion to the forms which it reveals." I would have to say that, at least at the lowest levels of visual processing, this is correct. At early stages of visual processing such as in the primary visual cortex (part of Kosslyn's visual buffer), representation of visual input appears to be limited to things like differences in light intensity, orientation of edges, color, and their location in visual space with respect to the retinal image(s). It is in some ways analogous to saying that all a computer monitor (or TV screen) represents at a given point in time is the hue, intensity, and location of a given pixel. It is only at the higher levels, where visual memories seem to be stored (the inferior posterior temporal lobes) that objects (or their shapes) are stored. So, getting back to Kosslyn's theory, if all imagery is projected from higher centers onto the visual cortex, then it is at this level that lighting might somehow be increased or decreased. I imagine that Kosslyn might argue that this could occur through the application of attention, since he claims that attention can "paint" the visual buffer.

It is also worth noting that there is strong experiential evidence in support of both memory-based and non-memory based imagery being rooted in different parts of the brain. Penfield & Perot (1963), report how this was discovered when electrically stimulating various regions of the brains of epilepsy patients during surgery. They noted that when patients' were stimulated in the area of the visual cortex (Kosslyn's visual buffer), they reported experiencing visual sensations such as "lights, stars, or coloured flashes moving about" (p. 690). This is a clear example of the brain producing spatially localized sensations of light with neither a real world stimulus nor recourse to any visual memories.

On the other hand, when patients' posterior inferior (back, lower) temporal lobes were stimulated, they frequently reported experiencing vivid images of people, places, things, and events (e.g., "I am seeing a picture of a dog and cat'The dog is chasing the cat'.Another picture, it is a fire in a forest" (p. 632)). Since the publication of Penfield's research, there has been much debate as to whether these images were accurate memories of specific events in the patients' past, or whether they were reconstructed amalgamations of memories of the type well documented in other psychological research. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that such images were based on some sort of visual memory (whether of specific events or mixtures of various past experiences).

Also, a comment by Ryan fits in very nicely with this theory. He said that "I "also think the brain is capable of making some improvision [sic] when it comes to situations like this. Just like you can predict what will happen in a situation you may have had some prior experience with, you brain can predict, and therefor project, what it thinks a red spotlight shinning on the chair would look like." This is basically what Kosslyn has argued in his book. He cites studies, which have shown that visualizing an object prior to seeing it can facilitate its perception when it appears. According to his theory, this occurs during normal perception most commonly when we are faced with input that is in some way difficult to recognize. For instance, when an object is partially blocked from view, is blurred, or is viewed in an unusual orientation. This makes it difficult to match the visual input in the visual cortex with stored object memories, which is the basis for recognizing an object. In such cases, Kosslyn argues that the closest matching memory image is copied from long term memory back onto the visual cortex ("visual buffer") and that through the application of attention and a shape shifting operation (in the parietal cortex), the memory image is adjusted in size and orientation to make the best fit. If that still fails to produce a good match to the input image, the process is repeated, though even higher level hypothesis testing, using the prefrontal cortex to scan the image for cues and informative regions may also be involved. To make a long story short, this is very similar to what Ryan was suggesting in terms of the brain making predictions about what things will look like.

Well, that is all I can say for now. I hope this helps make sense of the various arguments that have been going back and forth on this issue. This is certainly an intriguing discussion!

Best regards,

Les

Hi Stephen,

You are certainly right that our discussion brings up some big philosophical questions. The root of what you are getting at, I believe, is what has historically been referred to as "The Mind/Body Problem" in philosophy. From what little I've read on this topic (mostly a few pages in "The Oxford Companion to the Mind"), there have historically been 3 approaches to the problem of the relationship between the mind and the body. One is Dualism. The best known form of dualism is that of Descartes. He held that the mind and body are separate, each abiding by its own rules, the body by physical laws, the mind by spiritual laws. A second approach is Mentalism, which holds that the mind is more certainly known than the physical. Apparently Berkley argued that the mind was spiritual in nature, and the physical was known only through the sense impressions of the mind. The third approach is Physicalism, or Materialism. A particularly popular form of this approach is to say that all mental states can be attributed to physical states of the brain. That is essentially the basis for the account of light in dreams that I gave earlier. I think it is safe to say that some form of physicalism is probably the dominant theory of mind in psychology and, more generally, cognitive science today.

You bring up an interesting problem that comes along with physicalism, however. That is, death. Physicalism would seem to suggest that the effect of death on the mind is analogous to the effect of permanently unplugging a computer on the operation of its software. When you pull the plug, you can't play on the computer anymore. This view of death is particularly scary since we all know that death awaits us. Thus, an attraction of dualism or mentalism is that it holds out the prospect of a mind free of the physical body. And indeed, Berkley was a man of the church whose philosophy was explicitly religious at its roots.

My own view is that physicalism seems to do an awfully good job of explaining the mind. Reading Oliver Sachs' books shows the amazing ways that damage to the brain can affect the mind, and makes physicalism much more concrete and believable. However, there is "evidence" from reports by people who had near death experiences that suggests that the mind may not end with the onset of death. I put quotations around the word "evidence" because such reports are what many scientists would label as being "anecdotal." That is, they are based on first hand accounts, but are not controlled experimentally and are not verifiable through physical measurements--two of the most important controls that scientists have developed over the centuries for testing and verifying findings. Nevertheless, such reports do seem to show an amazing degree of consistency in some of their details (e.g., the famous light at the end of the tunnel, seeing dead relatives, hovering over one's body, etc.). Unfortunately, so far as I can imagine, there doesn't seem to be any easy way to reliably test the validity of such reports. You can't exactly sign up subjects to do near death experiments (despite what happened in the movie "Flatliners"!), and I don't see how one would physically measure things such as "the light," "hovering bodies," etc. Of course, if you are a hard line physicalist, then one approach would be to have terminal patients volunteer for brain scans or EEGs while dying, and look for "light" as strong activation of the occipital lobes (Kosslyn's visual buffer) as their vital signs are terminating. But this would only be weak evidence in favor of a physical explanation of "the light" since the dying patients couldn't corroborate it with their reports (unless they had a near death experience). And, of course, there is always the possibility that physicists will some day work out a way to detect ethereal matter such as might make up an astral body when it leaves the dying body. (Perhaps there really are astral bodies and they are made up of subatomic particles or some such things.)

Barring such evidence, my own position on the question of an afterlife is to be an empiricist agnostic. That is, when I die, I'll either be happily surprised to find out that the near death reports were right, and there is an afterlife, or the "computer" of my brain will "turn off" and I won't have any way to be unhappy about it. Nevertheless, while I live, I believe it is best to go on the assumption that I have only one life to live (so I live it well), but hold out some hope of an afterlife (to avoid getting depressed at the prospect of death).

Best regards,

Les

Hi there. I'm new to this forum and I am 'catching-up' on the previous posts, so I hope you don't mind me commenting on one of the early posts. In Lester's first post he mentions mistaking tire rubber for roadkill and then your 'mind' correcting your misconception when you receive more visual information. It only makes sense that it could happen in reverse as well. To illustrate this idea I'll tell a story: There is a man who doesn't believe in the existance of potato chips. He is walking along and to his great surprise he sees a few potato chips lying on the ground! In a split second he thinks, "There is no way I'm seeing what I'm seeing!" and they change into toadstool mushrooms. The man chuckles to himself and thinks, "I can't believe I thought they were potato chips. haha. How sill am I?" I've seen many examples of people reasoning off some event that they didn't understand or didn't want to face the truth of. Perhaps your subcounscious does the same thing to protect your ego (or your sanity). Any thoughts on this?

OK, I have a question for everyone. Where does light come from in our dreams?

In the waking world, of course, we can point to the sun, start a fire or flip on a light switch. It appears to require a source. Although science knows its speed, its nature still remains elusive. In some situations light behaves like a particle, and in other situations it behaves like a wave. Kindly advise me if I am not up to light speed on the latest.

So we climb into bed, close our eyes and it's dark. Then, as we begin to drift into sleep, our brain activity shifts in ways most of you understand far better than me. Then, voila! - LIGHT! Our mind is somehow illuminated. And, as all observant dreamers know, it might be the full brightness of day, perhaps dismal or darkened by storm, maybe eerie in twilight, or shimmeringly subtle in night.

I was parked at a Las Vegas restaurant tonight, and I was noticing all of the lights. Windows with lights on. Windows with lights off. Neon signs. Security floodlights. Headlights of passing cars. And the fascinating thing, I have seen each of these in my dreams with similar separation and equivalent clarity.

So what is going on here? I expect that there is probably a theory of how the brain creates light in its remarkable talent for creating a convincing model of the world. Nevertheless, I must ask: if light can be a creation of the mind when asleep, is it possible that it is also a creation of the mind when awake? The sole difference may be that, in the physical world, we are required by our ingrained modes of thinking to find and identify an external source. Do any of you know of any evidence or tradition that suggests that Light is the primary emanation of the mind? If this is indeed the case, it would be no wonder that science has trouble nailing it down.

Of course this theory may be nonsense, and hence I am asking my esteemed friends in this Forum to shed their own light on the matter. /Stephen Berlin

Ah, Light!! After my initial posting, I gave this subject some time to brew, and I am glad I did. Thanks for the great responses. For one short second, I couldn't believe my eyes. Lester used the word "magically" in a sentence. I had been waiting for such a slip up, but then I noticed the qualifying "almost."

As Lester points out, everything we perceive by our faculty of sight in the physical world is some reflection of light's spectrum onto our retinas. If I turn off the lights in my living room tonight, I won't be able to see the lamps, the chairs, the original Van Gogh on the wall. We need light to see the forms in our world, yet light itself has no form. So is there an intrinsic difference between light and the universe of form and substance which it reveals? If there is a difference, and I believe there is, I would think that the appearance of light in our dreams must somehow be processed differently than an object - or if not - the light must be an aspect of the object itself.

If I see a chair in my dream, obviously there is not light in the dream reflecting off of the chair and back to my dream body's retinas. I think we would have to conclude that in order to dream of a chair, I would need to have a memory of a chair in my mind which was previously acquired from the waking sensory world, and the image of the chair would - in order to be seen in my dream - necessarily come equipped with the light which originally illuminated it in my physical experience. It doesn't seem very likely to me that I would dream of my concept of a chair, then dream of my concept of light, then dream of my concept of light reflecting from the chair - ultimately resulting in my concept of perceiving it in my dream. Whereas in the physical world, light must be present to see all form, in the dreaming world, light is apparently intrinsic within all form. Of course, if all form comes complete with its own illumination in our dreaming mind, I think a good metaphysical argument could be made that it does so in the physical world as well and that we are just biased by the model we consensually call physics. Of course, should any of us ever dream of anything which exceeds the limits of known human perception and concepts, we still wouldn't be able to rattle science because we wouldn't be able to show it! For a breakthrough, we'd all need to have the same dream at the same time - one different from the current one.

Now, let's move on to Lester's good example of deceptive perception. We see cardboard on the highway and perceive it as road kill. In many circumstances, we will - upon getting closer - be able to correct the mis-perception. But let's say we don't. It is raining, and we move on down the road believing we saw some blood and guts. That false perception just became a part of my memory - it became a part of my history - it became a part of my life. So, at this point, what matters most? I contend that the false perception means more to me. It made me think of danger on the roadways. It made me think of death. I instantly assessed that wildlife is not as valued as man - otherwise I would have pulled over. The illusion became my reality. From this viewpoint I think I understand Lester's reference to solipsism. It is not entirely without some philosophical merit.

Scott's questioning as to "in whose mind" light originates is really to the point as well. I think many of us in the Forum have respect for theories such as Carl Jung's synchronicity and the collective unconscious and the evidence of myth. We somehow all seem connected at some level and yet the link is so elusive. Perhaps that link is Light?

And Roberto, I particularly enjoyed your observation that "there's a lot of "seemingly real' light hidden somewhere in man's brain which almost is never lit up." I agree with you - or perhaps it is lit up all of the time and our faculties fail to perceive it except under extraordinary conditions. As far as not becoming an "enlightened one, a Buddha," - well, that's good - otherwise you wouldn't fit in too well with the rest of us! Living in shadow, it is nice to be in the company of those seeking the Light. /Stephen Berlin

Hello Ryan, Lester and All Illumined by Lucidity's Light. Before beginning, I want to make it clear that I am by no means attached to the multitude of theories I dream up in my postings. I enjoy playing the devil's advocate for the sake of stimulating our discussion in general and my own thinking in particular.

Well, Ryan, at first you had me stumped. I like to be shown holes in my reasoning. I've kept your posting on the back burner of my mind for the past few days and, as is usually the case with this method for me, more inclusive theories sooner or later arise. So here are some plausibilities:

You used the examples of a "spotlight" and a "red light" shining on our dream image of a chair. Now, giving my theory of Light intrinsic within all form the benefit of the doubt here, it would not only be intrinsic within my memory of the chair, but also intrinsic within my memory of spotlights and red lights. Now, let's say, I dream of a "red spotlight" next to the chair and decide to turn it on. At this point, the intrinsic illumination in the spotlight is made dominant and it overrides the intrinsic illumination in the chair.

Next, let's assume that my theory that Light is intrinsic within all form is wrong. It could well be that our initial memory and all subsequent memories of chairs (to stay with the same example) include the lighting which illuminated them at the time they each registered in our brains. Knowing that we have seen chairs throughout our individual lives in many different lighting conditions, dreaming may be expected to permit us that entire range in any given dream situation. This of course would include the full spectrum of color. With this model, we can surmise that lighting effects on chairs in our dreams need not be limited to just our memories of chairs, but memories of anything we perceive in the waking world thanks to Light. Thus, although Light is formless, its distinguishing characteristics (intensity, color, contrast, etc.) allow it to be treated by our brains in similar fashion to the forms which it reveals. Hence, I think this indicates that I learn from Lester, but hell, what fun would the Forum be if we all agreed? /Yours intrinsically, Stephen Berlin

Ryan. I certainly agree with you on this point. The chair could be upholstered in feathers for example, or on our subject of light, be adorned with scintillating jewels of *intrinsic beauty. We need not have ever seen examples of these in our waking lives. As you say, our dreaming mind can improvise - mixing and morphing from our treasure house of a lifetime of memories. And since we know that this is the source of all of the imagery in our dreams, it should not be at all surprising that we are so easily deceived that we are awake. /Stephen Berlin

Hello my friends forum and latter. Well, Lester, I must say that Kosslyn's theories (and your meticulous interpretation of them for the benefit of this discussion) impressed me into two fortnights of silence. His metaphor of a "visual buffer" in the visual cortex of the brain which can 1) receive imagery from "lower centers" such as the retina 2) replay imagery from "higher centers" such as memory and 3) be creatively "painted" by focused attention is nothing short of astonishing. That cinches it. I hereby acknowledge my brain to be my second favorite organ.

I am assuming, since you used the word "metaphor," that Kosslyn's assertions are not necessarily established as fact, but are his astute speculation based on what science already knows from having traced different aspects of visual image processing to specific areas of the brain. Your examples from the Penfield and Perot study were particularly noteworthy, and I wonder if any similar follow-up studies have been done since 1963. I know that we cannot avoid the indisputable role of the brain in our dreaming, but for lucid dreamers who consciously navigate a magical realm of illuminated imagery which so wonderfully models the world minus its restraints, I confess to a twinge of dismay whenever I reflect that we are perhaps only navigating a convoluted glob of gook.

Consciousness may indeed be an emergent quality of sufficiently evolved complexity of organic matter, but this explanation leaves hope in a heap at death's door. Love becomes the fear and pain of ultimate loss. Our search for meaning is relegated to naught but an assuaging indulgence. Every act of kindness is unmasked as the harbinger of doom. If science is the only entree on the menu, you'll find me getting drunk on philosophy at the bar. "Is the mind an emergent of the brain, or is the body and its world an emanation of the mind? Bartender! Another Kierkegaard, Buber and Barth."

One of the best reality tests for lucid dreamers is asking the question, "How did I get here?" Let's apply that test to the last paragraph to see if we are dreaming.

The gist of the paragraph was formulated in the "higher centers" of my brain and was reduced into words which were entered into my computer. These were transmitted onto the internet and into cyberspace and were received and temporarily stored on multiple computers around the world from which you perceived it on only one. My words were then presumably processed into concepts and reactions roughly analogous to what I intended, and - together with an infinity of other processes not mentioned or known - the gist of the same paragraph now resides in the "higher centers" of your brain. Well, so much for the hope of being in a dream. But gee, from my brain to your brain over every terrain, it still sounds more like magic than science to me.

If anyone gets a headache from all of this, I heartily recommend Kosslyn's visual bufferin. /Stephen Berlin

Just as we can dream up an ocean in our mind even though we don't have one in there, we can dream up light. It is an interesting question no doubt, but yet I compare light in the mind to the overall wonder of a dream itself. There is not a lack of gravity in the mind (although I question that on some of the girls I've dated) but yet we fly. I wonder if my theory can be proven by a person who is blind and has never seen a headlight or lights in general. I am assuming that people blind from birth dream with a certain lightened environment, but I'm not sure. Perhaps an overall lightended environment, depending on their degree of blindness, but would they see that headlight? Would they see the same flashing Tow Truck lights I saw in my dream the other night as my Nova Dreamer cued me? I would really be curious for that answer. To me, if a blind person does not see the same type of lights in their dreams as we do, ex. light bulbs, theater lights, all the lights we are familiar with, then my theory of dreaming about what we've learned and associated from our environment is true. If people who are born blind do dream with the same lights as we do and not just a general lightened environment which they may be familiar with, depending on their degree of blindness, THEN I ask the question, where do lights come from in our dreams? Great topic...great! Regards Udo

What is a blind person's mental imagery like?

Hi Udo,

You have raised a question that has intrigued me for some time. I had collected a few articles on the topic, and your question prompted me to finally read them. I'll try to get at the question of blind people's imagination of light in a roundabout way. To begin with, not all blind people are unable to perceive light. Apparently even some congenitally blind people report being able to distinguish ambient light from darkness in one or both eyes, and some can even locate windows or doors visually (see the Arditi reference at the end). Thus, if a blind person can perceive such a rudimentary sense of light, he or she should be able to imagine it from memory, for example in a dream. However, there are also those blind people who lack even such basic perceptions of light.

However, even if one has no sense of light, a more interesting question is what one's imagination is like for visual things. This gets to the very basic philosophical questions you raised. Namely, does the ability to visualize something depend on prior experience with that thing, or is it inborn? What type of experience is required in order to visualize a thing? And these questions about conscious waking visualization apply equally to the case of dreamed images as well.

There are a large number of studies that have looked at various aspects of these questions. However, I will report on two studies that seem particularly interesting. Each looked at very different aspects of visualization and were conducted by extremely well known and respected perception researchers. (I have provided the references below in case anyone is interested in reading the original studies for themselves.)

One study (Arditi, Holtzman & Kosslyn, 1988) compared the abilities of congenitally blind and normally sighted people to visualize various common objects (e.g., aspirin tablet, typewriter, bus) at various distances. They found that their blind participants tended to imagine objects at arm's length (0.13-4.43 feet), whereas sighted participants imagined them at a much wider range of distances (0.02-42.33 feet). This could be explained by the idea that blind people's imagination of objects is based primarily on the sense of touch, a close range sense, whereas sighted people's imagination uses vision, a distant sense. They also asked the blind and sighted participants to point to the far right and left edges of the objects imagined at various distances (from 3-30 feet). They then measured the distance between the participants' pointing fingers when pointing at each imagined edge. As expected, for sighted participants, the distance between the imagined ends of objects became smaller with increasing distance. This follows the relationship between visual angle and distance (i.e., objects appear smaller the farther away they are). However, for the blind participants, this was not the case. If anything, blind participants' imagined sizes got slightly bigger as the objects were imagined as being farther away. A couple of the blind participants explained this as being due to the fact that as an object (e.g., a car) got farther away, one had to reach or walk farther to get to it. On the other hand, both blind and sighted participants imagined physically larger objects as being larger than relatively smaller objects (e.g., a briefcase was imagined as smaller than a motorcycle at 3 feet distance). Thus, while blind participants could imagine various objects of various sizes, they tended to imagine them within a haptic (touch) sensory framework that does not include things like visual perspective.

Another study (Shepard & Cooper, 1992) compared congenitally blind and sighted participants' judgements of the similarity of various color pairs. (They also included participants with various types of color-blindness, but I will skip that part for this discussion.) They had both the sighted and blind participants rank order pairs of color words (e.g., "yellow, orange" vs. "yellow, violet") from the most to the least similar. The sighted participants also made similar judgements for pairs of color chips and color chips with their names. These judgements were then put through multivariate analyses. The result was that the sighted participants' judgements were internally consistent in such a way that they formed the two dimensional figure of Newton's color circle. That is, colors such as orange and yellow were judged close to each other, as were red and orange, and colors such as red and green, or yellow and violet were judged as maximally different. This was the case whether the sighted subjects were comparing actual color chips or color names. Blind participants' judgements, however, formed configurations that indicated that they perceived only a single dimension, e.g., a scale of light to dark. The authors argue that this is based on the blind participants' verbal associations between the color words over a lifetime. However, it does not represent a knowledge of color anything like what sighted individuals have, and thus is evidence in favor of the necessity of experience in developing imagery of colors.

These studies show important similarities and differences between the imaginative abilities of blind and sighted individuals. Clearly blind people have extensive imaginative abilities, especially for things they can touch, hear, smell or taste. But for things that are peculiarly visual, such as the diminishing size of objects' images with distance, or the experience of color, blind people are at a loss. They can only make up for this incompletely through recourse to their other sensory modalities, or through their verbal knowledge. I think the same must be true for any human trying to imagine what it is like to perceive the world using a sense modality we don't have. Or, to make it a bit easier, try imagining what it is like to use a sensory modality which in humans is very rudimentary, but in other species is much more advanced, such as sonar. Humans can detect the presence of walls, and to some extent the relative distance of objects if they are sufficiently separated, by means of echolocation, and blind people tend to be much better at this than sighted people. But it is interesting to try to imagine what a dolphin's sonar perceptions are like. We can use our very limited echolocation abilities together with our other sensory experiences and our verbal knowledge to try to guess what their perceptions would be like. But a dolphin's actual sonar sensory experience, or sonar mental imagery, is likely to be very different.

Best regards,

Les

References:

Author Arditi, Aries. Holtzman, Jeffrey D. Kosslyn, Stephen M . Title Mental imagery and sensory experience in congenital blindness. Source Neuropsychologia. Vol 26(1), 1988, 1-12.

Author Shepard, Roger N. Cooper, Lynn A . Title Representation of colors in the blind, color-blind, and normally sighted. Source Psychological Science. Vol 3(2), Mar 1992, 97-104.

Hi Jeremy,

In your post, you said: Quote:

In Lester's first post he mentions mistaking tire rubber for roadkill and then your 'mind' correcting your misconception when you receive more visual information. It only makes sense that it could happen in reverse as well. To respond as succinctly as possible, I would say that what you are suggesting is not only possible, but has been demonstrated in numerous psychological experiments, but generally only under specific circumstances.

First, I am assuming that what you mean by "it could happen in reverse" is that (1) you receive enough visual (or other sensory) information to make a correct identification of an object as that object, but (2) then reinterpret the visual (or other sensory) information as being something else to match with your expectations. If that is a correct interpretation of what you mean, then I can say that it most frequently happens when you look at something which is truly perceptually ambiguous. The best known example of this is the famous "Young Woman/Old Woman" ambiguous figure. The description of the perceptual events that take place when viewing this figure, and consequently revising your interpretation/perception of it, would match what I described above (i.e., my rephrasing of your idea). You first clearly see one face, and then see it as another, and very often as a function of ideas you hold. For example, if you first see the young woman, and someone says, "Isn't that old woman's face scary looking?" you may suddenly revise your interpretation and recognize the old woman face where you hadn't recognized it as that before.

Note, however, that this requires that the image presented to your retinas be truly ambiguous. Clearly some images are more perceptually unconstrained than others. For example, clouds are famous as being able to be "seen" as all sorts of things (though this takes an effort of imagination--first they are simply recognized as "clouds"). And Rorschach blots are another good example of inherently vague stimuli. But most images are not able to be recognized as any old thing we might imagine them to be. For example, the "Young woman/Old woman" figure is usually seen as one or the other figure, but never as the rear end of a horse, a spider, or a bulldozer, to take a few ridiculous possibilities. The reason for this is that the image supports either a "young woman" or "old woman" interpretation, but not a "spider," "bulldozer," or other interpretation.

To my knowledge, no psychologist has ever measured the degree to which an image is constrained in its possible interpretations, though this may been done with Rorschach blots. Assumably, even for these, there is a typical range of possible interpretations, with some being very common, and others very uncommon. This would indicate that even such an abstract image as a Rorschach blot nevertheless constrains ones interpretations to a certain degree. These constraints are most likely based on ones past visual experience and are probably encoded in the temporal lobes where complex figural shape fragments are stored and used to build up representations of previously seen images (as shown by many careful studies of monkeys' brain cell responses to varying visual stimuli). And, of course, one's expectations definitely have an impact, especially when picking between different possible interpretations, some of which seem more contextually plausible than others.

However, if people were simply hallucinating whatever they expected to see all the time (as sometimes happens under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs), our species would probably have become extinct millions of years ago. The perceptual system must have evolved to serve extremely important survival functions (e.g., finding food, spotting danger, etc.), and if it were frequently grossly out of touch with objective reality, then these survival functions would not be met, which would probably result in death (e.g., a tiger might be mistaken for a sunflower by a caveman who might then try to pick some seeds from the tiger's face).

So, in sum, I agree that what you have suggested does in fact happen, and has been shown to happen under clearly prescribed circumstances. Nevertheless, the vital role of objective reality, as expressed to the brain through our lower level sensory systems (e.g., the retina for vision), in delimiting perception is a fundamental fact that cannot be escaped.

Best regards,

Les

Hi there...interesting Question.

May be light in our dreams is the work of our brain,like the visual cortex.There have been tests with blind people(not Stevie Wonder)to let little electric currents throuhg their visual cortex, which resulted in seeing shapes of light.

GREETINGS. JEFF.

Hi Jeff,

I believe you are right. In fact, the very thing you mentioned, i.e., the creation of "phosphenes" by electrical stimulation of the visual cortex, was already mentioned in an earlier posting above (see the posting of Sunday, May 16, 1999 - 01:48 am, entitled "Light in Dreams & Visualizing Things Never Seen Before"). That ealier posting goes into more detail about how the brain might go about creating light and other things you have never specifically seen before in life, in your dreams.

Best regards,

Les

An old physics professor of mine wrote Maxwell's equations on the board. He then turned to the class and said: "And God wrote Maxwell's equations, and then there was light." His point was that those equations define light. In order to communicate with each other as a species and make any sense at all, we first have to agree to some common definitions. The scientific community generally agrees on Maxwell's equations.

If you shine a light into an empty universe, where does the beam of light go? What does it illuminate? It's like the old riddle about a tree falling in the forest and not making any noise unless someone is there to hear it.

Light does not come from our brains. Our brains perceive light when we are awake but when we are asleep with eyes closed, our brains do a sort of flip flop. Our eyes right the world for us so to speak. With our eyes closed our brain gets turned upside down a little.

Has anyone ever seen that trick where someone gives you a piece of paper with some dark markings on it, not in any sort of pattern at all. You are told to stare at it for one minute then close your eyes tight and report what you see. What you see when you close your eyes is the face of a man, supposedly Jesus, or a character with a beard that resembles what we all think he might look like.

The brain takes those markings and flips them into a meaningful picture without the grounding reference of our open eyes to keep us from seeing. When you stare at a red object and turn your eyes away from it you get an instantaneous burst of red, green's compliment. Likewise with blue-orange and purple-yellow. Try this: Make an American flag out of construction paper but instead of making it red, white and blue, make it have green and white stripes and an orange field behind the white stars. Stare at it intensly and then quickly turn away. You will flash a red white and blue flag onto a blank wall or ceiling for an instant. Your brain fills in the missing parts based on what you just observed. I don't why or how this works but it does. I think dreams work a little like this. What we see and do an encounter in our waking lives somehow gets turned into its compliment in our dreams.

Hi Nicholas,

Let me see if I can recap what you are trying to say. I think you are trying to make two separate points: 1) Light is a physically measurable phenomenon (either particle or wave) that exists in the universe outside of our heads which our brain is able to perceive. This point is beyond debate so I will leave it be. 2) Our brains often tend to perceive things in terms of opposites. You give an example of color opponency in color afterimages. (E.g., if you stare long enough at something red, the cells in your brain that respond to red light become fatigued, and fail to inhibit the cells that respond to green light. Thus, when you stare at something white immediately afterwards, you perceive green.) You make an analogy between this and what happens in dreaming. If I am correct, the analogy would be that when the brain stops receiving sensory input, it creates its own pseudo-sensory input on its own as a sort of "complement" to the sensory input it is no longer receiving. This is an interesting way of thinking about the reason behind why the brain produces dreams. A testable hypothesis to derive from it is that the harder a person works their brain while awake, the more their brain will create dreams while sleeping. I don't know if any sleep researchers have ever tested that hypothesis or not.

There was one point that you made, however, in which you appeared to be trying to contradict the point made earlier in this thread, that "light" can be generated by the brain, e.g., in what are known as "phosphenes" (see the last two messages in the thread). You said: Quote:

Light does not come from our brains. I'll admit to leaving out the rest of what you said after that, in which you talked about the brain perceiving things in opposites, which admittedly allows for the brain to generate its own sensations. But I think a clarification is in order. It is important to realize that while light exists outside of the brain, it is also perfectly clear that what we perceive as "light" is different from the particles/waves of light that move around in the physical universe, and in this sense perceived "light" is an entity of its own. That is, I am basically asserting that the perception of a thing is never the same as the thing itself. This is a basic tenet of most theories of perception, and can be backed up with all kinds of hard scientific data. Furthermore, it is very clear that the perception of "light" can be produced without any photons of light entering the eyes. Besides dreams, the clearest examples of this are the above mentioned "phosphenes" which are produced when the occipital cortex is stimulated electrically (e.g., during brain surgery). When this is done, the person whose occipital lobe is being electrically stimulated will generally report "seeing" bursts of "light." It probably also accounts for the "stars" that a person sees when their head is hit from behind. Thus,"light" in the perceptual sense (not in the physical sense) is generated by our brains (even when photons of light are entering our eyes).

Again, for a more extended discussion of this topic, I would refer you to the earlier posting from Sunday, May 16, 1999 - 01:48 am.

Best regards,

Les

Hey, Les - you said "A testable hypothesis to derive from it is that the harder a person works their brain while awake, the more their brain will create dreams while sleeping." This reminds me of something Patricia Garfield said in her fascinating book PATHWAY TO ECSTACY. I recall her saying something to the effect that days when she was extremely busy doing all sorts of different things, meeting with various people etc., that the nights following such days were those most likely to produce lucid dreams for her. As for me, it seems that days when my brain is being used more are followed by nights in which my dreams are at least more vivid. Also worthy of note perhaps is the fact that I started having lucid dreams in university, when my brain was being stimulated perhaps more than at any other time before or since (though it is also true that I was trying to have lucid dreams for the first time).

My explanation of this would be that when your brain is more active in general, that level of activity is more likely to carry over into dreaming. Also perhaps it is the case that if you are stimulated into higher degrees of conscious awareness in the daytime, say by unusually novel stimulation in your environment, this may lead to higher degrees of lucidity at night.

Well, I should have known that it would be you, Lester, who would wrench me from the problems of existence back to our favorite threads, or at least the "perception" of those threads. I always thoroughly enjoy your postings. They challenge and they educate. In fact, just by virtue of reading you, I'm beginning to feel like an armchair brain. Nevertheless, I must do my duty as the devil's advocate to get you to post even more.

Today, I am simply going to take issue with a partial sentence. In discussing light as a physically measurable phenomenon, you said "This point is beyond debate." In terms of science in the physical world, or more accurately our chosen model for science in our model of a physical world, you are of course correct. Nothing though, in my rarely humble opinion, is ever beyond debate. It always depends on our perspective as much as our perception.

It general, human perspectives seem to fall into three primary categories. I would label these as Rational Scientific, Rational Unscientific (philosophical), and Irrational Religious. In these three, we have the perfect model of a dysfunctional family, always at odds but emotionally tied. You are, obviously, Rational Scientific. I tend to be Rational Unscientific. The vast majority of humanity seems to be either Irrational Religious or entirely lost.

I listen to science, but I neither believe nor disbelieve. I listen to all religions, but I neither believe nor disbelieve. I listen to philosophy and it allows me to do this.

Your opinion on how the perception of light is generated in the brain appeals to me. If I were a pure scientist, I would subscribe. Yet, I am a Dreamer and so are you. I hence find it curious that you so willingly distill the experience of meaning into such relatively meaningless parts.

I find both pleasure and comfort in our unscientific friendship. It ultimately adds up to more than neurons, and if it doesn't, it should. We both seek Truth, and in our conjoined divergence I contend that we are finding it. Warm regards/ Stephen Berlin

Stephen, In answer to your question about whether any of us know of any evidence or tradition that suggests that Light is the primary emanation of the mind, I would refer you to a book titled THE ONE AND THE MANY by Mercia (sp?) Eliade. In this book Eliade identifies this pattern of Light being viewed (experienced) as the primary emanation of the mind in about 20+ mystical traditions throughtout history. One modern book specifically related to lucid dreaming which holds this view is DREAM YOGA AND THE PRACTICE OF NATURAL LIGHT by Namkhai Norbu. TIBETAN YOGA AND SECRET DOCTRINES, edited by Evans-Wentz, is another book which describes the increasing frequency of experiences of White Light (the primordial state) as we move toward enlightenment. Judging by a review of mystical literature over a period of hundreds of years, EnLIGHTenment does seem related to actual experiences of Light. What are ACTUAL experiences??? I don't know how to answer that at the moment. But I can tell you from plenty of personal experience that clearly seeing bright white Light and being in "normal" reality (or dreams or otherwise "black" transitions between sleep and waking) at the same time is quite possible. What I'm trying to say is I do not personally believe that the experience of Light of which mystics speak is merely an analogy. There are two "versions" of White Light I personally see: one roughly at "12" in my visual field (typically bigger and brighter), another that moves from roughly "2" to "10" in my visual field. I do not consider myself enlightened (FAR from it much of the time!) but reading others' descriptions of these experiences, I think they may well be related, a taste of what is to come. Light and Love 2U Today! Nibbana

Good morning, Nibbana. Thank you for the recommendations. I am familiar with Mircea Eliade, having read a moderate amount of his writing about 20 years ago. His work is so thorough in its scholarship, though, that it generally overwhelmed me and I ended up consciously retaining few particulars. Nevertheless, I believe that we unconsciously retain what we consciously may not, and it thus seems likely to me that his writing has in some way influenced my own thought. It is even possible that it has to some unknown degree contributed to my specific interest in Light. I hope to track down the specific title you mention, as well as the other books you so kindly referenced.

Perhaps this is a good place to cross-reference this Forum topic - The Manifestation of Light in Dreams - with two strongly related ones - Post Your Lucid Dreams: Dreams of Transcendence and Aspects of the Dream State: OBEs, NDEs, Alien Abductions and Visions. Both topics have experiential accounts of Encountering the Light, including my own highest moments. Personally, I don't believe that those of us who experience these wonderful visions are more enlightened than anyone else to begin with. That being said, each experience of Light fundamentally changes us. We cannot behold Light and feel Bliss without proclaiming its impact on our understanding. For those who want the experience, I think intense study or devotion to a specific school or technique is of less consequence than simply the Heart's sincere and incessant yearning. Thank you for sending me your Love and Light which reflected back the same moment. /Stephen Berlin

Thank you for your kind post Stephen. I enjoyed and appreciate it. I do hope you did not have a sense I was talking down to you. That was not my intention. My intention was to provide information I believed was relevant to your question about whether any of us in the Forum know of any evidence or tradition that suggests that Light is the primary emanation of the mind.

I am left with the following questions and thoughts regarding your most recent post: 1) You state, "Personally, I don't believe that those of us who experience these wonderful visions are more enlightened than anyone else to begin with." The part that I'm not clear about is "to begin with." Do you simply mean, "Personally, I don't believe that those of us who experience these wonderful visions are more enlightened than anyone else"? If that is the case, I am not sure I can agree with you wholeheartedly. On the other hand, if you're saying something along the lines that, "We all start out (in the human condition) ignorant of our true nature." That seems more likely to be true to me. I do not question that the basic nature of every human being (and everything else in existence, for that matter) is Light. The degree to which each individual is aware of his or her true nature, however, is a completely different question in my mind. The way I view the world, enlightenment is related to awareness, and awareness to experience. No experience=>no awareness==>no enlightenment. I would not want to say that having a transcendent experience would necessarily make a person enlightened (unlikely!), but neither do I believe that a person can be enlightened WITHOUT having transcendent experiences. In my view, this is a very important/integral part of human experience, not one to be neglected or discounted.

In one of your posts you wrote about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I believe that this hierarchy corresponds roughly to the different chakras/body energies/potentials within a human being. I don't see the "higher" energies/chakras as "better" than the "lower" (or transcendence as better than "basic" survical), except insofar as a person has the opportunity to become more whole or complete through more broad and varied experience--integrating MORE of themselves (parts of which they are initially unaware or in darkness regarding).

I realize I'm starting to ramble, and I'm fighting off a cold so I need to get to bed here soon. I hope we can have more dialog about these issues at another time, as well as about your comment regarding yearning. Reminds me of a quote by Rumi, one of my favorite authors: "There are love dogs no one knows the names of. Give your lives to be one of them." Not to discount the value of yearning, but I am not convinced it is the ultimate, i.e., that there is not a space beyond yearning or desire (namely, contentment or realization), that may well include intense study or devotion. Intense study or devotion may well be a given person's path. Do they call it jana yoga in the Hindu tradition?? (I can't remember and am too tired to look it up at the moment). I sense you may be more of a bhakti yoga type of person (heart/desire/etc.), as am I. Before I go I want to share three quick quotes out of context, as a reminder to possibly discuss more later: 1) "The Clear Light is momentarily experienced by all human beings at the moment of death; by masters of yoga it is experienced in the highest states of samadhi at will, and unceasingly by Buddhas. The conscious realizing of the Clear Light, while still incarnate, is synonymous with the attainment of Buddhahood." EVANS-WENTZ, p.166 2)

Listen, if you can stand to. Union with the Friend means not being who you've been, being instead silence: A place, A view where language is inside seeing. -Rumi

and 3)

We shall not cease from exploration And at the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. -T.S. Eliot

Good night Steven. Namaste. N

Hail Sons and Daughters of the Bright Night! and thank you, Nibbana, for your question and comments regarding my statement: "I don't believe that those of us who experience these wonderful visions are more enlightened than anyone else to begin with." Let this be a lesson for all of you. Never end a sentence with a preposition!!

Seriously, I'll be happy to clarify why I don't think "degree of enlightenment" plays a role in a person's predisposition to having Visions - especially those that may best be described as Encounters with the Light.

I understand that it seems reasonable that individuals who are deeply immersed in a spiritual tradition would be the most likely to reap heavenly rewards. This conclusion, however, is the result of attributing our human work ethic to our spiritual quest. We are essentially saying that - by virtue of intense study and/or devotion - we can "earn" the Light. This implies that others - by lack of spiritual interest or effort - cannot. I find this thinking similar to the Christian fundamentalist view that the few and the favored sheep will go to heaven and the rest of us will go to hell. Or, from the slightly more palatable Eastern perspective, our souls are given the privilege to prolong their agony through several incarnations until ultimately submitting to a holy code of conduct.

I am not denying that commandments, prohibitions and penalties are necessary to keep our instinctual misbehavior within acceptable limits to maintain the semblance of social order. But there is really no need to project the values and ethics which are intended to enhance our quality of life in the physical world to our quest for the Spirit. For those of us who have literally "seen the Light," we know that it simply and naturally dispels all darkness. Being worthy is not a factor. In its Radiance naught but our own perfection can abide.

In my last posting I recommended "yearning" as the wine-of-choice for the would-be ravished. This suggestion was based upon my state of mind prior to my first Encounter with the Light (see Aspects of the Dream State: OBE's, NDEs, Alien Abductions and Visions). I should here admit that "yearning" was my barrel-aged interpretation of the bitter facts. I was cynical and angry that my years of sincere beseeching had fallen on divine deaf ears. I lost my faith. I gave heaven my middle finger (really) and gave up. Then came Light!!

Of course "giving up" hadn't really extinguished my yearning. "Contentment" or "realization" which you categorize, Nibbana, as beyond yearning, I see as a similar means to disguise our frustration with futility. We attempt to rise above our painful yearning by affirming that we have already attained that nebulous notion we name "enlightenment."

All I can personally attest to are "enlightened moments" and "transcendent experiences." I believe that true Enlightenment steps out of time and into the eternal. If Jesus and Gautama were "enlightened," I believe the truth of the matter is that they were able to sustain an intellectual and emotional link to their "enlightened moments." As wonderful as we know transcendence to be, we must admit that maintaining its full incapacitating ecstasy for extended periods would preclude our ability to sustain the flesh.

Despite their relative brevity, Encounters with the Light are fundamentally life-changing. They do keep their vitality - necessarily sealed in our memory - but always available to be tapped. We are privileged in retrospect to carefully contemplate their meaning with our reason. We feel genuine gratitude for having been given the Gift of the Glimpse, and more importantly, we proclaim it for all. We also very quickly learn not to get too pompous. Worldly favors are not included in the Light. The Zen masters were right: "Chop wood and carry water. Get Enlightened. Chop wood and carry water."

Like lucid dreams, Visions of Light cannot be fully understood until experienced. And also like lucid dreams, the first step in having one is often just knowing that it is possible. If it could happen for me, it can happen for anyone. Please write to me with your personal accounts. And solely for the purpose of demonstrating that the Light can be conferred by even the shameless, be sure to remember that the Rapture revealed my name in your will. Thanks. /Stephen Berlin

Hi Stephen, I fully appreciation your frustration with the notion that grace/Light/enlightenment can somehow be earned. I certainly agree that it is a gift. "Degrees of enlightenment" is certainly a tricky thing to try to explain in words. It's sure not like stockpiling merit badges in order to earn the Eagle Scout Award, or anything so mechanistic like that. I think it's more about learning to get out of the way and let God be God in our lives--let enlightenment/Light come to us, and be open to receiving the GIFT of grace--GOING WITH THE DIVINE FLOW, which beckons us toward wholeness and self-integration--the return to our Divine source. The Taoist way of trying to articulate all this is in line with my experience of how this seems to work. Hopefully the following two quotes will give you some idea of what I'm trying to get at: "Look, and it can't be seen. Listen, and it can't be heard. Reach, and it can't be grasped.

Above it isn't bright. Below it isn't dark. Seamless, unnamable, it returns to the realm of nothing. Form that includes all forms, image without an image, subtle, beyond all conception. Approach it and there is no beginning; follow it and there is no end. YOU CAN'T KNOW IT BUT YOU CAN BE IT, at ease in your own life. Just realize where you come from: this is the essence of wisdom."

"Empty your mind of all thoughts. Let your heart be at peace. Watch the turmoil of beings, but contemplate their return.

Each seperate being in the universe returns to the common source. Returning to the source is serenity.

If you don't realize the source, you stumble in confusion and sorrow. When you realize where you come from, you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused, kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king. Immersed in the wonder of the Tao, you can deal with whatever life brings you, and when death comes, you are ready."

I am NOT saying we can earn enlightenment. I AM saying that I believe we can learn to more fully cooperate with the unfolding of the Divine in our lives. The way I see it, there is a flow that we can either surrender to, or resist. We have free will, and the ability to influence our self-integration. To the degree we surrender, we become more whole and enlightened. To the degree we resist the flow, we block the Light in our lives. I believe the process of enlightenment is very much related to the process of self-remembering: remembering our true nature. How easy it is to forget our divine nature and get caught up in the dramas of our lives! I believe some people are much more practiced and skilled at re-member-ing, surrendering/staying in tune with the divine than others. I don't think these people are pompous people. In the words of the Tao Te Ching: "When you realize where you come from, you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused, kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king."

I'm getting sleepy now, need to go to bed. Will try to wrap it up for now, realizing I have not yet addressed all of your points. Certainly, our ideas about being enlightened can hold us back if we identify too strongly with preconceived ideas about what that will look like. That I am not advocating. LaBerge has a nice little quote in EWLD, that talks about how our ideas about who we are can limit our realization of who we are. Can't remember the exact words in my current state; I do have the energy to pull a quote out of my pocket that a friend gave me today that reminded me of LaBerge's more elegant quote: "What is between you and realizing yourself is who you think you are."

Good night Stephen, and the rest of you on the Forum. Sweet dreams.

Love & Light, Nibbana

Hi Stephen,

Looked at your post again this morning, when I was less groggy. Ah, the mystery of pain and suffering. Surely it is difficult to accept the notion of a God who would play favorites. Perhaps Grace is always available to us, waiting to be accepted in the current circumstances of our lives--whatever those are. WE choose: explicitly, or implicity (through unconscious attachment to past habits/patterns that may be outdated and no longer serve us). Perhaps when we struggle and resist what currently is before us, our egos are our jailers. Why should God be blamed for our poor judgment and lack of trust/commitment/faith in the process of life? We struggle against the flow=> we pay the price of perpetuating our ignorance. This discomfort might be best viewed not as a "bad" thing God does to us poor human beings, but as an incentive to get our acts together--God trying to prompt us along the path of freedom/detachment/liberation. Does God really abandon us, or do we abandon ourselves and God when we neglect the reason we were sent here (reunion, a conscious sharing in the divine splendor/Light)? I do not believe that blaming God (abdicating personal responsibility) is an effective strategy. We have opportunities both in waking life and dreaming to be co-creators in this process of the divine unfolding--opportunities to bring more harmony to ourselves and the world through acts of compassion, open-heartedness, generosity, and trust in our basic connection and Oneness. Hopefully we will be committed to doing our best not to fumble the ball. . .

More Light! Nibbana

Hello Again Stephen,

I was thinking more about your statement this afternoon that you don't believe "degree of enlightenment" plays a role in a person's predisposition to having experiences that may best be described as Encounters with the Light. I'm curious, to what do you attribute this predisposition? Are you aware of the kundalini literature which describes transcendent experiences of White Light as a typical feature of people whose higher chakras are more open? If yes, what do you make of these writings? Do you have reason to believe they are inaccurate? What do you make of Eliade finding this pattern of ecstatic experiences of White Light happening to mystics of virtually every major and not-so-major spiritual tradition?

Nibbana

Good morning, Nibbana. The quotations you offered from Eastern traditions have their counterparts in the West: "Let go and let God", "One day at a time", "It is God's will", and "Be still and know that I am God." These are relatively effective psychological strategies for coping with human problems and tragedies, but I am not convinced that they have any role whatsoever in initiating transcendence.

I have studied tantra and kundalini literature. If Visions of Light happen when "higher chakras are opened," (assuming a belief in chakras) how do we explain my experiences? Shouldn't I have followed some spiritual recipe to have influenced their activity. I didn't - unless I was unknowingly cleansed by red meat, brew and the poetry found in four letter words.

As to why Mircea Eliade found ecstatic experiences happening to mystics of virtually every major and not-so-major spiritual tradition, I think there is a simple explanation. Mystics are the most likely to report and record such experiences. If a casino boss or a political candidate reports having Visions, he or she will probably soon thereafter be reporting to the local unemployment office. If a person with a history of mental illness reports a visit from God, appropriate medication will be prescribed and administered. Nevertheless, it is quite well documented that hundreds of thousands of "ordinary people" have at some point in their lives experienced something "supernatural" such as an NDE, OBE, alien abduction, a visit by angels or the dead, or a vision of Light. Mystics, lucid dreamers, new-agers and guests on the Jerry Springer Show can be expected to find acceptance for such experiences within their own ranks. But for Mario, the longshoreman, "forget-about-it!!"

I don't deny that individuals with dedicated spiritual focus are more likely than the general population to have peak experiences. I attribute this solely to their knowledge and awareness that transcendence is both possible and desirable. I am very skeptical that any specific tradition, methodology or morality plays any part in triggering the sublime event.

Our last few postings, Nibbana, have naturally drifted off the topic of this thread which questions how the mind generates light in our dreamed environment. To continue along these latest lines, I think it would be good to start a new heading with a title like "Eastern Traditions" under Related Topics for Discussion.

Thank you for this challenging interaction. At the moment, though, I have a couple of other important irons in the fire, so I won't be able to keep up this pace in the Forum. For me, one posting usually consumes a couple of days. Love and Light /Stephen Berlin

Thank you for the interesting interaction also Stephen. The final comments I would like to make on this topic for now (and I hope you will not feel you need to respond, or turn me in to the Forum Police for posting off-topic) are as follows: 1) How is it that you are so sure that you as not more spiritually in-tune than many people? (You seem pretty darn alert and aware of spiritual issues to me, compared to the people I am likely to talk with on my block, my family, at work, or at the grocery store, for example--i.e. "normal" people.) Trying to have the conversations you and have had on-line with most of them probably wouldn'd have been very engaging/reciprocal. Red meat, brew and the poetry found in four letter words may not be as destructive as you think. I suspect transcendence is much more closely related to becoming whole than to becoming pious in any conventional sense.

Sure, I think most churchs would love to have us believe that following their "recipe" is what will save us. I also believe this is typically said out of desire for control or in attempt to put their own fears/doubts at rest. Personally, I do NOT believe recipes are the answer. Seems more like we paddle/effort/follow recipes (through will, desire, ego, etc.) until we get out to where we need to be; then when we finally get the faith, courage, and grace to surrender/be ourselves and let go of our conditioning, the current takes us downstream from there with much less effort and much more freedom.

2. As to the relevance of our on-line conversations to the initial question of how the mind generates light in our dreamed environment, my suspicion is that Light does not need to be generated. It always way and always will be. It IS our true nature, and we can experience that for ourselves in waking, dreams and N-REM to the degree that we are able to let go of the dualistic fabrications of our minds. I believe it is when our minds QUIT generating things that we get glimpses of Light, at least that's how it seems to work in my life. . .

Best Wishes with your hot irons my friend. . . ;) Nibbana