India, the mystIc East

[Diode-Man]

My view of Eastern "spiritualism", or whatever the British and other Western scientists and religious scholars thought they had found, is that it looks strange to someone who has been raised (since birth) in a paradigm that sees a single deity, and decries all others as "false".

Still though, people need to consider the dream state they go through each night. In dreams there are plots which the brain creates, the events, characters, and situations, reflect some element within the dreamer.

A scientist would say that ALL of these things reflect the personality of the dreamer in some way. However, I believe that there are certain elements in dreams which are not created by the dreamer. External spirits and energies which can saturate the dreams of any person.

The very nature of reality is curious indeed: In the day, the sun shines, if you drop an object it hits the ground. The dream state is the balance between the solid and the un-solidity of the human consciousness. I urge you to observe your reality in a less scientific and more spiritual way. But in order for you to do that effectively, you must first begin writing your dreams down each morning in order to work your "dream memory muscle" into a stronger unit, and remember that you should only do this because you enjoy it.

 

[Vkothii]

I don't believe I need to believe that. I don't actually need to start writing down my dreams (or anything else).

However that shouldn't stop me from writing down whatever.

 

[Diode-Man]

You don't need to, but there is a certain enjoyment which comes from remembering the strange and often amazing situations the brain can create in the dream realm.

If you can remember your dreams and analyze what happens in them, you can further analyze yourself and sort out any fears or issues you may have.

 

[Vkothii]

Well, I can still recall some of the lucid, theta-type dreams I've had.
Very symbolic, and something that I keep thinking about - in terms of what it reflects, or what it had to tell me about myself, type of thing.

How to relate or recount a vision. Scriptures are full of these things.
Revelations - Daniel's visions, etc and so on.

 

[Vkothii]

Been wanting to have a rave about something that goes way back, and which, in India - which is really lots of Indias - but musically there were, still are, two major traditions or schools of music.
Ragas are something like fugues, or melodies that attempt to convey some sense of, or visualisation of emotion, of feeling.
Music is unquestionably capable of evoking such things in humans. Animal responses to music, and the different kinds we recognise, are varied. Most of us would differentiate between "sad" music, and "happy" or "playful", even "joyous", or "funereal". Other animals seem to be more ambivalent.

The two main Vedic musical traditions involve what is known as "made sound", it's the study of melody - harmony and rhythym. This involves such niceties as counterpoint - the notion that every note has another note that can be sounded before, with, or after it. So can any rhythm or pattern. It's all about how patterns vary as they are repeated - a theme appears, which "travels" through an abstract space, or visits varied reflections and inflections of itself, a musical curve with loops in it, derivatives and integrals over time and an abstract "listening space".

The science of Nada Yoga, includes the sounds we can make and the melodic "integrals" we can construct, and also sound that is "not struck" - an inner sound.
Ragas are the poetry that a Nada Yogi invents, upon a sitar, to convey the sense of listening to an inner sound, or chorus. Bells, chirping insects, gongs, birdsong, a singing or constant, slow sounding of a multi-timbred instrument - the inner garden of Nada.