Minutes of the Second Oneironauticum, March 2008
Dreamers Erik Davis, lissa ivy tiegel, Geneva Bumb Shanti, Dean Mermell, Vibrata Chromodoris, David Shamanix, jacob Nasim, Christy Silness, and yours truly, Jennifer Dumpert, met at the habitat on Saturday, March 1.
We had all spent the day contemplating elements of waking life as if they’d been dream things (see direction below), after paying attention to the experience of remembering dreams that morning. We all went to sleep and awoke about nine hours later and shared our dreams over champagne brunch.
Much of our conversation centered around the nature of reality, and of the Tibetan Buddhist concept of the world as composed of thoughtform. We noted how unquestioningly we accept the goings on in our dream worlds as reality when we’re asleep (unless we become lucid). In the same way, we rarely question the reality of the waking world. Therefore, thinking of all components of daytime existence as dreams strongly affected several members of the group. We ultimately agreed that everyone’s exeprience of the objective world is ultimately conditioned by her or his own subjectivity–how we think about things, our emotional outlook, natural tendenices, and so on. All people can only perceive a world colored by their own subjectivity, so perhaps there is an objective reality outside subjectivity, but nobody is experiencing it.
Dean read us excerpts from Kilton Stewart’s perhaps questionably researched but very moving account of Senoi dream practices, originally published in 1951 and reprinted in that sixties classic of consciousness and dream states, Altered States of Consciousness, edited by Charles Tart. We felt kindred to these people who would built social interaction around dreams, and who prioritized dreams within their world outlook. As a meta-comment on the group, we decided that our intent could be described as thinning the veils between waking and dreaming life.