Original video by Stephen Berlin. Official website of Stephen Berlin's Lucid Dreaming Discourses: here, YouTube account here. The following text in this entry is a transcript.
Lucid Dreaming Discourses
Stephen Berlin
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Hi everyone, I’m Stephen Berlin. This is the third out of four talks that I’m going to give on transcendence in dreams. I’m sorry that I have to relate my transcendent dreams in their entirety, you know, transcendence cannot be taught in, like, “Step A, Step B, and Step C”. Normally, for you to reach transcendence, you either pop a hallucinogenic drug, or, you go through years of spiritual discipline—or, you get lucky. And so, my plan is another alternative, and that is by the fact that I have had over my lifetime of dreaming, a series of transcendent dreams—and it isn’t that many—that, by your unconscious mind, and I have great respect for your unconscious mind, that will recognize, by listening to these, certain patterns and things that even, you know, I don’t recognize. You know, minds are brilliant for doing that. And by listening to this variety of transcendent dreams, after your mind incorporates it and stews—probably a more appropriate word would be “incubates”—then, somewhere down the line, six days, six months, or six years, your dreaming mind will perhaps deliver you hopefully your own transcendent state of consciousness which, from your perspectives will be far better than any of mine. So, custom-made to your spiritual path.
Okay, I’m going to get on to the dream of today, which is a historical dream. I’m standing in a city square and I’m surrounded by this pretty impressive architecture, and in front of this square is like a stage. And on both sides of the stage are two big metal bowls. I would say, huge metal bowls. And they’ve got fire coming out of both them. And so—And night’s beginning to fall very rapidly at this point, and as I’m standing in this square, people start to really congregate, and pretty soon, they’re just, like, thronging in and pressing upon me, as I’m standing—It’s like, standing room only. And it’s dark and they have these two flaming bowls and this mob of people really—really—a lot of generated energy there. And I thought, “Hey, I better stick around! Something’s going to happen!” You know, so. Anyway, out of the darkness from between those two bowls steps Hitler, and he starts addressing the crowd. Now, this crowd of people now suddenly are spellbound, and I’m witnessing this. And, you know, it was like—I was going to say “Woodstock”, how do you like that? Woodstock and Nazi Germany. Where’s that connection? Well, where the connection is, is I was invited to Woodstock, and I didn’t go. That was my big regret of that drug-induced decade: I didn’t go to Woodstock. So, anyway, but here I was, in a historical event, and I was actually there! Now, you know, these kinds of things, like Woodstock and—and this Germany thing, are things that you hear about happening, but, often we’re not there when they happen. Well, here I was, there, and I was amazed by this, and—but I wasn’t lucid. Then, I all of a sudden just lifted off the ground vertically, and now my feet are dangling above the heads of this crowd—this meant, the—you know, The Fuhrer—and I thought, “This is a dream? I’m dreaming this?? I’ve—I’ve been transported back through time??? You’ve got to be kidding me!” And I’m just flabbergasted! Then, right at that point—Obviously, this is a major lucidity now, realizing this—and right at that point, some unseen force began pulling me—and I’m still in the standing orientation—some unseen force began pulling me back. And I suspect that’s a good thing, because, hey, I’m sure some of Hitler’s henchman would have, you know, shot me out of the sky. But anyway, I’m being pulled back, through, you know, in a standing orientation and I tried to I tried to turn around the fly—but I couldn’t do it, for some reason. But then I looked over my shoulder, and then I looked back and I was amazed as I always am that as I look back and I was amazed as I always am, that, as I looked over my shoulder, the background was coming towards me, and I turned back around to the front, and the scenery is again receding—and I was just—as always, astounded at the unconscious mind’s ability to create such a complex visual experience in a dream so perfectly! But it did.
Anyway. I’m now— (00:04:48) later, because I can now see the countryside below me, the Hitler spectacle had receded, and I assumed this was presumably France. And as I went over the country, after a while, I then saw a shoreline, you know, the waves and the coast, and, I then continued to move on and I was then, presumably, over the Atlantic ocean. Now, then, as I moved out over the ocean, I lost anything I could visually grasp onto, and this is where you would think I would wake up. But I didn’t.
Now, this part is where the dream became transcendent. The rest, you know, was all sequential and I would “tell”. This I can’t really “tell”. The next day, I was writing all day long, you know, any time I could think of something, I was jotting it down. This, all of a sudden, when I lost all visual stimuli, all of a sudden it rose up in me, it flooded down on top of me, like a tsunami on the right, and a tsunami on the left, and—and I was twisted, and pulled, and yanked, and churned, and turned, and pushed, and shoved, and warped and morphed—and—I was like—I was like an amoeba, you know, a boiling soup of imagery and emotion. And I saw—I saw war, and love, and battles, and blood, and all of the major archetypes, I would say—and family, and isolation, nations, and flags, and religious and sacred symbols, and throughout it all, birth, and disease, (09:06:35) and death, death over and over, and violence, and youthful infatuation—and then all of the common things that have come across cultures in time. Implements, and tools, and timepieces, and furniture, and transportation, and art, and music, and books, weather, transportation—you name it! And it was—the—I could keep going on, you can see what I mean. And I was just—
I woke up, then, and my heart was just going—boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! And the blood was just thrilling through my veins, and I’m out of breath—and I estimate this dream lasted at least an hour. People will say dreams don’t last that long, but, in my opinion this lasted more than an hour, maybe an hour and a half—And I was just weak and exhausted by this, and yet I felt I had witnessed the magnificent epic of man. The divine and mystical drama. The myths of myths, and how it changed me is, very frankly put, I felt that I had lived it all. That I had died all of the deaths. That I had been the victim of every horror in the world, and also the perpetrator of every horror in the world, and also all of the love, and all of the compassion, and all of the family, and all of the good and wonderful things in life as well. And, all the beautiful—I’d been all the beautiful artists, and I’d written all the world’s most wonderful music, and poetry, all of this—but all the—all the bad stuff, too, the—the—everything! And, by extension, and I’m not telling you to believe this—you, too! You have, too! And how it’s changed me is, when I see a homeless person, for instance, I think, “Well, there—there—there’s me. There’s me in another body.” You know? And I hear on TV about some guy or woman or whatever, committing some despicable crime, and, you know, being sentenced to death, I think, “That’s me in another body. Glad I’m not conscious in that one at the moment.” And, I just really strongly feel this! So, we have been the victims and the perpetrators, and the world the way it is right now? We need to really have compassion for the world, because (emphatically) we are in this mess together, and we are—we are everything we hate, everything we speak up against. And if we could just understand that…
Anyway, I’m sure I’m running out of time, so, I want to end this, I also want to thank you, since I'm in this divine and mystical drama, this—this (00:09:31) epic of man, I’m glad you're with me.
A Cursive Serpent Production
2007
My teaching, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. You are free to produce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship, without my consent or the persmission of anybody.
U.G. Krishnamurti
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