Dear Friends,

As I ponder more and more on the infinite complexity of the human mind and human behaviour,  I am glad in a way that I have taken DREAMS as central to unfolding the mysteries. For dreams are had while one is asleep and therefore they are productions by processes  already there within the individuals but disallowed while awake because of ego concerns. The ego interference is minimal while asleep and hence glimpses are had of the unconscious forces that are always active. This also gives the notion that if while awake we succeed to go sleep i.e. dull the Ego then we put ourselves in a position to have glimpses of the unconscious  while still awake! We can follow the workings of the unconscious as if watching a drama or a stage play. The psychologists studying dreams call such dreams "lucid dreams" as the person is still awake while witnessing the unfoldments of the Unconscious.

Dreams, though are  related to the current predicaments of the dreamer, are NOT productions of the individuals. Having dreamed he can react in so many ways ---reject it, forget it, seek out its meaning  etc.  We can ACT consciously upon it as a finished product in so many different ways. This gave me the idea for developing  Psychology as a field belonging to Hermeneutic Science in which what are analysed are TEXTS with Duality of Structure, the Surface and Deep. The notion of DREAM is generalised to everything, whatever that is apprehended my man are PRODUCTIONS or as Meykandar calls it ThORRiya Thithi, and man can react in so many ways only because there are such productions by forces beyond his jurisdiction. Even when he ACTS consciously and produces, within the ego regulations there are proceses beyond his control that enables the fulfilment of  his ego aspirations  . That he ACTS is also ultimately a constituted matter with the DESIGN to instruct  him about something that he is still IGNORANT about. His brehaviour , like his FACE, is a TEXT and he can understand himself only when he sees his own behaviour as a  TEXT and unearths the Deep Structure elements that infact constituted it.

When we begin to live like this the presence of  BEING as the Primordial Cause,  is noted and understood experientially and a person henceforth becomes a believer  ie. someone who subscribes to the  presence of BEING in himself and everywhere and learns also to be submissive to BEING in absolute trust.

It is at this juncture that I want to reply those who have been tasking  me that they do not dream at all and hence how can they also understand their unconscious? Here I wish to quote Richard M. .Jones from his interesting book "The New Psychology of Dreams: While everyone dreams about FOUR dreams a night,  "..............investigations have suggested that dream recall ability under both laboratory and home conditons is at least partially a function of the personality structure, recallers being generally inner-oriented and non-recallers being generally outer-oriented. " (Page 45)

This difference , I think, must be seen in terms of the ability to subdue ego and the inabilty to do so. The inner-oriented are those who can relax ego concerns  and see even self in a detached and objective manner as if SEEING another person. The outer-oriented must be then those who cannot do this and hence push the ego concerns in whatever they do.

Now how can these people learn about their unconscious? It is here that AccessTests come to the rescue: they enable  us to capture in pictorial terms the SAME contents of the unconscious that dream-recallers manage  to gain through dreams. The drawings in the Access Tests are almost the same as the DREAMS, graphical fabrications of unconscious forces actively peresent in the person.

Now Access Tests are non-verbal and it may NOT  be possible to get drawings from all people for some reason or other.  How can we investigate the unconscious here?

When I faced this problem, then it occured to me that the METAPHORICAL thinking available in the oral and written discourses are  useful  indicators of the working of the unconscious for metaphors are akin to dream images, flashes that OCCUR to a person .i.e. productions beyond his control. Of course poetry has a heavy dose of metaphors  and discourses that are poetical are the best for reaching the unconscious.

Overall I see that the prelogical metaphorical thinking and investigations into it are central for  a scientific  explorations of the Unconscious.

Dr K.Loganathan

>Dr Loga,
>
>At 11:57 AM 10/9/99 +0800, DrK.Loganathan wrote:

As I ponder more and more on the infinite complexity of the human mind and human behaviour,  I am glad in a way that I have taken DREAMS as central to unfolding the mysteries.

I am so ecstatic that we have such a one-in-a-billion resource such as yourself to weave the underlying mechanics of dreams in interpreting the human mind. Something so obvious as dreams since they such a large portion of human endeavour, yet so pathetically under-considered.
 

>>function of the personality strucure, recallers being generally inner-oriented and non-recallers being generally outer-oriented. " (Page 45)
>
>I've been reflecting on this, Dr Loga. What do you think of the possibility of people who live their dreams. That is there is such a high convergence between their night dream state and their day state such that they merge together.

I typically go to sleep lookinig for answers to a lot of unanswered questions and reflections. I wake up with lots of insights, angles and perspectives that either answer the questions or take me to another clue to find the answer. It is as if my mind goes into synaptic-impulses hyperdrive mode when I sleep and that's why the answers are available when I wake up. It's as if sleep time is the only haven for fuzzy logic to thrive. I don't know why though. And my post-waking morning mind just flows, continues, like a river from the night before, so well, thrilled with the new insights. And yearning to take action upon them.

I'm wondering, would it not be easier to recall if there was a high contrast between what happens during dream state and what happens during awake state? And that it would be harder to recall if there is high congruence between the
two states?

I want to recall much more of my dreams that I currently do :-)

anbudan../bala
 

Loga:

Bala , here you are using metaphors -like a river etc-- that have been used  from very ancient times for describing the working of the Unconscious.  In your sleep you are able openup  the sluice gates for the  unconscious to flow thorugh your mind. These sluice gates  are the prejudices, the stone-like mindsets, to use your term or the VINAI, the chains of Tholkaappiyar.  And only a person who can live in  UNCERTAINTIES and hence intrinsically OPEN can do this . This process is what Saiva Nanmani calls "the Creative  Intelligence" and what Saivism understands as the DANCE oF SIVA, again another useful metaphor. Actually what happens is the continuos conjugation of Bindu and Natham,  Yin and Yang,  Siva and Shakti.  This is the presence of Sivalingam at the MENTAL PLANE underlying endless productivity . It is akin to biological production but only that it takes place at the cognitive level. There are other levels to and Thirumular has explained all these in Thirumanthiram. I hope to write articles on these later.

Yes it is necessary and useful to establish HIGH CONTRAST between dream states and states of wakefulness. In Thumanthiram and other texts of the Siddhas they distinguish FIVE different states of Being: the wakeful (saakkiram) dream state( soppnam) the mythical (suzuththi) , the being in inner radiance (thuriam) and the absolutely transcendent. These five different states of Being must be carefully distinguished and it may be possible that as we become familiar with deeper states,  dreaming not only becomes more frequent but also easier to recall. In my studies there are cases where I could recall upto FIVE dreams a day. The Turiam is a frequent occurence in my case.

You can see that  so much yet remains to be done. We shall do what we can with whatever reasources at our  disposable. A beginning has been made and hopefully it will flourish.

Thanks.