This week, I get back on schedule with a special piece by Joe Rose.
Sorry about the skip week. I had been working on a special post. I conducted an interview with Andersen Prunty author of The Beard among other novels. And just before I posted it, he contacted me saying The Dream People, a surrealist online zine, was featuring his works and was activitely looking for interviews and criticism with and about him. So instead of posting, I submitted my stuff to The Dream People. Hopefully, my stuff makes the cut and will appear in the May issue. I’ll post about it if it does.
Here’s how I describe Joe–a shaman of the modern man.
In a world where most people have downgraded themselves to Human Having, or to the even more degrading Human Appearing, Joe Rose stands as a Human Being.
To get what I’m saying, here’s quote from a typical Joe Rose Facebook posting.
“There is a large side to us that goes unnoticed, and that is our dreams. It takes years to decipher what has been told in them. To which we finally realize they are of grand intuitions, therefore knowledgeable and important to our survival. In fact it might be said that our intuitive faculties are much more important then reason and logic, which are based on ratio. Intuition comes from the quite place where all knowledge is present at once after a day’s worth of processing our environment.” Joe Rose
And now the article Joe wrote specifically for The Absurd Circle.
What is a dream? How does one contend with what it really is? Biology, Sub – Atomic Molecular science, Shamans and Philosophers all have their say about it. If you ask me they are all saying the same thing. Neither however will forfeit their ideas to the other. It’s a mess. For me it is the Shamans or the philosophical point of view not because theirs complete sense of assuredness in their ideas, or not because the scientific world fails miserably at understanding dreams and consciousness. There is a point to empirical methodology – however dark and boring the concept they shoot out. To me the empirical form of knowing is just one sliver of awareness – to understand a concept one should always consider all points. So, I do not devalue either side’s knowledge. But, what I do find is that I am more attracted the shamanistic and philosophical point of view – for the portrait is paints is more textured and seems to go further down the proverbial rabbit hole. In truth, no one way really tells it all. But I am like any other creature–I like the cool version. And it seems the shamanistic point of view is available for anyone to delve into and see for him or herself if there is truth to any of it because in the province of the mind, what is true is true enough. Shamanistic technology helps its adventurer figure this out.
Modern neurology, biology, and molecular biology all say somewhat the same thing by stating that it seems the human mind can never know everything their is to know about the faculty of being a human or knowing its universe fully. So, with that statement it seems both sides of the coin are saying the same. There is nothing at stake in doing your own reconnaissance of mind, you cannot change the world with the information ones receives.. you can only reconfigure yourself. When entering this world of the shaman you are told that life is nothing more then a dream, and then you spend 30 or so years trying to know for sure that it is.
Shaman dream states explain to us that there is no connection to identity other then that of a molecular connection to nature… modern society is somewhat the same. We only loosely connect ourselves to culture, but when we stand back from it we realize we are nothing more then organic matter driven by a molecular motor.
So then what exactly is a dream and how encompassing is this dream.
There seems to be a subtleness to ourselves… one that lays just below reason and logic.. however reason and logic does not allude it’s understanding completely - but rather reason and logic are not useful in uncovering what one truly understands about his or her environment on a truer sense. Our daily trumps through the world have us picking up all types of information, processing, evaluating, tossing, keeping and rectifying information. We do this constant, sometimes unbeknownst to us. At night however we become aware of this processing state when we recede into sleep. The reason for doing away with logic and reason is – have you ever been able to reason out your dreams or make then have a sense of logic? It very rarely can be done. Tribal folk spend lifetimes trying to figure out dreams to little avail. Then why is a dream so profitable for life experience? Because in dreams we are our rawest self. There is no trick of identity in them. We are confronted with our real self in them and our truest interface with nature. If I had to say they akin to a gut feeling.. hard to explain but useful. Logic and reason keep us tethered to culture and the different identities that have to be created by us to make it through daily events. Those identities are mechanisms for survival – but not a a true interface with our molecular reality.
Since the mind is always processing information even when we are not aware the possibility of knowing our environment to it’s fullest can be had to a large degree. I do not put this in the province of psychics… it seems once we allude the ego for a time we become clearer in a sense. Able to replay all the information picked up in the environment. Dreaming in the sleep state furthers our abilities to get past the ego and let the mind do as it naturally does.
Then of course there is the theory that all we experience is a dream. From the likes of Lilly, Mckenna and other philosophers who speak of consciousness and how it interacts with nature it could very well be that what we experience during our waking hours is nothing more then a dream when you think that outside of our organic nature which gives us the feeling of solidness gives way to our atomic self – where molecules act funny and experience the stage of play in a different aspect then who we might think we do. Our eyes don’t see per se – they are the first intruders upon reality in that they are a lens, which allows light information into. Once the light has made to the eyes it is sent back to the cortex where our world is created. Then we are left with the differences between organic mass and molecular technology. The shamans for themselves make no bones about it… the definition of myth and spirit has made their ideas seem laughable… but if you were to ask them further one would find there really is no difference between what they call spirit and what modern science calls molecular. The difference is only cultural. But what is fascination about the shaman is that his or her techniques for acquiring the same knowledge are made accessible to all of us without the aid of degrees and expensive machinery to take a look at the molecular world. This statement in and of itself raises an eyebrow amongst a lot of folks.. The only way to attain proof from this statement for one is to experience the techniques of a shaman, then place them in the firing line of modern science. As of my exploration into it… I have have come to know that there is no difference between the modern scientist and the shaman. Which leads me back a thought that everything I need to know or have to know is available inside of me. I can break through to this information in dreams and dream states.
I realize of course these are awkward statements given the environment we humans have built… but keep in mind even after reading modern sciences take on what a human is you will still be left naked and alone – the human condition will forever it seems be mired in it’s own muck.. unable to get out of it’s own way. There is one thing that the small sliver of awareness that modern science is good at giving us and that is some hope. We place our hopes in finding structure – because structure keeps from the chaotic world of our true lack of identity. But this in no way should remove us from the talk of shaman dream states. There are just two different ways to semi attain the minds survival in an environment.
I want to state that these are my beliefs. I have accrued them over a period of time in studying all forms presented at this given time of what consciousness might be, consciousness which includes all states of mind. If you don’t sit well with what I have written here… you might want to do your own research.. it is a long process and you will not be able to quantify or argue a point unless you take the same journey – which by the way is a life long endeavor that may never show us everything of itself. This is why I implore the reader not to discredit the shamans’ point of view on the outset, nor either only 1/3 of way through your own research. Keep in mind there seems to be no utopia in ideas or state… but the dreaming mind offers a real look at what might be true enough.
Joe’s site End Cusp is worth spending some time on.