Dreams-Part-2
welcome everybody to our home with theosophy this is our second class we have some new people so welcome last in our last meeting we went through an introduction that is not really part of the leaders book it was taken from another book that he wrote the astral plane because what we are going to explore about the dreams as we are going to see has a lot to do with what happens on the astral plane so we we try to review the main aspects of that subject that will be needed to understand our present topic so today we are going to start exploring this this particular subject and as we normally do we will go through what Leadbeater explained I bring some excerpts from his book and then I will make some comments you feel free to ask questions or make comments as we perceive and then at the end we always will have some some time also for for exchange so if you want to wait to the end that's also good I have today with with me marina she's going to to read the excerpts for you so let us begin with the with the first slide mechanism of consciousness let us first consider rather carefully the mechanism physical etheric and astral by means of which impressions are conveyed to our consciousness the bitter had a quite scientific mind and the way he approached things was in in that particular way so normally when we read about dreams people go directly to the X perience of dreaming but as we are going to see the experience of dreaming or what we remember when we wake up off of that experience is not necessarily exactly what happened there are many things that affect our perception so if we are going to have a correct understanding of that experience that we call dreams then we need to know what are the different possibilities that may affect this this experience of dreaming or it's also its memory as we are going to see there are certain aspects that relate to our body not only to the physical body but also to to our subtle bodies that may affect the experience of dreaming or its recollection so it is important to to begin to keeping this in mind so that we can make an intelligent assessment of what we call a dream number one the physical aspect we have in our bodies a great central axis of nervous matter ending in the brain and from this a network of nerve threads radiates in every direction through the body it is these nerve threads according to modern scientific theory which convey all impressions from without to the brain and the latter upon receipts of these impressions translates them into sensations or perceptions so he begins to explore the part of the nervous system and this will be important as we are going to see but the idea is that we receive impressions that suppose this is in normal consciousness and we touch something and that that touching the object produces certain electrochemical reaction in our reactions in our mouths that they are communicated to the brain and somehow the brain or as we are going to see later some subtle aspects of of the brain not the physical brain necessarily but what we call the brain that say transforms emotion that is electrochemical into a sensation or a perception this is a problem in science is called in in the philosophy of science the hard problem of consciousness hard because it's hard to solve it is hard to understand from the scientific point of view consciousness is the result of this electrochemical ectric amical activity so they don't know there is a gap between a depolarization in in the membrane of the neurons which is an interchange of sodium and potassium from from the environment how that is transformed into a visual or a tactile or any sensorial stimulus so they don't know how that works and in in the Theosophical view we we postulate that the process is far more complex and involves some other aspects of our being not only the physical one now this brain of ours is very readily affected by slight variations in our general health and most especially by any which involve a change in the circulation of the blood through it when the flow of blood through the vessels of the head is normal and regular the brain and therefore the whole nervous system is at liberty to function in an orderly and efficient manner but any alteration in this normal circulation either as to quantity quality or speed immediately produces a corresponding effect on the brain and through it on the nerves throughout the body here he is talking about something that normally we don't consider too important but when we are talking about transferring a perception from the inner place to the physical plane it becomes very important in my circumstances he he's going to explain if the the flow of of blood through the brain is not good enough we may get sleepy or something like that but if this is happening while for example when we are awakening and while the consciousness that was the having some activity on different planes from the physical while that consciousness was coming to the brain he something like this happens it may distort the memory of what happens actually in some other books he says that this is why the the psychic research the clairvoyant research that they did is so difficult because even a problem of digestion may distort what you were you saw on higher planes and when you are bringing it down to the physical plane because the brain is not working properly maybe you know how your body's having a hard time digesting and there is not enough blood flowing through the brain that fact will distort what you saw on higher planes if you were clairvoyant for example so even people who are not clairvoyant when when we remember a dream if this dream is a remembrance from what happens on the inner planes as we are going to see then the remembrance may be affected by how the brain is working if the supply of oxygen to the brain be deficient it becomes overcharged with carbon dioxide and heaviness and lethargy very shortly supervened if the speed with which the blood flows through the vessels is too great it produces fever if too slow then again lethargy is caused so these are some examples of the thing that happened on the physical body are they and on the level of the waking consciousness but as as I say darkness we are going to see this effect more dramatically the what we perceived from the inner place it is obvious therefore that our brain through which be it remembered all physical impressions must pass may very easily be disturbed and more or less hindered in the due performance of its functions by causes apparently trivial causes to which we probably often pay no attention whatever even during waking hours of which we should almost certainly be entirely ignorant during sleep now the reason why this is important to to begin with and all the other the other processes that we are going to explain tonight it's a at a certain point in our growth what we call dreams the remembrance from experience on the only higher planes may have an important role in air even in our waking consciousness as long as the dreams are just curiosities and our things that have no necessarily impact on our daily life well it doesn't matter much if you remember well or not what you were you had read after all is just an imagination in your mind but as I said in the spiritual life the there is a period where consciousness begins to be able to learn on the inner planes and when waking up all that knowledge is transferred to the brain even if not in a very conscious way many times all this is transferred in a more unconscious manner so if this there is a conscious remembrance of certain things and they are distorted by by these mechanisms that we are going to explore then unless we know about that possibility if we start giving some if we considered our begin to consider our dreams as something important but we give them an importance without having the discernment that these things may affect what we remember from the experience then we may be led astray and we are going to see us the class goes on how dreams can be of help in the spiritual life normally as I said in the previous class we tend to look at the whole world from the point of view of the personality and the physical plane how things can be helpful for my personal life so a person dreams of a number and the first thing that the person thinks is of you know doing using it to win the lottery or something like that in in the Theosophical path we have the view that the the real is our inner self and that our physical life and our life in all the planes that their real purpose of this is to be able to realize the inner self so whatever happens from the inner planes may help us to lead a physical life that is conducive to the spiritual development and growth so this is why when dreams may begin to help us in that direction we need to know how to interpret them not in terms of if you dream with water what it means because as we are going to see that also is normally quite personal but in a deeper way we need to to understand what possibilities are they are - for error or to misinterpret and we are going to see all this during the class I'm just trying to point out why this is important because it's something that is not normally talked about when when exploring dreams before we pass on one other peculiarity of this physical mechanism must be noted and that is it's remarkable tendency to repeat automatically vibrations to which it is accustomed to respond it is to this property of the brain that are to be attributed all those bodily habits and tricks of man which are entirely independent of the will and are often so difficult to conquer and as will presently be seen it plays an even more important part during sleep than it does in our waking life so the the body the physical body has this ability to fall into habits this is very useful for certain things when we learn for the first time how to drive we have to think every motion and then we got we develop the habit this is that is called the muscle memory and then we don't have to think about it the body knows how to do it we just have to be present so the body has this ability to generate habits and repeat them now the this this quality of the body may become an obstacle when we are trying to perceive deeper aspects of life because the body is very good to relate to the physical world it is built to relate to the physical world but then that same body may become an obstacle when we want to perceive something beyond the physical world and I'm not talking necessarily about psychic perception or clairvoyance I'm talking about listening to the spiritual voice developing wisdom understanding life from a deeper perspective in particular with dreams because our brain as part of the body has the tendency to to repeat impressions many times whatever the the brain was was perceiving during the day will affect in a very important way how it will receive the remembrance from what was happening on the inner planes why the brain was asleep so if during the day we were worried then when we go to sleep and when we wake up that tendency to repeat the worry many times distorts the memory of a dream the memory of something that may have been an actual experience on the inner plates so for this reason the waking life and the the dreaming life the life on the on the physical plane and the life on the inner planes they affect each other they are a continually in a certain way so part of the the process discipline to to begin to open up to this deeper experience of life on the inner plate is to set the physical life in order it all comes together you cannot really just not pay attention to one aspect and suppose that is not going to affect another aspect but we are going to talk about all these more in in later classes number two etheric aspect it is not alone through the brain to which we have hitherto been referring however that impressions may be received by the person almost exactly coextensive with and interpenetrating its visible form is his etheric double and that also has a brain which is really no less physical than the other though composed of matter in a condition finer than the gaseous if you see here on the table that that you have on the screen on the physical plane there are two principles according to the philosophical view the physical body and the etheric double the physical bodies the dense aspect of ourselves that we perceive with our five senses and in the Theosophical view it is said that there is a an etheric or subtler counterpart of the physical body which is the bridge between the body that is material and the soul that is immaterial and I'm using the word soul in a general way so we have things for example the astral body if you see they are in the in the diagram or the table the astral body is not physical the physical body is physical how can something that is in material affect something that is material this is a problem in philosophy they call it the ghost in the machine they say if the mind is in material and the body's material then is like a ghost trying to to drive a machine it cannot interact with it well the ideas at the etheric double is like a bridge because it has it responds to both the material and the immaterial so it has equality of both aspects least steel physical but is subtler than the the dense matter and therefore can respond to what is in material so that is a in the same way that we have a physical brain there is a subtler counterpart to the brain that is the what we can call the etheric brain this etheric brain is has a function of of passing the bio electrical impulses that are happening at the level of the physical organ passing that and transforming that into sensations at the level of the D astral body and therefore it's part of the mechanism of consciousness if there is a disruption in the etheric brain then there will be a disruption in the physical or in the perception of the physical world now this etheric is the vehicle of the human vital force called in sanskrit prana and anyone who has developed the psychic faculties can see exactly how this is so he will see the solar life principle almost colorless though intensely luminous and active which is constantly poured into the earth's atmosphere by the sun he will see how their theory part of his spleen absorbs this universal life and specializes it into prana so that it may be more readily a similar ball by his BA one important aspect of the etheric double is to to generate a kind of vitality that the body can use this is as he says what in Hinduism they called prana in Chinese philosophy the Chi so if the the etheric counterpart of the spleen is the one that takes the prana that that comes from the Sun and that is all around us and that is a kind of universal vital force and specializes that into a kind of prana that we can assimilate and that the the body can used to keep on functioning now as we are going to see the flow of prana is very important in transferring physical vibrations to consciousness you will see how prana courses all over that body running along every nerve thread in tiny globules of lovely rosy light and how when the rose-colored particles have been absorbed the superfluous life principle finally radiates from the body in every direction as bluish white light so this is how the clairvoyant sees this he described this in other books also this is how he he saw all this so there is a an almost colorless kind of vitality that comes from the Sun then it is absorbed in the body and turned into some kind of pinkish or rosy globules that go around the body then that that vitality is absorbed and the leftover goes out of the human body in in this kind of bluish light that some people may see when they see the etheric double many times they see with this bluish white light and that is because it's the vitality that is we are pouring out that is the prana that is already used by human beings although then it can be that kind of bluish can be used by other species if he examines further into the action of this life principle he will soon see that the transmission of impressions to the brain depends rather upon its regular flow along the etheric portion of the nerve threads then upon the mere vibration of the particles of their denser and visible portion as is commonly supposed so at the beginning of the this chapter Ledbetter said according to science impressions are transmitted to the brain by this electric nerve impression or what we know now more specifically in the science of the 21st century is an electrochemical reaction so he says according to science that's what transmits the impressions to the brain but what he says here is a to the clairvoyant site the this electrochemical reactions actually follow the flow of prana and as he is going to explain if you in some way stop the flow of prana then this electrochemical reaction doesn't produce an impression in the brain when a finger becomes entirely numbed with cold it is incapable of feeling and the same phenomenon of insensibility may readily be produced at will by a mesmerizer who by a few passes over the arm of his subject will bring it into a condition in which it may be pricked with a needle or burnt by the flame of a candle without the slightest sensation of pain being experienced now why does the subject feel nothing in either of these two cases the ideas he's going to show very briefly both the the cold and the effect of the idea of a mesmerizer was the turn of that night into the 20th century mesmerism was quite famous and there were people that we're able to do some passes over Pete over you know another person so that the person would not feel physical stimulus today also that happens with some some people that practice hypnotism or similar things in the East they are the fakirs or the some Hindu hata Yogi's they know how to manipulate the flow of prana so they can pierce their their body and not even blood will flow and they were won't feel any pain so libido is asking here if it all depends on day on this electrochemical reaction how come that when these things are done by this mesmerizer the brain cannot feel anything there has to be something else going on there the nerve threads are still there and though in the first case it might be contended that their action was paralyzed by cold and by the absence of blood from the vessels this certainly cannot be the reason in the second case where the arm retains its normal temperature and the blood circulates as usual the this is not too different also from when we go into surgery and you have an anaesthetic then what happens according to theosophy is that the Terek towel is removed from the physical so even though you may have the electrochemical reactions going on and going to the brain because the plane is not flowing and bringing the impressions to the brain then the brain doesn't feel it and he will he will show how this happens in in this case is how he was describing if we call in aid of the clairvoyant he will tell us that the reason why the frozen finger seems dead and the blood is unable to circulate through its vessels is because the Rosi life ether is no longer coursing along the nerve threads for we must remember that though matter in the theory condition is invisible to ordinary sight it is still purely physical and therefore can be affected by the action of cold or heat yeah so let's go to the next one in the second case he will tell us that when the mesmerizer makes the passes by which he renders the subjects armed and sensible what he really does is to pour his own nerve ether or magnetism as it is often called into the arm thereby driving back for the time that of the subject the arm is still warm and living because there is still life ether coursing through it but since it is no longer the subjects own specialized life ether and is therefore not an rapport with his brain it conveys no information to that brain and consequently there is no sense of feeling in the arm so basically what this person is doing is pouring out part of his soul prana and because the the that prana belongs to him and not to the other person the brain cannot read that kind of prana because that prana was specialized by this other person's plane not by the subjects the subject of this experiment let's say now this knowing that he goes as you can see quite into detail about how impressions go from the physical to the etheric and to consciousness because it has an impact in many different aspects for example when even when we want to meditate something that most meditation teachers will will tell you is they need to have your back straight then the reason for having the back straight is so that the prana can circulate in a proper way because if the plan is not circulating properly then your brain is not going to be working properly also many times breathing exercises are recommended many times at the beginning of the meditation for the same reason now if you are going to be they're just sitting there maybe not many differences or much difference between having a lot of prana going on or not you will feel just a little more sleepy or less sleepy but if in your meditation you are trying to attain a higher state of consciousness to understand something from a higher point of view to stimulate the wisdom that is intrinsic in us then it is very important that the brain is receptive because you may have an insight but if the brain is not able to receive it without distortion then for all that matters to you in your waking consciousness is like if you have never had the insight so it is important when we are we are in pursuit of spiritual life to understand that the physical body needs to be healthy some people say well after all we are not the body then why should it be healthy but although that doesn't affect the spirit itself so to say you're the inner aspect of our being a physical body that is not working properly will be an obstacle for us in our waking consciousness to retain higher impressions so all this mechanism can explain a little and we are going to see how this is transmitted to to the inner person to the astral body and from there up to the mental and cosa but all this mechanism this is important to keep it in mind to recognize the need to to pay attention this is also why for example it is recommended to meditate when your stomach is empty because if the if you meditate after eating and your the most of the blood is is being spent in trying to digest the food then again the brain is not going to be as receptive as it should be you may miss these higher perceptions li asks what is the status of prana when a person is sleeping when the person is sleeping there isn't working out of the department the planner sorry the the physical elemental which is like the consciousness of the physical body devotes most of its energy when the body is asleep to repair the body and try to bring back the harmonium balance there's a lot of prana that is left over that has not been eliminated so that that's also something that happens but all this this activity of the physical elemental requires prana for the physical elemental to work it is said that this is why in the from a an occult point of view occult in the sense of taking into account what is hidden what is not easily seen it is good to go to sleep early rather than late because in the first part of the night the there is in the environment there is still prana from from the Sun that the physical elemental can use if you go to sleep late when the plan is already exhausted then the physical elementa has less energy to to use to repair the body so it is it is normally you know there used to be the saying that the early part of the night was like one hour sleeping in the early part of the night was worth three hours of sleeping in the late part of the night so of course our life may not allow us to to go to sleep too early but within what our life allows we should try to go to sleep early rather than late so that the physical element that can use the the leftover prana that is in the environment now Janet has another question how would compression fracture and the t12 vertebra effect ones meditation I would say that that depends on how the thetic double is working there because they you know when when something happens on the physical body then the etheric double is also affected at the moment of of the fact or the accident in this case but the aesthetic double can be repaired even if the physical part cannot the etheric double is as it is not so dense is far more fluid so prana willing flows through the etheric double as we saw not through the physical nerves of course you need some amount of physical electrochemical impulse huerta by but if if you are able to move your limbs and all that that means that that is happening so in principle it shouldn't affect much if they thirty double is working properly the prana will call naturally in their in the appropriate way if at the beginning I mean the the etheric double may need some time to heal but after you know a few years that I know that this happened to you some years ago it shouldn't affect much so yeah now just as any change in the circulation of the blood affects the receptivity of the denser brain matter and thus modifies the reliability of the impressions derived through it so the condition of the etheric portion of the brain is affected by any change in the volume or the velocity of these life currents so yeah we were saying it's not so much that the blood affects the etheric double but blood is the carrier the physical carrier of prana so if there is there is not enough blood or there is too much blood then the same will happen at the level of prana so this is this is why the the mechanism of consciousness can be affected by something physical for example when the quantity of nerve ethers specialized by the spleen Falls for any reason below the average physical weakness and weariness are immediately felt if under these circumstances it also happens that the speed of its circulation is increased the person becomes super sensitive highly irritable nervous and perhaps even hysterical in such a condition he is often more sensitive to physical impressions than he would normally be and so it often occurs that a person suffering from ill health sees visions or apparitions which are imperceptible to his more robust neighbor there is a a quote in the secret doctrine where Blavatsky says that world physical health is many times an impediment for psychic perception and this is because the the more active the physical senses are the the louder they they are so to say and then the subtler perceptions cannot be you cannot impress the brain because the the physical perceptions are too loud they are too strong so as leader says here if certain conditions happen what he described there that the there is not necessarily enough prana and the the circulation of the blood is increased we happens a lot for example when a person is stressed we know that when we are under stress we feel irritable we feel anxious or nervous because these conditions happen there is not enough prana and the blood is going faster that produces a particular physical state were where our senses are like more tense and there for they may receive some psychic impressions they immigrant in the wrong way and become you know a kind of hysterical attack or he may produce a vision or many times they told the two go together it is historical truth that many of these sensitive people even mystics they they had these also hysterical attacks because then they were able to perceive on the higher planes because they are nares or were naturally more tense than in other people when this happens when the the normal the regular physical evolution happens then the nerves grow or evolve along with the with the ability of consciousness to deal with all these and then the person doesn't fall into this irritability or any of these other problems when for any reason if we force try to force the perception of on the inner place as we explained in the previous class then this lack of balance may happen but the point here is that in certain physical conditions we may be more open to psychic perceptions it must be remembered that the etheric and denser matter are really both part of one and the same physical organism and that therefore neither can be affected without instantly producing some reaction on the other consequently there can be no certain certainty that impressions will be correctly transmitted unless both portions are functioning quite normally in the irregularity in either part may very readily disturb its recipe receptivity and produce blurred or distorted images of whatever is presented to it furthermore as will presently be explained it is infinitely more liable to such aberrations during sleep than when in the waking State so here is the reason why he was going in detail into into old days if then the physical and etheric aspects are not working properly as he says it it disturbs the receptivity of the brain and produce a distorted image there is I remember a story where Damodar he was an early Theosophical member he lived he was an associate of Lebowski and he was a disciple of the Masters and then he had I think he was sleeping actually and he woke up and remembered or brought to his memory the the image of an accident that Blavatsky had had had so he we pop Blonsky was living somewhere else and he reported to the people around that something had happened to Blavatsky now his remembrance of what happened to her was distorted it was it was more or less what happened then they asked Lebowski and she confirmed that I think she had tripped and hurt her knee but the remembrance that the mother had was distorted and this is an example not not that dreams are for that purpose but this is an example of how impressions are healed obviously so on the astral plane what was happening to gravity but then in the process of bringing it to the physical brain there was a distortion so again if we are talking about dreams as just something fun and you know some things that our brain are creating then these distortions are not very important but if we are looking at the subject of dreams as something that more and more may be important in the development of the spiritual life then all these things begin to be important and we are going to see some some examples of this as the class goes on so it is honest he says all these problems at the level of the brain that during our waking state may not produce a lot of difficulties they do produce a big impact when we are in the process of bringing back the memory to the physical brain 3 it should be 3 is this oh did you call back let me see no so yeah they go there astral aspect number 2 astral aspect still another mechanism that we have to take into account is the astral body which is the vehicle expression of the astral plane on the astral plane this astral vehicle is even more sensitive to external impressions than the gross and etheric bodies for it is itself the seat of all desires and emotions it is peculiar peculiarly susceptible to the influence of passing thought currents and when the mind is not actively controlling it it is perpetually receiving these stimuli from without and eagerly responding to them this mechanism also like the others is more readily influenced during the sleep of the physical body so now we are at the level of the astral body as you can see in the table there and the the the impression set so we have seen on the physical body there is these electrochemical reactions which are transmitted to the brain and carry with it the the prana the the prana is flowing through the thirty double while the the electrochemical reactions are going through the physical body and these impressions are transmitted to the astral body which is the one that transforms physical and etheric reactions into what we call a sensation a sensation and they and later on a feeling so this is where science doesn't know how this happens because of course within the physical science that we have developed at the moment they cannot measure any other phenomena than what happens on the physical brain and it is clear that an exchange of ions through the membrane of the neurons cannot produce per se a sensation something that is so complex as a feeling or sensation well the ideas are as I mentioned is that the quality justice the quality of the physical body is what we call chemistry and physics you know the activity of the physical bodies what what in science we we know as chemistry and physics the activity of what we call the astral body is what we call feelings and sensations so when all this stimuli goes to the astral body then it is transforming these sensations now the problem with the the astral body as you go to subtler and subtler aspects of a human being this aspects because they are lighter they are more fluid they are less dense they can be more easily affected they are more responsive it's like the difference between having a very fine blow blow on your hand or having a very thick one you know if you have a very thick one you will miss many of the saddle impressions if you have a glow that is that is very thing then you can perceive much more so the astral body is far more influential than they theory condemned the physical and as we know in in theosophy every feeling and every thought that we produce of Astral murder that impact our astral body and that impact tends to reproduce a similar sensation in our bodies so if we go to a place where people were angry we tend to feel that anger we tend to reproduce that anger whether consciously or unconsciously all the the opposite is the same we go to a sacred place and we tend to reproduce that kind of feeling so this is important because most of the dreams that we that are that are more than just a physical activity as we are going to see there are some dreams that are just a physical effect of how the body works but the dreams that are not the dreams that are part of an experience of the inner planes on the inner planes most of those that we can remember happen on the astral plane which is a plane of feelings that planes the plane of emotions and they they are perceived by our astral body so when the astral body is perceiving all this the the emotional animals fear may influence what how the perception is received in addition to the influence that may have how the physical and the etheric body are are working so we are going to see an example of this in the next slide for example a man had been a drunkard and after a long period of total abstinence had succeeded in entirely destroying the physical desire for alcohol yet he stated that he still frequently dreamed that he was drinking and in that state he felt the horror the old horrible pleasure during the day his desire was kept under control by the will and casual thought forms or causal thought forms casual casual thought forms or passing elementals were unable to make any impression upon it but when the astral body was liberated in sleep it escaped to some extent from the domination of the ego and it again responded readily to these painful influences and imagined itself experiencing once more at the disgraceful delights so this is from a person that wrote a letter to let bitter and and this is an experience that is not uncommon that so they disappear in a particular vice in this case it was drinking when when they died in theosophy for those who may not be aware of this the idea of the ego ego actually the way that it is used in Theosophical literature is from the Greek Eco the Greek word Tegel means - and so the when the ego is is written in in the capital e it refers to the spiritual - there is also a lower you go that is the ego that we normally talk about in psychology is the personal ego but the spiritual eyeness this they go there is what what is expressing through the mental body the astral body and the physical body when we are awake so while they are consciousness is in charge if we are result to fight a particular vice we little by little we begin to gain control over that desire and while we are in control then the desire is for all purposes dead now when in in in sleeping the consciousness retreats to the astral body and then there is a period during sleep that retreats even beyond to the mental body and then the astral body is left just like the physical in this kind of slumber then the astral body may be influenced by external thought forms or elementals or feelings so because there is still astral matter in the astral body that tend to respond to the old vice when there is some mmm thoughtful more or a formal feeling that that is similar to device that the person had that stimulates the matter in the astral body and because the astral body has this ability to produce images just as the physical body does and the mental body does we are going to see that later it generates this kind of dream of the person drinking and then many times it happens that when a person is fighting something then the person goes to sleep and has this kind of dreams and many times this has nothing to do with the person it has to do with an external influence on the astral body that is that is still in a process of purification so you can see here how something that is completely external and may not have anything to do with the consciousness of the person may produce this particular dream and in the case of this person who was very worrisome because the person thought what why am I still having these dreams and enjoying this these horrible pleasure as this person put it that he was trying to fight so this is all part of necessary understanding of the complexity of human beings so that we can understand or interpret in an intelligent way what happens when we dream for example in psychology they would say that he has that his repressing his desire so when the conscious mind is not there then the the desire expresses itself and even though that may be what happens sometimes there is a difference between self-control and repression self-control is a conscious attitude in which we are put in order in our nature repression is an unconscious mechanism when a person because of feeling of guilt or fear the consciousness of the person cannot bear something is something that happens without the person knowing unconsciously that shuts those things off but then when consciousness goes beyond the astral body in sleeping the astral body is full of this tendencies so it begins to reproduce all these desires so in that particular case you could say that these dreams are a product of the subconscious mind us in psychology then they say but that is not always the case many times the dream is because of this external stimulation has nothing to do with the person with the consciousness of the person so in psychology they called subconscious mind to a whole lot of phenomena that that are not understood and that can can come from many different sources by by studying studying all these you know teachings and what we are going to explore in the in this class you can begin to put some order in these perceptions and understand what is going on so this is an example of how the astral body may produce something an image in your brain that have nothing to do with you or what you were really doing and so can the physical body we all know that sometimes it sounds a physical sound produces a dream related to that sound or a or a it's like physical perception if your your unfinished lip you know that may generate a dream that you are losing your arm because any stimulation from the outside or from the inside meaning from consciousness tends to produce an image so in in our growth in understanding our dreams we need to begin to be able to differentiate when certain things were external influences and when some things were part of our conscious activity so this is the this is the last slide in what I wanted to present today we have not yet gotten completely into the subject of Dreams although we just touched on this because the the first thing that the bidder wants to show is all how the mechanism of consciousness words and all the different possibilities you know what this is a blessing and a curse in the Theosophical teachings it is a curse in the sense that most people need a kind of simple blanket statement you know what if you say something that is very simple then it's easy for that to to catch up catch on and for people to understand okay it is a you'll be and that is fine but then if you really want to go to go deeper you need to know the complexities and many times that simplistic approach produces misunderstanding I am not sure if I gave this example here last class I know I gave it not too long ago in one of the talk so I apologize if I already did but this idea for example that the mind or the illnesses come from the mind there is an oversimplification of a fact it is true that our mind can affect the body it is not true that everything that happens to the body came from the mind or at least not from this present mind many of the illnesses come from karma that was generated in many incarnations in the past some people are born with a particular illness before they could develop in mind of this incarnation so many of the illnesses have nothing to do with how the mind of the person is working there are many influences that can produce an illness now if you have this simplistic approach the mind the are produced by demand the good aspect is that it is easy for people to see that it's important to pay attention to how you think but then the the the bad aspect of that simplistic teaching is that it is not always true and many times a person not only falls ill but now feels guilty about falling ill because that person says is my fault I have this cancer because my thoughts were incorrect and maybe the person was a very loving hearted person and cannot understand and I have seen cases like this cannot understand how he or she may have this this illness when his or her thoughts were perfectly fine so the same way in the Theosophical view there is the tendency to try to explain the complexity of the universe and human beings which does exist there this scares some people away but on the other hand if you really want to to go deeper with all this you need to know the complexity so if we are giving doing just a class teaching people how to interpret their dreams then it they simply the simplest your explanation the better for most people but if we are dealing with this from the spiritual point of view to see ok this is a new realm of experience that as we grow spiritually begins to to have an impact on our life then you need to know what really goes on you need to know the different possibilities and although it may be confusing at the beginning knowing that these possibilities are there you begin to understand and and recognize when something happens and you are not going to be led astray by a simplistic view so that's what I wanted to present today now we can go to some questions and answers or comments feel free to to ask any question or if you don't agree with thing that's perfectly fine we can discuss it down and explore it so if you have a microphone you can raise your hand there is a button they are with a little person with a hand up you can raise your hand and we can give you the microphone if you don't you can write in the chat box and then we will read the question so we say any question or comments to the exercise yeah marina saying that we gave an exercise for the week last week so if there is any any comment or question about the exercise the idea of the exercise was that when we go to sleep we may be on the astral plane but we may be within a kind of babble self center surrounded by our thoughts and worries and our personal activity and not be really aware of the environment and actually many times we are like that during our day we are not really aware of people of what what is going on outside we may be walking in a beautiful place and be just inside our head with all our thinking so if we are going to be aware on the astral plane when we are sleeping then we need to begin to break that bubble in our daily life as we saw there is a kind of echo or continuity between what we do when awake and work what we do when asleep so the the exercise that we proposed was to work on this so if there is any comment or question about that that's also welcome if you if you want to to contribute and if not it's perfectly fine - okay PRV now you have the mic what you have to do is to click on the the mics icon that you will see on the top bar there click on it and you will probably get a sign that asks you to allow the software to use your mic so you have have to say allow and then you should be able to speak so yeah I have a question just because I went through this recently with having a baby when the mother and baby they're so connected and physical level and so when I dream and obviously when she was a little it like last threat to a master and he dreams do we as strongly connected to an astral level to otherwise if I see dreams and say they're scary does he feel it like when he's in utero what do you think yes the the mother and they connected on the inner planes even more than on the physical plane it is not uncommon that a person when when a woman is pregnant certain desires appear on the person that were not really hurts and many times they come with a baby the ID in the Theosophical view is that the the soul that is in canadian brings his or her own tendencies from the past so because they the the oil of their debian and the your of the man are interpenetrating they affect is each other and many times there are these desires that all of a sudden come that really belong to the the soul of the baby the the the soul during the when when the body is just a baby the soul is not all connected to the physical body yet there is a few years in which the life of the baby is more still at the biological level the brain is being developed and the whole organism so that the soul can express itself through the brain so for for a few years the baby is still not completely connected to the soul on the physical plane it's like the the real consciousness of the baby is waiting for the physical body to be to be ready and this is also why the this tradition of the guardian angel that they the little the babies and little kids have is because nature since the soul cannot really take care of it of the body under the development nature provides a kind of angel or daiva depending on what tradition you're talking about that fulfills that purpose until the soul can really take care of the body so most of the the consciousness of the baby is really on the inner planes and at that level there is far more connection between between everybody you know if you are on the astral plane there is far more connection with a person than on the physical plane so there is a constant you know interchange of feelings and emotions and thoughts and of course this is why it's good if the mother can be as peaceful and happy as possible but at the same time life is life and if not through the mother then the baby when growing up we have to face difficulties and all day so it's although it is better if the man if the mother can have a good emotional and mental and physical environment nevertheless sometimes that is not possible I mean it's not that you will you know ruin the the possibilities of the child so in short yes there is there is a connection a stronger connection you know it's just natural that that happens I don't know if that answers or you have any other question you know that cancer is thank you very much any other question or comment all right so I'll I'll send a an exercise as I did last last week for you in case you know you you want to to try to apply some of these these teachings and if next week you want you have any question or comment you can bring them up at the end of the class but otherwise we'll meet next Tuesday thank you everybody for connecting and participating and I hope you have a great week