Dreams: What They Are and How They Are Caused
About This Book
Many of the subjects with which our theosophical studies bring us into contact are so far removed from the experiences and interests of everyday life, that while we feel drawn towards them by an attraction which increases in geometrical progression as we come to know more of them and understand them better, we are yet conscious, at the back of our minds, as it were, of a faint sense of unreality, or at least unpracticality, while we are dealing with them. When we read of the formation of the solar system, or even of the rings and rounds of our own planetary chain, we cannot but feel that, interesting though this is as an abstract study, useful as it is in showing us how man has become what we find him to be, it nevertheless associates itself only indirectly with the life we are living here and now.
What You'll Learn
• Understand Leadbeater's taxonomy of dream types: the specific categories he distinguishes (physical stimulus dreams, astral body activity, symbolic communications from the higher self, and genuine consciousness activity on the astral plane) — what characterises each type, what causes each, and how to distinguish between them based on their specific qualities
• Grasp the astral body and dreaming: how Leadbeater explains the partial separation of the astral body from the physical during sleep, what the astral body does during this period, and how the specific experiences of the dreaming consciousness reflect the astral body's activities in ways that are garbled or transformed as they are translated into the brain's imagery
• Recognise the symbolic communication dimension: how the higher self communicates through symbolic dreams, what types of symbolism are most commonly used in this form of communication, and how to develop the capacity to interpret these communications — distinguishing their specific quality from the more random associative imagery of ordinary dream production
• Learn the development of astral consciousness: what developing genuine astral consciousness during sleep involves — the practices that support this development, what the characteristic experiences of genuinely conscious astral activity are like, and how to work toward the capacity for bringing clear memory of astral experiences through to the waking state
• Appreciate the book's place in the wider landscape of dream research: how Leadbeater's Theosophical account of dreaming compares with the Freudian and Jungian approaches that were developing contemporaneously, what each framework reveals that the others miss, and how reading them together might produce a more complete understanding than any single framework provides
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