Active Dreaming and the Paranoiac Critical Method

The remedy is the experience

-Jason Mraz

I consider myself a Synchromystic, with Gnostic leanings.  While this label is something which I've applied in the last few years, my basic interests have remained the same for a much longer time.  I have been a Salvador Dali fan, and other than Jung, Dali has had a massive influence on my thoughts and artistic tastes.  According to Wikipedia, “the aspect of paranoia that Dali was interested in, and which helped inspire the [paranoiac critical] method was the ability of the brain to perceive links between things which are rationally not linked.”  This definition could easily belong to Synchromysticism, and there are also connections between paranoia and the art form which Castaneda called “active dreaming.” 

All the internet posts about Salvador Dali say the same obligatory things, followed by a segue into a Persistence of Memory screenshot or perhaps a shot of Dream caused  by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate.    Okay, here’s my version:  Dali's id-worship was what inspired much of his creativity.  His paranoiac critical method, with its dream imagery and desire to “reenter the womb,” (sans obtuse, asinine Dali quotes) was his method of madness.  Dali’s philosophy was deeply affected by Freud.  Dali’s future wife, Gala Eluard, on the top of a precipice, and in the heat of passion, exclaimed “I want you to kill me!”  Gala understood that Dali’s philosophy went “beyond the pleasure principle;” Dali fell in love with his intellectual-goddess.   Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle is his attempt to validate the existence an unconscious drive which ruled all the others.  This drive, Freud claimed, was the urge to annihilation, the death instinct. 

Jung's “active imagination,” which he used to create his visionary Red Book, was the origin of many of his later theories.  The Red Book is a record of communication between Jung and characters which, he believed, originated outside his own mind. 

Is there a right type of fear, and a wrong one? 

I believe there is a hindering fear which is ego-based, which is an obstacle to meditative states of mind.  There is another fear which sets you free.  The intense fear that reality itself may not be real, is the ultimate paranoia.  This is the first step in realizing you are in a dream, at which point you can use your flashlight of intention to begin actively exploring your own “subconscious.”  Our overall emotional mindset is something we carry over into our dream state.  This is the same state of fearfulness which Don Juan actually encouraged in his student, Castaneda.

Dali's inspirational use of “delirious phenomena” and the “Hypnagogic State” show that he and Jung were both “Psychonauts: sailors of the mind and soul.”  This is a term which John Lamb Lash uses self-referentially.  Lash and Philip Dick both use(d) drugs, with the effect of destruction of ego and generation of altered states.  But unlike Freud, who was a famous cocaine user, Jung's visionary states were not drug induced.  Castaneda used ethneogens more, early on in his experience, but the state of mind was not considered dependent on drug use; Don Juan could enter it at will.    Other avenues of approaching this (right brain) state are yogic exercise, rhythmic sounds, or deprivation techniques. 

I am of the camp that says:  Any state of mind that can be reached with drugs can be reached without them.  Furthermore, if you cannot reach said state of consciousness without drugs, you probably have no reason being there at all.  The tedious path-to-power itself decides who deserves to be “initiated.”   For those who take the "easy" path, I'd ask: will you be able to survive what you witness?  Like a dream which you can’t remember upon waking, I assert there are laws which determine what you can bring back with you.  The unburdened American style of transcendental meditation, with its lax modicum, may cause very dangerous side effects.  Deep meditation is a type of request for judgment, and those who are not taking the “power realm” seriously, may not live to regret it.   

Organized religions won't offer you the sacrament if you aren't a practitioner; be wary of meditation without asceticism.

Aleister Crowley, in his day, set several world class mountain climbing records.  Crowley used a combination of physical exertion, oxygen deprivation, ritual, meditation, and heavy drug use as his “reality modulators” of choice.  In other words; everything he could think of.

But Castaneda is not Crowley, as John lamb Lash doesn't seem to acknowledge.  Lash, on his website metahistory.org, writes a series of articles discussing Castaneda.  Lash appears to accuse Castaneda of being dishonest about the sexual nature of his “magic.”  Perhaps Castaneda's philosophical system is more Dalinian(and Freudian) than we all realize.  According to Eugene de Klerk, (Source#1) “In attaching his unconscious imagery to the death principle, Dali is suggesting that these simulacra, in their evolution of the ideal, mask and indicate a further desire – one for disintegration [death.]  Klerk suggests that Dali's alliance-with-death is based on a healthy understanding of Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle.  Klerk continues:  “Freud asserts that sexual instincts provide for a will to unity... ...[but that the stronger, death instinct, is] “the most universal endeavor of all living substance.”    

Crowley's sex magic falls nicely in this definition of “seeker of unity.” Castaneda is clearly of the other camp, philosophically, regardless of the sexual nature of his personal life.  “Death is the only wise advisor we have.” -Castaneda

Philip K Dick’s novels reek of paranoia.  This is one of the things that make them such a blast to read.  PKD's writing is fast, and does not benefit from rereading a page or two.  PKD is best read straight through, in as manic a state as he was in when he wrote them.  The logical inconsistencies and “shifting realities” of PKD’s work are confusing and disorienting.  These tactics create a state of unease among readers, a form of paranoia.

I like my Synchromystic Pizza with paranoia on it.

The only synchronicity that is real is that which you experience; synchronicity is subjective.  Place yourself in a receptive state of mind to experience this beautiful world!   Take a vacation from the real!

My paranoiac critical question of the day is: Whose subjectivity are you experiencing?

Sources

1. The Paranoid “I”: Dali, Lacan and Questions of Subjectivity by E de Klerk
2. Metahistory.org, Carlos Casanova I: Sex and the Sorcerer, John Lamb Lash