**Bookless & Friends**
**Episode 810**
**Topic : Speaking with Dream Characters**
**Special Guest : Dr. Papa Giorgio**
Dr. David G. Bouklas: Welcome back Doctor Papa Giorgio. The only reason I’m inviting you back to my program is so I can have more pizza and wine. I don’t even care about dreams.
Dr. Papa Giorgio: Yeah sure whatever bro. We could be dreaming right now.
David G. Bouklas: Man, this pizza is a dream, I tell you. And the wine. This wine! I can’t believe this wine!
Papa Giorgio: Thanks, bro. I’m way drunk already.
David G. Bouklas: Me too.
Papa Giorgio: You’re a dream. Your face is a dream. I love sharing good food with good people. Let’s talk about the people we speak to in dreams.
David G. Bouklas: Dude, dreams. Dude. Oh yeah, if you are just reading or listening to the Dr. Bouklas & Friends program for the first time, Dr. Papa Giorgio owns a fucking incredible Pizza Ristorante in Western France and also runs a lucid dream clinic named Le Rêve Enfants which assists people with career, academic, and general lifestyle things. He’s been on the program a few times now.
Papa Giorgio: I am very thankful. If there is one prayer I could say in my life, I would simply say, with all of my heart, thank you.
David G. Bouklas: One time I told a dream character I was dreaming and since I realized they were a manifestation of my own thoughts I willed him to touch his nose, then this crazy shit happened where I saw myself from the dream character’s eyes and it freaked me out so bad I woke up and my heart was pounding insanely hard.
Papa Giorgio: Dude. You offended the shit out of your unconscious mind by telling a dream character that not only was it in a dream, but that it was a manifestation of YOUR thoughts. This is offensive as hell to the rest of your mind which you do not actually control – they have agency and control – notice how the dream world is a place you don’t create but merely go to each night. The unconscious freaked you out by showing you how arbitrary your own personality is by switching your position with that of the dream character. Your identity, the part of you that you call you, is just your ego, a mental construct, just like all the other personalities living in your head like neighbors you’ve never bothered to get to know. Your heart pounded because that experience threatened the legitimacy of your ego identity. Have a little respect for the rest of your mind, dude. It is a big deal that you even attained awareness in the dream, that is why the dream characters often will not acknowledge it. They don’t want you to have any power at night because you have the most power during the day. But you can form a dialogue with your unconscious, one of mutual respect, and it will lend you more power if you let it take the lead sometimes.
David G. Bouklas: If you aren’t in the co-pilot’s seat, move over. Yeah?
Papa Giorgio: During the day, you are the captain of a ship, but there is an entire crew below deck that you should get to know. Next time you are lucid, instead of antagonizing, make a genuine attempt to connect. Talk to your mind as a friend, not a slave.
David G. Bouklas: You think there is a separate consciousness from myself in the dream world, or more like my higher self?
Papa Giorgio: I know there are. Most dream characters may just act like NPCs (Non-Player Characters) but some of them are fleshed out personalities. Aspects of self that are either repressed or simply never emerged. Your main personality, the one you identify with, is like one very large program running but it is not nearly as in control as it would like to think. Think about all the little processes running in the background that you don’t control.
David G. Bouklas: Like healing cuts and scrapes, or digestion, breathing, all the organs, that kind of stuff.
Papa Giorgio: For sure. Cell regeneration. Like, everything. Your brain has to do a lot of work that you don’t manually manage. I’ve met a lot of the other major unexpressed facets of myself. Usually they are represented as people I know. Like my brother or a close friend tend to be other personalities that were formed during childhood and grew up with me. But the dream architect is like a very powerful force that usually doesn’t talk directly unless it is flexing, like, uh, if you have challenged it somehow, maybe by messing with the dream structure.
David G. Bouklas: The dream architect? Some idea of an omnipotent controller or creator within the dreamscape?
Papa Giorgio: Can anyone really say for sure? I don’t know much about it, but I know that the dream architect has total control of the dream world. And it can talk using the dream itself as a metaphor. It always knows everything, what you are thinking and what the other dream characters are thinking. One person here I think met his (dream architect) in a strange way. He was falling asleep but I guess his mind was restless because he dreamed he woke back up in his room and a tall man in a security outfit was standing in his room watching him sleep and it said, “Everything is ok. Just go to sleep now.” Like it was waiting for him to relinquish any remaining control so it could take over for the night, but there was this element of protection, like he watched over everything.
David G. Bouklas: Wow, I actually remember meeting him once. I had a triple dream once, where I would fake-awake-up over and over three times. One of the layers of dreams was waking up in a country home at night time under a full moon. A tall man dressed in a suit was sitting with me telling me that they liked me, that they were watching me or with me or something. I have a very foggy memory of it now. I always thought it was some government agent, some Tall Man or like that guy from Half Life. When I emerged from my third dream and re-entered this dream-layer later on, I was in the same room but the man was gone.
Papa Giorgio: It’s awesome that he appeared to you, especially in such a badass form. Understand that dream characters’ forms are just symbols for the personalities and mental functions they represent. You can, and already may have, spoken to him before or since while he wore a different form. In fact, if this was the dream architect, it is such a high functioning part of your unconscious that it is aware of everything you are doing and thinking right now. The interesting thing would be to take that knowledge and to realize you can communicate to it all the time. Also when you dream journal or try to interpret your dreams you are telling that part of yourself that you are listening and value its feedback. This reinforcement makes it more likely to intentionally communicate with you.
David G. Bouklas: Being open and honest about our feelings, with ourselves, and then invariably with others. Good, clear communication.
Papa Giorgio: I am trying to spread this message to my students at the dream clinic and to others in the dreaming community because the biggest mistake I see is that people have a patronizing relationship with their unconscious, and in turn their unconscious patronizes them. Mutual disrespect leads to an unhealthy connection with the greater self and a lot of compartmentalization. I am hoping more people will try to form positive dialogues with their unconscious and post about it. This has the potential to be the most fascinating thing that can happen in a lucid dream – actually getting to know yourself.
David G. Bouklas: Allow me to read this excerpt from the Tao Te Ching:
*The tao that can be told*
*is not the eternal Tao*
*The name that can be named*
*is not the eternal Name.*
*The unnamable is the eternally real.*
*Naming is the origin*
*of all particular things.*
*Free from desire, you realize the mystery.*
*Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.*
*Yet mystery and manifestations*
*arise from the same source.*
*This source is called darkness.*
*Darkness within darkness.*
*The gateway to all understanding*
Especially with regards to modern culture, however, it seems that people are doing lots of naming and labeling and being caught in a multitude of desires encouraged and perpetuated by this sorcery we call the mainstream media.
Papa Giorgio: Anything in the human experience can be seen as sorcery -even if most of it happens unawares – if one is so inclined, and outside of human experience too if one broadens the definition. Although, a completely open frame might not be a very useful frame at all!
David G. Bouklas: What about a framework of enlightenment?
Papa Giorgio: In terms of enlightenment, assume for a moment that fully realizing the three marks of existence according to buddhism equals enlightenment:
*aniccā — all things are impermanent*
*dukkhā — all things are unsatisfactory/suffering*
*anattā — all (conditioned or unconditioned) things are not self/ there is no self*
It could be the same pervading realization, applied to the subsection of sorcery:
*All sorcery is impermanent*
*That there is no form of sorcery that might free us absolutely from suffering*
*There is no sorcerer*
It is always useful to remember that one of the marks of classical enlightenment and at least some strands of sorcery is the paradox of everything has changed / nothing has changed. On one hand it is as if the world were completely renewed every moment, and on the other everything is exactly the same as it always was. Sorcery, ego, suffering, bodily fluids, conflict and confusion all remain as they were, but there is no longer something there for them to stick to.
David G. Bouklas: It’s interesting to hear your thoughts on this. I’ve never really thought about how terms such as sorcery – a word which can have dubious and varying meaning – can be applied to these matters. I think once we can disassociate from social stigma regarding certain words, we can evolve into a greater understanding of a more total definition of a term and transcend the limitations of languages with regards to the meaning of the word. We can realize that we are, in a sense, casting spells by spelling the words our language. In the beginning was the word…
Papa Giorgio: Of course this is just one angle, there are many schools with many maps, often in contradiction with each other.
David G. Bouklas: When I think sorcery I think of evil wizards like Jafar from Aladdin. There are people who are ‘bad spellers’. I think of manipulative advertising and the like. Where can I read up on this stuff? How can I separate the good stuff from the bologna?
Papa Giorgio: We do a lot of research in my field. We engage actively with other dream studies groups such as IASD (International Association for the Study of Dreams) Look for original sources of information, verifiable facts, corroborating evidence and consensuses from experts in the fields. We have to have vigilance and exercise some critical discernment. For example, I often see articles posted on Facebook and elsewhere with wild claims about some new miracle supplement, political stories that seem insane, or some new thing that is supposed to kill you. When pulling up the articles though, they often make factual sounding statements without anything to back them up, or without listing sources for their claims – a good sign to be skeptical of a claim. So, I usually quickly go through a bunch of checks to quickly filter out untrustworthy stories. I took the following information from a website, I don't claim this as my own ideas necessarily. But it's certainly practical and worth sharing.
√ Look at the style of the writing or speech. Is it clear, well formed and coherent? Is it written as a factual neutral article, or is is littered with opinion and hyperbole? Exaggerations and appeals to emotion are often used to distract from a lack of substance and fact.
√ If there are sources listed, follow them. What are the sources? Are they trustworthy? Is it some persons blogspot page, or is it a well known research institution or respected journalist? Are the sources who they claim they are? A “scientist” is not necessarily an expert in the field in question – so a sociologist making claims about climate change, or a geologist making claims about brain chemistry should be questioned. Similarly, a doctor is not necessarily a medical doctor, or a research doctor, or a specialist in the field in question – verify the person making claims is qualified to do so (and that they really exist, look for other publications).
√ Next, look outside that article and their sources. Are there other places the information can be verified? Public records? Respected scientific journals? Are other unrelated sites or news organizations talking about it? What are their takes on the topic? Is there a general consensus to the facts of the story?
√ Beware of excuses people make about why they cannot provide sources or evidence. Conspiracy and cover up claims are becoming far less believable in an age where sharing information is easy, decentralized and spread worldwide. So, it’s a big red flag if someone is claiming they can’t give you facts or evidence due to them being suppressed by some shadowy organization that somehow controls the entire internet (yet doesn’t shut down their sites “exposing” those conspiracies).
√ Finally, as others have said, look for motives. Is there someone that gains a lot for spreading that story? Is there a reason they may have fabricated evidence? However, be careful since motive does not disprove a fact, it just offers cause for stronger skepticism. If a politician is making a wild claim about their competition, they obviously have motive to share it – but it could still be true. Follow the other steps above to find out more.
David G. Bouklas: Interesting and important. Great for all of us to remember this stuff when doing any sort of research, or when checking Facebook. I guess we got off the topic of dreams a little bit.
Papa Giorgio: Au contraire mon ami, lucidity in dreams and in waking life, what is the difference? Are you dreaming now?
David G. Bouklas: We could just be dreaming each other now, or we are one giant entity dreaming itself into separate subconsciousness, just like the moment where I saw myself from my dream character’s eyes. I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. We have to recognize this truth and live Jesus Christ’s message to love God with all of our hearts, minds, and souls, and love our neighbors as we love ourselves. If we are really dream characters for each other, I hope we cool, bro.
Papa Giorgio: We cool, bro.
David G. Bouklas: This wine! I can’t believe this wine! Peace out Papa Giorgio.
Papa Giorgio: Peace.