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Markku Siivola: THE POWER OF IGNORANCE IN UNDERSTANDING DREAMS & its special place in Montague Ullman's Experiential Dream Group process IASD Conference, Berkeley, USA June 22-26, 2012
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Markku Siivola:

THE POWER OF IGNORANCE IN UNDERSTANDING DREAMS

& its special place in Montague Ullman's Experiential Dream Group process

IASD Conference, Berkeley, USAJune 22-26, 2012

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"If you want to know something,go elsewhere.

If you want to un-know everything,then sit and listen."

Steven Gray (Adyashanti)

"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's own ignorance."

Confucius

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FIRSTI did not know that I do not know

THENI knew that I do not know

NOWI do not know if I know that I do not

know

My poem, written long ago, is currently still even more valid than ever before

The last stage can be called theory free state; an attitudeless attitude.During the 2nd stage I still knew too much.

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first, we are ignorant about our ignorance

then, we are learning, knowing more and more

if we are lucky, then our knowledge leads to a conclusion about the absolute insufficiency

of all knowledge

unlearning begins

understanding ignorance

"We shall not ceasefrom exploration

and the end of all our exploring will be

to arrive where we started

and know the place for the first time"

TWO KINDS OF IGNORANCE

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Psychoanalytic faculty at the New York Medical College 1950-1961Clinical Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychiatry,

Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University. Director of Department of Psychiatry at Maimonides Medical Center,

New York 1961-1974Founder of Dream laboratory at Maimonides Medical Center, New York 1963Founding Member of Medical Section of American Society for Psychical Research

(president 1971), Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Downstate Medical Center, State University of

New York Charter Fellow of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association President of the Society of Medical Psychoanalysts 1956-1958, 1962 President of the Parapsychological Association 1966 Member of Society of Biological Psychiatry Member of Council of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Montague UllmanSeptember 9, 1916 - June 7, 2008

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Montague Ullman's Experiential Dream Group process is designed to open the port to

UNLEARNING:

learning to know our ignorance

"It is easy to overlook our ignorance by attributing the source of dreams to some reified, internal demon, variously known as Primary Process, our Unconscious, or simply, our Id."

Ullman: Wholeness and dreaming

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What is the special value of studying just dreams? Why not thousands of other phenomena of life?

Accessibility: Dreams are universally experienced and accessible for our species, being an universal, common language for the whole humankind.

Authenthicity: Dreams are the most authentic mirrors about our truest selves

What is the advantage of Ullman's dream group process?

As far as I know, this process...

- has the least amount of predefined assumptions, belief systems and theories about what dreams really are, thus letting dreams speak with their own voice.

- more than typical, pruned "If This Were My Dream"- variants, it is the most detailed multiphase, multidimensional exploration of dreams, thus remarkably effective.

- is remarkably safe because of the abundancy of safety measures

- helps us to unlearn from the illusion of knowing the dreamer, when dreams show how we, in our ignorance, have misjudged her.

BUT methods have no value per se:

Methods may ease the way to the spring, but it is the horse alone who decides if it will quench its thirst.

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the light of logic reason knowledge evidence

THE KEYS LIE IN...

fairy tales

religions

dreams

myths

THE KEYS ARE FOUND BY...

I ntuition

I mmersion

I nspiration

I magination

scie

nce

the scientist

science must search answers in...

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GERIATRIC

PSYCHIATRYInt. J. Geriatr. Psychiatry 15

917-930 (2000)

A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF DREAM-TELLINGAMONG MENTALLY HEALTHY ELDERLY

An example of the helplessness of science in understanding dreams

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How much can these kind of results advance our understanding of dreams?

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Conclusion:

Dream telling is not dangerous for mentally healthy individuals

This conclusion also discloses the extensive uneasiness of our whole society towards dreams

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mind in the waking state

mind in the dreaming state

dream groups must try to approach the

dreamlike non-judgemental state of

mind

We need the right tool for the job...

• a nutcracker for the nut

• intellectual knowledge for analyzing the everyday reality

• non-analytic, non-rational, not-knowing (=ignorant), open state of mind for understanding dreams

...INSTEAD OF SCIENCE, WHAT ALTERNATIVES DO WE HAVE?

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The right tool for the dream job is our brain

- the right one!

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Once upon a time there was a wise emperor who sent emissaries to take care of his country which was too wide for him alone to rule.

His cleverest emissary began to see his Master's gentle wisdom as a weakness, and finally dethroned his Master, bringing the kingdom eventually to ruin.

This tale of our brain hemispheres is told in Iain McGilchrist's book The Master and his Emissary. It is based on neurologic and neuropsychologic research of split-brain and other types of CNS-patients.

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The Master and His Emissary

The Emissary does not know that it does not understand - its typical manifestations are seen in materialistic, positivistic scientific rationalism, scientism - this is the main focus of our Western culture

The Master understands that it does not know- typical manifestations in creative arts, religions, myths, fairy tales

Our task is to restore the balance, to re-throne the Master, to revive our atrophied intuition

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This emphasizes • understanding• unlearning

This emphasizes

• knowing• learning• This attitude

paralyzes

understanding

The right hemisphere says:

"All the guidelines that have been devised and invented in the ages of human spirit, all the preparations, exercises and meditations that have been suggested, have nothing to do with the primally simple fact of encounter."

Martin Buber: I and Thou

The left hemisphere says:

Complementary approaches from the fields of arts, humanities and social and natural sciences are required for a full understanding of dreams.

Philip King, Kelly Bulkeley, Bernard Welt: Dreaming in the Classroom

KNOWING UNDERSTANDING

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EMISSARY MASTER

experiencing the world directly, delivering the impressions to the Emissary for wording process...

searching expressions for the experiences the Master has delivered to it

giving to the Master back concepts, analyses, theories, classifications - and in the BEST case METAPHORS

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In the worst case: inter-

pretations

In the best case:

metaphors

searching words for dream images

...then giving back ...

dreaming

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Siivola 2007

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By analysis of this picture you see only black&white blobs.By looking at it without any analysis, you may suddenly see the dog.

This awakening is experiental learning: learning from direct experience. It is unlearning, getting rid of theories, interpretations,

and all kinds of distorting filters of past knowledge.Dreams are understood this way.

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Two opposite ways to approach dreams

"Alice in Wonderland":encountering in total ignorance: without any preconceptions at all.

"Analyst": encountering through the filter of theories.

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instead of analyzing on the shorewe have to

...dive...give in

...embrace...immerse ourselves

to the sea of dreams

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AHA!AHA!

AHA! AHA!

THE THIRD WAY TO APPROACH DREAMSWay nr 1) Interpretations: only logical compatibilities are found, only intellectual

fascination ensues. This is deceptive pseudo-understanding: the most typical way to approach dreams in Western societies.

Way nr 2) Emotional reasoning: no post-processing by intellect. Sensible integration to daytime life is missing

Way nr 3) Co-operation of emotion and intellect, intuition and reason, right and left hemisphere

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THE ULLMAN PROCESS

= ignorance in practise

...and now a few words about

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The main stages of experiential dream group process

Stage II – the dream is connected to the group’s own lives - not yet to the dreamer’s life!

Stage III – the dream’s connection to dreamer’s life

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The dreamer is listening to the ideas of the group. The group is not allowed to communicate with the dreamer.

Stage I – The dreamer tells her dream- The group makes clarifying questions

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IA Listening to the dream: the dreamer presents only the dream, not his ideas about it, nor the events preceding the dream.

IB Clarifying the dream: the group asks clarifying questions in order to obtain a more detailed mental picture of the dream.

IIA Projecting feelings: The group makes the dream its own, communicating only with each other (not with the dreamer, who must be totally undisturbed in this stage, only listening to the group).

IIB Projecting metaphors: The group shares their metaphors, together with their feelings, with each other, but not with the dreamer.

IIIA The dreamer’s response: The dreamer associates freely, and must not be interrupted in any way by the group.

IIIB The dialogue

1 Searching for the recent emotional context

2 The playback of the dream: The dream is read back to the dreamer

3 Orchestrating projections: In order to not contaminate the dream too early with our preconceived ideas, it is not until here the group is allowed to afford projections about the possible connections of dreamer’s dream imagery and her waking reality.

Gathering notes from the dreamer

Composing the piece of music from the notes: orchestration

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Gathering the notes from the dreamer

Composing the piece of music from them: orchestration

The Ullman process discourages in remarkably several ways our very human desire to impose our convictions and assumptions - which we, in our ignorance, believe to be true - as facts onto the dreamer. Ullman process leads us away from our presuppositions and beliefs towards the real authenticity of dreams.

It makes it possible for us to put into use the most powerful dream opener: questions rising from genuine ignorance.

Only then the dreamer senses that she will not be overruled by the group's own beliefs and expectations, feeling more encouraged and relaxed to let her own ideas flow out more freely.

Only then we can see the real dream, not the mirror images of our own expectations.

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if the group succeeds in

orchestrationa new masterpiece is born

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…AND YET... SOMETHING VERY CRUCIAL IS STILL MISSING…

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We can never ever

understand a single dream.

We may see a fraction of it;

a wave or two but not th

e

limitless oceanic vastness of

any dream

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Shakespeare: Hamlet

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A CAVALCADE OF SOME IGNORANT MEN

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Carl Gustav Jung's wisdom of ignorance

Excerpts from the last pages of Jung’s autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“I cannot form any final judgment because the phenomenon of man is too vast.

The older I have become, the less I have understood or had insight into or known about myself.

I have no judgment about myself and my life.

There is nothing I am quite sure about.

I have no definite convictions—not about anything, really.

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Krishnamurti chose this book's title himself.

His every speech through decades dealt with the knowledge of knowing nothing.

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Barry Marshall, the co-discoverer of Helicobacter pylori, the cause of stomach ulcers, for which he won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance—it is the illusion of knowledge.”

Ullman: about unlearning

"...it is to so distance myself from what I think I know about dreams generally… …and this particular dream specifically... so that all a priori assumptions are drained out of my system.

Only then do I feel properly prepared to receive what is being conveyed to me from the dreamer. “

Note the connections of all these statements to

creative arts and religious experiences

C.G.Jung: "It is so difficult to understand a dream that for a long time I have made it a rule that I say to myself: ’I have no idea what this dream means.’ After that I can begin to examine the dream."

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A disciple is putting question after question to his Zen Master, who keeps pouring down the tea until it overflows.

- Master! My cup is already full!

- Why keep asking me questions when your mind is already full?

Note the similarity of these quotes with Ullman's (in the previous slide): "... so that all a priori assumptions are drained out of my system"

Jesus to pharisee Nicodemus:

"Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God"

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?SUMMARY

The key process to understanding dreams and life

When we peel away labels, consisting of ...

...names, concepts, theories, interpretations ...

...off the surface of life...

What do we know, when all these labels, which we have mixed up with living life, have been peeled off?

NOTHING!This mystery - which so many religions and philosophies have talked about and dreams pointed towards it through millennia - is here and now...

...flaming in all its infinite intensity only for the completely ignorant.

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Appendix

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We see the arrow......or do we see only its image in the bottom of our eye?...or do we see only the electric currents on their way towards our visual center?...or do we see still more mysterious process going on in our visual center?

TOTAL IGNORANCEThe perception of ourselves is not us.

It is only a perception among other perceptions.

What we (and everything else) really are, we are completely ignorant of.

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Is it possible to know what your dreams are? Or what you are?

YOU ARE THE WORLD

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An infinite information source, unbroken wholeness as a flowing stream with its waves: eternally arising and vanishing forms of the universe; "holomovement", having the whole in every detail like a hologram.

The manifest order represents the way things are, free of perceptual and conceptual limitations and distortions.

The perceptual order; our consensus reality; the way we see things are. We cannot grasp the manifest order and even less the implicate order.

"Dreaming may be a way of monitoring our distance from the manifest order, from the reality behind the way we look at ourselves, at others and at the social order in which we live our lives."

David Bohm's basic concepts

The expli-cate order

The implicate order

Ullman has always tried to understand the bigger whole; the cosmic dimension. He used often quantum physicist David Bohm's concepts below:

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dream link

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indi-vidual

waking state

REM sleep (= dreaming state)

dreamless sleep

dreamgroups

Dreams in an eternal context Dream groups try to reach beyond day consciousness through relay stations of

dreams.But only the individual alone is able to find his/her way to

the realms, about which many religions talk about, but none of them has a copyright

over it.

implicate ordermanifest orderperceptual order

God said, "Listen to me! You will have prophets. I will let them learn about me

through visions. I will speak to them in dreams.

But Moses is not like that. He is my faithful servant. When I speak to him, I talk face to face with him.

I don't use stories with hidden meanings--I show him clearly what I want him to know.

quotes from Easy-to-read Bible version 1987 Siivola 2011

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dreams are halfway to total ignorance


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