early CE Dream-World

[Clive]

https://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/night-school/

Based on exciting new research, mass-participation experiments and the world’s largest archive of dream reports, Night School reveals the truth about sleep and dreaming. Discover how to learn information while you sleep, find out what your dreams really mean, and get the best night’s sleep of your life. For more information, visit the new Night School website here.

I propose that sleep research may be very important to understand religions. We might have some science to get to grips with this subject.

[MrMacSon]

There are suggestions that some mystics, even in the 1st century CE, may have had "ascent" visions in which they would rise through the various heavens

Other than Paul’s questionable claim in 2 Corinthians 12:2-4 that he “knew a man” that had made such a journey or had such a vision, and the vague allusions in 2nd-3rd C. rabbinic traditions of such journeys/visions ... are there other “suggestions” of such journeys/visions by humans in the 1st C. CE in a Jewish or Christian setting?

In the post before yours, robertj, there is reference to the "most eloquent first-person account of dream epiphany of antiquity" of Aristides, a 2nd century orator and invalid. I think some of his writings, in other works besides Hieroi Logoi (Sacred Tales), are relevant to and relevant in aspects of salvation theology that I would like to elaborate on.

[MrMacSon]

There are suggestions that some mystics, even in the 1st century CE, may have had "ascent" visions in which they would rise through the various heavens (or between defensive perimeters of a super sized castle encased by wall after wall). The gates through these heavens, or the gates in the walls of the castle, are guarded by angels whose job is to keep you out.

You have to know the password, which sometimes requires you to try numerous combinations of passages from scripture, until you get the right one, and suddenly the guard angel says "You, you can go in!" and waves you through, like the bouncer of a nightclub. There were generally seven heavenly gates, or walls, to navigate through. The goal was to sing praises to God with the other angels in the 7th heaven or palace.

Cheers, DCH. Is this related to the notions of higher heavens?

Some do not think that this kind of throne mysticism was practiced as early as this, but I think there was some kinds of practice of mystical ascents. The Heavenly Castle theme is present in the book 1 Enoch in a section usually dated 3rd century BCE. Of course, by the 2nd century CE, besides Jews, EVERYONE was ascending: Gnostics, Magicians, you name it.

I suppose you could call these ascents "dreams" but I think they are better described as trance-like states.

DCH

Yes, there are indications ascent dreams had been going on for centuries, and were still 'practiced' on in the 2nd & 3rd centuries CE.

I wonder if there were things that stopped them, or stopped them being recorded: new theology? decrees? ...

[MrMacSon]

Jungian psychotherapy sounds similar. I was brought up in a sect whose core text was

"'In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.

That's interesting.

A detailed study of xianity and this dream world might be very fruitful!

I agree! Cheers, Clive.

[MrMacSon]

There may be references or clues in the NT texts

eg. Romans 12 (ESV)

1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers [and sisters] by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world [age], but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect [will of God].

[DCHindley]

There are suggestions that some mystics, even in the 1st century CE, may have had "ascent" visions in which they would rise through the various heavens

Other than Paul’s questionable claim in 2 Corinthians 12:2-4 that he “knew a man” that had made such a journey or had such a vision, and the vague allusions in 2nd-3rd C. rabbinic traditions of such journeys/visions in the context of a 1st C. Johanan ben Zakkai, are there other “suggestions” of such journeys/visions by humans in the 1st C. CE in a Jewish or Christian setting?

You are referring to the Hekaloth(sp) books, I think. Even this movement reached a zenith long before the traditions were written down in the 6th-8th centuries CE. However, something similar was going on long before the heyday (UIAM, most think this heyday was around the 3rd century CE).

The following example is from the Book of Watchers, which J T Milik, based on the paleographic dating of the Enochic fragments found in Qumran, dates the oldest fragments of this book to about 200–150 BC, and since the Book of Watchers shows evidence of multiple stages of composition it is probable that this work was extant already in the 3rd century BC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Enoch (or lay hands on a copy of Milik's book, but good luck with that) ...

(OTP 1EN 14:8-24) 8 And the vision was shown to me thus: Behold, in the vision clouds invited me and a mist summoned me, and the course of the stars and the lightnings sped and hastened me, and the winds in the vision caused me to fly and lifted me upward, and bore me into heaven.
9 And I went in till I drew nigh to a wall which is built of crystals and surrounded by tongues of fire: and it began to affright me.
10 And I went into the tongues of fire and drew nigh to a large house which was built of crystals: and the walls of the house were like a tesselated floor (made) of crystals, and its groundwork was of crystal.
11 Its ceiling was like the path of the stars and the lightnings, and between them were fiery cherubim, and their heaven was (clear as) water.
12 A flaming fire surrounded the walls, and its portals blazed with fire.
13 And I entered into that house, and it was hot as fire and cold as ice: there were no delights of life therein: fear covered me, and trembling gat hold upon me.
14 And as I quaked and trembled, I fell upon my face.
15 And I beheld a vision, And lo! there was a second house, greater than the former, and the entire portal stood open before me, and it was built of flames of fire.
16 And in every respect it so excelled in splendour and magnificence and extent that I cannot describe to you its splendour and its extent.
17 And its floor was of fire, and above it were lightnings and the path of the stars, and its ceiling also was flaming fire.
18 And I looked and saw therein a lofty throne: its appearance was as crystal, and the wheels thereof as the shining sun, and there was the vision of cherubim.
19 And from underneath the throne came streams of flaming fire so that I could not look thereon.
20 And the Great Glory sat thereon, and His raiment shone more brightly than the sun and was whiter than any snow.
21 None of the angels could enter and could behold His face by reason of the magnificence and glory, and no flesh could behold Him.
22 The flaming fire was round about Him, and a great fire stood before Him, and none around could draw nigh Him: ten thousand times ten thousand (stood) before Him, yet He needed no counsellor.
23 And the most holy ones who were nigh to Him did not leave by night nor depart from Him.
24 And until then I had been prostrate on my face, trembling: and the Lord called me with His own mouth, and said to me: 'Come hither, Enoch, and hear my word.'

The NT story I was thinking of sounds like an acid trip:

(RSV Mar 9:2-8) Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves; and he was transfigured before them,
3 and his garments became glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on earth could bleach them.
4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses; and they were talking to Jesus.
5 And Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah."
6 For he did not know what to say, for they were exceedingly afraid.
7 And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, "This is my beloved Son; listen to him."
8 And suddenly looking around they no longer saw any one with them but Jesus only.

The following is believed to have been written in the 1st century CE:

(RSV 4th Esdras = Latin Apocalypse of Ezra 14:23-48) 23 [God] answered me and said, "Go and gather the people, and tell them not to seek you for forty days.
24 But prepare for yourself many writing tablets, and take with you Sarea, Dabria, Selemia, Ethanus, and Asiel -- these five, because they are trained to write rapidly;
25 and you shall come here, and I will light in your heart the lamp of understanding, which shall not be put out until what you are about to write is finished.
26 And when you have finished, some things you shall make public, and some you shall deliver in secret to the wise; tomorrow at this hour you shall begin to write."
27 Then I went as he commanded me, ...
37 So I took the five men, as he commanded me, and we proceeded to the field, and remained there.
38 And on the next day, behold, a voice called me, saying, "Ezra, open your mouth and drink what I give you to drink."
39 Then I opened my mouth, and behold, a full cup was offered to me; it was full of something like water, but its color was like fire.
40 And I took it and drank; and when I had drunk it, my heart poured forth understanding, and wisdom increased in my breast, for my spirit retained its memory;
41 and my mouth was opened, and was no longer closed.
42 And the Most High gave understanding to the five men, and by turns they wrote what was dictated, in characters which they did not know. They sat forty days, and wrote during the daytime, and ate their bread at night.
43 As for me, I spoke in the daytime and was not silent at night.
44 So during the forty days ninety-four books were written.
45 And when the forty days were ended, the Most High spoke to me, saying, "Make public the twenty-four books that you wrote first and let the worthy and the unworthy read them;
46 but keep the seventy that were written last, in order to give them to the wise among your people.
47 For in them is the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the river of knowledge."
48 And I did so.

That sounds a lot like some sort Peyote inspired vision of Don Juan Matus as recorded by Carlos Castaneda to me, but it has been proposed that at least some of what has been written about Jewish ascents was due to scribes being present to record what the mystic described as he experienced them.

DCH

[Clive]

Umberto Eco writes in Baudolino:

in the Acts of the Apostles it says that God from one man devised our humankind to inhabit the entire face of the earth, its face – not the other side, which doesn’t exist.

“I don’t know if you have ever studied the measurements of the Temple, well don’t, because it is enough to drive you crazy. In Kings it says… In chronicles it says…

The problem however arises when you read the vision of Ezekiel. Not one measurement holds up, and so a number of pious men have admitted that Ezekiel had indeed had a vision, which is a bit like saying he had drunk too much and was seeing double. Nothing wrong with that , poor Ezekiel (he also had a right to his fun), but then Richard of St Victoire reasoned as follows: if everything, every number, every straw in the Bible has a spiritual meaning, we must clearly understand what it says literally, because it is one thing to say , for the spiritual meaning, that something is three long and another’s length is nine, since these two numbers have different mystical meanings.

“The most alert commentators have not succeeded in establishing the exact structure of the Temple. You Christians do not understand that the sacred text is born from a Voice. The Lord, haqadoch baruch hu, that the holy one, may his name always be blessed , when he speaks to his prophets, allows them to hear sounds, but does not show figures, as you people do, with your illuminated pages. The voice surely provokes images in the heart of the prophet, but these images are not immobile; they liquefy, change shape according to the melody of that voice, and if you want to reduce to images the voice of the Lord, blessed always be his name, you freeze that voice, as if it were fresh water turning to ice that no longer quenches thirst, but numbs the limbs in the chill of death,”

https://clivedurdle.wordpress.com/2008/ ... he-temple/

The issues here are about attempts to answer questions about what are dreams visions and altered states of consciousness. People have been asking these questions since the year dot. Huge chunks of religious behaviours and beliefs are, as I understand it, related to these questions.

It sounds like the healing sanctuaries, as at Kos, probably used dream techniques as a means of healing - I would propose they did get results better than placebo.

Wiseman (Night School p29) notes how Dali would

lie down and place a glass on the floor. He would then put one end of a spoon on the edge of the glass and hold the other between his fingers.As he drifted into stage 1 sleep, Dali's fingers would naturally relax and release the spoon. The sound of the spoon crashing into the glass would wake him up, and Dali would sketch the odd images that were drifting through his mind.

A 16th-century physician wrote that many laborers dozed off exhausted at the start of each night; sexual intercourse with their wives typically occurring in the watching period, after a recuperative first sleep.[19] Anthropologists find that isolated societies without electric light sleep in a variety of patterns; seldom do they resemble our modern habit of sleeping in one single eight-hour bout.[20]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_medicine

I propose that, for example, monastic timetables and Islamic prayer time rituals have had and continue to have very important effects.

[Clive]

Also, those who are blind from birth report dreams that frequently involve vivid sensations of sounds, tastes, smell and touch

Wiseman p 25.

Might various prophets and sages have had sensory issues?

[Clive]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783

In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks.

His book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern - in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer's Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria.

Much like the experience of Wehr's subjects, these references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.

"It's not just the number of references - it is the way they refer to it, as if it was common knowledge," Ekirch says.

During this waking period people were quite active. They often got up, went to the toilet or smoked tobacco and some even visited neighbours. Most people stayed in bed, read, wrote and often prayed. Countless prayer manuals from the late 15th Century offered special prayers for the hours in between sleeps.
And these hours weren't entirely solitary - people often chatted to bed-fellows or had sex.

A doctor's manual from 16th Century France even advised couples that the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day's labour but "after the first sleep", when "they have more enjoyment" and "do it better".

Ekirch found that references to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th Century. This started among the urban upper classes in northern Europe and over the course of the next 200 years filtered down to the rest of Western society.

By the 1920s the idea of a first and second sleep had receded entirely from our social consciousness.

He attributes the initial shift to improvements in street lighting, domestic lighting and a surge in coffee houses - which were sometimes open all night. As the night became a place for legitimate activity and as that activity increased, the length of time people could dedicate to rest dwindled.

[Clive]

And the light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not

Maybe astrotheology is a mistake - good and evil are actually about day and night. Christ rising at dawn conquers night - death where is thy sting?

Ekirch, At Day's Close, is very thought provoking.

Maybe xianity, as a city and town cult, is actually a religion of the beginning of the conquest of night with the growth of light at night?

night, to the watchful, rises