Cynthia Sue Larson Interviews Stanley Krippner

Dr. Stanley Krippner with Cynthia Sue Larson

I recently had the pleasure to chat with Dr. Stanley Krippner about quantum logic, consciousness, and dreams. Dr. Krippner is a professor of psychology at Saybrook University, and author, editor, and co-author of numerous books including:  “The Voice of Rolling Thunder,” “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” and many others.

I first met Stanley Krippner about ten years ago at the International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternative Modes of Healing, where we’ve both given presentations. I’ve long been deeply impressed with the insights Stanley shares, such as I reported in the September 2005 issue of RealityShifters, in which I mentioned some fascinating aspects of his work:

 Stanley Krippner presented a thought-provoking paper at this year’s shamanism conference that summarized research findings between the differences in the dreams of schizophrenics and non-schizophrenics. Imagery in schizophrenic dreams is quite different than imagery in shamanic dreams and visions; schizophrenic dreams are more apathetic, banal, and low-energy with few clear settings or distinct outcomes. I am intrigued to note that one of the biggest differences between shamanic and schizophrenic dreams appears to be that of lucidity… that what the shaman knows for sure is something the schizophrenic has not noticed. The shaman maintains a constant sense of awareness and focus that brings greater meaning to peoples’ lives.
http://www.realityshifters.com/pages/archives/sep05.html
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CYNTHIA: Thanks so much for meeting to talk with me today! I’d love to know your thoughts about the connection between quantum physics, consciousness, and dreams.

STANLEY: Montague Ullman was doing just what you’re telling me—applying quantum physics to dreaming. Especially to psychic dreaming. And he was working on that before he died. I’ve not seen the manuscript of his incomplete book, but you can get some information from an interview he did with Mark Schroll.

CYNTHIA:  Wonderful!

STANLEY: Now in the sense that I see it, it’s especially true of precognitive dreams—dreams about the future, because there will be several possible futures that the dreamer could dream about. And the psychic dreamer knows which one to dream about, so this is where the observational effect comes in. And this is why some people are able to do this and some people aren’t. Some people have the talent to unconsciously select the possible future that indeed comes true. And I wrote an article about the probable future years ago, before I knew anything about quantum physics. But in that article, I pointed out how so many dreams about the future are pliable. In other words, once the dreamer knows about what might takes place, the dreamer can make a change to prevent something disastrous from happening.

CYNTHIA: So you’re saying this happens frequently.

STANLEY: This happens frequently, yes. There’s been a study on this, years ago, by Louisa Rhine. If I remember the statistics, whenever there was a portending disaster, the dreamer was able to prevent the disaster in about three out of four occasions, which was a lot. And there was another evidence indicating that the disaster might happen, to know that this was something that was not just being made up.

CYNTHIA: Right. That would be the challenging thing, to know if it didn’t happen, would it have happened, of course.

STANLEY: One case I do remember was a woman who had a dream about a light fixture falling on her baby’s crib, killing the baby at exactly two o’clock in the morning. So she woke up and took the baby into the bed with her and husband. He was very dismissive, saying, “Oh, it’s just a dream. You were worried—you’re concerned.” But later that night, at two o’clock in the morning, this light fixture did fall into the baby’s crib.

CYNTHIA: Wow. And that’s something they would hear, and it would wake them up if they were asleep.

STANLEY: Yes, if they were telling the truth about this account, there you have an example of where the likely future had changed by human volition. 

CYNTHIA: Right.

STANLEY: Now, your feeling that dreams show us the real nature of reality is something that’s shared by many indigenous groups around the world.

CYNTHIA: Yes. What I’m suspecting is that’s the best way to look at the quantum paradigm that we’re trying to understand. I think that one of the best ways to look at it is as if everything really is a dream, basically. As you know, we can’t even agree on what consciousness is to begin with. But I’m expecting that we’re making progress.

STANLEY: Consciousness is anything you define it as. I tell people instead of waiting, just take any definition that you like, and use that, and run with it! So I don’t think the issue is that we don’t know what consciousness is. The issue is we don’t have a consensus on what consciousness is. Far from it.

CYNTHIA: We recognize it when we see it, but we don’t know how to explain it or describe it fully, so that everyone agrees.

STANLEY: That’s the so-called “hard problem,” which many people don’t think exists.

CYNTHIA: How about yourself?

STANLEY: Oh, yes! I’m working with a team of people who are interested in doing a documentary on the hard problem. Are you familiar with the new movie, The Imitation Game?

CYNTHIA: Yes.

STANLEY: Did you know that the protagonist had written about telepathy?

CYNTHIA: No. Wow! In real life?

STANLEY: In real life. It was Henry Stapp who picked up on that essay, and carried it a step further, in a classic article which came out in about 1972. So you might ask Henry for the article that builds on Turing’s notion of telepathy. It came out in a journal called Mind, as I recall. I have a copy of it. And it’s I think still very timely. Henry was so far ahead of his time.

CYNTHIA: Wow! So Henry Stapp wrote an article and published it…

STANLEY: Yes, based on Turing’s original article. Turing was saying, well, if telepathy exists, then it would proceed this way and that way. And so then what Henry did was to take that and show, yes, this is how it would proceed. And he was able to fill in the gap that Turing had no way of knowing about.

CYNTHIA: That’s quite useful! I appreciate the way that Henry Stapp looks at the Von Neumann cut, focusing attention on finding the place where consciousness occurs. I think of it as levels of consciousness, actually. So I agree with that. But at the same time, I’m also quite interested in the multiverse concepts and ideas, because they match the feeling of how it feels when you jump into another world.

STANLEY: They do, yes.

CYNTHIA: And you can jump in, and jump out. You can see things go back and forth, which is quite interesting to me. That’s why I want to talk to people who have experienced them, rather than people who say that you can’t do it. I’d rather trade notes with other people who’ve been there, on the SS Quantum Beagle, as we observe things from the deck, and share our notes. And then when it comes to levels of consciousness, I find that’s where some of the most interesting phenomena occurs, when you meditate a lot. I do martial arts, and I meditate a lot.

STANLEY: Keep doing both!

CYNTHIA: I think it helps. When you do martial arts, you’re honing your entire system and your ability to focus attention. I can move my consciousness and sort of expand it out. Like when I first met Eva Herr at the Portland airport and without any tips from her walked away from her to pick up her unmarked suitcase that she had not told me anything about, I was what you might call entangled with or coherent with the entire system of me and Eva Herr—and it felt very much like a dream. What it felt like to me was, “Now it’s time to go–wave at Eva. Now go this way. Now walk that way. Pick up that bag that is just now dropping onto the baggage claim carousel at the same moment you arrive. Now look at Eva and gesture to this bag to make sure it is hers.” It was her bag, and her jaw just about hit the floor, as she’d been on her cell phone that whole time, and had not given me any information about her luggage, nor was it tagged. It just felt like I was ‘in the zone’–like what athletes experience. So it wasn’t so much precognition so much as, “Here we go! This is what we’re doing.” I think a lot of people do this, and they don’t know that they’re doing it. It goes unrecognized quite a lot. And when we expand our consciousness, then you can have an effect on things like the weather, I believe. On a lot of things. A lot more than people recognize, even.

STANLEY: Two years ago I came out with the book about Rolling Thunder, the native American medicine man. I did it with his grandson, who’s also interested in quantum physics, and there are several documented instances where Rolling Thunder seemed to have an effect on the weather.

CYNTHIA: Yes, exactly! That sounds like a great book! I’ve also experienced other changes. Just on the flight to New York, we hit turbulence. The plane was just “bah-duh-duh-duh-duh” So I spread my consciousness to the plane, and the weather, and everything became all smooth. Smooth! Then my friend next to me started talking to me, and I turned and I looked at her, and it went back to “bah-duh-duh-duh-duh,” so I said, “Excuse me—I need to meditate.”

STANLEY: Really! I’m going to have to try that when I’m on a turbulent flight.

CYNTHIA: I think we often think we are the bodies that we’re in; we’re not the bodies that we’re in.

STANLEY: This is another native American concept—the concept of the “long body.” The body does not end with our skin—it extends into time, into space, and into other people.

CYNTHIA: Yes!

STANLEY: William Roll wrote a whole series of articles about the long body.

CYNTHIA: That’s what I would call levels of consciousness; you can expand it, you can bring it in, you can direct it.

STANLEY: Now getting back to dreams, have you read Fred Alan Wolf’s book about dreams?

CYNTHIA: Yes, it’s quite excellent.

STANLEY: Yes, I like his book about “The Dreaming Universe,” very much.

CYNTHIA: It’s one of my favorites!

STANLEY: I have an article coming out in a European newsletter, “Transpersonal Transformative Experiences,” and I have a whole series of examples past and present TTEs.

CYNTHIA: That sounds excellent.

STANLEY: There are two types of Transpersonal Transformative Experiences. One is the spiritual, and one is the secular. In both of them, they’re transpersonal, because the person goes beyond their usual self identity. And in spiritual experiences, it’s (vertical). They go up to the upper world, and go down to the lower world, and they encounter entities or beings or energies or forces that are not part of their customary world or identity. Whereas in the secular experience, that’s horizontal. People go to Nature. They become involved with other people in a group movement. And again, they transcend their ordinary identity in sort of a group consciousness or a version of their consciousness with Nature, and that’s all observable entities and observable objects, which is why it’s horizontal. But either one can transform a person.

CYNTHIA: Yes, they can.

STANLEY: I’m going to do another version of that on the east coast. I just signed the agreement today, for the Academy of Spirituality and Consciousness Research. You should look at their website—very interesting group. And that’s happening right after the International Association for the Study of Dreams.

CYNTHIA: I’d love to ask you one last question: What would be the one thing that you would like people to be aware of with regard to everything that you’ve done, and all of your work?

STANLEY: Interconnectedness. If people see how we’re all interconnected and connected with Nature, we wouldn’t have an environmental crisis, we wouldn’t have two dozen wars all over the world. We’d honor the rest of Nature and the rest of humanity, because we’d know that those are parts of ourselves. So that’s an easy question.

CYNTHIA: Getting to the place of how we can do that is the hard problem.

STANLEY: What you’re doing, with books like yours, helps raise peoples’ consciousness. And you don’t have to have everybody agreeing with this. A small group of people who want to make change is enough to get the ball rolling.

CYNTHIA: That’s right.

STANLEY: Have you heard of Stephen Schwartz?

CYNTHIA:  Stephen Schwartz—that sounds very familiar.

STANLEY: He has written several books. He has a new book coming out, “Eight Rules for Changing the World.” He gives many examples of how small groups of people in very peaceful ways can make major changes in the world, or parts of it, simply by following these eight rules.

CYNTHIA: Nice!

STANLEY: His book isn’t out yet, but it will be available on amazon.com.

CYNTHIA: OK. Thank you so very much!

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Dr. Stanley Krippner 
http://stanleykrippner.weebly.com/

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Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps. Cynthia has a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley, and discusses consciousness and quantum physics on numerous shows including the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, and BBC. You can subscribe to Cynthia’s free monthly ezine at: http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters®

Cynthia Sue Larson Interviews Judy Gardiner

Judy Gardiner

I met author Judy Gardiner in an author’s group through our mutual work in the field of intuition. I was delighted to discover that we agree that our world has truly entered the Quantum Age, and that Judy cares deeply about accessing intuitive insights through dreams. In addition to our shared interest in dreams and intuition, I was pleased to discover that Judy also loves the work of physicist David Bohm, proponent of a holographic interpretation of quantum physics.

Judy explained to me that she approaches dreaming as it relates to David Bohm’s idea of representing an underlying cosmic unity, in which many facets of this totality of existence are actualized in the fragmentation, timelessness, interconnectedness and wholeness you experience in your dreams. The relationship of dreaming to quantum theory was inspired in Judy by her late partner and colleague, Montague Ullman, a world-renowned pioneer in dreamwork. Fortunately for all of us, Judy recognized deep meaning in her dreams, which she now graciously and eloquently shares in her beautiful book, Lavender: An Entwined Adventure in Science and Spirit.

 

CYNTHIA: Thank you so very much for agreeing to this interview! Could you tell us a little about what your book, Lavender ~ An Entwined Adventure in Science & Spirit, is all about?

JUDY:  Thank you Cynthia for the opportunity to engage in the exciting message of Quantum Jumps. Lavender is a multi-layered and multidimensional journey in interconnectedness bridging the worlds of dreaming and waking consciousness, light and vision, matter and spirit, and time and eternity.

What began as a self-study in consciousness evolved to the story of Lavender which orbits the dream adventures of Penelope Peacock, an unscientific and unexpected vehicle for truths from other planes crossing the threshold of the personal dream and entering the realm of cosmic dreaming. As the story unfolds, we find that science and spirit become inseparable when concern for survival of self transcends to species-survival. Lavender begins with a single dream in which four statues come to life (later materialized at theTemple of Karnak, Luxor Egypt) eventually spinning out to the collective unconscious. The visit to Luxor was my first insight into the timeless nature of reality illustrating how the time in which a dream occurs, moves itself into the waking state to make a connection, manifesting as one undivided unit of time—one unified whole. Lavender has been described as a tapestry that is one young woman’s life and the world’s story.

CYNTHIA: I’d love to know a little bit about how you got the inspiration for writing Lavender, which clearly has meant a great deal to you on many levels, and what the writing process was like for this book.

JUDY: It began with a dream in 1994 in which a deceased friend advises me of a breakthrough for mankind concerning the optic nerve. Dream images of the visual system were followed by dreams of light entangled with sciences I hadn’t studied; e.g. genetics, astronomy, geology, chemistry, physics. Four historical figures of science, represented as scientific symbols, began to appear in my dreams, each symbol representing their past contributions while beaming the light toward the future and delivering a collective message of dire concern for the earth.

The writing process entailed years of untangling an intricate web of fragments and coded images authenticated by intensive research, synchronous experiences, electronic anomalies and powerful intuitive flashes. My inspiration came through the dreams of Spirit informing Science, a cosmic wake-up call urging that it be shared.

CYNTHIA: I can’t help but notice you mention the phrase, “dire concern for the earth” in conjunction with your source of creative inspiration.  As a writer and visionary, I’d love to know of any positive possible future(s) you envision–as well as what people can do to help ensure we collectively move in a positive direction. 

JUDY:  Unfortunately Cynthia, there’s no short answer to your very insightful question, but I’ll try to provide an overview.

The first step toward a positive possible future is to release from denial and accept the reality that we are confronted with unprecedented crises. This is a clarion call for collective awakening. Apathy and resignation will no longer work as we look to the future. We have poisoned the earth with our radioactive materials and other toxins, wounding her most vulnerable parts. It is time to seek help from our higher selves, reconnect to each other and ask, “What can We do to change this toxic energy within our psyches and our earth?

Paralleling Earth behavior with Human behavior allegorically illustrates the enfoldment of all matter. We and Mother Earth are one sustainable system, one vast interdependent whole. For a moment, let’s summon up all the empathy we have and think of ourselves as an integral part of Her. As human behavior is conditioned to respond to stimuli, so too may be the behavior of Mother Earth. If her safety is threatened, her stability compromised, so is ours. To quote from your website, “Just as electrons can make energetic leaps from one energetic level to another, people can quantum jump…” In this spirit, and as catastrophes accelerate, our survival instincts may shift from worry for self to worry for the planet. Here we can turn worry to positive action.

Like Mother Earth, our collective wound needs to be opened, cleansed and nursed back to health. We have become distracted by the outer world of materialism and disconnected from our divine nature, the spark that gives meaning to life. In establishing an awareness of global oneness, one path that will bring us closer to our inner reality is the world of dreaming where we can reconnect with our core of being.

By shifting from the negative energy of fear and anger to the positive energy of love and compassion, over time, we as a species may energetically help to balance our environment by restoring health and harmony to our earth.We must assume a genuine sense of universal responsibility as our central motivation and come to terms with the global and personal challenges surrounding us.

What began as dire concern in Lavender escalated to resounding alarm, forewarning of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the Keystone Pipeline Project and an alchemical transmutation occurring within the earth. Geology is a major theme in Lavender.

If you are dreaming about global issues you are likely tapping into the Cosmic Dream. This range of dreaming is an outgrowth of the personal dream, pointing to both our personal issues and those facing mankind as a whole.

Transforming our worldview can begin with a simple step by expressing one small kindness each day, be it with a smile, a caring word, a benevolent thought. The threats we are presently confronted with may be slowly unlocking the collective heart.

It was in the spirit of agape that Lavender’s message of unity consciousness was delivered.

CYNTHIA: I just love what you say about shifting from the negative energy of fear and anger to the positive energy of love and compassion, because this is something everyone can do. At a time when people might feel disempowered, I’m so glad to see you are encouraging people to make this kind of positive difference, and happy to see you encouraging people to pay more attention to dreams, and to how we share in the dreaming of our world into wellness. When I was a little girl, my mother’s mother asked me every morning, “What did you dream last night?” which helped me make connections between my dreams and the everyday world. I’d love to know if you had someone that encouraged you to pay attention to your dreams when you were growing up?

JUDY: Actually, I barely remember my dreams from childhood. I do remember sitting on the lawn at night staring at the vastness of the heavens and the blinking stars. When my little Scottie dog, Bonnie died, I would talk to her feeling that maybe she was one of those stars and that she knew I was always with her. I was born prematurely in the sixth month with little chance of survival back then. My heightened sensitivity to survival evolved to profound appreciation for the miracle of life.

I began to remember my dreams after I had retired from 25 years in a corporate career. Later, during my dark night of the soul, I found myself tunneling down the proverbial rabbit hole where I felt I was experiencing parallel universes in exciting new worlds. It was as though all those dreamless years had been deposited in a sort of dream vault where memories were imprinted and archived for a time when I would actually be able to “see” what they were saying.

I had mentioned that my dreams began with vision and were followed by light. In my most striking light dream, the glaring headlights of a car had flooded my sight. I had literally been blinded by the light—the inner light of the human spirit, our collective birthright—our altruistic nature.

CYNTHIA: I love your idea of dreams from “dreamless years” being deposited in some sort of dream vault where everything can later be viewed and perhaps more fully and deeply understood. So many people live such busy lives, that it seems a lot of us feel we don’t have time for thinking about or remembering dreams, or perhaps that we don’t have dreams in the first place. Do you have any suggestions for people to better enjoy and benefit from dreams in their lives?

JUDY: Yes, the feeling of dreamlessness is quite common but the fact is that dreaming is a biological function and we dream on average of 25% every night (based on 8 hours of sleep a night). Dreams are evanescent so it’s important to grab even a strand of a dream and record it soon as you can. Think of a kitten chasing a ball of yarn. One little strand can begin to unravel your entire life’s story. The dream courier is like Fed Ex. If we’re not there to receive the dream the first time, the courier continually tries to redeliver it. If still no luck, it goes into incubation, that dream vault, where it is stored in memory, gathering life experience, collecting data, reflecting backward and forward until the dreamer is ready to receive it.

The first suggestion for people to enjoy and benefit from dreams would be to dispel the mystique that dreams are meaningless or scary. Next, is to be open to accepting whatever the dream wants to tell you. The dream is your best friend, your very own Guru; the higher, wiser part of you whose mission is to introduce you to yourself.  When you welcome it in, it will train you to “see” and to “listen,” while healing, educating and guiding you through the sometimes turbulent and murky waters of life.

Dreaming strives toward wholeness. In a sense it is a very personal art form calling upon our imagination to decode hidden metaphors and clues. Dreams improve sleep, support memory, ward off depression, and notify us of health issues. They confront our anxieties and shortcomings by presenting past issues requiring resolution while pointing to assets we’re not using. Often intersecting with paranormal features they bring us closer to the mysterious nature of consciousness, perhaps facilitating communication from the Collective Unconscious. Non-locality is suggested in that the telepathic dream spans across space; the precognitive dream, across time.

The dream’s greatest benefit is that which transforms and awakens us to our potential. When we’ve reached that joyous summit, our dream terrain may expand our boundaries of consciousness and open to the cosmic realm in which quantum aspects of dreaming are revealed. A further aspect is that of interconnectedness. The fragments in our dreams are perpetually connecting, reflecting us back to ourselves as belonging to both nature and humanity, helping us to face areas of estrangement from self, others, and the planet. In this we experience an emotional depth that embraces human empathy at a divine level.

Dream activity can increase exponentially; the more you dream, the more you will dream.

CYNTHIA:  Thank you so very much for sharing some wonderful tips and information about dreaming!

JUDY:  Cynthia, you’ve asked such important and probing questions. I so appreciate your description of a holographic multiverse of interconnected worlds for it perfectly describes the nature of dreaming. Remember, dreams are our best friends.

CYNTHIA:  Would you be willing to share any favorite books or movies that are special favorites of yours that you’d recommend?

JUDY:  Some of my favorites books include:

Catching the Light, by Arthur Zajonc

Physics of the Soul, by Amit Goswami

Science and the Akashic Field, by Ervin Laszlo

Wholeness and The Implicate Order, by David Bohm

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

The House of The Spirits, by Isabel Allende

Two of my favorite movies are:

Wizard of Oz

What The Bleep Do We Know

CYNTHIA: Thank you so very much, Judy, for sharing so much fascinating information and so many marvelous insights about how you can get the most out of your dreams, how to cope with accessing seemingly hidden information from your “dreamless years,” and so much more! How can people best get in touch with you to find out more about you and your work?

JUDY: You can reach me by email at: judy.cosmicdreaming@gmail.com and my website is: www.cosmicdreaming.com

Note:  Dreams mentioned span 1992-2001.