Eric M W:From chapter 18:
...before that the first change, before dreams disappear [emphasis mine], is that your dreams of fear are changed to happy dreams.
Dreams disappearing, where have I read that before?
You read it in spirituality.
Let's paste a little more context from that same chapter 18...
Dreams show you that you have the power to make a world as you would have it be, and that because you want it you see it. And while you see it you do not doubt that it is real. Yet here is a world, clearly within your mind, that seems to be outside. You do not respond to it as though you made it, nor do you realize that the emotions the dream produces must come from you. It is the figures in the dream and what they do that seem to make the dream. You do not realize that you are making them act out for you, for if you did the guilt would not be theirs, and the illusion of satisfaction would be gone. In dreams these features are not obscure. You seem to waken, and the dream is gone. Yet what you fail to recognize is that what caused the dream has not gone with it. Your wish to make another world that is not real remains with you. And what you seem to waken to is but another form of this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their content is the same. They are your protest against reality, and your fixed and insane idea that you can change it. In your waking dreams, the special relationship is your determination to keep your hold on unreality, and to prevent yourself from waking. And while you see more value in sleeping than in waking, you will not let go of it.
The Holy Spirit, ever practical in His wisdom, accepts your dreams and uses them as means for waking. You would have used them to remain asleep. I said before that the first change, before dreams disappear, is that your dreams of fear are changed to happy dreams. That is what the Holy Spirit does in the special relationship. He does not destroy it, nor snatch it away from you. The special relationship will remain, not as a source of pain and guilt, but as a source of joy and freedom. It will not be for you alone, for therein lay its misery. As its unholiness kept it a thing apart, its holiness will become an offering to everyone.
Now, where have I read this before? How about
Dzogchen {Buddhism}?
According to contemporary teacher Chögyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, all appearances perceived during the whole life of an individual, through all senses, including sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations in their totality, are like a big dream. It is claimed that, on careful examination, the dream of life and regular nightly dreams are not very different, and that in their essential nature there is no difference between them.
The non-essential difference between the dreaming state and ordinary waking experience is that the latter is more concrete and linked to attachment; the dreaming experience while sleeping is slightly detached.
[...]
The teacher advises that the realization that life is only a big dream can help us finally liberate ourselves from the chains of various emotions, different kinds of attachment and the chains of ego. Then we have the possibility of ultimately becoming enlightened.
What are dreams and what is their function in actualism?
Richard:Any examination of the content or meaning of dreams always showed them to be nothing but haphazard, unsystematic thoughts – generally taken from events such as depicted on TV programs or in other media combined with daily experience – all mixed-up and firing erratically ... like pulling items from a ‘lucky-dip’ at a fair. There is nothing to be learned or gained from dreams other than what one wishes to read into them ... the disconcerting part of dreaming is the ad-hoc juxtaposition of seemingly real events happening in a seemingly real world. I also observed that a portion of the ‘dream-scape’ would be drawn from past dreams and making it difficult to discern whether they be drawn from real-life or not. There would also be a mix-up of the ‘dream-people’, with characteristics of one ‘dream-person’ all-of-a-sudden being the characteristics of another ‘dream-person’, or an admixture of the two ... leading to further confusion or perplexity. And so on ... and so on.
So, they are irrelevant to actualist practices. Maybe they are useful just as another affective indicator but nothing more than that really.
Now, do they disappear entirely? The last version of an answer was... 'not entirely sure.'
Richard:Now, as I was on my own in this actual world for eighteen years, before being joined by a handful of daring pioneers three years ago, it had long been an interest for me to finally be able to meet with another actually free person so as to compare notes and find out what was idiosyncratic to this flesh-and-blood body and what was species-specific.
And although the data-pool is still quite small – insufficient to reliably draw information from – there are enough indications to suggest that dreams and dreaming are not extinguished when that pivotal event/definitive moment occurs whereby all the instinctual passions/the feeling-being formed thereof are totally eradicated/is rendered extinct, forevermore.
Indeed, in my situation it took much application and diligence and patience and perseverance, over many years prior to my pivotal event/definitive moment in an abandoned cow-pasture, to eliminate dreams and dreaming. In doing so I utilised a technique from my early childhood – organically developed of necessity, back then, to have nightmares cease whilst still asleep – which I only found out, after going online in 1997, already had a name: lucid dreaming.
Chapter 26...
This is the journey's end. We have referred to it as the real world. [emphasis mine] And yet there is a contradiction here, in that the words imply a limited reality, a partial truth, a segment of the universe made true. This is because knowledge makes no attack upon perception. They are brought together, and only one continues past the gate where oneness is. Salvation is a borderland where place and time and choice have meaning still, and yet it can be seen that they are temporary, out of place, and every choice has been already made.
Note the notion of "the real world," which pops up in other places in ACIM. For example...
Chapter 16, The Bridge to the Real World
The bridge itself is nothing more than a transition in the perspective of reality. On this side, everything you see is grossly distorted and completely out of perspective. What is little and insignificant is magnified, and what is strong and powerful cut down to littleness. In the transition there is a period of confusion, in which a sense of actual disorientation may occur. But fear it not, for it means only that you have been willing to let go your hold on the distorted frame of reference that seemed to hold your world together.
Aren't your examples playing against your hypothesis? Let's bring more of them from the same text...
Chapter 12:
Make the world real unto yourself, for the real world is the gift of the Holy Spirit, and so it belongs to you.
The Holy Spirit keeps the vision of Christ for every Son of God who sleeps. In His sight the Son of God is perfect, and He longs to share His vision with you. He will show you the real world because God gave you Heaven. Through Him your Father calls His Son to remember. The awakening of His Son begins with his investment in the real world, and by this he will learn to re-invest in himself. For reality is one with the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit blesses the real world in Their Name.
When you have seen this real world, as you will surely do, you will remember us. Yet you must learn the cost of sleeping, and refuse to pay it. Only then will you decide to awaken. And then the real world will spring to your sight, for Christ has never slept. He is waiting to be seen, for He has never lost sight of you. He looks quietly on the real world, which He would share with you because He knows of the Father's Love for Him
Through the eyes of Christ, only the real world exists and only the real world can be seen
The real world was given you by God in loving exchange for the world you made and the world you see. Only take it from the hand of Christ and look upon it. Its reality will make everything else invisible, for beholding it is total perception.
Correct me if I'm wrong as I often get confused with this obscure and mystical language, but 'real world' has a positive meaning in this text, no?
By contrast, in actualism, 'real world' is just used as follows.
Peter: As opposed to the actual world, the ‘real’ world is a world where things, events and people are seen in the light of one’s ‘self’-ish perspectives, morals, beliefs and values and the over-riding animal instinctual passions that are innate in every human being. Hence what is right for some is wrong for others, what is true for one is false for another, what is beautiful for one is ugly for another, and the primary emotional view of the world is one of fear and aggression.
To the actualist, the 'real world' is not positive nor desirable. It's just a passional layer pasted over perception, and thus is an obstruction to see the actual world. By the way, that layer which produces such separation is basically made of feelings, not thoughts or wrong sensory inputs as some spiritualities postulate.
Could you point to a similarity other than the lexical coincidence?
Eric M W:Regarding apperception, here is the first lesson in the Workbook for Students:
Nothing I see in this room [on this street, from this window, in this place] means anything.
Now look slowly around you, and practice applying this idea very specifically to whatever you see:
This table does not mean anything.
This chair does not mean anything.
This hand does not mean anything.
This foot does not mean anything.
This pen does not mean anything.
Then look farther away from your immediate area, and apply the idea to a wider range:
That door does not mean anything.
That body does not mean anything.
That lamp does not mean anything.
That sign does not mean anything.
That shadow does not mean anything.
Notice that these statements are not arranged in any order, and make no allowance for differences in the kinds of things to which they are applied. That is the purpose of the exercise. The statement should merely be applied to anything you see. As you practice the idea for the day, use it totally indiscriminately. Do not attempt to apply it to everything you see, for these exercises should not become ritualistic. Only be sure that nothing you see is specifically excluded. One thing is like another as far as the application of the idea is concerned.
Is this not a basic exercise in apperception?
Not at all.
Richard:‘Life is intrinsically purposeful, the *reason for existence* lies openly all around. Being in this very air I live in, I am constantly aware of it; I breathe it in and out; I see it, I hear it, I taste it, I smell it, I touch it, all of the time. It never goes away ... nor has it ever been away. ‘I’ was standing in the way of meaning’. [emphasis added]. (page 116, ‘Richard’s Journal’).
Perhaps it would have been clearer still if I had written that ‘... ‘I’ was standing in the way of the meaning of life being apparent’.
It seems quite the opposite, actually. Maybe we're lacking context, but the text you quote per se sounds nihilistic, life-denying, 'equanimous' and 'empty' at best. On the other side, what Richard describes as apperception here and in a lot more fragments, is active, vibrant, inherently meaningful both objectively {as the characteristics of the actual world per se} and subjectively {the apperceptive individual who perceives those characteristics via pure senses}.
Not to mention all the other flagrant spiritual vocabulary and content that I read as I scanned those texts.
Very, very hardly a plagiarism.
EDIT:Perhaps the following is a nice summary of it all.
Richard:Actual freedom: By being born a separative ‘self’ one lives in a painful reality (being detached from actuality) and sensuousness ends this detachment with the resultant apperception revealing the actual world.
Spiritual freedom: By becoming detached from the separative ‘self’ (and thus being twice-removed from actuality) dissociation from painful reality manifests a metaphysical greater reality in the psyche rendering the physical world a nightmarish dream.
