I
have enjoyed a lifelong relationship with my favorite dead poet,
William Butler Yeats. I have always loved his poetry and have
been able – since elementary school – to recite long passages
from memory. I have had dreams and visions of Yeats and his
circle for as long as I can remember. He was not only a
marvellous poet; he was a Western magus, one of the leading
figures in the Order of the Golden Dawn. Since I was a boy,
Yeats has appeared in my dreams at night as well as my daydreams
and willed journeys in consciousness. In dreams, I sometimes
seem to be living in his era; at other times I seem to meet him
in a separate reality. When drumming for groups, I have had had
strong impressions of Yeats conducting experiments in "mutual
visioning" in his own time, and have felt communication between
us. 
One
of the most famous, and most controversial, dreams in the
history of science is the vision of Ouroboros – the snake
consuming its own tail – that revealed the shape of the benzene
ring to German chemist Friedrich August Kekulé (1829-1896). Was
it a sleep dream, a daydream or something else? I went back to
Kekulé’s own account, in his writeup of the extempore speech he
gave at the 1890 Benzolfest many years after his visions,
and compared rival translations of his remarks in German.
Something that struck me immediately was that his perception of
the “dance” of chemical elements was not a one-off affair. He
described a similar experience seven years earlier that gave
rise to his theory of chemical structures. He made it clear that
in years between the two visions he had developed a practice
of seeing or thinking in visual imagery.
Coming
in June 2012 from New World Library
Now
Available 
STICKY:
What is Active Dreaming?
Active
Dreaming? The phrase is a
provocation, designed to
shake us free from the
assumption that dreaming is
a passive activity...
Active Dreaming is a way of
being fully of this world
while maintaining constant
contact with another world,
the world-behind-the-world,
where the deeper logic and
purpose of our lives are to
be found. Active Dreaming is
a discipline, as is yoga or
archeology or particle
physics. This is to say that
there are ascending levels
of practice. In any field,
the key to mastery is always
the same: practice,
practice, practice. [More]
ACTIVE DREAM GROUPS AS MODELS FOR A NEW COMMUNITY
Active Dreaming groups are intentional communities in which each
member receives the gift of deep listening, the change to play
leader or teacher, and the opportunity to tell their life stories
and re-vision those stories.
Read more