Lucid Dreaming: Part 3

Out-of-body experiences are relatively common in shamanic and yogic cultures; in many cases practitioners receive instruction from teachers in dreams, which then translates into the reality of the waking world as well. From a Tibetan perspective, a single transmission of knowledge within a dream can represent a lifetime's achievement. In our own culture, Einstein's thought-experiments represent a direct experiential method of visualization, which has resulted in many aspects of modern science, such as the theory of relativity and quantum physics. It could be assumed that if the greatest scientists of the West used hypnosis, as well as shamanic and yogic methods of subtle body activation, greater discoveries than Einstein’s would be readily available. Similarly, tai chi, which is a direct means of enhancing the body's energy and health, and is practiced by millions of people globally, is said to be based on a dream of its founder, Zhang San Feng.

Fundamentally, the shaman uses an altered state of consciousness to travel outside of the body to affect the physical world. It is important to remember that the shaman does not act for his or her own benefit but for the tribe or the nation. Their journeying, as terrifying and even painful as it can be, is done for the healing of others.

Lucid Dreaming: Part 1

The art of dreaming represents a fundamental difference between the modern scientific understanding of dreams and the hunter-gatherer archaic description of reality. In the latter it is believed that dreams can be consciously controlled and used to enhance the well-being of the practitioner and the tribe. Dreams are an important source of information, which is independent of the sequential time framework of consensus reality. The shamanic belief is that dreams are actually the source of waking consciousness, and that one dream can completely alter the entire life of an individual. Even in the Western experience, many creative and scientific discoveries have originated from the world of dreams.

Reality can be divided into waking, dreaming and sleeping states. The concept of meditation is that these three levels can be permanently unified by the breathing pattern at the deepest level of sleep, which is when the physical body is the most rejuvenated by the pre-birth energy system.

Buddhism has a very strong component of dream work, as in the following description of dream yoga:

The Middle Way view provides the philosophical framework of the contemplative practice of dream yoga. In a nonlucid dream—in which there is no recognition that one is dreaming—all objective phenomena seem to exist by and of themselves. They, like one’s own personal self in a dream, seem to be real. But upon awakening, one recognizes that neither one’s own mind nor any person or situation encountered in the dream had any such independent existence. This is equally true during the waking state, and in the daytime practice of dream yoga one maintains this awareness as constantly as possible. Everything experienced throughout the day—contrary to appearances—arises in relation to one’s perceptions and conceptions. Every person encountered is perceived in relation to one’s own sensory and conceptual faculties. Never does one encounter the radically and absolutely “other,” for apprehension of the other is always dependent upon one’s own subjective perspective. Thus, upon fathoming the emptiness of inherent existence of all waking phenomena, one maintains throughout the day a sense of the dreamlike quality of all events, recognizing the profoundly intersubjective nature of all relationships with other beings and the environment.
- B. Alan Wallace, Contemplative Science

In shamanic cultures, it is believed that dreaming presents an opportunity to avoid misfortune in waking life, if fears and obstacles are successfully confronted and transcended in the dreamworld. Even though many scientists solve significant theoretical problems using dream information, our culture has only just begun to understand and investigate the potential of dream practices, including lucid dreaming, to enhance creative problem solving. Artists and poets and writers are clearly dependent upon dream information from the unconscious, yet very few scientists are using hypnosis or self-suggestion to achieve greater clarity in dreams.

The Second Yoga of Naropa: Dream Yoga

The goal of this practice is to have lucid dreams. Many Tibetan texts have been created by Tibetans dreaming and communicating with deities. Tibetan literature is believed to be a creation between the tantric deities and the Tibetan masters.

Dream yoga is an ancient practice based on the idea that gaining lucidity or awareness that one is dreaming while one is dreaming provides a quantum leap of awareness. The practitioner uses self-suggestion until lucidity occurs and success is said to provide great spiritual and health benefits to the practitioner. Like all Asian arts, dream yogic practices are transmitted in a teacher to student lineage, usually with an initiation ceremony of some kind.

In Tibet, it could be argued that dreams within dreams are from other dimensions. Skilled practitioners can communicate with enlightened deities, ancestors, etc. and bring this information back as powerful teachings.

Many Western scholars ignore the influence of dreams and their consequences within shamanic cultures. Western society has lost the ability to use dreaming as a survival tool. Hunter-gatherer cultures are essentially based on the visions or dreams of the shamans who function as intermediaries between the world of the living and the world of the dead. It is normal for example, within a hunter-gatherer culture, for individuals to be guided by dreams with either ancestors or animal guardians. Similarly, in China, many of the meditation lineages in both Buddhism and Taoism consider consciousness projection to be one of the results of successful energy cultivation. The founder of the water-boxing martial arts system, Chen Tuan, was known to leave his body for 100-day periods. Here once again we have the primordial archetype of a shaman who can hibernate like a bear while he travels out of body for three months intervals; during this time fellow practitioners were guarding his body.