Most Westerners focus on the content and meaning of the dream; rarely is the nature of dreaming itself investigated.
Tibetan Buddhism and Taoism have for centuries taught that the waking world is no more than illusion or a dream. Tibetan dream yoga can be a valuable tool in which we can learn to recognise the dream state. This in turn means that when we die, we are also able to recognise the death state as another transitional illusional state. If we manage to attain a clear headed conscious awareness through the death state, we may escape being born again and instead reach a state of enlightenment.
The practice of Tibetan Dream Yoga is a very accessible spiritual path, because you already sleep for a number of hours every night. So why not use this time more productively? If you already meditate for an hour or two in your waking life, that is great, but it still leaves 22 hours when you can be tossed around on the waves of samsara.
Working with sleep and dreams is just as useful as waking meditation and can lead to greater awareness and flexibility in your waking world. You will be less governed by habit, or karmic traces and be able to develop a stable and vivid presence.
‘Karma’ means action. Karmic traces are the results of actions which remain in your mental consciousness and influence your future. They are habits; inclinations and ingrained patterns of behaviour resulting from action you have taken in your life or your past lives. These traces condition and create our every response.
Using Dream Yoga, you can feel the karmic traces and allow them to self-liberate by remaining in non-dual awareness. The emotion will be allowed to arise and then spontaneously dissolve into emptiness. In this way, we can burn the karmic seeds.
Eventually the practice of Dream Yoga leads to a continuity of awareness that allows you to maintain full awareness during your dreams as well as in the waking world. Cutting karma at its root means we can respond appropriately to any situation rather than be driven by habit.
Here is a transcript of a recent interview I did with a London Buddhist centre.
On your courses you refer to 2 possible sources of dream experiences; that of our own mental projection and another type of dream experience based upon a possible collective dreaming. Can you tell me more about this?
This is an interesting topic! I believe that our minds are clouded with memories from the past, especially relating to emotional events, such that when we have a new experience, we are not experiencing it fully as it is, but perceiving it based on projections of past experience. As a consequence of this, I believe that we sometimes see dream characters or environments not as ‘dream reality’ might be, but based on our waking life expectations and projections. As we journey on the path of self-development, it is possible to become more aware of these projections and even sometimes to re-own the projected qualities so they do not affect the here and the now. Indeed one can also deliberately use lucid dreaming to encourage difficult emotions (you might say karmic traces) in the dream and then practise liberating the emotion rather than reacting to it based on projection. In this way, one use of lucid dreaming can be to heal projections.
Once we are not projecting, what do we see in the dream? Ideas from Toltec dreamers and Carl Jung suggest that there is perhaps a kind of objective reality, or collective unconscious. There is an interesting exercise that the Toltecs use whereby altering their perception, they test if they can see an energy aura of an object or person in the dream. If they can, the object or person is part of the collective unconscious or a more objective level of perception. If there is no auric field, the object or person is a projection of the mind. Therefore, it is possible that the dream exists on at least two levels; as a projection of our mind, or as a perception of another collective reality. Beyond this there might be a third level, where the separation of all objects and persons is itself an illusion and we understand ‘oneness’.
In view of the nova dreamer and similar devices, how useful can technology be to lucidity?
I was very excited when I first discovered that it was possible to use gadgets such as the Novadreamer sleep mask to assist in gaining lucidity in the dream state. I did have one or two successes using the mask. However over time the novelty wore off, and sometimes I found it a bit uncomfortable to sleep with a mask on. These days I prefer natural techniques to encourage lucidity; even just constantly questioning the nature of reality is helpful. Also, there is another question: if we rely on technology to become aware of the lucid state, does that not somehow sully the effort and persistence required to develop awareness?
Have you had any experiences with lucid dreaming supplements? I have used Aqua Marina with not much success. I found that nicotine patches and melatonin produced more vivid and sometimes lucid dreams. On the whole however, I prefer the natural approach!
What do you feel are the greatest benefits to lucid dreaming? In my view, lucid dreaming challenges the very concept of reality and teaches us to think very differently about the world we live in. I have had many dreams where I was absolutely sure I was awake; my five senses were no help in informing me of whether I was awake or dreaming. So how can we be so sure that the reality we see in waking life is not a dream? Although there are differences between the waking world and the dream world, ultimately I believe it is a matter of different perception. Lucid dreaming frees the mind to understand different perceptual possibilities.
What do you feel are the greatest obstacles for those learning to lucid dream? Time and effort. Don’t be put off if lucid dreaming does not come to you immediately. Keep practicing the techniques and you will be rewarded.
Do you think that there are any negative aspects to dreaming lucidly?
I can’t think of any. I certainly do not believe that dreaming lucidly is harmful. On the contrary, I have had many wonderful mind-expanding moments whilst being lucid. The journey of awareness is challenging, but what else is there?
Do you feel that non-buddhists can benefit from tibetan dream yoga techniques, given the often alienatingly foreign form (such as visualising red tibetan letter “ah”s in the throat etc etc) which they take?
I am not a practicing Buddhist. Nonetheless, I have found it very helpful to learn about Tibetan Dream Yoga. The big question is what does one do with lucidity once it arises? Buddhists use the state to recognise the impermanence of ‘reality’ and to prepare for the recognition of the death state. Western lucid dreamers have a wider approach and tend to focus more on how lucidity can help with living rather than dying. With awareness of the dream state, anything is possible, so a whole range of possible activities can be undertaken. Lucid dreaming can be used for healing, creativity, rehearsal, fun or exploration. From the Buddhist perspective these activities are probably missing the point because we are still stuck in samsara and the point is to become enlightened. Tibetan Dream Yoga in my experience does require discipline and can be rather disruptive of sleep patterns! It also incorporates techniques such as meditation on the Tibetan letter ‘A’, which are somewhat unfamiliar to Westerners. However, hundreds of years of Tibetan history and teachings needs to be taken seriously, and it does the non-Buddhist no harm to try lucid dreaming from a different perspective. Personally, I have found the practice of Dream Yoga brings a certain calmness and clarity to my life; both waking and sleeping.
