Lucid Dreaming Part 15

Misunderstanding the nature of the Sufi's words, the sultan was "astonished at the holy man's presence in the neighborhood of his camp," and gave the dervish purses full of gold and silver, but he refused them. In return, the dervish offered Suleiman a "soporific apple," which the Sultan peeled and ate.

"Then the mysterious man went to sleep," as did the sultan himself. Previously, he had ordered his men to awaken him at the arrival of Hudai effendi. But when the master failed to appear, they laughed at the dervish and mocked their sovereign's "credulity and senility." When at dawn the muezzin of the army began the morning call to prayer, the Great Eunuch gently woke the sultan, and after wishing him good morning as well as a brilliant victory over the enemy, whispered ironically: "sire, no news of Sheikh Hudai effendi. It looks as if his disciple is a fraud."

"Silence, you utter imbecile," roared the sultan, "Silence! The ill.u.s.trious Master has deigned to visit me. I have had a long conversation with him and I tell you that my faithful armies have won the most brilliant of victories, less than an hour ago. Await the messenger's arrival." The enemy commander had pa.s.sed out just as the battle was about to begin, and his subordinates were unable to carry on without him, with the result as described by the sultan via Sheikh Hudai.

Evidently, "at a dream signal from the humble disciple," Hudai effendi had visited and advised Suleiman-in a dream. Moreover, there is the suspicion that the dream master may have somehow been involved in the enemy commander's mysterious loss of consciousness, which resulted in what would seem "the most accidental" in spite of being called "the most brilliant" of victories for the armies of Suleiman the Magnificent.16

Fascinating as this and other anecdotes of mutual dreaming may be, they bring us no nearer to deciding between the competing interpretations of the phenomenon. One might wonder whether there is any way the question could definitely be settled. I propose that there is an empirical test: Two oneironauts could have simultaneous lucid dreams while being monitored in a sleep laboratory. They would agree to meet in their lucid dreams and signal simultaneously. If the experience were truly a mutual dream-that is, if the lucid dreamers actually sharing a dream world-simultaneous eye-movement signals would show up in their polygraph recordings. If, on the other hand, they reported carrying out this task in a mutual lucid dream but did not show simultaneous signals, we would have to conclude that they were at most sharing dream plots.

Let us be sure to appreciate the significance of such an experiment. If the mutual lucid dreamers failed to show simultaneous signals, it would be neither surprising nor especially significant. However, if they did produce simultaneous eye-movement signals, we have incontrovertable proof for the objective existence of the dream world. We would then know that, in certain circ.u.mstances at least, dreams can be as objectively real as the world of physics. This would finally raise the question of whether physical reality is itself some kind of mutual dream. Perhaps what really happens is the balanced result of a myriad of interactions contributed by all of us dreaming the dream of consensual reality. But if not, then there's always Bob Dylan's offer: "I'll let you be in my dream, if I can be in yours."

10.

Dreaming, Death, and Transcendence

While ascending a mountain path I began to find it more and more difficult to climb. My legs took on the familiar leaden feeling they sometimes have in dreams, and a dull heaviness spread through my rapidly weakening body. My feelings of weariness deepened relentlessly until I could only continue by crawling-but finally even this was too much for me and I was overcome with the feeling of certainty that I was about to die of exhaustion. This realization of imminent death focused my attention with remarkable clarity upon what I wanted to express with the one act of my life I had left: perfect acceptance. Thus, gladly embracing death, I let go completely of my last breath, when to my amazement and delight a rainbow flowed out of my heart and I awoke from the dream.

Years after this experience, the profound impact of this dream of death and transcendence continues to influence my beliefs concerning what may happen to us when we die. Because of this dream, I am inclined to share Walt Whitman's view that to die is "different from what anyone supposed and luckier." Yet I know that it was just a dream, and I wonder whether I, or others who have had similar experiences, have sufficient grounds for trusting the belief that they have seen the truth.

Whatever relation this dream of death may bear to reality, it ill.u.s.trates an important truth about dreams. There is a common fear that if you die in a dream, you will not awaken at all. Consequently, people dreaming of death tend to fear and resist the experience. But my dream ill.u.s.trates what could happen when the dreamer fully accepts a dream encounter with death. In cultures that consider death as transformation rather than annihilation, such dreams are easier to accept.

According to Greek mythology, sleep is the brother of death, an indication that the two concepts have long been closely a.s.sociated in the human mind. The reason is easy to see: both states are characterized by an inactivity sharply contrasting with the animate movement of waking life. And since the soul was regarded as leaving the body temporarily during sleep and permanently at death, sleep seemed a short death and death a long sleep. The straightforward a.s.sociation of death and dreaming naturally follows from dreaming's connection with sleep. And the a.s.sociations of sleep, dreaming, and death with the darkness of the underworld are all quite obvious.

Less obvious is that these symbolic a.s.sociations have another side: dreams, the children of sleep, also represent the creative impulse to life, as expressed by the seed germinating in the dark womb of the earth. Moreover, sleep itself resembles the state of incipient life in utero. As Freud observed, "Somatically, sleep is an act which reproduces intrauterine existence fulfilling the conditions of repose, warmth and the absence of stimulus; indeed in sleep many people resume fetal position."1 This brings us to the paradox that death, for the dreamer, most often signifies rebirth. As Ann Faraday suggests, "the most interesting dream death is our own, for this indicates the death of some obsolete self-image, from which comes rebirth into a higher state of consciousness and authentic self-being."2

The a.s.sociation between death and transformation has long been recognized in literature. In Thomas Mann's great alchemical novel, The Magic Mountain, Hans Castorp's initiation into the mysteries of life takes the form of a dream, and a lucid one at that, which answers and resolves all of his questions about the seeming contradictions of life and death. Mann describes his hero as "searching for the Grail-that is to say, the Highest: knowledge, wisdom, consecration, the philosopher's stone ... the elixir of life."3 Lost in the perilous mountains, battered and blinded by a blizzard that very nearly costs him his life, Hans loses consciousness of his surroundings and falls into the snow. During the same storm, he has seen in the "too perfect symmetry" of the flakes of falling snow the coldness of "the very marrow of death." But as he lies thoroughly immersed in the frozen ocean of death, he dreams himself another, wholly different world-this one as delightful a vision of sunshine, comfort, and harmony as the other one was a blinding vision of violence, elemental chaos, and harshness. Hans walks through this idyllic scene, joyously viewing the friendly and courteous behavior displayed everywhere by the happy, yet serious and in every way n.o.ble, people of his dream. But then he discovers, to his horror, a temple of human sacrifice in which he witnesses two hideously ugly hags tearing apart a child over a witches' cauldron. The shock brings him to his senses.

Upon half awakening to find himself lying nearly frozen in the snow, Hans Castorp says to himself, "I felt it was a dream, all along ... lovely and horrible dream. I knew all the time that I was making it up myself. . . . "4 Without moving, he continues to reflect for some time on his "dream poem of humanity," which he discovers possesses "both rhyme and reason. ... It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death." His lucid dream, he declares, has brought him to this profound insight: "My dream has given it to me, in utter clearness, that I may know it forever."5 Of this, Hans Castorp's creator wrote that "if he does not find the grail, yet he divines it, in his deathly dream."6 Having done so, Hans awakens himself fully from his reverie, struggles to his feet, shakes off his frozen coat of snow, and returns to live another several hundred pages.

The reader may object that the experiences of fictional characters are, well, fictional, and therefore unrelated to actuality. But the fact is that-in life as well as in literature-people who have survived actual or imagined encounters with death frequently report them to have been accompanied by powerfully significant experiences. These life-changing visions currently are referred to most commonly as "near-death experiences" (NDEs). The particular contents of NDEs vary widely, as much as the contents of OBEs, visions, lucid and non-lucid dreams. A useful picture of a thing can be sometimes constructed by combining, features from a variety of different examples. Raymond Moody has provided the public with such a picture of the NDE in his best-seller, Life After Life:

A man is dying and, as he reaches the point of greatest physical distress, he hears himself p.r.o.nounced dead by the doctor. He begins to hear an uncomfortable noise, a loud ringing or buzzing, and at the same time feels himself moving very rapidly outside his own physical body, but still in the same immediate physical environment, and sees his own body from a distance as though he is a spectator. He watches the resuscitation attempt from this vantage point and is in a state of emotional upheaval.

After a while, he collects himself and becomes more accustomed to his odd condition. He notices that he still has a "body," but one of a very different nature and with very different powers from the physical body he has left behind. Some other things begin to happen. Others come to meet him and help him. He glimpses the spirits of relatives and friends who have already died, and a loving warm spirit of a kind he has never encountered before-a being of light-appears before him. This being asks him a question, non-verbally, to make him evaluate his life and helps him along by showing him a panoramic, instantaneous playback of the major events in his life. At some point, he finds himself approaching some sort of barrier or border, apparently representing the limit between earthly life and the next life. Yet, he finds that he must go back to earth, that the time for his death has not yet come. At this point, he resists, for by now he is taken up with his experiences in the afterlife and does not want to return. He is overwhelmed by intense feelings of joy, love, and peace. Despite his att.i.tude, though, he is somehow united with his physical body and lives.7

It is important to remember that this account is a composite put together by Dr. Moody from a variety of diverse anecdotal accounts, no one of which possesses all of its features. It is really therefore closer to fiction than description, and may only provide us with an idealized picture of the NDE.

NDEs seem to exhibit varying degrees of completeness. Kenneth Ring, a psychologist specializing in the study of NDEs, describes the experience as unfolding in a five-stage continuum. "The first stage involves a feeling of extraordinary peace and contentment; the second stage is characterized by a sense of detachment from one's physical body, i.e., an OBE; the third stage is described as entering a transitional world of darkness; the hallmark of the fourth stage is a brilliant light of exceptional beauty; and the last stage is one in which the subject experiences himself as 'entering the light.' "8 Dr. Ring found that each of the five stages was reported by decreasing numbers of NDE subjects.

The resemblance of the NDE to certain aspects of dreams is quite obvious. For example, there are the images of relatives and friends who have already died and would therefore be significantly a.s.sociated with the person's idea of death, which itself has been brought up by his fear or expectation of his own impending death. There is also the obvious element of wish-fulfillment involved in seeming to be in a different body than one's own.

The popular press has treated the NDE in a credulous and sensationalistic manner, interpreting it as providing positive "proof" for life after death. Considering the fact that no one who ever had an NDE was really dead, the experience provides no more evidence for survival after death than OBEs provide for the existence of any kind of "astral" body independent of the physical body. A neurophysiologist would be quick to point out that when the NDE occurs, the person's brain is still sufficiently intact to produce the experience. In this regard, it is of interest to note that a deceased person's brain shows considerable activity thirty minutes or more after clinical "death"-that is, heart failure.

Like waking life, OBEs, and dreams, the near-death experience is still an experience. The question is, does it occur during death or during a more reversable sleep? Since our current sources of information concerning what is supposed to happen at and after death are limited to what we gain in seances and "phone calls from the dead," we are not in a very favorable position to determine the validity of NDE reports! I am not at all certain this is the most important question to answer, anyway. A dream need not be literally true to be significant and meaningful-for example, my rainbow dream, which began this chapter-and the same applies to NDEs, which often possess the profoundest significance for people who have had them.

People who have undergone near-death experiences frequently show fundamental and remarkably positive transformations in their approaches to life. Noyes summarized the changes as follows:

A pattern of favorable att.i.tude change resulting from near-death experiences was described that included the following: (1) a reduced fear of death; (2) a sense of relative invulnerability; (3) a feeling of special importance or destiny; (4) a belief in having received the special favor of G.o.d or fate; (5) a strengthened belief in continued existence. In addition to these elements that seemed directly related to the experience itself, several more appeared to be a.s.sociated with a heightened awareness of death that resulted from it. These included: (1) a sense of the preciousness of life; (2) a feeling of urgency and reevaluation of priorities; (3) a less cautious approach to life; (4) a more pa.s.sive att.i.tude toward uncontrollable events. This pattern of change seemed to contribute to the emotional health and well-being of persons reporting it.9

Dr. Noyes added that "an opposite pattern was described by a few and appeared to be a.s.sociated with psychopathology. ..." However, for most people, the NDE has a profound and vivifying effect that those of us who haven't experienced it might well envy.

But is it possible to have an NDE or its equivalent without nearly dying? Kenneth Ring has suggested that the NDE experience can take many forms; he quotes a line from Plutarch that says, "At the moment of death the soul experiences the same impressions as those who are initiated into the great Mysteries." Ring notes that "the modern world is witnessing the emergence of a new mystery school where resuscitation techniques administered by physicians have replaced hypnotic procedures practiced by high priests. The initiates of course are those who have suffered clinical death and the initiation itself is the NDE."

Ring regards the greatest benefit to be gained from the NDE (at least in its highest form) as the possibility of realizing "who and what we truly are," a self far more expansive and all-encompa.s.sing than the one we show in our daily lives.

According to Dr. Ring, a person who has found this out, whether by fasting and prayer, drugs, accident, or as it were, "by itself," is no longer concerned about personal survival after death, because he or she has experienced "eternal" existence. They could say, with Richard M. Bucke, the author of Cosmic Consciousness, "... I became conscious in myself of eternal life. It was not a conviction that I would have eternal life, but a consciousness that I possessed eternal life then ..."10 In my view, and I believe Kenneth Ring would probably agree, the NDE is one path to a mystical experience. It is an experience open to others so inclined, including perhaps lucid dreamers, as we shall see at the end of this chapter. It may not be clear why I am calling some NDEs mystical experiences. In that case, the following account from a woman who nearly died during the delivery of her baby may clarify this point:

The next thing I knew, I was in-I was standing in a mist and I knew immediately that I had died and I was so happy that I had died but I was still alive. And I cannot tell you how I felt. I was thinking, "oh, G.o.d I'm dead, but I'm here. I'm me!" And I started pouring out these enormous feelings of grat.i.tude because I still existed and yet I knew perfectly well that I had died. ...

While I was pouring out these feelings ... the mist started being infiltrated with enormous light and the light just got brighter and brighter and, as everybody says, it was so bright but it doesn't hurt your eyes, but it's brighter than anything you've ever experienced in your whole life. At that point, I had no consciousness anymore of having a body. It was just pure consciousness. And this enormously bright light seemed almost to cradle me. I just seemed to exist in it and be part of it and be nurtured by it and the feeling just became more and more and more ecstatic and glorious and perfect. And everything about it was-it just didn't bear any relationship to anything! The feeling-if you took the one thousand best things that ever happened to you in your life and multiplied by a million, maybe you could get close to this feeling, I don't know. But you're just engulfed by it and you begin to know a lot of things. I remember I knew that everything, everywhere in the universe was OK, that the plan was perfect. ... And the whole time I was in this state, it seemed infinite. It was timeless. I was just an infinite being in perfection.11

One element of the NDE, as described in Western accounts, finds independent support in the traditional teachings of the visionary culture of Tibet: "the Clear Light of Reality," according to the Tibetan Buddhists, is briefly experienced by everyone at the moment of death. Moreover, "unless the dying person possesses, as a result of having successfully practised yoga while incarnate, the yogic power to hold fast to the after-death condition in which the Clear Light dawns, he mentally sinks downward, stage by stage, and the Clear Light of Reality fades from his consciousness."12

Adepts who recognize the Light of the after-death state as being of the same nature as dreams are supposed to transcend the dream of life and death. The means by which one attains this transcendence is the yoga of the dream state. Through the practice of lucid dreaming during his lifetime, the yogi is able to experience the "dream of death" lucidly as well.

Dream yoga is not merely intended as a rehearsal for the final sleep of death. The serious follower of dream yoga is attempting to awaken before death: "The whole purpose of the Doctrine of Dreams is to stimulate the yogin to arise from the Sleep of Delusion, from the Nightmare of Existence, to break the shackles in which maya [illusion] thus has held him prisoner throughout the aeons, and so attain spiritual peace and joy of Freedom, even as did the Fully Awakened One, Gautama the Buddha."13

The first steps toward the dream yogi's goal of awakening involve becoming proficient in "comprehending the nature of the dream state." Once the yogi has become an accomplished lucid dreamer, he proceeds to the next stage, "trans.m.u.ting the dream-content," in which the initial exercise is the following: "If, for example the dream be about fire, think, 'what fear can there be of fire which occurreth in a dream!' Holding to this thought, trample upon the fire. In like manner, tread underfoot whatever be dreamt." After gaining sufficient skill in controlling his reactions to the contents of his lucid dreams, the yogi goes on to more advanced exercises, and by means of these he masters the ability to visit-in his lucid dreams-any realm of existence desired.

The next stage of practice is called "realizing the dream-state, or dream-content to be maya [illusion]." According to Buddhist doctrine, the entire universe of forms, or separate existence, is an illusory appearance or "dream." This should be a familiar idea to readers of the previous chapter, where it was argued that all experiences are necessarily mental representations and, as the subjective products of our brains, are thus of the same nature as dreams.

At the third stage, the dream yogi is advised to practice the transformation of dream content into its opposite. For example, the lucid dreamer should transform the dream, if it be of fire, into water; if it be of small things, into large; if it be of one thing, into many, and so on. Thus, the text explains, the lucid dreamer comprehends the nature of dimensions and of plurality and unity.

After becoming "thoroughly proficient" in the art of transforming dream content, the yogi turns his attention to his own dream body: this, he now sees, is just as illusory as any other element of his lucid dream. The fact that the fully lucid dreamer knows he is not his dream body plays a crucial role in self-transformation, as we shall see below.

The fourth and final stage of dream yoga is enigmatically termed "meditating upon the thatness of the dream-state." The text tells us that by means of this meditation, "the dream propensities whence arise whatever is seen in dreams as appearances of deities, are purified." It is, ironically, by means of these "appearances" that the ultimate goal is reached. The yogi is, of course, aware that these "deities" are his own mental images. Bearing this in mind, he is instructed to concentrate in the lucid dream state, focusing on the forms of these deities, and to keep his mind free of thoughts. In the undisturbed quiet of this mental state, the divine forms are said to be "attuned to the non-thought condition of mind; and thereby dawneth the Clear Light, of which the essence is of the voidness."

Thus, one realizes that the appearance of form "is entirely subject to one's will when the mental powers have been efficiently developed" through the practice of the yoga of lucid dreaming. Having learned "... that the character of any dream can be changed or transformed by willing that it shall be," the lucid dreamer takes "a step further ... he learns that form, in the dream state, and all the mult.i.tudinous content of dreams, are merely playthings of mind, and, therefore, as unstable as a mirage." A process of generalization "leads him to the knowledge that the essential nature of form and of all things perceived by the senses in the waking state are equally as unreal as their reflexes in the dream state," since both waking and dreaming are states of mind. A final step brings the yogi to "the Great Realization" that nothing within the experience of his mind "can be other than unreal like dreams." In this light, "the Universal Creation ... and every phenomenal thing therein" are seen to be "but the content of the Supreme Dream." And for the one upon whom "this Divine Wisdom" has dawned, "the microcosmic aspect of the Macrocosm becomes fully awakened; the dew-drop slips back into the Shining Sea, in Nirvanic Blissfulness and At-one-ment, possessed of All Possessions, Knower of the All-Knowledge, Creator of All Creations-the One Mind, Reality Itself."14

Having described the realization reached by the successful seeker, let us consider some of the possible pitfalls on the path of inner growth through lucid dreaming. Primary among them is the tendency for the less than fully lucid dream ego to misunderstand and misuse the new access to power and control over dreams that lucidity brings. The semi-lucid dream ego is inclined to use "magical powers" to seek its own ends, which may be at odds with the person's real goals. Moreover, the semi-lucid dream ego's sense of greatly expanded power leads to a grandiose expansion of self-esteem, the condition Jung referred to as "inflation."

Although the inflated dream ego, like a power-intoxicated Roman emperor, bestows divinity upon itself, it proves to be filled with nothing but hot air. The hottest of the airs it puts on is the delusion that it is the self. The truth is that the dream ego is only a self-representation that tends to forget its nature.

The ego's tendency (whether awake or dreaming) to mistake itself for the true self is natural. The ego is a model of the self, designed to serve adaptive action; it is based upon disparate sources of information, ranging from how the self has actually behaved in the past to parental and social notions of how the self should behave in the future. From this collection of expectations, predictions of the self's future behavior can be made.

Since pretending to have a socially desirable feature is more frequently rewarded than truthfully admitting not to have it, much of our mental map of the self becomes pretense. The pattern of social pretense, of playing a role intended to deceive others, is later applied to oneself after society's standards have become internalized. If we are to pretend successfully to ourselves, we must also pretend that we are not pretending. Thus the person behind the mask forgets he has another face. The actor becomes his role, mistaking the part he plays for the whole he is; appearance usurps reality; the original plan is forgotten; and clothes mock the man.

All this has been said regarding the undeveloped or semi-lucid dream ego. Lucid dreams are experienced and interpreted, by such an ego, as "my dream." But the dream ego is not the dreamer; rather than dreaming, it is being dreamed. The unenlightened but semi-lucid dream ego falsely believes itself to be the only reality, of which all other dream figures are the mere projections.

The case of Ram Narayana vividly ill.u.s.trates how far delusions of grandeur can be taken by the semi-lucid dreamer. Narayana, an Indian physician and editor, had been perplexed by the problem of how to convince "the creatures of his dream, during the dream state, that it really is a dream." He finally gave up trying, having decided that even if he succeeded, convincing them could serve no useful purpose. Therefore, Narayana resolved to enjoy himself instead and to pa.s.s his time while dreaming "as comfortably as possible." Consequently, next time he went to sleep, he addressed "the a.s.sembly of his dream characters" as follows: "Friends, why don't you try to attain the state of ecstatic and immortal bliss, entirely free from pain of every description? This state of bliss can be obtained only by entering into the celestial region, the abode of the Supreme Creator. To this region I go daily and enjoy its pleasures for twelve hours out of every twenty-four. I am the only incarnation and representative of the Supreme One."

Narayana indicated that "the majority of dream creatures believed in the above speech." A minority were skeptical of his claim of being the "only manifestation of the Supreme Deity." What about Krishna, Christ, Buddha, or Mohammed? demanded the doubters. They received the reply that "all those great men had come from lower regions and were only theoretical in their teachings and n.o.body ever attained salvation through them, that the dreamer alone came from the highest spiritual plane, and that he would teach them the only sure and practical method of reaching that region."

Having been made the usual promises, they were charged the usual price, being then told the chief condition of initiation was "to have implicit faith in their preceptor, the dreamer." Narayana went on to explain, in terms well known by the leaders of cults everywhere, that "the most effective means to hypnotize them all in a body was then employed, which consisted of looking intently into the eyes of the guru, the dreamer, while sacred hymns and songs of love and devotion were being recited in a chorus. They were further impressed with the idea that ultimately every one of them would reach the highest region, after one, two or more re-births, but one having complete faith in the dreamer would reach there the soonest."

Narayana claimed that "the method proved so satisfactory that the dreamer was actually worshipped by every one of the dream creatures and was p.r.o.nounced to be the only true spiritual guide. He now considered himself in no way less fortunate than so many leaders of the various faiths, in the waking world, who enjoy the pleasure of being devotedly worshipped by their disciples."