I would like to take you on a journey through an alternate
perspective on dreaming, into the dream realm of the Toltec Sorcerer. My
exposure to this world has been through multiple books featuring the Yaqui
Indian Sorcerer, Don Juan, as written about by both Carlos Castaneda and
Merilyn Tunneshende. I’d like to focus on The
Art of Dreaming, Castaneda’s work, because it more directly focuses on the
topic at hand.
The Art of Dreaming
reads as both a road map to the inner territory of the Dreamscape and a diary of
the author on his journey through the “Gates of Dreaming.” These gates are
symbolic of steps one must take to gain lucidity and control of their dreams. For
example, the path to the first gate is to set a nightly intention to see one’s
hands upon the beginning of a dream, and then to recognize in the dream that these
are one’s own hands. This is how one passes through the first gate of dreaming,
resulting in an increase of awareness in the dream state. In the map presented
by Castaneda, there are seven gates, each a progressively more difficult task
in the dream realm, requiring more mastery of one’s awareness and discrimination.
One of the eventual goals of passing through these gates is to not only gain
more control over ones dreaming awareness, but to be able to bring this
enhanced perception back into waking life. In the model presented by Castaneda,
this enhanced perception completely alters the way in which one engages with their
waking life, allowing those adept at the practice to see through the veil of
illusion shrouding our daily life in superficial meaning. This in turn gives
the adept more control over the direction of their life; a desirable outcome
for most of us I would venture.
As I mentioned, a core goal of the path described in The Art of Dreaming is the development
of more awareness; more personal power to wield in the dream world. One of the
techniques described in this model is referred to as recapitulation, which
resembles certain psycho therapeutic techniques of journaling about emotionally
charged memories in order to release their hold on one’s subconscious mind. A subtler
aim of this process is to reclaim the power that one has stored in these
memories; artifacts of oneself, stored away in the recesses of the mind. This
brings me to a parallel found in one of our other readings on dreaming, The Sandman.
In this story, we
follow the main character Morpheus, King of Dreams, on a journey to reclaim his
tools; a mask, a jewel, and a bag of sand. Morpheus states that he long ago placed
a great deal of his personal power into each of these tools. When they are
stolen, he no longer possesses enough power to shape the Dreamworld at his
command. An interesting note here, Morpheus states that “the Dreamworld, the
Dreamtime, the Unconscious—call it what you will—is as much a part of me as I
am part of It.”[1] As
I read it, The King of Dreams (the conscious mind) lacks the power to control
his dream world (unconscious mind) because he has lost a great deal of power
woven into the stolen tools of his dominion. He is unable to control this aspect
of himself because he has lost his personal power. He then journeys through the
dark side of the dream world (his unconscious mind) in order to reclaim this
personal power. Recapitulation is just that: journeying through the darkest
parts of one’s subconscious mind in order to reclaim the personal power bound
into the artifacts of emotionally charged memory; inaccessible to the conscious
mind because they lie hidden away out of the fear of what memories they
contain. In each and every one of us, Fear has stolen pieces of our personal
power away.
In fact, if we were to examine cultures from all over the
world, we would find symbolic descriptions of this exact process; losing
aspects of oneself and regaining them through some method of internal work.
Every culture has a different name for the process, but it is found pervasively
throughout the world. This is something I am incredibly passionate about, and I
am sure you’ll hear more on it later. For now though, back to dreaming.
In The Art of Dreaming,
Castaneda eventually develops enough skill to pass through a few consecutive gates
of dreaming. This takes him on a journey into the vast world of Dreaming. In
short: he encounters intelligent entities, the so called inorganic beings, and
he journeys to their home world. Here he is wooed by their immeasurable
knowledge of both his plane, and the many other planes of existence in the
universe; most of which are unavailable to one’s awareness in the strictly constrained
realm of waking existence. He supposedly brings much of this knowledge back to
his waking existence, forever changing his view of what is possible in this
universe.
Obviously, I cannot delve into extreme detail for it would
take an entire book… But given this prelude, I would like to inquire about my
reader’s perspectives: Do you believe that this is possible? Could Castaneda have
truly encountered intelligent beings in his dreams, or are these simply figments
of his imagination? What are the implications for either stance? Is there any
way we can “scientifically study” experiences such as these?
To understand from my perspective, I have to explain a
little more of what I understand reality to be. We assume ourselves to have a
direct experience of sights, smells, feelings, emotions, physical objects, and thoughts;
all those things which make up waking or “Real” reality. Scientifically
speaking, we do not experience reality in this way at all, but rather as
signals (photons, vibrating packets of sound energy, molecules of flavor)
converted to electrical impulses by our sense organs, and then into a conscious
experience by our incredibly complex neuron networks in the brain. Every single
“real” thing that we have ever experienced is at some level an approximation of
what is actually out there, encoded into a binary system of electrical impulses
signaling across the brain. So, then what is dreaming?
When we sleep, our brain begins to signal using these exact
same electrical impulses, but without any of the external sensory data. Our
dreams are an identical process, at some level, to our experience of external “real”
reality. Yet our dream scape is unconstrained by many of the physical laws that
we experience in everyday reality. Gravity, death, magic; these things and many
more manifest in our dreams in ways that we cannot even begin to conceive in
our waking reality. Yet, what makes it any less real to our experiencing
selves? The fact that every morning we wake up from dreaming? You could make
the argument that we “wake up” from normal reality into dreaming every night. Which
one is more real? Or is it more a matter of our conceptions and beliefs
regarding this question. If we believe that dreaming is “real” so to speak, yet
unconstrained by the laws of the physical universe, there is nothing wrong with
that. There is much to be gained by explorations of the Dreamscape. It can be
just a real of an exploration as journeying to the Amazon to explore the
jungle. Knowledge of self and the world can be gained through both types of
journey. One requires physical effort, money, and time in the physical plain of
existence; all limited resources. The other requires patient practice, creativity,
and dream time; time which can potentially be extended without limit, a
potentially limitless resource. We have all had those dreams which seem to
extend on for lifetimes, and others which seem to be over almost as soon as
they begin. Sometimes they are one in the same. Sometimes our daily waking life
influences the content of our dreams. Reciprocally, the content of dreams
sometimes influences our day to day experience; perhaps only in our mental
conceptions of the day, perhaps not. That is up to you to experiment with and
decide, for I can only share information, not the experience itself.
Experience: the only “Real” thing any of us will ever truly know.
Incredibly personal and fundamentally incommunicable.
That is the nature of quale.
In conclusion, my suggestion would be this: invest the minimal physical effort and waking time
it takes to develop a consistent dream practice, for it could take you on a
journey unlike any you have ever imagined.
This is really a fascinating exploration into the nature of dreams, and one I look forward to discussing in class this week. As someone that almost never remembers his dreams, at most only once or twice a year, I've found this entire topic rather intimidating. We spend so much of our waking hours on self improvement, from working out to studying to reading... I've always viewed sleep in the same way we discussed silence last week, a necessary break from noise of life. I'm interested by the potential you describe to gain greater self knowledge, but simultaneously wonder how I'm going to get any rest if I spend both my waking and sleeping hours striving for self improvement. Is there a balance to be struck, engaging in these exercises say only once or twice a week, or can dreaming in this manner still be truly restful?
ReplyDeleteI would venture that dreaming in this manner could be truly restful if the content of one's dreams was not in itself too stressful. If you want to rest and adventure maybe don't spend the entire night every night on a wild ride through the nebula. If you are truly lucid in your dreams though, it seems to me that you should be able to summon a relaxing and rejuvenating dreamscape at will. Perhaps that would be a good addition to the practice, to add in nights of intentional dream relaxation so to speak. I believe that the body can still get rejuvenating rest while portions of the mind are active. For example, John Lilly, who invented the sensory deprivation tank, wrote a fair amount on this notion of having an active mind and a recovering, resting body. After he was experienced at floating in the tank, he described situations of floating for 3 hours or so, but then going without any other form of rest for 20-30 hours without feeling tired. Drawing from this similar situation, I would say that yes, the body can recharge significantly while portions of the mind stay active.
ReplyDeleteOn the flip side however, I'm sure we have all had those dreams that are a roller-coaster ride, where we wake up feeling as if we got almost no sleep at all. I know I have, last night for example... I consider it something that comes with the territory of dream practice. Until our dream skills are developed enough, the dreams we encounter are likely to run the gambit from relaxing and rejuvenating, to harrowing and exhausting. But as with any skill, practice will be both rewarding and trying; its sticking with it in the long run that will lead to the best payout.