Dreamwork Within the Dream State and Within the Imaginary State of Being— Methods Based on the Traditional Dream Yoga Practice Preliminary to dream yoga, the practitioner must be acquainted with the dream world, remembering dreams and having clear dreams. For psychological reasons it is also very important to remember one’s dreams. In the waking state we reject re-pressed conflicts and fears which we find difficult to deal with. However, these con-flicts and fears, among all acts pertaining to the first four skandhas, leave imprints in the basic psychophysical energy of our consciousness, and reappear in the manifest dream in order to be lived through in this level of being. I find that living through psychological difficulties is the natural psychological function of dreams. Stage One The first stage of dream yoga is holding the dream. This stage implies the training of lucid dreaming—to know the dream is a dream while dreaming. In order to experience lucid dreams whenever desired—not just at random—the practitioner has to train her will power to be able to go consciously into the dream state. Also she needs to awaken and balance her subtle energies. Roughly we can talk about three chakra energies. The qualities of the chakra energies can be respectively expressed and distinguished in the following way: 1. An active type of energy, the rational-intellectual, the birth-creation, male type of energy. 2. A nonactive, nonoutgoing type of energy, nonrational, like the Death energy, which is female. The Death-consciousness is the subtlest form of consciousness. 3. The third energy type balances between the active and nonactive. People who mainly use the intellect or rational energy while asleep have to use methods of first getting into the nonrational (Type 2) energy. Getting into the non-rational energy on the threshold of sleep has different effects in the dream state, among which the most important for now are: 1. The sleeping state comes at rest and will therefore function naturally, fulfilling its function, i.e., the mental imprints (which for the reason of our mental health/healing need to come out and be lived through or worked through in the dream state); 2. Through nonrational energy one can develop lucidity and train to use one’s pow-ers in the lucid dream state. However, when the dream state is at rest and the will-power created, the practi-tioner needs to get more into the active (Type 1) energy in order to create the clear dream and in order to be more consciously aware in the dream state experiencing the lucid dreaming. But if the practitioner gets too much into active energy, she will wake up. She therefore needs to hold a fine balance between the non-active and the active energy, using the Type 3 energy in order to stay in the lucid dream, neither waking up nor falling back into the ordinary dream flow. Stage Two The second stage is mastering the dream. In this stage, knowing the dream is a dream while dreaming, the practitioner develops his own power of using his dream body with volition. This enables him to deal actively with the dream object in a way, which is similar to the way we deal with the object while awake. The first step in obtaining the power of mastering the dream body is to con-sciously be the dream body, as ordinarily we are being our physical bodies. Being the dream body still requires training the practitioner how to use it. He needs to get all the senses to work properly and to be able to move the dream body at will. Next the practitioner trains his willpower through the dream body in order to further investigate that which captures his interest. When this step is mastered he has the ability to acknowledge disturbing psychological structures emerging in the dream, and further, he has the ability to work directly in the dream state with them. In this context, I will mention some methods the practitioner can use to work directly with fear when confronted with negative aspects in the dream scene (the dream object), and discuss how/why these methods work. The practitioner is ad-vised never to flee the negativity, but to either fight it, or better still, to let the nega-tivity destroy himself. In other words, unite with negativity. In order to understand why these methods work, we must understand the dynamic between negativity and the subject being confronted by it. Here we have to reach back to the basic psychol-ogy presented earlier under the third skandha, where we found that pleasant feelings arise in contact with the object when the object seems to nourish and/or protect our image of ourself, and unpleasant feelings arise when our image of ourself is endan-gered. Thus, within my interpretation and experience, the negativity frightening the practitioner in the dream is a picture/representation of the practitioner’s fear of hav-ing his self-image destroyed. If a practitioner flees a negativity, he misses the opportunity to work with his self-image and with the fear of having it destroyed. Instead, through this action he manifests his self-image even further. Secondly, if the practitioner fights that which will destroy his self-image, he creates a feeling of being protected in himself, and he will therefore feel stronger both in the dream, and also, it would seem, in waking reality. Thirdly, the practitioner can let a negativity destroy himself in the dream, i.e. he can unite with the negativity. When a negativity destroys the dream subject, it destroys that which the practitioner identifies with and therefore wants/needs to pro-tect, his self-image. However, when this is destroyed the practitioner goes beyond this image of himself and reaches a more authentic layer of his being. No longer identifying with the image, there is nothing to maintain the game of fear and nega-tivity, which is why there no longer is any fear or negativity. The practitioner has united himself with his fear and negativity. Through this act, it seems to me, he has resolved underlying psychological problems. Having obtained the ability to master the dream it is possible for a practi-tioner to do many different and possibly unusual things within the dream. If, for instance, the practitioner wants to understand certain things, it could be within the sciences or within philosophy, psychology, the arts, he can—through various meth-ods—contact or tune into energy-lines of the knowledge he wants to acquire. The dream state gives special possibilities to do so, due to its naturally stronger unity between body/mind and subject/object. Stage Three The third stage is changing the dream. I mentioned above that the core point in the dream yoga was to break or go beyond our dualistic way of existence. In this stage the practitioner is supposed to start directly breaking some of our strongest beliefs: the belief in the solidness and absoluteness of the object, the belief in our separateness from the object, the belief in time linearity and space fixation. Thus, in order to change the dream object, a practitioner has to train herself to go within the will power of her dream body/mind, contacting the basic structuring energy through which she can contact the dream object of the same energy level. On this very subtle structuring level of being, there is a correspondence between the energy of the sub-ject and the object, through which direct contact is possible. Through this direct en-ergy contact the practitioner can change the object, and/or can create objects at will. In order to learn how to go into this subtle structuring level of being, the practi-tioner is traditionally instructed to use different deity-meditations in the dream state. However, to use these, certain initiations are required. When the practitioner can tune into this subtle structuring energy of the subject and the object, and use it for changing the object, she is breaking the ordinary natural laws of separateness. After obtaining this ability, a practitioner is able, by her will power and unity abilities, to transcend ordinary space and time limitations. When the practitioner was working with the dream object, she had to work from her more rational/active chakra energy side, still keeping a balance in order not to awake from the dream state. But approaching the training of the unity abilities of subject/object, the practitioner is advised to work more through the nonrational, nonactive, feminine energy side. As I have mentioned before, different levels of imprints, of more or less prob-lematic observances, give rise to the main part of the dream. Having sufficiently mastered the dream, the practitioner naturally and spontaneously does seem to know which method to use in successfully dealing with dream appearances, and through these with the underlying consciousness energy. These needed to come out to be lived or worked through. After having mastered the methods of changing dream ap-pearances, the practitioner can now change unwanted, unpleasant dream situations or her dream being. This act seems to have a direct healing impact on the underlying psychological difficulties associated with her waking life. Stage Four The fourth and last stage of dream yoga is to merge with the unity of the subtle body/mind. Here the practitioner is no longer working with the dream object/ap-pearances. He now works directly through the unity of the subtle feminine and mas-culine energies of his dream subject, going beyond dream appearances. From this state of being, which is closely connected with the above mentioned state of the illu-sory body, the practitioner works directly with his relationship to the waking state reality, also breaking the ordinary natural laws of the reality of the waking state. Dream Reliving As mentioned in the beginning, it is not so easy to traverse the steps of knowing the dream is a dream, being able to create lucid dreams at will, or going consciously into the dream state of being. Instead of working directly in the dream state, I have found it useful for the practitioner first to work with the same methods in the imaginary dream state of being. The imaginary dream state is a deeply relaxed state from which the practi-tioner enters a recalled dream with which she wishes to work. However, it is much more effective to work with the dream from the dream state than to work with the recalled dream from the imaginary dream state. The dream state is more subtle than the imaginary dream state. The imaginary dream state is more easily influenced by the view of the coarse-rational consciousness. However, psychologically speaking, if the practitioner is able to enter the imaginary state and not be disturbed or influ-enced by the coarse-rational view, then it seems fruitful for her to train and apply the dream yoga methods in the imaginary dream state. To advance on the spiritual levels, i.e., existentially changing the dualistic way of existence, breaking the natural laws, etc., it is, of course, difficult to work from the imaginary dream level due to the possible interference of the ordinary coarse-rational dualistic view. However, some progress certainly takes place when the methods are properly used. In general, it should be clear that any practice towards awakening and develop-ing the subtle energies of body/mind, whether through the imaginary dream state, training the imaginary dream state or training the chakra energies, has a great impact on the ability of a practitioner to create clear dreams, and to further the dream power necessary for creating lucid dreams at will, and to work directly with the dream appearances in the dream. References Ajitamitragupta (1981). The Tibetan Tripitaka, D.G. edition, no. 2832: Rmi-lam dri-ma med-pa bsgom-pa. Dharma Press USA. [Note: Provides information on Rmi-lam bsgom-pa, the Dream Yoga.] Dharmakirti (1981). The Tibetan Tripitaka, D.G. edition, no. 4210: Tshad-ma rnam-hgrel gyi tshig-lehur byas-pa (The Tibetan translation of Pramanavarttikakarika.) Dharma Press USA. [Note: Provides information on ’Du-shes (the rational/coarse-rational conscious-ness) and mNgon-sum (the nonrational consciousness with respect to direct perception of the yogi mind).] Dignaga (1981). The Tibetan Tripitaka, D.G. edition, no. 4204: Tshad-ma kun-las btus-pahi hgrel-pa (The Tibetan translation of Pramanasamuccayavrtti). Dharma Press USA. [Note: Provides information on ’Du-shes (the rational/ coarse-rational consciousness) and mNgon-sum (the nonrational consciousness with respect to direct perception of the yogi mind).] rGyal-tshab dar-ma rin-chen (1974–1975). Tson-kha pa’s collected works, vol. ca: Rnam-hgrel gyi bsdus-don, Thar-lam gyi de-ñid gsal-byed. Printed in Barasasi, India. [Note: Provides information on ’Du-shes (the rational/coarse-rational consciousness) and mNgon-sum (the nonrational consciousness with respect to direct perception of the yogi mind).] Tson-kha pa (1979). Tson-kha pa’s collected works, vol. ta: Zab-lam na-rohi chos-drug gi sgo-nas hkhrid-pahri rim-pa, yid-ches gsum Idan & Na- rohi chos-drug gi dmigs-skor lag-tu len tshul bsdus-pa. New Delhi, India. [Note: Provides information on Rmi-lam bsgom-pa, the Dream Yoga, and the sGyulus, the Illusory Body.]
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 17:01:09 +0000
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