Learning to Fly in a Dream

Meditationtime Forum Post

Date:  Posted 6 years before Sep 27, 2018

Marcia Beloved 6 years ago

I’ve been remembering a few dreams in the last week, and one I had last night was particularly interesting.

I was in a house with a middle-aged Asian woman.  The house was oddly constructed and was not modern, perhaps a hundred years back in time.  The furniture was old, it was dimly lit and had an unlived in feeling.  We climbed up a stairway which was totally draped with cloth.  As we reached the top, the steps were missing or collapsing, like missing rungs on a ladder.  I carefully reached the top floor, which was like a large balcony overlooking a very long rectangular room below.  Upstairs there was another room to the side, which I would have to leap across to.  The Asian lady was standing in the room across and was explaining to me how we would fly down to the bottom level.  She flew down, and in the process she was no longer a body but took the form of a sparkling sphere of energy and glided through space, leaving a faint trail of silver sparks behind.  She landed in the room below and assumed the ordinary body again.   She wanted me to do it, but I was afraid.  I thought, I’ll land on the floor and become a pile of broken bones.  She said that she would catch me before I hit the floor.

Unfortunately, I don’t recall any more to the dream.  Either it ended or I just don’t remember what happened next.

I felt very connected to this woman, and after I left the dream, I was certain she was someone I know, perhaps even meeting in this life.  My hunch is that she is a relative of my daughter-in-law, a woman I met at a Buddhist retreat, or a Buddhist nun from Korea.  Maybe it is someone from the past whom I have not met in this life.

2 aspects of the dream which stand out for me are:

1)   The Asian woman was in the role of a teacher.

2)   I saw the transformation of her body into sparkling spherical energy.

I have read in Tibetan dream yoga that dreams are categorized according to their location, with highest significance being given to those dreams which occur in the clear light energy of the sushumna spinal channel.  I don’t think I was in that location, but I know I wasn’t in the regular chaotic mental dimensions where many of my dreams occur.

I never totally woke up after this dream.  In my mind I was preoccupied with remembering the experience so I did not allow myself to go into a state of groggy rest.

Next I found myself in another dream, in a different old, less modern environment, and was with a person I met in the last few months. As we verbally greeted one another our foreheads tilted forward and touched.  Then we sat down on chairs, sitting side by side, at a small round table to chat and have a small snack.  I said, “I want to tell you about a dream experience I had.”  I started to relate the dream I shared above.  We didn’t talk long but got up and went in different directions. I had several packages I was juggling in my arms. I thought I knew where I was going, but got lost.  I met a young woman in a big old country building, and asked her where I was. She said there was no name.  I replied,” How can I call someone and tell them where I am, if this place has no name?”

End

MiBeloved 6 years ago

Marcia Beloved wrote:

I have read in Tibetan dream yoga that dreams are categorized according to their location, with highest significance being given to those dreams which occur in the clear light energy of the sushumna spinal channel.

MiBeloved’s Response:

The only persons who are having dreams in the clear light energy of the sushumna spinal channel are those who are adept at kundalini yoga practice and whose kundalini is in the head during the dream experience. Usually this is not the case. Therefore these statements by these Tibetan Rimpoche are more or less theoretical.

In the first place if the dream takes place while the subtle body is interspaced in the physical one and you are aware of both bodies simultaneously, then it is a lucid dream. In such a dream, it is more likely that the kundalini may be in the head. But if the astral body has separated out of the physical system and has moved away from it geographically, then it is rare for one to have a dream with the sushumna spinal channel cleared. Why?

The reason is that when the astral body separates out of the physical one and moves away from the physical one, the kundalini energy stays put in the physical system. It does not go with the astral form except in a fractional manner. This is why people who say they are in samadhi when they meditate are usually lying out right or they do not know what samadhi is and they are using the word just to con themselves and others.

In a regular astral projection, most of the kundalini stays behind to do the big job of maintaining the physical form. If the kundalini does not do that for whatever reason, that form will be declared as being dead. The only reason why my physical body remains to be my address for my astral form is the fact that the kundalini remains permanently without any break in the physical system.

This means that real samadhi is when the psyche splits off from the physical system and leaves that system in such a way that the system is almost like dead. In other words it has little kundalini energy maintaining it. In fact, we have heard of great yogis like Srila Yogeshwarananda for instance who instructed disciples in waking up their physical body after so many hours or days. Shankaracharya the greatest of the advaita Vedantis did this.

Usually the kundalini will itself arouse the physical system after it finishes its routine healing work during a period of rest, but if there is a really deep samadhi, the kundalini may fail to do this or may take a long time to do this, like when bears for instance come out of hibernation. The bear actually goes into samadhi in real terms but in a jada samadhi or a dull-consciousness samadhi. But it is a real samadhi and not a fake one like many students go into.

Therefore what I am saying is that a kundalini arousal dream experience will hardly take place unless it is a lucid dream and then you will know that it is that because there will be a dichotomy, a duality and beneficial one too, whereby you are aware of both bodies simultaneously and distinctly without any confusion. And what is the proof? Well you are the proof. Your objective perception is the proof. And you know what. There need be no other proof. Someone who has been there, done that, will know if you are lying because of how you explain what happened. There is no need for proof of this and people who are into that sort of stupid scientific proof should stay out of the conversation.

There is another problem with the statement above where the Tibetan master talks about location. I do not know what he said specifically but this is very vague. First of all there are two locations to consider not just one. One location is the actual astral environment. The other location is where the level in which the self is located or the level in which the kundalini is operating during the experience.

Suppose I tell that I am in my car. Okay is that a location?

But that is not all of it. Because you might ask: And where is the car located? In the white house? In Afghanistan?

So there are at least two locations to consider. The location where you are in reference to the condition of the psyche and the location where you are in terms of where your psyche is in the astral world.

So what is the Rimpoche talking about?

One of the things that is going to stall many of you in this practice is your eagerness to find simple explanation to something which is real complex. People have this idea that spiritual life is simple or should be simple. They are reluctant to sit down and give this some serious consideration. Actually the situation of the self, the situation of the psyche in which the self is housed, is very complex.

Once by the grace of a Krishna Deity Person, a Person using a spiritual body, I found myself using a spiritual body and viewing that person. It happened suddenly without any warning or preparation. Then after this experience ended, I became aware first of my subtle body in a state of high-rise kundalini. And then I became aware of the physical body which was also in a bliss energy state. All of this took place while the physical body was lying on the floor of a building in Mississippi. These are three distinct bodies which were interrelated in the sense that I became aware of the spiritual, subtle and physical systems in that order one after another and clearly and distinctly. So what was my location?

Here is the breakdown:

•     Location 1: in a spiritual dimension peering at the Deity Krishna.
•     Location 2: in a spiritual body which was in Location 1.
•     Location 3: in a subtle dimension peering but not seeing the form of the deity because the deity’s existence did not register in that dimension. Only the effects of my spiritual body on the subtle system were felt. The contact here between the subtle and spiritual was like the contact between a magnet and small piece of iron which the magnet causes to move without making any contact with the iron.
•     Location 4 in a subtle body which was located in a physical body and which had just stood up while that physical system was still lying down.
•     Location 5 in a physical dimension where the physical body was lying down
•     Location 6 inside that physical body, surrounded by kundalini and its energy distribution system.

So I have enumerated this to make it clear that location is complex. I am not critiquing the statement of the Rimpoche but I am clarifying that to think that it is simply as stated will lead to confusion.

OmkAR 6 years ago

Marcia Beloved wrote:

I never totally woke up after this dream.  In my mind I was preoccupied with remembering the experience so I did not allow myself to go into a state of groggy rest.

OmkAR’s reply:

This is the same technique I use to re-enter my dreams almost every morning. I have trained myself to not move upon waking, not change my breathing rate, not open my eyes, and hold that sleep-trance state. I'll start counting up from 1 to 30, and usually by the time I get to 30, I'll either resume back into the previous dream I woke from, or I will 'roll' out of body into the dream/etheric/astral copy of my room onto the floor fully lucid.

Most people on lucid dreaming forums call it DEILD or DREAM EXIT INDUCED LUCID DREAM. It's probably the easiest way back into the dream world fully lucid, once you master not moving upon waking.

Recalling the memories from the dream that you have just exited/woke from is much easier if you don't move or allow yourself to fully wake up to full beta state. As soon as you move, or even open your eyes you usually shift out of that state very quickly and your memories will start to dissolve away.

MiBeloved 6 years ago

I want to confirm this statement of OmkAR:

Recalling the memories from the dream that you have just exited/woke from is much easier if you don't move or allow yourself to fully wake up to full beta state. As soon as you move, or even open your eyes you usually shift out of that state very quickly and your memories will start to dissolve away.

If there is physical or even psychological movement, the memory impressions from the dream and the dimensional connection to the dream locations, may disappear, resulting in loss of memory of the dream or in the inability to reconnect into the dimension in which the dream occurred.

This might be compared to jerking a computer or dropping it, where it gets a blue or blacked-out screen and stops working. If one is able to restart the technology, some of one’s files might be lost forever.

The transfer from the memory in the dimension of an astral experience, to the memory or hard drive of consciousness which is in the subtle body, might be disrupted if one awakens suddenly or in a sensational way. Therefore one should train the self not to awaken abruptly. Another important aspect of this, is that to observe the course from the awakened state to the sleep state and vice versa one must have a very sensitive consciousness.

In fact the reason why we are not privy to nature’s operations of waking and sleeping is our lack of the psychic sensitivity.

Marcia Beloved 6 years ago

Thanks for your advice, Omkar.  It's great to have new posters and I hope you share more of your experiences.

Here is the Book Title of Tibetan dream yoga:  The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. 

I copied pp. 61-64 to share specifically on this forum.  I went back and re-read this section since I was still mulling over the Asian woman I dreamt of, who transformed and flew in a sparkling sphere of energy.  After re-reading, I figure it was an ordinary samsaric dream of the higher type.  Probably not a dream of clarity and definitely not a clear light dream.

Pages 61-64 are below.  Note that the e-format does not use page numbers.

Three Kinds of Dreams

There are three types of dream that form a progression in dream practice, although not an exact one:

1.          ordinary samsaric dreams,

2.          dreams of clarity, and

3.          clear light dreams.