I've been flying to the "sun" for quite some time. Although I might
consider this bright spot in the lucid dream as a piece of scenery to
explore, I also seem to have my own religious and philosophical
associations with it. However, neither first hand experience nor symbolic
interpretation rules out the possibility of psi. Even group psi. The last
dream in this article had resonance with my own waking life and with the
visualization and dream of two other dreamworkers.
The Room Above The Sun, 4/24/83
Second-hand, I see myself come out of a small house and walk towards a
large tree. Since I'm above and slightly to the right (of the dream scene),
I view mostly the head of the self below. She has dark hair and is wearing
a dress. She's also walking with another dark-haired woman.
As I become lucid, I shift to first-hand perspective. Now I can't see the
other woman, although I can feel her on my left. From this perspective, the
tree branches distract me because they completely fill my view. I want to
see beyond them. Reaching with my mind in that direction, I spontaneously
take off flying into the blue sky, headed for the sun. Closing in, I
discover that the "sun" is actually a stack of books pressed against the
"ceiling" of the dreamscape. The books have titles like "Rationalism" and
"Catholicism"!
I climb, or rather pull myself hand over hand, up the bookstack to the top.
There's a trap door here. Pushing the door upwards, I stick my head through
the opening. On the other side is a room with rows and rows of what look to
be small computers on tables. From my viewpoint just above the flat, grey
floor, I can see a white-clad man leaning over one of the computers. His
loose-fitting attire makes him look like a combination scientist and mystic.
"Is this the control center?" I ask him. He turns and indicates that I'm
half-right. This "higher plane" is also a learning center. Yes, I can see
the school desks in the room off to the right.
Levitating Is Against the Law, 5/3/87 (False Awakening)
Beyond the room where I'm located, I can hear a group of people at a
birthday celebration. I levitate up off the floor, then downward and land,
yelling at my son, "Go tell mother!" I want a witness to this super feat
(since I think I'm awake in physical reality). I try levitating upside down
while standing on my head, but there's too much weight. I jump up and don't
come down, floating into the bedroom. "See? See?" I call, "Let mother
know!" I float out of a sliding glass door.
Now I have the heavy, foreboding feeling that someone wants to keep me
here. Is levitating against the religious law in this time and space? I
float up to the roof where I can see cars passing quickly on a narrow,
windy road. I hadn't heard them before, because of the celebration inside.
I continue floating upward in a feather-light storm of snowflakes or white
puffs to circle around a brightly lit "sun." It attracts, then zaps me. I
get out of the way, to the other side.
Flying To An Exploding Sun, 12/11/90
I find myself outside, lucid, in a flat area with tall trees in the
distance. I especially notice the warmth and light of the dream scene and
look around in the sky for the source. It's the sun. Even though I know it
might not be the actual sun, I decide to fly to it. I launch myself into
the air and streak directly towards it.
Then I become concerned about the heat that I might encounter in the
inferno (who knows how similar it might be to the physical sun?) and I
start to veer off. But I steal my courage and force myself back on course.
The "sun" doesn't get any larger than, say, a garbage can lid, but I fly
directly into it with my outstretched hands. It separates into a fireworks
display, exploding from a small yellow center. Sparkles shoot off in all
directions, in an irregular but balanced circular pattern.
There are several dreamworkers mentioned in this fourth dream and its
aftermath. Here's a bit of information about them.
- Kent Smith founded the San Francisco Dream Training Institute and helped create the "Dream Definition Dialogue" interview method of dreamwork.
- Fariba Bogzaran is a lucid dream artist who teaches arts and consciousness studies at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, California.
- Fred Olsen co-founded the Bay Area Dreamworkers Group and created and practices the "Waking Dream Re-entry" technique.
- Françoise Boucher is a psychic dreamworker from Marin County, California.
- Tore Neilsen is a lucid dream researcher from Montreal, Canada who found that wearing a blood pressure cuff in the lab produced dreams of falling and flying.
- Barbara Shor was a mutual dream researcher from New York City who co-wrote "Shared Dreaming: Joining Together in Dreamtime" with me.
The correspondences between people are marked in bold blue font.
The Divine Within, 6/23/88
I become lucid in a room that has several people at the far end, some
sitting, some standing as if in a scenario of a shoe department (I
especially remember one slender, dark-haired man). I take a deep breath and
call out to my recurring dream character, "Willie! Willie!" Previously the
people had been fairly immobile, but the energy of my voice raises them to
activity. They jump up and/or begin walking rapidly away toward my left,
except for one. That woman, who has long, curly, light brown hair, comes
forward to speak with me. We talk; I ask her, "How do I find Willie? Should
I stay here? Or spin and go someplace else? Or what?"
"Do what you want," she replies. I remember hearing this reply before in
lucid dreams. So I decide on a new tack. "What do I want?" I ask her. In a
voice so low I almost think I imagine it, she replies, "Love." She's sure
right about that, I muse.
I decide to go ahead and spin my way-clockwise-into another scene, calling
out, "Willie! Willie!" I find myself in another room. The people here seem
shorter, younger, and definitely more playful. They crowd behind what looks
to be a rather large dollhouse placed on a table. I peer at them through
the open front door. "Do you want to play with me?" I call, trying to
encourage them to come forth.
Then I look around at my surroundings. I peek behind a mirror attached to
the wall, trying to find a doorway. "Aha!" I exclaim when I see just the
wall, as if there is some significance to this fact. I walk further down
the wall, searching for a way out. I realize my concern over the
possibility of being trapped is creating this continuous wall, so I let go
of it. In response, a door suddenly appears. I can peer into the next room
and see that just inside the door, to my right, are seated three Black men.
"Now we're getting closer!" I say to myself. This is the first time I've
come across Black people in this dream.
I walk across the room, up to a bar where women are seated or standing. I
talk with a rather tall Black woman standing there, asking questions like,
"Do you know Willie?" She responds, "There's somebody I'd like you to
meet." She gestures at another Black woman seated at the bar who turns
towards me. I am struck by how large her eyes are. As I continue to gaze,
her features metamorphose to become more Caucasian, yet the pupils stay
with the same wide-eyed look.
(During this dream sequence, I almost awaken several times, but force
myself to gather strength and continue the dream. As I am finally
awakening, during the "blank" period of hypnopompia, I hear a voice state,
"Create the conscious..." Waking fully, I wonder if that meant "Create the
consciousness." As I am pondering this, I suddenly remember that I want to
participate in Fariba Bogzaran's spiritual lucid dreaming project. Heading
back towards the dream state, I "freeze" the flickering hypnogogia. In a
grey space, I form the intent she suggested to "Seek the Divine Within" and
immediately have the distinct impression that Willie is standing unseen,
off to my left. Then movement propels me into a brief dream scenario.)
I find myself walking forward, carrying the back end (right side) of a
large mural which dips and sways as we pace (Willie is carrying the other
end). The mural is covered with a swirling abstract of red and hot pink
colors, juxtaposed with highlights of white and charcoal or chocolate
brown. I awake again with the strong impression that the "Divine Within" is
something that Willie and I create together.
(I tell my husband bits of the dream, then fall slowly back to sleep,
holding onto the intent that, for Fariba's project, I will be seeking the
"Divine Within.")
This time when the scene springs up, I am in a room with lots of people,
not immobile but moving around the room. My impression is that this area is
very much "on the surface" so I form the intent to go deeper. I look for an
exit and discovering none, decide to go through a wall. Instead, as I near
the wall, I find rows of bright, colorful curtains waving as if caught in
a breeze.
Just before I enter, however, I suddenly notice the person just passing by
is Fariba Bogzaran. Fariba is skating around the hardwood floor
counter-clockwise, as are most of the other people (I've come clockwise, as
have a few others). My sense is that Fariba's motion is "getting things
going" or revving the people up for her project.
My own forward movement and intent is so strong that I almost lose the
dream trying to stop myself. But before I take off to my adventure, I want
to tell Fariba what I am doing. With a supreme effort I manage to turn
around to call out: "Fariba! Fariba! I'm going to seek the Divine Within!"
"OK, Linda," she responds in her usual high-pitched voice, "Good luck!" I
turn once again to go through the swinging drapery. I walk through several
rooms and corridors of various shapes and sizes, not all of which are
rectangular or square. Some are curved -I remember a corridor made of a
series of semicircles spaced one after another which narrows to allow for
only the passage of a single person. I pass people everywhere I go,
sometimes stopping to chat with them.
One dark-haired woman seems quite lucid herself, almost a guide figure,
until she says to me confidentially, "For a buck you can pass over." I know
she means "passing over to the other side," that is, dying or being reborn.
I get the impression this opportunity is a particular point in a game, like
passing "Go" in Monopoly where you can collect a monetary amount before
going through another cycle. "Oh, no! Not again!" I exclaim. I know this
is the fourth time in a dream I had been offered such a "deal" (dreams
unrecalled upon awakening), but this time I'm not going to be tricked into
taking her up on this game, not for such a paltry amount.
It's at this point that I am in the semicircular corridor, following a
blonde haired woman as the corridor narrows. I realize that before long I'm
really going to have to squeeze through. I pause and make an adjustment in
my thinking (like taking a breath and creating more mental space). The
scene shifts and I find myself in a larger rectangular room where people
are coming and going-it's like a crossroads. I talk to some of the people.
Finally, after going through all this restricted space, I find myself
outdoors in a huge grassy field. After walking in a semicircle I come upon
a group of people seated in a rectangle, as if around an Olympic-size
swimming pool. I join the "end of the line" and sit down, too. In contrast
to the minor frustration I've felt in the rest of the dream, I feel that
I've finally "come home" to a bunch of like-minded people. I briefly wonder
"Sethians?" but they seem to include and go beyond that designation.
I feel so right and comfortable that I'm not at all upset to turn and
discover that the three "people" who've come to sit after me, aren't people
at all. They're colorful geometric crustaceans, cartoon-like lobsters and
crabs. We don't talk in English, but our non-verbal communication indicates
that they are in agreement with my views. Suddenly, directly in front of
the critters, appears what seems to be an immobile bus (no wheels). The
double doors swing open and a man steps out and points his finger at the
three crustaceans. "You've got to go!" he orders. I wonder-why? They
weren't doing anything.
Before I have a chance to develop this line of thinking further, my
attention is drawn to the right. I stand and discover that a new group of
people, including a blonde haired man, have intruded smack into the middle
of our group's space. They are busily setting up some weird construction in
the center of the grassy field. The outside is made up of straight-edged
planes crossing each other at acute angles, but the main piece is an
organic cylindrical structure, curved like the casing of a snake, but
larger at the base than at the top. The sun is a small circle in a wide
blue sky and its diffused light illuminates the entire vividly colored
scene. But the structure's top opening is only large enough to admit the
sun's blinding light. The hole is too tiny for anyone inside to see the
blue sky. Nor anything else, for that matter.
I get the sense that this inverted cone-like structure is built to attract
and gather the Light, like a telescope. The cylinder is painted bright
yellow, to better reflect the Light. The structure is only large enough
for one person to stand-their shoulders would be scrunched if they were
tall. There is little room for movement and they'd be mostly surrounded by
darkness. But these disadvantages would be ignored because of the
attraction of the Light. With head raised, the person would gaze directly
into the blinding brilliance collected at the topmost opening. Captured by
the ecstasy of the sensation, they would rise and be sucked into it and
disappear into the Light.
The symbolism is so powerful and so clear that I immediately and
intuitively understand what these people are about. And I get angry. "You
mean to tell me that I have to join some religion in order to reach God?
The hell with that!"
I wave my hand in rejection and the intruders and the structure vanish. All
I see is the field with people fleeing from me, back in the direction from
which I've come.
"The hell with that!" I repeat, setting my legs akimbo and slapping my
fists against my hips. I have the sense that my colleague Kent Smith is off
to my left, supporting my conviction that such a narrow religious pathway
to Godhood is totally unnecessary.
Here in this green, grassy, open field with buildings in the distance and
clear, blue sky stretching to the far horizon, I've a wonderful feeling of
expansiveness. I stand centered in the midst of the diffused sunlight that
covers the entire space and allows me to see the beauty of the whole world.
I awake with the same great feeling of self-confidence about my stance.
The next day I took a meditational walk through the nearby park. As I was
passing the playground, I did a double-take. The essence of the curved
children's slide was the same as the structure in my dream.
When I shared this dream with the Bay Area Dreamworkers Group the following
weekend, Kent Smith shook his fist and said, "All right!" No one else
seemed to react too much, no one that is, until we all painted pictures of
images in recent dreams. Then, as I was hanging my painting on the wall, a
visitor to our group took one look and told me about a waking re-entry he'd
just done a day or so before. It had the same image.
The following is a transcription of a taped interview with Tore Neilsen on
July 2nd.
Tore: "This is a waking image-I was doing it during a clairvoyant re-entry
with Fred Olsen and Françoise Boucher about a week or so ago. I was
focusing on the image of a black hole in space and the question was:
"What's in this black hole?"
I looked inside and there was this yellow image. At first it was just an
incoherent image-it was like a pile of yellow ice cream, except it was
two-dimensional, thicker at the bottom and thinner at the top. It was
standing straight up. I felt like I didn't know what this was. The next
instruction was, "Well, go with that."
So I kind of threw myself forward into the image and suddenly it was no
longer straight up, but it was a slide, that was down and sort of
pointing ahead. I was sliding down along the curves of this yellow object.
And I slid and slid right to the bottom, from side to side, right to the
bottom.
And at the bottom, I was in a valley overlooking an area like Big Sur.
There was a big gong in the image and I sat in front of the gong and
starting sounding, with a steady hum, "Wahhhhhh." I was sitting in front of
it and meditating. That's where we decided to stop."
Linda: "How did you get to the black hole? Was there any particular theme
you were carrying through or particular life issue?"
Tore: "I was focusing on some part of my body-I'm not sure. Yes, I think
coming down from my head and trying to see what was in the way..."
Linda: "So it was a body-symptom type of re-entry?"
Tore: "Yeah."
Linda: "And you were feeling pain or maybe pressure someplace?"
Tore: "I think it was a stuckness kind of thing. I got to a place where I
was really stuck and what seemed to be there was a black hole."
At the ASD conference next week, dreamworker Barbara Shor told me a dream
of a black rock. Deja vu. I showed her my painting and she confirmed that
hers was the same shape as the structure in my dream.
Finally, I was sitting with Barbara at the "Night's Worth of Dreams"
presentation, in which Fariba Bogzaran was participating. And what did we
see on stage? Fariba and others gliding around and waving a curtain of
plastic material to imitate the rolling sea! And, as a series of slides
were being projected against the stage backdrop, one especially caught my
eye. Barbara turned to me in sudden recognition, too. It was a curved rock
of sandstone, with base wider than the protruding top -the dream image come
to life! An eerie shiver went down my back.
Each dreamworker had his or her own associations to the image. Mine, I knew
instinctively, both in the dream and afterwards. The image was a perfect
illustration of my ideas of something which had concerned me greatly and
about which I had addressed in a Letter to the Editor of the "Lucidity
Letter". It related to the issues surrounding lucidity which emerge from a
particular spiritual/philosophical framework that emphasizes kundalini
arousal and "going to the Light."
My contention was that the fears, worries and overwhelming experiences
described by the dreamers were inherent in the practices of their
particular philosophical/religious structure but not in LUCID DREAMING per
se. My belief was based on knowledge of those lucid dreamers, including
myself, who do not experience that framework and its accompanying problems.
As my dream so blatantly states, it is not necessary to adhere to a
particular religion in order to have a spiritual lucid experience.
Furthermore, the format and content of the lucid experience is related
directly to the pre-dream expectations, values and mores of the dreamer.
So there. :-)
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