Thread: Book: Tibetian Yogas of Sleep and Dream

THE TIBETAN YOGAS OF DREAM AND SLEEP
By Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
Snow Lion Publications
Ithica, New York

Preface:
The author tells about himself. I first must explain what a Rinpoche is; they are high Lamas (Holy men of the Buddhist tradition), who are fbelieved to be reincarnation of the last person who held the post. The Dalai Lama is the head of their order. The Dalai Lama is believed to have held this post for fourteen consecutive life times. The point here is that the rank is very significant some what like a Cardinal (Catholic), therefore we can expect that this book was written with a religious leaning. My job here is to isolate just the dream related topics.
The author was recognized as a Rinpoche at age thirteen, when he was taught by oral transmission Zhang Zhung which are the teachings of his sect that deal with dreams. He says it takes three years of study to learn it. He then started teaching this material at age nineteen.


Introduction:
I am going to simply paraphrase some of the key points.
Many high Lamas have made sleep and dream yogas their primary practices, and through them have attained realization.
The main theme in this book is that through this practice we can cultivate a continuity of greater awareness during every moment of our lives. Sounds strangely like basic skills lesson 1, doesn't it?
Eventually we develope a continuity of awareness, that allows us to maintain full awareness during dream as well as in waking life.
We will also be preparing ourselves to attain liberation in the intermediate state after death.



Dream and reality:
The first step of this practice is to recognize the great potential that dreams hold for the spiritual journey.
He states normal waking life is as unreal as dreams and in exactly the same way. I actually understand what he means and will attempt to explain it in an advanced lesson.


How experience arises:
He explains the term ignorance, it is devided into two types. It is the ignorance of our true nature and the true nature of the world (think Neo before he took the pill). The other type is cultural ignorance, which simply means you have been taught to perceive the world in certain ways (such as certain foods should not be eatten).
He explains Dualism; he perception that we are separate from our environment. These Buddhists believe that in the true nature nothing is separate. Basically picture the Matrix with everyone inside experiencing Dualism when in truth none of the objects are real and it is all part of the same program.
He explains Karma and Karma traces. Karma is the actual actions that you have taken while Karma traces are the effects that it leaves on your psychology. Note that Karma may also include things that have happened to you. In the example of a soldier the Karma would be the actual battlefield experience and the Karma traces would be the PTSD that is created.
He does not really explain much about how experience arises other than the general concept that you will respond to situations based on what you have experienced in the past. It is really just standard psychology.



Karma Traces and Dream:
He states that dream yoga can be used to deal with Karma in two ways. The first is though observation of dreams in a no dual state (third person). Dreams will be influenced by your existing Karmic traces, in the example of the soldier: battlefield dreams and so on.you can observe the dream in third person and learn not to respond to the stimuli emotionally. By doing this you will eventually prevent the dream from evolving into more negative things. It is neccessary to remove the influence of Karmic traces from your dreams in order to reach rigpa- clear light of the mind. The easiest way to picture what he is talking about would be the white room in the Matrix except you are disembodied.
The second method is through first person interaction in the dreams in which we learn to control our reactions.
He believes if you can eliminate the influence of Karmic traces then you can create a dream state with no stimuli, this is a disembodied state where no dream imagery arises yet you are in a full L.D. He attaches high religious significance to this state believing this to be the fundamental nature of absolute reality. I do not attach much spiritual significance to this state myself. Reaching this state is a neccessary part of the practice but I use it exactly like they did in the Matrix and will be teaching how to do this in a select lesson.



Six Relms:
In this section he describes six relms. They are Gods, Demi-Gods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell beings, I did not find this section to be of much practical use. Each of the relms is supposed to be related to one of the six major chakras. In my experience, there are alternative relms that can be reached through the dream state and I have seen some that may fall into these broad categorizations. However, I only found a single useful piece of information in this section. He claims that by focusing attention into one of the chakras while in the dream state one can somehow enter the relm attached to that chakra. This is news to me, and I am not certain it is true.



Energy Body:
He gives a brief introduction to the concept of chakras but little specific instruction. The energy is devided into three root channels, six major chakra are located on and in them. three hundred and sixty smaller channels branch from the chakras. he activates his chakras by manipulating the root energy channels.
He claims that men and women's energy channels are arranged opposite, therefore men should sleep on their right side during dream practice and women on their left. I have never heard of this and do mine on my back. He uses the term Karmic Prana which is energy that suddenly arises when something triggers a Karmic trace, think of the extream reaction the soldier may have to a child surprising him with a firecracker. Until we can keep Karmic Prana from arising in dreams we will never be able to have a high level of dream control. I believe what he is saying here is that in order to reach a "white room" environment we must have good enough control over our energy to prevent our own psychological issues from influencing the dream. He teaches a basic breathing meditation that he says balances Prana (energy), it involves breathing in through one nostril and out through the other. He claims women should do this in reverse. This really is just a basic meditation so I do not intend on republishing it here.
He explains how the state of your energy body when you fall asleep will impact your dreams. The main idea being that if you are focusing on an unhappines or frustration subconciously when you fall asleep those frustrations may arise in your dream. By focusing attention into various chakras while going to sleep can create different characteristics in the dreams that arise that night. For instance: someone wishing a romantic encounter with an old love, may focus on the heart chakra while a horny sixteen year old male may focus much lower. Left to it's own devices the minds attention will be drawn to whichever chakras currently store Karmic traces, for instance; you are angry when you go to bed, so you dream about punching your boss in the face.



Images from the Mother Tantra:
Here he expresses that the process of realizing that you are in a dream is the same process used to realize the illusory nature of waking life. through learning to control ones thoughts we avoid being controled by our thoughts. The dream relm gives us a opportunity to work with controling our own thoughts and responces to situations. This will make it easier to understand how our experiences arise in waking life. He gives many comaprisons between dreams and things like lightning, echos, and rainbows; but I do not feel it is neccessary to list those things here.



This takes us through the end of Part I : The nature of dream. Those of you who own the book may feel I left many things out, but my intention is to streamline the material and stay relavant to this class.


This thread will be opened for Q & A when I have made the final entry relating to the book.
Some of the topics brought up in this thread, such as chakras will be explained in Basic Understanding: Lesson 1