When I was fifteen, I became inspired by the work of Stephen LaBerge on sleep and lucid dreaming. I discovered the Lucidity Institute after a google search. My interest was mainly using dream control as a creative outlet, to paint pictures in my own head. I have been practicing techniques for vivid dreams and studying the depths of my own subconscious ever since. Some of these techniques included keeping a journal, sketching imagery seen in the dream, and meditating before I go to bed.
In recent years, I have greatly increased my capability of command in dreams and dream recollection. I have achieved my initial goal of being able to create fantastic imagery in many ways and I am able to recall the visions quite frequently. In addition though, something starting developing that I did not expect. I began to observe a connection between what was going on in my life at the time and the content of the dreams. My desires and fears became more apparent, and I started remembering significant events in my life that I had forgotten. I believed that it gave me a heightened awareness of self. Because of this, I developed a strong spiritual connection with the content of my subconscious mind. In recent months, I have experienced very strange phenomenon in my dreams that has given me insight on things I could not have known otherwise. I am reluctant to use the word premonitions, but I believe I have perceived things in my sleep that were unusually coincidental with things that later had great significance in my life. Studying depths and limitations of the mind have now become a main focus and goal of mine.
So where does this fit with my studies in Thailand? I wanted a perspective of dreaming from a culture and location completely different from my own. While at Wat Thom Krabok, I was curious if Pra Chiyan had any insight to give me. One dream in particular struck me as very cohesive with the experience I was having in Thailand.
Here is the journal entry which I typed the morning after the dream. I removed some content to protect the anonymity of people that appeared in the dream and excluded things that were irrelevant to the overall theme of this blog entry. I kept the messy composition because it reflects the nature of the dream. I ensure that I maintained its authenticity.
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October 17th, 2012: THE DEITY
I am somewhere in the ancient middle east or asia inside of a palace. I am in the king's room watching as an army of people are pounding at the palace door trying to break in and overthrow their leader. I realize I am an important figure to this man and that he trusts me. The man in his white gown says "Find the strongest men we have to guard the door." The kings runs down the stairwell into a secret exit I assume. I run down a marble stairwell to the front door. The guards are REMOVING the locks from the door to allow the army to enter and then running down the stairwell after the king. I realize then that everyone inside the palace is also trying to capture and kill the king. I don't know if I am supposed to be protecting him or killing him? I sensed kindness from him and that he trusted me, I feel wrong siding with his enemy.
Pondering this, I realize the people are about to break in and that since I have decided not to side with the enemy, they will kill me. I hear someone running on the marble floor toward me, so I start running down the flight of stairs, midway the power goes out and it is completely dark. I am at the base of the first flight of stairs and I cannot see anything but I know someone was behind me. I can hear him breathing and standing in the stairwell with me. I hold my breathe and quietly back into a corner. It takes everything in me not to run. I can tell he is unsure if I am here. He starts feeling the walls trying to find me and an exit. He is getting closer and closer to me. I accept that I am going to die when suddenly something strange lifts me out of the room. It was a pair of arms but not human arms. I am floating in the darkness in the pair of arms and I pass out.
When I wake up, I am sitting in the marble courtyard after the whole ordeal was over. Many people have gathered here. I feel completely at peace and think that I have woken up from the dream at this point. I have a memory that I wandered back into the now lit stairwell after explaining my story to some people. Someone points to the corner I was standing in before I was lifted from the room and says "Did you even realize where you were??" I look up and see that the room I was hiding in had a giant golden shrine of a deity, and I stood directly underneath it when the attacker came after me. I am completely blown away by this. I then understand that he (the deity) was what lifted me out of the room. I flash back to the courtyard. I am staring at a rock and am creating reflections and fractal images of purples and oranges on it. My attention gets very distracted by this. Something causes me to turn around. All the people have vanished and I look up to see HIM. The deity didn't look like this crazy gold statue of him, he looked like a humble little monk. The deity was floating there. He was very still, esoteric, and a translucent, shining, flowing blue color. I understood him to be made of an ether-like matter. He was sitting in a meditative position. I am in complete awe as I sit about 25 feet away facing him. He is looking down at his folded hands. He opens his hands and a glowing blue lotus flower blooms from it. The lotus lifts from his hands, and at the same time I lift up and am floating there with him. I look around as thousands of blue lotus flowers bloom around us and rise into the sky like lanterns. The last thing I remember is lying on my back in the floating air and watching the lotuses drift further away.
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While explaining this dream to Pra Chiyan, I left out everything about the king and the details about the war surrounding the dream. I was more curious about which deity had visited me, (Hindi, Buddhist, Tibetan?) and the significance of the lotus and blue colors. He listened very intently, and when I finished my recount he thought for a moment and then said "this is something you have experienced in a previous life." I was extremely taken back by this first statement. He then said, "I believe that you were a strong warrior in a past life and perhaps a man, I think you have killed many people." How could he have possibly picked up on the war aspect of the dream from the little information about a floating blue man I had given him? I listened very intently as I noticed and studied how other-worldly and wise his eyes were. He explained that the dream was a calling, telling me that I needed to help many people in this life and that I need to recenter myself through meditation and practicing controlling myself and my impulses so that I can achieve this. He said many other things that I'm afraid didn't translate totally, which inhibited my understanding of his interpretation. I asked him what the significance of the blue lotus was, and he responded that blue signifies courage and fighting. Again, I did not reveal to him that there was a central theme of war in the dream, so it struck me as very odd that he perceived this theme of the dream.
Pra Chiyan was so fluid and experienced in his dream interpretation that it begged the question, "how important is the dream experience to you and to Buddhist monks?" He shook his head and said that he sometimes believes his dreams are of significance, but that meditating was the most important outlet to self enlightenment. Although this wasn't the answer that I had hoped for, it has brought up many more questions that I had not weighed previously.
I can attest through my experiences with lucid dreaming that one can achieve a waking connection with the subconscious mind to evaluate and "take notes" on what is happening throughout the experience. I also believe that someone can achieve a greater understanding of themselves this way.
Although Pra Chiyan didn't believe dreaming had as much impact in this aspect as meditation, I believe there is a gray area and that in meditation a similar connection between the conscious and the subconscious can be acquired. This is something that I would like to investigate more in my days left in Thailand and that I will hopefully carry with me when I return to the United States.
Link to Stephen LaBerg's website: www.lucidity.com
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