Book Study "Dream Yoga" | Session 1 | (thru prologue p. xix)
5:31PM Oct 29, 2021
Speakers:
Andrew Holecek
Alyssa
Keywords:
book
dreams
dream
world
experience
called
literally
lucid dream
sleep paralysis
lucid dreaming
thought
sleep
interesting
state
yoga
talk
wake
years
share
lucidity
It's great to be with everybody. I want to introduce Alyssa, who's our hostess. She'll be moderating q&a and stuff. I'll tell you a little bit about the format of how we run this thing. But in case you don't know this inaugural rare fun book study group. Chapter Three, so to speak, the first one a little over a year ago was right drains the light, which took us I don't know how many months to get through it. I had so much fun with that. Then we have Dr. Joe come in with his sister. And they did a beautiful thing and walk in the woods, the Winnie the Pooh thing. And so, yeah, people requested another round of this, and I am up for it. Because it's great fun. I originally had the idea of doing this when Ken Wilber did it, some 15 years ago with his book integral spirituality, which was I just found it so helpful. He went through the whole book, chapter by chapter, and I said, Wow, this is incredibly helpful. So I thought we'd give it a crack. And it seems to have worked last year, and it seems to work now. So this is, the way our evenings gonna go is I'm gonna, like I've done before. I'm gonna read and run commentaries, it's called a, it's actually a kind of a traditional thing to do, called Auto commentary. So I read this thing that I wrote. And then whenever it comes to mind, I'm just gonna stop pause, and riff. And that's what makes it fun, because I did write this thing some six years ago or so. So there's obviously a lot I've learned since it or at least I hope there is. So we'll do this for somewhere around the hour mark. And then the last half hour or so will be q&a discussion. So you can ping him in the chat column, you can raise your hand, always a little bit better if you do it live. So I can engage in some dialogue with you that really does help me with points of clarification can come in. And that's why I think these will all be recorded and made available for international community because it's the middle of the night for all our friends in Europe. And so we'll be recording it. And so what I do want to start with is how this book came to be. So I was invited, well, maybe nine years ago, something like that. When sounds true was really wasn't in the publishing, they weren't doing books. And they were just the CD and audio course thing. And so they invited me to come in and do a riff for them on Dream Yoga. And I said, Yeah, sounds like fun, I can do that. So we produced a six CD set. And they did pretty well. And then came he approached me and said, Hey, you want to transcribe this to a book? And I said, No, well, not really. If you want something out of it, let me just write a book instead of just transcribe it. Let's let's add some new content and really unpack it. And so I had a great fun using the kind of template for the six CD set there was like the bones and then I just went wild in a really fun way and just really riff and elaborated and that's how this book came to be. And I had no intention of developing this theme even further, honestly, but Then a couple of years later, I wrote dreams of my book, which, really now the second book in a trilogy. So this is the first book in the trilogy dreams of light. The third one is, is drafted pen, but I'm kind of putting a little bit outside to write these two other books. So I'm really busy on the writing department, which is my favorite thing to do be down here in my little nerdy studio doing my nerdy research and writing, which I just love to do. And so, just this week, I heard from sounds to that the book was published in Japanese. So I think five translations now in different countries, which is pretty cool. Everybody tells me it's my best selling book, which makes me happy. So that's basically what we do. It's super informal, which is why I really like it.
Cue your questions in in the chat column, raise your hands, I'll do the, you know, 15 minute mark or so. And then we can jump in and talk about it, which is all that's always my favorite part. Because that I can be very specific about your interests and stuff that you may particularly want to unpack, unfold, challenge, or make offerings. If you come across material from other sources, they go, Wow, did you realize this person says this about that. I have all layers for that kind of stuff. So even though I'm the point person here, so to speak, this is very much a participatory event and a collaborative venture where we can learn from each other in a number of different ways. And just like when we did it last year, kind of the emergent design game, we'll just see how it unfolds, how it morphs what it may grow into, because there's lots of ways we can take this little dance together. And so without further ado, I'm just going to start with with a prologue. And just like I did before I just read away, stop, make some comments, if anything appeals to me. And I usually don't go through in advance and mark things up. Even though I suppose that could be a little bit helpful. To me, it's more like beginner's mind when I read a sec, oh my gosh, there's something that might be worth talking about. So here we go. Page. Actually, it's introduction. So subscript eight, prologue. Beautiful quote, by real account, I believe on the night, every human being on this planet sleeps and dreams. It's not just every human beings, all sentient life forms, it's really interesting to study see, if we didn't get past the first sentence that got things to say. It's really interesting to study how different animals sleep, Dolphin sleep at half their brain being turned off. It's really quite provocative to see how birds will be dreaming while they're flying. So it's not just every being human being is every sentient being style, a unifying feature of all humanity. Everybody knows what it feels like to fall into tranquil asleep, and everybody knows what it's like to be jolted awake. We've all had nightmares, blissful dreams or difficulty with sleep. Right now, as you read, that's about half of the people on earth are sleeping and dreaming, dreaming snuggled into mysterious state of consciousness. Yeah, it's still pretty mysterious. But with all the science coming out right now, I mean, there are a lot of people, not only in the world of lucid dreaming, which is really taking off in the neuroscience labs. But just the continued ongoing research, exploring the nuances, the subtleties of what's happening on a neurological level in the domain of sleep. A lot of the stuff actually, some of the best selling stuff has come out after I wrote this book, write Matthew Walker's book, why we sleep and a bunch of others, retrospectively, would have been cool to interject some of that, but the challenge was writing any book is limitations, right? The good thing about sounds too is they let me run free with this, which is great. And some writers, some publishing houses have a hard stop at like 60,000 words or whatever. And that's not so easy. That's not really the way I like to roll. And so that's one of the reasons I love working with with sounds too, because they pretty much give me free rein, which is great. If you could stay at a stationary point in space and look at our planet for 24 hours, you will see the blanket of darkness creep across the globe. This is cool because I developed a friendship and I interviewed this guy on the nightclub side, right. Ron Garan this astronomer coming I'm sorry, astronaut, who spent six over six months on the space station, and he's telling me how cool it is to be up there looking down and watching I don't know how many sunrises he saw every day, like a dozen sunrises every day. And just as the sweeping panorama is darkness swept around the globe and the slightly accelerated fashion he said it was just breathtaking to watch all that
he could stand on a stationary point space and look at our plan for 24 hours you would see the blanket of darkness draped across the globe. The front end of this comforter would be tucked around billions of people and countless trillions of sentience animals As they fell into sleep, while the back end would be pulled off to rouse billions of others to the rays in the morning sun. And so we spend their lives day after day, night after night succumbing to the power of the cosmos, as the spin of our planet forces us into a circadian rhythm, and it states of consciousness we know very little about. Yeah, again, the East knows a lot about the states, because they have explored it with meditative technologies, including these nocturnal meditations for 1000s of years. And this is why the labs are trying to get these really proficient meditators. Those are who are proficient not only lucid dreaming, but also lucid sleep, that have the capacity to do things that normal dreamers and sleepers really can't. And so while this is a relatively recent exploration in the Western scientific community, what Bob Thurman my dear friend calls cycle knots or stable bears calls the old Ira knots, the intrepid explorers of the inner space of mind. They've been doing this for literally 1000s of years. And that's why they have a lot to say about these dimensions of mind that the West is now starting to dip their toes into the cross pollination that's taking place between them is really cool. I mean, that's why they're bringing these big hitters into the neuroscience labs, because they can maintain levels of lucidity awareness, at the highest levels across all states. And one level that's really the fruition especially from the Advaita Vedanta point of view, the fruition is actually maintaining lucidity, and a kind of equanimity, or democracy of consciousness across all states. Have you ever wondered what's going on when you sleep and dream I have. Since then, by the way, I've become a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. And so I am super interested in this, I get weekly, tons of data. This is why my dear friend, Dr. O'Malley, who's so knowledgeable in this arena, is bringing this additional kind of you can say aspect to the whole like club Weena is bringing in more overtly the signs of medicine and good sleep. So for those of you who may not be aware of what Dr. Ed does on the second Wednesday of each month, check it out. He's a rock star. And he I learned every time we do a session with him, I learned so much from him. What are the shadowy states of consciousness we all share? Is there a way to use the night and bring sleeping and dreaming onto the path of psychological and spiritual growth? Can we use the process of sleep to wake up? This book will show you that yes, you can. The following pages you will discover an amazing world waiting for you in the stillness of the night. This world is full of wonder mystery and infinite profundity. Excuse me, it's the world of the inner space of your own mind. A dimension of reality this is deep and vast is the outer space of the cosmos. I use this analogy a lot these days. Because it really ties into classic principles in the Hermetic tradition, as above, so below. The king of the Tantra is a massive color chakra Tantra, as within so without, it's really compelling to use outer space and outer light, to invoke qualities of inner space and inner light. And my friend, Reggie Ray, it makes a lot of sense to me, he's done a ton of work on somatic meditation than the like, talks really elegantly about how it makes total sense to me that how, in a very real way, when you're looking into the outer dimensions of limitless outer space in a very real way, you're actually looking at your own mind. We spend more time in bed than any other single place. Have you ever really thought about this? Dad to the outer world, or potentially alive to an exciting inner world, and about a third of our lives is lost in this inner space. So this is the cool thing right there. Right You can't add more years to your life but you can add more life to your years bringing lucidity and these domains of consciousness that are previously just completely inaccessible. So I you know, what about kind of Maxim's or phrases these days is is kind of consciousness hacking, hacking into previously secretive, restricted domains of mind, the non lucid previously now lucid mentions of sleep and dream and actually bring them out into the light of awareness, no small thing.
But a third of our lives is lost in the inner space and up to six years of spent in the dream world. Yeah, we entered the dream world according to Steven Lubbers, up to 500,000 times, right, you can get a PhD in less than six years. So we spend about 25% of our time in REM that's mostly when we're sleep dreaming, but not always you can have you can have dreams at any phase of sleep. It's just REM sleep is kind of primetime dream time. And so about 25% Over time is there that's about a month a year. In an average lifetime, that's like six years, right. So if you can maintain lucidity in that state, as I argue, I really do think there's some super interesting neurological data around this. You're actually working with a kind of pedagogy of the future, really the ability to harness this domain of the mind for classic education. And obviously, when we're working on these dimensions, psycho spiritual development. So this is why I'm super excited about it and continues to be so more and more as more data comes out, more scientific backing comes around and more induction methods. And this is a really exciting thing, even since I wrote this book, is how much the West has to contribute here. Because as brilliant as the east is, in my experience, both personally and also teaching people, the Western lucid dreaming induction techniques, I think, are actually more effective. And when these are more refined, like transcranial electrical stimulation, there's some really cutting edge technologies in the pipeline, where lucid dreams can be induced more regularly. This is this is no small thing. It's like I mentioned this code. So often, Matthew Walker neuroscientists said right, it is entirely possible that lucid dreamers represent the next iteration of Homo sapiens evolution. That's that's is that hyperbolic. Is he just exaggerating? I don't think so. I don't think so. Let me just say one thing here, because this was not available when I wrote this book. This is really interesting to me. That the most recent some of you have heard me riff on this before the most recent advances, literally in brain evolution, literally, not metaphorically. And in the double entendre. It's very compelling. Literally, the frontal aspects of the brain leading the frontal edge of evolution. These are the parts of the brain that if you were to take your eyes and somehow roll them straight up, as if you could just like, look straight up. That's the part of the brain that you would be looking at. Principally, they're all part of the prefrontal cortex, but the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, the orbital frontal cortex, and the precuneus. These are so interesting, because not only are these the most recent developmental aspects of neural anatomical evolution, which is why our most recent evolutionary ancestors, the apes, don't have it, which is why their foreheads sloped back, they look up, they see space because that part of their brain has not developed. This part of the brain is involved in metacognition, awareness, awareness, which is another way to talk about what a lucid dreaming of lucid dream is, a lucid dream is a meta cognitive dream. It's a dream when you're aware of the fact that you're training. And so therefore, how how interesting is that, that these are actually parts of the brain that come back online in the lucid dreaming arena. So the information there is really quite compelling, even neuro anatomically, The Lucid lucidity principle of lucid cultivation lucidity is literally involved in correlative to the most recent advances in the evolutionary development physically. I mean, how interesting is that? Okay, where did I leave off? Yeah, from the Cozy cradle to the Nestle grave. One thing about writing so I'm going to give you some tips for if you're developing writer you know, all the all the great my editors i has really true editors, editors will always tell you write with as many evocative images as possible, make the writing as concrete as you can. This is why the Akademische thing is just so deadly hard to read. One reason. The other reason is intentionally a few Scutari they these academics write by designed to be hard to understand. But anybody who's ever studied writing knows that when you try to write, you should use as many evocative words that bring about images for people. So here we go from the Cozy cradle to the Nestle grave. We have some of the most momentous events of life occur on the bed for sure. We have ecstatic sets, give joyful birth, get miserably sick and often die in bed. Right? These are some of the biggest events in life. But the opportunities for psychological and spiritual evolution that are available in bed are even more momentous, given the proper tools. That's the charter in this journey.
Turning off outer experiences allows us to turn on breathtaking inner ones. And so here's another entry check. This is actually fun. I haven't read this book in years. So it was cool, like all the stuff I could have put in there. So this is also interesting. You know, paraphrasing TRD is shut down right that geologist paleoanthropologists Judge, I think it was Jesuit priests right. wrote the book, the phenomena of man. I mean, really paraphrasing him. Alpha Omega point, one of his greatest contributions was this, this assertion that evolution hasn't stopped. It's only moved indoors, precisely, again, tying into the earlier riff on evolution, precisely where we go when it gets dark, right? If we don't violate the natural curfew of the night, when it gets dark, oh, Billy, come on, in, you're playing in the yard, come on, man, it's getting dark, come inside. And then as we eventually start to power down, we're coming inside even more, when we lay down in bed to go to sleep, we're really coming inside. So again, unless we violate that natural curfew of an AI, which we do all the time, with really artificial light. And there's so much really, really interesting doubt about this, how light pollution is expanding, I don't know, like, four to 6% a year of satellite data showing this. It is actually having a very profound and city has a deleterious effect on life forms around the world that are not adapting to this artificial light, which I have always maintained is actually the it's kind of an interesting irony is that artificial light, which pulls us one out and away from ourselves at a time when nature is inviting us in is really the the signature of the Kali Yuga of the Dark Age. artificial light, in my opinion, is the signature of the Dark Age. Why? Because it's so insidious, because it's causing us to be distracted, literally etymologically to distract is to pull apart to pull away. And so we're distracted, we're pulled away from the present moment. So if we violate the natural curfew tonight, and go don't follow the invitation of interiority, then this is a type of distraction. That to me is causing some real havoc in the world these days. So this is another one of these evolution has not stopped. It's moved indoors. And this is precisely where we're going when we sleep and dream, right. So it's another kind of marker of like, whoa, maybe there was something to this lucid dreaming evolution thing. I stumbled into this inner world nearly 40 years ago, whoa, time flies. And I've been exploring it ever since. Yeah, like big time. Like you I've been dreaming my entire life. And some of the most remarkable experiences I've ever had occurred in my dreams, and they continue to occur in my dreams. I mean, no kidding. Some of the deepest, most most profound experiences, period have occurred and continue to occur in the context of my sleeping dream. My early 20s One such experience changed my life. Yeah, this is a big one. We just completed an exhausting five year double degree undergraduate program in music biology, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Until I realized I went to one of the best schools in the country in the only university. And I was up against like, literally genius level artists. Some of these Louis Lortie Ireland. I mean, these people are not literally world concert artists have world class conductors on the light. And so it was a just a painful side note, for me, was a very powerful experience. I love being there. These are like my bohemian years. When I got to be like the artist, I just love that time in my life. But I also realize, well, there's some really super gifted, talented people out there. And it was like, ah, you know, do I really want to teach it? Oh, do I want to be a professor? Or do I? So it's like, okay, let's do something practical. So I thought about going to med school. So I got a double duty in Canada performance and biology from IU. And so they took a year off before going to graduate school because I tried to figure out what am I going to do? wasn't really sure. I think it was like 2322 23.
This is probably this is probably the most transformative year of my life outside of my three year retreat experiences. I spent the first half of this year working in a maximum security federal prison. Yeah, this is Indiana state federal penitentiary in Michigan City, Indiana. What a great job, quote, unquote, to be in this really super gritty, super intense maximum security prison with some amazing characters. They used to call me Hollywood because I had really long flaming white hair when I had more hair back then. And I actually I made a lot of friends believe it or not with some of these credible people and realize that they were really a lot of these people were just like me that maybe made a bad decision here and there. So anyway, I don't want to go too far up that tree, but it was a very powerful experience. I learned a lot. So I spent the first year of working in maximum security federal prison. My job was to supervise inmate construction crews. Yeah, literally I remember this so well Motley gangs of killers rapists extortion sent these No kidding. My parents were totally freaked out. They were thrilled when I finally left that job to do this surgical thing because they were always worried that I was going to be kidnapped and whatever. I love it. I thought it was very fearless, maybe a little stupid, but fearless for sure. It was a gritty introduction to the shadow side of life. That's an understatement. Because I befriended these tough guys. I saw that their crimes for the most part were just surface expressions, I came to see that these men came to see these motors people who are just like me, who lost their way. Really. The second half of the year, I worked as a surgical orderly My job was to prep patients for surgery, deliver them to the ER and later take them to the to the recovery room involved intimate care and lead to start discoveries about the harsh realities of illness and death. Yeah, big time. I mean, people he's scraped up people that have been in motorcycle accidents, literally. And I heard a man on the gurney. And there'll be like four surgeons waiting. And they, you know, they look at this guy, he was already completely ballooned with inflammation. And as they look at each other, you're like, where do we start? So a lot of people died. I mean, it was intense. I learned a lot involved. Because I was thinking about going to med school, I became the teacher's pet to a number of surgeons. I basically watched surgery all day long. And that was it. Like, I was basically watching operations like seven hours a day. They allowed me to watch countless operations and ask endless questions, it was a marvelous opportunity to learn about life and death. As a young man, I experienced these two jobs is a sobering introduction to the human condition, they still remain that way. And it was interesting, because I had the opportunity at that time to work, I grew up in a beach town, there was a pretty highfalutin Yacht Club in my town. And I actually, they had an opening in the bar as a bartender. And I went and applied just for the heck of it, I got the bloody job. And so I had, it was really interesting. I had one of these kind of bifurcation points in my life, I had the opportunity to say, hey, I can have this totally cush job in this super high end Yacht Club, basically facilitating alcoholism, you get the idea. I mean, I could have been there, doling out all these drinks to these people. Or I could have taken this job in the, in the greedy prison and something even back then said, Yeah, you know, follow the dark side, go go into the shadows. And so that was that was a really interesting bifurcation point for me because I felt a tug of like, Oh, I could totally get this job. I would just make friends with all these rich people, and blah, blah, blah. And then I said, or I can go down this path, The Road Less Traveled and work in a really intense situation, not nearly as pleasant to put it mildly. And it turned out to be pretty costly, important decision that then came to somewhat inform other decisions I made in my life because I realized well, I learned so much working in the ER and in this maximum security prison, I'm sure a lot more than feeding some guy who's fifth whiskey at the end of the night when he can hardly stand right so that was that was somewhat of a revelatory for me. During that year was also this is an interesting read. I haven't read this book in years. So this is bringing back some like nostalgia here for me. During that year, I was also becoming interested in the ideas associated with a burgeoning new age movement wasn't even called the New Age Damn. It started practice of TM, I did that in IU. Two years earlier. I wrote about the experience of that, by the way, in my first book, power pain. That was a big deal experience for me, to show me that there were dimensions of reality.
Deeper than my external world surface world, it was slapping me in the face with these two job experiences. I was also reading a great deal. I always read it. That's what that's what I do. I read things like the SAF material. I actually had correspondence with Jane Roberts. I don't know if any of you out there read all the stuff books that speaks of stuff material. I read every one of her books. And it these books really affected me they really influenced me and Jane was so sweet. I'm here I am just like this punk kid from Michigan and I was able to actually establish a very sweet correspondence with Jane Roberts before she died. It was really kind of a big deal for me. And her Casey, amazing guy, right pop psychology and quirky books about dreams. There was a memory maybe two or three books on Buddhism. There was like nothing out there at that point. It's a long time ago. The juxtaposition of heavenly spiritual experiences and hellish inter At a psychological social cycle disease shipped me to the court truly did. How could I reconcile my blissful spiritual states with the harsh realities of the prison and hospital? But six months into the treaty, this is so weird. I can't remember this like it was yesterday. But six months later this year, I started having prodromal dreams dreams of premonition that seemed to foreshadow something I had this like ineffable sense of anticipation was like, something's about to happen here. These Recurrent Dreams which increased the frequency generated an ineffable sense of anticipation, I knew something was about to happen. One day, while deeply contemplating one of my new age books I was doing with my sister who was really very kind of sensitive, open kind of psychic type, artists liminal kind of being. I remember very clearly, we're talking about some jean Robert stuff. And then the following thing happened here, my mind suddenly broke open. In an instant, I was flooded with insights and visions of an entirely new world. It was as if a huge spiritual hammer slammed down on top of my skull and split me apart. See, see? See the good writing they're a huge hammer splitting on the top of my skull does not evoke pictures, right? You see, you're supposed to do that as a writer jammed out on top of my stall and split me apart. That's very evocative words, word. words define me even decades later on this new world was a kaleidoscope of electrifying perceptions like having eyelids peeled back and eyes. I never knew my head. I felt awake for the very first time. jolted from the slumber that had been my life. I mean, yeah, that's exactly what it felt like. I remained in this ecstatic open state for two weeks, convinced that this is what it meant to be spiritually reborn and mystically awakened, I really did think it's like, yeah, this is maybe what the Enlightened thing is about. I mean, I like no idea, right? I'm just clueless. Two aspects of the experience stood out, one related to the night and the other to the day, both of which were connected to dreams. And the first was that my dream life exploded. Totally true. I had dozens of very powerful dreams, many of which were lucid, which means I realized I was dreaming while staying still remaining in the dream, while others were prophetic. Yeah, again, more and more of these prodromal dreams of premonition. This is I'm exploring this more and more. Now there's a really interesting analogy for the nerds out there like me, the deeper divers just came out, big book third in a series. This one's called consciousness unbound. It's a it's a wonderful exploration with deep thinkers, neuroscientists, anthropologists, philosophers and the like. There's a really interesting chapter in there on pre cognition, which is something that William James wrestled with, for a large part of his life and, and if you've ever really reflected on this whole precognition thing, it's powerful. I mean, it really throws a colossal monkey wrench into the linearity of what we know is is Cartesian or even Newtonian time. How do you explain these complete? I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds of reports, some of which they're written, now they're documented they come true. How do you explain that in a Cartesian Newtonian world, it just even in an Einsteinian world doesn't really fit. So contemplating things these are how paradigms change when when you get enough data, that the current paradigm just can't explain it. And eventually the paradigm is stretching my vision first. So things like precognition if you really reflect on it, very, very mind bending.
Yeah, many of these dreams were hyper real, hyper lucid, more intense and real in the waking experience. I'm sure you've had hyper lucid dreams. Some of you maybe I started to dream diary, right. And within two weeks had filled several notebooks No kidding. They're still in my box of notebooks for my future library. It was as if my deepest unconscious mind erupted, and a volcano of dreams burst for some of those dreams still got my life today. No kidding. The second aspect and this one in one way was was even more compelling. The second aspect was that my daytime experience became very dreamlike, illusory. My world had become fluid, illusory and groundless. I saw everything as a transparent symbol. I mean, it was bizarre. Oh, really? I mean, I remember like the there was a time magazine thing that came in that week. I remember I was on the cover in that sent a message. It was like everything was like the world was just sending me all these kinds of messages. And I have, like no idea what was going on, I had no idea about was called symbolic guru. There was a lot of stuff that just there was just so mind bending is like, what is going on here. And, you know, this is kind of cool for a while. So I'm gonna get into in a second. But then I realized, Hey, isn't this kind of like what Charles Manson started to do? Right? Like the world was starting to teach him and send him messages and all that stuff. So that's where things started to get a little bit wigged out for me a little creepy, because I had. This is why it's so important in traditional kind of psychological, psycho spiritual pedagogy to go through, or at least be aware of three classic stages of understanding, experience, and realization. And so understanding is like what it sounds like, just simply gaining some kind of intellectual cognitive grasp on material. Experience is also kind of what it sounds like, it's you. Finally, the map, the understanding actually transforms the experience. But by definition, technically, experiences by definition, always have a beginning and an end, there's their states that traits are stable. And then eventually, with enough stability, the experience effect does mature Tibetan matures, and the tapa realization, the trait and it's stable. And so the reason this is worth riffing on because I see this all the time still. And I saw this is a huge part of my problem back then, was I actually had an experience before I had any understanding. So it was like, it was like premature I had these experiences, and I had no understanding of what was happening. Because I didn't know anything about this pedagogical approach. I didn't know anything about dream, yoga, illusory form, emptiness, any of that stuff. It was like I wasn't ready for it. And it was this kind of breakthrough. That literally almost led to a breakdown. I'll share here it got really dicey for me. Because I thought instead of maybe having a glimpse of so called enlightenment, I said, this is glimpsing insanity. I mean, like, you know, what's the difference? Right? So yeah, so this is so true. Currently, when I walked along the shores of Lake Michigan near my house, the waves were teaching me about the rising and falling thoughts in my mind. When the sun broke through the clouds, he was a teaching about the awakened mind shining through the gaps between my thoughts Milarepa right, often wrote and said, phenomena are all the books when needs if you're open to it, your world is always teaching you always I didn't know anything about symbolic guru. I had no idea. I just wanted to say hey, this is kind of trippy. And again, I you know, I was a pretty straight laced guy, right? Yeah, I drank a little bit. Maybe smoke one or two joints. I didn't take any LSD. I didn't take any psycho hallucinogenic agents zero. So this is like really like whoo, trippy stuff, man. Remo was showing me the transcendent ephemeral nature of things everywhere I looked. It was as if the world was sending me a message. I was treading a fine line between metanoia and paranoia. That is deriving spiritual meaning from my world versus imputing excessive meaning to it. In addition to my burgeoning dream diary, I also filled several notebooks with insights delivered during the day, I was thrust into a dazzling and highly surreal experience possible to convey the impact of these miraculous weeks which remain the most transformative of my life. Yeah, they were a big deal. Because my daytime experience was becoming more dreamlike. This is where it gets really interesting. And my nighttime dreams were becoming more real clear and stable. I had a hard time increasingly hard time determining if I was awake or asleep
there were times when my dreams felt super real and waking experience became the dream these previously separate worlds were mixing together kind of cool at first but not so cool. rather quickly. Because like what is going on like where's my world? What happened? What happened to my world world please come back. This was entertaining. Firstly, paint but became progressively disconcerting and experienced, I started out so fresh became frightening. Where was my solid and secure world? I was losing my grip on reality. Instead of asking myself is this enlightenment I began to panic and ask is this madness? Thriller, in being spiritually awake was replaced with my fear of being insane? I chuckle at it now, but it was not chuckling material back now. I felt that if I went to see a therapist, I had enough intuition that to do this. Even my cousin who was a psychiatrist I thought well, I'll just call him and see if he knows anything about this. But this guy was a classic Freudian, psychoanalytic kind of guy. And I realized, yeah, I don't think so. I felt that if I went to see a therapist, I would probably be medicated or even institutionalized. Yeah, I mean, probably contemplative cycle. Psychiatry is already laying famously said, attempts to wait before our time are often punished. Especially by those who love us most, because they bless them, or asleep. They think anyone who wakes up or who is still asleep, realizes that what is taken to be real as a dream is going crazy. I mean, isn't that true? He was an amazing guy. There was a really funny cartoon. He was actually friends with Trungpa Rinpoche, there's, there was a classic photograph with two thought bubbles. That is awesome. So imagine already laying sitting on a rug with a rocking chair and a porch next to Trump or J. They're like, no rocking back in the Thought Bubble. Above both of them. They're you know, they're thinking they're both saying think they're both the Thought Bubble says the same thing. This guy is crazy. rd length, she was crazy. Obviously thought rd Lang was crazy. So that this little kind of thought bubble cartoony. It's just hysterical, but he was brilliant. He's the guy who said the mystic swims in the same ocean were the psychotic grounds. In a desperate attempt to establish some sense of ground and therefore sanity, short experience now yeah, I gave myself a two week leave kind of emergency medical leave from the hospital. I hit an orange Volkswagen Beetle. And so I raised literally raced out to Colorado because of the ski bomb. And like I say, Here, join my buddies to drink and ski my way back to sanity. Yeah, so I don't know if it was the nature or the alcohol, or both. But somehow, my world was glued back together, right. Within a week of intense distraction. My sense of a stable world began to rebuild. I don't know if it was the beer. My rowdy friends are spending so much time in nature. Probably a little bit of both. But I breathed a massive, massive sigh of relief is that unworldly two week experience faded and regain my sense of reality. F by the way, is what planted the seed for me to come out here to study physics. Yet it see you and to basically become a ski model was like well, Colorado is pretty cool place. I returned to Michigan resumed my job as the surgical orderly but something had changed. Like Yeah, no kidding. The hangovers from my drinking binges couldn't completely erase the hangover. of my other worldly experiences. Within a few months, I felt stable enough to begin venturing back into what I experienced. I knew that something profound and profoundly disturbing had happened. It was like as it's like a rip in the fabric of my reality, right? My world was just ripped apart. And the total facade what I thought was to be real was just completely exposed as the Emperor without clothes, right? But then I was like, okay, like, now what? What do I do with that? Even though I successfully forced my way back to consensual reality, not reality, consensual reality. Reality is a consensual hallucination. It's a great talk by the neuroscientist and Neil Seth, TED Talk, check it out. I had glimpsed a new world and dreams were a big part of it. So began my exploration into the world of sleep and dreams. I started reading everything I could about dreams. Freud, Jung, countless books from psychologists, scientists, mystics and quacks, no shortage of quackery in this arena. They were helpful, but also incomplete. I still couldn't understand what happened. Again, I had the experience, no understanding, that's a problem.
One day by process of elimination, so here's what happened was basically so this is a really chunky what happened here. So I basically sat out, trying to figure out WTF was that and so I mean, I started I was really I thought quantum physics had something to say with it. That's why we one reason I came out to CU to actually study physics, because I said, Ah, this world that appear to me, quantum physicists have something to say about that. And so, you know, I booked a battery for three years out here, and realize close, but not quite no cigar. And then things become like now what, right physics can't describe this. So then I began this kind of systematic exploration of the world's contemplative traditions, reading about Hinduism, Sufism, and then one day I started reading about Buddhism. I remember really very well Houston Smith material. I was like, whoa, this this, this is really interesting. Maybe the Buddha, the awakened one. Well, that's interesting right there and even in his name, the awakened one. That's interesting. One day started reading about Buddhism and it was immediately struck that Buddha literally means the awakened one. What does that mean? To wake as opposed to what? What did the Buddha wake up from? What did he wake up to? Well, you woke up from this is why so as backwards, he woke up from the nightmare of reification. He woke up from the mistake of seeing the world of solid lasting and the dependent axiomatic precisely what my second book dreams of light goes after. I mean, that's what that whole book directly attacks. So he woke up from the nightmare of duality, the nightmare of reified reality, and ironically, woke up to a true reality there is in fact, empty, dreamlike, malleable fluid, we've got a completely backwards actually, you wake up from a reified, so called real world into a dreamlike empty reality. The more I studied Buddhism, the more I understood what had happened to me, these teachings were the only thing I encountered that could explain outrageous to me crime. Since then, I've come across stuff in mystical Judaism, even some Sufism stuffs and Hindu stuff. Had I doubled across that back then, would have been one of these other traditions, maybe, I don't know. But the Buddhist tradition definitely seems to have as far as I can tell, the deepest, most extensive material on this. These decisions were the only thing I encountered because explained my rages too weak, right? That's a big deal. That kind of explaining our explanatory power is a big deal. It's like, whoa, this, these peeps, can completely describe what I went through, that has power. Like maybe I'm not good at saying maybe there are some other people that are just as crazy. Inspired by the story of the Buddha and the resonance of his teaching. So by experience, I too became committed to waking up, which makes me a Buddhist, in the purest sense. But always remember, right? The Buddha wasn't a Buddhist, that's always helpful. The Buddha wasn't a Buddhist. He's just the guy who woke up. Christ wasn't a Christian, is another guy who woke up. For the past 30 years, though, it's been longer than that. Now. I've continued my practice and study of this dental mobile tradition. But since then, whoa, since then, those of you who who've been hanging with me for a little bit, you know, you know, as much as I love the Buddha's Kool Aid, and I do deeply. Oh, they don't have the answers to everything. I'm a big, deep fan of integral theory, you have to go approaches. Like I often say, I don't care. Like Buddha said, Wherever you find the truth, you will find my dharma. I don't care where the truth comes from science, philosophy, anthropology, physics doesn't matter to me. If they have something truthful, to say, I'm going to listen. And so therefore, yes, the Tibetan Buddhist thing is my main path. But I am super interested in other non dual traditions mandelieu Siva, tantra, Kashmir, Shaivism, Taoism, and then all that, you know, the deep philosophical, Western intellectual teachings and traditions that are resonant with his lineage.
I think that's actually important. I was actually having a conversation with Youssef hall where he was the guy that the Islamic scholar that I interviewed. He's been pinging back and forth. We've been talking about writing this book together along with Francis to so a Christian, a Muslim, and then I don't know what I am, the three of us getting together to write a book, which I think would be pretty cool if I could work with these guys. About In fact, the, the power of tradition and lineage, and the real dangers, the territoriality, the provincialism to absolutism, and talking about how if traditions are open distributaries from other traditions, cross pollinating and keeping their waters alive, then they become stagnant it becomes like a dead sea. And so stay tuned. That may be another book, three years down the road with yourself. And Father, Francis Cesar. Wouldn't that be fun? And these guys are amazing. When I finally came across the Buddha's teachings on Dream Yoga, which is when you strive to have lucid dreams with the goal of doing specific practices within them, I knew I come home. Really, this was my sweet spot. Even though I consider myself a Buddhist, I'm primarily interested in the pursuit of truth discovering the nature of reality. So my current like lingo is I'm a curious, curious I'm deeply curious about the nature of mind in reality, I don't care who can help me understand it, I'm going to listen. This truth may include or transcend traditional or even new age, religion, as well as science and philosophy. I'm interested in personal evolution and I don't care what and I don't care what does it so while the teachings in this book are based on the wisdom of the Buddhist tradition, in particular Tibetan Basha, Why should we honor Buddhism? In particular there? Have you name that right? So there are four schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The oldest one literally means old school is nema. That's the one the partners of Baba introduced. And then in order Kagyu. sokkia, and and gaillac. And so I'm, I'm a principal student of huggy Nima, the two called so called practice lineages. The ones that emphasize meditation more than scholasticism. sokkia, and especially gay, Luke, are mostly emphasizing study. They also come from psychology, science and my own experience, no one has a patent on truth. Just as my experience join DNA, this book will continue the theme of unity is I joined the wisdom of the east with the knowledge of the West, in an attempt to bring this wondrous world of the night into the crisp light of the day. As a final thought, there's promise and peril and sharing spiritual experiences. Oh, yeah, this is important, including powerful dreams. The promise is that it can inspire and connect you to others. And the thing I really I've changed my tune on this. I mean, all my teachers, originally, the more senior traditional, no criticism at all. Basically, it's like God, keep your mouth shut, don't say anything, don't say anything. But the younger ones are different. The younger ones are saying it's okay, if your motivation is clean and pure, it's okay to share. And what really inspired me was manger remedies, amazing book that just came out two years ago, right? In love with the world. I mean, this is like 300 pages of the most inspiring stuff from a meditation master, totally sharing his experience. And so it's like, well, I get inspired when I read that. So I'm actually sharing more than I used to. And maybe as I go through this, some other material will come up at all right to share with you. But there are some guidelines around proper sharing. And that's what this little riff is about. The peril is they can inflate the ego and deflate the potency of the experience. By Buddhist tradition, we are advised not to share these experiences traditionally, Guru derivate J. Actually, major MPJ slather. So they're talking about spiritual experiences inappropriately. It's like being in a cave with a candle and giving your candle away. They're left in the dark. These experiences arise in the sanctuary of silence and they should remain in the sanctuary. In the lucid dreaming literature, there are many books where authors convey their proficiency by recording how many lucid dreams they've had. Again, I'm not dissing any of them, none of them. I mean, my friend Robert Wagner writes about how he's had over 1000 lucid dreams. Hey, high five, man, that's awesome. I don't have a problem with that because he is a real deal. He's such a humble guy. He's I mean, he's just the real deal. So if he's if he's gonna say, I don't 1000 lucid dreams probably at this point. 2000 That's inspiring to me. That's not self aggrandizing especially from him. Proficiency their proficiency by reporting how many lucid they've had describing leisurely they can induce them, or sharing transformative dreams. I understand the need for this and often find inspiration in their reports. I really do.
Mastery lucidity has no established credentials, right? Oh, I, I have a master's and lucidity from Harvard. Maybe someday we can start a program right? Would that be awesome. Masters and PhD program and acidity. I guess Naropa University is probably the closest one or cis, California to do. Clinical Studies. Master elicited, he has no established credential. So writers instill confidence in their readers by sharing their experiences. Otherwise, why Listen, right? Why bother with this guy? Why should I listen to him? We also don't have role models in this young field right certified dream heroes we can emulate Can you name one? What do you do in modesty as a result of mastery? How do you convey that mastery without violating the modesty that prevent or prevent slipping into perform a contradiction? performative contradiction that is unwittingly falling into the trap you espouse to avoid the post modernists fall into this one all the time. This is why you'll have a hard time finding masters of Dream Yoga. This is no kidding, right? People always ask me, oh, can I who can I go study with who's a master do yoga? And I said, nobody. That's not that they're not out there. But they're not going to advertise that. I mean, these guys are really modest. And usually when he asked him to go, oh, I have no experience. I have no realization. So it's a really, it's an interesting deal. kind of works on the east. I'm not so sure it works on the west. But again, you can see how slippery you can see how slippery this track is. How are we doing? timewise Whoa, crap. Seven o'clock. Perfect timing. What happens when I just started going? I can't stop. So a couple more paragraphs. This is why you'll have a hard time finding answers and Premika don't talk about their experiences, as a Taoist tradition proclaims, He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know. Well, if that's true, you guys are totally screwed, right? Because I definitely speak a lot, which means I don't know anything. So it might be some truth to that. I'll let you decide. Really, it was like it was a llama Tampa, pull up a j means you remember J. But younger ones don't remember J, let's talk very much a little more conservative. I look, they're all great. When they said, you know, it's totally okay to share. Really, if your motivation is clean, if you're pure, you're really trying to help people. It's okay to share. So for those of you who you know, interested in sharing, especially in this community amongst ourselves totally fine. Well, maybe check your motivation, when you got to start flapping your lips in front of others definitely got to be really careful. Because really, I often have this this this adage, this maxim, transforming obstacle and opportunity, transforming death into awakening and hardship into awakening, that kind of thing. But this is a bi directional adage, which means you can also transform opportunity into obstacle. And I have seen this countless times when people have an experience totally legit. I could name a dozen of these people all in the impatient West 100% legitimate experience, that stables is that realization, it's just an experience. And instead of nurturing it in silence, the soccer referee start to talk about it. People start to believe it, they start to believe in them. Next thing you know, their guru got a cold. And the whole thing goes south. I really I don't I could name a dozen of these communities that are just like plunk because they violate some of these kinds of rules. So even though I start this book by sharing a life changing experience, I will try to middle way erring on the side of omission. Yeah, maybe I'll share a little bit more this time around. Hey, I could be dead before this book is gone, right. So why not share some stuff before I before I check out? You know, I will occasionally rely on the dreamy pours of others to convey what is possible in the night, the delicate dance, this tiptoe between conveying inspiration and beating self aggrandizement. Parenthetically, this is why I call Young, who totally knew about lucid dreams. He was a very sophisticated dreamer. He was reticent to endorse even talk about conscious dreaming lucid dreaming because he saw the potentiality for ego conflation of self aggrandizement. He was very cautious about this. Even humility can cloak arrogance. Suffice it to say that many of the most powerful experiences of my life continue to occur in my dreams. These dreams are often more vibrant than anything in waking reality. They are frequently changed my life, I believe in the night. See, that's the call for milk at the beginning, right. Hey, so Wow, we got through the prologue. At this point, we should be able to get through this in two years.
What's the rush man? Let's let's do what we did before. Let's have fun. Let's take our time. And if there's anybody out there that wants to ask a question or make a contribution, share something. Next time we'll pick up in the introduction. We're more than welcome to riff away so it's not just be up, you're doing my silly thing. So more than welcome. I can check in the meantime, I could check the chat room. If there's somebody out there who does want to say something or something, ask something.
I did have one that came in through the chat. Okay. It just came to me though, so you probably won't be able to see it. But it says I have experienced sleep paralysis, the dependent oh my goodness, Tibetans call it pressing demon, your 40 years, it no longer frightens me as much and I have spiritual advice on how to respond. But I never have a clear explanation of why does this happen? If one believes which I do that the beings I perceive are impact sentient beings interacting with me why did they arrive at that time? I do not know their motivation positive or negative? One time I asked them why do you bother me? And they said because you are the only one who sees this. Is my mind somehow more relaxed, more open or less stable, more anxious?
Yeah, let me say a little bit about this hard to say for sure. But let me let me share one story of actually playful story. Funny story. Somebody lying to do this when you asked your question. Lama Lama, Dr. Nida who teaches some Dream Yoga with some regularities of spending physician really cool guy I like him a lot. I attended one of his teachings a couple years ago and Dream Yoga I learned a lot from this guy I can't I can't remember if it was him having this dream and he shared it that I don't remember or somebody told him this dream and then he related I don't remember that. But he shared the story about let's say it was him about how all these all these whatever it is recurrent nightmares. This demon kept chasing him chasing him. And finally, one day when his lucidity was pretty strong he got tired of this guy, this demon chasing him and and he stopped it in the dream he turned around, and is this is this entity whenever it was, like kind of ran right up to him kind of like Tasmanian devil cartoon figure skating with all this dust lining up. He asked him in the dream, he goes, Why are you chasing me? And the dream character says, I don't know. It's your dream. So like, I mean, that's pretty bloody awesome. Like, I don't know, man, is your mind. So you know, it's hard to say exactly what's going on with you. But let me say a couple of general things that may be of some benefit. And also say a little bit more about the relationship between sleep a Tony on sleep paralysis, they're not the same thing. And then refer you to books that write about this my friend Ryan Hurd, which I interviewed like two years ago who I interviewed. He has a wonderful entire book on sleep paralysis, I highly recommend it. And also my friend, we interview twice Claire Johnson, PhD, psychologist and really adept lucid dreamer. In her book transforming nightmares, she talks a lot about sleep paralysis. So here's the way this stuff works. There's the difference between sleep a toniann sleep paralysis, so sleep a Tonia is everybody experiences that I shouldn't say they don't experience it, they Well, actually, you could say that. They do experience it but not in a access conscious way. They experience it what philosophers call phenomenal consciousness, they have the experience, but it's not access to conscious awareness. So that's a slightly nerdy, technical philosophical thing. But everybody experiences Leetonia that is that is a natural, super interesting evolutionary way that evolution has designed to keep you from acting out your dreams, your body basically when your REM sleep. turns into like a limp rag doll. You know, you can't move. And that's by design. That's sleep a Tonia. When that doesn't work. By the way, that can be a really big problem, like super deadly super serious and there's some outrageous stories. I mean, like unbelievable stuff. To run behavioral sleep disorder, and other really there's over 100 Sleep Disorders and parasomnias we should talk to Dr. Ed about these super interesting discussion these parasomnias and so behavioral sleep disorders when you have you're in REM but you don't experience sleep a Tony and then what do you do you act out your dreams and so you end up beating up or even killing your sleeping partner or jumping out a window like that is not a good thing. So sleep a Tony has nature's way to protect you from yourself. Sleep paralysis is when you actually recognize sleep a Tonja. And basically freak out that's when you're aware of it. That's that's sleep paralysis sleep a Tony as normal. You don't know what is happening. You can't move you can't speak. Sleep paralysis is an out of phase REM sequence where you're you're, you're aware of the fact that you're paralyzed when you're not supposed to be. And that's where things can get, like you mentioned, and I write about this in dreams of light, I have, I think a whole section on this in the SIBO section. All the different traditions talk about this whole
riff about sleep paralysis, and so like you'd like you correctly say, again, experience and understanding if you have the experience, and you don't have the understanding, that can be a huge problem. Parenthetically, I do write this about this in the book. It can be such a big problem without proper understanding that it can literally scare you to death. Hence the no SIBO effect the opposite of placebo. There was a really interesting set of articles and then a book about these young location men that died in the middle of their sleep because of the power of their belief system. That belief literally killed them. And it all had to do with sleep paralysis. If they had known what sleep paralysis was, they wouldn't have thought that what was appearing to them and the natives these is these demons prosecuting them for that, appropriately practicing their religion, they would not have died from fear they literally would not have killed themselves with their beliefs. So they had an experience Without understanding it killed them, literally. So there's another instance of why understanding is so important. Not so for you. Good for you that you have this and it doesn't take you out. Like the actual what's actually going on there that is really hard for me to say, in fact, like impossible. I can't tell you exactly what's going on when you seem to have no idea. I just don't know. So I'm not criticizing it in the slightest. I just don't know, when you have what appears to be the influx of external agencies entering your dream arena, that could be happening. But I have to say the vast majority of the time, that's not what's happening. These are just projections of your unconscious line. Again, I can't say we're told assurance, I mean, we'd have to sit down, this is not the place to do that. We'd have to work with the dream therapist or something and really tease this out. For me, the important thing here is, is just the understanding the phenomenology, the physiology, what's actually taking place between two Beethovenian sleep paralysis that's completely harmless. Working with that kind of liminal, your urine in a liminal kind of space. So I would explore the idea of liminal dreaming and liminality, to work with this dimension. But the actual kind of etiology, like what is taking place? Where are these agencies coming from? I cannot answer that, and I'm not sure anybody really could. The issue to me is one of relationship to that realizing what do you do with these agencies? And that partly will depend on you. I mean, are they are they bringing about like, transmissions or teachings or are conveying information they find us on help, then, in fact, it could be some external agency taking place. But the vast majority of the time most of our dreams or solipsistic, most of our dreams take place within the arena of our own body mind matrix. Not all but most of them, there are instances when the mind can become open and porous in these external agencies, so to speak, can infiltrate your own mind? Yes. Is that what's happening to you? I don't know. That's a really tough one to tease out. So this is why it's always helpful if you could come on, and I could engage a little bit of conversation with you, but based with what you said, in the chat, that's what comes to mind. Okay.
I see Eric has his hand up, too. And then there was one that came in the chat right before. They said, Did you do you recommend a Neil Seth TED Talk? It was about reality.
Yeah. It's interesting. He said, he's a sharp guy. He's a neuroscientist. He and his TED Talk, his reality is a consensual hallucination or something like that. It's worth listening. He's a sharp cookie. Anybody that works with this kind of contest, you know, challenging the status, the tyranny of conventional appearance, is worth listening to. And he does it from the perspective of a neuroscientist. So pull about, it's, you know, the usual 17 minute Ted thing is worth listening to him. I think. He's no dummy.
And Eric LMU, but, Andrew,
how are you? I'm good. I saw Neil Seth has a new book out to that looks really? Oh, what's the title? Being you? Oh, that's great. Wait, wait, that reminds me of a book by Western disk or I have to read it. I'd be curious if anybody read it, the title of which is where I buy the book just because of the title. The title is, you are not your fault.
You are not your fault. Anyway. Sorry, Eric. This way my crazy lateral thinking works fire away. You mentioned a couple of times symbolic guru. Can you just give a high level of what that is? And not super? Yeah, yeah, it's worth knowing about. So in the Tibetan world, they talk about four types of Guru four types of teacher and these are interesting. So the first one is the more conventional physical person guru. The second one is Guru, basically as Dharma is texts. The third one is symbolic guru. And that's when the world really does become your guide your teacher like a member, you know, Milarepa phenomena are. So, this is very, this is very it was one develops heightened sensitivity to their reality. This is already happening. Pay attention to it. If you pay more sensitive attention to it. You'll see this happening all the time. That when you have experiences of auspicious coincidence tendril, you start to notice particular ways that your world is operating. I really noticed this when I mentioned retreat, when I become really quiet really open. And I'm more aware of it's like, oh my gosh, the world is like constantly. And again, we want to, we don't want to get too anthropomorphic here that like it's teaching me, you know, it's like somehow the whole world like special in the world is somehow conspiring to send me these messages and teaches me, I think that's a little bit too facile. But the notion isn't is a really elegant one that when you become really quiet, really open. I'm sure many of you listening to your puppy and had this sort of experience, you start to notice that the world is constantly in this kind of communication thing. There's always phenomenal feedback taking place. And so really, on one level, the symbolic Guru is not only individual, it's it's collective and one level, you can say what's happening in the world now just colossal. So I mean, just all three, you and crap show that we're living with ecological, social, political, you name it, it's there. Well, that's the phenomenal world. Basically, the alarm clock is just roaring, trying to wake us up, that's about a guru, so to speak, is screaming. So again, it's not this this anthropomorphize entity teaching you in that regard. It's just the play of reality, giving you kind of cybernetic feedback. And so when you become aware of this man, this, this can become no small thing. I mean, you can really get tremendous guidance from the tendril the auspicious kindness, coincidences in your life. So the fourth type of guru was the most important one. And that's the ultimate guru. And that's, that's within you. So So all three, the first three are provisional, they're all basically pointing you fundamentally automated to yourself, that at the highest levels, you become your own teacher, you have ultimate refuge, in your own innate wisdom, within. So classically, or I guess, the way those are peeled out, but yeah, I find the symbolic thing to be super interesting. And especially because I've had so many experiences around this, outside of that crazy thing, 20 some years ago, especially when I'm going to be treated, the world just becomes very interesting as a kind of transducer of communication. Super interesting stuff. Yeah, really interesting. I actually, I was going back to some of some of my notes from your deeper dive last year, the retreat, and there was an instruction that you had that you made that to see the world as everybody in the world as an enlightened beings here to wake you up. And I've been trying to do that, actually, recently. So that's kind of an auspicious time. Yeah. So would you share with the group what that's about this is, I can't remember where I got this. I usually try to
add attribute things to the property source. But I don't know if I made this up. I don't think so I probably got it from somebody. It's a wonderful kind of contemplation, that thought experiments that everybody on this planet, including animal forms is already awakened. You, you're, you're the only one that still completely sound asleep. And so every being on this planet is basically here to teach you to wake you up, you know, so like, when that jerk cuts you off on the road, I mean, that's awesome. Baba, right? Or when when somebody whenever happens, that's the Buddha teaching your chin Raizy or whatever. And so it's a little bit this idea of sacred album, pure perceptions, that I find very helpful that the world is always teaching us and we're open to it. We can, we can learn a lot. It's opening the art antennas to the feedback from the phenomenal world. It can really facilitate our ability to evolve. If we're interested in our level of feedback and evolution. So people are not they don't want that kind of openness and feedback. That's you too threatening. So basically, anyway, something like that, bro. Great. Thank you so much. Okay. All right. Anybody else?
Yes, we got a couple more. Um, Tim said Hi, Andrew. Do you now consider Dream Yoga as your main spiritual path? In order to really do Dream Yoga? Is it correct to say that we must develop lucid dreaming?
Yes, because Dream Yoga transcends but includes lucid dreaming, so yeah, you can't you can't practice Dream Yoga without some really. So you there you have to have lucid dreaming in order to to Dream Yoga. Isn't my main path um, it's it's my main nocturnal path. Yeah. That in conjunction with liminal dreaming. Lucid Dreaming Dream Yoga, sleep yoga, Bardo. But but in the nocturnal arena Dream Yoga is my main gig for sure. And then if you look at the deeper renderings of Dream Yoga, which is why I wrote the book dreams of light, when you try to look at the world and perceive it as a display of mind, so like the If you decode the Twilight language, your dream dream was cold language for manifestation of mine. And so if you talk about dream and that larger sense, you can say Dream Yoga is my main path for sure. But I don't think that's what you're asking. I think you're asking a very targeted thing. Well, so I use that targeted, classic exploration of Dream Yoga, to work with the notion of dream mind altogether. What is what is what what is Dream period? What is the DREAM principle? And so in that regard, Dream Yoga, in a larger extended sense, 24/7 sense. Everything can be held underneath that frame. So something like that. Okay.
Perfect. The next one says, Could you speak to what the difference is between lucid dreaming and an out of body experience that Robert Monroe studied and researched?
Yeah, this is an interesting one. So yeah, the Monroe Institute I know of his work. In Charlie Morley's wife, I think now ex wife does a lot with this sort of thing. Here's the deal with this, and this is just my opinion. Most OBS, are hyper lucid dreams, in my opinion, also my experience. That's not to say that you can't have legitimate OBS. I do not know enough about Robert Monroe's stuff to comment on that. So I'm going to, I'm going to refrain from that kind of commentary. It's not my place to do that. But it's amazing how many people come to lucid dreaming programs that actually have done Roberts stuff. But in my experience, when I talk to people when they have an OBE, and they sit down, and I asked them about their experience, it doesn't take me very long. And this is not a criticism at all. It's just like, is that what's really going on? It doesn't take me very long to suss out. That's not an OBE. That's a hyper lucid dream. And there are ways to test it. There are ways you can actually test that. But without saying again, you can in fact, cultivate what's called a special dream body in my stages of Dream Yoga. I think it's like stage seven. That can be done. I will refer you to some sources that are really illuminating in this regard. One is my dear friend, Evan Thompson, who I interviewed on my club. One of my favorite interviews, I have to say he's he's a really sharp guy. I'm just reading a new academic paper he published on conceptuality. What does concept really mean? What is concept mean from both Western and Eastern point of view, this guy is really bright. And so evident he has his monumental block. This is a landmark wouldn't want opinion waking, dreaming, being waking, dreaming being self unconsciousness in neuroscience, meditation and philosophy. This is a magnum opus. Evan goes after this in a in a really interesting way. There's an entire chapter devoted to his really insightful analysis and critique of OBE is similar to that. Almost just as insightful as Susan Blackburn. I think it's Blackbird Blackmore, Piper, I think, in an anthology called something like sleeping, mind sleeping brain waking mind or something like that. It's an anthology edited by Stephen Colbert and Shane Kobach. There's a really interesting chapter by Susan In fact, it might be to an OBS these are very very insightful. So you know, I'll probably let that ride for now. There's definitely a connection between them in that most obese are in fact hyper lucid dreams. But there are rare instances where for sure people can have legitimate obese and again, this book I mentioned this a marvelous anthology just came out. Big Book expensive but worth it. These 100 pages there's a couple I think there's at least one chapter in that book on Adobe's really mind bending stuff and so it fits in my worldview. Absolutely. But the connection between those two is is that's the way I relate to them and I can't I can't I can't speak with any authority about Robert stuff. I just don't know if his work intimately enough. Okay. Oh, Susan Blackmore. Yeah, Susan Blackmore. Thank you, Bob Barry Blackmore.
There's from Laurie in the chat.
Okay, Arthur. Yeah. Okay. Is there such a thing as a false lucid dream? In one dream, I seem to flash onto the fact that I was dreaming and told the dream character I was dreaming. And I went around knocking on things and thought, wow, things feel a solid years when I'm awake. But when I tried to manipulate things in the dream, I couldn't, nor did I remember to do a state check thoughts. Again, Laurie, hard to say for sure, but you can definitely be in a lucid dream. Because of the power of our habitual patterns. They will appear are just as Bloody real, is what we think of as our waking state. So I, I wouldn't say it's a false lucid dream it that's hard to really, I'm not even entirely sure what you mean by that there's a difference between false, um, between false awakenings and lucid dreaming, and that sort of thing. But what I'm gleaning out of this is that you can definitely have experiences you can knock things over, they can feel just as solid and painful as real as in the waking state. You can manipulate them, not because it's a dream, but because you still think it's real. And so I can't say with total authority, that was a full blown lucid dream. Yeah, next time trying to do a state check. And then try to practice actually some level of transformation try to work with some of the stages of Dream Yoga. But some of these, these questions are actually a little bit difficult to say, with total authority. I can't tell you with complete authority, what some of these experiences are, I can just kind of circumnavigate some of what you're sharing to give you a sense of it, but I can't say what total. So from Lynn, can you say a little bit more about what characterizes the hyper lucid dream? What defines a dream as that? Yeah. Okay. So hyper lucid dreams are dreams that that are relatively rare. They tend to be also associated with longevity, so they tend to be longer. In their dreams, where the dream itself appears more real than this. The colors are more vibrant, the sensations are more real. It's it's like you're in a hyper hyper reality chamber. Everything is just like hyper real. And when you come out of those, those are game changers. I've never had a full blown near death experience. But I suspect it's similar to that. That's why hyper lucid dreams can change. One hyper lucid dream could change your life. Just like one nd he can. Because they're so powerful are so charged. You wake up from those puppies, and then it'll rattle your whole day in a good way. Because you wake up from that. And then this appears foggy, faded dream. Where you experienced in your mind, just a few minutes ago seemed more real than this. So I'm trying to think of who else who else references these types of experiences overtly? I think coming up in this book, I talk a little bit more about hyper lucid dreams, so hang tight. I'm not quite sure we come back to this topic. But that's what comes to mind. Okay. All right.
I think you got all the ones from the chat. Oh, one just came in. Okay.
Oh, from Ken, what can be said about waking up from a dream, setting an intention to go back into the dream and being able to do this. Oh, yeah, I do this all the time, Ken. This is a type of liminal dreaming, and also what's called wake initiated lucid dream. On the hit, they'll pop again. So that's Oh, these are a lot of big words. But I do this all the time. So it's classically called awake initiated lucid dream. Which means you're what you're trying to do is you're trying to bring there's two ways to have a lucid dream. One is a dream initiated lucid dream, which is the more common one easier, or something will clue you into the fact that you're dreaming some dream sign, whatever. And you wake up within the dream and say, Holy crap, this is the dream. You wake up within the dream, wake initiated, not dream initiated, is when you bring awareness with you from the waking state into the dreamer state. And when you do it, like you just see it here, going back in that's from the Hypno pop again, from from the back end of the sleep thing. I do this all the time, like constantly. It's also a way to work with liminal dreaming, which is where you're in this plasma dimension. You're not quite awake and not quite asleep, kind of wake up out of it. Just like you're saying, Can you have this intention? I want to go back in, close your eyes, turn the lens of your mind back in. It's also Stephen bears talks about it in his technique. Mild pneumonic induction of lucid dreams. So I think we riff on this stuff coming up in this book, I can't remember but Stephen talks about all three of these wild dial and mild techniques. And yeah, like you said, I do it regularly. I do too. It's it's relatively easy. And it's really cool. So good for you. So let me just peek through here. Okay. Anybody else have a question or a comment before we click out for today? I'm just going through all this. Are we good for now? You can also fake it. Yeah, cool. You can also bring your questions you can submit stuff in advance who wrote consciousness unbound? Yeah, it's an anthology. So there's like 10 authors in it.
I found one on Amazon that said it was edited by I think it's Kenneth. Where'd it go?
Yeah. Kelly. Rosenberg
Edward Kelly.
Yeah, that's it. Yeah, we're Kelly. And there's another one. Rosenberg.
Oh, her name was like a lame. Yeah.
Yeah, this thing just came out. Like, a couple months ago. It's it's not inexpensive. It's a pricey book. And it's a deeper is for those who really want to go deep and and stuff. It's not a particularly easy read, but I love it. I'm just reading through all these notes. These
are cool. We have a hand raised to Okay. Oh, it says Elaine. Hello.
Hi, Lane fire away. Hello. You can mute on mute, you
can mute. Okay. So I asked you a question in a virtual hangout that was very similar to something you wrote on page 15. In the prologue, it's the last sentence of the first full paragraph. Question you pose. Okay. Okay. Fine, I reconcile. So I want to know, how did you reconcile that? When you say how can I reconcile my blissful spiritual states with harsh realities? How did you finally reconcile that? Because I have a hard time reconciling some of this.
Oh, lordy. Yeah, this is an ongoing journey for me, right? How do you reconcile it? Well, you know, the way it let me say how I work with it. I'm not sure reconciliation is a term I use now is, is working with a deep understanding of the two vectors of psycho spiritual evolution, that the difference, this, again, is really interesting, interesting, the difference between states and structures of consciousness, the difference between waking up and growing up the difference between vertical and horizontal enlightenment that you can have, depending on your state level of realization, and you'll start to level of development. People can have vastly different experiences, perceiving those, quote, same reality. And so this is a really, obviously, massive type of life question that to me has is really, the only way I can wrap my mind around this sort of thing is, in fact, by looking at it, the genius of the east and the west, the developmental models from the West, in terms of structures of consciousness, absolutely indispensable for me, in terms of understanding why why people do what they do, and also a book I'm reading now, this is another big one, by Robert Sapolsky, called behave. He's an amazing guy. This guy's bloody amazing. And this, this is his magnum opus, another one of these 700 Page monsters. Where the title is, is illuminating. It talks about why do we do the things we do. And what he does, in an in really insightful way is go back, a millisecond, a second, a minute, a month, a year and a lifetime. In basically using this framework of going back further and further time. He shows all the cool conspiratorial factors that come into play, that make us do the things that we do. And obviously, as a hardcore scientist, he leaves out I mean, it's a brilliant book, but he leaves out a ton. He doesn't talk at all, at least, as far as I've come across, I doubt that he will, even though he's magical Linus and been in minor life conferences. As far as I can tell, so far in the book, he does not talk about karmic trajectories, and all the so called psycho spiritual or deeper spiritual components. So I'm not sure how much further I can go with this. To me, it's really the way I've worked with so called reconciliation between heaven and helpers, and then, in, in so called blissful spiritual experiences, has to do with understanding the spectrum of the two vectors of development. Without that, this makes no sense to me. The world just remains utterly bewildering and incomprehensible. But with a light of integral theory, the two vectors of growth, understanding the spectrum and the complete complexity of the human condition, you can gain some pretty profound insights into these sorts of things. So obviously, huge topic that maybe that's enough I can pick up for now. So check out yeah, check out states and stages. Check out towards the psychology I mean, I'm sorry, go
ahead. No, I mean, I see that but when we're talking about something also that if you call like destiny, or fate where it's not really a you know, these is that and then you answered it about karma. I'm wondering is that like, you're talking about development as
I get a little squeamish with things like destiny and predetermination predestiny that that makes me a little bit nervous.
Okay, let's say accident. of birth. I mean, you know, you're born in some poor setting some, you know, where you don't have the opportunities that other people do. So,
like, how do you explain that?
Well, how do you reconcile like, the spiritual, the spiritual bliss with knowing that so many people are suffering, I guess? Oh,
good governor. I mean, this is just a colossal question. Right? Let me tell you one thing, you cannot say it's all karma. You can't do that?
I don't think it is. Yeah, it
just that makes no sense to me. And that is a really facile form of Eastern reductionism that should be destroyed. So, you know, these are? Again, the question is so deep, it's so big, it's so vast, that the best I can do is just throw some noodles against the wall and say a couple things.
No, I appreciate it. I do. I know, I know. It's vast. But I just like asking you getting your opinion.
Yeah, I mean, you just have to cast a really wide net, that's don't get tripped into single action, or single explanatory processes, or, or attempts at that, the only way to really understand these things is I'm fast, vast scope. And these are very deep, complex issues. So I think you're gonna understand that with the limited bandwidth that we have here, that's probably the best I can do. With it. The general approach for me here is integral theory. The integral folks here have really tremendous explanatory power, because they in fact, odd are all these really fast, complex strands that come together to make phenomena to arise. So that's where I would look at all the integral approaches the integral thinkers that work with this. Okay, thank
you very much.
Okay, maybe one more or are we done?
There's a couple more that came in. Okay. Let's do these. Just
a couple more, and then we'll close it for today. That's okay. Well, where'd it go? Oh, yeah, consciously about liberating tyranny. Yeah. Liberating materialism. Yeah, that's great. Get it?
Oh, who was it? Who? Oh, my God. They were wondering, the year retreat.
Say again, I'm sorry. Your who led
the three year retreat?
Oh, yeah. I had a bunch of what are called Drupada retreat masters. So Trungpa Rinpoche put me in. He's the one who gave me all the obvious shakers and apartments. My Groupon, we had several of them. We had a number of llamas that came in. And then we had on the palmo she was in Annie Pamela Pema children was part of this team. So we had we had a number of different people. Susan Chapman, you know the the droop on or retreat master we had three or three or four of those, the main one was on a Palma. And then on the Pema came in Pema children, Susan Chapman, and then we had some other Lamas from Toronto and also Nia, they came by to give us instructions about major materials. Okay. So we had a bunch of different people, but they were maybe two people on calmo and Susan Chapman, but they were there for the heart of it. Okay.
And then Barry said, how do you reconcile pre cognition and destiny?
Well, I again, Barry, I don't I'm not the whole destiny thing wigs me out a little bit. I'm, I'm very suspicious of these kind of. Again, this is a little bit like the earlier question. He's kind of pre deterministic things, these Destiny things? Do they have traction? Maybe, you know, like the destiny of the great historical Buddha's when they come into the world. They're there, they're destined to go through the 12 acts of a Buddha, that sort of thing. That that's what tradition says there seems to be kind of Destiny related to that. But in terms of you know, this is a really another one of these really tricky, thorny issues because it weren't How does it tie into determinism? How does it tie into freewill? How does it tie into all these other factors? That Destiny itself kind of subsumed? So these are just can we just talk about the Denver Broncos or the World Series? These are really difficult questions. And I get a little bit hesitant on one level. It's tricky when we do stuff like this because the material bags, sometimes deeper explorations. It's one wall level I'm setting myself up for for some problems, because the material itself can lend itself to pretty deep explorations and to really, very, really unpack this sort of thing. This is not an easy thing to tease out to really talk about the strands are coming together to create vectors of growth and life all together. But as a general rule for me, this is just my style my thing I get very uneasy, various squeamish with this whole predetermination thing. It doesn't really make sense in my world. And so I, I'm not sure where it's like and why do they, you know, I start to stutter and stammer because it's like, holy crap, these are really difficult issues. So, yeah, what we need to do is have like a little metric, like one of those hammers that you can pump down on a circus thing, and that goes up and rings the bell. So if the some of these questions go up and ring the bell, then that means the question is too big for me. Too big for the time allotted for me to attempt to wrestle with it at this class. So I hope you understand very great question my friend just like the other one. But these are a little bit like, hey, Andrew, can you talk to me a little bit about the meaning of life? Well, yeah, sure. And you know, like, a month and even then, do I have any of the answers? No, I just have my opinions. So reconciling or working with a relationship of, of precognition and destiny. Maybe start by reading that book, Barry and then get back to me, okay. Read the consciousness unbond book, see how it lands with you read the chapters, I'll be cognition. And then maybe you can illuminate Neil. Okay, but I love this guy. He's the best. That's the best I can do with that. So thanks, everybody. So we do this totally geeky thing if you want. You don't have to. But it's really fun. Everybody turns on their camera for just a second. Only if you want to we all wave a very corny. Goodbye. It's a nice way to connect. It's really nice to see everybody. Yeah. Oh, look at all these wonderful humanoids out there. It makes me very happy. So thanks, everybody. We launched this thing. And because of other obligations and stuff, next week, we're going to meet every other week. Thank you next week on Thursday is going to be Thursday gathering but thanks, everybody.