The Possibility of Dreaming Courses

The trick in setting up dreaming does not lie in looking at things, but in sustaining the sight of things when they are no longer in sight. Dreaming becomes real once you have succeeded in bringing into sharp focus anything you bring to mind, for then there is no difference between what you do when dreaming and what you do when you are not dreaming.

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Over the last eighteen months or so I have had a number of dreams about me developing and running courses, specifically around dreaming. Within the logic of dreaming this suggests that there is a possibility in the web of life open for me to do this. We could call the courses “Dream Yoga” in the sense of joining the sleeping state with the so-called waking state where no bendy asanas are required. The idea being that one is as fully conscious as one may be all of the time. If one can dream consciously, awake and “lucidly” one might carry that through into the so-called “waking” day in which most people are asleep and somnambulant.

Any course with dreaming as an orientation must perforce be holistic and a whole-being thing. It cannot be modular and prêt-à-porter nor can it be podcast. Such a thing, by its very nature, must be experimental and experiential. It most definitely cannot be done by using a ‘phone app!!

Such a course would require a mature humanity of its participants and a willingness to persevere over a considerable length of time, years.

For some reason this notion of “dreaming courses” came to me again in the twilight between sleep and  “awake” this morning.

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Maitrayana Upanishad

Translated by F. Max Müller

And thus it has been said elsewhere: He who has his senses hidden as in sleep, and who, while in the cavern of his senses (his body), but no longer ruled by them, sees, as in a dream, with the purest intellect, Him who is called Pranava (Om), the leader, the bright, the sleepless, free from old age, from death, and sorrow, he is himself also called Pranava, and becomes a leader, bright, sleepless, free from old age, from death, and sorrow. And thus it is said:

'Because in this manner he joins the Prana (breath), the Om, and this Universe in its-manifold forms, or because they join themselves (to him), therefore this (process of meditation) is called Yoga (joining).

The oneness of breath, mind, and senses, and then the surrendering of all conceptions, that is called Yoga.'