Deepen Your Practice 36 - Dream Yoga: Dream Yoga by Griffin Mark

Author:Griffin, Mark [Griffin, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hard Light Publishing
Published: 2012-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

Dream Yoga: Summer Retreat 2011

Meher Mount, Ojai - June, 2011

Spiritual life and spiritual training is a kind of swimming of perception through an ocean of constantly changing values of perception, based on the field of regard. From the standpoint of the body, we experience things one way. From the standpoint of the subtle physical body, we experience things another way. From the standpoint of pure mind, we experience things even a third way. They assemble themselves into an overwhelming phantasmagoria of the event that we call life. Finally there is the beginning of reaching the level of cognition that we call ultra-cognition. This is equivalent to samadhi – where the mind slows down and finally stops, ceases to operate, what the Buddha called “cessation”, lack of production, absence of production of phenomenal value.

This idea of dream yoga, simply put, is shifting the basis of phenomenal experience. Throughout the day we have been using the waking state as the platform of the experience of all of these levels of attention and cognition – moving in and out of the fourth state, and sliding through various quality of dream state, qualities of attention where no cognition is occurring at all. In dream yoga, we shift the basis of phenomenal experience to the sleep-with-dream state. Then, rather than launching from the waking state, we move into the higher values of cognition, essential cognition and ultra cognition, from the sleep-with-dream state. It’s interesting because of the dynamic of the connection of sleep to dream, where the unconscious takes over from the conscious mind, and we have the phenomenon of dream. When we add the qualities of concentration and meditation to the dream state, we come into the possibility of a very fantastic array of potential experience. This is simply because we don’t have to carry the body along with us; the senses are off-line. It is a matter of pure dream, mental operation. In fact, in a dream we can give ourselves any kind of body we choose. In a dream, if we want to fly we can fly. In a dream, if we want to go to another plane or another world, we need only apply our attention, our concentration, and it happens like that.

The trick is to learn how to do it consciously. It’s a little tricky, and it takes practice. Because the unconscious is rolled into the equation, anything can happen. I’ve recommended that everyone in the Center practice dream yoga at least once a week. Pick a day out of the week and enter the dream state consciously, just so you get used to it consciously. So when we come to a situation like this where we are in a place of power, we have some of the chops, some of the skills under our belt that are necessary to move in the dream state, consciously.

To put it simply, the event of dream takes place in a space between the subtle body and the mental body – what we call the bardo.

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