Dream Space: Between Life and Death
By
Maria Volchenko, Ph.D.

(Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Shamanism and Alternative Healing,
San-Raphael, 2002)

Our life is twofold. Sleep has its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed.
Death and existence: Sleep has its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality.
(Byron, “The Dream”)

There are several questions that I have asked myself for years. What is the dream space? Whether it is possible to explore the dream space? How is it possible? Where is the entrance to it, and how to open the door to this space? Till now I have learned about two possible ways to investigate the dream space.

1. It is lucid dreaming. If I become aware that I am dreaming and do not wake up but begin to control my dream reality, then it is possible to explore it. The origin of this practice is the Tybetan yoga of dreaming. The main goal of this dream practice is keeping consciousness at the moment of transformation from life to death as well as was taught during transformation from waking to dreaming state of consciousness. It is well described by Shri Auroibindo,

2. It is high level of awareness in the wakened state, when it is combined with a dream re-entry. Again we get memories of both dreaming and waken realities. Here we also get an expanded state of consciousness, and we can use it to explore some aspects of the dream space. At the highest level this practice is similar to a shaman state of consciousness, when a shaman takes his journey to another world and stays quite aware of what is going on in this world. Shamans and experienced dreamers practice contact with dreaming during the day in an awakened state of consciousness. A poetic term ‘twilight zone’ sounds a little bit inconvenient in this case, because they practice expanded state of consciousness, and it is connected to bright visualization and memory. One of important goals of this journey is communication with ancestors and departed people.

In both ways we have to take into account that we might face experience connected to death. In both cases we also use an expanded state of consciousness together with dreaming intuition, the waken state logic of reasoning, and day life knowledge. Here is an example of my experience of exploring my dream space in lucid dreaming. However it is not easy to become a conscious lucid dreamer in order to explore this space. Tibetan yoga is not an easy practice. One has to pass through a long-term everyday practice that includes a boring discipline. Yet, a lucid dreamer needs a good level of energy. It is one of the reasons why children are good at lucid dreaming.

Once I realized that I was in a dream because I had a phone talk with my friend and at the same time I saw him sitting at a tea table right opposite me. In my dream I decided to explore whether it is possible to get some information. I was going to ask my friend some simple questions, for instance, - “What are you doing now?” Then in the morning I could give a call and ask the same questions in day reality. As soon as I began to ask my questions, the reality began to change. My friend disappeared from his armchair and appeared at a different place. Then he became transparent, and at last he disappeared as well as his arm chair, the tea table, and the whole room. My too strong ‘day logic’ that I had used to put my questions drugged me from my dream space to my day reality and I woke up.

In the waken state one can try the following exercise. Put your watch on your other wrist, or put your keys to an unusual place, and see for how long you can remember this change. It is rather irritating exercise, but it helps not to bee too proud of your day awareness. In Gurdzhiev’s schools students call this exercise “an alarm clock”, and it really helps to wake up and to be here and now. Gurdzhiev also used lucid dreaming to develop day awareness of his students. Stephen LaBerge offers his students an exercise, which is similar to the ‘alarm clock’, because it helps to develop their skill of lucid dreaming. It looks like these two realities are much more connected than people used to think of them. There is a Russian saying, - "As in dreams so in waken life". The same exercise develops both dreaming and wakened awareness, because it develops the same awareness, which we have for any state of consciousness.

Thus, one can try the second way of conscious entering the dream space. Here the poetic term ‘twilight zone’ sounds a little bit inconvenient, because a dreamer's consciousness, memory, and visualization should be clear and bright. This way of exploring dream space was well familiar to people in old times. There are many ways, tools, and rituals to get to the dream space in a conscious way. They differ by form in different cultures, but have the same deep meaning and goal. Mostly I use Russian Slavic and Siberian tools. But the main stages of the dream space re-entry and exploration are the same for any tradition.

First of all, a safe, purified, comfortable place is to be created for this experience for one person, who is going to do dream work alone, or for a big group. The group itself is a part of the environment of each member of the group. Thus, the group is to be in a state when it gives safety and comfort to each member of it. We cannot go to a temple of the God of Dreaming, we cannot get to a powerful spot of Nature, but we can use special objects and our conscious intention to create the right atmosphere at the place where we are. When the dreaming soul is traveling, the body should not be disturbed.

Then the inner space is to be prepared for dreaming by rituals, for instance, by prayers. Russian pagan dreamers used special ‘strong’ days for tuning dreams. They did not practice yoga but they practiced prophetic dreaming. How could ordinary people do it? The main idea of all Russian pagan rituals for dreaming was the following. An object was used in a ritual in such a way that the object appeared in the following dream. Then it served as a key to the dream content, and also could remind the dream next morning. Despite the fact that in Russian tradition there is no direct description of the use of the elements of nature in dream rituals, the elements are used. First of all the water is used as a powerful tuning tool, and as a symbol of a river. River flow is compared to dreaming in many traditions. The fire is always present because dream rituals take place when it is already late and dark. Other objects that are used in many rituals are branches of tree, stones, food (both smell and taste of it), and clothes and so on. There were also symbolic objects, for instance, a sash (a protective talisman and a symbol of path), a key and a lock.

In my dreams I have traveled many times to a small town on an island. I usually get by train or by car along a bridge there. There is a mountain on the island, and a beautiful white building on the top of it. In my other dreams I have been swimming in the ocean, walking in a forest or along a river many times. I have found a secret path behind my grandparents' place in the very center of Moscow, and the path led me directly to a small town with old small houses and narrow curve streets. How could I get there in a conscious way?

There is a simple and powerful ritual used by both pagan Russians and Russian Gypsies. It is literal crossing the bridge from day reality to the dream space in order to find an answer to an important question there. A small ‘physical’ bridge is created and placed under a dreamer’s bed. This ritual can be used for daydream work as well, for instance, to explore the space of a recurring dream. Probably, a bridge is one of the oldest objects made by people, and its image is connected to a river, and to the river of dreaming. This ritual or this technique is very useful for city dreamers.

The next question is what is this place where a dreamer gets again and again over the bridge? My many years’ experience showed that dream painting is one of the most powerful ways of both exploring the dream space and developing expanded state of consciousness. It includes drawing a map of a dream space, painting a landscape, a room, and an image. When I use dream painting in teaching dream work, first of all I try to separate it clearly from painting fantasies. Only then it becomes a powerful dream work practice. The idea of one of ways of its exploration came to me from a shaman map of the world. Similar pictures of the map were found in Siberia and North America. When I tried to create the map of my dream space I realized that I drew something very similar to this shaman map. I offered this technique to my dream work students, and they got the same results. This map can show one of 'levels', 'dimensions', or 'aspects' of the dream space. Notions of three-dimensional waken reality cannot describe the variety of spheres of dream space.

Here is another area of it. Over twenty years ago I had a dream, which got me to begin everyday dream practice. This my old dream was so powerful, and its space was so strange that I had to paint it. In the dream I met my grandmother who had died already. Now I know that while exploring dream space I cannot avoid this kind of meeting.

Twenty years after the dream I learned from Tuvan shamans that for three years we should not disturb people who left for their journey through other worlds. If they appear in your dream space before this term, then something is wrong with their journey, and they need help. But in three years they might come back to your dream space as helpers and protectors. My grandmother left our world about two years before I had the dream, and in the dream she wanted help in order to overcome a long road across a dark, cold and sad place to a shining gate.

In course of the next twenty years some of my relatives and friend left, and I met them again in my dream space. Only much later I have learned that the nature and some aspects of scenery of these meetings are quite common for dreams of people of different cultures. For years I was sure that this my experience is absolutely unique, while it was quite ordinary and common. Sometimes the dream space appears to be not a private one. Once I read in a book that people often see their departed relatives or friends in a dream or deep meditation at a place that looks like a beautiful garden. I did not see all of my departed relatives and friends in the garden, but only those who left in peace, and it was their time to leave. I do not try to give any explanation of it. Is it another level, part or dimension of my dream space? Did I have a look through a 'window' from my dream space to another world? I do not know.

While traveling in my dream space I found one more area, which strangely looks like a place 'between life and death'. Following the title of this poem I called it the primal memory:

PRIMAL MEMORY

By Nikolay Gumilev

Translated by Robert B.Amacker

Here is all life! Whirling, singing
Seas, deserts, cities
A shimmering reflection
Of something lost forever.

Fires rage, trumpets blare
Rhone stallions take flight.
Then thrilling lips
Of happiness seem to repeatedly proclaim.

Here again, delight and sorrow
Again as before, as always
The sea shakes its gray mane,
Cities, deserts rise.

So when at last will I awake
From sleep, to be myself again -
That simple Indian, who dozed
Beside a creek one sacred night?

In the flow of my dreams I investigated this area of other lives for years while I did not become aware of it enough to do it in my waken state. And it is another long story.

Due to this experience first I began to accept my dream space as a multidimensional and a multilevel one. Then I realized that it is highly connected to day reality. In a book of a North American shaman I found the following definition that I liked a lot:
“Dream Wave. The intangible web of life, which is comprised of threads of energy, thought, emotion, intent, ideas, and life force; the connective tissues that exists in our universe as the unseen energetic pathways, forming a web that is connected to all solid matter, all levels of awareness, and all animate and inanimate life forms.” (Sams Jamie - Dancing the Dream: The Seven Sacred Path of Human Transformation. Harper, San-Francisco, 1999, p. 257)
I think that it becomes visible in our dream space.

Now I begin to understand why I could not get a simple answer in my lucid dream, while I got very deep experience in many non-lucid dreams. I begin to understand what is the space, or the level of my dream space, where I meet my departed relatives. But the more I explore and understand, the more questions I get. Here I would like to end up with one of them, - Why do I find more and more ‘coincidences’ between dream pictures and day life? And why can other people easily repeat my experience?

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