{"id":2487,"date":"2011-05-18T04:06:21","date_gmt":"2011-05-18T08:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=2487"},"modified":"2011-05-17T21:10:32","modified_gmt":"2011-05-18T01:10:32","slug":"indias-dream-travelers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/05\/indias-dream-travelers.html","title":{"rendered":"India’s dream travelers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In Hindu tradition, dreaming is the key to other worlds, and the literature and sacred writings of India are a treasury of tales of dream travel, clearly grounded on experience. The Yogavasistha<\/em>, a vast Kashmiri compilation from the first millennium CE, is one of the richest troves.<\/p>\n

The travelers find that time is elastic. You may live a hundred years in a dreamworld and return to find that only a day has passed in ordinary time.<\/p>\n

What is experienced in the dreamworlds is real, and has real consequences in the traveler\u2019s ordinary. Spiritual apprenticeship and initiation can take place in this way. Lavana applied his mind to offering the elaborate sacrifices required at a royal coronation inside a dream. He supervised three Brahmins actively performing the required sacrifices while a fourth acted as witness to the correctness of the proceedings. In this way, Lavana accomplished work of \u201croyal consecration\u201d that normally involves twelve years of effort, suffering and sacrifice. However, the gods made him suffer in another way \u2013 and learn, in the process, about the human condition and the connection between the life experiences of different personalities in different circumstances.<\/p>\n

Lavana was seated in splendor on his throne, drinking a warm cup of mulled wine, when a wandering sage appeared, leading a magnificent horse. When the king turned his attention to the horse, he found himself mounting it and galloping off across plains and desert. He was unable to check the horse until his foot caught in a dangling vine and he was pulled out of his stirrups. Broken in body, he was dying of hunger and thirst when a dark woman \u2013 an Untouchable, lowest of the low in India\u2019s caste system \u2013 found him. When he begged her for food and water, she agreed to save him on condition that he accompanied her to her village and married her. The king agreed.<\/p>\n

He spent a lifetime among the Untouchables, raising children, working in the cemeteries among the bodies and ghosts of the dead. When he died, his corpse was thrown on the funeral pyre. In that instant, the king was jerked out of his dream as his headed nodded forward onto his chest. The mulled wine in his cup was still warm.<\/p>\n

There are more complex versions of this story. In one of them, a Brahmin ascetic dreams he is an Untouchable who dreams that he is a king. The ascetic is standing in a river meditating, with the water up to his chest. His awareness is drawn into the life of an Untouchable who enters a city where he is hailed as the new king. After several years, old companions recognize him and he is dethroned as an unclean impostor. At the end of his life, his body is thrown on the funeral pyre. As it burns, he finds himself back in the Brahmin\u2019s body he left standing in the river.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Hindu tradition, dreaming is the key to other worlds, and the literature and sacred writings of India are a treasury of tales of dream travel, clearly grounded on experience. The Yogavasistha, a vast Kashmiri compilation from the first millennium CE, is one of the richest troves. The travelers find that time is elastic. You…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,20,31,36],"tags":[199,200,198,197],"class_list":["post-2487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ancestral-traditions","category-history-of-dreaming","category-multiverse","category-myth","tag-hinduism","tag-india","tag-lavana","tag-yogavisistha"],"yoast_head":"\nIndia's dream travelers - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/05\/indias-dream-travelers.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"India's dream travelers - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In Hindu tradition, dreaming is the key to other worlds, and the literature and sacred writings of India are a treasury of tales of dream travel, clearly grounded on experience. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2487"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2489,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2487\/revisions\/2489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}